Author's Notes:
Disclaimer and detailed story notes in Chapter One, "Promises and Choices".
This chapter is rated T for sexual suggestiveness and references to drug and alcohol use.
This story explores the undercurrents during T'Pol and Koss' wedding. What if the priest marrying them sensed the bond Trip and T'Pol share, long before T'Pol knows what it means? What if Koss did want someone else, but wasn't willing to disappoint his parents?
Update, June 11, 2016: I'm revising some rather glaring errors I've discovered and enacting an overall embetterment of this story. Since the current word count is over 5OK, and I'm also involved in several other projects, patience is greatly welcomed, as are reviews that point out any typos, glitches, or whathaveyou I haven't corrected yet.
My aim, as always, is to provide the very best stories I can write. I love feedback, even less than stellar reviews, because there is so much to learn from them. Lay 'em on me! =D
Views on a Wedding
A young woman knelt upon the pressed sands of her homeworld, her fingers lifting to match those of the man across from her. They hovered just at the range at which bioelectric pulses could be sensed - the prelude to the joining. His energy felt strange. Too calm; too still. She was required to meet the man's blue eyes, but it was difficult to do so. She was aware of a deep, illogical desire to refuse, to rise, to flee...to burst into tears that would be understood by only one person here.
She was a Vulcan. She would not cry.
A little off, a man stood in borrowed finery, watching. her fingers lift, in concert with the man kneeling across from her. He wondered what she felt; was it different than what she felt with him? Was it better, with a Vulcan man - a man of her own species? He could only see her face in a thin slice of profile. He wanted almost desperately to charge across this damned sand garden, grab her, run away, pull out a communicator he didn't have and demand a beamup from a ship that was 16 light-years away, in Spacedock.
Instead, he stood there, and watched her preparing to sacrifice herself.
He was on Vulcan. He wouldn't cry.
Aesthetically, she was beautiful. Almost, illogically, he could imagine that she had been sculpted by a master. He was privileged to have the chance to combine her genetics with his own. So his parents had declared, since they were children, and chosen for one another. He, however, was uncertain it was enough. Ought children not be raised in a home where a certain affection. or at the least regard, existed between their parents? Where both were available to them? He could feel the resistance, the distance, that separated them; she would never feel other than a stranger to him, and she wanted nothing more than that of him. In truth, she wanted this as little as he did. Perhaps he should end this, now, before the next posture began.
They were Vulcan. They must try.
She remembered a dimly lit room, and music that pulled her in. A man who Awakened her, with his music, his smile, the covert interest, and the recognition. The way the music flowed through them both, weaving them into one another. She had imagined this day, then, with the fog of his world rising impossibly from the dry sands of hers. But he had been across from her then, and not behind. His blue eyes she would look into willingly, eagerly, and touch the life within him through their joined and trembling fingers...she would join her life to his, and take a most illogical joy in doing so. Except that she was Promised to Koss, was kneeling here with Koss.
How was she supposed to marry Koss, with the feel of Trip's cool human cheek still rough and cool upon her lips? With the clasp of his hand around the small gift she offered secretly still sending Awakened tingles sizzling through her?
How was she to bear it?
She was doing this for her mother. But he knew, it was also penance, for what she felt were the wrongs she'd done. Maybe that wasn't very logical, and it wasn't very likely anyone on this world would understand, but he did. It's why he was standing here, feeling the heat of her soft hungry lips on his cheek, the press of whatever she'd slipped into his hand when she clasped it. Up on her toes again to kiss him - had he gotten around to telling her how incredibly sexy that was to him, as though she couldn't wait for him to bend enough for her to reach? As though she couldn't get enough, soon enough...
It had been so brief, so bold, so reactionary, for her to do such a thing, on her way to be married to someone picked for her when she was only a little girl. His heart swelled with pride, and with the sorrow of knowing it would be the last kiss between them, the last time her sudden ardor would jolt through him like a plasma arc...
How was he going to bear it?
It was nearly time. Three more breaths, and it would be too late to stop; too late even for the challenge - but surely, she would not call it. Her young human, for whom she had dared show affection, even here, could not win. Koss would do as he must, as he had been commanded. He had no wish, though, to give her the body of her lover as tribute. He hoped, for them both, that, once the ceremony was complete, the formalities tended, they might go on with their lives as they had lived them. He wished her to have the human, when she left, if she desired him. He wished, too, to have his Chosen - but it might be that his refusal to challenge the command to marry T'Pol had cost the chance at the life he wished for himself.
