Lessons

A/N. The extended version of this chapter can be found on Archive of our own (AO3)

Trip put her down on the bed gently, and it didn't take more than his first glance to tell him that T'Pol was apprehensive. She indicated a nondescript bag she'd brought with her, and he looked inside. She nodded when he took out the two boxes it contained. One was unmistakably a human design – a recording device. The second one had Vulcan markings and was undoubtedly a hypospray.

He already had the general idea of how things were intended to play out, but he had his doubts as to how successful this was likely to be. He sat down on the bed beside her and took her hand.

"You really want to record the ruckus we're going to make? You aren't even comfortable with talkin' about intimate matters. I don't want to guess what shade of green your face will be when you hear us makin' noises that wouldn't be out of place on a farm."

He didn't feel quite comfortable talking like this about the upcoming – hopefully more satisfying – encounter. It certainly didn't add any romantic elements, but he knew it meant a lot to her to become more compatible with him, so it was necessary to accept the more clinic nature of preparations.

"I will undoubtedly be most uncomfortable with it, as will you, because I want to ask your permission to give the recordings to Hoshi."

He looked at her with his mouth hanging open in disbelief. It took him a few moments to regain his wits.

"I thought you wanted to teach me to understand what you say. Why the heck would you want to give something like that to Hoshi?"

"I wish to ask her if she would able, and willing, to program a specialized variant of the universal translator for you. The standard one does not translate the vocabulary I am likely to use. Additionally I wish her to make it translate my utterances to something that is palatable to a human."

"Okay, now you've got me confused. What do you mean by 'palatable to a human'?"

"Vulcans without control are prone to use an immensely crude and vulgar language. I had to plead with my mother's katra to stop reciting the obscenities of her past encounters with my father. And I do not need to be an expert on human sexuality to know that it would spoil the experience for you if I demanded that you 'manhandle my udders until they burst'."

Trip didn't know whether to groan or laugh, so he did both. She was right, of course. That sort of smack talk would kill the mood more effectively than a cold shower; he was already feeling somewhat less than aroused. He motioned her to sit up and sat down behind her, where he started to perform relaxing neuropressure techniques in a bid to restore at least some sort of atmosphere.

"Ok, I get the idea how that would be a mood killer," he agreed, pushing his thumbs into the appropriate nodes along her delicate spinal ridge. "I was thinkin'. Since we have four weeks, we don't need to rush things. How about we start lightly – just foreplay."

"It is a logical proposal, but I cannot guarantee that I will respect that plan once my control is compromised."

"Trust me, I'm not goin' to resist if you demand more," he said with a chuckle, continuing his gentle ministrations.

"I believe I am prepared for a first attempt at 'making love' properly, ashayam," she said softly and Trip's heart was filled with joy by her use of the human term. He gently pushed her down onto the bed and lay down beside her after shrugging off his uniform and underwear.

"Let go of your control, darlin'," he encouraged her with a whisper into her ear as he started to trace its outline with the tip of his tongue.

=/\=

"I see some things never change," Zoe Machado said as she walked into the gym at the human compound.

Hoshi, whom she had finally met again since their days at the Academy, was using one of the torturing devices pulling the metal bar down, lifting the weight behind her – and, in true Hoshi fashion, she was doing so butt naked of course.

"Still waiting for your dashing Mister Reed to walk in on you?" she asked, unable to resist a good ribbing.

Her friend sat up, breathing heavily. Her whole body was covered by a glistening layer of sweat. The weight fell down noisily as she let go of the handle.

"The dashing Mister Reed had four full years to 'walk in on me'. He didn't even have the balls to ask me out on a date. What am I supposed to do – beg?"

"You could have asked him yourself, you know," Zoe replied and grinned mischievously. "I don't think anyone who saw you on stage last night would buy your 'shy wallflower' act."

"I did Zoe. I asked him more than once. I mean, how hard can it be to accept an empty seat at movie night? 'I don't think that would be appropriate, ensign.'" She mimicked his British accent perfectly, but ended on a barked laugh that only partly disguised the hurt behind it.

The young ambassadorial aide didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for her friend, who was still straddling the torture machine. Hoshi was looking quite frustrated.

"Yet I bet you made the move on Goldie because he reminds you of him, even if it's only the accent," Zoe argued and sat down on a chair next to her naked friend. But Hoshi only snorted sarcastically.

"He's everything that Malcolm isn't. If I gave him such a clear view of the naughty bits, Malcolm would run screaming. And while the dashing security chief couldn't make up his mind for four full years, Goldie simply scribbled his comms code on my butt."

Zoe doubled over, laughing hysterically. "He did what? That's hilarious!"

