The BLTS Archive - Heatwave
by Linsey (linsey_kree@hotmail.com

---

Notes: Written while in a similar situation myself last night. Is
rather short and un-beta'd. My usual beta isn't available right now 
so I decided just to go ahead and post. All mistakes and  mine. If you
point them out I'll just get embarrassed. I blame Emony for the
certain other two characters mention in the story.

Feedback: it makes me smile.

Archive: EntSTslash, BLTS, WWOMB and Chaos. Others please ask first.

---

He turned to the right. Then he turned to the left. The covers pooled
somewhere around Malcolm's stomach and he pushed them down further and
kicked them down to knee level. He couldn't get comfortable.

It was this heat. This infernal heat. Eight days they'd been in this.
Eight days of 90 degree heat on board Enterprise. No one knew yet what
had gone wrong with the Heating systems but last week it had decided
to go up by almost 20 degrees.

The whole crew had taken to wearing the bare minimum of clothing on
duty. The top half of their jump suits were all tied around their
waists and most had even forgone the t-shirts they wore underneath and
were now only wearing the Starfleet issue underwear.

He remembered having talked with Commander Tucker about it when he'd
seen the man tearing off his t-shirt, stripping down to his blue
underwear. Surely the Commander would be used to heat, being from
Florida and all? But he'd only had a snippy response about the
difference between this dry heat and Florida being that on Earth there
was such a thing as 'weather': a cool, soft breeze, humidity and all
that.

But this heat on Enterprise? It just seemed to hang dryly in the air:
as if the molecules were stubbornly refusing to hit each other and
just stayed put. It had made everyone cranky.

The Captain was cranky and sat shifting in his chair all day
complaining about sweat running down his back and beyond. Only the
Captain had put it in more lewd terms. The man had quite the foul
mouth and a penchant for sharing details about his bodily functions.
This was a new development, of course, and had rather shocked the
Bridge crew. That was, until everyone else joined in with the
'sharing'. Now the entire Bridge crew had turned into potty mouths.

Travis was cranky which was strange to see as he was so often upbeat.
Tucker already had a streak of crankiness, continually. At least when
he was with Malcolm he certainly did, so there wasn't much change
there except a shortened temper as soon as anyone asked him how much
progress he'd made on fixing the DAMN HEAT.

Malcolm knew he'd succumbed to a certain hostility towards others
himself. Sure he liked decorum and structure, everyone knew that. He
liked order. But he'd felt himself taking things to extremes over the
last few days. Though he had noticed he'd kept his proverbial 'cool'
longer than the rest of the crew.

But then he had noticed when he'd given Crewman Shaw a hard time a few
days ago for arranging the Phase Pistols in the wrong order. That was
maybe going too far. He'd ended up giving the poor guy half an hour
off at the end of his shift in penance.

There had been a near riot in the Mess when Chef announced at lunch
today that he'd run out of ice cream and it would take him a while to
make up a fresh batch. Since then there had been rumours of some sort
of 'ice cube' party on C-deck tonight. He had no clue what that was.
Or what you'd do at it. Would everyone have to bring their own ice
cubes?

He could see it now: turning up at the door holding a tray with a
little ice cube on it.

"I see you brought a traditional square shaped cube this evening,
Lieutenant."

"Yes, Crewman, though it is beginning to melt a little. I don't think
this afternoon was a very good year."

Malcolm threw a pillow off the bed in disgust. It was too hot. Maybe
the one below was cooler.

He wondered how Tucker was doing. Maybe he should go help? He wasn't
getting any sleep any time soon and he knew the Commander had been
pulling double shifts to fix the problem. He knew Tucker was existing
on a meagre amount of sleep and having all his meals brought to him
while he stayed underneath the various engineering panels. Come to
think of it, probably no one had seen his face for the past 5 days.
Malcolm had been lending a hand when he could get away from the
Armoury. Since the cannons were offline right now his workload had
been lessened a little, so he was able to spare about 2 hours per
shift. He'd taken to grabbing some food from the mess hall and taking
it with him. He'd had to force the Commander to eat yesterday.

