STRINGS ATTACHED

EPILOGUE

-a week later-

The doors opened and Malcolm sighed at the state of chaos in the room. Clothes were scattered on the floor in a beeline from the bed to the bathroom, the bed was in disarray, and a stack of PADDs, papers and dirty plates was piled on the desk.

The door to the bathroom was ajar and the shower was running. Walking towards the bed, Malcolm refrained from picking up the discarded clothes. Not your stuff. His father would have a fit if he knew about the state of his quarters, all thanks to one of Starfleet's most acclaimed officers.

A week ago, Malcolm had officially announced that Trip could sleep in his quarters until he felt comfortable in his own bed again, and that had been the beginning of the end of order in his room. He hadn't said anything when he found Trip's dirty uniform on the ground on the same day, since the Engineer, sound asleep in the bed, had been dead tired and injured. He hadn't said anything when Trip didn't move out the next day and just piled in stuff he needed for work, because Phlox had benched him while the ship was in dire need of its Chief Engineer.

Now, one week later, Trip still hadn't shown the slightest inclination to move out or clean up, and there was a half-empty plate on the bed, tilting to the side dangerously, and Malcolm decided that enough was enough.

"Trip?" he called, and immediately the shower was turned off and a shock of blond hair appeared behind the bathroom door.

Trip flashed him his million-watt grin as he dried his hands with a towel. He had hitched up the sleeves of his uniform, revealing the ugly bruising on his contused arm. "Honey, you're home early!" he greeted.

"Well, I wanted to get ready for tonight," Malcolm said as he undid the upper buttons of his shirt. With a frown, he noticed the soaked bandage on Trip's right hand. "You're supposed to keep that bandage dry."

With many of Phlox' medical systems damaged when the ship had been thrown around like a ragdoll during the explosion, a lot of crewmembers with minor injuries hadn't been healed yet. Trip was among them, although his injuries, thank God, were far from medical emergencies. The Doctor and the Engineer had quickly worked out a compromise that allowed Trip to work full hours as long as he spent half of his day repairing the delicate medical machineries in sickbay under Phlox' supervision. For five days now, Malcolm shook his head at Trip's interpretations of 'light manual work' and his inability to keep his bandage clean for more than a few hours. He had tried to talk to Phlox about it, but that had only resulted in the worst 'the pot calling the kettle black' dressing-down ever.

"Oh, I wanted to get a fresh bandage anyway. I fixed the shower!"

"That's good," Malcolm said, until he remembered that nothing had been wrong with his shower this morning. "Wait. It wasn't broken."

Trip's grin dropped, which pretty much spelled busted, but he immediately blocked Malcolm's path of sight by shutting the door to the bathroom. "I left you some pie." He mentioned towards the bed and at the half-empty plate on the blanket.

Just then, a pie crumble fell onto the sheets. It was such a cheap trick, but it worked well.

"About that, can you please not leave food in the bed?"

Trip looked at him disappointedly. "Are seriously saying no to pie in bed? Who does that?"

"We're invited for dinner in a few minutes."

Unimpressed by his arguments, Trip waltzed past him and grabbed the plate. When he caught Malcolm's glare, however, he refrained from sitting on the bed and leaned against the wall instead. The pie was gone in a matter of seconds.

"So, how are weapons doing?" Trip asked between bites.

Malcolm sighed. The damage done to Enterprise's systems by the alien disk and the explosion in zero g had been extensive – the ship was mess. With only half of the crew cleared for work, repairs went much too slow. The Warp Drive, much to Trip's dismay, didn't power up to a speed over Warp 2.6, which meant that they were still a good deal away from Sol and Jupiter Station. To make matter worse, neither the hull plating nor the weapons were working reliably yet.

"I've sent you the report this morning. We still have to target manually."

Trip grunted. "Sorry, I hadn't had time to read it yet. T'Pol keeps pestering me about the paper."

Malcolm unzipped his uniform, walked towards his wardrobe, and eyed his humble selection of leisure wear unhappily. Somehow, he hadn't thought about packing an outfit for this very special occasion. He wondered what he'd wear if he were to meet Trip's parents but chased that thought away immediately –the analogy made things even more awkward.

"Well, it could change the course of science." He held up a plain dress shirt and a black jumper and turned to Trip.

"That one," Trip said, pointing at the dress shirt. "T'Pol doesn't think the data will suffice to change the Vulcan Science Directorate's mind anyway."

After making sure that the ship wasn't falling apart, T'Pol and Trip had started to unravel what the hell had happened to them. In the process, the two of them had begun to create a theoretical model of a multiverse structured in branes and connected by cosmic strings. T'Pol was providing the math for the dimensional model, while Trip was offering experimental designs to determine how a jump through spacetime might be conducted. Luckily, it was possible to prove the appearance and disappearance of the alien ship and the cosmic string with the data Shuttlepod One had collected. So far, they had calculated the need of 13 dimensions and at least three particles that hadn't been found yet. To Malcolm, that sounded like a lot, but the science team hadn't even batted an eyelid.

If they managed to propose a sound paper, the Tucker-T'Pol-Theory-of-Time-Travel, as Trip called it (T'Pol didn't), was going to cause literal ripples across the world of science. Nothing less than T'Pol's reputation as a scientist and Enterprise's mission as vessel of exploration were on the line. The Captain, too, was incredibly excited – if the first proof about the structure of the universe came from a Vulcan-human collaboration, Starfleet's status among its allies would be catapulted into a new era of diplomatic opportunities.