She watched in amusement as Hoshi shifted her posture and pointed to a fading number on her buttock.

"So did you contact him?"

"Not yet," she heard Hoshi say. "I'll have him checked out by a friend next Tuesday."

"He looked like a nice guy," Zoe argued. "Why do you need to check him out?"

"I've met a 'nice guy' in the Expanse and he held me hostage," Hoshi returned. "Trip met a 'nice girl' and she had him stick his fingers in a bowl of rocks. It turned out that she had basically raped him and he ended up pregnant. T'Pol met a Vulcan and he mind-raped her. We've all learned the hard way not to trust first impressions."

Zoe didn't know any answer to that. She just looked at Hoshi in shock.

=/\=

Hoshi sat back, re-reading the latest chapter of her translation. She wondered how T'Pol would take to the revelations of the Kir'Shara, which in essence declared that the militant suppression of emotions was the wrong way. Granted, the term of 'mastering thine emotions' was sufficiently vague to be open to debate, but the gist was clear that there were situations when one had to work not against them, but with them.

Instinctively suppressing fear was a practical thing, but it made one prone to overlook the reasons that had caused it – danger.

=/\=

Former administrator V'Las looked back and groaned in frustration as his pursuer was still there. He did not quite know why this woman – T'Pau – had decided to leave the task of finding him to the terrhassu, a species that was ill-equipped to deal with the hardships of the Forge. He was, however, developing doubts if this human was really ill-equipped. After all, even his sand-colored hair seemed to be an adaption to camouflage in the desert. His sand-colored suit and the pale color of his skin made the outline of his body blend in with the endless waste of sand.

Having been abandoned by his rihanssu contact he was left to fend for himself, and he rued the years of inactivity in the High Command as his stamina and strength seemed to have diminished greatly. How else would a frail human keep up with him?

He continued running along the path, but by the looks of it the Terran did not even need to exert himself unduly. He was casually matching his pace, even drinking water on the move. It was as if he demonstratively tried to keep up an appearance of not being challenged. Unlike his pursuer, he did not have any water provisions and V'Las knew that the next well was at least another five hours away.

Would the human kill him while drinking? He did not know how to assess the situation. If the male tracking him was really as untaxed by the exertion as he made it seem, he could easily have caught him by now. A horrible thought came to his mind – the Terran did not want to kill him. He wanted to chase him into death by exhaustion – and he was succeeding.

=/\=

A pang of panic gripped T'Pol as she woke up from a deep slumber – the left side of the bed was empty. Had the encounter been unsatisfactory again? For herself she could most certainly answer that question with an emphatic NO. Even after several hours of sleep, and now firmly back in control of her emotions, her mind simmered with contentment.

Looking at the window, she saw that it was dark outside, so she had slept at least eight hours, which was unusual in itself. She slowly got up and made her way to the bathroom.

=/\=

Trip was seated at her desk, doing calculations on how they could reprogram a re-sequencer to produce jet fuel instead of milk or coffee. Considering the amount of fuel they would need, a single device would need a full twenty hours to produce it, not to mention that the sewage system would be really clean afterwards.

He felt two hands on his shoulder and when he looked up, his view of T'Pol's face was obstructed by her breasts.

"Now that's some view," he said with a grin. "Slept well darlin'?"

"I did sleep exceptionally well, beloved. As for my state of undress, I begin to understand Hoshi's preference for it. However, I strictly limit my audience to one."

"Won't be gettin' any complaint from me," he said elatedly, moved the chair and motioned her to sit on his lap.

Once she had sat down, he slipped his arms around her torso to steady her.

"So what does the scientist say? Was our experiment a success?"

"As far as I could review the data so far, it was most successful. I would however recommend repeating it numerous times to make sure that the findings are statistically representative."

Her face was solemn, but her eyes definitely had a twinkle in them.

Trip laughed. She was getting really good at doing her 'teasing voice', and while both of them had always enjoyed a good banter, teasing each other this way was even more fun. He did go a bit more serious as – jokes aside – he wanted to make sure that she had enjoyed it.

"Well, from the look of things, I'd say you really enjoyed it, but we've already established that indirect communication doesn't really work between us. So I'll need a clear statement."

"Even though my memories are incomplete due to the partial loss of coherence, I have never felt contentment to such degree before," she admitted and kissed him. "I do not, however, know how much satisfaction you would have had from such an encounter other than inspecting my unclothed physique."

Trip chuckled lightly.

"Then your memories must be really sketchy. You seem to be unaware that you nearly made me incoherent, too. Just tell me it wasn't your mother, who taught you to ...um... 'apply the oral technique'."

