I love the stories where sleeping together is the big, cosmic hurdle and their emotional journey is what happens first. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if it was the other way around.

He is not embarrassed or apologetic about wanting sex and she's not sure why she thought he might be.

"If you are amenable," he says the first night as her knees grip his hips and he raises a hand to her temple.

It is a rush of sensations, devoid of feeling, but that doesn't surprise her anymore than the fact that she's in his bed.

…

Sleeping with a professor is not something she intends, specifically, nor is it something that she particularly avoids.

He is tall and handsome, and she can't help but notice him as he lectures. She likes the sound of his voice, the way his hands grip his padd, and the intelligence that seems as innate a characteristic as his ears.

She looks up fraternization regulations after his second lecture and finds Starfleet surprisingly permissive. 'Appearance of favoritism' is subjective and there's nothing that Nyota does better than wrestle language to fit what she wants. In this case, her wants are wearing a fitted instructor's jacket and discussing the Romulan conditional tense.

She often waits after class to ask him questions. It only takes three weeks for him to mention he has a paper copy of an Andorian epic poem in his quarters. She doesn't ask if he can bring it to his office, just finishes her homework early and puts on a nice bra and a new pair of earrings.

Standing on her toes to kiss him is straightforward and when his hands close over her waist before sliding lower, she simply steps into his body.

While he is direct in what he wants, his hands firm and insistent, he asks permission before lowering her to the bed. She has the opportunity to back out and instead traces the waistband of his pants until his stomach jumps under her fingers.

The fact that it is all together too simple would be something to consider if she stopped to think about it. Instead, she enjoys the firm press of him into her and the way he makes her arch off the bed. She also enjoys not thinking and the hot, white blankness when their minds touch and they move together. She thinks he enjoys that too, the relief from churning academia and the way their thoughts finally still in the space between their bodies.

…

He is focused, capable, and excels at everything he attempts. That is a good part, she thinks, sweat drying on her skin.

Class is no different, afterwards. That is one of the best parts.

…

She tries to never wonder what led them to bed together, since it's not something she can explain. Stress relief, she shrugs at Gaila, who of course figures it out within days. Just physical, she tells her sister when asked if she's seeing anyone.

He sends her a newly published paper on Klingon fricatives and they discuss it over lunch in the lab one day, cups of tea cooling between them as she gestures with her hands and he keeps his clasped on the table. She finds it easy to talk to him.

He is easier to sleep with and they repeat the experience as often as their schedules allow.

…

The opening for his Advanced Phonology aide comes as an automated alert and is one of several that she receives from professors in the department. She is an accomplished student and catches the attention of three other professors who ask her to work for them. She hands Spock her application in his office and he accepts it without touching her fingers.

She is not one to have sex with professors, she reminds herself, and is still sometimes surprised that the man sitting at the other desk is the same one with his head between her thighs most nights. But they slip so easily in and out of their uniforms, their fingers practiced on the clasps and zippers.

…

She enjoys his proficiency with language and his proficiency with her body. His fingers are hot on her temple, the need and want grinding between them as she moves her hips over his. She can feel the dark coil of heat in his stomach match her own and thinks guv-tvi-rivak across the connection between their hands, the closest she can get in Vulcan to the vulgar fuck running through the haze of her mind. His fingers make slick, hard circles that cause her to rock harder against him and his hips jerk slightly. He repeats it back in Andorian, she in Betazoid, he in Trill, and she in Orion, which is such an inherently dirty and hot language that he rolls them over and pounds into her until they're both gasping. She can't help but smile at him when they still and he traces her mouth with a finger, curious.

…

She's not sure what sex was like before touch telepathy anymore, and has no desire to remember. She likes her ability to anticipate what he wants, likes that instead of pushing her head down towards his lap, his hand finds her face and she can feel what her mouth does to him. She likes that he shares that.

She likes that his cool demeanor in the office is at odds with the heat in his eyes when she stands before him, and his quiet gasps when she touches him.

She likes how well he knows her, even since the first time. It keeps it purely physical, without awkward fumbling or stopping to ask how it feels.

It feels good, and she likes that too.

…

When their minds brush, she rarely glimpses anything other than heat, pleasure, and the way her body looks to him. She thinks it's an offshoot of his natural restraint and tendency towards privacy. She never thinks there aren't emotions, just that he has no intention of sharing that with her.

She knows she is less contained, her thoughts bizarrely flickering between subjects. Once, after they had thoroughly tangled his sheets and before she moves to leave, she feels him take her hand and listen.

