The Courage To Speak
By Laura Schiller
Based on Star Trek: Enterprise
Copyright: Paramount
"Okay if I sit?"
"Please." Malcolm Reed gestured to the chair opposite his with a sweep of his thin hand. Was it her imagination, or was that hand a little thinner than usual? When he smiled up at her politely, were his cheekbones sharper? No wonder, she thought, her heart twisting with remembered fear. He and Trip almost died.
The Lieutenant's smile faltered. Suddenly aware of how long she'd been staring at him, Hoshi set down her meal tray and dropped into her seat with a blush.
"Are you all right, Ensign?"
"Am I all right?" She laughed breathlessly. "I was just about to ask you the same thing."
"Only, if you're waiting for those to crawl away," he nodded wryly at the pile of stir-fried vegetables and noodles on her plate, "You might want to transfer to a Klingon ship."
"You have no idea how many terrible English food jokes I'm not telling you right now." She wrinkled her nose in mock dismay at his shepherd's pie – the other half of the menu, traditionally divided into meat and vegetarian dishes - which he'd been turning over and over with his fork until it looked like something Porthos might have dragged in.
"Trust me, I've heard them all before. But let me tell you, after a few days of emergency rations, I'm ready to give Chef a medal for this stuff." He scooped up a pile of mashed potato and ate it with visible relish.
Emergency rations. On Shuttlepod One. Of course. Hoshi couldn't help admire the neat way he'd deflected her question; still, she had to ask again.
"How are you doing, Lieutenant?"
Mr. Reed shrugged. "Phlox cleared me for duty."
Typical. She gulped down an irritable reply with her orange juice.
"That's … not what I meant. Unless … unless you'd rather not talk about it." The last thing she needed was for him to think of her as a busybody little ensign pestering her superior officer.
"Well, I … " She looked up at him through her eyelashes. He was holding his stainless steel mug in both hands, swirling the tea bag, staring into it instead of looking her in the eye. He shifted in his seat. "Actually … "
"Yes … ?"
His eyes met hers, so suddenly she felt it should be audible, a clicking sound like in a cartoon. It could still surprise her, how blue they were; like a summer sky just before the sun begins to set. She found this Englishman almost as exotic sometimes as Phlox or T'Pol, and just as confusing, if for somewhat different reasons.
"It tends to make you think," said Lieutenant Reed, leaning forward. "A time like that … it makes you reconsider what's important. Christ," he chuckled darkly and looked away again, "I had nothing but time to think in that bloody shuttlepod. Best way to block out Trip and his endless chattering."
"You call him Trip now?"
Hoshi was moved. In her own culture, moving from surname to given name, let alone nickname, was an important gesture. Lieutenant Reed was one of the few Westerners on this ship who felt the same way. His polite sarcasms about "Commander Tucker" had been frequent; if he was saying "Trip" now, that had to mean something.
And if she remembered his voice along with Trip's on the comm, calling out "It's Hoshi!" with an almost delirious joy, that was … well, that must have been gratitude for tracking them down. Gratitude meant something too.
"Well, yes. It seemed only proper after he shared his whiskey bottle with me when life support started to fail."
He said that so matter-of-factly in his cool, elegant accent, Hoshi didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She settled for twisting noodles around her fork with all her concentration, swallowing them, and not looking at him until she could keep a straight face.
Oh, Trip. The first thing she'd done on seeing her sweet American friend alive and whole was to hug him. If she did that to Mr. Reed, he'd probably put her on report.
He cleared his throat. She paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. He couldn't tell what she was thinking, could he?
"Hoshi - "
Her given name. Again. What his accent did to the "o" was unreasonably cute. Focus, Ensign! "Sir?"
"Hoshi, listen – I wanted – " There was a tension in his voice that she had never heard from him before. He put down his spoon with a clatter. Sometime during the silence, he'd managed to empty his plate entirely. He wasn't kidding about being hungry.
"I need to tell you that you're … the work you do is extraordinary."
Extraordinary? It was high praise, especially from a man who so rarely gave any. She was flattered, extremely so, from a professional point of view. Then why did the pit of her stomach seem to sink with something almost like disappointment? The way he looked at her, for a moment she could have sworn … Kuso! How come I can read almost any form of communication in the universe except his?
"Um … thank you?"
"No, you are!" Lieutenant Reed's eyes glowed with intensity. His cheeks were turning pink. "Any idiot can shoot a gun, but you … when I saw you walk back onto a ship full of corpses that had terrified you the first time, when I saw you open a channel to a ship about to destroy us, a ship full of aliens, and speak to them … without the universal translator, no less … I knew you were one of the bravest people I'd ever met."
Hoshi looked down at her hands, which were shaking. She hid them in her lap.
"That's why … that's why I need to know if your invitation to dinner is still open."
She hadn't thought it was possible for her face to heat up even more, but his mention of that moment did the trick. Having asked him to dinner in her quarters in an attempt to find out his favorite food as per the Captain's orders, she had been politely and awkwardly turned down with a remark about how "inappropriate" it would be. She hadn't even been trying to hit on him, but the moment he'd said no, the indulged only child inside her had stamped her foot and demanded why.
Since then, the handsome armory officer had become as much "forbidden fruit" to her as pineapples, no doubt, had been to him before he'd started taking those anti-allergy hypos. Everything that had happened since then had only made her crush worse. And now he wanted her to cook him dinner?
"Yes, of course! I mean, I'm sure I could fit you in sometime."
Judging by his sudden, adorable smile, she didn't fool him a particle. "I'm sure you can."
"Uh, sir, just to be clear this time … when you say dinner, do you mean … ?" One more misunderstanding of this sort was bad enough; two might just have her storming into the Captain's office to demand an early vacation.
"When I say dinner," said Lieutenant Reed, in a murmur only her highly trained ears could hear, "I mean both dinner and anything else my lovely hostess is willing to provide."
He didn't touch her. This was the mess hall, after all, and anyone might be watching. But she felt the heat of his eyes along her face like the touch of a hand.
"You don't think it would be … inappropriate?" she managed to say.
"There are no direct rules against it. Even if there were," the corner of his mouth twisted in a bitter, complex way that worried her for a moment, "It's not as if I've never broken a rule before."
"You?" Hoshi found this hard to believe.
"Yes, me." His face cleared into a true smile, and she had to smile back. "Have I shocked you, Ensign? The prim-and-proper Englishman showing his wild side?"
"I haven't seen your wild side yet. Something to look forward to, I guess."
"Be careful what you wish for."
Lieutenant Reed's smile took on a mischievous, boyish sparkle, almost like Trip's when he was needling T'Pol. If the security team could have seen their superior officer then, they wouldn't have known him.
"Will tonight do?" he asked, so casually he might have been asking about a target practice session. Only that smile gave him away.
"Yeah, sure. I get off shift at seven," she said, just as casually. Squealing with joy, after all, while still an understatement given the circumstances, was not something Starfleet officers did in a public space.
"See you then, Hoshi." He picked up his tray with one hand, got to his feet in one smooth motion, and used his other hand to pull her chair out as he walked past her. The breeze of his passage tickled the back of her neck.
"See you … Malcolm."
She followed him to the drop-off station, nodded a professional goodbye, and didn't realize until he'd rounded the corner of the corridor that she'd forgotten to finish her lunch.