Here's chapter two. When I said the story was complete before, I only meant it's finished on my hard drive. Not to worry, there's another chapter or two after this one. Thank you, reviewers! Oh yeah, disclaimer: CBS/Paramount owns all things Star Trek.
He dropped to his knees in front of her. "Please tell me what to do."
Instead, she kissed him.
For perhaps a half a second he stiffened, as if he wanted to resist. She reached up to caress his head and his neck, hoping that her hands could explain everything for her. His arms responded as if of their own accord, reaching around to pull her tight against him. Soon his whole body was insisting she was his with an animal fierceness that might have alarmed her if she hadn't been so consumed by the same lust for possession.
Afterwards, she lay in his arms and caressed him reassuringly until he fell asleep.
Once she judged him well and truly sleeping, she carefully allowed her more problematic feelings to rise to the surface where she could examine them, categorize them, and decide what to do about them. Once, she would have automatically sorted them away into their dark and hidden places. But this disciplined Vulcan approach posed certain problems.
She had hurt him so badly.
Even in the midst of love-making she could feel him vacillating between great joy and relief and crushing grief. He truly didn't expect this to last. Indeed, a part of him was already furious with her for the withdrawal he was certain would come.
Perhaps he was right to doubt her.
Trip's surging, contradictory emotions were even more overwhelming up close than she remembered. There was a part of T'Pol that desperately wished she could escape to her quarters right now and meditate in solitude to try to regain some balance, and she was only disregarding that instinct because she knew it would devastate him to wake up and find her gone.
Trip was right when he'd said their relationship was even less likely to succeed than Romeo and Juliet's. She'd immediately read the play and agreed that those two clearly had a great advantage in that both of them were human; indeed, if they hadn't let irrational emotions rule them they might have 'lived happily ever after,' as the humans put it – though they were both so headstrong that T'Pol doubted this.
But then, Vulcans did not consider living happily ever after an honorable goal. Indeed, Surak explicitly warned against the pursuit of happiness. He argued that one should not even seek a sense of peace; it was something that would, rather, arise naturally as a result of daily discipline and consistently honorable behavior.
When she had begun to study the Kir'shara, T'Pol had assumed that study and meditation and honorable service would take her where she needed to go, and she had assumed the journey would be hers alone. Only when Trip left Enterprise had the painful hollow of his absence begun to teach her that she was no longer the solitary being she thought she was.
Surak's definition of honorable behavior surely did not include ignoring a mate's needs – even if that mate was inconveniently and sometimes maddeningly human. Nor was there any logic in ignoring her own need for Trip. A mating bond, once formed, was simply an inescapable fact of biology, at least for a Vulcan.
And yet she'd done it again. In her grief she had shut Trip out in a frenzied search for peace that she could never hope to achieve without him.
Were they doomed to repeat this cycle endlessly?
Trip's arms tightened around her and she looked up at his face, surprised to realize he was awake. "We need to talk," he said.
She felt a stab of apprehension and was perversely tempted to kiss him again just to shut him up. Instead, she sat up, crossing her arms protectively across her chest. "Agreed."
He sat up and patted her reassuringly on her bare thigh. "The goal is that we find a way to make this work. Yes?"
She nodded, relieved.
"I think getting some clothes on might help us concentrate. I know it would help me, anyway." He smiled and started gathering their scattered clothing.
She took her cat suit when he handed it to her and stared down at it for a moment.
He looked surprised. "You'd rather borrow something?"
"Yes."
He went to his locker and pulled out a white shirt off a hanger for her. "How's this?"
She nodded and shrugged into it quickly, then rolled up the too-long sleeves. "You could tell what I was thinking?" she asked. His acuity with their bond still surprised her.
"Not thinking, feeling. Your reluctance came across loud and clear. Don't you feel my emotions through the bond?"
"When we are in close contact. Or when I choose to."
He grimaced. "Only when you choose to? Think there's any chance I could learn that trick?"
"Perhaps."
"You know, for someone who's spent years telling us that Vulcans don't feel this or that you sure seem to have plenty of strong feelings."
She flushed with shame.
He frowned. "Like that, for example. Is this because you've somehow got yourself bonded to an emotional human? Is it my fault?"
She looked up, surprised. "No, it's nothing to do with you."
He sat down next to her, clearly concerned. "Then why are you so … embarrassed? I wasn't trying to insult you, you've got to know that."
