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“Malcolm?”
Captain Archer’s voice pulled his attention away from where he’d been staring. He couldn’t. He mustn’t. But, oh god, he wanted.
“Erm. What was that, sir?” he stammered, flustered as he struggled to recover himself. “My apologies, I was… distracted.”
“I can see that,” Archer smirked. Malcolm’s back stiffened. He’d been caught out.
“It won’t happen again,” he replied.
“See that it doesn’t,” Archer said, his grin broadening, a sparkle in his eyes. Certainly, now, Malcolm was the butt of a joke to his captain, and yet, he couldn’t help himself. His attention wandered, and he quickly found himself lost once more in warm, brown eyes, filling his heart with longing.
“You can pet him, if you want,” Archer added happily.
Malcolm’s gaze snapped to his captain once more, away from the little beagle looking up at him hopefully, his little tail flapping to and fro. He could feel the look of horror spreading over his face at the mere suggestion.
“No, sir, I couldn’t possibly- I believe I am needed at my duty station, sir, if I may be dismissed?”
“Malcolm, I’m in my pajamas in the hallway. I’m off duty. Clearly this isn’t a formal meeting, and you don’t need my permission to leave.”
Malcolm, Archer could see, was practically vibrating by this point.
“But you have it anyway,” Archer amended.
“Yes sir, thank you sir, have a pleasant evening sir,” Malcolm rattled off, and bolted down the corridor as quickly as he could without actually running.
Porthos whined softly, smacking his little dog mouth like he did when he wanted cheese.
“Sorry, buddy. I’m sure you’ll win him over someday,” Archer said sympathetically.
The two padded off down the hallway, Porthos on his little doggie paws and Archer in bare feet.
***
It happened twice more, and then a fourth time: Archer would run across Malcolm while out with Porthos, the dog would look at Malcolm with his adorable puppy eyes, and Malcolm would stare at him transfixed, only to make his excuses and flee. The last time, Porthos had trotted after him, somewhat naughtily, although Archer could deny the dog nothing with that cute little face of his. The dog cornered the armory officer against the lift doors, hopping up at him ( very bad behavior, indeed) as the small man pressed back against the door plating.
“Just give him what he wants, Malcolm!” Archer said, because this was getting ridiculous.
“But his rank!”
“His what? ”
“ Your rank, sir, of course,” Malcolm corrected. “I can’t-”
Whatever argument the lieutenant had been about to put forth was lost as the lift doors opened, sending him falling backward into the waiting compartment with a yelp. Archer grabbed Porthos just in time to keep him from taking a ride as well. Porthos was disappointed, but Jon didn’t want to lose his dog on another deck and have to devote resources to tracking him down. Besides, he wasn’t wearing pants under his bathrobe, just his underwear, so running around the whole ship like that was no good.
Jon sighed.
“One of these days, Porthos. He’s just a tough nut to crack, that’s all.”
***
Jonathan Archer had that look about him. The one he got sometimes when he was obsessing, getting overly fixated on something he was struggling to figure out. He could be relentlessly single-minded. Trip Tucker would know; the man was his best friend, after all, and he’d seen him get a burr under his saddle about all kinds of things.
“Somethin’ on your mind, Jon?” the chief engineer asked after staring at that pensive look for half an hour over breakfast.
“I think Malcolm is afraid of my dog,” he said, the reply bursting out of him like a dam breaking.
“Huh?” Trip asked articulately, mouth hanging open, his fork frozen partway in its journey as he stared at Jon skeptically. A piece of omelet slid down the tines and plopped wetly onto his plate.
“Every time they see each other, Porthos wants to play with him, and Malcolm runs away.”
“Humans possess many phobias,” T’Pol contributed. “None of them are logical.”
“No, that doesn’t make any sense,” Trip argued. “Malcolm isn’t scared of a dog. Only two things that scare him are drowning, and-”
Trip hesitated.
“And what, Trip?” Jon pressed.
“Well, I don’t think it’s for me to say,” Trip hedged.
“I overheard Ensign Sato telling Ensign Mayweather that the Lieutenant is afraid of breasts,” T’Pol volunteered, and Captain Archer nearly spit some of his juice. She added, “Eavesdropping is distasteful, yet humans continually underestimate the sensitivity of Vulcan hearing.”
“ Breasts? ” Jon sputtered.
“He saw her with her shirt off,” Trip said, rolling his eyes.
“That seems… inappropriate,” T’Pol stated.
“Is this going to require disciplinary action?” Jon asked.
“What? No!” Trip said. “It was accidental and in the line of duty, and mind you, he didn’t even look. Kinda think that’s why she thought he was afraid of ‘em. Her boobs, I mean.”
