The way she evaded him, even while sitting still, told him, once again, that he'd read things right, but approached them all wrong. Here she was, telling him she thought they should stop the neuropressure sessions – but, dammitall, her voice was on the verge of tears.
"Why?" He wasn't asking only about neuropressure, he realized. He was pretty sure she knew it, too.
She hedged – not something she was noted for, and Trip caught a hint of a truth he couldn't begin to understand, and which she couldn't begin to talk about. He'd never felt at once so close to someone, and, in the same breath, so far apart.
He could feel her quivering from where he stood behind her. Not visibly; that delicious undercurrent that only came when she was aroused, when she was touching him, or wanting to...
Thrill of delight, stab of yearning. She still wants me...
Only then did he know that he hadn't been sure. Something in him leapt up, intent, intense – and, dammit, he had to fight back a physical response he hadn't dressed to conceal. Damn. Baseball scores. Fish tales.
Aw, hell – not the way she looked, sitting there, in blue. Damn, he loved the way she looked in that color. In any color, really. In nothing at all.
Wrong way, Trip! Grandmothers with mustaches, planting kisses on him. Lizzie, throwing swamp mud in his eye because he said her favorite imaginary friend Just Wasn't Real...
Better. He could breathe again, without taking the chance it would become a pleading, embarrassing moan.
"I've taught you all I can." She kept – almost - turning to face him, then flinching away as though his simply being here was more than she could face, right now. Maybe he should go, leave her to hide out until she'd had enough- but something in the way she bowed her head told him that, hard as this was for them both, letting it rest like this would only throw up another wall.
Aww, pepperpot. What the hell is scaring you?
Insight struck with the force of antimatter...
She's afraid of you.
She's afraid of intimacy.
Most of all, she's afraid of herself.
Trip wanted to ask her why again, but, with the way she was defending herself already, he wasn't sure she could take it.
Time to fess up, maybe?
At least time to face her. If he'd hurt her, somehow, if what they'd shared was scaring her, he could still be her friend, if she'd let him. He'd miss the neuropressure, and that easy flowing sharing that they'd developed while doing it – but he'd gotten used to missing that. Since Azati Prime, and whatever had happened to her there, she'd been – absent. No, it was more than that.
Vacant. On some strange sort of autopilot that didn't seem to be able to adapt to the changes.
She needed a friend. He could be that – he though he could, at least – without pressuring her for anything more.
If she'd let him.
He came around behind her, trying not to notice how she sat perfectly straight, correct- trying harder not to remember laying in this same spot, with her straddling him, arching back in a lovely curve before all but throwing herself onto him in sheer ecstatic abandon, claiming him with that same offhand confidence that was such a part of her...
Or had been. And, damn, he was turned on by her, and there was almost literally nowhere to look that didn't hold decidedly erotic memories...
Shit.
He'd planned to stay standing, but the vixen had a direct line of sight to how she was affecting him, and he sure as hell couldn't go back, now that he was around her...besides, the way she was flinching, Trip had a strong sense that he needed to get in her way, if she was going to look at him at all.
He hitched up the legs of his sweats a little – he was pretty damned sure he was gonna need the extra room, no matter how hard he tried to resist...
Especially since he could still feel her low-grade quiver – when had he become more attuned to that than to the engine vibrations through the deck plating? And damn her, how could she look so vulnerable, so composed, and so utterly unaffected by the arousal he could feel roaring through her?
He'd been talking to her, but, honestly, he couldn't remember what he'd said, only the way the candlelight flickered shadows over her lovely, troubled, flinching face. She looked like she was fighting her own impulse to open to him; or to run from him. Trip wished he knew which.
"Where do you suggest I eat?"
There was pure Vulcan hautuer in that line, laced with anger. Trip had heard that voice before. The first time, he'd thought her arrogance was beyond bounds, intolerable...but then he had another memory..
