Trip was ordinarily a slightly choosy eater, as well as a voracious one. The food on offer was probably pretty average, if not calculated to win any Michelin stars, but today he couldn't give a damn what he ate. Eating was going to be very much the secondary item on the menu, but he had to get something on his plate just to give the two of them an excuse to secure a table.

He helped himself to lasagna and side salad. T'Pol took a cheese salad, and after he'd paid for them both (quelling even the possibility of argument with a single glance), followed him meekly to a corner where a table partly screened by a potted palm offered a modest illusion of privacy.

His emotions had gone through an absolute roller-coaster over the past couple of hours. He'd kept himself going with innumerable cups of coffee, but now felt as if he could do with a beer – several beers, if not several dozen, to help him get a handle on how he was feeling. Still, if he was planning on flying back to Jupiter Station any time in the near future, the beers were a no-no. Maybe once he got back to his quarters he'd break open a bottle and drink to … well, whatever the hell there was going to be to drink to.

There was only one thing he was absolutely sure of right this minute. He and T'Pol were going to talk, and both of them were going to be honest, and if he didn't get the answers he wanted, no, needed, he was going to walk out of here and never set eyes on her again, because he didn't need the pain and he didn't need the bullshit, and she'd handed out more than enough of both before now.

Glad to see her? Like he was glad to see the dawn after a night of storm, and the night since he'd left Enterprise had been the longest of his life. But he'd been doing his utter and absolute damnedest to heal the wounds in his soul she'd gouged out of it last time, and if it had been up to him he'd have avoided seeing her at all, because even the darkness of a stormy night was easier to bear than the devastation of good daylight showing him that the woman he loved wouldn't fight for what he'd thought they had.

Fate had dictated otherwise. They were here now, and somehow, somehow what she'd been through had broken open that Vulcan reserve she'd used as a shield to block him out and push him away. She'd clung to him, kissed him, called him her beloved – behaved like she couldn't give a damn that other people were in the room. For a time they'd even been like they used to be back on Enterprise, before the Xindi Weapon carved a hole in the Earth's crust, teasing each other in the way that had first warned him he was falling for her; except that now there was warmth behind her Vulcan put-downs, and he could kiss her like they were in love….

Were they in love?

Of his own feelings he had no doubt at all. The passion she'd woken in him had shown his previous feelings for Natalie and her predecessors for the ephemeral things they were. But in his eyes love wasn't enough without commitment, and her antics had driven him absolutely crazy, until at last – finding that she saw no reason for revealing their relationship and fighting the world for acceptance of it – he'd taken refuge in flight, telling himself furiously that she'd soon get over a man for whom she cared so little.

The work waiting for him at the Jupiter shipyards in the frenzied preparations for war had been more than enough to take his mind off his romantic troubles. For most of the time, during the day at least, he'd been too busy even to remember he had a heart to have a constant ache in; evenings were the periods that comprised catching something to eat and then catching up on the paperwork, not a period of rest. Night had been the time when, more often than not, he just reeled away from his desk and passed out on the sofa in his office, saving him time going home and getting undressed and then having to repeat the process in reverse to come back again five or six hours later. To get the full value of heartbreak, you must have time to feel it – and time, for Trip Tucker, had been an enemy forever on his heels.

Every now and then, however… something would bring her to mind: a snatch of Vulcan overheard in a corridor, or a song on the radio, or just a bowl of breadsticks in the canteen. And then the pain would come crashing through the numbness, each time less bearable than the last.

He'd toughed it out. He would get through this. Some day there would be a time when he'd hear Vulcan spoken, hear songs on the radio, even see breadsticks in the canteen and not feel a damn thing.

It was just that it hadn't happened yet….

"Ashayam."

It took him a moment to react. He'd been staring down at his lasagna, which was going cold. He was hungry, but his hunger was less real than the woman sitting opposite him.

"T'Pol." Her name sounded strange in his mouth, stilted somehow. "Don't call me that if you don't mean it. Just don't."

She hadn't picked up her knife and fork. She was just sitting there looking at him.

After a moment, she extended her hand across the table, thumb and two outer fingers lightly folded inwards to leave the joined middle and index fingers extended.

The gesture seemed to be waiting for some response, so after a couple of seconds he returned it, slowly.

Their first touch was tentative, feather-light. It was strange, after the way they'd clung and kissed earlier on, but he concentrated his whole attention on the place where skin touched skin so lightly and carefully. She began at the base of his fingers and hers traveled slowly, so slowly, upwards from there; never losing contact, never increasing the pressure as it crested the top and continued down the other side. Her gaze was so fixed on it that he could almost imagine she was experiencing every individual ridge and hollow of his skin, imprinting it on her memory.

