THE CARD GAME

by ---katirene (XMP)

seaQuest is owned by Amblin Television and Universal Television. It was created by Rockne O'Bannon and developed by Steven Spielberg.

Tim O'Neill, Miguel Ortiz, and most of the others are all part of the show. They are not my characters and I am making no profit off them except in that they enrich my dream life and give me inspiration.

Ensign Treysa Barlow, PhD Anthro is the brainchild of Paula Behanna (APB) who lets me use her with the explicit understanding that Ari keeps her hands off Tim. Ensign Irene Adler is my creation, but from what I can tell, she belongs to herself.

There is a P.O. Jones listed in the crew manifest, but I have no idea of who s/he is. I just decided that there ought to be a Teej on board.

This story takes place after WaterGate and "Wild Thyme". Paula and I are working on a series of intertwined stories explaining the whereabouts of both ensigns while Sarah was on board, but since Cmdr. Ford isn't cooperating with me, I've been amusing myself with other diversions, hoping that if I ignore him long enough, he'll come around. (Hey, it worked with Ari and Miguel!)



THE CARD GAME
by ---katirene (XMP)

Ari paused in the corridor and regarded the door in front of her with uncharacteristic indecision. She wiped the palms of her hands on the back of her pants and raised one fist, then froze, feeling distinctly odd. Her heart was pounding hard inside her chest, and all she could hear was the rush of blood in her ears. Maybe she was coming down with something? Perhaps she ought to put this off and go see one of the medical staff. Trey would understand. On the other hand, maybe it was just plain old funk.

Lowering the hand again and slowly unclenching her fist, Ari tried to convince herself that calling here was no different from going in to talk to Trey or Lonnie or Jen. And she had no trouble at all popping in on Tim at all hours, day or night. For that matter, she'd been here before, checking on numbers, fixing up meeting times, or arranging for duty details. This was no different. No different, she repeated firmly to herself, raising her fist again and knocking before she lost her nerve.

"Come on in," Miguel's voice invited genially. Ari opened the door and looked in. He was seated at a small folding table, a deck of cards in his hands, looking expectantly toward the door. From the look of it, he'd just dealt a couple of cards to Petty Officer Jones. Ari blinked and felt a little dizzy, swallowing heavily. Somehow, she'd never thought that there would be someone else in the room.

"Ah. Oh. Um, hi there, Jones. I'm sorry, Ortiz," she scrambled to say. "I should have realized this would be a bad time. I, ah, I wanted to check some of the, the settings for the calibration exercises tomorrow, but I couldn't find the specs, and I thought, ummm .... I can come back ..." She started backing away. It didn't matter what Trey wanted her to keep Miguel occupied and out of the way for a couple of hours, she couldn't ... And anyway, it looked as if the two of them would be here for a while. Miguel jumped out of his seat, knocking it over in his eagerness to stop her retreat.

Taking her arm, he pulled her into the center of the cabin. "No, no, this is fine. You want the manual for the new model WSKRS?" She nodded dumbly as he retrieved a technical book from the shelf above his bunk. "Yeah, I've got it right here. You don't mind, do you Teej? If I take a few moments to go over this?"

Thaddeus Jones, also known as Teej, leaned back and smirked, hiding the smile behind his hand. This was the perfect opportunity to observe these two together, he thought. They'd been generating a lot of gossip over the past few months, starting with the time Adler had poured a full cup of coffee into Miguel's lap in response to some obscene suggestion he'd made. Or not made. Nobody was quite sure what had passed between the two of them at that meal, and neither one could be persuaded to tell.

Some people claimed that the the two of them were breaking regs right and left, carrying on an affair under the noses of Captain Bridger and Commander Ford, both. Others said that Adler was a tease, leading the popular sensor chief a merry chase and making his life hell with her antics. That was Piccolo's favorite refrain. But the majority of the crew seemed to find it sweet and touching. He'd overheard McKay tell Luce in engineering that it was better than reading a romance because you didn't have to imagine what they looked like.

