Title: Under the Skin

Author/pseudonym: Caroline Crane

Fandom: Enterprise

Paring: Trip/Archer

Rating: PG

Status: new

Archive: yes to list archives

Series/Sequel: part 7 of the Heart on Fire series

Disclaimers: Insert standard disclaimer here

Notes: Once again I find myself apologizing for the long break between parts in this series. I haven't watched the show much in recent months and the characters all went quiet in my head. Then today I drug out my Korn CDs in hope of some inspiration on another fandom, and lo and behold Trip just started talking away. I realize I left this piece in an unfortunate place, but I'll try really hard not to take another month to write the next part.

Summary: Trip's POV as he tries to talk to Jon about what's coming between them.

Warnings: none

Under the Skin
by Caroline Crane

I've tried telling myself that it wasn't spending the night with Malcolm that finally convinced me to come clean with Jon. Drove me to it is more to the point, because as much as I've tried to deny it I knew some of the stuff I thought that night scared me. It wasn't so much that I thought I could actually fall for Malcolm; maybe if things were different and I hadn't been hung up on my best friend for years, but no matter how much I wished things were different I had to play the hand I was dealt. That's what my father always said, and it turns out he was right because no matter how hard I tried to avoid it I finally got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore.

So I've been standing in front of his quarters long enough to draw attention now – that is if there was anybody around. Lucky for me there isn't; it's the middle of a shift so anybody that's not on duty is sleeping. Including Jon, which is why I'm not sure this is such a good idea. Part of me wonders if I should wait and do this later, over dinner maybe or at least when he's fully dressed. If I wake him up now I know what I'm gonna be facing when he answers the door; Jon in his Starfleet issue skivvies, nothing I haven't seen before but now that I'm here I'm not sure this is the best way to approach the problem. Something tells me if I put it off even one more day that I'm gonna lose my nerve, though, so as much as I want to I don't turn around and go back to my quarters.

I haven't been this nervous about anything in…well, ever, I guess, and I haven't even rung his doorbell yet. It'd be different if we were back on Earth, but risking everything while we're trapped on a starship together means I won't be able to avoid him once he knows. I won't be able to just disappear from his life, keep out of his way and make it as easy as possible on both of us to just stop being friends. So yeah, I'm taking a huge risk by telling him the truth, but he's already pushing me out of his life so I have a feeling he already knows the truth even if he doesn't want to deal with it.

That thought alone should be enough to convince me not to do this, but I reach out before I can talk myself out of it and ring the bell anyway. It takes him a long time to wake up enough to realize there's someone at his door; long enough that I start to think about hightailing it back to my quarters before he opens the door. I'm not the type to back away from danger, at least not when it comes to Suliban or Ferengi or any of the other situations we've run into out here. When it comes to coming clean with Jon, though…well, that's a different story. Risking my life is a lot easier than risking the best friend I've ever had, not to mention the only person I've ever cared enough about to think about finally settling down.

This would be a lot easier if I'd ever heard of him dating another man, but every story I've ever heard about his love life always involves some woman. Not that there are a lot of them, but enough to make me think I'm wasting my time. I still have to take a shot, though, because if I don't I'm not gonna be much use to anybody on board. Not when I can't even sleep for wondering what he's thinking, why he's pushing me out of his life. I don't know how he thinks that's gonna work when he's been under my skin for years; he worked his way in without even trying and now there's no going back. He's still trying to hold me at arm's length, and it feels like part of me is missing every time I look at him and he doesn't look back.

I've about got myself talked out of going through with this when his door opens, and then he's standing in front of me looking pretty much exactly the way I expected him to. He's scowling when the door slides open, but when he sees that it's me he looks surprised for a second before his expression goes blank. Just like that, like he can turn it on and off at will. If there was a way to teach that skill I'd pay anything to learn it, because it would mean not standing in front of my best friend in the middle of the night wishing we'd never met.

"Trip?" He says my name like a question, and I hear everything he's not asking me in that one word. As in 'what are you doing here?' and 'what's it going to take to get rid of you?'. I don't have an answer for that one, though, so I ignore the tightening in my chest at knowing I'm the last person on the ship he wants to deal with right now.