“Yeah, Trip, we got that,” Jon scoffed.
“An antiquated and uncouth term for secondary sexual characteristics commonly associated with human females,” T’Pol said blandly.
Trip shrugged. “That’s what she called ‘em.”
“By what metric did Ensign Sato determine that the Lieutenant was experiencing fear?”
“I dunno, I guess he looked startled or somethin’? Hoshi would know better’n me,” he said. “Look, you probably just had to be there.”
T’Pol stared at him blankly. “How could I possibly ‘be there’ to better understand it when I was not, in fact, there, and the scientific nature of space-time precludes the possibility of time travel to rectify this… oversight?”
“I’m telling you, time travel is real- ”
“It’s just an expression,” Trip intervened. “It means you have to rely on the people who were there to tell you all about it since you couldn’t be there yourself.”
“Ah. A far more logical interpretation. Thank you.”
“Trip, do you think I scared him?” Jon asked, looking concerned.
“Uh,” Trip said, confused. “How d’you mean?”
“I was in my underwear.”
T’Pol turned slowly, and looked at Jon as though he had been an Andorian all along and she had only just realized.
“... Every time?” Trip asked.
“Just the last time,” Jon said, “and I had my bathrobe.”
“Why’n the hell would you go and do a thing like that?”
“I would prefer not to know,” T’Pol interjected.
“I was just walking my dog! Trip! What if he thinks I want him to…” Jon gestured vaguely.
“... Want him to what, Jon?”
“You know! Do… inappropriate things in… secret places. Naughty places! ”
“Oh god. No, I don’t think… no.” Trip sighed. “Look, if ya just leave it alone, I’ll try to find out what his deal is with the dog. Also, the whole boobs thing? Let’s never bring that up again.”
“I strongly concur with that course of action,” T’pol said.
Jon looked vaguely troubled, but nodded anyway.
***
Clearly, Trip was going to have to intervene. Jon could just get so hung up on things sometimes. Like the time he found out it was Malcolm’s birthday, and made Hoshi stalk him to find out what he liked to eat. At the time, Trip hadn’t been too keen on Malcolm just yet in general, and was pretty ticked off at him that time in particular, so he hadn’t seen why Jon thought there was a point in forcing the guy’s friendship. There was also the time Jon was bound and determined to make Malcolm have breakfast in the Captain’s mess, and by then Trip had gotten to know Malcolm well enough to know that both the recognition and the personal attention from a superior were enough to make Malcolm’s skin crawl. The man sought out the company of few officers of lower rank, and only one of higher rank than his own, and that was Trip himself. This clashed with Jon’s determination to make friends with absolutely everyone in a way that was spectacularly fraught with problems, particularly if Jon kept trying to push the issue with Porthos.
“He thinks you think he wants ya to touch him in secret places,” Trip informed the armory officer.
“Secret places? What, like in the back of shuttlepod two?” Malcolm said with a disbelieving scoff that was quickly muffled as he pinned Trip to the bulkhead beneath the shuttlepod airlock and pressed his lips to the taller man’s neck.
“Unf,” Trip replied, and Malcolm quickly moved to claim his lips, the small space falling silent for a few moments, save for some soft, wet kissing sounds.
“I don’t think that about the Captain,” Malcolm said reassuringly as he nipped along Trip’s jaw. “Nor am I frightened of Porthos. The little scamp scarcely weighs more than ten kilos, if I had to guess.”
“Malcolm…” Trip said thoughtfully. “D’you… are you actin’ that way because you think Jon’s rank extends to his dog?”
“Don’t be thick, Trip. How could I think something so… so… patently absurd?”
Malcolm laughed it off, but as Trip got a really good look at him, he saw that Malcolm had started to look a little nervous.
“Oh my god,” Trip groaned. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re worried about fraternization with a dog. ”
“Well, that’s… that’s silly, ” Malcolm said, but he was looking more and more evasive. “Listen, are you sure maintenance isn’t due in here today, because I’m beginning to feel we should cut this short…”
“Aw, c’mon now,” Trip said, pulling the shorter man in for a soft, soothing kiss. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. It’s just that if you wanna play with the dog, y’should just… y’know, play with him, is all.”
“If I wanted to play with the dog, I would, ” Malcolm replied, his voice becoming something closer to a growl, pushing Trip back up against the bulkhead. “Just now, I’ve got other things I’d rather be doing, if you don’t mind.”
He yanked the zip of Trip’s jumpsuit all the way down, and sank to his knees with a wicked grin.
“I don’t mind,” Trip confirmed, his eyes rolling back in his head as Malcolm put his clever mouth to work.