She reached the base and stopped. So in his turn he did the same, stroking gently up her motionless fingers.

It was quite surreal.

He had not quite reached the base before she spoke. "I was wrong."

He kept moving. "In what way?"

"I was wrong to believe that there is something to be ashamed of in what we have. Wrong to try to hide it. Wrong to care more for what others thought than for what my Bondmate thought. Wrong to make you suffer when my whole duty should have been to cherish you, in the way the oldest and most venerable Vulcan tradition teaches bondmates should cherish one another.

"I am truly sorry, Trip."

He didn't lift his gaze. Not even when his fingers stopped and hers took over again, in a slow, almost sensual caress: like their fingers were kissing each other.

"This is called the ozh'esta," she said almost in a whisper. "It is only performed between bondmates, offered to one's t'hy'la… one's soulmate."

"T'hy'la," he whispered. "I want to hear you say it. About me. To me."

He looked up at her face then, watched her lips form the word. Beautiful, kissable lips. Beautiful eyes. Beautiful face. Beautiful ears, with their cute points. Beautiful long, elegant neck. Beautiful… heck, let's not go there, this is a public place and once I get started…. "T'hy'la."

"When we have eaten, I would like us to go to the Vulcan Consulate," she continued, and then hesitated. "If you are willing… I wish to declare our bond before Ambassador Soval."

He could feel the smile trying to break out. He controlled it firmly. "Guess that'll depend on what'll happen when you do that."

"What will happen?" She looked up at him at last. "We will have declared ourselves betrothed. Then whatever has to happen, will happen."

It was no use; the grin was going to happen whether he allowed it to or not. "On Earth, darlin', people aren't 'betrothed' till one or the other of 'em's asked the other one to marry them."

"If that is a Human requirement, then one of us will have to carry it out," she said seriously. "Do you have any preferences which it should be?"

"Well, I think we can have a discussion about that," he replied. "But one thing we definitely are not goin' to do is get 'betrothed' in a hospital canteen!"

Disengaging his fingers, he sat back in his chair, studying her closely. "I'll do it – on one condition."

"And what is that?"

"That you kiss me. Here. Now."

For all that they were in a relatively secluded corner, there were still a decent number of people nearby. She'd already attracted some attention, being a Vulcan as well as a beautiful woman. It was unlikely in the extreme that nobody would notice.

"I do not find that condition acceptable, Trip." She lifted the napkin from her lap, folded it neatly and put it down beside her plate.

Watching her, Trip was conscious of a wrenching pang of despair and disappointment, for even in the face of everything that had gone before, hope had sprung up in him already that this time it would be different. He held his ground, however; if she wouldn't even kiss him here, what the hell were the chances she'd tough it out in the face of the reaction from Starfleet and the High Command? "Then I guess there's nothing more to say. That's my condition – take it or leave it."

"I prefer to leave it. Do you wish to eat your dinner?"

Food was the last thing on his mind. Even apart from the fact it would have gone stone cold by this time, the thought of putting anything in his stomach now was nauseating. He shook his head, clamping his mouth shut on the bitter things that sprang to his tongue. For a moment – just for one wonderful, amazing moment….

It seemed she wasn't hungry either. They both carried their trays to the trolley in the central area, and slid them into the empty slots. As he pushed his home and turned away, Trip promised himself in a haze of fury and grief that this was finally, once and for all, the end. He was through being fooled and used–

Her hands closed on his jacket so hard that it was a wonder the seams didn't give way. His brain didn't have time to react before her tongue was in his mouth, but his body picked up the theme like lightning, wrapping his arms around her and dragging her close while the two of them kissed like there was no-one else in the world, the core and focus of an entire interested restaurant.

If he'd had leisure to notice or even enough interest to care, the reaction was mixed. There was some hissing and cat-calling, but mostly there was applause as the two of them finally broke apart.

"I believe the Human term is 'Gotcha'," T'Pol observed, with what was definitely a twinkle.

"T'Pol, if I didn't think I'd get both of us slung out of here I'd smack your butt." He kissed her again. "We just wasted two perfectly good dinners just so you could make a point."

"If it is Earth tradition not to get betrothed in a hospital restaurant, then after we have spoken to Soval we should find some more suitable establishment. Ms St Clair may wish to accompany us."

A third kiss was practically mandatory as the two of them walked towards the door, sped on their way by more applause. "I'll bet my bottom dollar that's absolutely the last thing Ms St Clair will want to do. She's already walked away because she doesn't want to be the third wheel."

"But what does impersonating the stabilizer of a bicycle have to do with accompanying us to a restaurant…?"

The End