Part I

Enterprise’s gym had a distinctive smell to it, and this wasn’t it. Jonathan Archer, dressed in a tank top and shorts, looked around for the source as he walked into the room. There were only a few other people there, Malcolm working with free weights, Travis on the gyroscope and T’Pol on the treadmill. Archer picked the treadmill next to T’Pol and looped his towel over the handle. T’Pol, of course, didn’t have a towel with her since she rarely worked up a sweat, unlike her human counterparts.

Wherever the smell was coming from, it was stronger on the treadmill. Archer started up the treadmill and set it for variable terrain. He started jogging, letting the machine set the pace, and let his mind wander. One of the reasons that he liked running was that he could let his mind wander wherever it wanted to and by the time his treadmill session was done problems would solve themselves or at the very least he would have a new perspective to work with. This afternoon, however, he kept coming back to the sweet, fruity smell that was lingering in the gym. He ran through the various fruits and perfumes in his mind trying to place it, but failed so he moved on to the duty roster which had become a problem lately because two of the crew were reportedly having difficulty working together. The rumour mill aboard ship was saying that the root of the difficulty was a romantic relationship gone bad.

He chose to ignore the rumour, unless he was informed officially of the relationship, since it would require disciplinary action. He’d feel like a hypocrite to discipline anyone for that, since he harboured his own desires to ‘fraternize.’ Not that he would ever act on them. Still, he made a mental note to read the two crew the riot act and come as close as possible to letting them know that he knew, unofficially, and that they better get their shit together so he didn’t have to deal with it again.

As he was considering what he would say, he saw T’Pol wind down her treadmill session and leave. He caught another whiff of the scent as she passed in front of him on her way out of the gym and then she was gone. Telling himself to stop staring, he looked around the gym to see if anyone had caught him checking out T’Pol’s retreating backside. He needn’t have worried. Malcolm, who was known to have a thing for women’s backsides, was freely checking out T’Pol to the point where he wasn’t even paying attention to where he was putting down the weight—which, as it happened, was on his foot. Travis snickered as Malcolm tried to swallow the string of curses begging to be unleashed at his own stupidity.

“Lose your concentration, Malcolm?” Archer tried not to grin as Malcolm looked up guiltily and Travis struggled not to laugh too loudly. Malcolm shot a glare at the ensign who tried valiantly to regain his composure.

“Must have, sir.”

* * *

Jonathan Archer strode confidently out of the turbolift and followed the familiar path to T’Pol’s quarters. Movie night had been reinstated with a few changes. Each crew member now submitted a movie from the ship’s database to a pool and the computer randomly picked one each week taking into account votes from the crew to determine the relative popularity of the movies. Not surprisingly, a lot of the movies were science fiction—although ‘Alien’ never seemed to come up in the rotation. Tonight it was ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ remake from the late twentieth century. For some unfathomable reason it was T’Pol’s choice and he had managed to tweak the movie schedule to make it come up in the rotation sooner rather than later.

He stopped in front of T’Pol’s quarters and rang the door chime. They’d gotten into the habit of having dinner together before movie night since it was sometimes the only chance they got to sit down and go over some of the minutiae of running a starship that didn’t merit a meeting in and of itself. Of course, he had an ulterior motive in that he enjoyed the chance to sit down for an hour with her and just talk to her casually, watch her without letting her know he was doing it. The door opened, admitting him to T’Pol’s quarters. Usually she was ready, but apparently tonight she was running behind.

The same sweet, fruity smell that had permeated the gym was in T’Pol’s quarters, only here it was stronger. The door to the bathroom was closed, but there was no noise other than the rustle of cloth. He refused his mind permission to explore what she might be doing in there and instead looked around her quarters for something to distract him. He’d been in here often enough that he knew about almost everything of interest—anything that he could legitimately look at, that is, which meant anything out in plain sight.

Today, there was something new. Sitting out on the table was a small box with a tin sitting beside it. The label on the box said Passion for Passion Fruit Gift. According to the label on the box, it should contain Passion fruit Shower Gel, Passion Fruit Body Scrub, and something called Passion Fruit Body Butter. Two of the items were missing, but a tin labelled Body Butter was on the table beside the box. It looked like it had been opened, which he thought was odd since T’Pol would never use anything with animal products in it. Giving in to his curiosity, he picked up the tin, which was slightly greasy, and opened it cautiously, keeping a guilty eye on the bathroom door. So that’s what she’d had on in the gym.

