Wardrobe Malfunction

T'Pol walked into the spacious office of the new head of the High Council. Normally she would not even think about troubling the planet's highest representative with personal matters, but the young new leader had not only been a close acquaintance of her mother, she had also seen her mind during the healing meld she had performed while carrying the Kir'Shara through the desert. There was none other she could ask in her attempt to find out what had happened to her mind.

"Have a seat, T'Pol," her host offered and T'Pol sat down into one of the chairs around a small table. A young aide served refreshments.

"I was informed you wished to consult me on a personal matter?" T'Pau asked once her aide had left, and T'Pol could hear in the voice of the young female that there was a certain amount of curiosity involved in her inquiry.

"I have been experiencing... premonitions and what feels like intrusions of foreign emotions."

"I suspect the 'premonitions' concern your mate, Commander Tucker?"

"How do you know?" T'Pol asked, shocked by the revelation that the other woman knew her intimate secret.

"Your mother and I spoke a great deal. She was unable to forgive herself for her part in forcing you into marriage to Koss."

The soft tone in T'Pau's voice startled her. The successor of V'Las was exceedingly young, but T'Pol had only known her as a female with an iron resolve. She continued to listen to her host's explanation.

"She discovered his affection for you when she accidentally touched him while helping him don your father's robe. T'Les insisted that she had never experienced such passion – not even in her own mate. And since I have seen your mind – and your past – I knew that it was inevitable that you would come to your senses and give up your denial of your affection for him once this illicit marriage was annulled, for otherwise your katra would have been poisoned. You were perilously close to it in any case."

"Why have I not sensed my mother's thoughts when I carried her katra in my mind?" T'Pol asked.

"Your talent for denial is strong, T'Pol. It was easy for T'Les' katra to use that facet of your personality to hide the thoughts she did not want you to see. As for your 'premonitions' – I believe what you experience are the early stages of a tel – the mating bond. I am, however, surprised that a human is receptive to telepathy. Perhaps you can describe such an experience?"

T'Pol closed her eyes and began applying a breathing technique as she had done during the visit to the caves with Hoshi.

=/\=

Trip had just been putting the finishing touches on the attitude indicator when he was suddenly drawn into that darn white space again. Just like before, he looked into the surprised eyes of T'Pol. This time, however, he was going to test how real these weird daydreams were. He grabbed her by the buttocks and planted a kiss on her mouth. Their lips had barely touched, however, when – much to his confusion and disappointment – the white space vanished, along with T'Pol.

Coming to his senses, he hurriedly removed the device from his lips, looking around in considerable embarrassment to find out if someone had seen him kiss a piece of metal. Thankfully all the Vulcans were busy putting the finishing touches on the upper left wing. It was a good thing he hadn't been talking to one of them when the daydream started...

That would definitely have been one way to get himself talked about.

=/\=

T'Pau saw that T'Pol was not entirely coherent, or at least heavily distracted. Her guest had entered a shallow meditation technique and come out of it with a pronouncedly flushed face – obviously aroused.

"He touched... my posterior and... he kissed me," T'Pol said and T'Pau gave her a moment to regain her composure. She had not expected the disclosure of such intimate details.

"Has there been any history of that happening before?"

She saw T'Pol's uneasy nod and wondered if her visitor referred to the intimate touch or fleeting meetings inside mind. In any case it mattered not. The symptoms of a nascent tel were irrefutable.

"Then it is true – you and Commander Tucker are bonded."

The young Vulcan left deliberately unsaid how unspeakably rare it was for a tel to form without the help of a bonding meld. She was convinced that many Vulcans were not prepared to accept that such a rare event had taken place between a Vulcan and a human.

=/\=

Hoshi wiped the sweat from her forehead. The heat was unbearable as she made notes about the last cave. It was the history of the Time of Awakening. Apparently a group of Vulcans, led by a fellow named S'Task, who did not accept the teachings of Surak, had boarded a generational ship and buggered off into space.

Fed up with the sweat soaked uniform clinging to her skin, she zipped it open and shrugged off the upper half of it. She tied the arms around her waist and continued her work. She had to get the job done within the next twenty minutes, as breathing was hard enough on Vulcan without the added challenge of air that hadn't been refreshed since the middle ages.

