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“Coitus Conceptus” Rating: NC-17 This story is a sequel to Coitus Experimentus. ((((((((((((((((((((((( Part 3 ))))))))))))))))))))))) Trip scrunched his face at the sound of his door chime. Desperately wishing he could push his head back into his warm pillow, he turned over and opened his eyes. His brass diving helmet had been, oddly, replaced by a few different objects atop the tall stack of square cupboards in the faintly luminous room. He remembered where he was. Turning over, he found T’Pol. She was on the inside edge of the bed, her back plastered against the wall. She still slumbered deeply, her eyes jumping around under her lids as she dreamed. Trip watched her for a tender moment, the events of last night rushing back to him all at once and warming his chest. The sound of the chime came again. Trip had momentarily forgotten what it was that had awakened him, but he wasn’t about to go and open the door of T’Pol’s quarters first thing in the…what time was it anyway? Trip leaned over to look at the chronometer. 0954?? Activating half lights, Trip jumped off the bed and grabbed his abandoned sweats off the floor. This small commotion was enough to infiltrate the heavy, heady sleep weighting T’Pol to the bed. She, too, scrunched her face and slowly lifted herself partway off the mattress. She spied Trip standing in the middle of her floor, half-dressed and bent over, looking under things for his shirt. She sat up slowly, feeling almost hungover from the vigorous workout they had given their bodies and minds. Her brain was stuffed with cotton, and she was sure she had never slept so hard nor had so many chaotic dreams before in her life. Trip spied his shirt across the room in the corner. He went and pulled it on, turning back to look at T’Pol. She was sitting up, awake. Her hair poked out at various odd angles, momentarily thrilling Trip with its unbearable cuteness before he hissed at her, “There’s someone at your door.” T’Pol hadn’t heard either of the chimes. She looked at the door and replied, “Whoever it is will have to come back later.” “Y’don’t understand,” Trip said, reaching under the bed on hands and knees for her robe. He thrust it at her. “It’s 1000.” T’Pol stared at him, then at the chronometer in disbelief. They were more than three hours late for duty. Both of them. Taking the robe, she looked back at Trip’s semi-panicked face and raised an ironic eyebrow as she eased her stiff arms into the sleeves. “Whoops.” She echoed her own dry comment from the night before, causing Trip to grin in spite of himself. The chime sounded a third time, and Trip looked at the door in extreme annoyance. “God,” he muttered. “No one’s home. Take a hint.” Phlox’s cheerful, time-to-wake-up voice floated intrusively through the wall via the comm: “I am opening the door now, please ensure you are appropriately attired.” Trip and T’Pol stared at one another as she tightened the belt of her robe into a knot. Phlox only gave them about two seconds before the door emitted the strange, loudish tone that meant someone was overriding the lock. The physician stepped briskly into the small room, glancing around interestedly at the artifacts and objects within as he did so. He loved house calls. Finally, he stood next to Trip, looking from him down to T’Pol, who still sat on the edge of her tumbled bed. “Ah. Excellent,” he noted, clearly putting one and one together at the site of T’Pol’s still-pyjama-clad male visitor. “And how is our patient today?” T’Pol’s eyes took on a hard, flinty cast. She knew she had to speak with her physician, but illogically, she suddenly would rather see him locked in his own decon for a few hours. “I am fine,” she responded in a dangerous voice. “I’m sure you are,” Phlox agreed heartily, “…now.” He glanced approvingly at Commander Tucker’s still-speechless form and then pulled out a medical scanner which he proceeded to point at T’Pol. “Hmmmm!” Phlox exclaimed nasally, digesting the news on his small device with more-than-usually-fierce medical zeal. He tapped a few buttons. “Ah,” he grunted, satisfied. He turned his scanner next on Trip who stood mutely by, powerless in the face of the ship’s doctor. Phlox made several passes of Trip’s physique along with various noises indicating that his interest was piqued even more by Trip’s readings than T’Pol’s. Trip waited, hands on his hips, even exchanging what he swore was a brief eye-roll with T’Pol before Phlox folded up his scanner, satisfied. “Y’sure you’re done?” Trip asked, arms wide as if to indicate that Phlox should take his time. Phlox smiled widely. “Yes, thank you.” “So’re we gonna live?” Trip enquired, not totally kidding. “For at least a few years more,” Phlox replied jauntily. “Barring any accidents, of course.” He beamed at them, and then became somewhat more subdued as he realised the happy couple weren’t in the mood for his bonhomie. He cleared his throat and made a more professional assessment. “T’Pol’s endorphin and hormonal levels are nearly back to normal. The plak tau seems to have been slaked!” He sounded triumphant, as if he himself had had a hand in