Mood Swing-Pt 10

Mood Swing

By Sue

E-MAIL: susieqla@yahoo.com
RATING: R (contextual adult language)
STATUS: WIP
CODES: T/Tu
CATEGORY: Friendship/Romance
SPOILERS: “Strange New World”
ARCHIVE: Yes
DISCLAIMER: Enterprise is the property of Paramount and its subsidiaries. No profit is being made.
SUMMARY: Missing scene.

A.N.: On-going series of vignettes focusing on this pair's developing relationship.

Part 10

”Commander, what is a ho?”

Her fellow officer gave her a questioning look before taking another sip of his coffee. Something about the way she'd asked triggered the wry side of his sense of humor. “Plannin' on takin’ up a little gardenin', are ya?”
Indulgently, with a patience she had helped him cultivate, Trip waited for his wide-eyed breakfast companion’s reply.

"No." Her answer was flat and toneless. The individual who had made the remark sounded belittling, and the words echoed in her mind. "I was passing along in the corridor on D deck--"

Trip flashed her one of his smarmiest grins. "Comin' to see me?"

T'Pol favored him with a staunch stare, her gaze as fixed as a retro-fitted torpedo launcher locked on an attacking target. "I was en route to Observation. The captain requested I undertake a survey randomly involving members of the crew."

"What's the survey about?" Trip couldn't help but wonder if T'Pol planned on finishing her cantaloupe compote; it looked delicious, and he loved cantaloupe. For some unknown reason she had hardly touched it. He reached for a second container of half-and-half to add to his coffee that was still too hot.

"Whether having a form of live entertainment he designated as a 'talent show' would be well received."

Great idea, Trip thought and nodding, said, "I'm all for it. Check out the local talent. You'd be surprised how many would-be performers land up in Starfleet. Course, since I don't have my harmonica anymore, that let's me out." Giving her a soulful look whose bedrock was a healing heart, he asked, "You sing, darlin'?"

"Irrelevant. I would not be a participant." T'Pol pushed the juicy compote away, clearly unwilling to eat another smaller than small bite. "Vulcans do not--"

"Carry tunes?" he laughingly supplied.

"Indiscriminately participate in frivolous displays," she said with an air of finality.

"How 'bout ones chock full of heavy drama?"

"You have not let me finish."

"Sorry," Trip conceded, "you know me...tangently-challenged. I'm all ears." His wink and his apologetic tone sufficed.

"I encountered several members of Lieutenant Reed's auxiliary logistics team on deck-to-deck patrol."

He felt obliged to fill in her pause. "Who?"

"Names are inconsequential."

"Oh, I don't know...names make it more juicy." He eyed her compote again, but didn't ask about it, allowing her to continue.

"I extended a greeting to them and walked on. Obviously they thought I was out of earshot when I overheard one of them remark, 'She's gotten lots better. Being Commander Tucker's ho's got a lot to do with it..." More to herself at this point she voiced, "It was the way it was said..." The mockery had seemed to cloy the empty corridor.

Trip blanched; his eyebrows streaked to his hairline. T'Pol observed his mandibular muscles contract and expand several times. He, in two words, ‘saw red,’ and after some very gutter-spawned profanity sailed out of his mouth he banged back against the booth's backrest. Though a grown man, Trip, in league with his unpredictable behavior, mirrored the actions of the volatile young boy he once was when blowing his top at the slightest provocation was the order of the day. His younger brother had been notorious for setting him off. "You're gonna point them out to me, and I'll set those damn pea-brains straight, but good! Damn ignoramuses!"

"Why are you so angry?" T'Pol said in a voice that was the essence of mildness. She could tell he hadn't heard her.

"WHY?" he stabbed vocally. Irate, with every intention of blowing off more steam, Trip slammed his balled up hand down on the flint-hard table. Those nearest to the couple looked in startled surprise. His hand throbbed badly, but physical pain was nothing compared to the hot-blooded anguish churning within. "Aw, hell, it's just not right! Folks jump to wrong conclusions faster 'an bullfrogs gulp down flies."

From halfway across the mess hall, a candid opinion was offered. "Trouble in their paradise by the look on his face." Hoshi's expressive eyes, as deep as the Expanse, and just as furtive, indicated to Travis whose back was facing Trip and T'Pol. "Whatever you do, don't turn around. He'll know we noticed; he never misses a trick. He gets very defensive where she's concerned, as though their *thing* isn't public knowledge."

"Can you blame him?" Travis insisted. "He's got it bad, and that ain't good. The southern gentleman is whipped; Lady Logic's got him tied up in knots, and our Chief Engineer doesn't want it any other way. I think the only one who might not have a clue about their situation is the captain, and I wonder sometimes if that comes from his being in denial. He was there first--just my opinion, mind you." Mayweather nearly gave Sato heart failure when he pretended to turn towards the couple under clandestine discussion. Making Hoshi freak was his third favorite pastime next to rappelling and virtual piloting.

"Don't you dare!" the linguist breathed in a scintillating hiss. She latched onto his hand and shook it, then him, into submission. "Captain Archer has more than enough on his plate as it is without his senior officers' rollercoaster dalliance to rattle him."

Travis just jigged his eyebrows up and down.

