A Touchy Situation

Disclaimer: I don't own Enterprise or its characters.
Summary: T'Pol learns a few things about a specific human pre-wedding ritual...

Those gathered around the mess hall table sat in silence as T’Pol looked at them with puzzlement. They swallowed sheepishly and wracked their brains for an answer to the Vulcan’s honest query.

T’Pol slowly grew impatient. She could see no reason why her human companions wouldn’t respond. So she asked again: "What is a bachelor party?”

It wasn’t a hard question, especially for Malcolm Reed who was more or less an expert at all things hedonistic and oversexed. To Reed, throwing Trip a bachelor party was a forgone conclusion, a no-brainer that would happen regardless of how the bride felt about the matter. On more then one occasion Malcolm had been forced to hide the presence of the bachelor party from the groom’s ladylove through trickery and deceit. But he’d never once been forced to explain what a bachelor party WAS to anyone before, especially someone as completely unaware of human cultural nuances as T’Pol was.

As he sat there watching Trip sweat bullets and Hoshi bite her lip to keep from laughing, Reed decided to lie. “Oh, it’s nothing.” When he discovered that he couldn’t look her in the eye, his morning coffee suddenly seemed to hold the secrets of the universe, “It’s just a little human tradition meant to celebrate the blessed event.”

Much to Reed’s dismay, T’Pol was intrigued and pressed the issue. “So it is a rite of passage. Is the ceremony religious in nature?”

“Well, I know I’ve praised God at a few of them, my dear.”

“Fascinating.” While she had observed a great deal about human culture, she had never witnessed one of their religious ceremonies and realized that, in terms of human faith, she knew very little.

“May I attend this ‘bachelor party’?”

“NO!” Trip and Reed screamed at the same time, which nearly made Hoshi fall out of her chair. A scowl from Reed didn’t help the situation either and soon Hoshi’s shoulders were shaking with unvocalized laughter.

“What I mean to say,” Reed said through a mask of false calm, “is that this particular tradition has some…restrictions.”

T’Pol’s eyebrow shot upwards, spelling Reed’s downfall. His refusal to give her access to the ceremony had aroused her curiosity even further and there was little chance of dissuading her now. “I assumed that, as the bride, I would be given access to all aspects of the wedding.”

Trip grabbed his beloved's hand and turned her to face him with the most charming smile he could muster.

“You will, Sweetie, absolutely.” A guilty thought cross his mind: ‘We’re bonded, she knows when you lie.’ He tried desperately to think of just about anything that might convince her to drop the matter entirely.

If he had wished for the ship’s hull to magically turn into ice cream it might’ve been more likely to come true.

“It is illogical to not allow your future spouse access to your ‘bachelor party’,” she said as she shook away Trip’s attempts to drive the conversation in a different direction.

The sweat was pouring off of Trip’s forehead now, and the pressure of ‘ditching’ his fiancée now fell entirely on his shoulders. “What I mean is that a bachelor party is just one of those things that a groom and his buddies do apart from the wedding. It’s nothing.”

T’Pol’s eyes narrowed.

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The issue became more complicated as the day of the bachelor party grew closer. Many of the men on the ship seemed to share whispered conversations when they thought she wasn’t listening or inside jokes that she didn’t understand. But the absolute last straw was when Captain Archer approved an excursion to the planet Risa for every male member of the Engineering crew and several MACOs in spite of the fact that none of them were due to receive shore leave for another seven months. T’Pol was beginning to suspect a conspiracy.

Although she was far too Vulcan to admit it to anyone, T’Pol had begun to worry that her husband’s mysterious bachelor party was something dangerous or foolhardy. Ancient Vulcan men would often take part in long trials before marriage, such as killing Lematyas with their bare hands or walking across a desert with no food or water. The tradition was eventually banned due to the high mortality rate.

When the day of the "blessed event" finally arrived, a feeling of dread settled in T'Pol's stomach as she saw the soft curve of Risa's horizon outside her window, and she knew that Trip would be leaving as soon as they established a stable orbit.