Of course, Malcolm thought as he remembered Archer's excitement, this whole uncomfortable thing would go down much easier for the Captain if a new age of science dawned thanks to his actions. Returning to command had been difficult and dealing with Starfleet Command when they returned to Sol was going to be even harder. There were going to be tons of board meetings and committee questions doubting humanity's capabilities and emphasising the danger of exploring space. The commanding officers had worked on a meticulous report that told the truth yet left out some of the rather… brutal actions the crew and the Captain had conducted over the past days, but consequences were still bound to come.

Discussing what was included in the reports and what not had to have been a strenuous affair. According to Hoshi, the silence between Archer and T'Pol on the bridge had been deadly at times, and Trip had stormed out of the Ready Room more than once. The horse trade to leave out Archer's violent outburst towards Trip had only been accepted if Malcolm's own vital part in the mutiny was altered – and after a week full of stilted appearances in front of the crew and awkward conversations in-between, the Captain had finally extended the olive branch and invited Trip to dinner.

"Aren't you going to get dressed?" Malcolm asked, throwing the shirt back into the wardrobe and hanging the jumper over the door, carefully.

"I am dressed."

Malcolm rolled his eyes. "Aren't you going to get dressed properly?"

Trip looked at him funny. "For Jon? Why would I?"

It was the first shared dinner in at least six months and bound to be painfully awkward. Knowing that they had to do this sometime, Trip had accepted. Then they both had started to panic until Archer had generously invited Malcolm as well, Trip had generously accepted on his behalf, and then they had asked Malcolm, who had been too British to decline. Which was why here he was, trying to be a nice-looking buffer.

"You're usually the first one to criticize my outfits," Trip added, sulkily. "Also, I can't go to my quarters right now and I doubt your shirts would fit me."

"He's in your room right now?"

"Finishing touches." Trip nodded.

For some reasons Malcolm didn't know, decorated Captain Jonathan Archer was painting the walls in Trip's quarters. Apparently, it was part of Archer's redemption towards Trip, who had just shrugged when Malcolm asked him, and commented on the depressing effect too much grey could have.

Malcolm had decided to just not ask anymore. Whether Trip was suffering some PTSD, or he just looked for excuses to stay with Malcolm longer – he had learned that he needed to pick his battles more carefully if he wanted to win the war. If Trip wanted his room to look like one of his terrible, terrible shirts, so be it.

The man in question probably thought about wall paint as well, as his gaze had started to wander about Malcolm's smaller quarters, and the Brit used that moment to dash over to the bathroom blazingly fast and rip open the door.

Behind him, he could hear Trip yelp. "Mal, wait -!"

Malcolm stared at his shower, or rather, what had been his shower once. The booth had been completely stripped, the tiles were strewn across the floor, and the sealing material lay in crumbs and dust everywhere. The shower itself had been hung over the frame of the booth. It wasn't disconnected, as far as Malcolm could see, as a steady trickle of water dripped onto the floor, turning the sealing material below into mud.

"I can explain!" Trip said and stopped a good two metres away from him.

Wise decision.

"Darling," Malcolm said calmly, turning towards Trip with a polite smile that made the other man pale visibly. "Why exactly did you butcher my shower?"

"I was just about to -"

'Commander Tucker, report to sickbay immediately.' Doctor Phlox' voice, sounding stressed, crackled through the ship.

Trip's eyes went wide as they darted towards the door.

"Don't you dare, Tucker."

"Sounds like he's in an emergency, right?" Trip edged closer to the door. "Probably the skin regenerator again. Someone has to be in a lot of pain right now."

"You'll be in—Trip!" The Engineer had reached the door by now and opened it. Malcolm dashed after him. "We're expected for dinner!"

Already outside of the corridor, Trip called over his shoulders. "Oh, right. You go ahead, I'll make it quick."

"What?! I'm not going alone!"

Trip turned around and raised his hands, that damn grin back on his face. "Are you going to leave the Captain waiting, Malcolm?"

And then he was gone. Malcolm stared at the empty corridor. In the background, he heard the shower drip steadily.

"Bloody hell."

-The end-

A/N:… and that's it. Thank you for reading this story, for your patience between chapters, and your lovely reviews. It was so fun to embarrass Malcolm with awkward conversations and stress out Trip to the point of exhaustion. I'll miss these two adorable idiots.

The fanfiction that inspired this story was 'Imperfect' by Sita Z. Check it out, it's great. It made me wonder how the crew dynamics would change if Archer and Trip had a public fallout. Who would side with whom? Would the power positions change? What would have to happen to trigger a mutiny? … and then I combined with the Stormfront episodes, which had bothered me so much because of that terrible, terrible writing.

I hope I managed to explain my plot about the time travel stuff well. The episodes didn't give us much material to work with. There are some details I plotted (like how had Jon been 'infected' with the device (when he fought with Silik); Enterprise powering the conduit itself (when they shot at the facility), also Vosk's 'today's the day speech' that makes absolutely no sense if he doesn't think that Enterprise's arrival will have an impact on their situation) I couldn't write into the story because the crew couldn't know about them.

I know Malcolm's jealousy was a bit much for some of you. I agree that it seems like a stretch, but hey, that's why it's called fanfiction :). All of the three protagonists in this story have been portrayed in canon as somewhat unable to deal with complicated emotions and with some serious anger management issues. Trip represses emotions until he either explodes or implodes, Malcolm picks fights when he feels challenged for no reason, and Archer distances himself and snaps in the worst of situations. They are such interesting characters, it's a shame the show never gave us more about it (that's generally a ST issue, I think…).

Anyway, sorry for the rambling. Thank you for reading this story! Leave me a few words so I know what you liked and what you didn't like. Did you have a favourite scene? Did you like the change from chamber play to space opera? Is there still something missing for you? Constructive criticism is always welcome.

Good bye! :)