Personally, Teej leaned toward the romance theory, himself. The thought that anything could be happening on board seaQuest and Cmdr. Ford not know about it was laughable. And the way they were standing there, Miguel protectively close behind her, one arm reaching around to point to the pages, the other hand on her shoulder. The way she seemed to have relaxed into his presence. That spoke of a closeness and implied trust that didn't fit the other scenarios.

Of course, Ortiz was standing too close. Teej snorted silently, not wanting to call attention to himself. Ortiz stood too close to everyone. It was part of his Cuban heritage, where the personal comfort area was very close to the body. But Adler had a personal territory almost as large as Tim O'Neill's and not even the Captain violated that, Teej had noticed. Everyone tended to give the tiny ensign a wide berth. At this point in his ruminations, Jones noticed Miguel staring at him.

Catching his eye, Miguel mouthed the words, GO AWAY. He nodded slightly, folding his cards together and laying them face down on the table surface.

"Look, Miguel, I'm sorry," Teej said standing up and heading toward the door. "But I just remembered that I told Amy I might call her. And she may have the kid up by now." Ari looked up and smiled brightly, her whole face lighting with interest.

"That's right!" she replied, warmly. "How old is Viola now? Eighteen months?"

"Nineteen," he corrected proudly. "And Amy says that she's already walking. Can you believe that?"

"Do you have any pictures," she asked eagerly. Behind her back, Miguel had closed his eyes with frustration, then opened them and shook his head ferociously at the other non-com.

"Yeah, but not on me," he answered, smiling at Miguel with real amusement. "Maybe you can come by and see them later," he invited.

"Sure, sure. We'll do that," Miguel answered for her, taking the ensign by the shoulders and turning her firmly around to look at the book lying open before shutting the door on his friend. Whistling happily, Teej headed toward the phone down in the Rec Room. He did want to see his wife again. It had been about a month since they'd been home, that time Lucas had decided to go AWOL, and the sight of those two together reminded him of just how much he missed her.

Ari watched with a sense of contentment as Miguel put the manual away on the shelf again. He has such an elegant back, she thought, admiring the line of his spine all the way down. As he started to turn, though, she hastily cast her eyes further downward, to the objects on the card table, picking up Teej's hand and absently fanning them out.

"I'm sorry I interrupted your game," she said softly into the silence, the nervous, shy feeling returning now that she didn't have duty to help her. "It really wasn't all that urgent, you know. I could have come back later." She folded the cards together then spread them out again, feeling him come nearer, his warmth radiating to touch her even as they stood apart, stealing her breath away.

This made no sense, she admitted to herself. She worked with him everyday, gave him orders, for goodness sakes. How could she be feeling shy about him now. They'd fought together, swum together, worked together, played together. Shakily, she remembered the time or two that they'd even fallen asleep in each other's arms. She knew him better than she knew anyone else. There was no way she could feel this shy around him. She gave him a shaky smile.

Miguel smiled back reassuringly. "You didn't interrupt anything important," Miguel told her, thinking fondly to himself that she looked terrified. It was a powerful feeling to be able to make the fearless Ensign Adler look so unsure of herself. Normally, her self-confidence was monumental, and contagious. She blinked up at him, as if his words made no sense. He reached out as if to touch her cheek and prompted her memory, "Teej was just passing time until he could make that call home. And anyway, I'm glad you dropped by. Sometimes, I feel slighted. You're always in Tim's cabin but you never come here." Suddenly, he wished he'd used another verb, that one had certain implications that could serve to frighten her off.

"Really?" she responded idly, as if the subject hadn't ever occured to her. It probably hadn't, he thought. In some ways, she was still very naive and innocent. If he wasn't careful, he could frighten her away again, and that was something he never wanted to do. She frowned down at the cards in her hand. "Who would have won?"

"Huh?" For a moment, Miguel felt at a loss. Won? Ah, well ... She held the cards up, nodding toward them.

"The game. Who was winning this hand?"

"Oh." The handsome sensor chief looked at Teej's hand and stretched across the table to pick up his own, one hand on Ari's shoulder for balance, leaving it there when he returned to his former position. Comparing the two, he began to laugh. "Now I'm really glad you dropped by. He was beating the pants off me, and this would have put him way ahead." His voice slowed as he came to the end of the sentence because Ari had leaned her back against his front to get a better look at both sets of cards.