He smiled when he saw the very elevated eyebrow on her face. Quickly consulting his mental 'eyebrow reference sheet' he decided that it was a mixture of amusement and surprise.

"I applied the oral technique?"

"Most masterfully I might add," he said with an honest smile. "Where did you learn that? I would have thought that something like that isn't exactly in the Vulcan text book."

A slight greenish tinge crept up her cheeks.

"It is a technique Hoshi has taught me. I was not sure I would remember it in my state."

"Oh you remembered all right," he beamed enthusiastically. "Leave it to Hoshi to teach you something like that."

"She has a variety of synthetic phallic..."

Her explanation was cut short, when he put his finger over her lips.

"Darlin', that's a detail Hoshi does not want me to have," he said, smiling at her.

"As I have recently learned, however, the technique seemed to be known to our Vulcan ancestors."

A red flag popped up in his mind.

"Hold it, darlin'," he said and waited until he had her full attention. "I don't know what you learned about your ancestors, but I know you. What happens between the sheets is a matter between you and me only. And the key is that we both are comfortable with whatever we do. It doesn't count what Hoshi demonstrates or what your ancestors knew or didn't know. When the two of us get intimate there is only one rule – both of us have to enjoy it, okay?"

She looked at him in confusion, but he held her gaze.

"Is it not the purpose of an intimate encounter to elicit as much pleasure in one's partner as possible?"

"True, darlin', but human intimacy isn't Vulcan blood-fever. I won't die if you don't do whatever I fancy at the time and I already told you, if I can see that you don't enjoy it, I can't enjoy it either."

"I will keep that in mind," she promised. "At least when it is working properly."

He chuckled and pointed at his calculations.

"Can you have a quick look, darlin'? I think I've got the calculations right, but you'll spot a mistake much faster than I do."

He sat back while T'Pol bent over him to look at his work. He enjoyed the glorious view while she checked his calculations.

=/\=

Hoshi coughed, reminding herself that it was about time to leave the ancient caves. More caves, easily accessible from the one she had inspected with T'Pol, described more parts of the history of T'Pol's people and her clan seemed to be almost always in the thick of it.

In a way it was good that she had come alone this time as T'Pol would probably not be too keen on learning about some parts of her clan's history. The stories in the first cave, about three thousand years old, had shown ritual orgies among clan members. Her friend didn't really need to know that almost a thousand years later the very same celebrations were gang-rapes of the abducted females of the clans that had been vanquished in battle. Sickeningly the barbarian adage 'if I fit in, she's old enough' seemed to have been a grim reality at the time.

The only thing that made the knowledge bearable was the fact that T'Pol's clan was the one who brought about change through Surak and his first disciples, who had all come from the clan Sh'hiran'lin'iijyliunh'rei'iy'iukn'hy'wen'lhia'ehrm'n. She didn't know if Vulcans engaged in genealogy, but considering the similarity of Names like T'Pal, T'Mar, T'Las, T'Pen to recent members of T'Pol's family, it stood to reason that she could be a member of the house of T'Klaas, one of the first followers of Surak and the first kohlinar master.

While she walked up the stairs towards the surface she thought that it would just be fitting that T'Pol as a member of Surak's clan would be instrumental in bringing another wave of change to her world. Not only in the fact that she helped save the Kir'Shara and therefore correct the corruptions of Surak's original teachings, but also by being the first Vulcan to openly live with a human - or any alien, in fact.

Since Vulcans in Surak's time had only primitive ion-drive based space technology they had not made contact with other races, so there was no Surakian wisdom to rely on in her quest to find a path in life with Trip. She was – in the figurative sense – writing the rule book on interspecies relationships.

As Hoshi walked out into the open air again, she tugged at her sweat-soaked uniform, looking forward to getting rid of it upon return to her guest quarters in the human compound.

=/\=

Trip sat down heavily in the chair in Professor Solan's office. The fact that it provided all the comfort of a slab of concrete was irrelevant after a six hour lecture on aerodynamics before a group of Vulcan engineers, who took curiosity to a new level.

"When you warned me about your engineers being 'inquisitive', you weren't kidding," he said, exhausted by standing for hours under the influence of Vulcan's higher gravity.

"It is a necessary trait for a successful scientist, but not one that is widely appreciated among the wider population," his host explained.

"That's an understatement. You wouldn't believe how much flak T'Pol has taken over the years. But one thing just doesn't add up. Why did Vulcans never wonder why birds fly? I understand you were a warrior race. Airborne travel would have been a huge advantage."

