The BLTS Archive - Worthless
#6: Spilled
by miera (mierac@hotmail.com)

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ARCHIVE: Entslash & Tim can go ahead, anyone else please ask first!

FEEDBACK: We (me and the bunnies) appreciate your support.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I know, I know, it's been a while. I left the boys
suffering in limbo. It wasn't my fault, the bunnies deserted me
because I was neglecting them. Hopefully they're back. I felt I owed
it to Malcolm to put him front and center for once, since all the
other stories are more from Trip's perspective. This takes place the
morning after "Worthless."

WARNINGS: None

DISCLAIMER: Everything here is owned by the almighty Paramount,
except Jessy (who can't seem to stay the hell out of my stories
now...)

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Malcolm entered the Mess Hall and felt the tension in his shoulders
ease as he realized that the ship's Chief Engineer was not present.
He sent up a prayer of thankfulness to the Captain for having a
private dining room.

During the entire day, he'd ruthlessly kept his thoughts away from
Trip and the previous night. The result had been the third "monthly"
efficiency check of the phase cannons in the past two weeks. Malcolm
might hold himself to a standard higher than Starfleet, but this was
getting ridiculous. But between the message from Madeline and. . .
well,
he'd been in need of something to concentrate on.

He sat down at a corner table alone, and did his best to appear
deeply absorbed in his reading. As he ate, chewing and swallowing
mechanically, his eyes strayed to the bandages that still wrapped
around his knuckles. He froze.

He saw the scene in his quarters the night before, almost as if he
was outside of it. He remembered Trip teasing him about the bruises.
He saw Trip, shaking his wrist in front of his own face, scolding him
for doing that to himself.

Then he saw Trip cradling his bruised fingers gently, pressing a kiss
onto each bruise like a caress. . .

*Shit.* Malcolm shook himself back to reality.

Of course that wasn't what had happened. Instead he had forcibly
taken hold of Trip's hand and tried to push the conversation into a
direction that it shouldn't have gone. His own lurking desires had
overwhelmed his better judgment in the intimacy of the moment. He
crossed a line, and he paid the price.

*If only you had just told him to leave in the gym. It was a mistake
to talk to him,* his inner voice scolded. He flinched, involuntarily.
He didn't want his friendship with Trip to be a mistake. It couldn't
be.

The mistake was misreading the signs. He'd simply taken Trip's
overtures of friendship the wrong way.

Something deep in Malcolm's gut told him that wasn't true either. The
blushing, the quickness of breath, the nervousness, Trip exhibited
all the classic behavioral signs of someone fighting off an
attraction to another person. His voice, his body language. . . no,
Malcolm hadn't been wrong about that.

What was blindingly obvious was that Trip might feel something, but
he wasn't prepared to act on it. And in the light of day – or, he
thought wryly, what passed for daylight on a starship – Malcolm
wasn't sure he was prepared either.

"Sir?" the voice interrupted his train of thought. He turned to see
Jessy standing next to him, in uniform and evidently preparing to go
on duty.

"Good evening, Lieutenant. What can I do for you?" *Not now, Jess,
please.*

Giordano didn't take the hint. She sat down, folded her arms on the
table and stared at him. "Are you alright?" she asked in a low voice.

He looked up, surprised. Her eyes went down to his bandaged hands,
and then back up. There was a concerned look on her face.

"I'm fine," he said, automatically. She didn't blink, but her
eyebrows went up. Her brown eyes fixed on his and waited. He forced
his body to relax slightly. "I'm alright," he said softly.

Jessy held the stare a moment longer, then gave a short nod. "OK."
She pulled back and stood up. "Good night, sir."

"Good night."

She walked away, and he smiled in spite of himself. It was amazing
that a such a short conversation could make him feel that much
better. *Now if Trip had just been that straightforward, none of this
would be happening.*

Well, not that anything was actually happening anyway. He sighed, and
pushed his half eaten dinner away.

He thought about the difference between the two conversations as he
walked to his quarters. Jessy had obviously noticed the same signs of
distress Trip had. But Giordano was too polite to pry into his life.
As a friend, all she wanted to know was if he was okay, and she
trusted him when he told her so, at least after the second time.

It comforted him. There were so few people in the universe he felt
close to. He valued Trip's friendship a great deal, but he wasn't
Malcolm's only friend on board. There were others. In a way, that
exchange in the Mess Hall had been as close to intimacy as Malcolm
got these days.

So why was it that the exchange with Jessy had not left him with a
racing heart and sweaty palms? He certainly found her attractive,
that wasn't in question. While the fact that she was his subordinate
would've been reason enough yesterday, given that he'd made an
inappropriate advance on a senior officer just last night, somehow
rank didn't seem to have the weight it had before.

The difference was. . . Jessy was his friend. Their relationship was
quite clearly defined in his mind, and he believed in hers. It had 
moved from supervisor/subordinate into a quiet closeness due to the 
things they had gone through together and shared with each other over 
the past months, but even with all that, it was a friendship only.

With Trip on the other hand. . .

Their professional relationship remained much as it had always been:
oppositional. They clashed most of the time. Their job descriptions
were not intended to be complimentary to begin with. Throw in two
very different personalities, they were on opposite sides of most
issues. Off duty it had been the same for a long time. Trip was
cheerful, outgoing, competitive but not calculating, a natural born
leader. Everything Malcolm wasn't. The only thing they seemed to
share was a fierce devotion to the ship and their crewmates. Out of
that, somehow, had been born a friendship that humbled him in many
ways. It was something he was proud of, more so than he wanted to
admit, even to himself. No matter what it had cost him in
embarrassment – and those costs kept mounting with every moment of
temporary insanity when he let Trip talk him into anything – he
valued their friendship highly.

Somehow the friendship had spilled over the walls that carefully
enclosed his feelings into the proper boxes. Malcolm no longer had a
name for what was happening between them now.

He was, as Trip had pointed out just last night, a creature of order.
He liked routine, control, predictability. He wanted to know which
box to put everyone in. Being uncertain about people made him
uncomfortable, unsure of himself.

Trip was making a mess in his head. It drove him mad. He'd let the
madness show, and now, there was chaos, things spilled all over in
confusion. He needed to clean up the mess. He couldn't live like this.

He would maintain order. He would be far more careful what he said
and did. Trip Tucker was his friend, and if Malcolm wanted to keep
that friendship, he had to accept the limitations. He had to put his
feelings for Trip back into their proper box. Something told him it
was going to hurt, but he would do it. Anything to avoid driving his
best friend farther away from him.

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The End