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"Cry Havoc"
By MissAnnThropic
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: None of its mine. I’m just a sad little fangirl that spends her days writing fanfic and watching taped episodes of my favorite shows. :(
Description: The evolution of Trip and T’Pol’s relationship following the events in ‘Harbinger’.
Chapter 7
By the time dinner time rolled around, Trip felt like he could eat anything without batting an eyelash... and during the course of Enterprise's travels he'd seen some mighty unpalatable foodstuffs. Food, it seemed, was not only on his mind. A steady trickle of crewmen, both Enterprise and Ares, were leaking over to Enterprise's mess hall. It seemed that Ares's chef was MACO as well, and saw no reason to perfect his culinary skills beyond what was acceptable for military rations.
Trip was making his way down to the mess hall with a cluster of engineers on either flank. Jasmine, after a few hours watching Trip work, had to grudgingly concede to his expertise (without succumbing to his biggest complaints about Ares). Jasmine, apparently, was the kind of person that could be cold as ice but professional to a fault when she was assured the other party knew how to do their job properly. Her nasty disposition had made way for stony silence, occasionally broken by a sharp wit that had caught Trip off-guard more than a couple of times. Still, he'd been a little surprised that the MACO had accepted an invitation to dinner aboard Enterprise when he'd politely offered.
Ethan Trip had never doubted would be joining him. His old academy friend had been at his elbow, keeping pace with every tweak and upgrade Trip had worked on, and it was almost like old times. Ethan's own assistant, Carlina, was accompanying them. She was an innocent-looking, pixy-like blonde, Starfleet, with a shocking memory for dirty jokes.
A second MACO made up their entourage, a lean man by the name of Heren, who obviously relied on speed and stealth as opposed to raw power. He was the silent type but appreciated a good joke as well as anyone, and honestly seemed rather taken with Carlina.
When they passed through the doors of the mess hall all five of them came to a halt and stared. It was a packed house in the mess tonight. Starfleet blues were ensconced in MACO and Starfleet grays. Half the people were working over dinner. All the center tables were full, some beyond seating capacity, and only a few peripheral tables had open spots left.
Trip scanned the room quickly. Hoshi was sitting with the Ares's linguist, Aran Slade, MACO. Their study and review material scattered across the table top out-massed the weight of their trays and food together as they worked, oblivious to the commotion around them, with heads bent over a PADD and foreign words sputtering from their mouths.
Their dismissal of their surroundings allowed Phlox and his guests to overtake the remainder of Hoshi's table. The Denobulan doctor was talking animatedly with Ares's two senior medical officers. C.M.O. Lance Althea, MACO, and a strikingly beautiful woman of Hispanic descent named Sera Valencia, Starfleet.
Ensign Mayweather and Ares's chief helmsman, Cameron Afton, MACO, were interspersing their meal with precision hand movements to simulate piloting maneuvers. They were joined, for lack of space, by Lieutenant Reed and Mac Douglas... Trip half expected them to be pulling out phase pistols for on-spot inspections. Junior crewmen of both ships littered the room, joining in conversations with their senior officers when appropriate, mostly enjoying the chance to break for chow.
"Whew," Trip commented, "finding a seat might be tight."
"We can always return to Ares for chow," Jasmine said.
"Please, no," Ethan said quickly, "Trip, don't do that to me, you can't imagine what they pass off as food over there."
Trip smirked. "Don't overload just yet, we'll find a place to hunker down in this mob." He turned his eyes to the edge tables, considering their options.
Within seconds his eyes fell to the table at the far left corner, unoccupied but for one individual. That one person sat, unrushed, eating a fruit salad with a knife and fork. Sub-commander T'Pol.
Unbidden, Trip smiled. He had not seen her all day save for the occasional passing in the hallway, hardly enough to say two words to her. Seeing her now brought a measure of ease to his hectic day, seemingly erasing hours of hard labor.
"Come on," he turned to the clutch of engineers at his flanks, "Sub-commander there has plenty of room, sure she won't mind the company."
Trip had expected acquiescence, so he was puzzled when he was met with reluctant faces instead. No one moved to follow Trip as he initiated a false start in the Vulcan's direction.
Trip frowned at his dinner companions, perplexed. "Is there a problem?"
Jasmine answered only, "Maybe we should pick another table."
Trip felt a cold fist clench around his stomach as suspicion swelled. He'd been getting along better with the Ares crew, even the MACOs, but that camaraderie was quickly slipping. He could see in their eyes the distaste at his suggestion and it rankled him.
