(Untitled)

[imjustpretty]

Who: Ray Kowalski, T'Pol, anyone who hung out in the mess hall late last night.
What: Involuntary awkward confessions of possibly unrequited attraction. Ray says he hates this flood. :|
Where: The mess hall.
When: Last night; that is the first night of the musical flood.
Warnings: Uh. Do I have to warn for Tom Waits?

Comments

[with_discipline]

The flood was...unusual. T'Pol had never been musically inclined, and she wasn't sure how to handle being surrounded by songs of all sorts. She tried to escape for a cup of tea and whatever vegetable the kitchen was serving. She hadn't expected to run into anyone; she certainly hadn't expected to be sung to.

Arching her eyebrows at Ray, T'Pol was careful to keep her expression neutral. When he'd finished, she took a sip of her tea, eyebrows still arched. "The flood?"

[imjustpretty]

The three or so minutes it takes him to get through the rest of the song might very well qualify as the most mortifying three minutes of his life. He sings about offering a chair, sharing a drink, and about seeing that she's as lonesome as he is, and throughout the entire time, T'Pol just--stares. Ray wishes she'd just leave, except then he'd probably end up having to follow her until the song was finished. He hates this flood.

He finishes with the worst line yet--And I think that I just fell in love with you.--and then just stands there. This--he has no idea how to handle this. This isn't even within shouting distance of any definition of normal.

"I don't--I didn't mean that."

He can feel his ears grow hot and knows that he's blushing. He swears he didn't mean that.

[with_discipline]

It was hard, trying to impress a Vulcan. His assurance answered her question, though she wasn't certain she believed it. In some, if not most cases, it seemed these floods had a certain aspect of truth in them. It was uncomfortable, though she very carefully hid that. She wished, fleetingly, that Trip was aboard; but he had a more important mission to carry out. Assuming time even passed outside the ship.

"I see," T'Pol said simply, eyebrows arched. "The flood has been an...interesting one."

[imjustpretty]

"Interesting. Yeah." That's not the word Ray would use, but he's too embarrassed to protest. He fidgets, scruffing up the hair at the back of his neck, and then gestures at the counter where he put down his coffee before he started singing. "I'll just-- I'll be-- one second."

He gets his coffee, and as he turns back, he is extremely tempted to just leave. It would be easiest. On the other hand, it would also be a kind of admission. Not to mention incredibly rude. Still, as he heads back to the table, he doesn't sit down. After all, T'Pol might want him to leave after--well, after that.

"Have you-- I mean, did it make you-- I mean, like, y'know. Sing."

[with_discipline]

She toyed with her own mug while he retrieved his - though toying really just amounted to taking a sip. When Ray returned, she crossed her legs and arched an eyebrow, tilting her head to the side before shaking it. "No," she told him with an almost apologetic tilt of her head. "I have felt no such impulses."

Which wasn't completely true. But it was close enough.

[imjustpretty]

"Right." That made sense. Ray couldn't for the life of him imagine T'Pol doing a musical number the way he'd seen people do it all over the ship all day. "Maybe it's not, y'know. Maybe it doesn't affect--" He reached up and touched the rounded tip of his right ear. "You know."

There was an awkward pause, and Ray made up his mind to leave. He'd just go back to his room and lock his communicator away and go to sleep as quickly as possible in order to prevent more . . . singing. Seriously, this boat was absolutely insane.

He gave T'Pol a bit of a perfunctory smile and tipped his head in an uncomfortable salute before he turned around and headed for the door. About halfway there, his shoulders tensed as he heard a piano opening motif, and he quickened his pace. No more singing, please.

And then he stopped and turned around. It wasn't him who had started singing.

[with_discipline]

No, it wasn't. At first, T'Pol wasn't certain who was singing, either. She definitely preferred to believe that the flood didn't effect her because she was not human, but that had not been true in the past - and, apparently, it wasn't true now.

"Come on hold my hand,
I wanna contact the living.
Not sure I understand,
This role I’ve been given."

She was still sitting at her table, realizing that the voice she was hearing was hers. She'd never really listened to herself sing before. It was an incredibly odd sensation.

"I sit and talk to god
And he just laughs at my plans,
My head speaks a language, I don’t understand."

It was a song she was unfamiliar with, but that didn't appear to matter. T'Pol's hands tightened around her cup, and her eyes shifted away from Ray, to somewhere over his shoulder. Trip was too far away for her to reach, mentally, but she could imagine a blonder head in the hall.

"I just wanna feel real love,
Feel the home that I live in.
Cause I got too much life,
Running through my veins, going to waste."This