vanquishing the beast. T’Pol forced herself to remain still, but she had the strangest urge to shove the well-meaning physician out her quarter's door. Phlox was oblivious to his Vulcan colleague’s more-than-usual stoicism. He continued: “However, it is Mr. Tucker who wins the prize today for curious chemistry. Your endorphin and hormonal levels are much higher than normal…even for a human male. I expect that last night they would have been off the scale. If the commander would have agreed to let me place a biosign recorder in her room I would have been able to give you a wealth of information, but…” Phlox trailed away in disappointment at the selfish sense of Vulcan privacy that had denied the galaxy’s exobiologists such a profusion of live, never-before-studied information. But, inhaling at what could not be helped, Phlox elbowed Trip rakishly, trying one more time to participate in the happy couple’s first (to his knowledge) morning-after: “However, you seem to have weathered the gale stalwartly enough, eh, young man?” Trip merely glared witheringly at Phlox, if only to distract the portly physician from the murderous daggers that were flying from T’Pol’s eyes. In her case, it was remotely possible that looks could kill. Phlox noticed for the first time the strain in the room. He looked from one to the other of his patients before tutting, “What? Are we having difficulties with the morning after?” The good Denobulan doctor chortled condescendingly at what he perceived to be their strained senses of sexual decorum. “Ah, it reminds me of my honeymoon with my third wife, Realla. Ohhhh…” he shook a finger laughingly at T’Pol, closing his eyes in recollection. “Remember, commander, when I told you how inhibited we males are in comparison to our wives? Well, —” “Uh, Doc?” Trip interrupted. Phlox halted midsentence, somewhat affronted as he regarded Trip, who was gesturing as if the good doctor should probably take his exit. “Ah. Yes.” Finally abandoning his attempts to lighten the young couple’s ever-present doomsday aspect, Phlox drew himself up, clearing his throat. “In any case, I have informed the captain that you two have both come down with rather nasty temporary cases of Fraxian flu. You are relieved of duty for today.” T’Pol digested this silently, but Trip spoke up. “Yeah, don’t y’think that’s gonna look a little—” he made developing motions with his hands, noting that in the last twenty-four hours, his verbal capacity had effectively switched places with his body language. It seemed to help though: he was saving himself from saying a lot of stupid things, he was sure. Meanwhile the doctor simply cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, not necessarily,” he scoffed deeply and professionally. “I chose that particular malady due to the fact that I have quarantined six crewpersons with it already this week. The virus runs its course in about thirty hours. You will blend right in.” “Yeah, Mansen and them? But those guys work together in the same section. If T’Pol and I come down with mono all of a sudden, people are gonna talk.” “Let them talk,” T’Pol suddenly voiced from her perch on the edge of the bed. She was staring at the floor, tense, arms folded. Both men looked at her in surprise, almost as if they’d forgotten she was there. Phlox smiled in satisfaction and looked at Trip. “There. You see? That’s the right attitude. As we say on Denobula, ‘blessed is the union upon which glad whispers dance’.” Trip just stared at him, his jaw starting to work slightly. “Well, it….loses something in the translation.” Phlox lifted a small case off the floor. “Here is something to eat. You’re back on duty tomorrow at 0700 sharp.” The doctor stepped toward the door, pausing just before he exited. He glanced back with a sly face. “And…try not to oversleep, hmm?” “Goodbye Phlox,” Trip intoned loudly at the large physician’s retreating back. The door hissed to and they were alone again. Trip walked over to the window, slowly and vigorously rubbing his face with his palms. He thudded his head against the glass a few times, finally letting his forehead rest with one final thump against the cool, thick pane. After a moment, he rolled himself along until his back was against the window. He looked across at T’Pol, who still sat on the bed, staring at the floor. Trip watched her beautiful face. As the old movie said, she really was ridiculously good-looking. He almost couldn’t stand to look at her. It hurt his chest. He took a deep breath, noting her self-protective posture, her deep introspection, the sadness on her face. He knew that this, their second morning-after, could instantaneously fly off in any given direction of possible events. Many of them not good. A few deliriously happy. Most extremely uncomfortable. Trip braced himself, waiting to see which it would be. T’Pol, shifting from her reverie, flicked her eyes up suddenly, strongly, into his. The infinitesimal rocking motion she had been maintaining stilled utterly as she watched the face of the young/old human man who had helped her so well. He was watching her back, fear written in every corner of his face, though he thought he