"Really?" she asked again, this time sounding more interested. "Neither of you have anything that matches and you have face cards. Aren't they higher than his?"

"Hmmm,," Miguel anwered quietly, fighting the urge to kiss her and pointing to the deuce. "But that's a wild card and it gives him a pair. Which beats my high card."

"Wild card?" she asked, craning her head around to look up at him, leaning her head against his chest to do so. "Like a one-eyed jack?" He smiled down at her, reflecting on just how much temptation he could take. If he was reading her correctly, and he thought he was, any wrong move at this time would send her bolting. Removing the cards from her hands, he put both hands on her shoulders and pushed her gently but firmly into Teej's abandoned chair.

"Here, I'll show you," he said, taking his own seat and pulling the cards over. Shuffling them, he began to deal out groups of five, naming the hands as he did so and giving her the order of precedence. "We tend to play dealer's choice draw poker. The dealer shuffles and hands out five cards, declaring the rules, style of play, and wild cards at the time." He started dealing.

"Deuces or one-eyed jacks."

"Well, sort of. It can get pretty involved. Anyway, we'll keep it simple, just have deuces wild, ok? And, with wild cards in the play, the highest hand would be five of a kind with five aces beating out everything. A royal straight flush is next, ace, king, queen, joker and 10 all in the same suit. It's almost impossible to draw this hand." Patiently, he proceeded to lay out examples of every conceivable poker hand.

Gathering them all up, again, he handed the deck to Ari. "Now you tell me," he ordered. Thoughtful now, feeling easier about being here now that she didn't have to worry about what she was going to say, she shuffled and began to repeat the lesson back. It didn't help her concentration any, when he got out of his place to lean over her shoulder and correct her from time to time. But Ari didn't mind, leaning back against his stomach to look up at his face from time to time, checking her accuracy by his expression.

Finally, Miguel retrieved the cards and resumed his seat. "Ok, then, how about a game?"

"Are you sure? You haven't said anything about betting, and you can't play poker without some kind of stakes," Ari replied, frowning slightly as she realized the omission. "Besides, don't you need more players?"

Dealing out five cards each, Miguel smiled crookedly. "Well, there is one form of poker than generally only two people play, and it doesn't involve a poker pot, exactly. More like forfeits," he teased, confident that she wouldn't understand the reference.

"You mean strip poker?" Ari responded matter-of-factly, picking up the cards and looking at them, moving them around to try to find some kind of order. When Miguel didn't answer immediately, she looked up and then started to laugh at the dumb-founded expression on his face. "Miguel, I may not be experienced, but I'm not stupid. Of course I've heard of strip poker." He swallowed heavily.

"Ah, yes. Of course you have," he answered weakly.

"But I wouldn't agree to it," she went on smoothly. "You'd... what was that phrase you used? Ah, yes. You'd beat the pants off me, wouldn't you?" Ari smiled sweetly at him, and Miguel looked away briefly, licking his suddenly dry lips at the thought. She looked down at her hand, the smile turning into a sly smirk.

"What if I spot you?" he offered, half-jokingly. Her face flew up, the smile disappearing in shock as she checked to see if he meant it. "Socks and shoes." Recovering quickly, Ari appeared to consider the idea for a few minutes, playing out the line, then shook her head with seeming reluctance.

"It wouldn't be right. We'd be breaking our word to Captain Bridger," she concluded, sounding sincerely unhappy at the thought. Miguel was pretty sure that she was only playing along with the idea to tease him back, but she did sound sincerely regretful.

It was strictly against UEO regulations for officers to have any romantic liasons with enlisted personnel, and strictly speaking, Ari shouldn't even be here in his cabin alone with him right now. But just as seaQuest wasn't a typical UEO vessel, Captain Bridger wasn't a typical naval officer. He'd made it clear in an oblique sort of way, that he wouldn't oppose any relationship between the two of them, so long as it didn't become necessary for him to take official notice of it. So long as they behaved with an outward appearance of propriety he would raise no questions about any romantic interludes occurring off his boat and out of his sight.