***
Trip had it all figured out. It took a while to put his plan into action, specifically, long enough for a first contact to go well enough that the Captain and T’pol were invited to stay planetside for a few days, leaving him in charge of the Enterprise, and more importantly, dog sitting.
Thankfully, Jon’s bent for making everyone his friend made that happen sooner rather than later.
Grinning at his own foresight and planning, Trip popped his head through the hatchway and addressed the man crammed up into the phase cannon housing.
“You ‘bout done with that?” he asked conversationally.
Malcolm expressed his views on the cannon’s questionable parentage and slowly extricated himself.
“As done as I’ll get tonight. Have you got plans?”
“Yep,” Trip said, letting the ‘p’ pop, “if you’re up for it.”
“Really?” Malcolm said, sounding intrigued.
His gaze slid down the length of Trip’s body and back up, and oh, yes, on any other night, Trip would be game, and maybe still was, depending how things went. If his plans were a success, though, Malcolm might be otherwise occupied.
“Got a surprise for ya,” he said, watching Malcolm’s smile falter and gaze shutter predictably; Malcolm wasn’t overly fond of surprises. “Been workin’ on somethin’ with Chef,” he added, knowing it would loosen Malcolm back up. Malcolm wasn’t a picky eater, so anything food-related was generally safe territory.
It was a cheap move, but that was how surprises worked, and none of it was technically untrue. It just wasn’t the only thing Trip had planned. Dropping a red herring into the mix was practically a rule of crafting a surprise worth its salt.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t spare fifteen minutes to make out and grope, though. No one was going to bother them here; Malcolm was so prone to becoming cross with his temperamental phase cannons that the armory crew left him alone while he worked up here unless they began to suspect he had died.
Thank heaven for Malcolm’s temper.
***
Malcolm shifted from one foot to the other, trying to subvert the impulse to bounce in place in a blend of anticipation and anxiety. Everything Trip had said had been fairly straightforward, but there had been that twinkle in his eye and swagger in his step that told Malcolm something was afoot, as blatant as though it was a line on a page in those beloved Sherlock Holmes stories he had read over and over as a boy. That air of mischief could mean anything, too; Trip’s surprises had a tendency toward being either wildly amazing or complete disasters with very little falling in between, but Malcolm knew from experience that the one thing that wasn’t going on for certain was nothing. Oh yes, Trip was up to something, and that meant Malcolm was either about to be in for the time of his life, or subject to something very near to mortal peril.
Arousal and dread made for less than accommodating bedfellows.
He steadied his posture and pressed the button at Trip’s door. One did not pussyfoot into the unknown with one’s uncertainties on full display.
He was being overly dramatic, anyway, and he knew it.
The door slid open, revealing all that tall… blond… tall and blond and gorgeous… leaning there at the doorway just so cavalierly, as though calculated to raise the temperature under Malcolm’s collar to something dangerously close to steamy. Alas, no; that notorious Tucker charm that would have sent any Victorian lady to her fainting couch was completely genuine, innately a part of this marvelous, glorious, gorgeous… man. A man whom Malcolm wanted to climb like a tree. And, had he mentioned, gorgeous?
“Hello,” he sighed dreamily, distantly aware from the way Trip had his lip caught in his teeth, and the shaking of his shoulders from holding back his laughter for the sake of Malcolm’s dignity, that he had probably failed to reply to Trip’s greeting at least once.
“Well, steady on, there,” Trip drawled playfully, not bothering with an attempt at sounding British but rather letting his American Southern thicken luridly, lending that much more absurdity to his turn of phrase.
“Oh, bugger off,” Malcolm sassed back, a blush riding high across his cheeks as Trip waggled his eyebrows, no doubt taking the insult as a sexual suggestion.
“How ‘bout ya blow me?” Trip sassed back. “Then again, I have beer, so I expect we could just have that instead.”
“Both. Both is good,” Malcolm declared, pushing Trip back through the doorway with renewed confidence.
***
“Well, it’s the right temperature, at least,” Malcolm noted, sipping from the glass.
Trip had really made an effort, bottled it and everything, serving it in a glass to be fancy and all. He watched as Malcolm studied the liquid in the glass, thoughtfully considering the flavor.
“Do you know, it’s almost exactly a proper brown ale, except not at all?” Malcolm concluded finally. “It’s very good, though. Well done.”
Trip couldn’t help the brilliant smile that broke across his face. He knew he must be grinning like a loon, but truly, anything that pleased Malcolm had a tendency to do that to him.
“You say Chef helped you?” Malcolm eyed him shrewdly. “My compliments, then. To him, of course.”