There was a nagging thought in her mind that the writing – should she indeed have deciphered it properly – sounded eerily close to what she had heard when they had run into the Romulan minefield. Could it be that the Romulans were the selfsame people who had left Vulcan in disagreement over Surak's teachings, or were in some way related to them?

=/\=

Trip inspected his work with no little amount of satisfaction. The dashboard of his plane was complete with a myriad of dials, knobs and levers. Pushing the yet unconnected power lever forward he augmented his fantasy by making appropriate noises in his mind. Shaking off the momentary flight of fancy, he started pulling some of the cables, checking that the appropriate controls were moving in response.

A noise from the background alerted him to the arrival of a visitor and his face split into a grin when Hoshi climbed into the half-finished fuselage.

"Hi Hoshi."

She peered around admiringly. "Hi. Have you built all this in just two days?"

"Sure. We even have a seat for cute lady visitors," he said and pointed to the co-pilot's seat.

"You've been together now for what - three days - and you already chat up other girls?" she needled him.

"I don't think I could compete with someone who manages to scribble his comms code on your butt without you noticing. And you never did a lapdance for me, so I know my place," he returned the barb with a grin, enjoying her slight blush.

"For you I would have, you know, back in the day," she said and Trip knew she referred to the lapdance.

"But I wouldn't have watched, Hoshi," he said seriously. "We all loved your little routine, but believe it or not; some of us were much more fascinated by where you could put your legs instead of what was between them. That standin' split on the pole actually looked better with the panties on than without them."

"Yeah, that wasn't a very modest pose, was it?" she agreed with a chuckle.

"I think T'Pol still hasn't gotten her head around the fact that you actually really like doin' that, and as much as I want to help you out with your mysterious admirer, I'm not sure we should really be there next Tuesday. After all we've been through until T'Pol finally admitted I'm more than an experiment, I don't really want to hurt her or make her insecure."

He could see Hoshi's slightly sad look. Although she was rightly careful about her unknown admirer's intentions, he could also see that she probably wished that he was genuine and she'd banked her hope on him to find out.

"Hoshi, considerin' that you refused pretty much every overture from even the most popular guys back in the day, how come you're suddenly goin' all gaga over a guy you never met before? Are you sure it wasn't the drink? I mean strippin' is one thing, but you would never have done a lapdance back then, let alone one that enabled someone to give your butt an autograph. You must have gone pretty wild."

He could see her blush deepen.

"Trip, I just feel that he's the right one. I mean, yeah, I wasn't really sober, and if he had started to grope me, I'm sure the night would have ended with him in my bed. After all it's been ages since I... you know. But he was the perfect gentleman and he smiled at me. Have you ever seen Malcolm smile?"

"Actually, yes, but we were stranded in a shuttlepod and pissed out of our skulls," Trip replied with a chuckle. He decided to leave the detail unmentioned that Malcolm was also commenting on the finer points of T'Pol's butt at the time.

"I've waited so long for him to make a move and suddenly I meet this guy who is all that's great in Malcolm without the stick up his ass. I had the exact feeling I had when I saw Malcolm the first time – the same butterflies."

"But he's only a surrogate, hon," he said and took her hand. "You still compare him to Mal."

"I'm not you, Trip. God knows where you took the strength from to take so many rejections from T'Pol and still come back for more. I just can't. I've heard 'That wouldn't be appropriate, Ensign' one time too often."

"So you think I'm a doormat," he said, slightly offended by the unspoken implication.

She sighed.

"If I'm honest? Yeah. Until yesterday, I did," she admitted, her glance cast downwards in embarrassment. "That was before I heard the recording. T'Pol has no idea what a great catch she almost let slip through her fingers. You must really love her to go through with a weird experiment like that for her sake. I'm not inhibited by anyone's standards, but that took some guts."

"Let's say it was one of the more bizarre encounters I've had. But don't sell yourself short, Hoshi. The very fact that you still think about Malcolm is proof enough that you haven't really given up on him. Are you sure that you aren't lettin' a great catch slip through your fingers?"

"What am I supposed to do Trip, wait another four years?"

"I wish I could answer that," Trip sighed. "It's your life of course and if T'Pol's okay with it I'll help you out with your mystery man. But I also feel bad for Malcolm."