The third breath was exhaled; the priest knelt into the waiting moment, and joined their fingers, sealing them. It was as it was.
He would bear it.
Her fingers were sealed to Koss's - and all T'Pol could feel was Trip. His emotions lapped through her from behind and beneath the surfaces needed for this joining. Her emotions were not required. As well, since they would not leave Trip. She could feel his hurt, his pride, his pain...and, together, as the vows were spoken, binding her to another, their two minds, already deeply entwined, remembered...
She allowed herself the dream, the memories of their voyage here...
"When I first came aboard, you offered your hand."
"And you turned me down cold, pepperpot. Turned your back on me, even - not that I minded the view."
"If I had I touched you then..."
"Would it have like what happened in Decon, after Rigel 10?"
"Given the intimacy of the touch, perhaps something far more inappropriate - such as the incident in the Suliban cell."
"Wonder what the Captain would've said about that? And if I would have been brave enough then to do anything about it?"
"You might have had little choice. It's perhaps as well that we didn't find out. Captain Archer would certainly have replaced us both. It would have been - intensely uncomfortable - to have had to explain the reasons to Ambassador Soval."
He'd laughed and wrapped both arms around her, to pull her onto his lap. "You looked at my arm like it was attached to a considerably lower life form, you know. Hurt my feelings. All that smoldering interest at Fusion, following your scent." He nuzzled her neck, and T'Pol shivered into the touch, undone once again by the alien intimacy. "Mmmm," her t'hy'la breathed. "I love when you go all mineral, citrus and sandalwood."
She inclined her head in silent question; Trip took it as invitation to slip another morsel of pecan pie into her mouth. She nibbled and suckled contentedly at his fingers, seeking crumbs and deeper sweetness. He groaned softly, and shifted his weight - this form of touching did fascinating things in his lap. She moved with him, emboldened by the intoxicating effect of the pie, which was still mostly sugar.
"You smell different - well, hell, you never beat around the bush, so why should I? - you smell different, when you're aroused. I don't have an exact name for what you smell like - Vulcan desert things, maybe - but it reminds me of citrus and sandalwood, and walking through the steam at Yellowstone. Did things to me at Fusion, and in the Cap'n's Ready Room, too. I had to pretend I didn't notice it, and, even so, I was mighty glad you left the room first, so I could avoid disgracing myself. Maybe if I knew then what it meant, I wouldn't have worried so much." He was back at her neck; a sensual counterpoint to the effect of the pie merging with their freedom and the deeper connections they'd forged over the last days..."Citrus and sandalwood again," he murmured, and then they'd needed to say nothing, for some time...
The priest was signaling - the first level of joining completed. Koss's fingers slipped up the length of her fingers, around, back again to the tips - an invitation to deeper connection. Three breaths, before she must give response.
T'Pol felt nothing but panic struggling to break free, her limbic system threatening response.
She belonged to Trip, in her soul. She suspected she would never belong to Koss.
She could refuse.
Trip watched her, waiting out those three breaths. Why was he sure she was debating it, that she was as tangled up in him and the memories as he was in her...?
But she'd told him all about the ceremony, during their stolen day. All that would happen, if she refused, was that they would wait her out. Maybe once, long ago, she might have been that rarest of women who could outlast all that her world would bring to bear. She was certainly stubborn enough...but the last year had worn her down, worn them all down, damn near shattered her beyond repair or redemption. What she'd rebuilt, she'd rebuilt in the company of humans, and Phlox, and even Porthos. She was more like them than she'd been, before, and maybe she always would be, now.
He didn't think she had the patience to win. Please, pepperpot, don't make this any harder on yourself. You've suffered more than enough.
As though she heard him, she moved her fingers just as the third breath threatened to become a fourth. Trip stared at her moving fingers...remembering...
He'd been stunned when he saw what she meant by "transport" This was a sleek, swift, beautiful little Vulcan cruiser...she saw him eyeing the warp drive, and informed him that this was a private craft, and unclassified. He could tour the small engine room, and access the specifications, too, if he wished.
He was glad he did that right off, while she was stowing the large case she'd brought- who would've thunk T'Pol, of all people, would be a heavy packer? - because, once he got back to her in the guest cabin, they never left it again until it they had been at Vulcan Space Central for six hours. There was no reason to leave. They had ample space, nice big windows, water features and growing things, access to a very well stocked servitor, and two pilots to do the flying, too.
Not to mention a decadently large and comfortable bed behind a locked door.