covered it well. He didn’t. She knew that he was afraid. A terror of sorts was gripping him in a fatalistic been-there-before sort of way: that, in helping her, in loving her, he would have driven her away finally and forever. T’Pol knew this because of her ability to read Trip’s face like an open book. But she also had confirmation provided by the quiet, steady, psychic string she could feel tugging from somewhere behind her navel, somewhere in her brain…connected to Trip. He wasn’t aware of it yet, as he had no experience with telepathy, and so unconsciously ascribed anything he found in his mind to his own self, not realising the myriad worlds there were to explore with thoughts alone. In a way, T’Pol was relieved. Though she was fairly sure that they had formed some kind of affinity after their first sexual encounter, it was thready and unconscious at best. But the Pon Farr seemed to have asserted a mating bond upon them as tangible as she had ever expected one to be. She had convinced herself rather completely that a proper mating bond wouldn’t be possible with Trip. Hadn’t even mentioned it to him. And now, it seemed, her mind was being made up for her in a way. So there was nothing left to do, but…give in. Anything else would be illogical. T’Pol swallowed, watching Trip’s face, feeling his warm human heart beating faintly, birdlike, within her own chest. She rose and crossed the short distance to him, never taking her pupils away from his eyes. And after a moment, folding each of his limply hanging hands in one of her own, she raised herself slightly on her toes and brought her lips to within a centimetre of his. She hovered for a hot, breathless, eternal second, as if to choose which portion of Trip’s mouth she was going to touch with her own. And then she fastened her lips softly, burningly onto his, opening her mouth and pressing her tongue into him and receiving his own thirsty tongue in return. T’Pol drinking his relief as it poured through her own, drinking for the first time in her life from something rather certain and passionate and mutual. * * * Trip walked briskly down the corridor, rubbing his upper arms through his off-duty T-shirt. The rest of the ship was decidedly chilly compared to T’Pol’s quarters. Phlox’s sandwiches and milk had been fine, but his stomach had decided it needed dinner, so he was making a quick—hopefully unnoticed—trip to the mess hall. “Oh, hold up a minute,” a voice called from behind him. Trip slowed and half turned. Malcolm was jogging up to him. “Just got to get up-wind,” the lieutenant explained as he trotted past and slowed to walking pace again eight feet in front of Trip. “Very funny,” Trip said, not attempting to catch up, but matching the other man’s pace. Malcolm didn’t turn, speaking loudly into the corridor ahead. “I hate getting ill. Very active immune system, I’ve got. Slightest exposure to any pathogen and it goes into overdrive: runny nose, fever, the whole works. You’re supposed to be in quarantine,” he added somewhat petulantly. Trip rolled his eyes. “Yeah, it’s not exactly TB I’ve got here, Malcolm. You don’t have to worry.” Malcolm cocked his head slightly backward as he responded, though he didn’t turn. “Must be pretty virulent if it can cross species, though, hey? Only I hear you’ve infected Commander T’Pol.” Malcolm‘s naughty tone left nothing unimplied. Trip, irritated, gave him what he was fishing for: “Yeah, well, we were up all night shagging each other’s brains out, what‘d‘y‘expect?” Malcolm scoffed at Trip‘s clearly dripping sarcasm, finally turning just before he entered the mess hall. “You wish. If you’re going to be like that, I can eat supper on my own.” Malcolm passed through the mess hall doors, leaving Trip halted in the corridor, one hand on his hip, the other raised as if to make a strident point. The doors hissed shut in his face. He let his pointer finger drop, sighing. May as well get used to it, Trip logicked, even as his mind fumed. ‘Eat supper on your own’. Good, why don’t you do that? Who said I wanted to eat with you anyway! God, stupid Malcolm with zero troubles in his life! Oh no, I don’t have a girlfriend. Shut up! Just shut up Malcolm! Finally, comforting himself with the notion that Malcolm’s day couldn’t have been anywhere close to as satisfying as his own, no matter what salacious gossip the lieutenant had to hand, he stepped toward the doors again, passing through them as they parted and making his way to the dispensers. On impulse, he poured himself a hot chocolate rather than tea. He reached for a second cup and was about to request chamomile tea for T’Pol, when he suddenly felt an overwhelming impulse to fill the cup with more hot chocolate. He did so and then looked doubtfully at the cup, wondering if T’Pol would take it. But his hands snapped a lid on and placed it decisively on his tray even as he formulated his doubts. Oh well, he could always come back, he decided. He grabbed a couple of hot pasta salads, one sans chicken, and two forks, then made his way straight back out the door, hoping to have got away easy. “Get better!” Malcolm shouted after him. Trip glared once over his shoulder