"I have other letters in my quarters. Would you like to read them, as well?" Oh, she'd been royally pissed at him, then, and she'd had every right to be. Between that damn forced marriage (arranged? You couldn't arrange a marriage for a seven year old child – you could only force it on her wholesale, and that was a dirty enough little secret, without him sneaking around spying on her and all but accusing her of espionage in the process...).
But she'd also been vulnerable, her deepest secret and the ultimatum that went with it in his hands.
He'd started to understand her then; now, he was sure.
She was trapped. By what, Trip didn't know. She was embarrassed to be asking for any kind of special treatment – but she had to. Had to stay in here with whatever the hell had hold of her; had to stay away, isolate herself.
Oh, pepperpot, what's wrong? I wish to hell you could just tell me...
Beautiful little fire-dweller. At least she was looking at him more, and getting her dander up a little. After the cringing remoteness, the passion raised Trip's spirits – and predictable, another part of him as well...damn, but she was potent!
Time to tell her so, Trip reckoned. Trick was, though, to do it in a way that let her off the hook, that didn't pressure her for anything more than they'd already shared.
Finally, she was meeting his eyes; but that direct regard of hers seemed like another door she was hiding behind, now...another hastily erected barrier. Scratch that. Hastily built. 'Erected' was not the best word to focus on right now, not when he could still feel the quiver, smell that special not-quite-citrus-and-sandalwood scent she got when they touched...
Predictably, he got tangled up in his feelings and whatever the hell it was he was trying to say, and the impossibility of labeling what they'd shared apparently not nearly enough to satisfy either of them.
"Had sexual relations?" She made it sound almost clinical – except for the direct and unblinking way she gazed directly into his eyes, and the quivering, beneath her surface, rippling his depths...he had to tease her, or grab her and kiss her. There were no other options.
And, at last, she sparring with him, dancing warily around his words, calling it an 'exploration' again...
Oh, yeah. Exploration, expedition...followed by ecstasy, exhaustion, and then...more exploration. She could make it sound as sterile in the retelling as she wanted. Trip was there, and so was she, and they both knew better.
But her quicksilver wit was emerging, and her passion. Just a few weeks ago, she'd used those to spring the most delightful trap Trip had ever been ensnared in.
Dammit, he wanted to be trapped that way again. And again. And then again.
And more after that, too.
She darted a glance off to her left, lowering her lids, swallowing. Oh, pepperpot, you're not a quarter as good at hiding your feelings from me as you think you are. You want more, as much as I do – and why do I get the feeling you need it even more?
Her eyes didn't come back to his face until she got that damned Vulcan mask back on – well, sorta. "I'm fine." she said, but her voice cracked into the hitch of an abortive sob.
What the hell had happened to her?
And was he responsible?
She was shattered, somehow, deep inside, her core fractured and in desperate need of attention. Structural integrity compromised, said all of his engineering instincts. Complete collapse imminent.
Whatever this was, it was bigger than she was, right now. And, somehow, while he was trying to make it better, he was actually making it worse.
She was pleading for him to believe her, to not press, to give her the space she needed...
Even if I explode – or implode. In his mind, a sudden image of that gooey tentacle-fella who'd wrapped him up, with the captain and three others...but this time, it was T'Pol who was being absorbed...from the inside out.
I want you to go. I want you to stay -
It hung there, in his mind, like a star. Not his thoughts, but hers. She didn't seem to know what she'd done, and Trip did the best he could to cover his shock.
She couldn't share this with him consciously, and his attempts to find out what it was were hurting her, confusing her. She'd turned her head to the left, now, shutting him out, slightly, after her false declaration.
He couldn't bear the way she couldn't bear to look at him. Dammit, he'd come to help, to comfort, not to put his foot in his damned mouth and make it all worse.
He nodded. Okay, pepperpot. I'll let it be- for now. But you're in desperate need of some TLC, no matter what you say...
He sighed a little at the barriers still standing between them. But it helped, just a little, to have an idea of how badly she needed them, right now...
He left her, locked inside with her candles and her pretense of mediation and her quivering, hidden desires, and spent the next two hours venting his frustrations on the one treadmill that had survived the attack.
She was locked in, and he was locked out. Damn.