Pep Talk Log with Kate
Dec. 9th, 2012 01:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keepurshirtonltAfter looking to Jon for some advice about the fallout from T'Pol, Trip goes to Kate to ask if it's worth Phoebe laughing in his face. And ends up discovering Kate is twitterpated herself.
After his talk with Jon, Trip needed reassurance from one other person on the island. Someone who knew Phoebe like he did and would probably know better if she was going to laugh in his face or not. Well, she wouldn't be that mean but still, it was the thought. He took a deep breath and rang the doorbell of Kate's flat, hoping she was home.
Lilo had retreated to her bedroom, headphones on and Elvis vinyls probably cranked up so high she'd be prematurely deaf. Probably, a halfway decent adoptive mother would tell her to turn it down on assumption. Kate? Was just glad not to be listening to Blue Suede Shoes again. Kate? Was also glad that she could actually hear the door. She padded to it dressed in lumberjack plaid, a black t-shirt, and black leggings - standard at home uniform, a blue slurpee still in her hand and eyebrow cocked when she peered through the peephole.
"Hey, Starfleet," she said cheerfully when she opened the door. "Just you, right? No aliens and no captains?"
While he'd been in cold climates before, dressing for it was always an after thought for a Florida boy like Trip. Still, he found jeans, a sweatshirt and heavy coat did wonders for keeping the cold at bay. He grinned when Kate opened the door, despite his nerves. "Nah, left Jonny to handle the aliens back at the apartment. I was hopin' we could talk."
"S'about all we can do," Kate said and waved him in. "Lilo's home." That wasn't the only reason, probably, but she wasn't thinking about that right now. Much. When he'd stepped through, she closed the door behind him and locked it again. "Want a beer or something?"
"Really? I didn't hear Elvis blasting so I wasn't sure." Trip stomped his feet to get rid of any extra slush on his boots before coming in. "An' that's kinda what I wanted to talk 'bout. A beer would be great."
"Noise cancelling headphones are the greatest invention ever." Kate grinned and headed into the kitchen. "Kick off your boots and stay awhile," she teased while she pulled open the fridge and pulled out two beers.
"I just need stronger walls. Jon's taken to bouncin' the water polo ball he found against the wall an' I can hear it everywhere in the apartment." Granted, Trip didn't really mind since Jon put up with a lot from him. He slipped off his boots and shoved his gloves in the pockets of his coat before hanging it up. Then he padded into the kitchen after her. "An' I'd love to stay but I think after I ask ya what I need to, it might not be a good idea. In a good way. I hope." He made himself stop talking because his nerves were definitely showing. He could have hated T'Pol for this since he'd never been this bad before her and the Expanse.
Okay, that got Kate's attention, enough so she folded her foot beneath her when she sat on the couch and kept some distance between them. She handed him the beer - twist off cap - uncapped hers, took a sip, then made a face. "Beer and blue slurpee. Not a palate pleaser." Palate pleaser? She had been spending a lot of time with Caffrey. "Seriously, babe, whatever you've got to ask me, unless you suddenly became a serial killer or a pedophile, you can always stay 'til you're ready to go."
He took his beer and sat down on another chair. Sitting on the edge so he could lean his elbows on his knees, he took a sip and smile at Kate's discovery, while raising an eyebrow at her choice of words. "Wouldn't think so. Cotton candy and beer, that's not bad." He let the word choice go as he chuckle and looked down at his beer bottle. "Nah, nothing drastic like that I promise." He paused and took another sip of beer before he looked up again. "I've been thinkin' about asking Phoebe on a date. Ya know, a real one." Not the 'play dates' he was used to with both Phoebe and Kate.
Kate thought about teasing him, saying how she was offended or something, but really, it made things simpler just to say, "Guess it's going around," before she took another sip of beer. "So what, you want to know if I'm gonna be pissed at you dating her and not me, or you dating my girlfriend?" Hell, even if she weren't in the position she was in, she'd gotten good and damned used to being the one that got left, here on the island.