He's so curious and she wonders briefly how many other women's minds he's been in before, how many human's. He arches an eyebrow at her and she thinks you should feel privileged to be in mine. He flushes slightly, the same tinge on his cheeks as when he first pushes inside her each time.

It's like channel surfing, she muses, already feeling her thoughts start to wander in her state of satiation and nagging exhaustion. She can feel his confusion and curiosity, perhaps the first emotions other than want that she's ever known from his mind. She thinks of flipping through holovid channels, to explain the phrase, which makes her think of the weekend when she and Gaila are planning to catch a movie, which makes her realize she needs to finish her homework before that, which makes her think of her Introduction to Stellar Cartography paper, which makes her reach for her underwear and untangle them from his shirt, leaving him looking faintly amused as she heads back to the library.

…

She tears her and Gaila's room apart looking for her comm. She has a distinct impression she knows exactly where it is, but it's easier to look under her bunk, through the piles of textbooks, than message him in the glare of the morning light.

Spock slips it into her hand as they pass in the door of his office, he on his way to a meeting, she on her way to sort emails and answer questions about syntax. His fingers brush her wrist, her palm, quickly, and then he is gone.

She tightens her hand over the case.

…

Female cadets heavily dominate xenolinguistics and the department is full of short skirts, high heels, and long hair.

Many eyes follow him as he leaves his classroom, and he often has a long line for office hours. She bends over her desk in the corner of his office, carefully focused on her work. Mostly she is ignored, written off as pretty but studious. She knows her reputation as untouchable and enjoys the irony as others ask after his weekend plans, if he's up to anything that evening.

He is up to something, as it happens, and she pushes him onto his bed. She likes the heat in his eyes when she holds his wrists down and keeps him from touching her hands, her face. It is silent in her mind until the silence slides into loneliness and she presses her cheek into his palm as she takes the length of him in her mouth.

His thoughts are filled with the curves of her body, the rhythm of her tongue, and her voice repeating words he taught her in Vulcan that don't belong in a classroom.

At the interdepartmental meeting the next day, she remembers the mark she left below the neckline of his uniform and doesn't mind the other women watching him.

…

She thinks she's getting a Pavlovian response to watching her comm light up.

"Booty call?" her sister asks, smiling from the monitor.

"Something like that," she replies.

Her sister is always one to push. "Another cadet?"

Nyota sighs. "No."

"Fun. Human?"

"No. Yes. Half."

"Kinky."

Her sister waits for more and Nyota just shakes her head.

"You just jumped into bed with him? You have to tell me."

Spock has never made her feel easy, or taken advantage of, and has never been anything other than direct and polite. He is the most conscientious man she's ever been with, and the most considerate. She tells her sister none of this, partly because it is simply inherent in his character and she can't imagine him any other way, and partly because to do so would necessitate an unarticulated honesty with herself.

…

He leaves for a week to oversee the installation of lab equipment on the Enterprise. She covers his classes and the other cadets seem simultaneously relieved and lost without him.

She ignores what his absence tugs at in her, but sits with her comm beside her the night he's scheduled to return.

"Tell me everything," she says, even as he traces patterns on her bare skin. He lowers her onto her back and goes down on her with a fervency that she's missed with him gone. She feels a quaking thirst when he takes her hand roughly in his and enters her, and she's not sure if she's parched for the battering rhythm or he is, but she comes again.

"Tell me," she says as he catches his breath. She shifts so she is sitting beside him as he stares at the ceiling, her fingers aligned over his. It is the first night she stays for any length of time and she walks home staring at the stars above her.

…

They stay late in his office one evening, comparing what they know of the Bjoran language before she has to run to choral practice. In the midst of a considerable amount of papers and tests that week, she often thinks back to the warm glow of fading sunlight and the rapt attention he paid to her words.

…

Their lives push at what is between them. His mother calls one night when he is unzipping his pants with one hand, the other under her skirt. He looks almost panicked before he tugs his shirt back on and answers the comm. She draws her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, unsure whether to leave, trying not to automatically translate the Vulcan words.

Her exams hang before her. She becomes irritable under stress, something Gaila points out when they snap at each other over dirty laundry. She recites Risan morphology to herself one night before a test and can't seem to stop even as Spock kisses his way down her neck and hungrily takes her breast in his mouth.

He pulls back, such a foreign behavior from him that she immediately goes cold.

"Would you prefer to study?" he asks. He swallows when she shifts on his lap and she can feel the friction of his pants against his erection through their joined hands. Heat flares briefly before he swallows again. She feels his mind close slightly as he controls himself. "Professor Jarandal says you are quite accomplished and his best student. However, if you need more time to review-"

"No," she says, slipping a hand under his waistband. She has studied, for hours, and came to his apartment to relax. "I'll do fine."