She was finding it impossible to look him in the eye. "I told you that everything that happened in the expanse took a toll on my control. The T'Pol on the other Enterprise told me that I will have difficulty with my emotions for the rest of my life."
He looked surprised. "Jon said she struck him as pretty serene."
"She did have over a hundred years to adjust to them." That was not the whole story, of course. She swallowed; it was past time for a certain confession. "She told me that I should trust you, that you would help me."
"You know that's all I've ever wanted," he said, grabbing her hand. But then some resolve appeared to strike him; he carefully put her hand down, and got up and moved to the desk chair, where he sat down and gave her a level stare. "So how come you never told me that before?" She could feel him working hard to keep his voice even.
"I didn't want to have to explain how I got this way."
"But you're going to tell me now."
She stared down at her lap, willing her hands to lie still. "Yes." She had to now, if only because it appeared he would accept no less. "I behaved inexcusably in the Expanse."
"We all did inexcusable things in the Expanse," he said softly, and she could feel the darkness of that time accompany his words. "What did you do?"
T'Pol folded her arms. "After my exposure on the Seleeya, I developed an addiction to Trellium-D." She waited for his reaction.
But Trip was just puzzled. "An addiction?"
"The ore we brought on board … I found a way to extract Trellium-D from it and inject it into my blood stream."
"Why would that even occur to you?"
She kept her eyes down. "Once the worst of my exposure on the Seleeya was past, it felt good. I could feel things… I enjoyed it." She still sometimes thought longingly of those injections – that liquid blossoming, the heady sense of expansiveness, the deceptive illusion of control over a heightened reality. With that drug in her veins she'd actually believed that she, T'Pol, could somehow safely navigate emotional territory that thousands of years of Vulcan tradition had declared off limits.
She looked up and watched Trip think it through; she could practically feel the floor drop out from under him when he drew the obvious conclusion. "So this thing between us – it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been … under the influence?"
She rose from the bunk and kneeled in front of him, putting both hands on his knees as if she needed to hold him in place – which perhaps she did. "I have always found you compelling, Trip, from the very beginning. I do not believe I would have allowed myself to act on my feelings without the drug. But I also don't believe I would have started taking it if I hadn't wanted to get closer to you."
He stared back at her. "That sounds like it is my fault."
She gazed fondly up at him. "If you truly feel the need to blame yourself for being so attractive that you tempted a Vulcan to experiment with emotions, then I suppose you are free to do so."
He grinned sheepishly for a moment, then sobered. "I know I always liked to push your buttons, T'Pol. I swear, if I'd realized what I was setting in motion…"
She stood up and walked over to the window. Just as he didn't appreciate hearing she'd attached herself to him under the influence of a drug, she didn't particularly like hearing he would have backed off if he'd realized what he was getting into.
"T'Pol?" he said uncertainly.
"As you have taken pains to explain to me on numerous occasions, you were always a gentleman. If you truly feel the need to blame anyone for this, it should be me, or perhaps Dr. Phlox."
"So … those neuro-pressure sessions," he said, with a spark of his old cockiness. "I knew you were enjoying them just as much as I did."
She arched an eyebrow, pleased to see him recovering a little of his confidence.
He grinned. "But you sure took umbrage at the suggestion that it was sexual in any way. Really enjoyed getting me all rattled about it too, didn't ya?"
"It wasn't sexual."
"T'Pol." He got up and got into her space. "Come on. Maybe you wanted to pretend it wasn't, and maybe I was willing to pretend right along with you, but it was. Admit it. The candles … the silk pajamas … all that physical contact. It was one big giant come-on."
Indeed, she could feel that he was getting aroused just describing it. She stared evenly back at him. "I did not set out to initiate a sexual relationship, if that is what you are implying. I was merely obliging Dr. Phlox by attempting to help a fellow officer. I did not initiate any sexual contact until…" she hesitated. She wanted to be truthful with him, but Sim had complicated the matter a bit.
"Until you found out I was doing this completely and utterly nonsexual thing with another woman."
"Until you admitted you were attracted to me."
"At which time you conveniently happened to be completely naked under your robe!" Trip shook his head. "You know, Jon told me something once that I've never forgotten. He said you almost never head straight for anything you want, and that sometimes his job as captain consists of finding a back door he can leave open for you."