"T'Pol, this is incredible. How did you manage it?"
"Ambassador Soval was pleased that I was returning home, and suggested I might find his private craft pleasant, after so long among humans."
"So you brought me along? Is that really fair?"
"Given that he almost certainly was motivated by a desire to be certain I returned to Vulcan, it seems an equitable use of the space. He stated that he wished my journey to be pleasurable and restorative, a time for rest and reflection, and bid me to do as I will. It would be an insult to fail to do so."
"Is that so?"
"It is. Trip, you said that you have no home to return to. For the next days, this could perhaps suffice."
"Well, it's already got you, pepperpot - and this great big empty bed..."
They'd stripped one another, and hadn't put on another stitch of clothing until they reached orbit around her world.
Her fingers returned to Koss's fingertips. Trip could almost feel them, the faint scars of a baby who had dared to touch the flame, a woman who had dared to claim her own life.
And now chose to give it back.
He watched the priest gesture, take them through the next painstaking set of vows, and then Koss's fingers were moving again.
"You honor T'Pol by standing for her." T'Les, at his elbow. Probably had no idea how furious he was at her, for putting her daughter in this impossible position, for arranging such a damn foolish thing in the first place. He didn't have to acknowledge her praise, now.
He could refuse.
The woman's fingers trembled; her arousal scent wafted on the breeze. It was said to be the most delicately balanced fragrance on Vulcan, the pheromone release of an aroused woman. At a marriage ceremony, when the bride was brought to the point of so palpably signaling her sexual readiness, it was seen as the ultimate indicator of a successful pairing, one that could grow beyond what was required, to encompass all that the Vulcan heart and soul and mind were capable of.
It was a scent that had always triggered nausea, for him.
He hadn't understood why - until he first smelled the arousal scent of another man - and all that was within him had cleaved to it, sought after it.
And found it.
Now he scented the odor of T'Pol's arousal, and swallowed back the bile that rose to the back of his throat. He held it back, he suspected, only because he knew beyond doubting that he had not stirred such arousal in her, that she had no more interest in him as a mate than he had in her.
It was for her young human, who had Awakened her, quickened her, mated with her - and it was he and only he that T'Pol wanted now. He, and not Koss, was her Chosen. Koss remembered the story told about her - the only infant in memory to not trust the warning words. T'Pol had learned for herself what damage flame could bring. He had thought, when she first refused to return for the ceremony, that she was testing the flame of the humans. But then she'd returned to Vulcan in the company of this human male, and he had smelled her consummated state, and understood.
She had taken a mate. As he had. although they remained unconsummated.
The ritual deepened to the third level, and the priest assisted them in touching one another's telerotic centers, in the place where they had been locked together the last time they knelt together, as children. The intent was to Awaken them to each other, above all others.
But there was nothing within her for him to touch that was not already claimed by her human, and willingly given by T'Pol herself. She glowed and quivered with the urgency of the fires alighting within her. Wild fires, beyond what Vulcan could sustain. Fires born of and belonging to distant stars, another world...
"Why did you agree to this marriage, T'Pol?"
She didn't take her focus from her souldancing. Likely, she could not, with the intensity of her consummated bond threatened.
Perhaps, she could not even hear him, as strange otherworldly music wound through her. The gold-haired man stood a little off, nehind her, where she couldn't see him, but his eyes glinted with a strange light as he watched her. Until now, Koss had not known that humans could be Awakened, joined with thus. However, this Commander Tucker was within her, and she within him. Even at this level of joining, there could be no doubt.
They were bound. There was no room for him anywhere within her.
Koss felt his own arousal surging, triggered by the delving, but more by the fierce wild power of hers.
It was too late to refuse.
The priest moved them through the third level...the last level awaited, the one that would tug her away from him, break the connection that would sever him from her, give her to a man who scarcely knew her. He couldn't, if he would do this to her, pull her away from her family, her anchor.
From me, dammit.
He still wasn't sure how he was managing to stand here and let this happen to her - to them. Before he knew her he wouldn't have. But her little misshapen IDIC was in one hand, and the flat disk she'd slipped him in the other. Trip held them clasped together in front of him. He didn't have to see them, or her face, to draw comfort from them.
He remembered Charles, and how he'd interfered then, telling himself it was for her, even though Charles had been neither he nor she as Trip understood them, and had asked for nothing of him. It had, as a matter of fact, told him he was wrong, that these things were wrong for it. He'd pushed Charles too far, and Charles had died.