Now that he couldn't not react to. Trip's eyebrows went up and he cocked his head with a grin. "Goin' around huh? Somethin' I should know?" Then he shrugged. "Maybe, if you think I gotta. Mainly, I was asking because you know her. How likely do you think it'll be she'll just laugh in my face?" Because the last time he tried something with someone who mattered, he got told he was an experiment over tea in the middle of the mess hall. He'd rather not have a repeat, even if he knew the circumstances were completely different. Fun was easy...this was hard.
"Nope. Not pissed. Both you and Pheebs deserve better than driving the U-Haul of my baggage. So, far as I'm concerned, mazel tov." She might make him buy her a beer or ten, for free, if she decided to be sulky about it later, but she wasn't feeling it. She leaned back against the couch, arm up over the back of it, chill. "We can talk about what's going around when I'm done explaining to you that you're ten kinds of idiot if you think Phoebe ever laugh in anyone's face, let alone yours."
"Hey, none of that now. It ain't 'bout baggage 'cus lord knows mine got aired enough recently." Kate and Phoebe had had to physically save him from his baggage so he had no right to judge. "And you know what I mean. I know she's not gonna laugh but I don't want to make anything awkward either."
Different kinds of baggage, hers and Trip's. Hers was more of a matched set with...sigh...someone else's. Kate shrugged, tipping her bottle toward him before taking a sip. "Depends. If you act squirrelly about it, she might get nervous. But I don't see her getting weird about an actual date. She likes flowers and romance and all that."
Romance. Trip loved romance. Which begged the question, why had he even thought he wanted anything with T'Pol, a Vulcan who probably would have despised it? He knew he'd been desperate for connection but if he was honest with himself, his thoughts had gone beyond that before the mess hall. And thinking of T'Pol just made him take a long drink of his beer, especially since he didn't want to explain T'Pol to Kate. "I can do flowers and romance. I like flowers and romance. I want to do that for her."
"You're holding out on me, Starfleet," Kate said, but didn't press, really. Whatever made Trip twitchy about asking Phoebe out, that was more for Phoebe to know than her. Not that she didn't guess it had to do with that Vulcan he'd mentioned a few times, but 'talk to me' was way more Phoebe's language than Kate's anyway. "But that's fine. Anyway, I think Phoebe'd like it."
"Believe me, I wouldn't even know where to begin." Trip shook his head as he took a drink. It's not that he didn't want to tell Kate, he honestly just didn't know how. It had been hard enough talking about it with Jon earlier that day and at least the captain had a better idea of the extenuating circumstances. "Thanks Kate. I know it don't seem like it, but you've done wonders for my confidence." And now that they weren't talking about him, he leaned back in the chair and got comfortable, visibly relaxing. "So...what's this 'bout you now?"
Kate opened her mouth to make a crack about the hours on her knees, between his, on her back, over him, alone and with Phoebe that should've given him the confidence of a god, but it kinda stuck there, not wanting to come out. So, yeah, basically, she was screwed. She sighed, got up and went to the kitchen and grabbed the six pack and brought it back to the table. "Eh, nothing. Caffrey." Then she waved a hand. Somehow this was harder to talk about than she thought it would be.
The crack was nothing Trip hadn't heard before, just substitute Kate and Phoebe with the random alien girl of the week. That he had all the confidence in the world in. It was other stuff where he got a bit cagey. When Kate got up to get more beer, Trip pursed his lips and took another drink. This was going to be interesting. "Caffrey huh? What about him?"
"We have a thing," Kate said, parking it again, both knees tucked under her now. "It was like us, you and me, me and Pheebs, casual." Except he lived closer and Kate spent a lot more time in his bed or him in hers. That was all, even after the Sanctuary. She shrugged, swigged her beer, looked anywhere but Trip's face. "But he broke the code on me. Showed up in a suit with flowers and took me out on an actual date, without asking first." Sneaky bastard. Smart, too, not giving her a chance to say no.
"Uh huh. So, basically what I'm about to do to Phoebe." Trip said with a smirk he didn't even bother trying to hide. "So, how did it go?"