"Captain." I'm not sure why I decide to keep it professional – this is anything but, after all, but somehow calling him 'captain' instead of 'Jon' makes it a little easier to look at him while he's standing in front of me in his underwear. "Sorry about waking you, but we need to talk."

He squints a little like he's still having a hard time understanding what I'm saying, and I have to dig my fingernails into my palms to keep from reacting. I expected him to be pissed that I woke him up or maybe to jump to the conclusion that there was some emergency in Engineering, but I'm not prepared for how cute he looks when he's confused and sleepy. It only lasts a minute, though, and then he's standing aside and letting me into his quarters. He doesn't say anything or try to find out what I want to talk about before he lets me in, which means either he's too tired to be nervous or he already knows.

I brush past him, trying not to react to his body heat or the fact that I can smell sleep and Jon as I pass. When I reach the chair on the opposite side of the room I turn around again, but his back's still to me. Porthos jumps down off the bed and I reach down to scratch her ears when she comes over, grateful for the distraction so I don't have to watch him ignoring me. At least somebody's glad to see me.

When I finally look up again he's looking at me, and just for a second when our eyes meet I can see what he's thinking. I've known him long enough that it doesn't surprise me, but when he started avoiding me I started wondering what I was missing. I know what everybody else thinks they see; they think the way Jon touches me without even realizing it and the way he looks at me means something more than friendship. For awhile I wanted to believe they were right, but I learned the hard way how wrong I was and anyway that's not why I'm here. I'm not even hoping anymore that somehow I missed something and he really does love me – I'm here to clear the air and that's it.

So when I look at him I can tell he knows why I showed up when I knew he was sleeping, but as soon as our eyes meet he forces his expression to go blank again. I really wish I knew that trick, because I'm pretty sure what I'm about to say is written all over my face. "Look, Jon, I know you ordered me to keep my nose out of whatever's bothering you and I've tried."

He sighs and crosses his arms over his chest like he's about to dig his heels in for a fight. That's not how I want this to go, though – all I want is to finally say out loud what we both know so I can go back to staying out of his way with a clear conscience. The last thing I want to do is fight with him. There was a time when I'd push his buttons just to see if I could get a reaction out of him, but that's not what I want anymore. Hell, I'd be just as happy if he didn't say anything at all. Just let me get this over with and then get the hell out of his quarters, and we can both pretend it never happened as soon as it's over.

"Before you tell me it's none of my business just hear me out," I say when he opens his mouth. I wait until he nods a little and leans back against his desk, wishing he didn't look quite so good in that shade of blue. I clear my throat and look down at my hands, turning them over like the perfect words to say what I need to say are gonna be written there somewhere. "I'm not here to try to get you to talk about the Vulcans or the way you pulled rank on me the last time we talked. If you want to push me out of your life…"

I look up in time to watch his jaw clench – he doesn't move but I can tell he's already pissed that I brought up our last conversation. The flash of anger in his eyes startles me for a second and I pause, just for a second but long enough to lose control of the situation. "Don't blame this on me," he says, his voice so different from the way it sounded when he said my name just a few minutes ago. He sounds mad, yeah, but there's something else there too, like a warning only I'm not sure what he's warning me about. He did push me away, and even if he doesn't want to talk about it that doesn't change what happened.

"I'm not blaming you for anything," I say, suddenly glad I chose to sit in the far corner of the room so I wouldn't be tempted to inch closer to him. It's still hard not to want to get up and go over there, smooth the anger out of his face and show him how I feel instead of telling him. The way he's looking at me like I've overstepped some kind of bound, though…I'm not sure what he thinks I did wrong but I feel my shoulders tense anyway. "I'm trying to be your friend."

He shakes his head and looks down like it's too much to even look at me. My stomach twists but I ignore the sick feeling, telling myself that after all the years we've been friends he at least owes me this. He can at least listen to the truth before I walk out of here, even if it means he kicks me off his crew and turns around to take me back to Earth. Hell, I'd volunteer to catch the next available freighter back if that's what he wants, just as long as he listens to me before he orders me out of his life for good. I always figured he had to know at least a little about how I felt, after that night I asked him to spend the night with me I thought it was pretty obvious. The fact that we've never talked about it hurt, yeah, but neither of us let it ruin our friendship because it was too important to both of us. At least I thought it was, until we got on board this floating fishbowl and couldn't find a way to avoid each other when we needed a breather.

