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Author's Note: Written for Journey to Drabble.

Discipline
by LJC

Never let it be said that Nyota Uhura doesn't know how to have fun.

It's just that her idea of a good time rarely involves seedy spaceport bars on the edge of nowhere, where 90% of the clientele are on leave from deep-space missions and have one of two possible objectives: "get hammered" or "get hammered, and get laid".

Which is why, when the Enterprise pulls into Starbase 47, she elects to stay behind and the weekly poker game—having lost most of its participants to Shore Leave—turns into Uhura, Chapel, Gaila, Rand, Colt, and Dehner splitting two bottles of Scotty's Engine Room Hootch in the nearly deserted rec room on Deck 2.

By the wee small hours of the morning, Uhura has lost her favourite earrings to Christine, her Andorian silk shawl to Gaila, and a week's pay to Dehner.

"Seriously, best poker face ever," Uhura says slightly too loudly as Gaila helps her back to her quarters so she can catch a few hours sleep before Alpha shift. "We gotta get her to play the captain. She'd so totally kick his ass."

"Uh-huh," Gaila says, as Uhura has now made this observation multiple times. Once in the rec room, once in the sanitary cubical on Deck 4, and twice in the 'lift, having apparently forgot between Deck 4 and Dec 11.

"Oh good, you're here," Gaila says as the doors to Uhura's quarters swooosh open and she finds Commander Spock sitting placidly at the desk with a PADD. "You can take over."

"Spock, did you know Liz Dehner totally kicks ass at poker?" Nyota says as she winds her arms around his neck. "It's not just that whole Ice Queen thing, because actually, she really loosens up once you get her drinking."

"You are intoxicated," Spock observes as she begins swaying to only music she can hear.

"Just a little." Spock carefully walks her backwards to her bunk, and she sits down as the back of her calves hit the matters. "I wanna see her play Jim. Jim doesn't get his ass kicked nearly often enough."

"I routinely play chess with the captain, and his ratio of games won to games lost or abandoned would seem to contradict that statement." Spock unzips her boots, setting them in the storage cubicle built into the base of the bedframe.

"By a woman. Jim doesn't get his ass handed to him by women nearly often enough. Even Janice gives him a free pass on hitting on her, despite fraternisation regs."

As at that moment Spock was helping her out of her uniform tunic, he raised a brow.

"Considering our positions, I am not certain citing regulations regarding fraternisation boosts the effectiveness of your arguments."

"And okay, it's not just women," Uhura continues as he retrieves from the hook on the wall of the sanitary the oversized Starfleet Academy Chorale Ensemble Does it in 3/4 Time tee-shirt she usually elected to sleep in. "Chris says McCoy lets him get away with bloody murder, whenever he's down in Medical. And poor little Chekov just worships the ground he walks on."

She tugs the tee-shirt over her head, and it take two tries to get her arms through the correct openings before he carefully turns the shirt around so she would not strangle herself trying. "You and Hikaru are the only ones who give him shit. And me. But I always have. Did I tell you he tried to pick me up in a bar in Iowa?"

"On several occasions."

"What he needs is for people to stop... To not fall for any of his bullshit. That what Jim needs. I bet he's picking some Dilithium miner or cocktail waitress or commodore's daughter up in a bar right now. When he's supposed to be setting an example. You know, for kids like Chekov. Of how... not to be that guy."

"You will be gratified to know that the Captain showed great discipline and retired to his quarters after his shift ended, rather than joining Doctor McCoy and Mister Sulu on Starbase 47."

"Really?" Her smile is wide, the corners of her eyes crinkle. "Good for Jim!"

She reaches up and kisses him, and while he finds the odour of Mr Scott's illicit alcohol offensive, the slide of her tongue against the roof of his mouth does much to offset the discomfort.

"You know what?" she says as she begins divesting him of his uniform tunic.

"I do not."

"I think I'm hammered and I want to get laid."