Avoir Raison
written by Keren Ziv
up to the episodes in season two
given a rating of R
pairing the couples of Archer/T'Pol
summarized as 'She does not have an excuse for this; instead,
reason upon logical reason pile on top of one another until they
threaten to overwhelm her.'
disclaimed by the fact it isn't hers
noted by word up to Colin, for knowing what I meant when I said, "Vulcan smut is illogical!"
It begins, like so many things before it, in the ready room. He is uneasy, tense, about their position. The latest communication with his home world has left his shoulders curved. Where once he had the posture of a Vulcan, he now lacks the soldier's stance.
There is no one else in the room; he is letting his frustration seep out of him in the comfort of her presence alone. She supposes she ought to take pleasure in this fact; it merely leaves her uncomprehending, searching for his motivation.
It doesn't surprise her nearly as much as it ought to when she stalks over to him and crushes her mouth against his own. At first all she can think of are the teeth and tongues to be dealt with in this new, strange, Human custom. Hands trail down her sides, and she quivers; the hands stop, and she freezes.
(action/reaction)
No.
But the way it's said gives her permission to press her lips against his skin, learning, trying to erase all that is breaking him. She would not be a good first officer if she allowed her captain such pain, even if he is not a Vulcan. This addition to her duties does not faze her; she assumes he is too tired by six weeks of nowhere to question anything she does at this point.
She's lost her top now, though that is an inefficient way of phrasing it; she knows exactly where it is. However, she does believe there is a good chance that she's lost her mind, as her skin tingles where his breath has been, where his hands have lingered momentarily. She once entertained the thought that the heat of her skin and his would burn. But now she feels the coolness, and thinks that perhaps they complement each other, bring each other to a different level.
(Neither Vulcan nor Human, but something new.)
He says her name. T'Pol, he says. Oh, and then he touches her lips and her nose and smiles and she knows what he's thinking, through his touch, through his eyes. She'd have to be blind to not see what he feels and, for a moment, she experiences an irrational pang of guilt.
She doesn't understand his insistence on love
(shon-ha'lock. warned about in early childhood; this will bring many other unforgivable emotions to the surface: envy when unreturned, jealousy when it is, to name just two volatile effects. stay away from it at all costs),
or even lust
(pon farr. natural, if shameful. to be kept from outsiders, hidden),
but she reaches for his waist and draws him near to her, until their bodies are fitting together, compact, jagged, his hipbones outlined harshly onto her flesh. She is aware of his height when their bodies are so tightly pressed. For the first few moments it makes her uncomfortable, searching for a balance to it all.
(There is none.)
He explains to her: She doesn't smell like cinnamon or vanilla or nutmeg, but rather clean, as clean as he could imagine it, with just the softest hint of something else he couldn't quite identify. No name to the smell, then, but another smell altogether.
He says: He never realized that sex brought a new odor to her. He tells her that her scent is spicy.
(His is sour, pungent, and completely unlike a Vulcan's.)
After they are finished and he has fallen asleep, woken, and left, she changes her bedclothes, desperate to get the stench of their actions away from her, out of the room. This is his, the unkemptness and disorder that awaits her when he's gone.
It is his legacy: the shower she drowns herself in, the nasal inhibitor she adjusts. It is the feel of his touch still lingering on her hips long after she's carefully dried herself; it is the pensive stare that she gives the back of his head later on while on the bridge, thinking, questioning.
To a Vulcan there is the nakedness of the body and there is the nakedness of the mind. One is not the other and without the mind there is no fear or shame in disrobing the body, even if such emotions had been sensible.
(He is always emotive, maintaining eye contact for the longest times, avoiding looking at her body, bare before him.)
He's not unpleasant to look at, and so she watches him freely, the way his shoulders blend smoothly into his back, the firmness of his buttocks. It is true that he is the first male she has seen aroused, and so she takes an especial interest in that.
Dispassionately enough she watches him that soon he's minding where he places his hands, discovering the colors and nuances of her body himself. He takes in more of her face than her eyes, and learns where exactly she is most responsive to his touches and caresses. He becomes more acquainted with and of her body than she had known existed.
She is quiet, unemotional, during sex, concentrating on shields and walls and ignorance rather than the electricity in her.
He tries to tell her: Elvin, and she looks at him unblinking, uncomprehending. She's here to relieve tensions, pent up emotions that Humans cannot suppress but must rid themselves of.
(Sexuality.)
She wonders if the same story is told over and again with the movement of her hips.
She begins to think that perhaps she understands what he means when he whispers words into her thigh
(exquisite; magnificent; dazzling)
and it frightens her; frightens her to understand these many words for aesthetically pleasing that his species has come up with; frightens her to yearn to see herself as such. There's something wrong, something broken, in a Vulcan that wishes to viewed as beautiful, and so she frowns as his lips carve the words into her flesh.
(wonderful; glorious; breath-taking; incredible; stunning)
There's a greener tint to her skin when she blushes.
(Vulcans do not blush.)
They don't kiss; he has never initiated it. She embraces him freely, though. Embraces with her arms, embraces with her lips, Vulcan giving comfort to Human.
(How strange.)
His color fascinates her, the pink flesh covering the pink blood. His physiology is almost foreign to her.
(Alien.)
She wonders if it is simply biology that separates their peoples, not merely the thousands of years of evolution and civilization and erudition that divided their histories into neat sections. If maybe it is not the breeding and early instillation of values that gives her the edge over humans, but much more simple, more basic.
It could be found in the difference between red and green, the ability to desire.
She does not have an excuse for this; instead, reason upon logical reason pile on top of one another until they threaten to overwhelm her.
She almost falls, once. She almost tumbles off the bed into the floor into an ungainly heap, legs thrown like a rag doll's. He catches her, though, hand underneath her back, smile on his lips.
There is no logic in trust, and so, when she slips into that habit with him, it is a vice.
He does not care any more.
Please, he says, pressing his mouth onto the ridges of her collarbone. He's losing hope. In her curves and angles and crevices he sometimes catches up with it, briefly. Please, help him.
She does not openly scoff at his Human insistence on hope, but she finds these words they use so void, empty of more than even her icy Vulcan logic can be. Tomorrow may very well be a new day, but who could honestly say that it would be better? Time is shifting; it is stagnant. With logic like that, who needs Vulcans?
Humans and other emotional beings may pity the Vulcans for what they perceive as having no hope, but they merely see it as hopeless.
(There is an irony in that.)
No, she will never understand love, but allows him his fancy at thinking she someday will.
finis