"There are no birds large enough to carry an adult warrior, except for Lan'kagars, but those creatures consider us a rather desirable part of their diet. In wartime one concentrates his resources on finding new ways to kill each other. By the Time of Awakening, we had already developed fusion and ion drive, which did not require knowledge of aerodynamics."

"Figures," Trip acknowledged, taking another drink from the professor. "Now with the theoretical basics out of the way, I think we can start buildin' the thing. I take it enough of your people know how to use a welding torch?"

"Are you sure we can finish the project in the time of your visit?"

"Easily," Trip said with conviction. "With today's technology, we should easily manage to build it in ten days. In fact in that time we'll easily manage to build two. I'd like to take one of them back to Earth."

"Is there any other support you will require?"

"There's one thing," the engineer answered, taking out a PADD. "I hope you have a good tailor's shop around here, which can produce some of these?"

"Considering the size it does not look like a garment." The professor stated the obvious.

"It's called a parachute. It's opened during the free fall and through aerodynamic drag it decelerates the fall to a speed that allows a safe landing."

"A safety device?"

"In most cases yes," the engineer confirmed. "Another use was deployment of troops. You could fly over a war zone at a relatively safe height and troops just jumped out and landed by parachute. That way you didn't need any infrastructure as you didn't need to land in the first place. It was also done just for fun."

"Your people jumped from great heights as a recreational activity?"

"Sure. Biggest jump ever happened in twenty-twelve – a guy called Baumgartner jumped from a height of thirty-nine kilometers, spent over four minutes in free fall, exceeding the speed of sound before the 'chutes were deployed and he landed safely in a field."

"Most peculiar."

"Nah, just humanity at its craziest," Trip returned with a wide grin.

=/\=

Her naked body was soaked in sweat and her breath was labored, trying to meet the heightened need for oxygen in Vulcan's thin atmosphere. Hoshi didn't care about either condition as her right hand vigorously pushed the buzzing vibrator deep into her opening again and again in search of relief. Lying on her back with her legs spread wide, she pinched her nipple with the left hand, while the right one continued to pound her heated flesh with the synthetic device.

She whimpered in lust and her hips started to buck as she slowly built up towards climax before her squeals gave way to a low grunting as the climax rocked her petite frame.

If she was thinking of anyone in particular riding her like a rodeo horse, she wasn't going to let even herself in on the secret.

=/\=

Hoshi was still lying on her back spread-eagled, wheezing from the exertion of masturbating herself to a glorious orgasm. When she had agreed to T'Pol's request to give the audio recording of Trip and T'Pol's tryst the linguistic once-over she had assumed that she might end up fanning herself, but the wild sounds had left her so horny that she had to get it out of her system with the help of 'Mr. Bombastic', her trusty seven-inch vibrator.

One thing was for sure, Vulcans certainly weren't hopeless romantics, with or without emotional control, unless one felt 'encouraged' by the words 'lick my burning flesh harder, dirty animal'. Programming something useful into the universal translator with T'Pol's crude swearing as a base would certainly be a challenge. But Hoshi relished a challenge, even though – or perhaps especially when – it made her so hot that she had to empty Mr. Bombastic's batteries.

T'Pol's ripe language was not what had made her so horny, but Trip's cool comments. Not only did it show that there was a man putting his mind to one goal only – making his partner feel more than good. The sheer variety of nibbling, kissing, licking and caressing he had performed had her imagination play a veritable porn flick in her mind with herself and Mr. Right, whom she was hoping to meet one day, in the main roles.

Hoshi got up, and on still wobbly knees she staggered towards the shower.

Damn Zoe. Making her remember Mr. Wrong, who wouldn't know a good thing if it was waggled in his face without a stitch on…

Heck. A guy as uptight as Malcolm Reed probably couldn't get it up anyway.

=/\=

He sat on the crest of the dune watching how a sehlat gorged on the innards of the Vulcan. He doubted the petite female, who had performed the thoroughly enjoyable lap dance for him two days ago, would still be as enthusiastic to please him if she saw the barbarity he presided over. But then he had just done the job they had asked of him. He had eliminated the former head of the High Command without actually killing him himself. Several injections of Tri-Ox had enabled him to chase the bugger into the path of some really hungry wildlife. After all there were no doping controls in the Forge.

He would certainly pay for the exertion over the next days, but he had all the time in the world to recover. Five days until Tuesday, when the most fascinating and gorgeous creature in the galaxy would be on stage again. He would have been disappointed had she just called him using the comms code on her bum as it would mean that there was someone seeing her naked. It was the most sophisticated method he could think of to check whether she was unattached.

Five days from now it was time to make his intentions known. He could hardly wait seeing her beautiful dance again. That she was undressing while at it was a welcome icing on the cake.