He read off the ingredients on the side and decided that shea butter must be some kind of plant product. He dipped a finger into the tin and rubbed a bit of the substance between his fingers. It was at this inopportune moment that T’Pol emerged from the bathroom along with the remnants of passionfruit scented steam from her shower. She was dressed in uniform and ready to go, but her arched eyebrow silently demanded an explanation as he guiltily replaced the lid on the tin and put it back on the table.

“I didn’t know you liked passion fruit,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t ask why he had a finger in the tin and wishing that he hadn’t picked up it up in the first place since he was now stuck with a couple of greasy fingers and providing an explanation.

“It was a gift.”

“Really?” The look he got from her suggested that he hadn’t sounded quite as casual as he had meant to. It was hard to ignore the sinking feeling that news gave him, but he pushed it away along with the questions he wanted to ask, like who would feel comfortable enough to give her that particular kind of gift.

“Ambassador V’Lar,” she said, a propos nothing as they stepped out of her quarters.

“What?”

“The gift,” T’Pol said, “it was from ambassador V’Lar.”

“Oh.” He felt his earlier lightness return with the knowledge that T’Pol did not, in fact, have a secret male admirer—well, at least none other than him. “That seems kind of an odd gift, is it some kind of Vulcan tradition or something?”

“No.”

He tried to think of something else to talk about since he got the feeling that he was showing way too much interest in her personal body care products than was proper for a superior officer. Unfortunately, his brain refused to shift gears, not in small part because his nose was right about the level of her head and she had obviously made use of the shower gel and body scrub. The scent wafted off of her with every step.

“The ambassador said that the fruit reminded her of someone she and I both know.”

They entered the Captain’s Mess and sat down to their steaming soup which had just been brought out. How the steward managed to time things that well, Jonathan had never been able to figure out, but the steward managed to do it every week.

“You?” He asked T’Pol as they took their seats. The look she gave him told him that the incredulous note to his question had not escaped her notice. He liked it better when she hadn’t found him as easy to read.

“No,” she said as they began eating. Once he had figured out that she only talked while eating if he instigated it , he tried to confine the conversation to in between courses or after dinner. He cringed inwardly that he hadn’t known about Vulcan manners concerning meals earlier. Not that he would have deferred to her customs when she had first come on board, but if he was actively annoying her it was better to be aware of it than to do it through blundering.

The conversation shifted to the two crew members who were requesting not to be put on the same shift. As it turned out, it was only one of them asking for the change—the other having apparently figured out that it was career suicide to bring personal issues on-shift. He was surprised to learn that T’Pol found the rules on fraternization illogical and that she thought the prohibition against relationships caused more difficulty with crew moral than the fallout from failed relationships. Apparently on Vulcan ships it was the norm for couples to serve together.

“It’s different with humans.” She didn’t have enough experience with human relationships and breakups to understand that these two crew members were the norm, rather than the exception when relationships began and ended in an enclosed space.

“I disagree.”

“You’re welcome to, but you’re still wrong.” Before she had a chance to rebut that comment, the steward entered with dessert. As the bowls were placed in front of them, he found that T’Pol was watching him out of the corner of her eye while steward avoided looking at either of them and left. The bowls contained a sorbet of some kind. The scent was delicate and familiar but he didn’t realize what it was until he tasted it, probably because he’d become used to the scent coming from T’Pol: passion fruit.

“Do you like it?” T’Pol asked, breaking her own custom of not speaking during meals.

“It’s nice.”

They finished their dessert in silence, and then, having run out of time for conversation, arrived at the movie screening just a few minutes before the movie was scheduled to start. He got an odd look from Travis as he stood in line to grab some popcorn. He got another couple of odd looks as he made his way back to his seat by T’Pol. It wasn’t until the movie credits started rolling and he dipped into his popcorn that he realized what the looks were about. His fingers still smelled rather strongly of the body butter. There was no telling what kind of assumptions were being made—likely ones that were highly improbable and titillating.

Part II