Never and Always...
Rating: PG-13, for a bit of sexual suggestiveness.
Disclaimer: Star Trek: Enterprise is the property of CBS/Paramount. All original material herein is the property of its author.
A/N: Thanks to the Vulcan Language Institute for ceremonial translations.
Chapter 9: Daydreams Can Be Hazardous To Your Health
Trip strolled hand in hand with T'Pol through the meadow. "You're starting to like playing hooky," he smiled.
"On what do you base that assumption?" she inquired.
"The backgrounds are getting prettier."
"This vista is not my invention," T'Pol replied. "It must have come from your mind."
Trip looked more closely at the flower-dotted expanse of green, humming with bees and birdsong, topped by a clear blue sky. "I'll be damned. You're in my head this time." He plucked a buttercup and tucked it behind her ear. "God, you're beautiful."
T'Pol could feel his desire for her, even as it stirred her own...a delicious warmth pooling deep in her belly, yearning for his touch. She gazed into his sky-blue eyes...and then he was kissing her deeply. She felt the soft touch of his fingers as he caressed her, setting her inner warmth ablaze.
His lips wandered up to her ear, his tongue tickling her there, near the buttercup. "Have you ever made love in a meadow?" he whispered invitingly. He tugged at her hands, pulling her down with him to the soft, fragrant bed of green clover. He leaned in to kiss her again...
...but Captain Archer's face got in the way. "Commander T'Pol!"
She blinked. She was back on the bridge of Enterprise, with the captain peering at her in obvious confusion.
Archer waited for T'Pol's eyes to focus on him. He had kept his voice low, but Hoshi was a little too obviously keeping her back turned; she had heard him. Great—more fodder for the rumor mill.
"My apologies, Captain," T'Pol murmured softly. She shifted in her seat, deeply embarrassed by her lapse, and by the waves of lingering desire still coursing through her. She attacked her console, punching up calculations. "I'll have those figures for you momentarily."
"Forget the figures." Archer put his hand lightly over hers, stopping her. He was concerned, not annoyed. He would have preferred to speak with her in the ready room, but it would draw even more attention to take her there. He leaned close, dropping his voice to barely more than a whisper. "What's going on? Is something wrong with the bond?"
"Yes—no—" T'Pol stopped, determinedly setting aside her self-consciousness. This was Captain Archer, her friend, her trusted confidante, soon to be an advocate for her and Trip before the Starfleet board of inquiry. "The bond is still in its formative stages," she explained, in the same quiet tone. "Its current manifestation is unpredictable...and erratic."
"For Trip, too?"
She nodded. "He has mentioned distracting episodes as well."
"How do Vulcan couples handle this?" Archer asked.
"It is expected for newly-married Vulcans to..." She hesitated, not quite knowing what to say.
"Zone out?" he suggested.
Unable to offer a better answer, T'Pol nodded again, somewhat contritely.
Archer gave her an understanding smile. "Okay, then. I'll expect it. Carry on, Commander."
As the captain returned to the center seat, T'Pol studied him. She considered herself fortunate to have a commander who gave such unwavering support in this matter. With a small sigh, she endeavored to return to her work, though she could still feel vestiges of desire—Trip's desire, as well as her own—resonating within her mind and body.
It was going to be a very long duty shift.
-- -- --
Trip snapped back to the humming reality of engineering. He shut his eyes and rubbed them as everything spun around him. He felt as though he'd been locked in a dark room with a strobe light flashing in his face for four days. He had even started thinking of the spontaneous bond links between him and T'Pol as "flashes," because of the way he emerged from them dizzy and disoriented, half-blinded by the sudden changes of scenery. Not to mention aroused as hell, most of the time.
Like now. He was still painfully hard, remembering the feel of T'Pol's body under his roaming hands. He was lucky he'd been sitting at his workstation when this last flash hit; these jumpsuits didn't hide a damn thing.
The flashes were occurring more frequently now, day and night, whether he and T'Pol were awake or asleep, hard at work or idly daydreaming. There had seemed to be no rhyme or reason to them, until Soval theorized that their discovery of the bond was itself the cause. Knowing they were bonded had them thinking more about each other...and thinking about each other triggered the flashes...which focused them on each other even more. Soval also suspected that Trip's emotional human nature, and T'Pol's emotional sensitivity, exacerbated the already erratic nature of the nascent bond.