“Hey! He only helped me t’find somewhere I could keep it secret and he could keep an eye on it. And with gettin’ ingredients. But I figured out everything I needed, and how t’make it, and how t’build the… the… brewing thingy! I’m an engineer, it ain’t exactly a huckleberry above my persimmon, ya know!”
Malcolm's eyes sparkled and his lips pressed tight, trying to hold back a smile but ultimately failing in the long run. And there it was: Malcolm, laughing, sitting right there on the edge of Trip’s very own bed. Laughing at him, sure, but when it came to laughing at him or with him, it all boiled down to Malcolm cutting loose and having a good time, as far as Trip was concerned. Besides, it wasn’t like the little Englishman ever really laughed at anything horrible, because it wasn’t in his nature to find humor in real meanness.
“I suppose you’ll be running a distillery off of the warp engine, next,” Malcolm goaded.
“Only if I was wantin’ t’blow us all the way t’Jesus,” Trip replied. “My great-granddaddy always used to say, ‘Don’t mix yer motorin’ with yer moonshine.’”
“That was advice someone in your family actually had to give?” Malcolm tutted, shaking his head. “It would seem my people have left the colonies unattended for far too long.”
“Well, speaking of leaving things unattended,” Trip said, grinning broadly again, and as though on cue there came a scuffle from the head. Malcolm sat up straighter, instantly alert, and Trip was reminded very appropriately of Porthos at the mere mention of cheese as Malcolm’s eyes darted between him and the closed bathroom.
“I hate t’have to do this to ya, Malcolm…” Trip said, sauntering to the door, “but… surprise.”
He pushed the button, the door opened with a whoosh, and out scampered around ten kilos of beagle.
Porthos, free of obligations to his vacationing master and operating largely on his on will thanks to Trip’s tendency to spoil him in all possible ways, let fly with his heart’s wildest dreams and leapt on the bed, bounding squarely against Malcolm’s chest and taking him down to the mattress. Baying a happy victory, he zigged, he zagged, his tail he wagged, and he licked face like tomorrow would never come.
“Dog after my own heart,” Trip observed with eyes alight in merriment, heedless of Malcolm’s spluttering protests as he took his seat to watch the spectacle unfold.
Every limb flailed in tumult, the proud Englishman brought low by a worthy adversary and left with no plan of attack or defense.
“Oh god, wet, it’s so wet!” he cried out to the heavens, but the heavens offered him no salvation.
And Trip watched a miracle unfold before him, one he would carry in his heart to the end of his days, as Malcolm’s hands, those hands capable of magnificent violence, the most delicate of repairs, and the most sensual and loving touch Trip had ever known, gave up in surrender and dropped to Porthos’ little fuzzy head, and pet him.
And oh, did he pet him. Malcolm petted that dog, and Porthos licked his face, and someone was laughing and someone’s tail was wagging, and Trip didn’t really think it mattered who because it was one emotion felt by both man and dog at once.
It seemed, Trip thought to himself with a small laugh of his own, you really could teach an old dog new tricks, and he didn’t mean the beagle. From the center of the action, Trip could hear Malcolm’s voice, and it took him a moment to make out what Malcolm was saying:
“Oh, I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Porthos yipped happily, and Malcolm laughed happily, and Trip laughed happily, and said, smiling:
“I think you said that t’him faster’n ya did to me.”
Malcolm sat up carefully, holding the wriggling beagle to his chest.
“I truly do love you, Trip, I do,” he said. “Ever and always. You know that, right?”
“Yes, Malcolm, I surely do.”
Malcolm sniffled then, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand to wipe away gathering tears. Porthos attempted to catch any that escaped with a sweeping lick to Malcolm’s cheek.
“I’m sorry, love. I’m just terribly happy.”
Trip, resting his chin in his hand, cocked his head to the side with a smile.
“You know what?”
“What?”
“So am I.”
Porthos bayed his agreement to the rapturous joy of all.
***
The two men lay cuddled in Trip’s bunk, the dog sprawled between them, enjoying their own personal movie night and finishing off the last of the beer.
“Y’know, this right here? This is the American Dream, Malcolm. A man, his love, a beer, and a dog.”
Malcolm met Trip’s gaze with a look of amused scorn.
“This is British beer, sort of, in spite of your efforts.”
“Suppose I have t’give ya that, it’s awful warm for American beer.”
“And beagles are British dogs.”
“Dear god. Mistakes were made.”
“Tosser.”
“Hey, Malcolm?” Trip asked with mock innocence.
“Yes, Trip?”
He smirked, that glint of mischief sparkling in his eyes.
“Don’t forget to salute Admiral Porthos the next time y’see him on the bridge.”
Malcolm cuddled closer with a happy sigh, Trip holding him snugly in his arms.
“Piss off, darling.”
“Yes, dear.”