He had to get some sleep though. He hadn't slept properly for days. No
one had, really. It didn't help the crankiness.

But maybe if he went to see Tucker.

He had to stop thinking. That was the problem. If he could shut off
his brain he'd be fine and he'd drift off.

Of course, it would help if he managed to get into a comfortable
position. He just had to stop thinking about Commander Tucker. The man
had a way of getting into his head and not leaving. He liked the man,
it was just that he didn't want to be spending so much time thinking
solely about one crew member.

As it was the Commander had a talent for getting the two of them into
trouble. Of course, the talent began with Trip being able to con
Malcolm into doing almost anything he asked.

How he did it, Malcolm didn't know. If he knew, maybe he could do
something about it. Maybe it was that Malcolm knew he had to protect
him. After all, it was his job, and the situations Trip would get them
into would begin at 'risky' and inevitably move straight into
'trouble' with ease. God knows what the Captain thought every time he
had to reprimand them.

Tucker was sneaky. It wasn't something you'd expect from the plain
talking Southerner, but it was there: a sneaky, scheming, streak that
Malcolm admired. He liked to think he had his own sneaky streak. It
came in handy in his job. The two of them together could make a pretty
good combination.

Tucker and Reed against the Universe. Well, it had a certain ring to
it. They could take it over; the Universe that is. Or would that be
too 'Pinky and the Brain'?

Which one would be which anyway? Malcolm would be the Brain,
obviously. Surely. He had the tactical knowledge for Universal
domination.

But wasn't it Trip's ideas that kept getting them into situations in
the first place? Narf?

Oh god, he'd become silly. He desperately needed sleep.

'Morpheus, open up you arms and let me in. Please? I'm begging you!
I'm hot, in more ways than one. And I'm damn good in bed! Anything?
Narf?'

---

Malcolm stared at his forearms against the metallic panel of the
Armoury station on the Bridge. Next shore leave he should seriously
consider trying to get a tan, rather than gallivanting off with Trip
in search of the perfect combination of alien alcohol and good
company.

"Tucker to Bridge."

"Archer here, Trip. What's doing?" There was a soft rustling sound as
Archer shifted in his seat.

Of course, he could try and modify a lighting panel in his room to
give off more of the UV light they had. A makeshift tanning booth. It
could work. He could get Trip's help to do it.

"I think I may have found the problem, Cap'n." Tucker said and Travis
let out a soft 'whoop' of joy at the announcement. The thought of the
end being in sight was such a relief to everyone. You could sense it
in the air.

"Well if you need my permission to fix it, Trip, then you got it.
Whatever you want. Just do something. Anything. Before I drown in
sweat and my ass goes red from sliding around on my chair."

"Uh... sure, Jon. I need Malcolm down here to help out."

"He's on his way, Archer out." The Captain turned and nodded at
Malcolm, who was indeed already on his way to the lift doors. Malcolm
gave a slight nod in response before the doors closed behind him.

---

Malcolm entered engineering to find Tucker sitting on the deck plating
near the weapons interface system with a tool kit strewn around the
place.

"My systems, Commander?"

Tucker pulled his head away from the panel and looked up at the
Lieutenant. "Yup. Wouldn't you know it, it's the last place I checked.
So much for going alphabetically through the systems. Next time, I'm
going in reverse."

"Where do you need me?" Malcolm asked crouching down. Tucker turned
around to look at him again, smiled for a second and looked at
Malcolm, before saying anything.

"Well, I know the problem is somewhere back here, but I can't quite
figure it out. It's your system though and you know it better than
me."

Malcolm knelt close to the Commander and took the wrench out of Trip's
hand. They were sitting so close together he could smell the other
man. And it wasn't entirely pleasant.

"Commander," Malcolm began while heading straight under to the cannon
alignment circuits, "you are in desperate need of a shower."

