Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

Hatchery

Hoshi stirred and turned over.  She’d been drowsing, wrapped in a warm post-coital haze of satisfaction, but she’d become aware that the body beside her was not slipping into the usual slumber. 

Usually their sexual encounters gave Malcolm the same release as they did her, but tonight that obviously hadn't happened.  Although he was lying supine and the slowing rise and fall of his chest testified to his physical satiation, she could see even in the dim light that he was wide awake.  His eyes were fixed on the bulkhead above his bunk, and his free arm was thrown up around and above his head in a way that suggested sleep was far from his mind.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing, sweetheart.”  He planted an absent kiss on her forehead.  “Go to sleep.”

“Malcolm Reed, you make a rotten liar.”  She propped herself up on one elbow and studied him as closely as the poor visibility would allow.  “Now tell me what’s really going on in that mind of yours.  I’ve known something’s up with you since you came back from that Insectoid ship down there.”

If it was something to do with security that he couldn’t share with her, he’d tell her so.  But she knew it wasn’t.  She was becoming attuned to the way that his inner moods subtly affected his lovemaking; usually he was tender, even diffident, but tonight he’d been a little more forceful than she’d known him before, a little more demanding.  It had certainly been exciting, but she’d known that something was simmering away behind it.

“I’m sorry,” he said contritely, kissing her again, this time with more attention.  “I hoped I ... well, I hoped you wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“After all this time, you think I don’t read you pretty well?”  One finger traced the outline of his mouth, and he kissed that too.  “And you came back in the shuttle with Major Hayes.”

Instantly he stiffened.  Bingo, she thought.  It hardly needed more than the mention of the MACO major’s name to send her lover into a rage; jealously possessive of his position on the ship, and more than half convinced the captain was weighing up Hayes as his replacement, Malcolm was obsessively suspicious of every word the major uttered.

The two of them had already engaged in one bout of brawling that had put both of them on the carpet in front of the captain.  It had resulted in an uneasy truce, but apparently this hadn't lasted.  Realistically, it had never been likely to.

“He’s at it again.”  The words emerged as a snarl, as though bursting out under pressure.  “Trying to circumvent my authority, trying to turn us all into bloody MACOs.  Now he wants to cancel Movie Night and set up another training session for the senior officers instead!  He has no idea what it’s like being out here as long as we’ve been.  And when I don’t agree, ‘I don’t think that’s how the captain would see it’!”  He drawled the words out in a horribly accurate imitation of Hayes’ accent.  “He has no fucking idea.  He’s just a jumped-up oaf straight out of West Point who thinks he knows everything.  And the captain seems to buy every damned thing he’s selling!”

Hoshi opened her mouth to argue and closed it again.  She would have to choose her words with the utmost care with Malcolm in this mood.  Normally he was careful not to use bad language in front of her; that he had so far forgotten himself as to swear told her a great deal about his emotional state.

“I’m sure Captain Archer appreciates everything you’ve done for the ship,” she said gently.  “If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be here.  I don’t believe for a moment that he’d even think of replacing you, even if the major wanted your job.”  Which I’m fairly sure he doesn’t, she added to herself silently.

“Oh, certainly.  That’s why he brought the MACOs on board.  Because my team wasn’t good enough!”  The pent-up bitterness was fairly exploding out of him now.  “Conceited wankers, strutting round the ship in their bloody camos like they own the place!  And Hayes is the worst of the lot!”

This certainly wasn’t the time to mention that she’d made it her business to befriend many of the MACOs and found them charming and polite without exception.  They were a credit to their unit and to their leader, and she was sure the captain had meant them to complement the ship’s security team rather than replace them.  As for Major Hayes himself, he was stiffly professional but perfectly courteous in an old-fashioned sort of way.  Very much like the public edition of Malcolm himself, as a matter of fact.  This wasn’t a good time to mention that either.  To say it wouldn’t go down well was probably the understatement of the century.

“Amanda Cole seems to have been good for Commander Tucker,” she said slyly.  “If the scuttlebutt’s anything to go by.”

That got her a sharp look.

“He assured me it was just neuropressure.  Nothing intimate was involved at all, more’s the pity.”  A huff of a laugh, with little humor in it.  “I think it’d take more than Corporal Cole has in her armoury to do Trip any good.”

“I think you need a little neuropressure yourself.  If you spend all night whipping yourself into a rage over Major Hayes you’ll be asleep at your post tomorrow.  Turn over and I’ll give your shoulders a rub.”

Evidently nothing loath, he rolled over to lie on his stomach.  She sat up and put her hands on his deltoid muscles.  They were practically knotted with tension even now.  “Gosh, you’re stiff!”

“Give me another twenty minutes and you never know your luck.”  He grinned at his own joke, and then groaned as her fingers began kneading hard into his flesh.  “Ow.  Oh, God.  You have three days to stop that.”

“If you don’t stop fretting so much you’re going to give yourself an ulcer.”

“Tell that to Major Pain-in-the-Arse.  Though he’d probably be pleased if I did.  It’d make his takeover bid that much easier.”

“Malcolm.  You have to sort this out.  Talk to him.  I’m sure he wants a good working relationship as much as you do.”

“What he wants is my job,” he growled.  “He just can’t stand a lowly lieutenant giving him orders.  He’ll do anything to undermine my authority.”  He raised his head and gave her a dark look.  “One of these days he’ll push his luck a step too far, Hoshi.  And then we’ll see.”

A shiver of apprehension went through her.  She was beginning to feel that it was inevitable too.  The tension between the two men was not, as it had been once, producing the charged and breathless hush that precedes a storm; that had discharged itself in their violent clash in the gym.  It had been replaced by a steady, hostile, niggling war of attrition that was slowly and inevitably ratcheting up the ill will between them again.  And another such clash would be the worst possible outcome in the circumstances, where everyone on the ship should be concentrating fully on their mission.  She could only imagine what Captain Archer would find to say about a second episode.  One, if not both, of the combatants would be quite likely to see the inside of the brig.

“Hey.  Don’t let’s think about him here.”  Hastily she pushed the thought away, as though she could push away the fact along with it.  “I’ve got much better things for you to think about.”

He glanced back over his shoulder.  “Seeing you like that, I’m thinking about them already.”  With a swift, skilled twist he pulled her down beside him again.  “Now, let’s talk about improving on that twenty minute forecast I mentioned.”

She gave herself up to his newly hungry caresses, but there was still anger behind them.  She could feel it.  And nothing she could do or say would stop it.

The reckoning was only a matter of time.