Interface

Sighing noisily, Hoshi tried wrestling T'Pol's attention back to her. Where was she? She and the distracted Sub-Commander certainly weren't on the same wavelength for this session of meditation technique refinement. She could, for all intents and purposes be sitting here by herself.

"Sub-Commander? Uh..." Clearing her throat, Hoshi frowned into the bemused Vulcan's face as her tapered fingers impatiently rapped against the formickle tabletop.

For the most part, they had this small common room's limited space all to themselves. The only other persons in the room were two troubleshooters connected with IT&S systems. "T'Pol?"

T'Pol dragged her mind out of Commander Tucker's arms and reintroduced it to the present. Sheepish eyes adjusted their focus, bringing Ensign Sato into starker clarity. "Yes. Concentrate, Ensign."

"Concentrate, Sub-Commander?" Hoshi sniffed. T'Pol's raised her right eyebrow sharply. "Are you with me, T'Pol?" She wondered if her lack of concentration might have its roots in something recent.

Remembering she was trying to be more flexible with her crewmates, T'Pol said, "Why do you ask?"

"I thought maybe you might have something else on your mind besides our exercise." Hoshi paused. "Is there something? Something, oh, I don't know...something I could help you out with?" Forthrightly, Hoshi stated, "You don't seem yourself."

T'Pol rolled up her mind like a scroll and refocused. Inwardly, she berated herself for doing Hoshi a disservice and for indulging her burgeoning willful tendencies. "I apologize, Ensign. My thoughts dwell on another concern. A concern that has no relevance to what we're trying to accomplish here." Seizing her resolve by the reins and pulling hard, she said, "We will start again...the bowl is filled with ice just beginning to melt..."

Sato nitpicked. "Why the switch? Why ice melting when you wanted me to focus my imaging on crushed, dried cherry blossoms when we first started the exercise?"

"This second imagery is more suitable," T'pol dryly submitted, knowing she had hedged. Now she rued the way she had nibbled on the Chief Engineer's lower lip which had inevitably led to his running his tongue over hers.

What a skilled tongue he had, T'Pol eagerly revisited, and the faint appearance of a smile played upon her mouth that longed for the press of the magnetic man's against hers.

Sounding baffled, but determined to get to the source of her abstracted mentor's evasiveness, Hoshi quired, "What's that look about?"

"Look?" T'Pol countered, nimbly on the defensive. What had she been thinking, her decision to keep this appointment with Hoshi? The woman's mind, with its powers of keen perception was nothing to underestimate. The muscles of T'Pol's left cheek had suddenly developed a slight tick. "I wear no special look that would cause undue concern."

"Oh, yeah. Right," Hoshi mildly ridiculed. Conversationally she said, "This makes the third time I've seen it. Ever since we began our session, you haven't exactly been one hundred percent in the being with me department." Then, wringing more confidentiality from her voice the canny linguist nudged T'Pols arm that was closest to her. She finagled, "Who or what's got you this out there?" Hoshi's inviting smile was sincere.

"'Out there?" T'Pol said, sounding puzzled, and looking it too.

"Miles away; out to lunch. Gone. Absent. Not--"

"I understand," T'Pol remarked just in time to see Malcolm and another helmsman, the one who routinely relieved Travis from duty, enter the common room. Reed gave her a nod of acknowledgement, and she returned it, along with Hoshi then. "What makes you think--"

"It's Trip. Commander Tucker, am I right?" Folding her arms over her chest and leaning back against the triangular-backed chair, the savvy Communications Officer boldly insinuated, "You two sure have your issues." Arching the corner of her mouth, she instrumented, "Okay, what's he done now?"

T'Pol did not want to answer right away. She kept her thoughts quiet, still resisting the idea of breathing a word of this latest turning point in her life to Hoshi.

She took stock, thinking that perhaps she could use a human female's point of view, especially this one's. It was logical. The ensign was a natural perceptor about most things interpersonal. It was the foremost reason why she had decided to school the ensign in Vulcan meditative discipline in the first place.

"Sub-Commander... You're doing it again." It was nice to know that even Vulcans could succumb to flights of fancy. It was plain T'Pol had made the trip again during these several minutes.

With a wooden-looking expression marring any hope of openness with Hoshi, T'Pol quirked, "Doing what, Ensign?" Divulgence tickled her tongue.

"Slipping away to a place you don't want me following." Hoshi adjusted and readjusted the set of her brow. She pursed her lips, waiting.

"Ensign, could I?" T'Pol restarted, following a deep breath. "I seek some advice concerning a hypothetical situation."

"How hypothetical are we talking here, Sub-Commander?" Hoshi steepled her fingers, busy formulating her best guess. Her eyes brimmed with curiosity.

Dropping every strand of pretense right there and then, T'Pol related with a rigid face, "Commander Tucker is in my quarters, awaiting my imminent return. He desires mating with me upon my arrival."

Hoshi's eyebrows nearly flew up into her dark, glossy hairline in accompaniment with her mouth forming a perfect oval and she uttered a fragile, "Oh."

"You find this shocking," the Vulcan, whose cheeks were tinted a high-toned green now, judged, gathering as much from the ensign's unanticipated reaction.

"No--no. Not shocked. Just a little surprised." She'd had a feeling about these two ever since spying them in the mess, watching Trip pop a marshmallow into T'Pol's mouth from his plate of Rocky Road ice cream. "Tell me. Is this sudden, straight out of the blue? Or not a surprise. You saw this coming?"