As to why most of the flashes ended up getting Trip and T'Pol so...stimulated, they had asked Soval about that as well. Actually, Trip had been too self-conscious to bring it up, so T'Pol had asked outright, in that mortifyingly direct way of hers. In reply, Soval had simply stated the obvious: it was a mating bond, designed by countless millennia of evolution to solidify a relationship that, between two Vulcans, typically began between strangers and was expected to last well over a century.
So it went. The flashes were always enjoyable, but hellaciously inconvenient. Trip would be practicing Vulcan phonetics with Hoshi in the mess hall—and abruptly he would find himself alongside T'Pol in a memory of her days in the Vulcan Security Directorate. T'Pol would be meditating in her dimly-lit quarters with Soval and Captain Archer—only to be deposited onto a sunny Florida beach, indulging in a lazy interlude of nude sunbathing with Trip. T'Pol had begun teaching Trip how to create and employ simple mental shields, but he wasn't going to kid himself; it would be months before he got enough of a handle on the techniques for them to be useful. In the meantime, they were both distracted, losing sleep, and getting behind in their workloads.
Crewman Cook trotted up. "Commander? We're ready for you now, sir."
Trip looked up blankly for a moment. He couldn't for the life of him remember what Cook was talking about. "Crewman?"
"The EPS grids. You wanted to look at them when we finished replacing the old conduits."
"Right. I'll, uh, be there in a minute."
"Yessir." Off the kid went.
Trip sighed. What was he supposed to do until this bond thing settled down, anyway? Walk around holding a clipboard in front of his lap? For the next several months?
It was gonna be a very long duty shift.
The turning point came later that day, while Trip was balanced precariously over a catwalk railing, recalibrating the energy flow of one of the warp plasma regulators. It was delicate work, requiring total focus and concentration, since the instrument panel he was adjusting was only centimeters away from the unshielded energy stream of electro-plasma itself. He had almost completed the calibration...just one more adjustment, thank the heavens, because his leg was cramping something fierce in this position—
—And all of a sudden he was in the sand garden of T'Les's home on Vulcan. T'Pol was kneeling across from him, a vision in her purple wedding robes. T'Les was standing behind her, with the silver-haired priest off to the side, speaking sonorously in Vulcan. "...Nam-tor u'khaf-spol Vuhlkansu...nam-tor u'katra Vuhlkansu. Nam-tor u'sha'yut..."
Trip could understand the words now, thanks to Hoshi's coaching. This is the Vulcan heart...this is the Vulcan soul. This is our way...
With a start, he realized: My God, it's her wedding day all over again.
This was a flash Trip desperately wanted to avoid living through again. He was ashamed of his own cowardice, amazed that it still hurt so much to see all of this again, even though he and T'Pol were together now. He couldn't keep looking at her; he lowered his eyes. "Darlin'...don't make me do this. Turn it off."
With a gentle smile, T'Pol held out her hand, two fingers extended. "Look again, t'hai'la."
He didn't want to, but for her, he would do anything. Slowly, he lifted his gaze. There was T'Pol...T'Les...the priest...
Wait. He was kneeling in the groom's place. In Koss's place. Koss was nowhere to be seen.
It wasn't T'Pol's memory he was in, but her wish...a wedding that never was, but should have been. Relaxing, Trip regarded her with new understanding, accepting her ozh'esta. "Soon, t'hai'la," he murmured softly. "Soon we'll be—"
His outstretched hand burst into flame. With a yelp, he jumped back from her—stumbled—the ground opened under him—and he fell clean out of her mind, plummeting downward into darkness.
-- -- --
"No!" T'Pol gasped. She lunged blindly, sending several padds skittering across her console, clattering to the deck. All eyes on the bridge turned to her in shock.
Archer was at her side in an instant. Her eyes were unfocused, her breathing so rapid she was practically hyperventilating. He grabbed her shoulder, jarring her back to reality. "T'Pol! What is it?"
She turned to him, focusing on him with an effort. "Trip—he's in trouble—"
"Go," Archer said.
T'Pol bolted for the turbolift. A moment after she left, the call came from engineering about an accident.