An acutely observant man, he knew that the Brit wasn't half as uninterested in Hoshi as he made out to be. He also knew that under that stiff and reticent exterior was a lonely man who found relationships difficult – as had been made clear in Shuttlepod One during what they'd both thought were their final hours. He didn't know – but suspected – that once the hard shell was cracked, a passionate lover lurked inside. However, none of this was something it would be fair to Malcolm to make public knowledge, even to Hoshi. The Englishman had to make his own moves. Or not make them, if that was what he chose.

"He had enough time, didn't he?"

Trip could hear the finality in her words – Hoshi really was prepared to let go of her hope as far as Mal was concerned. And his stuffy British friend didn't even have a chance at a last-minute reprieve, because he was back home on Earth, probably overseeing repairs in that very minute.

But there was nothing he could or even should do. It was Hoshi's life and in a way she was right. Malcolm could at least have accepted the seat next to her at movie night. Being a stickler for the rules was one thing and an honorable one at that, but he was afraid that Malcolm would soon regret his professional conduct.

But it was an easy thing to say for someone who wouldn't be busted for fraternization, because the 'relationship' with T'Pol had technically begun before she was commissioned in Starfleet. Malcolm didn't have that loop hole and couldn't jump over his own shadow to break regulations. That rigid adherence to the rules was part of his make-up, part of what defined him; part of what he'd probably call his honor. Life definitely wasn't fair for all.

=/\=

T'Pol closed her eyes and quickly applied the necessary mental techniques to free her mind from the arousal that had built up by listening to the recording. No wonder that Hoshi had been so aroused she had to 'help herself', the Vulcan thought. After all, she had almost reached the same predicament moments ago.

Quickly she wiped the body fluids off her hand that had covered it due to the vigorous stimulation of her private parts. She was satisfied that she could, even after letting go of her control, regain it as long as she had not yet lost her senses of hearing and vision. This would make intimate encounters less risky after their return to the ship. Up to a certain point of arousal they would be able to interrupt a sexual encounter in case of an alarm or other events. However, the simmering arousal inside her mind was hard to suppress. It would be easy to just finish the 'autonomous routine' for now, but she challenged herself to try and fight the arousal into suppression. There would be a chance to release it in the night.

She stood and collected the towel with which she had safeguarded the bed sheets against staining. It was time for a shower and final preparations for the return of her mate.

=/\=

Trip looked down uneasily. For no apparent reason, he had suddenly developed a painfully hard erection only for the 'little engineer' to go limp again. Ailerons weren't really sexy enough to cause such a reaction, and neither were mental calculations of possible stall speeds in relation to Vulcan's thin atmosphere.

Thank god he was in the shower at the time. An eight inch boner wasn't the most inconspicuous sight, even under a uniform, and certainly it would be an excruciatingly embarrassing one in a meeting with people who found the thought of holding hands in public was scandalous. This was the second time he had this weird sensation of feeling something that didn't quite belong to his mind. And then there was that weird daydream in the mornin...

He looked up at the Vulcan 'shower'. Sure these sonic showers left him cleaner than an hour in decon, but standing under a shower and not getting wet was not only weird, it was thoroughly unsatisfactory. Leave it to the Vulcans to make one of the most pleasurable activities thoroughly dull, he thought grumpily.

Thankfully T'Pol was not clinging to the Vulcan ways in all aspects of their private life.

=/\=

She adjusted the blouse so that the hems of the half-opened garment ran diagonally across her breasts. Carefully she made minuscule adjustments, so that her nipples were covered, but a tiny fraction of her dark bronze colored areolae were showing on either side, along with 'a cleavage that will knock him out' as Hoshi had described it. To facilitate this look they had procured a brassiere that only lifted the underside of her breasts leaving them otherwise uncovered.

Normally such a garment would not be necessary as Vulcan mammary tissue was less prone to loss of elasticity than human one, but to push them into the right position and shape, the support was needed for once. The short strip of lace visible just above the point where the blouse's hems met to form a large V shaped opening, added an aesthetically pleasing touch to the ensemble.

Her long legs were covered in long white lace stockings, that were fastened to a supporting garment called 'a suspender belt', which was tied around her waist. Her attire was completed by panties that matched the color of her brassiere, and an extremely short and almost uncomfortably tight skirt. Hoshi had amused herself by 'trying to find out if that was actually a skirt or a belt'. Unfortunately she herself had had more than ample time to make such observations as it had taken considerable time to practice walking in the newly acquired high-heeled shoes without suffering any ankle injuries.