She wondered if T'Pol was overstating matters. Hoshi had heard from Trip about the twisted yarn T'Pol had weaved for the Captain and him about Vulcans visiting Earth years before first contact and conferring their gift of Velcro to humankind.

Was the Commander, the Southern flash in the pan, really waiting in her quarters, champing at the bit to get lucky? Or was this more of Vulcanic leading one down the garden path?

T'Pol shifted her angular shoulders, answering the raptly-attentive inquisitor with a slight shrug. "Intimacy is something I wish to explore with the Chief Engineer."

"Don't mind my asking this, but have you ever...uh..." Sato paused for proper phrasing. "Uh, done it with a human male before? I mean if I'm not being too personal..."

"Done *it*, Ensign?" T'Pol pointedly accentuated.

Nodding, Sato continued, "Uh huh...done the deed."

"The deed..." Humans and their love affair with dangling syntax. T'Pol cocked her head a little to the left, looking pensive.

"You know..." Hoshi winked at her meaningfully. "The horizonal rumba."

T'Pol thought for a moment, and what Hoshi was cryptically referring to dawned on her, finally. Looking her colleague and the woman she felt closest to on Enterprise squarely in the eye, T'Pol said, "No. I have never engaged in sexual interaction with a human male."

"Intercourse," Hoshi helpfully supplied.

"Intercourse," the Vulcan slowly repeated, acknowledging the correct term. "Never with a human male." Arching an eyebrow, she added, "I have had extensive exposure to data involving human reproduction and diverse mating rituals taking into account cultural differences within human populations."

"I'm talking one-on-one Human-Vulcan interaction. Very up close and very friendly."

She had had opportunities...many, in fact, but she had never wanted to let it go that far with anyone until the Chief Engineer. Tersely, T'Pol answered, "No. The Commander is to be my first experience."

Hoshi smiled warmly at her. "Good choice, Sub--" She dropped the use of a title. "T'Pol." The Vulcan didn't bat an eyelash. "Trip's such a sweet, good old boy. Every bit the gentleman he's always claiming he is. Granted, he's a little on the outspoken side, not the type who finds it easy holding back, but that genuine heart of his is usually in the right place."

"So you think I should..." T'Pol threw very soulful eyes at Hoshi, willing to coin a phrase. Solemnly, she said, "'Do the deed' with Commander Tucker."

"Whoa, whoa, hold the interplanetary phone," Sato heatedly piped-up. "Who cares what I think?"

"I do, Ensign. I value your opinion."

"You flatter me, but bottom line, it's what you judge to be right for you that counts. How do you feel?"

Cautiously, sounding identifiably uncomfortable, she voiced, "Torn. As though I'm caught between two worlds. One where logic rules, one where emotions rule. No middle ground."

Feeling sorry for her friend, Hoshi gently asked, "Before you do anything, stop and ask yourself. What are your feelings for Trip? Do you care about him? Does he care about your feelings? Are you going through with it to make him happy? What about yourself? Will this be just an exercise in using, for you both? I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm of the opinion that the care and concern which over time can evolve into love enhances the entire sexual experience." The fling on Risa had been so unlike her. She chalked it up to all the hype the crew had given the planet and its free-styling reputation.

"The Commander is waiting for me."

"Right. I got it. In your quarters." She cocked her index finger at her like a revolver straight out of the old West. Thoughtfully Hoshi expressed, "Don't be pressured. If you're not ready, holding off until you are has more going for it." Watching T'Pol as she stood, Hoshi said, "One last gasp of advice?"

Looking cooly receptive, T'Pol asked, "What is it?"

"The dynamic is complex, but when it comes right down to it..." The expressiveness of her face was the window to her true feelings. "It's more than inserting tab A into slot B. Boom--game over. Critically more."

"I appreciate your input, Ensign."

"What are friends for, Sub-Commander?"

The Vulcan's processing mind leapt ahead. "He is waiting for me to initiate."

"Why do I get the feeling," the Asian dark-haired beauty ventured, "that you're about to don a lab coat?" She ended by telling her friend, "I know it's pretty difficult at a time like this, but try to live beyond the heat of the moment."

T'Pol balanced her negligible weight on the outer bones of her petite feet. She kept pressure off the insteps. Her posture was always impeccable, as was her balance, in more ways than merely correct spinal alignment. "Thank you for everything you have outlined, Ensign. You offer valuable insights. I will see you on the Bridge at point zero-eight hundred hours."

Hoshi's smile was never brighter. "Night, T'Pol. Sweet dreams." She nested her chin upon the backs of her meshed fingers.

The Vulcan tipped her head at her. She walked on. When she passed the table where Mayweather, who had later joined Reed and Dirk Winters, the other helmsman, were seated, they rose, and wished her a good night's rest. She repeated the same head movement she'd given Hoshi. Before exiting the peacefully-humming common room, she nodded at Hoshi again, and her speculative friend waved, watching her go.

"Hey, Hosh," Travis called out to her. "Join us. You look like you're cast adrift sitting all alone over there."

Making a face at the handsome Boomer, she got up and joined the men who had been discussing which of all the planets they had visited so far was the favorite.

"That's easy," Hoshi charged when they asked her. She pouted at Malcolm because it was his contention that she didn't have one. Air-swatting his shoulder, she proclaimed, "Risa--ta-da! I wonder if we'll get to go back anytime soon..."

TBC

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