T'Pol already knew something of what she was sacrificing. He'd decided, almost from the start, to make this as easy on her as he could.
It was the minutes of that almost, though, when he'd first argued, then turned and walked away, leaving her standing alone...
Damn, he wished he hadn't done that.
Sure, he'd come back - it had only taken about ten minutes for the desert heat to get more powerful than his anger - at least, his anger at her. Her damned restrictive culture, though, and the way it pushed her around - not even a fireplain had enough heat to smother that seething rage.
They'd finally figured out a way to outsmart her, outlast her - and he'd left her there, stung by her defeat.
Aww, pepperpot, you fought them, as best you could. You were a supernova of resistance. And you almost made it, almost got free of that invisible hold this damned planet has on you.
This damned planet was her homeworld. Nothing he could do or say would ever change that. She belonged to this place, the same way he belonged to Earth.
The priest was giving the last incantation, and Koss had his hand damned near up to T'Pol's elbow. Any second now, he would feel her sheared sway from him - Trip braced himself for the pain of it, of knowing she was gone forever.
The fourth and final level neared completion.T'Pol knelt across from Koss, but her soul merged and danced with her human . There was no way to reach her, where she'd gone; he would never have all of her, even if he wanted her. She had chosen for herself, even dared to reveal it openly, here. Or, perhaps, she simply couldn't resist the force of her bonding.
Who was this human, that he would support TPol as she married another? Who was he, that he did not refuse to be here, as Koss's own Chosen had done?
Was it that the man was human, or that she had claimed her right to him, to her passions, to her choice, and to her life?
Koss's Chosen had wanted that of him. He had declared his choosing of Koss to his own family, denying their arrangement. It had caused a rift with his family, and a self-imposed exile from Vulcan that had lasted nine years. Upon his return, he said that he "had no regrets". Koss thought it an odd turn of phrase, but Kov wouldn't explain it. He would say only that, if Koss was unwilling to resist his parents' determination that he marry T'Pol, who seemed, in all ways, ill-suited as Koss's wife, he could not bear to witness the joining.
He had been clear. If Koss would not resist tradition, or his parents' will, then he must live with the consequences of compliance.
But now, as T'Pol wore her quivering arousal for another as her birthright, Koss felt someone else edging in, watching from the shadowy corner outside the wall of the sand garden.
"T'hy'la!" His surprise, his moment of delight, were unseemly.
"T'hy'la?" A sharp echo, and now her eyes searched his face, her mind probed his telerotic center, relentless and reckless as the child who had touched the flame. At last, he had something of the woman's attention, and her human's, as well. He knew the full scope of the word's meaning.
The questions surged through, and between, the four, but could not be answered. Koss's soul was consumed by his t'hy'la's presence...he didn't reveal himself, except in the merging -together. T'Pol was a wiser woman than his parents had given him to believe- she returned to her own joining, allowing his to be as it would.
The priest entered into the mindlink, surveyed them all, and the manner of the two joinings. He nodded, very slightly. "This is what thee hast wrought, here, today - the depth of your joining, and what you will carry forth, into your life as bondmates. Art thee content with what has been forged?"
The request was not for two, but four. It encompassed all that existed between them, rather than merely what the law pertained to.
The human looked around, his face telegraphing emotions the woman knew the meanings of. "What the hell's going on here? How is this - and why the hell are you asking me? I object to this entire proceeding - and the practice of marrying off little kids as though that makes sense for the adults they'll become!"
"Trip." Koss had never known that she could be so fragile. "If you object, you will be permanently ejected from this link. From my mind."
"I thought that was the basic idea."
"Trip - not now. Please, trust me. Do not object. Let us have this much- if we can't have more."
"All right- I don't object. I'm - what'd you say? Content. Yes. Put me down as content, heaven forbid any of the four of us get to be, I dunno, happy."
"Commander Tucker, you are delaying the conclusion of the ceremony." Why was there a wave of pleasure blending with her thought?
"Sorry, pepperpot. Wasn't trying to crash your wedding. I'm content with - with 'what has been forged'."
The assent went more quickly through the Vulcans - and then, the priest declared the marriage valid, and the link satisfactory, and they dropped their hands slowly, awareness shifting from the internal to the external.
T'Pol was his wife. He was her husband. As it had been from the time of the beginning, without change, so it was done.
"Why did you never tell me?" She could feel her control slipping; it was foolish to remain close enough to reach her husband.
Her husband. Koss was her husband. The priest had bound them, even if the memory of the link was already faded. But she knew now that he, too, desired another, and not her.
