Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

Cogenitor

Oh. My. God.

Malcolm reached the sanctuary of his room and leaned back against the door panel.

“What is it with my luck?” he asked himself bitterly.  When he was single – safely, if not satisfactorily, single, unattached and solitary, females of every species had gravitated towards Trip as though he’d developed some kind of sophisticated magnetic field that only affected estrogen, whereas he himself might as well have been invisible.

Now that he had Hoshi, and was therefore unavailable, the cloak of invisibility had dropped off his shoulders and the magnetic field had suddenly and magically transferred itself to him.  Exactly when he least needed it to.

Well, yes, he’d flirted with his opposite number from the Vissian ship when he’d taken her to the Mess Hall.  Veylo was an attractive woman; it had been rather hard to resist the temptation to respond when she so obviously found him interesting.  Secure in the fact of his ultimately good intentions and wishing to make it clear to a certain Commander Tucker that whatever conclusions he might have drawn about the state of play between Lieutenant Malcolm Reed and Ensign Hoshi Sato were totally erroneous, he’d allowed himself to enjoy the game of seduction.  He wasn’t in earnest, after all.  It was just harmless fun, and he hadn't realised until he was fairly launched into it how he’d missed the subtle game that he’d learned to play so well back on Earth.  He’d never had any problems with getting into relationships; staying in one had always been his problem once the woman in it with him came to the inevitable realisation that he was an emotional train-wreck.  And whatever was going on with Veylo, it was never going to come under the heading of ‘permanent’ anyway, so that problem was never going to rear its ugly head.  He was simply enjoying himself, rediscovering the art of racy double-entendres that she was just as expert in as he was.  What were the chances she saw the matter any differently?  Sharing a bit of cheese didn’t qualify as adultery.

But things had taken a dramatic turn for the awkward during the tour of the Armoury.

He’d been – well, yes, perhaps a bit irked by the discovery that the weapons he regarded as so modern and up-to-date were apparently ‘quaint’ by Vissian standards.  He’d hoped that showing her the phase cannon assembly might go some way towards balancing the equation; the phase cannon was, after all, the top end of Starfleet technology.  He had no intention of revealing classified information, but to his eyes there was still a lot to be proud of in that beautiful, deadly machinery.

And that was when she’d sprung it on him.  She wanted to sleep with him.  Except that ‘sleep’ would be only the final item on the agenda.

He’d been so shocked he’d straightened up without thinking and almost stunned himself on a coolant pipe just above his head.  This apparently hadn't changed her mind. 

According to human ‘mating customs’ (as T’Pol would doubtless have termed them) ‘dinner’ was the next step, followed, if both parties were agreeable, by ‘bed’.  He was extremely taken aback by the discovery that the Vissians did things the other way around.  If he wanted the honour of eating with Veylo, he had to sleep with her first.  Well.  Not sleep with her.  God, why didn’t he just say it outright?  Shag her.

No regulations.  No need to tiptoe around the corridors, peering round corners like an intruder on his own ship and slipping into his own cabin with a junior officer like a bloody burglar, terrified of discovery.  No frantically stifling his cries in the pillow for fear someone in the corridor outside would hear him.  And as gratifying as it undoubtedly was to hear that his efforts were making Hoshi want to caterwaul like an alley cat, the unromantic urge to put his hand over her mouth to muffle the noise really took the shine off his achievements sometimes.

He was perfectly confident that he could earn that dinner.  If he wanted to.  And how appealing it was, the idea of actually being able to be upfront about it.  In the bitterest of ironies, the days had been when he’d have positively relished the necessity for subterfuge, the ceaseless game of carrying out an illicit affair under the unsuspecting nose of authority.  Now, however, all that seemed like something he’d grown out of.  He hated the dishonesty of it: the secrecy, the lies.  He and Hoshi were grown adults, forced to act like guilty teenagers because of some stupid regulations that had never been written with five-year stints in mind.

He hadn't said ‘yes’.  On the other hand he hadn't actually said ‘no’ either.  He was disgusted with himself for having been so tempted.  He should have been honest, or if he couldn’t manage honesty he should at least have made some graceful excuse that would have allowed them both to slide out of the situation with honour intact.  Now he was left to wonder how he was going to get out of the trap that he’d neatly shut himself in.  His moral side was lecturing him sternly that two-timing the woman of his dreams would be inexcusable; that the shades of his ancestors would be spinning in their graves at the very idea of such ungentlemanly behaviour.  However tempted he might be – and, being human, he still was – he knew that he couldn’t betray Hoshi, no matter how appealing the idea might be to his lower nature.

Bloody hell.  This is a new one for a tactical officer: think of some way to get out of shagging a beautiful woman without causing an inter-species incident. 

He needed advice.  Ideally, from someone who wouldn’t a) reproach him for forgetting about regulations and invite him to watch a game of water-polo to take his mind off things, b) tell him he’d been illogical to get himself into this dilemma in the first place, or c) laugh their heads off at his plight.  Option d) would doubtless get him a sympathetic hearing, but probably also an unseemly amount of delighted curiosity.  There was always option e) if he was really, utterly desperate, but telling Travis anything he wanted kept confidential was pretty well the same as f) putting out a ship-wide announcement.  Both options e) and f) were almost certain to lead to the one outcome he was particularly anxious to avoid: Hoshi kicking him in the balls, calling him names and refusing to sleep with him again.