T'Pol tried and failed to tamp down a great surge of irritation, both at this analysis of her and at the endless human predilection for figures of speech. "Your point?"
He turned serious. "If you want this relationship to work, you're going to try to be a little more direct with me. I'm not a backdoor kind of guy. If I knock on the front door and you tell me to go away, I'll go away. I might come back and knock again once or twice, but I'm not going to go circling around the house to see if you left a window open for me to crawl into."
"If you want this relationship to work, perhaps you could speak plainly instead of using obscure metaphors related to domestic architecture."
"There you go, trying to avoid the main issue again!"
They stared at each other in annoyance until T'Pol glanced down. And saw something interesting. She lifted her chin. "I take it you're finding this discussion stimulating?"
He smirked. "I've always enjoyed arguing with you." He stepped forward and reached up under the shirt she was wearing to grasp her bare hips in both hands.
T'Pol flushed as she was flooded with the sensation of his desire meeting her own.
He whispered in her ear, "I also can't resist you when you're wearing nothing but my shirt." He began to trace the point of her ear with his tongue.
It was getting harder to talk, but she managed to get out, "Why do you think I wanted to wear it?"
She felt a flash of amused gratitude from him. "I'm beginning to feel a little more optimistic about us," he said, and went back to licking her ear.
x x x
Jonathan Archer sat in his seat on the bridge and looked at three suns and three trails of matter streaming between them, and couldn't believe that his science officer wasn't on the bridge to see it.
Of course, if she was, she'd be completely blasé about it, probably tell him that she'd already seen at least twenty other trinary star systems in addition to the one Enterprise had already studied in the second year of its mission, and that there was nothing remarkable about this one.
Which was bull. T'Pol ate this stuff up with a spoon.
So the fact that she hadn't appeared meant something – presumably that his first and second officer were finally resolving their differences.
He shook his head slightly. He was pleased for his two friends, but he couldn't help remembering that old bromide: Be careful what you wish for.
x x x
The next time Trip awoke he realized that T'Pol was not in bed with him. Adrenaline surged and he sat up quickly.
"I'm right here," she said mildly, from his desk chair. "Would you like to see the trinary system the captain referenced earlier?"
"Sure," Trip said, and pulled on his sweats before coming to peer over her shoulder at his monitor. "Pretty neat." He gently squeezed her shoulder. "You want to go up to the bridge?"
She turned to him. She was wearing his shirt again. "The doctor recommended you do some light walking. Perhaps you could come with me."
Trip smiled. "You plan on wearing that? I don't think I have the energy to fight all those guys off right now."
She turned and gave him a serious look. "How do you recommend we handle our relationship in our interactions with the crew?"
They had never had this discussion before and he took it as a good sign that she wanted to have it now. Hell, he took it as a good sign that she was using the word 'relationship.' That didn't mean it was going to be an easy discussion, however. He sat down on his bunk. "Depends. Are you willing to leave Enterprise?"
She looked surprised. "Are you?"
"If that's what it takes for us to be together, I'd do it happily."
"Starfleet needs experienced officers in space."
He knew how to translate this. "You don't want to leave."
"Captain Archer also needs us."
Trip sighed. "You know there's no way Starfleet can countenance a relationship between two officers in the same chain of command."
"Perhaps if one of us were willing to step outside the chain of command…"
He shook his head. "There's still no guarantee they'd let us serve together. And they'd probably bring in somebody new. What if it's another moron like Kelby? Not to mention it's career suicide if you ever want a command of your own."
"Do you?"
"I used to. Not so much now that I've had a taste of it. You?"
"I find it highly unlikely Starfleet will ever give a Vulcan command of an earth ship."
"But if they did?"
"Then I would consider it an honor."
"Really? I never thought you were ambitious that way."
"It's not ambition. It's putting my talents to use for the greater good. However, I'm not sure how effective I would be in that situation without your presence or your … advice."
He grinned. He was awfully glad she saw it that way; he knew his 'advice' sometimes looked a lot like insubordination. "We do seem to work well together."
"Indeed."
He shook his head. They were getting off track. "Okay. So you don't want to leave. This just got a hell of a lot more complicated." He lay back on his bunk, suddenly feeling tired.
He could feel her frustration spike. "Are you saying we can't have a relationship while we both serve on Enterprise?"
To be continued…