"Uh uh. You said you were asking her out, not showing up at her doorstep looking like something out of GQ." She made a face at him, sipped her beer and shrugged, tight. "That's not a fair thing to do a girl. Even one who hates dress up. Seeing h--" Oh no. No no no. No. No. Maybe if she drank the rest of these beers she'd forget that almost happened. "A guy in a perfectly tailored suit, making puppy eyes at you? Dirty pool."
Trip snickered into his beer. "Can my ears be deceiving me? I think Kate Freelander is twitterpatted. This is Neal, who works at the casino right? I'll have to ask him 'bout it. Maybe I should try that with Phoebe if it worked so well on you." He wouldn't, he was a bit more of a traditionalist then that. But he couldn't help teasing Kate a bit.
Kate threw the beer cap at him and rolled her eyes. "Twitterpated is for sixteen year-olds and prom dates, not FWBs with charm as a superpower." It wasn't only that, but every time she let herself feel anything, it went bad. They left her with nothing but dreams that woke her aching, and memories, everywhere she walked.
His laughing only got harder as he exaggerated dodging the cap. "I don't know. I think your doing a pretty good job at it." Granted, Trip couldn't imagine Kate as a twitterpated teenager but that didn't stop him. "We're FWBs. Somehow, I think Neal charmed his way past that." His expression and mood softened, since he was happy for Kate. He knew what Declan leaving had done to her and he wanted his friend to be happy again. Or as happy as anyone could on the island.
"It's not..." Kate sighed and drank about half of her beer in a single swallow. It didn't do much to wash down the truth, but it might keep her from choking on it. "It's not the charm. Not saying it hurts anything. It's just..." How did you explain to one of the good guys like Phoebe and Trip what she and Sawyer, and now she and Neal shared that pushed her buttons so hard? Not looking at him, she shrugged. "I don't know where it's going. It's just getting to the place where it might be worth risking it to find out. You know?"
Trip hadn't thought of himself as one of the good guys in a while. Not since the Expanse. He didn't think anyone on Enterprise did, not after what they had been forced to do. But that was a whole other issue. "Yeah. Yeah I do. And if ya need help figurin' it out, my door is always open. No point in takin' risks without backup."
"Thanks, babe." Her mouth quirked, eyes brightening a little at the offer. Even if it wasn't the kind of thing he could help with, it was still good to know he'd be there if it went south. "Same, you and Pheebs, but I've got a feeling that'll work out fine."
After his talk with Jon, Trip needed reassurance from one other person on the island. Someone who knew Phoebe like he did and would probably know better if she was going to laugh in his face or not. Well, she wouldn't be that mean but still, it was the thought. He took a deep breath and rang the doorbell of Kate's flat, hoping she was home.
Lilo had retreated to her bedroom, headphones on and Elvis vinyls probably cranked up so high she'd be prematurely deaf. Probably, a halfway decent adoptive mother would tell her to turn it down on assumption. Kate? Was just glad not to be listening to Blue Suede Shoes again. Kate? Was also glad that she could actually hear the door. She padded to it dressed in lumberjack plaid, a black t-shirt, and black leggings - standard at home uniform, a blue slurpee still in her hand and eyebrow cocked when she peered through the peephole.
"Hey, Starfleet," she said cheerfully when she opened the door. "Just you, right? No aliens and no captains?"
While he'd been in cold climates before, dressing for it was always an after thought for a Florida boy like Trip. Still, he found jeans, a sweatshirt and heavy coat did wonders for keeping the cold at bay. He grinned when Kate opened the door, despite his nerves. "Nah, left Jonny to handle the aliens back at the apartment. I was hopin' we could talk."
"S'about all we can do," Kate said and waved him in. "Lilo's home." That wasn't the only reason, probably, but she wasn't thinking about that right now. Much. When he'd stepped through, she closed the door behind him and locked it again. "Want a beer or something?"
"Really? I didn't hear Elvis blasting so I wasn't sure." Trip stomped his feet to get rid of any extra slush on his boots before coming in. "An' that's kinda what I wanted to talk 'bout. A beer would be great."
"Noise cancelling headphones are the greatest invention ever." Kate grinned and headed into the kitchen. "Kick off your boots and stay awhile," she teased while she pulled open the fridge and pulled out two beers.
