AN: I've read everything i can find about this shadowy belowdecker, and it isn't much. Like our dear Lieutenant Ayala, Ensign Vorik is a man of mystery. Although in Pathways, he did get to beam out in pieces. How many Starfleet officers can make that claim?
B'Elanna walked the entire way down to Holodeck Two wondering why she had ever agreed to this, and trying to devise a way, legitimately or not, to back out of it. ToDSaH, she thought. Wuss. She shook her head. It wasn't the fight that she was concerned about—it was all of the peripherals. The fact that Vorik was clearly still attracted to her. His intense loneliness, and youth and inexperience with life. She wasn't a nursemaid, and didn't feel like nursing a young man who had a crush on her, even if he had tried to take matters into his own hands. Actually, now that she thought about it, the challenge had been quite refreshing. It appealed to the Klingon in her that she struggled to keep buried deep, and that was what frightened her most.
Well, B'Elanna wasn't much for backing down from a challenge, as long as she knew what she was fighting. Feeling a little more confident, she faced the holodeck door, to find a program already activated. She smirked. Vorik had better not have tired himself out, because he was going to have a long day ahead of him. She certainly wasn't going to give him a break in his duties in engineering if they had a rough morning in the holodeck.
When she stepped through the door, though, she found him seated in meditation, wearing a pair of loose pants fit for a martial arts workout. His shirt was folded neatly next to him on the floor, and the room was warm and dark, filled with candlelight. Vulcans and candles, and yet they pretended not to understand romance. She studied his well-muscled shoulders and back in the soft, flickering light, reading the map of his strength. He was definitely fit, but no muscle group was overly developed beyond his shoulders and triceps. She remembered that he had done extensive rock climbing, which would account for that. His head turned slightly at the swish of the door, and his hand reached for his shirt. "Forgive me, B'Elanna. I came early to meditate."
"No problem, Vorik. I can see you're top-heavy, with less muscle strength in your lower back. You'll have to watch for that." She grinned at him as he turned, pulling his shirt on smoothly, but she got a glimpse what she expected—broad pectoral muscles and strong biceps but a smooth abdomen. He had no strong muscle wall over his stomach, and would be easy prey there. He studied her for a moment with his head slightly cocked to one side.
"I have always underestimated you, B'Elanna."
"Yes. You have. Now you get to find out how much that will cost on the dance floor." Without any more warning than that, she swung into a high kick and immediately dropped into a spin and went for his soft abdominal muscles with her fists. He allowed the kick to land on his shoulder, but the blow was heavier than he anticipated, and he barely deflected her double punch from his stomach. She righted herself and grinned saucily at him. "You need better protection. You're weak where it counts most to be strong." Without waiting for his reply, she barked at the walls. "Computer! Run Torres A. Safeties on. For the moment." She flicked her eyes back at the young Vulcan, his serious eyes on her rather than the environment taking shape around them. Good. He had learned his first lesson.
Torres A was a simulation made from an amalgamation of an old Earth Marine boot camp, some of her most hated Starfleet simulations, and Klingon wargames. It was the most intensive workout she had ever put together, and she ran through it when she needed to blast herself into oblivion. She didn't expect Vorik to make it even halfway through. The first barrier was a granite wall, which they climbed with minimal gear. He was a natural on the sheer wall, finding crevices that B'Elanna had trouble using, even with her smaller hands. She found out that his thigh muscles were as well developed as his biceps, as he made powerful stretches and balanced on holds that she wouldn't have risked a hook on, much less a life. But Vorik didn't say a word to her through the entire experience until they got to the top, and then he turned, nodded to her agreeably, and said, "That was most refreshing. May I borrow it?"
She nodded, trying not to appear impressed. "Anytime, Vorik," she said with practiced nonchalance. And then he turned to look beyond them, and his easy confidence shriveled to nothing. Between them and the next checkpoint was a vast lake. His mouth fell open, and then he closed it, and squared his shoulders. B'Elanna creased her forehead, wondering if it was too much. Desert planet dweller that he was, had he even been swimming before? Before they reached the bank, he confirmed her suspicion.
"You will have to teach me to swim, B'Elanna. I do not have this experience." His voice was quiet, mildly awestruck. She nodded, and looked up at the ceiling.
"Computer, end Torres A simulation." The lake vanished, leaving them in the empty deck. She thought for a moment, and then spoke again, uncomfortably aware that his eyes hadn't left her. "Tomorrow, I'll begin to teach you to swim. Today, we'll finish with standard wrestling holds. In 3 G's." He nodded, his eyes darkening, and as she finished giving the computer instructions, the weight in the room increased steadily until, to him, it felt like home. He tucked and rolled, catching his commanding officer off balance and sending her tumbling. She laughed out loud, knowing that she couldn't make any excuses for having not been ready. She settled into a low stance, and they threw themselves together, each determined not to fall. The heavy gravity dragged B'Elanna down, and she threw herself into the fight against it, and against Vorik, whose powerful shoulder strength was to his advantage in this game, and something loosed inside of her, and she was straining, all of the sudden, with everything she had. A small part of her mind realized that she had never let herself go like this, had never just cut the cords of her restraint. And then Vorik grunted with the strain beside her, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy, and she felt a new surge of power from untapped sources deep within. She threw Vorik to the ground, but before she could pin him he was back up again—she had underestimated his natural quickness in this dense gravity. And now he was on her without mercy, breaking every hold she could find on him, using his height and reach to his advantage, and she was pressed into a game of avoidance, into defense.
That wouldn't do.
Breaking free, she circled him, panting. How long had it been since she had become winded during a workout? Vorik was sweating lightly, his concentration steady and his eyes black. She grinned a heady grin, feeling energy building up inside her, ready to take him out… ready to… A communicator chirped somewhere. "Carey to Torres." She shook her head, and Vorik straightened, their battle trance broken. She looked around for her commbadge, and then realized that it was pinned to her shirt. She tapped it. "Torres here." Her voice was a little unsteady, and she swallowed.
"Chief, can you come down a little early today? I wanted to get started on the new sequencing for the warp coils before the captain comes by for inspection." Carey sounded nervous. The captain had ordered them to shave off energy usage all over the ship, and she and Carey had been working on a timing sequence that would take seconds off the powering of the coils. It was tricky, to say the least.
B'Elanna forced herself fully into the role of Chief Engineer, leaving the warrior behind. "Sure. I just need to take a shower and change. Ten minutes. Torres out."
Vorik looked slightly bemused, but bowed, and she returned it. "Thank you, B'Elanna. That was… most enlightening. What will I need to… swim?"
She imagined what a Vulcan would look like in swim trunks, and shook her head. Talk about a targ in the water. "Bring standard swim gear, with gills. I'll teach you the crawl stroke tomorrow." He nodded, and then turned and walked out, only slightly favoring his left leg. She stood for a moment, trying to catch the last threads of a dream. What was it that she had just been ready to do to Vorik, before Carey had called? She had to be very careful that this little exercise didn't spiral rapidly out of control. She was in complete control. Complete control.