"I smell bad?" Tucker said quietly beside him, while sniffing himself.

"Normally I wouldn't say anything." Malcolm responded. He took a
second to steal a glance in Trip's direction, meeting his eyes, and
tried not to laugh at the Commander's slightly shocked look. He leant
down, fumbling for his scanner before feeling it being placed in his
hand by another, more sweaty hand that lingered as Trip tried to
inconspicuously sniff himself again.

"That bad, huh?"

Malcolm nodded in response as he scanned the cannon circuits.

"Damn it. Why didn't I think of this sooner?" He turned and looked at
Trip, still sitting crouched beside him while Malcolm did all the work
now. "The power reroute circuit is fried. Instead of sending it back
to the main engineering systems it's sending it to the heating system.
No matter what temperature you set it at, this kind of extra power
will keep it boosted up regardless."

"So all we gotta do is replace the damn thing. Typical. It takes a
week to find the problem and all of ten minutes to fix it and check it
all."

Malcolm turned back to the system and smiled. "Highly ironic, sir."

"Would you quit that!" Tucker thwapped Malcolm's shoulder as he stood
up, before putting the hand back out to help Malcolm stand up.

Malcolm grabbed hold and was pulled up before he moved towards
Tucker's desk. "Quit, what, Commander?"

"Calling me 'sir' and 'Commander' all the time. So many people do it I
think I'm gonna forget my actual name. Call me Trip, please."

"Yes, si.. Trip." Malcolm replied, rummaging around for the
replacement circuit on Tucker's desk.

"Actually do it this time, Mal. I've told you a hundred times before
to call me Trip then you do it once before I'm back to being
'Commander' again." Trip came up behind Malcolm and put a hand on his
back as he watched Malcolm move things around in the top drawer of his
desk.

Malcolm laughed slightly at that before turning up to face Trip
triumphantly brandishing the new circuit. He moved back over to the
panel, feeling the extra heat of Trip's hand leaving him. Yet it was
there again a few moments later as Trip had followed him over.

A small amount of time later he was done. And they were standing side
by side checking the repairs were successful. Both men looked at each
other, took deep breaths then checked the final readout.

All fine. The power was now heading back into other systems. Trip went
over to the environmental controls and shifted the temperature. They'd
already tried setting it lower before hand but nothing had worked. It
was set at 30 degrees, so he turned it up to 65. Just a little below
normal. Once everyone was cool again he'd shift it up a few degrees.

He turned to face Malcolm, who was leaning against the Chief
Engineer’s desk, and spread his arms out and smiled. "All done!" He
then commed the Bridge and could here the exclamations of joy from the
Bridge crew. Then they listened as the Captain made the ship wide
announcement that things were now back to normal and smiled at each
other: a job well done.

Trip walked back over to his desk and pulled himself up to sit on it.
"We should celebrate," he continued. "How about a drink? My place?"

"That would be nice. However, I think you need to go have a shower."

"A cold one." Trip sighed, looking at Malcolm, and then down at his
hands. Sensing that his slightly evasive declination had offended Trip
he put his hand on the Commander's arm and said, "But we could meet a
little later. Besides, I'm still on shift. The Captain will expect me
back on the Bridge."

Trip brightened up a little. "Okay then. Swing by at about 2100, I'll
be ready by then."

Malcolm looked at Trip, he seemed to have that sneaky look in his
eyes. But Malcolm thought it probably corresponded with the next thing
Trip said, as the other man leaned over a little closer and continued,
"You know what? If we ever wanted to take over the ship it would be
really easy."

"What do you mean?" Malcolm asked.

"Think about it, Mal. We could just fix the heating up really high,
wait until the crew fall apart again, then strike."

"But we'd be affected by the heat too." Malcolm reasoned.

"Ah, but we'd be ready for it all. We'd be prepared in advance."

Malcolm took in the teasing, yet gleeful look in Trip's eyes. There
really was only one thing to say to all this.

"Narf."

---

The End