"I just need stronger walls. Jon's taken to bouncin' the water polo ball he found against the wall an' I can hear it everywhere in the apartment." Granted, Trip didn't really mind since Jon put up with a lot from him. He slipped off his boots and shoved his gloves in the pockets of his coat before hanging it up. Then he padded into the kitchen after her. "An' I'd love to stay but I think after I ask ya what I need to, it might not be a good idea. In a good way. I hope." He made himself stop talking because his nerves were definitely showing. He could have hated T'Pol for this since he'd never been this bad before her and the Expanse.
Okay, that got Kate's attention, enough so she folded her foot beneath her when she sat on the couch and kept some distance between them. She handed him the beer - twist off cap - uncapped hers, took a sip, then made a face. "Beer and blue slurpee. Not a palate pleaser." Palate pleaser? She had been spending a lot of time with Caffrey. "Seriously, babe, whatever you've got to ask me, unless you suddenly became a serial killer or a pedophile, you can always stay 'til you're ready to go."
He took his beer and sat down on another chair. Sitting on the edge so he could lean his elbows on his knees, he took a sip and smile at Kate's discovery, while raising an eyebrow at her choice of words. "Wouldn't think so. Cotton candy and beer, that's not bad." He let the word choice go as he chuckle and looked down at his beer bottle. "Nah, nothing drastic like that I promise." He paused and took another sip of beer before he looked up again. "I've been thinkin' about asking Phoebe on a date. Ya know, a real one." Not the 'play dates' he was used to with both Phoebe and Kate.
Kate thought about teasing him, saying how she was offended or something, but really, it made things simpler just to say, "Guess it's going around," before she took another sip of beer. "So what, you want to know if I'm gonna be pissed at you dating her and not me, or you dating my girlfriend?" Hell, even if she weren't in the position she was in, she'd gotten good and damned used to being the one that got left, here on the island.
Now that he couldn't not react to. Trip's eyebrows went up and he cocked his head with a grin. "Goin' around huh? Somethin' I should know?" Then he shrugged. "Maybe, if you think I gotta. Mainly, I was asking because you know her. How likely do you think it'll be she'll just laugh in my face?" Because the last time he tried something with someone who mattered, he got told he was an experiment over tea in the middle of the mess hall. He'd rather not have a repeat, even if he knew the circumstances were completely different. Fun was easy...this was hard.
"Nope. Not pissed. Both you and Pheebs deserve better than driving the U-Haul of my baggage. So, far as I'm concerned, mazel tov." She might make him buy her a beer or ten, for free, if she decided to be sulky about it later, but she wasn't feeling it. She leaned back against the couch, arm up over the back of it, chill. "We can talk about what's going around when I'm done explaining to you that you're ten kinds of idiot if you think Phoebe ever laugh in anyone's face, let alone yours."
"Hey, none of that now. It ain't 'bout baggage 'cus lord knows mine got aired enough recently." Kate and Phoebe had had to physically save him from his baggage so he had no right to judge. "And you know what I mean. I know she's not gonna laugh but I don't want to make anything awkward either."
Different kinds of baggage, hers and Trip's. Hers was more of a matched set with...sigh...someone else's. Kate shrugged, tipping her bottle toward him before taking a sip. "Depends. If you act squirrelly about it, she might get nervous. But I don't see her getting weird about an actual date. She likes flowers and romance and all that."
Romance. Trip loved romance. Which begged the question, why had he even thought he wanted anything with T'Pol, a Vulcan who probably would have despised it? He knew he'd been desperate for connection but if he was honest with himself, his thoughts had gone beyond that before the mess hall. And thinking of T'Pol just made him take a long drink of his beer, especially since he didn't want to explain T'Pol to Kate. "I can do flowers and romance. I like flowers and romance. I want to do that for her."
"You're holding out on me, Starfleet," Kate said, but didn't press, really. Whatever made Trip twitchy about asking Phoebe out, that was more for Phoebe to know than her. Not that she didn't guess it had to do with that Vulcan he'd mentioned a few times, but 'talk to me' was way more Phoebe's language than Kate's anyway. "But that's fine. Anyway, I think Phoebe'd like it."
