Missing Scenes from Season Three - Harbinger

SPOILERS: "Harbinger" and it won't make any sense without it.

DISCLAIMER: All things Star Trek belong to CBS/Paramount.  "Harbinger" was written by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  Some of you know that I have already written Harbinger and post-Harbinger fics.  My Commander Tucker series (after "... Has a Baby," which is AU) is a canon-friendly series featuring a whole mess of missing scenes from the tortured relationship of Trip and T'Pol.  This time around, I've decided to take a somewhat different tack (and yes, I plan to continue, as long as I can keep it sufficiently different, hopefully not only from my own work but from everyone else's).   So we'll see if you like it.  There is an NC-17 version of this in Decon, but I wouldn't get  too excited about that - it's really just a little more specific.  Thank you as always, reviewers and beta JustTripn.

CONTENT WARNING:  (Non-explicit) sex and rude language. 

What the hell?

T'Pol was naked.

T'Pol was kissing him. 

T'Pol had her hot, coppery Vulcan tongue in his mouth.

He kissed her back, of course - there was no fighting that natural response.  Indeed, for a few moments responding was all he could do. 

But Trip hadn't become the youngest Chief Engineer in Starfleet by flying blind and hoping for the best.  He was a man who always read the manual ... and often rewrote it.  So when it became fairly obvious where this was going, he decided he'd better slow things down.  "T'Pol ... T'Pol, hold on a minute.  What do I need to know here?"

She blinked uncomprehendingly at him. 

He decided to start with the most basic question first.   "Are we doing what I think we're doing?"

"If by that you mean engaging in sexual intercourse ... yes."   She took a breath.  "Do you not wish to?"  Her eyes dropped and her brow furrowed in confusion.

He smiled.  "Well, obviously I do.  It's just ... I'm Human ... you're Vulcan.  Is there anything I should know before we ...?"  He'd actually already attempted to quietly research this matter himself years ago, out of sheer curiosity, but had come up against a wall of silence:  the Vulcans, apparently, did not share any information of a potentially sexual nature with other species.  That had left him with nothing but T'Pol's cryptic comments and some articles written by Humans and other aliens who made various highly dubious and contradictory claims.

"I believe Vulcan female and Human male physiology is sufficiently compatible.  And as I believe we have already discussed, Vulcan women have no expectation of pleasure in the act.  From my study of Human sexual practices, however, I am hopeful that your experience will be pleasant."

"My experience ...?"  He stopped and squinted at her.  She'd studied the matter?  Well, that was typical.  "What are you saying, exactly?  Can you take pleasure in it?"

"I don't know."

How could she not know?  She was a science officer.  They didn't even share this knowledge among their own people?  And really, how could any woman not know something that basic about her own body?  Unless, perhaps, it really was something that simply didn't happen?

"So ... is that why you're doing this?  To find out?" 

"That is not the only reason."  Her eyes shifted away from him. 

He grunted.  He'd love to think she'd just suddenly gone all ga-ga for him, but he knew better.  "You're jealous of Amanda."

Her face darkened in what sure as hell looked like anguish.  "Would you rather do this with her?  Perhaps, since she is Human ..."

"No, T'Pol.  Not at all.  Not if I can be with you.  You must know that."

She looked so damned relieved.  He felt his remaining tenuous grasp on reason slipping away.  Jealousy implied she meant more to him than just a chance to test a hypothesis, didn't it?  She must want him, or she wouldn't bother.

But there was just so much they could really screw up here.  "What if this ruins our working relationship?"

She looked taken aback.  "Why would it?"

"Because sometimes sex can just kind of ... mess things up." 

"Even if neither of us wants that to happen?"

She just didn't get it, did she?  Well, she was a virgin.  A complete and utter virgin, obviously.  Maybe afterwards she'd figure it out. 

Or maybe she wouldn't.  Maybe this was going to be an unmitigated disaster.

Of course, it might already be that, even if he got up and walked out the door right now like a responsible senior officer would.  You couldn't just tell a suddenly naked woman that no, you don't think so, without expecting to suffer a few consequences.  This was perhaps especially true if you actually wanted her with every fiber of your being. 

On the other hand, this was the same T'Pol who had never let him hear the end of it about Ah'Len or Kaitaama.  She expected him to just jump at the first sign of a little action.  She assumed he was easy. He said, "Look.  It's not that I don't want to do this with you, T'Pol.  Believe me, I do.  But are you sure neither of us get pregnant from this?  Or develop some terrible case of something unspeakable?"