"Whore..." she proclaimed for the second time after Trip had whispered it.

He gasped. His eyeballs looked as though they would pop out of their sockets. He tried not to sound snide. "Hush--that's not the kinda word ya broadcast." He lowered his voice considerably. "Ya know what it means, don'tcha?" Her expression was as nondescript as ever, so it was hard for him to tell whether she did or didn't. "Don'tcha?"

The ephemeral flash of recognition in her eyes arrested Trip's splintered attention. "A prostitute. A person considered sexually promiscuous. One considered as having compromised principles for personal gain." Point-blank comeback was unstintingly her forte. "The human term is derogatory, so it is only logical to conclude that its shortened form, which you clarified is ho, is too. Therefore, it would seem that I was insulted." Her intuitive supposition had been dead center.

"Ding, ding, ding, ding--ding--ding. Grand prize winner. Ya damn right you were--we both were!" He had practically yelled. Heads craned in their direction again.

"Yet, there is no need for you to--"

Trip shot his face close to hers, his warm breath splashed against it forcefully; she didn't recoil. Neuro-pressure had many incidental side effects, a greater tolerance of his affinity was just one of them. "I'm entitled to my feelin's when some jerk--any jerk--says you're slutty. No, sir! Not when you're the finest woman it's my good fortune to have as a good friend, best damn confidant I've ever had--and that's had in the context of this conversation, not in the Biblical sense. I can really be myself with you, T'Pol. I won't stand for it! No one on this ship knows you like I do. I count that a privilege." He took a deep breath, only half regretting that his voice had risen only momentarily. "And your help...priceless." Emotional was emotional. "I know, I know, I'm bein' nauseatin'ly irrational. You saved me." Up went his hands. "Shoot me; set on kill."

Never, not even if someone tried forcing her trigger finger, T'Pol considered with her deadpan at its severest. The incident in that cave when the landing party had been infected by mind-altering spores and he had wanted to kill her was as though it had never happened. "You honor me," she said with eyes all demur, reaching his in stages. Whenever she did that, little did she know it made him feel ten feet tall.

Casting his indecision about how he really felt aside, in a voice racked with emotion, he said "No--you've honored me, since day one."

"Commander..."

"Regardless of the crummy ways I acted more times than I want to remember," Trip owned up.

"Or the way I viewed you...as the most impossible human in the quadrant." He saw her blush, the lovely olive tint of her skin deepened, and he blushed too. He smiled the smile that made something she was noticing more and more hitch in the pit of her stomach. Gently, she advised, "Truth rewards those who trust it. Ignore what people say and know peace."

"I'll try, T'Pol. Not easy for a guy like me, but..." Then with more resolve, he stressed, "I really will." Perhaps she had the right idea, when all was said and done. It was nobody's business what they were to each other but their own. When they got together in her quarters, behind closed
doors, all outsiders were shut out; they didn't matter. What did matter were the levels of trust and greater understanding growing between them.

Their gazes locked into place, and, with subtle visual nuances, vowed not letting go anytime soon. Trip's hands crept towards hers, but T'Pol's met his midway. Their hands matched what the look in their eyes had started first.

"Peace," they confided in unison, and Trip just kept nodding.

"Bliss restored," Hoshi said liltingly as she gave Travis a lazy smile, her eyes having taken on a moony look. "They give me goose bumps. Par for the course...par, but sweet."

Travis sneaked a peek at the chief engineer and science officer who looked at each other as though oblivious to anything extraneous. "Yeah, but for how long?" Facing back to the communications officer, he remarked with a small shrug, "We'll stay tuned for further developments. They're better than Movie Night..."

"Some guys have all the luck," Major Hayes muttered into his cup of lukewarm coffee, his eyes targeted on the beautiful sub-commander and the swaggering commander who never seemed to be apart from T'Pol for very long from what he'd been careful to observe. The scuttlebutt had to be true, he lamented. They were lovers, senior officers intimately involved. His covetous feelings were getting harder and harder to dismiss. There was something so compelling about the exotic woman, exotic, yet dismissive of her affecting charms. He was at a loss to know exactly what that indefinable something was, but what was becoming increasingly clear to him was how Tucker was making him feel...myopically envious.

Sighing, the major overturned what was constantly on his mind of late...'If only she'd give me the time of day the way she lavishes it on blondie.' I'd be more than willing to learn what her 'something' is.'

Maybe the new training drills, Captain Archer and he had agreed on was a good idea in case of intruder incursions, would afford him his foot in the door. He grasped at straws, he knew, but sometimes just the act of grasping was a salvation of sorts. He'd keep playing it close to the vest, try in his own reserved way to get to know her better, and lend himself to her getting to know him. There was a chance he could win her affections. They could have a falling out. Commander Tucker was a hothead from what he'd noticed so far. The Starfleet man was dependable, but he was prone to overreact. What could such a refined, intelligent woman possibly see in such an opposite?

Hayes harmonized that if a golden opportunity dare present itself, he'd seize upon it.

Of course it was wrong, getting this turned around over a woman, especially in the midst of the most important mission in human history, and his military career. But, *she* was no ordinary woman...extraordinary was her descriptor.

Sub-commander T'Pol was what he'd been hoping to find for a very long time. She was as real as they came.

Continue to Part 11

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