"Tell you? Have you lived so long with humans, T'Pol, that you would ask? Such things are a deeply personal matter."
"Why did you agree to the marriage? That we both preferred another is enough to secure an annulment. We need not have completed the ceremony." T'Pol heard raw emotion rising in her voice, and chose not to make any effort to suppress it. She was as she was, and Koss had said he wanted her.
Let him now see what he had negotiated for, demanded.
"I honored my parents' agreement. I complied with the law and custom of our people."
"Did you not tell them?" She stalked a step nearer, balancing on the balls of her feet. Did she intend to harm him?
What did it mean that she didn't know?
"What would it have profited?"
"It would have profited us, and those to whom we've given ourselves!" She whirled away, but then spun back.. "By what right do Vulcan parents dictate the measure and scope of their childrens' lives?!" She sounded like Trip. "It's not humane!" She spat that at him through bared teeth. She was nearly close enough to touch him. He was capable of killing a human, but he had only the basic self-defense and kal-if-fee training all children were given. She could kill him, and have no husband.
He backed away a step, nearer the door, as though he could read the thought. Perhaps he could. They were bound; she was his wife. "It is custom, tradition, and law. What else is there?"
T'Pol came a step nearer. His scent enraged her. So calm, so Vulcan - unsettling. Nauseating. She thought of the years she and Trip had spent learning one another, forging a connection based not upon someone else's dictates, but instead upon who they were, upon shared experience, desire, concern, common resonances and irrevocable differences.
This man had made them sacrifice it, so that he could appease his parents!
"There is the fact that we now must live with what they have chosen for us - what you have. By what right did you do this to us - or to those we chose for ourselves?"
With a sudden flash of fury, she closed the distance, so that her body was pressing into his. Trip would be aroused by this; Koss was not. He was taller than Trip, but he seemed to fear her - of course. Her reputation in the Security Mission was well known, before Enterprise added emotional volatility he could not have failed to notice.
"You agreed." He was backed hard against the wall; T'Pol fought back the instinct to lash out, use Koss as the means of venting her emotions. "Is this the nature of your illness, T'Pol? Are you unable to control yourself?" His voice was gentle, calm. A request for information, not accusation.
"I'm more able at some times than others. However, I may choose not to exercise the ability." She was shaking now - it would be a simple matter to use him as the outlet he had denied her. Koss's eyes were wide with fear - blue eyes, like Trip's.
That was enough to stop her. She fled to the room he'd given her, and dug through her bag until she found the shielded case that contained her supply of trellium-D.
Trip Tucker had been ready to pack up and get as far away from here as he could, as fast as he could. But something he didn't understand resisted. It told him he needed to stay, and T'Les had already informed him that there wouldn't be another transport leaving for Earth for three days, and it would only be logical for him to remain here until it arrived.
He hadn't wanted to stay, but he didn't have anywhere else to go. He was as polite to T'Pol's mom as he could be, under the circumstances, but told her that he'd prefer to be left alone to acclimate to the circumstances. Maybe she thought that meant meditation. He didn't know, and he really didn't care, either. He went gone straight to the guest room and closed the door.
There were two bottles of Andorian ale on the bedside table, and a small food case from Enterprise. The ale the Captain had forced on her - Trip's share was already gone, but T'Pol didn't have the same interest in alcohol. There was no glass, as though she knew that his pain demanded nothing less than slugging from the bottle. And there was a little note in her precise and elegant handwriting.
T'hy'la,
Please be careful.
"Aww, hell, pepperpot..."
He decided he'd better fortify himself before he looked in the case. Three burning swigs, then he opened the case.
Pecan pie -two slices. More than enough to get her soused and remarkably silly, if she'd been here. Silly, and aroused...oh, damn.
The first bottle was gone almost before he knew it. Trip imagined feeding her the pie. He couldn't eat it himself, not while remembering her licking it from his fingers...
How the hell was he going to work with her, live on the same ship, see her in the Mess Hall, or on Movie Night, and know that she was someone else's wife? What was he supposed to do, just bottle up all his feelings?
He wasn't Vulcan. He couldn't.
Was that even what she wanted? The end of that ceremony- had something happened, there? It had felt, for a minute, like he was there in her head, right with her, and Koss, and - someone else. Someone he knew? But he didn't know anyone else on Vulcan except T'Les. Couldn't have been her.
Musta been the heat. Or the pain. Nothing else made sense.
"It's just wishful thinking, anyway, Tucker. She did what she said she had to do. And you stood there like an idiot and watched her condemn herself. And that's all there is to it."