as he exited, catching Malcolm’s tablemate Travis giggling into his milk. Malcolm was poking industriously at his pasta with a fork: you’d never know he’d opened his mouth. Trip grit his teeth slightly as he powerwalked back to T’Pol’s quarters, soothing himself with the thought that while Malcolm and Travis were laughing, he was going to go back to eat dinner with the girl with the ‘nice bum’. So…. Mollified by this musing, and approaching T’Pol’s quarters, Trip slowed his step. He spent a second shifting the tray to one hand and forearm so that he could press the door release, when he looked up to see Malcolm jogging around the corner, PADD in hand. A smug look of satisfaction lit the darker man’s face when he spied Trip, laden with his tray, about to enter the science officer’s quarters. Trip let his finger fall away from the door release, and in echo of his actions from earlier, thudded his head softly against the bulkhead above the control panel. Finally, eyes closed, head to the wall, utterly defeated, Trip crankily spoke. “Malcolm quit stalking me! Go play in the airlock.” Malcolm halted a couple of feet from his friend. He held up the PADD he carried. “I forgot I have to give you this tonight.” Malcolm sized Trip up. He looked beat. He told him so. “You look beat,” he said. Trip, pivoting upon the fulcrum of his forehead, eyed Malcolm sidewise. “Yeah, well, I’m supposed to be sick, remember? I’m just droppin’ this off at T’Pol’s, and then I’m going to go to bed. By myself,” he lied, in response to Malcolm’s it’s-none-of-my-business face. Trip took the proffered PADD, scrolling quickly through it. Minutes of last week’s systems-efficiency meeting, with Malcolm’s copious notes on his schemes for rerouting power to weapons. Trip let his arm fall limp as he glared blearily up at Malcolm from under his eyebrow. He pushed off the wall and blinked away a headrush as he waved the PADD under Malcolm’s nose. “What’d’you think I’m gonna do with this? Why can’t anyone send me a message on the computer?! I hate these things!” Malcolm took a nonchalant step back from his germy crewmate. “What, send you a message? Yeah, I stopped doing that after I hacked into your mailbox last October to see if you ever received that memo I sent on the updated power requisition protocols from Starfleet. You hadn’t opened a thing since the August before!” “You’re not supposed to do that,” Trip wearily explained to the security chief of Enterprise. “You’re…I mean, people’s private….” he trailed off into a sigh, realising it was pointless. There was no privacy on a starship. Protocols or no. Security chief or no. It was all just laundry blowin’ in the wind. “I left a note in there letting you know about my trespasses and my reasons for them.” Malcolm’s proper voice implied no wrongdoing. “The language was choice and creatively applied. It was, as we refer to it in the British navy, a ‘shittigram’.” He pressed his point home: “And if you had checked your messages anytime since last Hallowe’en, you would know that. So,” he nodded at Trip’s latest PADD, “enjoy your bedtime reading. The captain’s authorised my team to start on this stuff tomorrow. I’d like your help.” Somewhat pacified by the conversation’s turn into things as mundane as work and Malcolm’s continuing efforts to wrangle more power from auxiliary systems for the weapons, Trip nodded. He glanced at the PADD again, his mind beginning to automatically tick over a couple of things he planned to accomplish the next day in Engineering before the security chief invaded. Malcolm, mercifully deciding enough was as good as a feast, turned to leave Trip alone in the corridor. But as he did so, he tossed over his shoulder, “So, if I need you later, you’ll be here?” “Yeah,” Trip affirmed carelessly, scrolling through the PADD… his mind kicking-him-in-the-rear, even as he uttered the last of the single word. “Uh-huh.” The first syllable pitched low, the second high: the word spoke volumes. Malcolm lifted his eyebrows, folded his arms, did a very British job of trying not to smile, and briskly left Trip standing in front of his girlfriend’s quarters. The tray shook slightly as Trip violently controlled his urge to fling it at Malcolm’s retreating back. Somewhat proud of his restraint, he firmly pressed the door release before the captain decided to walk Porthos down T’Pol Street. The door hissed open and shut, allowing Trip to slip inside. He put the tray down on the low table and flopped onto the floor in relief. T’Pol, who had been waiting for him, immediately distributed the food onto the table and pushed the empty tray out of sight underneath it. Starting directly upon her salad, T’Pol took the edge off her hunger. After a few silent moments of chewing, she swallowed and took a sip of hot chocolate. She closed her eyes at the taste as she swallowed and then took a long breath to savour the strange flavour on her tongue and in her nose. Trip watched this interestedly. T’Pol looked at him. “Thank you for getting this for me,” she said in her low voice. She took another small sip. “Yeah,” Trip replied, “it was weird. I was about to pour you some tea, but then I