And that's what it all comes down to – I'm about to ruin the best friendship I've ever had because I can't get far enough away from him to get a handle on how I feel. There's no shore leave, no week back on the ranch in Texas with Mom's pecan pie. The closest I've come to forgetting for a little while has been with Malcolm, and even then I couldn't really forget why I was doing it. Not when I had to face him again during our next shift and pretend that everything was fine, that I wasn't in love with him and it didn't bother me that he looked at me kinda funny whenever he saw me talking to Malcolm.

"I have a responsibility to the entire crew," he says, and at first I don't know what he's getting at. I've never given him a hard time about his rank, and until he decided it was in his best interest to kick me out of his life he'd never pulled rank on me either. "It doesn't matter how I feel, I shouldn't let it affect my judgement."

"How you feel about what? The Vulcans?"

"No. Partly." He pauses and looks back up at me, and for a second I can almost imagine that he's trying to tell me something. I know it's not true, though, because if it was he wouldn't have turned me down the last time we got close to having this conversation. Then he sighs and looks down again and whatever I thought I saw in his eyes is gone. "The point is that we're out here all alone and I'm responsible for everyone on this ship. Starfleet and the Vulcans are watching every move we make, and now other species are starting to take notice. They're just waiting for me to screw up, Trip. I can't afford to let anything get in the way of that."

I stop myself just before the words 'so let me help you' come out of my mouth. As much as I want to help him, to do whatever I can to make him see that he's not alone in this I know what he'd say. He's always been a martyr, it's one of the things that drives me craziest about him. It's like he gets off on being Jonathan Archer, on everything that goes along with the name and the expectations Starfleet has for him. I've always known he was trying to prove something to himself and everyone else, but I never thought there would be a time when he wouldn't let me help him.

"You're not out here alone, Johnny," I finally say. This isn't the conversation I came here to have, but at least he's talking. I don't want to start thinking that it's because he missed me over the past few days, but when he looks up at the sound of his name it's hard not to hope a little. He's shaking his head like he's about to argue with me, though, so I keep going before he opens his mouth. "Okay, so maybe we're new at this and we're learning as we go along, but you've got the whole crew behind you. You've got me, I'm always gonna be there."

I don't know if that's what he wants to hear, but I can't stop myself from saying it. Even if we really were just friends I'd mean it, he has to know that. If he doesn't I guess I never meant as much to him as I thought I did. Part of me expects him to smile, maybe even tell me I'm right and he's just being paranoid. I keep waiting for him to tell me that he's been wrong all this time, that he misses having me around and he just wants things to go back to the way they were. I know it's not what he's going to say, but it's a nice thought.

"It's not that easy."

He's got this look on his face like he's trying not to say something important, and I know I'm missing something obvious but I can't let myself believe it's what I wish it was. I'm his friend – or I was anyway – but that's as far as it goes, right? Whatever's on his mind, it doesn't have anything to do with how he feels about me. At least not in the way I wish it did.

"It is," I say, standing up before I even notice I've moved. I've been telling myself since I got to his quarters that I wasn't going anywhere near him, but it feels strange to be so far away from him when I'm used to friendly touches whenever we're in the same room. I don't know if he's ever thought about the amount of time I spend with my hand on his shoulder, but I miss that just as much as I miss talking to him. There's about a foot of space between us when I stop, and it's all I can do to keep my hands to myself. "I know what the Vulcans did to your father. I understand how you feel about them breathing down our necks, I feel the same way. But that's the whole point – you don't have to deal with them by yourself."

"You can't help me." The anger's back in his voice and his jaw, and he almost flinches when I take another step toward him. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I tried to touch him, but suddenly it feels like somebody just punched me in the gut. "You still don't get it, do you?"

"I guess not." I don't bother trying to pretend it doesn't hurt when he looks at me that way. I don't even think I could, even if I wanted to he'd see right through me. "Enlighten me."

"It's you." He's not looking at me anymore, but his whole body's tense and I feel myself tense in response. Then he swallows and turns back toward me, fixing me with that gaze that's almost resigned but sort of defiant too. "You're the problem, Trip."

The End