He was just ruminating over which of these equally unappealing alternatives might be the best to take when the door chime sounded.  His startled jerk upright was an eloquent indicator of his growing sense of being hunted, and it was with some trepidation that he gave permission for whoever it was to enter.  If it was Veylo he’d just have to take the bull by the horns and explain his situation.  If that involved him ending up looking like a total prat, he didn’t deserve any better.  At least he’d be a faithful prat.

The door hissed open.  Trip stood there, and as soon as he saw his commander’s face Malcolm knew that as far as needing help went, the boot was on the other foot.  Trip’s face was a faithful mirror for his every mood, and right now it was angry and desperate, even almost wild.  Until they got this sorted out – whatever crisis this new arrival betokened – then his own concerns would just have to take a back step.  Maybe Fate had intervened to save him, but the shudder of certainty went through him that it would be a rescue more costly than he’d have wanted at any price.

This was trouble.

Big trouble.

***

“Gosh, I’d never have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself!” said Emma, laughing.

“I know!  He’s the last man on board I’d have...” Miriam buried her face in her coffee cup, snorting.  “Right out in front of everyone!”

“So what’s with the latest?”  Hoshi dropped into the empty chair at the crowded table in the Mess Hall, her face alight with interest.  To judge by the faces of the women gathered there, something remarkable had happened; and she was always keen to keep up with the latest scuttlebutt.

She noticed, a moment too late, that one face was not grinning.  Her best friend, Liz, was looking stricken.  And that expression was directed at her.

“Uh, it’s ... it’s nothing,” stammered Liz.  “Nothing at all.  Really.”

“Nothing?” Eloise stared at her.  “It’s the most exciting piece of ‘nothing’ to happen on this ship for months!”

A cold feeling started to congeal in the pit of Hoshi’s stomach.  To try to assuage it she took a swallow of her green tea.  Even though it was still hot enough to make her mouth smart, however, the cold feeling still remained.

Emma leaned forward.  “You should’ve been here at lunchtime!  I swear, everyone in the place was watching the two of them!”

“Watching who do what?”  Her voice emerged thinly; or at least it sounded so to her ears.

“The Vissian Tactical Officer and Lieutenant Reed!”  Eloise almost squealed with excitement.  “They were flirting with each other!  Right over there!”

“It was nothing like that.  You’re just making mountains out of molehills.”  Desperation was too plain in Liz’s voice.  “Of course they’d sit together and talk.  They must have a lot of shared interests.  That’s all it was.”

“Oh, sure.  You could tell what one of their shared interests was!”  A laugh ran around the table.  “Feeding him lumps of cheese, like the Captain giving Porthos treats!  And man, if his eyes had been hooks –!”

Hoshi took refuge in her mug of tea again, her thoughts spinning.  She hardly heard Liz continue trying to argue a case she clearly didn’t believe in herself.  From all accounts, the evidence was pretty damning, and it would need more than the efforts of a loyal friend to clear him of the indictment.

To be sure, nothing had been said of commitment or exclusivity, let alone love.  Their relationship was far too new for that kind of question.  She felt that she mattered to him; she knew unquestioningly that he’d wanted her and still did, and she wanted him just as badly.  The physical side of their relationship was a drug to which she’d become addicted at the first hit.

In cold hard reality, she had no idea how he regarded her.  Although she’d shared his bunk on quite a few occasions now, she’d known better than to attempt to pry beyond what he chose to reveal of his inner thoughts.  He remained, in many respects, a closed book to her.

The most basic common sense told her that she could hardly complain that he’d never sat in the Mess flirting with her.  They’d both known from the start that their liaison would have to be kept a close secret; it might not directly contravene regulations, as she was not in his chain of command, but it was sailing pretty damned close to it.  Every word, every look, had to be guarded.  Even Liz had been excluded, though the odd hint she’d dropped of late suggested she’d guessed something was going on.  Her obvious dismay now confirmed that beyond all doubt.

“We were kind of hoping for a repeat performance tonight,” snickered Anna.  “But neither of them have shown up.  Maybe they’re having something a little more intimate ... in his quarters.”

A delighted gasp ran around the table at this scandalous suggestion.

“Maybe she’s getting a personal demonstration of his weapons capability,” chortled Hannah.  “She sure got a personally conducted tour of the Armory this afternoon.  Never saw him so charming.  I hardly recognized him!”

There was a very slight stir of discomfort at this.  Hannah was a member of Malcolm’s department; she owed him loyalty.  Dropping him deeper into the mire by revealing his behaviour in the confines of his own domain was not, as the Brit would probably have expressed it, ‘cricket.’  That said, it was an open secret that she thought she should have made Ensign long ago.  Her commanding officer doubtless had his own reasons why she hadn't.

“Pity I missed them at lunch, then,” said Hoshi mechanically.  She’d been working on a particularly complex translation and had taken it back to her room to finish in peace and quiet; consequently she’d turned up late for lunch and, obviously, missed all the fun.  It was clear that Malcolm had noticed her absence and acted accordingly.  Maybe he’d have acted the same way even if she’d been there.  After all, he’d never uttered the word ‘love.’

She looked down at her risotto.  It was rapidly going cold, and she no longer wanted it anyway.