However, neither one of them wanted to have that kind of relationship. They tended to do the group liberty and off-duty thing with Lonnie, Trey, Tim and Lucas, their fellow "Usual Subjects" and members of Darwin's human pod. In fact, Miguel realized suddenly, this was the first time they'd been off-duty together strictly alone since ... Since he wasn't sure when.

"Ok," he sighed. "Let's just play." Miguel won the first hand. As Ari gathered the cards up again, he grinned at her. "Well, if we were playing strip poker," he said, "then I imagine you'd be taking off your ..."

"Shoes!" she compleated the statement in no uncertain terms, while his smile grew even broader. She 'lost' her socks next.

"Both of them," he reminded her. "They come as a unit." Wrinkling her nose at him, she agreed. But Ari took the next pot.

"Ok," Miguel sighed. "There go my shoes."

"Uh - Uh!" came the quick contradiction as she leaned forward pointing to emphasize her point. "You spotted me them. No shoes or socks," she crowed. He shrugged equably, enjoying the game, and the cards, too.

"Fine. You can have my shirt."

"What are you wearing underneath," Ari wanted to know. "So, I can visualize it better," she explained quickly.

"Black tank top. Want to see?" He started to unbutton his top and she squealed, looking to one side and covering her eyes, peeking through her fingers though, he chuckled to notice.

"No! That's ok, I'll take your word for it."

"Hmmm, but I think it's getting a trifle warm in here," he teased and pulled it off anyway, draping it over the back of his seat, winking at her and enjoying the pink flush rising in her cheeks. "Looks like you're getting rather hot, too. Want to...?"

"No!" Miguel sitting across the small table from her in his tight black tank shirt, muscles rippling with every movement, Ari found it harder than ever to concentrate on the cards and she lost the next two hands, 'removing' her pants first and then her top.

"So...? *Now* will you tell me the colour of your panties?" Miguel teased. He'd been thwarted in that question earlier on the grounds that her uniform top covered the item in question. "And your bra, if you don't mind." Ari blushed.

"I'm wearing a tank-style shirt," she informed him in a low voice. "Ivory coloured, knit silk. And lavender ... " Her blush intensified.

"What was that?" he asked, leaning forward. "I didn't quite hear you. Lavender what?"

"Underpants," she replied a trifle defiantly. "AND I am wearing a bra, too."

"What? That's cheating! If I'd known that, I only would have spotted you my shoes!" he complained jokingly. Making a bratty face and sticking out her tongue, Ari answered the unspoken accusation, "You didn't ask."

Ari won two games after that, and then Miguel won two, leaving them with only one forfeit apiece. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, trying to unobtrusively ease himself into a more comfortable position. This was really the oddest game of poker he'd ever played. Both of them were fully dressed, compleatly regulation, but on another level, it was a mental striptease. As though, the reality of the situation was the imaginary one. In some weird way, Miguel felt as though Ari really was sitting less than a yard away from him, wearing nothing but a scrap of lavender silk. He tilted his head to one side, remembering the glimpses he'd gotten of her while fighting Bourne in Bonnchance. Moistening his lips with the tip of his tongue, he shifted again.

Ari looked up from shuffling the cards, feeling Miguel's eyes on her. She could tell what he was doing, the same thing that kept making her drop the cards. She bit her lower lip nervously, her imagination overlaying the mental image of the fit, muscular chief wearing only a pair of tight boxer-briefs. It wasn't that difficult to visualize, she'd seen him often enough in swim trunks and then that time, ...

Ari looked up and stopped dealing, her eyes going dreamy as she gazed at him, and her lips glistening, invitingly parted. Miguel swallowed heavily, wishing fervently that they were absolutely elsewhere, not onboard seaQuest at all. The way she was looking, it would take a miracle for them to get through this with their agreement with Bridger intact.

"The deal?" he reminded her, his voice sounding a little husky, and she quickly averted her eyes. If it weren't for the fact that she was already as red as a beet, he knew that she'd be blushing again.

Recalled to the matters at hand, Ari quickly dealt out the last ten cards. Two pair, jacks and fours. A small sigh escaped her, maybe she'd win this hand, too. She discarded the odd one. Miguel dropped two. Ari gave him two more, then took her own one. Another four. Full house. Sternly, she stifled the exultation she felt before allowing her eyes to look up.