"She doesn't bite," Trip clipped rather tersely, proverbial hackles rising.
Ethan stepped toward Trip, the voice of friendship, and lowered the volume of his words. "It's not like that, Trip, we just... things with the Vulcans lately have been... it's just uncomfortable, you know?"
Trip frowned darkly. "No, I don't, but you're free to eat somewhere else and I'll meet ya back on Ares. If you'll all excuse me." Ire bubbling, Trip went to the kitchen and collected himself a tray then started across the room toward T'Pol. He silently dared the others to turn away from his outright gesture, expecting some of them to be shamed into joining him, ETHAN at least. His former group stood back and watched before drifting toward another, mostly open table and seating themselves.
Trip, thoroughly riled up, reached T'Pol's table and stopped. "Hey."
T'Pol looked up from stabbing a grape with the prongs of her fork and nodded. "Commander."
Trip pulled out the chair at T'Pol's left side and sat down. He tried to relax fury-taut muscles and huffed. He didn't mean to sound so put-off when he sighed, but apparently he had. Or possibly T'Pol registered his mood by other means.
"Is there a problem?" she asked.
Trip looked up at her. She didn't even look bothered. She was sitting alone in a crowded room, ignored and shunned to be brutally honest, and she didn't look hurt. He would have expected at least someone from Enterprise's crew to be sitting with her, keeping her company for god's sake. She was one of them, part of their family, she shouldn't be ostracized like this. It didn't even occur to him that all the Enterprise crewmen present were occupied with Ares crew members and in all likelihood hadn't chanced to notice T'Pol's isolation.
Trip shook his head. "Damn MACOs," he muttered a reply as he picked up his fork and shoved at the blob of spaghetti on his tray.
T'Pol lifted a single eyebrow at him.
Trip was still annoyed. "T'Pol, have they been..." he trailed.
T'Pol cant her head. "Have they been...?"
"The Ares crew... have they been... mistreatin' you?"
T'Pol seemed a little startled, or maybe Trip saw only what he expected to see, then the Vulcan answered, "Their reaction toward me, considering the news we've heard about Earth/Vulcan relations, is not unexpected."
"Damnit..." Trip hissed angrily between his teeth. He knew, in T'Pol-speak, what that meant.
T'Pol's voice was calm. "It's of no consequence."
"The hell it isn't, it's being racist... or specieist... or something. Doesn't that bother you?"
T'Pol took a drink of water before replying, "You know well already that it doesn't. When I first came aboard Enterprise you were not so different."
"That's not fair, T'Pol, I didn't know you then, and the Vulcans I'd met up to that point were arrogant, condescending..." he stopped and sighed. "Guess I see your point."
T'Pol nodded easily. "I do not allow it to affect me."
"Mind if I'm angry for the both of us, then?"
T'Pol looked toward him and Trip could swear something flickered in her gaze, a light that glimmered faintly with amusement, blink and he'd have missed it. "If it makes you feel better," she replied, and the look on her face made Trip smile and almost forget his anger, forget the Ares crew, completely.
"How is the work in engineering progressing?" T'Pol asked after a few moments eating in silence together.
"Well," Trip mused, "they did a lot of things I would never have let happen to Enterprise, a lot of stuff Ethan agrees is dumb as working on a power conduit in metal gloves, but they might be able to hold together long enough to let someone else blow them up."
"Is the situation so grave?" T'Pol asked in a doubting voice.
"No, but damn some of the things they've done, it almost literally hurts to look at it. If I ever meet this Commodore Raleigh it might be hard not to give him a piece of mind on starship engine design. Henry Archer must be rolling over in his grave. As far as the recommendations we offered... those are coming along fine." Trip looked down at his tray and its contents pensively. The spaghetti wasn't great, chef didn't do Italian that well, but the two slices of Texas toast were almost enough to make up for the mediocre pasta, and the small cup of chocolate pudding... next to pecan pie it was the best thing to perk up the prospect of any meal in Trip's opinion, at least incentive to eat it, unimpressive as it was.
Trip picked up one of the pieces of toast and bit into a corner.
T'Pol swallowed a bite of food before she said, "Commander, I would like to discuss with you some of the sensor console alterations made on the Ares bridge. The reconfiguration may not affect the function of the sensors, however I have not seen a technical schematic of the wiring to the panel so I do not know for certain that the upgrades I have recommended will not interfere with the sensor arrays once in place."
"I'll get to it after dinner, maybe tomorrow, but is it okay if we check the Ares at the door?"