If only he wasn't sure that loving her was nothing like loving anyone else, and that losing her was the end, for him.
Please be careful. It was almost like he could hear her, in his head.
"I'm tryin' pepperpot," he whispered, as he took the second bottle and the container of pie, and headed into her room - her room, where they'd spent most of the day before yesterday in bed, talking, crying, making love, storing up the moments like some secret treasure...
He could still smell her - citrus and sandalwood, but mostly sulfurous minerals, and a thick heavy layer that somehow smelled like despair... Damn...
There were two more bottles of ale, here, and another note.
T'hy'la,
For after you've slept, and eaten, and explored your gift. Perhaps it is foolish to ask you to be careful.
The gift...
He hadn't dared look at it, just slipped it into the sleeve pocket of the robe as the ceremony was winding down to a solemn close.
Now he did. Upon one side was etched a golden slipper, and on the other, the IDIC symbol, misshapen, as though made by a small child.
No, not one flat disk. Two - two disks, magnetically sealed...
She'd felt their polarity, too...damn.
It took pressure- considerable pressure, he heard in the echo of her voice - to separate the disks...
In the small hollowed place within was a data disk, small enough to fit a PADD-
Such as the one propped before her computer.
He looked at what he held, looked at the PADD.
It couldn't be a mistake.
He took the PADD, and turned it on.
"A Human's Guide to Vulcan Emotion," he read. And then, another of her little notes. "Please insert data disk to proceed."
He slipped in the disk, and there she was, in her wedding garb, looking delicate, lovely - and very near tears. They were in her voice, too, when she spoke.
"Trip. I know that what I will do today will hurt you, perhaps too deeply to allow us to recover even our friendship. That I wish not to hurt you is irrelevant; you are hurting now, and perhaps this - this impulse I have to share my own feelings with you will bring you no solace, only more pain. But another version of myself said I should 'follow my heart', and it has led me to this."
Her tears broke free, but she didn't cut the recording right away. Her open tears were a rare gift; he didn't know if anyone else had ever seen them. They slipped silently down her face for a long moment, before she faded out - to be replaced with a younger, more rigid version of herself - dressed in a thigh length jacket, tight leggings, boots, and a dark cowl intended to hide what she'd never hidden from him...
The young woman spoke a date, in Vulcan, and then dark troubled eyes met the camera. "Tonight, I broke protocol. My reasons were illogical; the cost if I am discovered will be high. I took considerable risk, in leaving the compound - "
And then, that calm face evaporated, leaving her incandescent, transformed, the way she'd been, listening to the music, so long ago.
"It is illogical, but I find I do not care. For no consequence can undo what occurred tonight. Tonight, I encountered a human man named Trip. We shared – something. I can say nothing more than that; I don't know what it was, what it means, or where it will lead. I am Promised to Koss; I am expected to marry him. And yet - this tentative and undefined connection, with a man about whom I know almost nothing - a human male, with whom I share neither genetic nor cultural heritage - is already far more powerful than the mindlink I share with Koss.
"Even if I never see him again, if this few moments of connection is all that ever exists, between us, I will hold to it as the ideal of what a bond might be.
Query for Meditation:
Is it possible to share another's thoughts without touching? What does it mean that I long to see this man Trip again, and learn more of him? That I imagined kneeling upon the sands, with fog rising, and becoming his wife, and not Koss'?"
"Oh, pepperpot..."
Trip opened the second bottle, and propped the PADD against the empty. One entry after another, she chronicled her journey to him. There'd been so much more going on behind that Vulcan mask than he'd guessed at. He'd fantasized about Little Miss Pointed Ears Under That Cowl. She, true to her Vulcan nature, had meditated and researched and formed theories and experiments. But she'd been a hell of a lot more consumed by him than he was by her.
She'd always taken this seriously, even when he thought she felt nothing at all. No wonder she was jealous - feeling things for an alien that nothing in her life had prepared her to feel. Feelings logic couldn't explain or suppress.
Trip watched her, as he drank, loving the little shifts in expression and tone, the gradual loosening of that taut control. After a while, he stripped out of her father's robes, and tangled into the bedding that still smelled of their lovemaking. She hadn't made the bed before she left, as though she needed to hold to this, too. Trip let himself go while pretending she was here, telling him stories, making love with him and not who-knows-where honeymooning with Koss.
He passed out to the sound of her trellium-enhanced jealousy over Amanda Cole, and her account of what happened after.