Without a word, she lay them down and then felt the anticipatory smile grow on her face. Miguel looked at the revealed cards with a regretful expression, shaking his head slightly. With a small sigh, he lay down it own.

"You lose, cara," he said softly. The grin faded as Ari looked down at the four queens and an ace.

"No. How.. That's ..." With a helpless shrug, she smiled sheepishly at him. "You win." Standing up, she slowly walked over to his side of the table and waited while he, a little unsure of her motives, pushed away from the edge. Then she sat in his lap, settling herself comfortably, and put her arms around his neck.

With a sense of disbelief, expecting to wake up at any moment, Miguel carefully placed his arms around her and felt her place her lips on his. Madre de Dios! She didn't know what she was doing to him! She shifted her weight on his lap and he moaned slightly. Or maybe she did. Without conscious thought, his hands moved upward. But before they had time to do anything more, a knock at the door distracted them. With a gasp of dismay, Ari jumped up to her feet, turning her face away as Tim peered around the door.

"Ari! There you are! Trey's been expecting you for the past half an hour. What have you been doing?" She blinked, reordering her thoughts and remembering why she'd come here in the first place.

"I .. ah... I forgot I was supposed to meet her," she confessed without looking around, trying to get herself back under control. What had she been thinking of? she wondered. Looking down at Miguel, she appealed to his sense of gallantry, sounding a little nervous, "Would you come, too and ... and back me up if she's really upset?"

"Sure, cara, ah, but ... ummm, in a minute. You go on ahead and I'll catch up. Where are you going?"

"The moon pool. I've got to, ummm, freshen up first, though," she answered, and still blushing brightly, she slipped past the bemused and curious Communications Officer to make good her escape. Tim walked over to the table, picking up the cards and examining them, while Miguel stood and tried to get himself arranged properly.

"Must have been some game," the tall, thin officer observed. Miguel laughed, only a little nervously.

"Oh, it was. More than you know, it was." Deciding that would have to do, he turned to his friend, leaning against the bed and sighing slightly. "You know, Tim, that game almost makes up for you guys forgetting my birthday this year." Tim shrugged uncomfortable at the reminder, even though no accusation was implied.

"I'm sorry about that, Miguel. But with the girls both being gone more than a week ago, and you acting all weird over that singer," he shrugged. "It's been hectic." The Cuban sailor sighed.

"Yeah, yeah. I understand. Especially since they've been kind of, I don't know, not quite themselves, since. But I would have thought ... Oh, come on. Ari's probably ready by now." He led the way out. As Tim followed, he reflected that it had been an odd week or so, since Ari and Trey had both returned. Trey was acting rather distant and stand-offish since then. He understood that she'd had a rather unpleasant time at CeenDee, but she seemed to be blaming him for part of it.

And Ari ... ? On the surface, she was the same, but there was something bubbling just below the surface. Tim thought that she might have heard rumours about Miguel's enchantment with the pretty singer that seaQuest had transported to a USO show, and he'd been pushing the man to discuss it with her. But Miguel was of the opinion that if it wasn't broke, don't fix it. In fact, he seemed to be more confident about their relationship than ever.

Ari was waiting for them outside the lavatory, her face glistening damply and her hair pushed back, wet tendrils of curls already defiantly jumping up like little corkscrews. Taking an arm of each man, she kept up a determined chatter all the way down to the pool room. Just outside, though, she stopped, nodding to Tim and suggesting, "Why don't you go in and soften her up a bit, Tim? I want to say something to Miguel, first."

The door closed and Ari checked the hall carefully. There shouldn't be anyone around at the moment. Stepping close to the disturbing chief, she raised her arms around his neck and pulled him down, giving him the long, satisfying kiss that Tim had inadvertantly interrupted earlier. "Next time," she whispered, "I'm going to win. And not just in my imagination, either." Smiling a giaconda-like smile, she stepped back and opened the door, gesturing him through.

Miguel couldn't believe that he'd heard her correctly. Examining her face closely, he stepped over the threshold backwards, then turned around and blinked as everyone yelled, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" They hadn't forgotten after all.


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