A/N: Hey, it's not like I need a break from writing. It's not like I need sleep or peace of mind ever again. That being said, welcome to another experiment along the same lines of Musings On A Dead Stop. You know the trend: each chapter features a different pairing until I run out of them. Every fanfiction author has their thing. Alelou with her TNT Missing Scenes...Sensara with her minor Vulcan characters...and EnlightenedSkye with her Musings series? We can only hope.

Beta read by BonesBird, to all whom due thanks. This is rated T for caution, language, and expected eventual sexual situations. Reviews welcome.

Poor Travis...little does he know that his ideal evening isn't going to go off as planned.

Musings on Vox Sola

Hovis

Hoshi Sato was having a terrible day.

It wasn't that she had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed; hell, she had been lucky to get up at all after her most recent bout of insomnia had kept her awake long past midnight. She had stumbled into the bathroom, suspecting that a long, hot shower would wake her up, only to find that she had missed her chance and most of the warm water had already been used up by her fellow crewmen preparing for a busy alpha shift. So, after a quick, unfulfilling dunk in the lukewarm sludge that passed itself of as recycled water, she moved towards her closet. There, another unpleasant surprise—it seemed as if she had neglected to take her uniforms to the quartermaster the previous evening. It was preposterous. She was an adult, not some immature university student who had to be reminded to pay a visit to the laundry rooms. But she had forgotten, she had to acknowledge that, and that was how Hoshi found herself trailing a trio of dismayed Kreetassans along with a few other bridge officers, sporting a tangled ponytail, wrinkled jumpsuit, and a translator of her design that never seemed the freaking work when she needed it to.

Yes, it surely had been a morning for the history books, and as she sat at her station nursing a punishing tension headache from the entire ordeal, she decided that it could really only get worse.

Her cheek was resting in her slender palm, her eyes screwed shut with concentration, when she heard it for the first time. Besides the ambient noise that accompanied the frenzy of activity on the bridge, there was a low frequency humming sound that was threatening to drive her up the wall if it did not cease immediately.

"Does anybody hear that?" She inquired to no one in particular, not expecting anyone to pay her any mind. After all, another first contact had been royally bungled today, and she was, for all intents and purposes, most likely culpable.

Travis Mayweather, to his credit, entertains her question. "What, the static?"

She shakes her head. For any large ship traveling an extended distance, that is to be expected, but this is something different. "Frequency distortions mixed in with the static."

She's too focused on her console to notice that Travis has sat back in his chair and thrown one of his trademark disarming grins her way. "You've got better ears than we do," he says, and it's true. The helmsman knew that his fellow officer was more than likely in a bad mood following the morning's incident, and was willing to try nearly anything to cheer her up.

After a few seconds, the mildly flirtatious compliment notwithstanding, Hoshi concluded, "It's coming from the comm system."

Sub-Commander T'Pol, forever the wet blanket to her harmless grievances, hardly draws her attention away from her work to ask, "Have you run a diagnostic?"

"Twice," she replied, feeling the familiar heat of irritation rising in her stomach. Normally, she would have let the science officer's peevish questions slide, but her emotions were closer to the surface than they had been in a long time. Biting her lip and sliding away from her verbal sparring partner, she acquiesced, "Guess today is just not my day."

A few yards away, Travis watches Hoshi carefully, innately tuned in to her body language, which is more telling at the moment than it is typically. The two had been friends for a few months now, hitting it off at the beginning of the mission, seeing as they were the only junior officers among the senior staff. Together, they had shared a myriad of youthful tribulations, some exultant, some not so much. This was one of those times.

He knows he can't do much to brighten her spirits in the way of his usual sense of humor while everyone is watching, so he endeavors to broach a somewhat touchy subject. "How's the translation coming along?"

"Slowly," she acknowledged, immersing herself in her data once more. Suddenly, she sat up, exclaiming, "Qwajat, their word for eat…"

"What about it?" He prompts her instantly.

"With emphasis on the first syllable, qwa-jat means to mate," she said dryly, her eyebrows climbing up into her hairline. This was remarkable, not to mention that it might somehow explain the disagreement that had happened earlier.

Travis glances over at her, ignoring the rather childish sensation of butterflies in his stomach at the sound of Hoshi saying those particular words. Gruffly, he nods. "I can see how that might cause some confusion over dinner."

Had she been in a better mood, she would have laughed at the helmsman's innocent comment. However, she continued, "Context is critical in every language, but Kreetassan has the most subtle variations I've ever seen." Then, not feeling as if her conversational partners were fully understanding her plight, she pressed, "The same word can have a dozen different meanings."

Before Travis can say something in the way of reassurance, the Sub-Commander says, "We rely on you to recognize the difference, Ensign."

Oh, no. This was not good.

As he watched, Hoshi scoots back from her station and demands to know, "You think it was my fault?"

"I didn't say that."

"You implied it."

Sato's tone at that moment, dangerously low with a slight lilt, set off all kinds of warning bells in Travis's mind. He had observed enough arguments between his mother and father to know where this was heading.

"I simply noted that linguistic matters fall within your responsibility. For all we know, it was Mr. Tucker's table manners that offended them," the Vulcan replies smoothly. From his vantage point, Mayweather can see Hoshi set her jaw and go in for the kill.

"But you think if I might have picked up the language faster, they might not have stormed off the ship." It was what she assumed the entire crew thought.

"There's no need to react emotionally," T'Pol admonished, saying the one thing that Travis thought you should never tell a woman when she is upset. Then, her pièce de résistance: "Try to learn from failure. It could make you next first contact more successful."

It's valuable advice, he has to admit, if a bit misplaced and not very sympathetically worded. Travis watches the communications officer mumble a few words of very sarcastic thanks and turn back to her work. He admires her tenacity, her wit, her sense of humor…well, damn near everything about her. And that's why as she watches her discuss the annoying high frequency she keeps encountering with Enterprise's chief engineer, he begins to formulate a plan to get her mind off of the morning's ill fated meeting with the Kreetassans.

Midnight. Ice cream. The sweet spot. Who could say no?