She checked her appearance in the mirror one last time, evaluating if all the fine details of her body's shape were sufficiently emphasized, especially the posterior and the concave curvature of her waist, which her beloved found so attractive. As the bust was the main focus of today's encounter, this part of her physique had of course received extra emphasis.

Hoshi had a habit of concentrating on certain body regions when visiting the gym. The young linguist had suggested doing so during their 'scientific sex', too and T'Pol had decided that today would be 'bust day'. For a human, Hoshi's logic was surprisingly sound. Concentrating on her mammary features would most likely yield a wider variety of utterances pertaining to that specific part of her body, and Hoshi had expressed her hope that 'there will be some I can translate without making it sound like a porn flick'.

Why she had, on the other hand, suggested clothing that she described as 'a tad slutty', was the young linguist's undisclosed secret. Most likely it was to have a particularly extreme effect on him, and the nervous Vulcan found herself actually looking forward to seeing him possibly even stunned into silence. Satisfied with the apparel, T'Pol reached for the wig she had once worn during their visit to the Akaali planet. She knew that her mate had a wish for her hair to be longer and 'less Vulcan', and reasoning that she was 'pulling out all the stops' with the clothing anyway, she could as well test his reaction to a different hairdo.

=/\=

When he had crossed the last dune and walked down the sandy hill, finally leaving the Vulcan Forge behind, he could see that his 'employer' had indeed kept his word and was waiting for him in an unmarked shuttlepod of Vulcan origin. Prepared to mount a defense, should the ensemble prove to be a trap, he carefully entered the craft.

"I take it there were no complications?" his employer asked. What the point was of wearing a leather jacket on Vulcan was not readily apparent, but then the bloke probably didn't even take it off when mounting his old lady.

"We encountered a rather hungry sehlat and he gladly donated his organs," he reported dryly, running his hand through his blond hair. Remnants of sand trickled out of it onto the clean floor, but he couldn't really give a flying toss if the cleaning lady would have to work five minutes longer.

He opened one of the nearby freestanding containers and took out one of the refreshments. After three days in the desert it was good to replenish lost minerals. He would need to nurture his exhausted bulk back to full health lest he'd be looking like a wash-out when he would hopefully meet the gorgeous lady again.

=/\=

Trip walked out of the small office that the Vulcan Science Academy had assigned to him. With a last long look he checked the progress on their building project. After just three days the fuselage and one set of wings were finished, and since the Vulcans could easily work twenty hours without tiring, he was sure that by the morning the double-decker wings on the opposite side would be attached too.

He checked that his fresh uniform was sitting correctly and walked out of the building towards the launch platform, where Hoshi had parked the shuttlepod during the day after returning from another trip to Mount Seleya. Looking forward to another night helping T'Pol in her 'scientific endeavor' he started up the craft and started speculating on what she would have thought up this time.

=/\=

T'Pol wondered if she should allow herself to relax her discipline prematurely, just to laugh at her mate's completely dumbfounded look. If she was to ask him his name right now, she wasn't sure he would be able to remember it. He was standing in the doorway, steadying himself with his arm while taking off his shoes. He had frozen in the middle of the action and was now staring at her in disbelief.

His dilated pupils and the unmistakable smell of pheromones in the air told her that even though she was – technically – fully clothed, her appearance aroused him greatly; that fact gave her a singularly un-Vulcan (and rather base) satisfaction. Feeling so strongly desired by her mate was an exhilarating sensation.

"Do you need help divesting yourself of your footwear, beloved?" she inquired innocently.

"I need help breathin' darlin'," he answered, his voice an octave higher than usual. Slowly he continued removing his shoes, but never took his eyes off her.

She indicated that he should sit down at the table, where dinner was served. She had spent the best part of the afternoon preparing food with Hoshi. For obvious reasons the young human could not stay for dinner, but she had taken a copious amount of the food with her in isolation containers to share it with her friends in the compound.

"Before we engage in sexual," she quickly caught herself, "before we 'make love', ashayam, it is prudent that we eat. If you are agreeable to it, I would like to propose that we concentrate on my bust today."

"Trust me, gorgeous, I am concentrating on your bust..." he muttered absentmindedly. Certainly his gaze was riveted in that direction in an agreeably flattering manner.