T'Pol lifted a querulous eyebrow at him.
Trip rolled his eyes. "I don't want to talk about the Ares right now, I've had it with them, I need a breather."
T'Pol acceded easily enough, "Very well," and turned to her meal again as though she intended utter silence in place of shop-talk.
Trip looked down at the partially eaten piece of toast in his hand, a buttered prize for mess food, and he spoke on impulse.
"Hey, T'Pol, try this," he proffered the piece in his hand toward her.
T'Pol looked mildly at the bread though made no move to take it from him.
"There's no meat in it, I promise. Texas toast, one of chef's better successes if ya ask me. Just try a bite."
T'Pol considered the piece in Trip's hand a second more then slowly reached up and, exerting care and a delicate pincher grip with her index finger and thumb, accepted the toast and brought it warily to her lips for an experimental nibble.
Hoshi, in a break between her tutoring of Slade on the Xindi languages to actually eat, noticed the MACO medical officer next to her abnormally still. She looked up at him and noted that his attention seemed anywhere but on his physician colleagues.
"Althea? Is everything all right?" Hoshi asked.
Althea shook his head. "It's damn strange..."
Hoshi frowned and finally turned her head to follow the MACO's line of sight. She ended up looking at Trip and T'Pol alone at a table together near the back corner of the mess hall. Certainly a common sight to the Enterprise crew, so it took her a moment to register why that might seem odd to someone from the Ares.
"What is that, Lieutenant?" Phlox asked congenially when he heard the MACO medic's comment.
All at once, Althea had everyone's attention at their small, crowded table.
He nodded discretely toward the two Enterprise crewmen. "I thought Vulcans were supposed to be phobic about their personal space, you know, the whole no-touching, no contact thing."
Phlox answered jovially, unaware an undertone of distaste had slipped into the human's comment, "Well, that's true, although I don't know if 'phobic' is the correct word, but yes, Vulcans do have a very acute sense of privacy."
Althea faintly sneered. "Commander Tucker just gave the Vulcan some of his dinner and she took it."
Hoshi wanted to ask why the MACO was watching the two Enterprise officers but instead smiled thinly. "Well, Commander Tucker and Sub-commander T'Pol are friends."
Sera pitched in reflectively after a look toward the duo in question, "I don't think I've ever seen Vulcans eat after each other, much less after a human. Then again, I didn't hang around the Vulcan consulate on Earth very often, so I'm not really in a position to know."
"Oh," Phlox shrugged it off, "I see no reason to be shocked, Commander Tucker and Sub-commander T'Pol are quite close."
Hoshi grimaced. The doctor couldn't know how the Ares crew would take that, how it could be construed among humans. It wasn't the kind of thing either Trip or T'Pol needed circulating around.
As Hoshi expected, Slade, Sera, and Althea all turned their eyes to Phlox at his proclamation.
"They're friends," Hoshi reiterated, feeling obligated to defend her shipmates from false gossip. Hoshi pressed on, "I think all of us on Enterprise have gotten close to Sub-commander T'Pol; she's become a part of the crew."
Phlox, while sometimes too social for his own good, was not an idiot. He detected the edge to Hoshi's words and gathered the thrust of her remarks. "Certainly. In fact, I quite enjoy the sub-commander's company, a thoroughly intelligent and capable woman."
Hoshi gave Phlox a silent, grateful glance. The doctor kept the neuropressure between Trip and T'Pol in his confidence, which was exactly the last thing he needed to be mentioning to present company. The Ares crew would not understand Trip going to T'Pol's quarters every night after their shifts ended... it would get blown out of proportion in a hurry.
Althea shook his head. "An Earth starship is no place for a Vulcan, it's the last place we need them sticking their noses. They're everywhere, telling us how they think we should do things."
Hoshi's eyebrows furrowed unhappily at the MACO. The Vulcans had been known to be a little overbearing in the past, but never invasive enough to warrant such unmasked hatred. Slade was quiet, not contributing, but giving no indication that he disagreed, either. Sera merely lowered her gaze and looked troubled.
Hoshi glanced once more toward her comrades under unknowing attack. T'Pol had returned the toast to Trip and seemed to be lecturing him on the wholesome, nutritional value of a plain fruit salad or possibly Vulcan mint tea. Trip, of course, would have none of that and seemed to shovel a forkful of spaghetti into his mouth just to prove the point, depositing a hapless, unnoticed dab of tomato sauce on his chin in the process. For a split second T'Pol looked like she might reach up to wipe it away but, of course, didn't and shortly thereafter Trip tended to the errant spot himself and proceeded to finish off his toast.