just suddenly chose this instead. I hope you don’t mind. I really wasn’t sure you’d want it, but something made me keep it.” “That was me,” T’Pol said. She took another bite of salad and chewed methodically. Trip stared at her. “That was you?” he repeated, “How did you…I thought it felt weird…how come you’ve never done that before?” “I never used to be able to,” T’Pol answered. She was feigning dispassion, but Trip could see that she was intrigued by the phenomenon. “Our…encounter…seems to have had a rather lasting effect. I did not expect it.” “Huh.” Trip thought about this. They already had some kind of weirdo connection that let them hang out on a massive, foggy-white soundstage at times. This was just more of the same thing, he figured. He wasn’t complaining: anything that let T’Pol quit misunderstanding his feelings for her was fine by him. But he couldn’t help jesting with her to see what she’d say. “Y’know, my future wife and kids are really going to wonder about Daddy’s psychic communion with some strange Vulcan lady.” “Strange?” she demanded softly. “Your future wife and children,” she said huskily, “are going to find it perfectly regular.” Twin shots of adrenaline split down Trip’s arms at her implication and the quality of the voice that made it. T’Pol put her fork down decisively and crawled around the table to his side. Kneeling up, she grabbed the front of his shirt. Her eyes roamed hungrily over Trip’s face and fell into the incredible blue of his eyes. He swallowed, looking down at her mouth, just inches from his own. Her lips were parted, her skin faintly minty, and she pushed her hips against him gently, suggestively. Trip was so used to a T’Pol constantly shutting him out, turning away, that this canty new lass who desired him so frankly sent him into a frenzy of lust. T’Pol reached one hand to his chest and scraped her nails across the back of his neck. Unable to hold back any longer, Trip grabbed her roughly and crushed her to him as he kissed her mouth. She responded instantly with as much strength as he and they grappled frantically in their attempts to kiss and suck and touch as much of one another’s bodies as they could grasp. Dinner forgotten, Trip pushed T’Pol back onto the carpet and tugged her pyjama bottoms past her hips, throwing them over his shoulder once they were free. He pushed her thighs apart with his hands, stroking the inner flesh a few times as T’Pol bent her knees and panted readily. Trip pressed his thumbs against the thin fabric of her dark blue panties, feeling the warmth and moisture behind them. He leant forward, on his knees, to kiss his way around her inner thighs, licking and nipping and never quite touching anyplace she yearned him to. T’Pol pushed up on her elbows, tensing her abdominal muscles so she could raise her upper back and neck off the floor and watch her lover at work upon her. Trip hooked his fingers under the waistline of her cotton panties and slid them down off her smooth legs. Then, leaning closer, holding her muscled legs apart with big hands, gently he breathed on her hot skin, tearing an involuntary moan from her throat. Feeling his own nether regions tightening uncomfortably, Trip ran a gently caressing tongue over the outer lips of her nearly hairless sex, leaving traces of wetness which he blew upon with hot breath. T’Pol sobbed convulsively once and swallowed, panting, waiting, watching. Trip glanced up once into her fiery eyes before placing a thumb on each side of her cleft and pressing her mounds wide apart. His plan had been to tease her for as long as he could, but the sight of her wet, dull-emerald petals gleaming openly nearly sent him into a climactic spasm then and there. He clenched his teeth, fighting for control and buried his face in her navel. T’Pol grabbed two fistfuls of his hair, grinding her sex against his chest, waiting for him to continue. After a moment, Trip looked up at her across the flat plain of her belly. “God, I love you, T’Pol,” he gasped and he descended upon her opening with his tongue and fingers. The shock of hearing those words from her human best friend and lover brought instant tears to T’Pol’s eyes and she, for once without cerebralizing, simply lay back upon the carpet and moaned Trip’s name and thrust herself openly at him as he did every single thing he could think of to bring her pleasure. * * * T’Pol wandered through an empty space, her memories failing her. She could not remember her name nor why she had come. There was a speck in the distance…the only detail in the whitescape in which she found herself. She walked seemingly forever until the thing began to increase in size. It was a tiny person, two feet tall. She had no way of telling its age. The person spoke to her, but though T’Pol went down on one knee, she couldn’t understand the words, too rich and alien were they for her ears. Finally the person reached into a miniscule pocket and removed something, which it tipped into her hand. T’Pol brought her palm close to her face and closed one eye to see what nature of speck the Small Person had given her. It was Trip. Atomically minute, and not speaking (she was pretty