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Risa was well known for its beaches, pleasant weather, and warm temperatures. It was perhaps less known, at least in most circles, for its strip clubs. But like most things on Risa, the strip clubs on the planet’s largest continent were classy and extremely well-maintained. The women were beautiful and actually seemed to enjoy their work, the security was excellent to the point of keeping rowdier guests from ever being on the same street as the reputable clubs, and, since adult entertainment on Risa was basically a non-profit industry, the bar was free. Most men would dream of having a bachelor party in a place like this. In fact most men might give several important parts of their anatomy just to be a GUEST at a bachelor party like this one.

But Trip was miserable.

“Come on, old man, I have a reputation to worry about here,” Malcolm said as he popped open another bottle of Risan beer and then swallowed a large gulp of the fizzy purple liquid. “At least pretend like you're having fun.”

Trip shook his head sadly before taking another sip of the odd silver beverage placed before him at the beginning of the evening’s festivities, “We shouldn’t have lied to her like that.”

Malcolm rolled his eyes. The last thing he needed was more Trip/T’Pol angst. Every time he tried to do something with Trip these days, it usually ended up in a ‘I miss my Vulcan love goddess’ mope session. He’d been certain that parading Trip in front of naked women might’ve done the trick, but sure enough, all it did was send his friend to the nearest bar stool to sulk. It was a vicious cycle that made Malcolm rethink inviting either one of them to anything ever again. T’Pol and her engineer boy-toy might’ve been a romance made in the heavens, but to Malcolm, they were the wet blankets from hell.

Everyone else was having fun. Travis was surrounded by a group of beautiful girls all cooing over his handsome face and form, while relieving him of the contents of his Federation Credits. Phlox was demonstrating his amazing Denobulan liver (livers actually, he claimed to have four of them) by drinking several of the engineering staff under the table. Trip was the only party pooper in the crowd.

"I think I'm just gonna take a little walk." The mopey-faced engineer said as he removed himself from the stool and headed slowly towards the door.

Reed just sighed as he took another long sip from his bottle.

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Tired of tension and strain, T'Pol decided that to eat dinner. But as she removed her garden salad from its place in the cooler, she overhead the sound of soft feminine laughter coming from the table on farthest side of the room.

"You mean she doesn't know what a bachelor party is?" Amanda Cole cackled with glee as Hoshi giggled between bites of her salad. "That's priceless!"

The two women were laughing so hard that neither of them saw T'Pol standing behind them. So when she finally spoke, they almost jumped three feet in to the air.

"May I ask what is so amusing?"

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As he walked from the room, Trip could hear the tittering laughter of drunken party goers. He wasn't surprised to find Kelby sitting on a nearby bench sandwiched between two beautiful alien girls, completely inebriated.

"Comanshder!" Kelby yelled as he leapt from his seat to deliver a sloppy hug around his superior's neck, "Ish so gud to she ew, MAN!" He smelled terrible, like he'd taken a bath in that god-awful Risan liquor. It would've been kind of funny to watch if Trip wasn't already knee deep in guilt. "Looks, I feelsh like I owe ew an apologese for all da thingsh I said to you."

"Hey, good to hear buddy." Trip couldn't understand a single word, but Trip knew that if could just get Kelby to stop talking for even a few more seconds he might pass out and the conversation would end itself.

"I no et ish!" Kelby shouted a little too loudly, then his eyes went wide with shock as if he suddenly remembered something extremely important. "Haysh! Goirls! Comm hear and meetsh the Comanshder!"

Suddenly the two alien women that Kelby had been pawing when Trip arrived rushed to the man's side and Trip received the shock of his life. The women, DeeAhn and Latia, were the two shapeshifting thieves who had robbed him blind the last time he'd been on Risa. His stomach turned as he remembered the night he’d spent tied-up with Malcolm on a cold basement floor. He tried to play it cool around the "girls," feigning ignorance of their true identities as they whispered sweet nothings in Kelby's ear. "Ladies." Trip hightailed it from the threesome as quickly as his legs could carry him. "Better you then me, Kelby." He whispered as the drunken slob was dragged by his arms into a nearby alleyway, where he would probably be robbed blind.