"Of that," he replies, laying back and pulling her over him, "I have no doubt." His eyes close as she touches him and when he puts two fingers on her temple, she draws on his words and Risian is forgotten.

…

They can talk about the distinction between synchronic and diachronic analyses for hours. Their discussions at the end of work often run late and she wonders if it's the first thing in his life that hasn't gone according to schedule.

Their ability to speak of language is seemingly inexhaustible. Their ability to speak of anything else is evolving. She has always been one to apply herself to perfecting new skills.

She finds knowing him on a personal level is something of a stumbling surprise next to the directness with which he unbuckled his belt that first night, or the tangle of her cadet uniform and his instructor's jacket leading to his bed.

To know him as more than a professor and a warm body is not something she intends, and not something she avoids.

…

He sends her a third paper on the use of the subjunctive in 22nd Century Terran music. They listen to sound bites together in his living room, their hands brushing over each other's as they tap on the padd before them.

"That is what you hear?" he asks suddenly, gripping her hand firmly and pulling it towards him. Amidst the harmonies swirling in her mind, she feels him probing gently. His eyes are dark and hard on her and she watches them soften as he listens to the music through her.

"You find it fascinating. My emotional response to the music."

"Indeed," he says quietly.

"What do you hear?"

He shakes his head and doesn't let go of her hand for a long time. When he finally does, it is to draw her close to kiss.

…

It seems terribly intimate, how well she knows his mind. It's ordered, just as neat and contained as his apartment, as if he's tidily stacked the boxes of his thoughts in rows and columns. She likes to see those boxes tumbling when she licks the skin over his hipbones, or when she traces her tongue up his ear. She imagines them crashing down as his hands twist in the sheets, his head pushed back into the pillows as she move above him.

His body was one thing, to know what was beneath that uniform. To know what's behind his eyes is another.

…

He's immobile in bed, his skin shining with sweat, and she has the distinct impression he can't walk. He often offers her water, and lately something to eat, when they finish.

Tonight, she pulls on his shirt and helps herself to his kitchen. There's coffee in his cupboard, unopened. She drinks it, he doesn't. She's never spent the night and has never intended to. She doesn't mention it, and leaves soon after.

…

He's emotionally unavailable, or that's what she tells herself, since there are deep emotions at corners of his mind, carefully shielded except when he gasps in her arms and puts his face against hers, his breath hot on her skin.

Then, she feels something, and knows he does too, but it remains unnamed. For a linguist, it is the first thing she ever resists defining.

…

It is often easier to convey something by touching his hand and using the concept of her words, rather than the words themselves. She wonders, sometimes, what would happen if someone walked in to his office and saw them holding hands, bent over a translation, but it never happens.

She communicates better with him than with most others, and though she is trained in the art of words, she likes that they often don't need them.

…

She's terrible at relationships. She knows this about herself, has heard it bandied back by men before. She is committed to her work, often ignores calls in favor of one more hour of studying, and often grows bored with the men she dates.

He is the only man she's been with who is busier than she is and the only one who accepts her uncompromising ambition. The first night he rolls off her and picks up a data chip, she is relieved she can check her padd without any guilt or explanation. She scrolls through a test that was graded while her legs were wrapped around his waist and gets dressed while reviewing a translation due the next day.

She has never skipped class or a meeting to see him, and has never shirked her homework or studies. He seems content to exist at the edge of her life. She doesn't feel she owes him anything and he has never asked for what she can't give. It occurs to her, as he pulls his pants on and plugs the chip into his padd, that she has returned that favor. It is one of the things she tries not to think of, but does so with increasing regularity.

…

Her sister begs to know more about her mystery man.

"Not dating him, not a boyfriend," she says. She's sure using those words would involve something beyond regular sex, shared meals, and how comfortable she feels with him, but at the moment she can't clearly articulate the difference.

It's not a relationship. She tells herself this often, but not as often as she finds herself sending him a paper he might find interesting or checking her messages from him.

…

She thinks he is the perfect blend of cultures and heritage. She never tells him that and thinks maybe that she should.

She brings him a salad and a piece of Vulcan flatbread from the cafeteria, along with her own sandwich for lunch. He sends her a clip of Bach played on a ka'athyra.

He is not like other men she has known and she likes that. She does not ask if she is like other women, but when he murmurs into her hair in Vulcan, she thinks she is not. He holds his heritage close to him and speaks to her in his native language in bed and in Standard in the office. She has never asked him to explain anything about himself.

"Sarlah," she says as she takes his hand, his eyes on her bare body. "Come here."

