Her Best Guys

The Enterprise was a Constitution-class starship bearing 430 crewmembers in departments and divisions of command, operations, and sciences, as well as engineering, medical, and training. Its continued successful travel through space depended on the competent professional ability of each and every one of those crewmembers in each and every one of those divisions; whether you were a communications officer on the bridge or a yeoman assisting researchers in the nuclear electronics lab.

The Enterprise was not a ship full of giggling children agape at every strange sight they saw throughout their journey. Still, communications officer Lieutenant Nyota Uhura often found herself stunned, as if by a phaser, at the extraordinary magnitude of mischief the most senior of her officers got up to.

When adults - professional adults - learned that one of their colleagues had gone on a couple of dates and was considering calling the relationship something more official, they didn't treat it like the discovery of a second sun (in the solar system, the terran solar system). When that relationship subsisted between not one but two of their colleagues, they didn't find out that the sun was somehow habitable, and the foundations of intergalactic exploration had been turned on their collective regulation-bound head, because humanity as they knew it was facing a suddenly entirely different characterization of any necessary future earthlife colonization projects.

But, Nyota Uhura and Nurse Christine Chapel were now dating, and Captain James T. Kirk, as well as Commander Spock and Lieutenant Commanders Montgomery Scott and Leonard McCoy, found this news utterly stunning, worthy of an extended celebration.

These were men that advised each other, morosely, of life-and-death developments on the planets below starship orbit, and made decisions upon those developments that left all concerned grave and grumbling. These were career-minded officers who were immensely invested in the quality of their work and significance of their jobs. These were men that, if men had to be making the decisions, were the best the Enterprise could hope to have to offer.

These were also two pairs of men who'd been carrying out their own odd little relationships between missions and mishaps; relationships that were characterized not by excess fanfare nor public displays but instead grim regard and private discussion.

Yet Captain Kirk, upon hearing the news, practically crowed like a rooster, clapping Dr. McCoy on the shoulder as if he'd had anything whatsoever to do with it all (maybe he'd let Christine lollygag on occasion when she wasn't meant to, it was true), throwing a wink to Engineer Scott, and begging the frankly idiotic question, "Well, why so serious, Spock?"

Spock, for his part, gave Uhura a careful look. "Have I been behaving with undue sobriety, Captain?"

Now Jim gave Spock a look.

"Jim?"

"I suppose not, if this were a brass briefing we were receiving, but this is Lt. Uhura we're talking about - aren't you happy for her?"

"I believe the accurate descriptor would be 'elated', Jim."

With a par-faux-unamused glance, Uhura dismissed the captain's complaints, instead lightly touching the side of Spock's arm with her free hand (the other, of course, clung to Christine) and responding, "Thank you, Mr. Spock. You know I was happy for you, too."

It wasn't about the outsiders' (the men's) reaction to the news. Uhura and Chapel even knew that they didn't think it was. ("Couldn't have picked 'er better, Ny.") But when they crowded around the happy couple to offer more involved, sincere congratulations (such as Spock had just done, politely), the girls couldn't help but roll their eyes.

The reward for not keeping it on the Q-T was enthusiastic, if somewhat messy, kisses on the cheek from Kirk, Scott, and McCoy. The price was the same, and Uhura paid with a smile so wide she wasn't sure she could be annoyed.

Chapel squeezed Uhura's hand. "You owe me twice as many, later."

Nope, definitely not annoyed in the least.