Hoshi frowned. After so long together on Enterprise T'Pol had finally settled into a truly comfortable friendship with a human, one where she was at ease enough to eat after another, to give a moment's consideration to normally off-limits casual physical contact. Hoshi hoped that wouldn't be ruined, tainted by intolerant humans who did not know T'Pol... didn't know her but yet could damage her life aboard Enterprise.
Which didn't even speak to what it would be like for Trip to have his friendship with the Vulcan called into question. Trip, by nature of being human, was much more likely to react to such an assault on his personal life. Trip had benefited from T'Pol's presence, her counsel, in so many ways.
Hoshi didn't want to see that broken, for both T'Pol's sake and Trip's.
It didn't bode well for the reception they'd get when they made it back to Earth. If the Ares crew was any indication, they may run into the same opinions and prejudices a million fold.
*****
T'Pol's expert fingers moved to Trip's seventh vertebra and pressed from either side. She had exerted only a fraction of the customary pressure and instantly his muscles went almost lax beneath her touch. His breath flowed evenly, controlled, but yet a sense of sleepiness rolled off of him. The session was teetering perilously close to putting him to sleep right on her floor.
"It seems you hardly need my assistance sleeping tonight," T'Pol remarked as she moved to the next neural node along his spine. They were both positioned on the floor of her quarters in their customary places. Human and Vulcan were both topless. Trip was wearing only his boxer underwear, T'Pol only her pajama bottoms, unabashedly exposed from the waist up. In his presence, it was no longer an issue.
"Hmmm," Trip rumbled, breathing in, "I could have fallen asleep at the Ares's injector manifolds an hour ago."
T'Pol stopped her hands and she looked at him over his shoulder. "Then why come tonight for neuropressure?"
Trip turned to face her and smiled boyishly. "Just wanted to see ya."
T'Pol blinked slowly at him but said nothing in rebuke to his very human tactic. Instead she stated factually, "We have been out of contact the majority of the day, given our respective duties."
Trip propped his weight on one arm braced on the floor and looked at her teasingly. "I can go if ya want me to."
T'Pol opened her mouth, closed it, then said, "Since you are here we may as well complete the neuropressure."
Trip grinned and leaned inward. T'Pol did not retreat and soon enough his lips were against hers, a tender but feather-light kiss.
When they parted T'Pol physically placed her hands on his shoulders and turned his back to her once more. Undeterred by his confession of coming to her quarters under false pretenses, she resumed the neuropressure. Trip smiled and could swear her hands moved a little slower, in no hurry to be finished.
T'Pol's voice intoned lowly, "You were troubled today."
"Yes, I was." Trip didn't even ask to what she was referring.
"It seemed the source of your displeasure was the Ares crew."
Trip tensed fractionally. "Ya wouldn't be wrong."
T'Pol's hands paused again. "Why?"
Trip turned again to look at her strangely. "You serious? The way they acted toward ya?"
T'Pol was unfazed. "As I have said, their reactions to me are inconsequential to the mission. You should not permit it to distract you."
Trip sighed angrily. "That's not the point, T'Pol. Maybe it doesn't bother you but it bothers me and I can't help that. I don't have the kind of self-control you do."
"I was already aware of that," she said, pitch to her voice loaded.
Trip stopped and looked closely at her. "Was that a joke?" As he watched her, despite T'Pol's unchanged expression, his lips curled into an irresistible smile.
T'Pol's eyebrows rose but she said nothing.
Trip shook his head and sobered. "It's wrong."
T'Pol gave a marginal shrug. "It is illogical, but then humans are not renown for logic. For that reason, their feelings toward me are to be expected."
Trip frowned. Deep, shadowed lines carved into his brow and bracketed his mouth.
"Trip," T'Pol said calmly, "let us check the Ares at the door. I don't wish to discuss them further."
Trip looked up at her again and the furrows of concern on his face almost completely faded. He smiled again, mirthful at her turn of phrase, and T'Pol was eased at the effect it had on her. He obligingly said not another word about the other Starfleet ship or its crew.
T'Pol returned to administering neuropressure and for a time they lapsed into comfortable silence.
Trip broke that serenity by saying softly, voice thick from the relaxing effect of the neuropressure, "I like it when ya say my name."