She often feels calm and at peace when their hands touch, or when his fingers rest against her face. It takes her a long time to understand that those feelings are his.

…

"Coffee?" Cadet Barrett asks her when she stifles a yawn as she explains the difference in syllable weight of High and Low Romulan. "There's a new café that just opened…"

"I-," she says, then hesitates. She has a paper to finish. She has choral practice that evening. She has a-

She hears Spock shift at his desk, clicking softly on his padd as he grades quizzes.

"I'm sorry, I can't," she says quickly, and highlights one of his paragraphs with her stylus, crossing out a mistake.

She hands Spock Barrett's quiz that night, asking for clarification on his rubric for trimoriac syllables. He leans close to her on the couch, his voice low and even as he explains the drawn out morae. He touches her hand, briefly, and her mind fills with Sanskrit, Rigveda and Atharvaveda, the words overlapping in a jumbled hum before she echoes them back, tapping her fingers idly against his palm in time with the syllables.

It's late. She went on a long run with Gaila that morning. She had three lectures and spent the afternoon in a study group before editing her paper. She hides a yawn behind her hand as she finishes grading the quiz.

"Coffee?" Spock asks, raising an eyebrow as she hands him Barrett's padd.

"Stop," she says, and jostles her shoulder against his with a smile. "Don't tell me you're jealous."

"I am not."

She rolls her eyes at him, something she knows he finds exasperating.

His fingers close over hers.

"Nyota," he says. She stops breathing. He repeats her name again and her hands shake. "Nyota. If you preferred to be with someone else, then you would be. Jealousy is illogical. You are here because you prefer my company above others. If that changes, I trust you will inform me."

She takes a long time to respond.

"So I guess you're not seeing anyone else, either?"

"That should be self-evident."

She feels something from him that makes her stomach twist slightly and her eyes prick. They kiss each other slowly and he reigns in his thoughts until it's just the feel of their bodies pressed together. She feels him strain against everything else that pulls at their minds and she makes herself think of the feel of his hot skin, the padds uncomfortably pressed under her as he lowers her to the couch. It's easier to think of the slide of his tongue against hers than what skirts beneath those sensations, the meaning behind the way he traces the lines of her face.

That night, he gets her off twice before pushing into her with something that seems like determination. If she thought harder about it, it might feel like possession, but it's difficult to form a coherent thought as his mouth is wet against her neck and he grips her thigh in a strong, hot hand.

…

She knows exactly how long the walk is between her dorm and his apartment, the length of the lift ride, the steps to his door.

None of that has changed. What has changed is how he takes her coat and asks after her day. She thinks their record for keeping their clothes on is becoming astonishing and forgets what it's like to be pushed against the door as soon as it closes behind her.

She finds she doesn't miss how it was and instead enjoys his attention to her responses, her own queries. She likes how his skin feels at the base of his neck, how his hands press against her lower back, his voice low and deep as he tells her about his afternoon, his meeting over dinner.

His diction and cadence are different in the half-light of his apartment, his bedroom, than his brightly lit office. She wonders if it's their own dialect, passed between the two of them in their words, thoughts, and bodies.

If it is, they have learned it well, she thinks. He inhales sharply as she kisses his stomach and drags her nails up his thighs. She twists her fingers in his hair as his head dips down, his lips hot on her breasts. Their hands fumble for each other's and join as their bodies do, and his eyes are black and dark and never leave hers. Afterwards, they speak little and he helps her into her jacket and touches the backs of her fingers. It is words enough for her.

…

A fourth year asks her to serve as communications officer for the Kobayashi Maru. She's never heard of it, but agrees readily.

She thinks about not seeing him that night when he messages her. She can't forget the image of the fourth year slumped in her captain's chair, his shadow among the other instructors in the windows above them. She is jumpy and nervous and the klaxons echo dully in her ears.

They do not quiet until he presses his fingers to hers and covers her body with his own.

She shakes in his bed, afterwards, and he gathers her to his chest. She feels his hot skin, his breath returning to normal, and the tightness of his arms across her back. She also feels his apologies, unuttered, and his admiration of her skill during the test.

"I would be honored to serve with you one day," he says into her hair and she thinks it's perhaps the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to her.

…

He's not emotionally unavailable. It might be simpler if he was.

He makes her tea during midterms. He often asks if she's eaten and if she is ok walking home by herself. She gets in a fight with Gaila and he offers what he knows of Orion culture. He goes over her subspace physics exam with her, sitting with the sheet draped across his lap. She is embarrassed by her low grade, but he walks her through equations with the same thoroughness and patience he normally applies to his attentions between her legs.