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T'Pol searched her memory to recall a time when she felt more angry than she did at that very moment. She had sat in her quarters worried half to death that her beloved fiancée was in danger or being forced to do something against his will, when all he was really doing was sitting in a bar getting inebriated and staring at other women.

Naked women.

That was what really bothered her. It was something of an open secret among the intergalactic community that Vulcan women were perhaps the most jealous lovers in the known universe. Since most Vulcan marriages are arranged at birth, female Vulcans aren’t used to competing for their male’s attention. So on the rare occasion when an obstacle does present itself, most Vulcan women find themselves suppressing unfamiliar feelings of possessiveness towards their chosen mate.

T’Pol wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the swirling storm of emotions she was experiencing at the moment. Since the day she met her future husband, she had found herself becoming oddly bitter and vindictive with the other women that had drawn Tucker’s once-wandering eye.

But she couldn’t stop herself from feeling the way she did. Falling in love with a human being had been a new experience for her, and often Tucker would say or do things without any knowledge of what it meant to a Vulcan woman. On Vulcan, a marriage was a practice of calm subtlety where gestures of affection or fidelity were small and almost undetectable to the outside observer. To a Vulcan woman, refusing to be home on time for dinner was the same as having an affair. Staring at strippers, on the other hand, was practically an unforgivable sin.

T’Pol had managed to keep all of this to herself on her long walk to the shuttle bay and was somehow able to hide her discontent all the way to the planet’s surface. When she finally landed, she didn’t have very much willpower left to suppress her anger, but she did her best. She made quite a scene as she marched briskly down the street in the direction of the “away team’s” transponder signal. Her body language tensed in the universal posture of an angry wife. Bouncers cleared out of her way, and those patrons who dared to block her path found themselves on the receiving end of her cold glare.

Inside the club, the "away team" immediately started sinking into their chairs. Nobody wanted to get caught acting like a drunken fool by the Vulcan science officer. Some of them even fled into the bathrooms or ducked under a table. T’Pol would’ve been lying to herself if it didn’t bring her at least some satisfaction

Bursting through the doors to the nearest private room, she found the ringmasters of this little party of sin. Her eyes roamed the room only to come up empty of their desired prey. Malcolm was there and so was Travis. Both men were staring at T’Pol’s unmistakable form with a mixture of awe and terror. The half-naked woman who had been perched on top them now made her goodbyes and fled the room.

In a voice so cold it could have frozen a star, T’Pol asked, “Where is Charles?”

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Part of T'Pol knew that she had every right to still be angry with her future husband. In one day, he had lied to her, committed what Vulcans would consider adultery, and proven his own unenlightenment once again. But when she saw him standing there on the beach, skipping stones into the ocean while he could've been having the time of his life she felt an odd swell of pride. For some reason, she was flattered that he was unhappy with his bachelor party. He eventually looked up to see her standing in front of him and he flashed her a nervous grin.

"T'Pol, honey..." She watched him struggle for words but ultimately failed miserably, "I assume you...you know about..." His voice trailed off and he looked down at his feet in shame but T'Pol's silence forced at him to look her in the eye once more.

"I know." She stated matter-of-factly, "Why are you not enjoying your party?"

He smiled sheepishly at her and blushed a little. "You'd laugh if I told you."

"I find that outcome unlikely." She whispered and he chuckled at that.

"Malcolm worked real hard on it so I didn't want to hurt his feelings but truth be told, I don't really want to look at any woman but you." And with that she silently decided that she would eventually forgive him. She was annoyed with him. That was certain. But somehow knowing how deeply in love he was with her suddenly made it all worth it.

"I will, of course, make you regret this incident."

He smiled again and took her hand as they walked down the beach together, "Sort of figured you would." The waves rolled up the beach to tickled their feet as they strolled across the sand towards the setting sun. "When do I get my 'spanking'?"

"Your punishment will be postponed until after I kill Mr. Reed."

The End