Trip awoke in sickbay. At once, he tried to sit up, which was a dire mistake. With a groan, he gingerly laid back. Everything hurt. His left shoulder was cussing a blue streak at him, and his right hand still felt as if it were on fire. His right arm stung from elbow to fingertips.
T'Pol appeared at his side, openly relieved to see him awake. Before she could speak, Phlox bustled up behind her, all smiles. "Ah, Commander! Awake at last. I trust you're feeling terrible."
"That about covers it," Trip muttered. "What...?"
"Lieutenant Hess tells me you stuck your hand in a live warp-plasma energy stream, then fell fifteen feet off a catwalk." Phlox appeared quite impressed. "Fortunately, you did not land on your head."
"Lemme guess. My shoulder."
"Dislocated," Phlox confirmed. "But it's back in place now. Not to worry." He grinned cheerily, then left them alone.
T'Pol touched Trip's arm, looking guilt-stricken. "I did not mean for—"
"I know. Don't fret about it, darlin'." Trip smiled at her. "I wouldn't have missed that last flash for the world."
Her troubled expression softened to shyness. "What were you thinking about?" he asked her.
"I was compiling my report of our time in the Forge," she replied. "I was detailing the attack on the Syrrannite camp..." She fell silent.
"Your mom?"
T'Pol nodded. "I thought of her, and home...and then you and I were there." She looked away. "When you disappeared from the...the flash, I fear I made quite a scene abandoning my post. The captain was most understanding."
"You abandoned...?" Trip was flattered and scandalized at the same time.
She looked abashed. "I arrived here in sickbay as you were being brought from engineering."
"We have to do something about this," he said soberly. "If I'm in the middle of trying to stop a warp core breach or something, and I get sucked inside your head—"
"Agreed," T'Pol acknowledged. "I have already spoken with Ambassador Soval."
She turned toward the entrance. Trip saw Soval waiting quietly near the double doors. He came forward now, to the foot of the biobed. "I was distressed to hear of your accident, Commander."
"Thanks, Ambassador." Trip tried not to let his disappointment reach his voice. "I guess we do have to sever the bond."
"Not at all," Soval replied. "There is a far simpler solution: to complete your bond through a mind-meld."
T'Pol turned hopefully to Trip. Evidently the two Vulcans had already discussed it. "You can do that?" Trip asked in surprise.
Soval nodded. "My wife and I became bondmates in this way. We followed the old customs of Surak's day, and bonded during our marriage ceremony."
"The way folks married in Surak's day," Trip mused dreamily. "I like the sound of that."
T'Pol regarded him with contentment. "I find it agreeable as well."
"I can, of course, perform the bonding meld," Soval stated. "However, I believe T'Pol has achieved a sufficient level of skill to perform the meld herself."
Both Trip and T'Pol snapped out of their mutual reverie and stared at each other in wonder, which quickly gave way to excitement and anticipation. Reluctantly, T'Pol turned her attention from her fiancé to Soval. "I have not been schooled in the procedure."
"I will instruct you beforehand," the ambassador assured her. "Should your meld not be successful, I will assist you with the bond's completion."
"Now," Trip interjected. "You will instruct her now." They both turned curiously to him. "Hey, I'm the one in the biobed," he said. "I'm ready for completion five minutes ago. Got my meaning?"
T'Pol hid a smile, while Soval arched an amused eyebrow. "As you wish," he said. "T'Pol and I can discuss the details this evening, following her duty shift. Rest well, Commander." With a nod to them both, he departed.
Trip gave T'Pol a speculative look. "Are we going to need assistance with this bonding meld?"
The determined set of her lovely jaw told him that she had every intention of succeeding on her own. "I think not."
He couldn't help but smile at her. "I know we're doing this now as a matter of self-preservation...but I want to tell you, it's not the only reason I'm looking forward to us being fully bonded."
"Nor is it mine." To explain, T'Pol offered him an ozh'esta.
Trip happily obliged, touching his fingers to hers—and jumped as he felt a rush of sweet affection springing from their joined fingers, spreading through him in a gentle wave. "What was that?"
"A taste of what the bond can do." She leaned close, her eyes sparkling with promise. "The sooner you mend, the sooner we will be able to perform the bonding meld."
He smiled angelically. "I'll be a model patient," he promised.
-tbc-
