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You sat with one of your lab mates in the mess hall, ravenously eating your dinner of sausage ravioli. You and he had been so busy cataloging and pressing the rapidly wilting plant samples from that morning’s planetary exploration that you’d ended up working straight through lunch. You both managed to get slightly larger helpings for dinner that night, which you both ate with the eagerness of piranhas.
Right as you stuffed a too-big ravioli in your mouth, whole, that literal ray of sunshine walked through the doors of the mess hall. Nyota Uhura. You’d been a couple years ahead of her at the academy and hadn’t noticed her too much then because your studies had kept you so busy. But three years later, through hard work and little bit of luck, you’d managed to secure a position on the Enterprise for its five-year mission. To say that you had come to admire Nyota in the past year didn’t even scratch the surface.Not only was she one of the most brilliant women in Starfleet, but she was also positively gorgeous. She exuded confidence and poise without being arrogant or vain.
You could have gotten lost in her deep brown eyes as they drifted around the room, pausing when they met yours. You attempted to smile through your mouthful pasta but ended up just imitating a puffer fish.
“Umm, Y/N,” your lab mate, Sandro, interrupted your shameless staring, “You’ve got a little…” He gestured to his chin with his index finger.
“Ohf, shif,” you garbled, wiping at your chin and swallowing the mouthful pasta, cheese, and sauce. Your napkin came back with a large splotch of marinara in the middle. “How long was that there??”
“Long enough for Uhura to see,” he responded with just a hint of sass.
“Damnit,” you stared into your plate, “Why? Why is that every time I try to, you know, look cool or attractive or whatever, I end up just making a fool of myself?”
Sandro could only shrug as he cut at his piece of chicken.
You weren’t being entirely too hard on yourself with that statement. Many of your encounters with Nyota had ended in, well, complete disaster.
There was this one time that you had been conversing actually quite fluently with her at a bar on the first shore leave of the mission. Things had been going suspiciously well, and you were feeling confident enough to ask to buy her next drink. Unfortunately, the question got a bit jumbled on it’s way out of your brain, and you ended up asking with what you thought was a suggestive quirk of your brow, “Would you like to buy my next drink?” Not realizing your mistake, you smiled at her expectantly for at least twenty long seconds until it hit you too. “Oh no, I meant to say ‘Would like me to buy your next drink?’ It just came out wrong, you know how that goes…or maybe not.”
Nyota looked at you with an expression of, what was that? Disgust? Amusement? A mixture of both, or something completely different? Hell if you knew.
“Sorry, I’m just gonna−” You feigned looking around the bar and catching Sandro’s eye, “Oh, well my buddy, Sandro, is beckoning me. Have a good night, Nyota!” Then in your haste to get away, you ran clean into a server with a tray of shots, knocking her over, shots and all. The manager politely asked you to leave.
Then there was another time that you had asked one of the engineers, who moonlighted as a hair stylist on the Enterprise, to give you something trendy, and he gave you a phenomenal cut. The next day while you were running on the treadmill in one of the exercise rooms, Nyota walked up to your machine and started a bit of small talk with you.
She was asking about your workout routine before saying, “And by the way, Y/N,” she said your name! “That new haircut is a knockout,” she said smiling and looking up at you through her long lashes.
You were speechless and positively glowing. That was until you got a bit too distracted by it all, tripped on the edge of the treadmill, and were propelled backward into the wall by the belt.
Nyota had been kind enough to help you up and walk you to the medbay as you clutched your broken wrist, patting your back softly as you moaned in pain. However, she left soon after dropping you off.
Those were just two of the more notable interactions you’d had with her.
“I mean, sure, we sometimes talk in passing. And she does laugh at my jokes, usually, but I’m not a clown, Sandro! There’s more to me than that. Do you hear me? I am not a clown!” You exclaimed with growing exasperation.
“Geez, ok! You’re not a clown. ‘Course, if you were, you’d be like that sad opera clown.” He smirked playfully at you, taking a swig of his tea.
“Hah. Hah.” You said unemphatically, stabbing a ravioli aggressively. “And I think you mean Pagliacci.”
“Ok, nerd,” he laughed back. “I’m just tellin’ you; she’s not completely oblivious to you. You are clearly obsessed with her, so just ask her out. Calmly.”
“I’m not obsessed with her, I just…have a really big crush on her, is all. Besides, I don’t even know if she’s into women.” You retorted weakly.
“So ask her out. What’s the worst that happens? She says no very, very nicely?” He suggested.
You couldn’t help feeling that Sandro was right, but it was far easier to rationalize asking her out than it was to actually do it.
“I’m just taking my time is all.”
“Don’t take too much time.”
You responded by stuffing two ravioli in your mouth at once, looking Sandro in the eyes the whole time with your best dead stare.
Unbeknownst to you, across the room, Nyota was looking at you and couldn’t help but chuckle at your antics before returning to the conversation at her table.