T'Pol faltered only a fraction at his statement. She wasn't sure how she was expected to respond to such an intimate comment... surely it was loaded in human culture with subtleties she did not understand. In Vulcan society the stigma around names, those spoken in private, were monumental in significance. Trip could not know that. Luckily, after a time, it seemed he was content to merely have said it and did not necessarily expect anything in return. That, too, brought more peace and pleasure to T'Pol than it logically ever should have. To know he simply enjoyed the way his name sounded when she said it was pleasing. That she could do so little and have it please him thus. Of these thoughts, however, she said nothing.
"I am finished," she reported when she'd thoroughly worked him over, his presence registering to her senses as one of deep relaxation.
Trip wordlessly turned and in practiced moves T'Pol turned her back to him and sat still as he began to administer the same treatment to her. Trip had learned the Vulcan practice incredibly well... someday she should tell him how proficient he had become. Someday, but not today.
For a moment in the neuropressure T'Pol felt hesitance, confusion and frustration that was not her own, but it subsided in time, dissipated, and T'Pol did not ask Trip about it.
Half an hour later Trip audibly sighed. "It's late."
"It is," T'Pol quietly agreed.
Trip wearily rose to his feet behind her. "I better get some sleep, tomorrow won't be any easier than today."
T'Pol slipped on her robe to cover herself and ended up looking up at Trip from her seated position on the floor. He'd already slipped his shirt and pants back on and now stood with his eyes glued to her. He was waiting for something, looking for something maybe, but T'Pol couldn't think of what that might be.
Trip's face was taken with a fleeting frown as he said, "Good night, T'Pol."
T'Pol swallowed the faintest tendrils of fear and uncertainty. "Good night... Trip."
Trip smiled again, softly, barely, but it was enough to dash the worried frown from his face. He nodded wordlessly, somehow knowingly, then turned and left.
T'Pol sat a moment in silent mediation, in an exercise to realign her thoughts, before finally rising herself and preparing for bed.
*****
'This,' Hoshi Sato thought, 'is what it must feel like to step into a parallel universe.'
The communications' specialist was sitting at the comm station aboard Ares. Everything was familiar, similar, but a command was displaced a little here, a centimeter there. It was more or less right, but on the whole wrong.
"Ensign Sato?" Slade spoke from beside her. It brought Hoshi back to the task at hand. She had been trying to program the Universal Translator parameters for the Xindi dialects with the most complete lexicons into the Ares computer. The fly in the ointment, however, was the program interface. Someone back on Earth, in their imminent wisdom, had written a series of baseline codes for language formats. On the surface it seemed like a good idea... it allowed settings to be chosen once a language's pattern was established. Subject-verb-object sentence structured languages under one program, tongues with imperfect tenses and stacked argument structures in another... on Earth it would have been a time-saver. In space, it was a pain in the ass. No predominant, overall setting applied to the various Xindi dialects, and every time Hoshi tried to input the grammatical profiles for a Xindi form of language the program fought her, insistent such a language structure did not exist or, at the very least, needed to be cataloged under a different structure program. Fine and dandy, except such a change-over would cause the UT to flag a new, different discrepancy. By noon Hoshi was ready to rip the Ares's UT hardware out with her bare hands.
Hoshi sighed and gave a less than heartfelt, "Sorry," to her Ares counterpart.
"Is there anything I can do?" he asked, sounding just as harried and irritated as Hoshi.
It was that brusque attitude that made Hoshi snap, "Tell your captain to wipe the UT in this ship and start from scratch."
Slade frowned. "How about I track down one of our computer programmers instead and see if he can find a less drastic solution?"
Hoshi waved him off. "All right, we'll try that first." She was almost serious about crashing the UT program and installing the Enterprise version. At least that she knew how to wrangle down and make cooperate. Hell, she was prepared to start the UT from scratch if damn necessary.
Slade left her side and soon was off the bridge.
"Hoshi... you all right?"
Hoshi turned at the sound of Trip's voice. He was on the bridge too, working with T'Pol at the Ares's science station... something about sensors. He had obviously heard the curt exchange and knowing Hoshi held her temper better than that most of the time friendly concern shone in his eyes.
"Yes, sir... I'm sorry, this is just... frustrating."
Trip smiled sympathetically. "Count your blessings you're not havin' to worm your way through their engineerin' section."
Hoshi smirked and sat back to wait for Slade to return, grateful for the short break.
"Commander," T'Pol called Trip back to the science console and Trip, with one last glance at Hoshi, leaned closer to the Vulcan woman to have a look.
Trip frowned. "Well, I see what ya mean, but I still don't think it's going to be a problem. Here, let me show ya what I mean."