"I have done some research into the matter.  I don't believe so." 

Had that sounded just a little uncertain?

As if she knew exactly what he was thinking, she suddenly pulled away.  Without looking at him, she said, "I apologize, Commander.  Your concerns are reasonable.  I believe I have overstepped ..."

"Oh no you don't," he said, horrified, and grabbed her before she could retreat further.   He kissed her with all he had until her resistance melted and she began to respond to him again.

Once he was certain she wasn't going anywhere, he turned his attention to her right ear, licking, while his left hand went exploring further south.  "There's just one thing," he murmured in her ear.

She waited, panting.

"You have to call me Trip."

"Trip," she growled, and pushed him back onto the floor.

He lay there a moment, a little stunned.  She straddled him and did very nice things to his own ear with her tongue, then kissed and suckled her way aggressively down his neck, before sitting back and tugging on his pants.  He lifted his ass cooperatively, but he couldn't help contemplating a wrestling move or two that might show her she wasn't the one who was going to call all the shots here.

Though if she was, he supposed he could live with that ... Oh God!  Oh God yes, he could live with that.

x x x

What the hell?  

He'd managed to wrestle some control back, for awhile, at least, and had gotten busy exploring this strange new world.  And while there were fewer differences between T'Pol and Human females than he had feared, it turned out that she was as well protected as a new bottle of pills.

"T'Pol?"

"Yes?"

He took a breath.  It was damned hard to think straight with her intoxicating scent fogging his brain.  "You do realize this is kind of a no-going-back thing?"

"Of course."

"So any Vulcan guy you might someday want to, you know, do this with, would know..."

She lifted herself up on her elbows and stared down at him. 

Shit.  He supposed it wasn't really very romantic, bringing up the possibility of future lovers that weren't him.  But being so inexperienced, perhaps she didn't understand.   "We don't have to do this all the way, you know.  There are other ways to ... be intimate."  He gave her a quick demonstration of what he meant, for he was already quite convinced that Vulcan females were as capable of pleasure as the Human kind.

Her breath hissed and her back arched, but apparently she wasn't persuaded.  "I wish to have the full experience of coitus," she managed to get out from between gritted teeth.

Well.  Trip certainly did, too, but he'd learned the hard way not to take anything for granted.  "You're sure?  That's not going to mean we're officially married on twelve planets or something, is it?"

She went still.

Shit.  It did.  It did, didn't it?  Did he want to be married to her?  He hadn't even thought about it before.  "Look, it's not that I'm totally opposed to the idea," he said, surprising himself, "but I don't think I'm really ready to take a major step like that."

She lifted herself up on her elbows again.  "You're not Vulcan," she said.  "I know that this act does not carry the same importance for Humans that it does for ... most Vulcans.  I certainly would not consider us married."

What would she consider them to be, then?  He wanted to ask, but he suddenly had this overwhelming sense that if he did he'd have become the girl in the relationship, tremulously trying to get her partner to promise he'd still love her in the morning. 

So she just wanted "coitus"?  Fine.  He'd give her the best damned coitus in the universe.   If she wanted to walk away from him after that, it would be her own loss.

He went back to work with renewed determination.  He was a talented engineer.  He could make any kind of equipment sing. 

x x x

Wow.

Just ... wow.

T'Pol had been a quiet lover, never vocalizing anything beyond a change in her breathing and some very soft moans.  Afterwards, she was breathless and limp and so, so beautiful. 

He couldn't believe she'd let him see her in a state of abandon like that.  For that matter, he didn't think he ever felt like this before himself - as if his whole being belonged to her and to the universe at once, as if something in him that had never opened before was suddenly in full blossom.

"I can't believe how amazing that was," he said.  It had felt completely different than any other sex he'd ever had: he'd never imagined experiencing such a profound sense of connection to another person, ever.  "I think you may have just ruined me for anyone else."

She swallowed and said nothing, just stared up at him, her eyes wide.

Even with a continuing undercurrent of connection - yes, he was definitely feeling something, a kind of low-level hum in the back of his mind - her silence at this point was a little unnerving.