sure), he stood in her palm, squinting questioningly up at her. Suddenly her memories of herself poured back around her, and she remembered who she was, and who this was she held so tenderly in her palm. She studied his tiny, perfect, uniform-clad form, realizing as she did so how very fragile their relationship was. How very precious. A hot tear sparked suddenly from the corner of her eye and burned a path along her cheek as she recalled their last interaction before falling into an exhausted slumber. The only words Trip had spoken. She put her lips near to her cupped hands and spoke softly, so as not to deafen: “Trip, I….” But the plosive consonant at the end of the first word produced an infinitesimal puff of warm breath that lifted the speck away from her hand and sent it twirling away through the air. T’Pol watched, horrified, the loving iota that was her mate vanishing into the blinding whiteness. * * * She awoke with a start and a gasp. It felt as if she hadn’t breathed in minutes and she sat up. They had napped right where they lay upon the floor, entwined after exhaustive lovemaking. T’Pol was naked from the waist down and she reached for her silky pyjama bottoms, pulling them on for warmth. Her stirring woke Trip, who had only been dozing lightly. He sat up also, wrapping strong arms around her from behind. T’Pol closed her eyes and leaned into his warm chest, feeling the glad relief of a nightmare snuffed. The details of the dream grew hazy nearly immediately in her mind, but a strong sensation of its shocking theme still burned in her chest, and she acted before her mind had a chance to throw water over it. Turning to Trip on the floor, putting one long leg over his and curving the other one around in between them, T’Pol looked up into Trip’s face. Her right hand reached up to stroke his face as if in a trance while her left gripped both of his in their laps. She kissed him carefully, once. And then watching his eyes as she spoke, staring deeply into his soul, she let herself go. “I love you, Trip,” she confessed. Trip let out a breath, nodding slowly at her, stroking her own cheek with his hand now. T’Pol put a hand over his on her face and turned it open to kiss his palm. His fingers caressed her eyes and nose as she did so and she couldn’t believe the sensation of incredible affection she was feeling. Never, in her whole long life had she been treated this way; never had she been touched her this way. They wrapped their arms around one another and sat chest-to-chest for a few moments, simply savouring the closeness and newness of one another. Finally Trip sat back a bit so he could look into her face. “Did you sleep?” he asked. “A little,” she responded, thinking of her bizarre dream. “I had a dream.” “Me too,” Trip said. “It was weird…kinda like those daydreams I didn’t have aboard Columbia.” T’Pol nearly smiled at his choice of words. She looked at him. “What was yours about?” “It kinda hard to remember now,” Trip replied, thinking back, “but it was definitely in that white place. Someone else was there. A giant person who picked me up and spoke to me.” Trip thought about the face of the person he had communed with in the dream. It was oddly familiar. He tried to pick the memory out of the cement of his subconscious. “They looked almost like…Lorian,” he decided aloud. “But not quite.” T’Pol absorbed this. She hadn‘t been able to comprehend the person’s face. “And then what happened?” she asked pensively. Trip scrunched his face. “I can’t really remember any more,” he replied. “Wait, no you were there too for a minute. Just your face. Man,” he laughed, “I’m startin’ to sound like Dorothy.” At T’Pol’s questioning look he clarified, “Wizard of Oz?” but she shook her head. “It’s an old movie. About a girl who had a dream. And a bunch of other stuff.” T’Pol raised an eyebrow. “I had a similar dream. I think you are right…it was akin to those you ‘didn’t’ have aboard Columbia.” Trip, now that he was thinking consciously of it, could sense a sort of - strangeness - when he really concentrated, that was probably T’Pol’s mind or spirit or whatever the hell it was they were sharing when they could see into each other’s heads. A…pulling…more than anything. A sensation of the other person’s wants and needs, tugging faintly, but clearly, at his attention. He put a wondering hand to his head, almost in attempt to touch the place of connection, as he looked at T’Pol in amazement. “I feel like a fish that’s been hooked, only with no pain,” he tried to explain. T’Pol nodded. “An apt description,” she agreed, concentrating. Though she was from a telepathic race, it was also one that did its very best to eliminate inflaming sensation. Constant passionate emotional exchanges were definitely on the list of dangerous items, and so, their abilities were severely self-limited from early in life. However, a couple thousand years of sentient aberrance was nothing to millions worth of evolution, and so, though the abilities were seldom accessed, they lay shallow within each Vulcan man and woman’s psyche, accessible by any who would make the effort. And though neither of them realised it, slightly