"Enough, already!" Archer exclaimed to no-one in particular, but his words were muffled by the towel he was using to dry his hair.
He had paced his quarters for almost half an hour after returning from the gym, before becoming aware of just how keenly he needed a shower.
He was now once again pacing like a caged animal, and Porthos had long since given up following him around the room. The beagle was now sitting in his basket with his head on his forepaws, watching the agitated man march back and forth.
"I couldn't think of anything to say," Archer said, causing Porthos' ears to twitch. "It was like I was back in high school."
He laughed, but without much genuine amusement. The whole situation was getting out of hand. Being puzzled by her behaviour was one thing, but starting to actually get awkward around her was ridiculous.
He stopped pacing, and folded his arms.
I'm attracted to her, he thought. No question about that. But there's no crime in it either.
Was that true? Probably. Fraternisation was discouraged amongst crewmembers, and most certainly between those on different levels of the chain of command, but it was hardly prohibited. And that was actual relationships; this was just an unspoken attraction.
"And an unrequited one," he added, aloud. He frowned, and resumed pacing.
There had certainly been several moments over the past year when he'd fleetingly wondered if T'Pol might harbour feelings for him, but the whole concept was just so difficult to accept.
She most certainly had feelings, and experienced emotional responses to things - no matter what she might want you to believe about Vulcans - but it was a big jump to say that she could actually become attracted to a colleague.
"Especially to a human," he said, but where he expected to feel the familiar tinge of bitterness, there was only weariness and something approaching regret.
Dancing around the issue was wearing him down, and this latest episode of almost emotional behaviour from her seemed to have taken a heavier toll on him than he'd thought this morning.
Maybe I should just finally talk to her about this, he thought. Just to clear the air.
This was one situation where her standard defense about Vulcans not experiencing emotions could actually work in his favour; she could hardly claim to be uncomfortable discussing it for the purposes of reducing friction between them.
"It's only logical," he said, and again laughed without humour.
He glanced over towards Porthos, who was still watching him intently. He gave the dog a smile, and received two quick swishes of the tail in response.
"I'm going to take that as 'good luck', pal," he said, and after a further moment he crossed to the door.
T'Pol sat on the end of her bed, clasping the sweater against her chest. Her eyes were closed. The silence of the room belied the turmoil within her mind.
She had clearly underestimated the degree to which she had been repressing her feelings about Captain Archer; that much had become plain.
It would seem that the events of yesterday acted as a catalyst, she reflected.
She had spent the last twenty minutes or so at the centre of a whirlwind of newly-acknowledged, if not quite newly-awakened, emotions. As soon as she had caught his scent on the sweater, she had felt a surge of two contradictory feelings.
I experienced a sense of both his presence and his absence, she thought.
She had closed her eyes involuntarily at the time, and it was as if he was standing right there in front of her. It wasn't just the familiar scent; she found she could picture even the smallest details of his face. Every feature, even the creases around his eyes which appeared most prominently when he smiled. She had not been aware that she had developed such an exquisitely detailed familiarity with his appearance.
But then the sense of absence had risen, and this was the most unsettling feeling of all. She could still picture him, and it was still as if he was standing just in front of her - but suddenly that small distance created a sense of loss.
Even if he had actually been there with her in her quarters, standing so near, there would have been an invisible barrier between them.
A barrier of protocol, her mind supplied, but that wasn't all of it. A barrier of culture.
But not his culture. Humans were very accustomed to being within the personal space of others; they made physical contact regularly and with abandon. Archer would clap Commander Tucker on the back when congratulating him, or comfortingly squeeze the arm of Ensign Sato if she was experiencing doubt in her abilities.
But it is different between he and I, she thought.
He did occasionally touch her; he had done so this morning, in what had become his usual gesture: he clasped her shoulders with his hands. But there was a strained formality about it; there was reticence. There was a barrier.
It is a barrier of my own making, she realised.
It was true that Vulcans generally did not like to be touched, but her stance on the matter had necessarily been gradually modified during her time on Enterprise. Nonetheless, she had always maintained an appropriate detachment from her human crewmates, and in some ways she maintained the greatest detachment of all from Captain Archer.
It would not have been difficult, given that she was his First Officer, to let her guard down slightly when she was around him. She could perhaps even have had some semblance of the easy interaction that he enjoyed with Commander Tucker. But she had not permitted it.
He has always seen me at my most guarded, she realised. He had even alluded to it that very morning, by saying that she was more tense than usual.
All at once, the nature of the barrier between them was clear, and she felt as if there was ice in her stomach. She had systematically ensured that he would always view her as different from the others onboard - and particularly different from human women. The mere possibility of any personal relationship between them would surely never even have entered his mind.
It was indeed a situation of her own making, and now she had discovered that she had hidden the truth of her own feelings even from herself. Commander Tucker would no doubt have said that it was a fine old mess.
Her heart sank, and she gathered the sweater even closer to herself, taking some small comfort in the softness of the fabric and in the smell of him.
Never had the distance between them felt greater.