Well, what had he expected?  That she would tell him she loved him too and he was her very special honey bunny?  That was never going to happen.  He propped himself up on his elbow next to her - there wasn't really enough space on the narrow bunk for them to lie side by side.  "Sorry," he said, brushing a loose wet hair back from her forehead.  "I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable."

She visibly flinched, and he cursed himself for somehow saying the wrong thing.  "Talk to me, T'Pol," he said softly, and laid a possessive hand on her incredibly chiseled belly.  Every instinct told him not to allow her too much space now or she'd take it.

"I'm not uncomfortable," she said.  "I'm ... surprised." She stopped and took a breath and started over.  "The experience was far more pleasant than I had anticipated."

He smiled and said, "Good," though it still seemed to him that something was bothering her.

Perhaps she would be thinking she wasn't supposed to have a good time?

She'd turned towards him, then, as if to tell him something, when the comm suddenly blared to life with a tactical alert.

After that there was the rush of finding clothing and getting dressed and running to their duty stations.

x x x

Since nothing seemed to be happening once he got to engineering, he went into the bathroom to change into the spare uniform he kept there. 

Was that a hickey?

He leaned into the mirror in disbelief.  He hadn't had one of those since high school.  He tugged on his black undershirt, relieved that the vivid mark was low enough he could keep it covered. 

She had been pretty intent on his neck - he remembered that. 

Suddenly he didn't feel quite so anxious about what she might have been about to say.  If she tried to go all Distant Logical Vulcan on him, maybe he would just casually open his shirt and remind her of what she'd done.  Maybe he could even say, "You broke it, you own it."

Of course, that could apply to him, too, in this case.  But after what they'd just shared, he wasn't quite as freaked out at that idea as he had been before.

Outside, he checked engine status - everything was humming along - and checked in with staff - also humming along - and went back into the bathroom one more time, just to look at that hickey again.

He was not crazy.  He had not imagined it.  T'Pol had given him a hickey. 

He had evidence.

x x x

Okay, he'd almost let her get away with all that Logical Vulcan Bullshit out of sheer outrage and disbelief.  He'd been nervously preparing to tell her that he was thinking maybe she was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and she'd thanked him for allowing her to "explore Human sexuality."

It had thrown his game off, no question about it.  He hadn't even thought to mention the damned hickey.  And he was still furious. 

But he was also an idiot if he thought T'Pol was going to be able to handle that morning-after conversation like a Human woman would.

And besides, maybe she'd just done him a big favor.  For one thing, she'd helped him come to his senses. 

He'd been as moony as a teenager about T'Pol for months now, but that didn't mean there was any future in it.  It was ridiculous that just because they'd shared one astoundingly amazing session in the sack that he'd suddenly leap ahead to all sorts of things that never would and probably never could happen, even if by some miracle they both wanted them.

What was that brain chemical?  Oxytocin?  The one that makes people who are having sex feel like they complete each other?  The one that encourages them to have children and be monogamous at least long enough to get the children safely to reproductive age, because that's what their genes want them to do?  This wasn't really him getting his heart broken: it was just his genes misfiring, trying to get him to start reproducing with this hot Vulcan babe who was just deliciously curvy enough to trick his stupid Human genes into thinking there was some point to it.  Maybe there was even something about Vulcan physiology that made a Human male's brain overdose on oxytocin or something. 

So ... to hell with her!

Except that he also knew somehow, deep in his bones, that she was full of shit.  If she wasn't somehow desperate for him, or at least desperate for somebody, she would never have done what she did.  Never.  She had needed him.  Badly.

So ... he was very confused. 

He should be pleased that she'd help him come to his senses before it was too late, because this was just so pointless.  But he was equally certain she had real feelings for him, and simply had no idea how to deal with them.

Which left him pretty much exactly where he'd been before they'd had sex: still caring deeply about this woman and still fairly certain there was no use feeling that way, except that now he was feeling insulted on top of all of it. 

It clearly wasn't going to work for anything more than the very short term.  He should just be thankful for having that one night.  One glorious, amazing night ....

Or maybe ...

No, Tucker, you freaking idiot.  One night.  That was it.  Never again.  Don't be so damned easy.

Still, he couldn't quite completely bury the idea that if he played this right, he'd have her again.  Even that he'd have her all to himself in the end.

Which was stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

He sighed. 

The problem was, he just couldn't make himself stop thinking that she was already his.