Hoshi, without realizing it, ended up watching the two. Until she had someone who knew more about combating the intransigent computer she had nothing else to do. The bridge of the Ares was currently sparsely manned, with only a couple of on-duty officers near the back and a glassy-eyed helmsman holding course of the grid-locked starships. Trip and T'Pol were the only members of the Enterprise crew on deck so the people Hoshi was most interested in at the time.
Trip and T'Pol were in quiet conversation and Hoshi took up one of her favored little hobbies. She watched their bodies talk.
Trip invaded her space without heed, his hands moving across T'Pol's controls as he explained a power converting conduit to her. T'Pol was unbothered by his proximity, permitting his closeness in a way she tolerated no one else's outside of dire, inescapable circumstances. She nodded slightly from time to time, demonstrating both understanding and that Trip still had her complete attention. For all the grief T'Pol gave Trip for being irrational and illogical to the point of being intolerable, the Vulcan honestly respected Trip's skills as an engineer.
"I don't–" T'Pol began to speak, but Trip interrupted her. That was another quirk Hoshi noticed. Not many people had the gall to interrupt T'Pol, and those who did received the darkest glare T'Pol would permit herself to adopt. Everyone, of course, except on occasion Trip.
"Nah, I know I'm right. Here, look," Trip shuffled around T'Pol's chair to press a control at the top corner of the sensor console. He brushed against her back in the process, came into contact, and as T'Pol had paid no attention to him interrupting her she did not pay mind to his unintentional movement. Not even to discretely move up and away from his body.
Trip squinted at the readings at the top of the control console, prodded the inside of his cheek with his tongue as he thought to himself, and his hands went into motion. One reached again for the control, the engineer apparently satisfied with the results, and his other...
Hoshi had to blink and look again. Trip's second hand wandered up and came to rest against T'Pol's back. A soft touch, upon a human hardly worthy of notice. Upon a Vulcan, however, a screaming violation of personal boundaries.
And T'Pol continued to permit it. The way she'd permitted his leaning in close, his teasing, his interrupting, his quintessentially human mannerisms, she allowed his casual touch.
There was not a chance that she simply did not notice it. She knew his hand was there and it did not stir so much as an indignant blink from the Vulcan.
Trip moved back to his original place at T'Pol's right and as he moved his hand skirted her shoulders then fell away. Hoshi doubted Trip even noticed he'd touched her.
"See, right there... these four controls are tied into the left console power relays so as long as ya don't exceed the current load capacity you'll be fine."
T'Pol nodded. "I see that now. Thank you."
Trip smiled. "No problem, call me if ya need anything else."
T'Pol nodded and Trip began to turn toward the turbolift.
He'd barely made a step when T'Pol called after him, softly and more of a last-minute blurt as something obviously occurred to her. "Trip..."
Trip turned on his heel to look at her.
"I would still prefer a set of schematics on the energy allocation to this console."
Trip nodded. "Sure, I'll get someone to bring ya a copy."
"Thank you," T'Pol said again then returned to her work. Trip stepped into the turbolift and was gone.
Hoshi sat there doing a probably pretty spot-on imitation of a fish out of water. She had to have heard wrong, she must have, but at the same time she knew she hadn't.
T'Pol had called him 'Trip'. The Vulcan who was so ardently professional that the crew had taken a long time to get to know her for her distant armor, who refused to address anyone except by their full title, had called the commander by his nickname.
Hoshi knew a little of the meaning Vulcans assigned to informal names, it was a feature of their spoken communication and therefore under her purview, and that scrap of understanding had her reeling at what she'd just seen.
All at once, Hoshi's eyes widened in realization. Sharing meals together in the mess every day, eating after one another, visiting one another's quarters at night, the concessions each made to the other's culture, the transgressions each tolerated from the other, the errant hand T'Pol had allowed, the use of Trip's informal name without thought.
'They're friends,' her own words came back to her.
Apparently she was very, very mistaken. Or at least grossly underestimating the nature of their relationship.
Before she could think further on the discovery the turbolift opened again and Slade returned, followed by a gray-clothed Ares crewman, no doubt the computer specialist.
Hoshi was thankful to turn her back to the Vulcan science officer in case T'Pol happened to look in Hoshi's direction. The ensign knew it would take a few minutes for her to sufficiently train her expression not to betray the truth she'd deduced. A truth, she decided then and there, to speak to absolutely no one. After the reaction T'Pol and Trip merely sharing dinner had provoked she didn't want to think what the revelation of an intimate relationship would spark. Besides trouble.
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