Following his glance she looked down and saw that the left side of her blouse had shifted slightly, fully exposing her nipple. Raising an amused eyebrow, she readjusted the garment.

"Later, beloved." She needed him to exercise a little more patience than usual. "While we eat, we need to discuss something."

"And I'm supposed to concentrate?" he asked, for the first time looking into her face for an extended period of time.

"Did you have any unusual periods or any unusual emotional experiences lately?" she asked, ignoring his attempt at humor.

"I suppose you mean the daydreams?"

She nodded, both in affirmation of his answer, but also in satisfaction about the fact that – despite the visual distraction – her beloved did indeed pay full attention to what she had to say.

"What you describe as 'daydreams' are early manifestations of a tel – the Vulcan mating bond."

He considered this statement.

"Since it has a name, I suppose that's a normal thing among Vulcans?"

T'Pol looked at him for a minute. She had expected that he would be worried or perhaps even angry that she 'had done' something to him that he wasn't prepared for, but it appeared that Hoshi had been right when she said that Trip would accept their relationship no matter what changes it brought to his life.

"A tel is indeed 'a normal thing' between Vulcan mates. Ours, however, is unusual, because for a bond to form normally a bonding meld has to be performed by a priest. Our bond has formed on its own. According to parts of the Kir'Shara that Ensign Sato has already translated, it is a rare but most desirable event. We each seem to have found our true ashayam – our true soul mate."

"You say the sweetest things when your boobs have fallen out of the blouse darlin'."

She saw his absentminded look, but she knew that it was pretended. He was indeed concentrating fully on her information, but feigned distraction as part of a game and waited how she would react to the repeated misalignment of her clothing. Unwilling to readjust the uncooperative garment again, and even more unwilling to deny him the visual stimulus he seemed to appreciate greatly, she simply left it uncorrected and raised a long-suffering eyebrow.

It was not necessarily common practice to have one's breasts exposed during the meal and it made her understand what Hoshi had meant by describing the apparel as 'a tad slutty', but she reasoned that bringing positive emotions to her beloved was a worthy enough cause to endure the indignity of a malfunctioning garment. It was not meant to be worn much longer than the meal was expected to last anyway.

"What does this tel mean for us, other than the fact that I have rather entertaining daydreams?" he asked, having apparently sated his desire to appreciate her half-exposed mammary features visually – for now at least.

"We will experience more of these 'daydreams' while the bond strengthens with time. However, the stronger the bond grows, the rarer these spontaneous connections will become."

"That's the reason for that living together for a year thing, innit?" he asked with an unmistakably mischievous glint in his eyes. "So that you if you were for instance married to a dashing engineer, he won't stick his hand into a live plasma stream while thinking he's kissing his wife."

T'Pol didn't answer. Instead she raised an amused eyebrow waiting for 'the minor currency unit to drop'. On an unknown impulse, she also opened her top garment slightly as she felt a strange sensation of a raising temperature. A fleeting thought of her mate's mind as a mechanical device came to her, with the appropriate noises connected with its currently frantic activity.

"This... tel... It's like marryin' isn't it?" he asked slowly as if he was prepared not to believe the answer anyway, staring mesmerized at her now completely exposed breasts.

"Yes, beloved. We would need to undergo a witnessing meld to make it official, but according to the recovered true teachings of Surak, we are considered husband and wife since the moment our bond formed. That is, if you are agreeable to the idea?"

T'Pol felt a moment of confusion, when his smile faded and he did not immediately answer. He slowly stood up and started opening her blouse. She stood up to make it easier for him. Soon the sheer garment floated to the ground and her breasts bounced into their normal shape when the minimalistic brassiere was removed.

"I don't think I'm hungry anymore," he said very calmly while zipping open her skirt. With the nimble fingers of an engineer he hooked into the waistband of her panties and pushed them down. She slipped her feet out of the uncomfortable foot gear and raised an eyebrow when he made no move to remove the belt or the stockings, which were the only pieces of clothing left.

"Those stay on," he decreed. "You have no idea how ridiculously hot you look stark naked in a suspender belt."

"Trip? Is everything alright?"

"No," he replied, causing her a moment of panic, but it vanished as she heard the rest of his explanation. "I have not yet had time to demonstrate to my WIFE just how agreeable I find that idea."

As he released his joy in a loud whoop, she let him carry her to the bedroom.