About a week later, you found yourself in a similar situation. The only differences were that you’d had lunch that day and attacked your spaghetti bolognese with a little less ferocity and Sandro was stuck eating in the lab while he finished up his reports he’d procrastinated on.
You were lazily flicking through some of your lab notes on your PADD as you ate. Taking a few noodles, you twirled them around your fork into a perfect pasta nest and were in the process of raising the fork to your mouth when you almost dropped it on your plate. Nyota was standing on the opposite side of the table smiling at you.
“Mind if I sit here? I’ve got no one to eat with today either.”
“Uh, yes. Please.” Your voice was just a touch too eager, but Nyota didn’t seem to mind.
“You and your pasta.” She commented with a soft smile. “You’ve inspired me to try the bolgnese today.”
‘You and your pasta?’ What did that mean? Trying to keep your cool, you responded, “Yeah, it’s not bad. It’s not my mother’s bolognese, but it gets the job done I suppose.”
“Old family recipe?” You couldn’t tell if she were genuinely interested or just making small talk.
“Oh yeah, I won’t bore you with it, though.” You desperately searched for a topic of conversation, landing on something in the immediate vicinity. “So, what’s keeping your friends away today?”
“Oh, that,” she said with a low snicker, “They kept putting off writing up their communications reports from last week’s away mission, and so they’re working through lunch to get them in on time tonight. What about you? Where’s your friend, Sandro, is it?”
“Yeah, Sandro. He’s in the same situation. He’s eating in the lab, finishing up his lab reports.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to eat in the science labs,” she said, raising her brows slightly.
“Oh, there’s really not a lot of dangerous chemicals or anything like that in the botany lab. I mean, there’s deadly plants sure, but they’re dried and pressed on herbarium sheets. There’s not much danger in that, unless of course you spilled you food on them…which would be, well, best not to dwell on ‘what ifs.’” You sort of trailed off, and she just smiled and shook her head at you and began tending to her plate.
And that’s when you noticed it, your eye twitching ever so slightly. “Nyota, are you cutting your pasta with a knife?”
“Uh, yes? It makes it easier to eat.” She responded, squinting her eyes a little. “Why?”
Not wanting to ruin yet another conversation, you decided not to go there, “Oh, nothing, I was just…you do you.”
“Is there something wrong with me cutting my spaghetti, Y/N?” Your name didn’t sound quite as pleasant coming from her this time.
“No. Well, it’s just that, it’s more traditional to twirl the noodles like so,” you demonstrated with a bite. “They made the noodles long for a reason.” You wondered if you were being patronizing.
Unconvinced, she responded, “I suppose, but I still say it’s easier this way. See?” She ran her knife across her plate and scooped up a forkful of shortened spaghetti, raising one brow defiantly.
“Well, I’d avoid doing that if you ever visit Italy,” retorted a bit sarcastically. But realizing that you did not want to argue about pasta when you should be trying to pluck up the courage to ask her out, you added, “But, it’s just a stupid thing really. I mean, c’mon. It’s just pasta, right?” You tried to look contrite.
“Ok, yeah. Like you said, ‘You do you.’” She said, still sounding a tad irritated.
The two of you sat, eating your spaghetti in silence for a couple minutes. Finally, Nyota broke the silence. “Wow, look at us, huh? Adults?” She chuckled, looking across the table at you.
You smiled and laughed softly in return, “Yeah. Adults. ‘Course, in my family we take pasta pretty seriously.”
She smiled, shaking her head, “You and your pasta.” She repeated the same phrase from before, as her smile faded into a more, what was that facial expression? Before you could ponder the nuances of body language any further, she set her fork down, looked you dead in the eyes, and asked, “So, I don’t want to sound too forward, but what’s it going to take for me to get a date with you.”
You froze and stared at her blankly. Date? With me? What?! “Wait, have you been flirting with me all this time?” You blurted out before your brain could control your mouth.
She cocked one brow, “Well it’s about time you noticed. So, what do you say?” She looked at you expectantly, her usually confident demeanor a bit lessened.
“Are you kidding me?” Ok, you needed to calm down at this point, “I mean to say, I would love to go on a date with you.” You tried keep your voice steady.
“Really?” She asked, looking a bit excited and even a bit shy.
“Really.” You replied, adding, “Nyota, I’ve been trying to pluck up the courage to ask you out for months, but in case you haven’t noticed, I tend to, well, I don’t need rehash all the disastrous conversations I’ve had with you.”
Realization dawned on her, “Ooh. I honestly didn’t know if you even liked me all that much. You always seemed to find creative ways of getting out of conversations, like knocking over bar waiters and falling off treadmills.”
You laughed a bit at that, “Nope, I’m just…well, really that awkward and clumsy, and it only get’s worse when I’m around you because you’re, well, you.”
She smiled at that, looking down. You couldn’t believe this was happening.
She looked back up at you, positively beaming and said, “Well, this lunch has turned out rather well. Our friends should procrastinate on their work more often.”