Because OF COURSE they would name stars to each other as a way to go on a date.

First Star Trek writing... be nice.

"Do you come here often?"

Spock turned at her voice, away from the Perseids showering meteors across the sky, and watched her make her way across the soft sand. His stood straight as always, hands tucked neatly behind his back, and his uniform somehow unrumpled despite the late hour. She couldn't see his face clearly in the dim light from streetlamps and hovercars meters behind them, but could discern him tilting his head against the darkening sky.

"Sorry, bad joke. I didn't expect to find you here," she said, drawing even with him where the sand became hard packed from waves when the tide was in. She had taken her sandals off and they dangled from her fingers and she felt… short next to him, in a way she rarely did when in uniform.

"I do not come here often, only tonight to observe the meteor shower," he replied, still watching her as she tilted her face to the sea, to the stars. "I can only assume that with your advancement to Syntatic Theory III, the second Phonological Theory course, a Practicum in Conversational Andoran, and your preliminary work on your thesis, that you do not often frequent the beach yourself."

She smiled, glancing at him to find that he had turned back to the meteor shower as he had spoken. She had spent a long afternoon in his office the past semester, going over course offerings and making choices for summer classes. "I added Neurolinguistics with Professor Rand," she said. "I have more free time now that I'm not TA-ing for you, or suffering under your considerable course load. Those computer science students don't know what they're in for."

"You performed admirably in my classes," he says, though he doesn't need to remind her and she grimaces.

"My lowest marks at the Academy."

"The highest I've ever given a student."

He did that sometimes, throwing something into a conversation that straddled the line between Vulcan honesty and what, if he were fully human, she might consider something else.

"I presume you still intend to take Phonological Analysis this Fall?" he asked, and when she looked at him again, his eyes were tracing a new spray of meteors.

She missed this, his perfect recollection of their conversations, and his obvious interest in her coursework and career. He had recommended her for her summer internship translating obscure subspace Klingon communications, work she found both challenging and mesmerizing. She could imagine sitting at a Communications work station on a starship positioned near the Neutral Zone, her fingers flying over her work as they hurtled forward…

"Yes, I've signed up for it already." They lapsed into silence as they stared at the sky, companionable after so many hours working together, he at his desk with a stack of PADDs, and her at her small table in his office. She hadn't realized how much she enjoyed working with him until the spring semester had ended. Her time in his office had always been colored with a bit too much work, an extra half hour to complete after her attention had begun to wander, or a translation that required her to keep a finger in a Betazoid dictionary since the material so far eclipsed what had been taught in class.

She had slowly realized that his unrelenting pressure had been a compliment, one never uttered out loud, but instead passed to her in challenging work that other professors didn't think cadets capable of. She knew, with certainty, that he did not think his other students up to her level, often evidenced in his terse remarks on their papers and harsh grades handed back.

Still, he had remained accessible to them, and her, in a way that only a handful of other professors were. Once students got over their innate fear of approaching him, his office hours were often full of a steady stream coming for extra help. He didn't seem to tire of explaining material once a student showed a commitment to mastering it, something that had been the foundation of their work together all those months ago.

He had been reassigned from the Communications department to Computer Sciences, ostensibly in preparation for his new role on the Enterprise. He would have more free time at assist Captain Pike as the launch date, still ages away, drew inexorably closer. She couldn't bear the idea of the flagship sliding away from the space dock without her and was pushing, pushing, to graduate in time to be on board.

She was not the only cadet to do so – Kirk was rivaling her for credits completed each semester, if not for grades, and helmsmen, medical staff, and weapons specialists were lining up outside simulators on weekend mornings. If Starfleet had planned on its recruits pushing themselves to earn their place aboard, they were reaping the rewards as Nyota's class fell over themselves competing.

She felt a secret thrill knowing that while Kirk had Pike pulling for him, plus his golden last name that still turned heads during roll call, few earned the kind of praise Spock bestowed on her. And she had earned it, thumbing through phonology textbooks and stumbling, embarrassingly, through Vulcan and Romulan translations as he shook his head, again, and gestured for her to start over. He had been patient, sitting with her as the sun set and his office lights came on that first semester, as she pushed down growing hunger and a desire to stretch. Doing that in front of him seemed like admitting some sort of weakness and it wasn't until later, when she could flawlessly converse in a number of dialects with him, when they ate their dinners at their desks most nights, that she realized that of all people at the Academy, if he was the one to push her, he did so with a respect that it seemed almost impossible to tarnish.

"I trust your visit to your family was successful?" His voice broke against her thoughts, pulling her back to the sand under her feet and the cool breeze on her face.

"Oh, yes. My niece has grown a foot, and my brother was on leave, so we could all be together," she smiled, thinking of the warm spices and scents from home, the sun over the desert that cast light in a way completely absent from San Francisco. She had asked Spock, once, if he had ever seen any of Earth's deserts and if they reminded him of Vulcan. His response, clipped and short, that the light's refraction in the Terran atmosphere and the different geological composition of the landscape, had spoken to a homesickness that he didn't articulate, but which had caught in her throat and belayed any further, or future, questions.

"That growth rate seems abnormally accelerated for a young human, considering you saw her not six months ago," he replied, his slight frown caught in the lights of a hover bus rounding a corner on the street behind them.

She laughed, the sound hanging in the air between them. She had missed this, the way he was joking and probably knew he was joking, and probably knew that she knew that he was joking, though that never passed between them.

The breeze picked up and she found herself shifting closer to him, even as she studiously studied the meteor shower above them. "Ra's al-Ghul," she gestured, raising her hand so that her arm very nearly brushed his. "Or Algol, in Standard," she said, as a bright meteor streaked past the star she named. "Mirfak, or Alpha Persei, and Atik, or Zeta Persei."

"Home of the Petarians," he said softly. "NGC 869 and NGC 884. Discovered by the Hsia Dynasty in China in the third century BCE." He paused for a long moment as her hand fell back between them. "The Perseus Cluster of galaxies contains NGC 1275 with an active nucleus that produces sound waves of a B fifty seven octaves below middle C."

Nyota hummed a B quietly, thinking of the sounds a galaxy made, the pitch of the waves against the sand as she stood next to Spock.

He looked at her suddenly and she stopped humming, embarrassed to be caught in such a sentimental moment. "I extended the invitation to you at the conclusion of this previous semester, Nyota, but I would be remiss if I did not further encourage you to continue attending my office hours, despite the cessation of our academic relationship."

She often wondered if he used bigger words and long sentences when he was not sure what to say, instead filling the space with syllables and the rhythms of his precise speech.

"Oh! I have class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons now. Because of Neurolinguistics."

"With Proffessor Rand."

"Yes." She swallowed and tightened her fingers on the straps of her sandals. "I'm free in the evenings of those days."

He did not say anything for a long moment, staring at the horizon. "The Computer Science offices do not have the extended hours of the Linguistics labs, though I am unable to determine a logical reason as the students work extremely late into the evenings. Regardless, though my office will not be available, either day would be acceptable."

"I told you about that new vegetarian place. Near Pac Heights." It wasn't a question but he answered as if she had asked one.

"That would be an amenable course of action." He nodded, and she nodded, though neither were looking at each other.

"Tuesday," she said with finality, though made no move to go.

"Tuesday," he confirmed.