She tells him about her childhood, her family, and when she speaks of the heat of the desert, he touches her face and they remember hot sand and heavy air together. She feels a loneliness from him she never would have guessed, and a longing for his home that makes her press against him. They say nothing, but sit and watch an imagined landscape in their minds, their hands tracing over each other's.

…

He skims his fingers over the bruises on her back from Advanced Hand to Hand Combat. His hands are warm, hot even, as they knead tired muscles. It's the first time they don't have sex. It feels more intimate than most of the times they do.

The next day, he takes her to the gym. They are not often seen in public together, not outside of his office or the lab, but nobody watches them as he shows her how to shift her weight and drop someone twice her size to the mat. As he helps her back to her feet, she gives him a colorful image of how this might be useful for them and he turns slightly green.

That afternoon, she dumps Barrett in a limp heap before her. When he asks her out again, she declines immediately and calls Spock the moment her class is over.

…

His mother calls again. This time, they are eating leftover spaghetti and translating a Greek poem into Trill. She can't quite remember the reason they started.

She hears him speak her name, hears his mother ask about her, and she idly traces her fingers over a dictionary.

…

They sit naked in his bed for hours as she tells him the story of Beowulf.

"You remember all of it," he says as the morning light filters in through his window.

"My first translation," she yawns into her hand.

They eat breakfast at the coffee shop down the street as the sun rises. He pays and though she hasn't let anyone buy her food or drinks for many years, she finds she doesn't mind. They sit outside at a table damp with dew and he pushes a stray piece of hair out of her face. She doesn't mind that either.

…

She is at the top of her class. She holds her transcript and can't help but wonder.

He doesn't take her to dinner or buy her champagne. Instead, he asks for her discretion and shows her the scores she earned in his class compared to her classmates. It wasn't favoritism, she sees. She did better than all of them.

She hugs him tightly and she can feel his pride in her course through her thoughts.

"Guess you wouldn't have wanted anyone less," she says as he runs his hands over her back.

"Anyone else," he corrects and she smiles into his shoulder.

…

She is completely flummoxed by the notion of his birthday. She settles on a dozen different gifts, then forgoes that idea for maybe a dinner instead, or tickets to something.

"Lingerie," Gaila suggests.

"Shut up," Nyota replies. She stops, thinks. "Ok. Maybe. Last resort."

In the end, she is scheduled for a training simulation on the Exeter and misses the whole week. She thinks of him the entire time and writes him a long email with her thoughts on a documentary about the Cardassian Empire they had watched together.

"Happy birthday," she whispers into his ear as she straddles his hips the first night she's back. "I missed you."

His hand is already on her face, something she thinks he does quicker and more readily whenever they are apart, and they way he digs his fingers in slightly and the brief burst of longing mixed with happiness is enough to tell her she has done ok.

She winds her arms around his neck and feels him kiss over her collarbone, up to her jaw as she tips her head back.

"I missed you a lot," she breathes, his free hand sliding over the curve of her hip.

He doesn't say anything in return, just drops his forehead against hers and beings to recite back the words of her email into her thoughts. It is thoroughly unsexy and thoroughly perfect and she rocks against him a bit faster.

…

She thinks they've been in every position possible, have explored each other completely. There have been nights with her on her hands and knees, in his shower as he balances her against the wall, roughly bent over his desk in his living room, living out a fantasy about his office neither of them can bring themselves to articulate aloud. She has lost count of the times they have been together, even though she is sure he knows, and the feel of his body against hers is comforting and necessary.

She is surprised, then, to wake up with sunlight in her eyes and his arm heavy across her stomach. She drags a pillow over her face and turns to press against him. He pulls her closer, fitting their bodies together in such a different way than the night before that she takes a moment to shift into him.

His hand closes over hers and she dreams with him of golden sand.

When she wakes again, a cup of coffee sits on the nightstand beside her.

...

So a couple thoughts. First, this was about a quarter of it's current length and was mostly just them doing it. But they just happen to be such dorks in love that I kept thinking up other scenes.

Also, I can never get on board with Spock being unsure of himself when it comes to sex. Have you seen him? That guy gets laid whenever he wants.

I also wanted to write about how professors are after Uhura for her brain and others are after Spock because he's hot. It was a refreshing change from a woman being pursued for her looks and her skills and ability being overlooked. I kind of want to write a whole long story about that. Maybe I should work on my WIPs first, though?

Finally, I like the idea of Uhura being really bad at being in a relationship because she's so focused. I feel like that's something that would draw them together, at least initially.

Let me know if you liked it and any thoughts you may have! Criticisms welcome as well!