deeper, slightly longer-ignored, Trip’s own inherited abilities were at play: the psychic abilities of humans having faded only from conscious knowledge millennia ago, and not from their physiological makeup. They sat, holding hands on the floor, eyes closed, experimenting with the newest, most satisfying aspect of their relationship. It wasn’t even what either would call ‘communication’, that word implying two discrete people passing information back and forth like a ball. This was more like doublethink: a helix of thought that became inseparable from its own origins, even as their identities were somehow preserved. As they focussed upon their joined selves, Trip noticed what he could only describe as a triangular effect, contained within the total oneness that made up their combined soul. He gently pushed against the forces he could detect, feeling them with his infant psychic hands. T’Pol, so well-trained in the arts of mental, physical, and emotional control, was hardly better than he in this new realm, having never explored very far outside the proscribed box of her people’s accepted way of mental life. Together they bounced and tested the lines of force. It was a joyous, childlike sort of heady freedom that gripped them, as they realised that all hang-ups and worries and misunderstandings were things only of the flimsy physical realm. This was real life, the life within, the life one forgot every morning upon awakening. The world wherein nothing wrong could be said or done. And as they ricocheted around the infinite boundaries of their small meat-and-bone skulls, they noticed something further. The triangular effect that both felt more and more strongly was of a third force unto itself. The images and impressions were new and startling to both of them, and thus were from outside either of their own psyches. Playfully, the two young spirit things approached the third…childlike wonder and acceptance having taken over fully as the sole way to perceive the world the moment they had dipped themselves fully into the dimension of thought. The third globe of energy was stronger-willed than either of them, more single-purposed, yet more alive, if that was possible…in this place where cells and telomeres had no meaning. They were existing now as three diffuse points of nuclear whiteness within an infinite space of nothingness. T’Pol hovered directly adjacent to the frisson of energy that was Trip, and both regarded the mysterious third. Fatalistically, they felt themselves drawn toward it, with no more power to change their course than they had to snuff out their own burning centres. They approached to within one irrelevant, immeasurable, nonexistent picometre and halted for a nonsecond, before the third nudged one infinitesimal point closer. A triple shock of sheer primal energy—slivers of the big bang—sunk solidly into each globe, whipcracking them all apart with a sizzling licket of whitehot iron fire. * * * T’Pol’s eyes snapped open, her face dragged downward with strain. After a tense, unending second of tachycardia, she inhaled deeply, and looked down to see Trip flopped on the floor. She fell forward on her hands and crawled weakly forward a step, turning him over. Instinctively, she leant a trained ear and cheek down to feel for breath, her heart jumping when the faint, moist air washed reassuringly over her skin. She shook Trip’s shoulders lightly. “T’hy’la…Trip…can you hear me?” Trip’s eyes were closed but he nodded. He reached a hand up to rub his eye and squinted at her, though the room was far from bright. “What the hell was that?” Trip asked, gingerly propping himself up on one elbow. T’Pol sat back on her heels, glad to see he had only been temporarily stunned. She didn’t know how to answer him, knowing what she knew now. She also didn’t know why she knew the answer to his question; she just did. Trip looked up at her pensive face. Though he was still mentally aware of her presence, his skills were far too new for him to use deliberately without great effort, and so he had no idea what she was thinking. T’Pol watched his face. “What?” Trip finally asked. T’Pol’s voice was low. “That was the embryo.” Trip sat up further. “That was the what?” T’Pol forced herself to meet his eyes. “The embryo. Our mating must have been successful.” She had known this could happen, but was unprepared for the illogical feelings that washed over her. She certainly had not planned on any type of mental contact with the blastocyst before it continued out of her body as part of her natural cycle. Trip looked as if he was again ready to sink into syncope. “No,” he finally managed, “No, I remember specifically asking you, and you said you had it covered. No babies.” T’Pol didn’t understand why he looked so upset. “That is correct,” she confirmed somewhat tentatively. “I said it would not be a concern. That Phlox and I had already discussed it.” “Right,” Trip exclaimed, the words ringing in his memory. “So what’re you talking about?” T’Pol was mystified. “What are you talking about?” Trip sat erect now, fully awake. “You just said embryo. What embryo are you talking about if there aren’t going to be any babies?” T’Pol realised where his confusion lay and explained. “I spoke to Phlox about my need to satisfy the Pon Farr and my wish to avoid pregnancy. As ovulation is directly tied to the plak-tau, it cannot be interfered with if the fever is to be appeased. On Vulcan, a simple dose of therapeutic radiation is used to temporarily destroy the male partner’s supply of sperm cells, if children are unwanted. Phlox did not recommend this in your case as human stem cells are much more susceptible to mutation than ours. However, as a viable human/Vulcan embryo is impossible without certain medical intervention, Phlox concluded that no contraception was necessary in our case. Nature would simply run its course, whether or not I chanced to conceive.” She doggedly forced herself to finish this logical explanation, even as Trip’s face melted farther and farther into some emotion she couldn’t label. When she finished, Trip simply sat, staring. After a moment, he echoed to himself, “Nature would simply…” He trailed off in dismay. “God, why didn’t you tell me? I woulda used a raincoat!” T’Pol stared in total confusion. “A rubber! A condom! A prophylactic! Something so you wouldn’t get pregnant for Chrissakes! What the hell do you think?” Trip jumped to his feet and ran his hands through his hair. T’Pol remained where she was, a sudden sick feeling flowing through her stomach. “Trip,” she began, “I thought we agreed that neither of us wanted children right now.” “Yeah, we did,” Trip affirmed, his back to the wall now. “That’s why I’m a little startled to be having psychic conversations with embryos that shouldn’t be there.” “I am sorry if that upset you,” T’Pol said, truly surprised at his reaction. “But you needn’t concern yourself with raising a child. I do not plan on remaining pregnant.” “Well, it’s a bit late for that,” Trip said loudly. “For what?” T’Pol asked. “To back out,” Trip answered. “We’ve got a kid in there, we both saw it. The little bugger nearly fried our cerebella. How can we just turn our backs on it? Him? Her?” “That ‘kid’ is less than twenty-four hours old,” T’Pol maintained. “There is no functional difference between preventing conception and preventing implantation. Lacking any intervention, the blastocyst will simply break down as a normal part of my cycle.” Logic was the only thing she had left to hold up, and it was sound, she was sure. She clung to that surety to try and steady a voice that was starting to show strain. Unfortunately, ‘logic’ in such subjects is a matter of opinion, and Trip had plenty of his own thoughts on the matter. “I think there’s a big difference. One is prevention, the other is abortion.” Trip’s voice hardened as he thought of losing a second baby he had no idea he was going to father in the first place. T’Pol stood to face him. “That’s a rather hard-lined attitude for someone lacking a uterus to take,” she reminded him coolly, though wretchedly. “In any case, I am surprised at your response. I would not have guessed you were a ‘pro-lifer’.” She uttered the human colloquialism with distaste: anything that smacked of imposed control reminding her too much of Paxton. “Hey,” Trip replied forcefully, “I’m all for a woman’s right to choose in general, but that’s when you’re talking about some fifteen-year-old who got knocked up by her deadbeat boyfriend. It’s different when it’s your own damn kid! You and I are both mature adults. What right do we have to say to this embryo, ‘we don’t feel like allowing you to live right now…it’s not that we couldn’t, it’s just too inconvenient for us’.” “One could apply the same argument ad absurdum to any gamete that doesn’t reach its full potential,” T’Pol reasoned back somewhat heatedly. “No y’can’t,” Trip contradicted. “It’s not the same and you know it. They don’t have enough chromosomes to survive.” Trip rubbed his face in frustration and then grabbed two handfuls of his own hair, pacing the room as he tried to make T’Pol see. “I don’t think you understand. This…this…miniscule being that you have within you right at this moment is every bit as real and precious, no matter what its physical size, as the baby and the adult it will eventually become. It is Lorian and Elizabeth’s full sibling. Are you going to refuse to allow me to raise a third child of our bodies?” His face softened into grief and his voice broke as he added, “’Cause I don’t think I can go through that again.” Though she was trying to reason a way out of the problem, T’Pol’s heart was breaking. They truly were ingenious at misunderstanding. And now, the one time when she thought they had it all finally settled into place, she had misjudged him horribly. She had not thought the method of contraception would matter to him. A mistake simply of culture and opinion, but crushing nonetheless. And it was too late. Her lips trembled as her control wavered under a rising tide of misery. “I don’t think you understand, Trip,” she whispered, miserable with remorse. “It’s already past the time when Phlox can intervene. The enzymes have to be injected prior to—” Trip turned and silently left her quarters. TBC |
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