"Believe me, I wouldn't even know where to begin." Trip shook his head as he took a drink. It's not that he didn't want to tell Kate, he honestly just didn't know how. It had been hard enough talking about it with Jon earlier that day and at least the captain had a better idea of the extenuating circumstances. "Thanks Kate. I know it don't seem like it, but you've done wonders for my confidence." And now that they weren't talking about him, he leaned back in the chair and got comfortable, visibly relaxing. "So...what's this 'bout you now?"
Kate opened her mouth to make a crack about the hours on her knees, between his, on her back, over him, alone and with Phoebe that should've given him the confidence of a god, but it kinda stuck there, not wanting to come out. So, yeah, basically, she was screwed. She sighed, got up and went to the kitchen and grabbed the six pack and brought it back to the table. "Eh, nothing. Caffrey." Then she waved a hand. Somehow this was harder to talk about than she thought it would be.
The crack was nothing Trip hadn't heard before, just substitute Kate and Phoebe with the random alien girl of the week. That he had all the confidence in the world in. It was other stuff where he got a bit cagey. When Kate got up to get more beer, Trip pursed his lips and took another drink. This was going to be interesting. "Caffrey huh? What about him?"
"We have a thing," Kate said, parking it again, both knees tucked under her now. "It was like us, you and me, me and Pheebs, casual." Except he lived closer and Kate spent a lot more time in his bed or him in hers. That was all, even after the Sanctuary. She shrugged, swigged her beer, looked anywhere but Trip's face. "But he broke the code on me. Showed up in a suit with flowers and took me out on an actual date, without asking first." Sneaky bastard. Smart, too, not giving her a chance to say no.
"Uh huh. So, basically what I'm about to do to Phoebe." Trip said with a smirk he didn't even bother trying to hide. "So, how did it go?"
"Uh uh. You said you were asking her out, not showing up at her doorstep looking like something out of GQ." She made a face at him, sipped her beer and shrugged, tight. "That's not a fair thing to do a girl. Even one who hates dress up. Seeing h--" Oh no. No no no. No. No. Maybe if she drank the rest of these beers she'd forget that almost happened. "A guy in a perfectly tailored suit, making puppy eyes at you? Dirty pool."
Trip snickered into his beer. "Can my ears be deceiving me? I think Kate Freelander is twitterpatted. This is Neal, who works at the casino right? I'll have to ask him 'bout it. Maybe I should try that with Phoebe if it worked so well on you." He wouldn't, he was a bit more of a traditionalist then that. But he couldn't help teasing Kate a bit.
Kate threw the beer cap at him and rolled her eyes. "Twitterpated is for sixteen year-olds and prom dates, not FWBs with charm as a superpower." It wasn't only that, but every time she let herself feel anything, it went bad. They left her with nothing but dreams that woke her aching, and memories, everywhere she walked.
His laughing only got harder as he exaggerated dodging the cap. "I don't know. I think your doing a pretty good job at it." Granted, Trip couldn't imagine Kate as a twitterpated teenager but that didn't stop him. "We're FWBs. Somehow, I think Neal charmed his way past that." His expression and mood softened, since he was happy for Kate. He knew what Declan leaving had done to her and he wanted his friend to be happy again. Or as happy as anyone could on the island.
"It's not..." Kate sighed and drank about half of her beer in a single swallow. It didn't do much to wash down the truth, but it might keep her from choking on it. "It's not the charm. Not saying it hurts anything. It's just..." How did you explain to one of the good guys like Phoebe and Trip what she and Sawyer, and now she and Neal shared that pushed her buttons so hard? Not looking at him, she shrugged. "I don't know where it's going. It's just getting to the place where it might be worth risking it to find out. You know?"
Trip hadn't thought of himself as one of the good guys in a while. Not since the Expanse. He didn't think anyone on Enterprise did, not after what they had been forced to do. But that was a whole other issue. "Yeah. Yeah I do. And if ya need help figurin' it out, my door is always open. No point in takin' risks without backup."
"Thanks, babe." Her mouth quirked, eyes brightening a little at the offer. Even if it wasn't the kind of thing he could help with, it was still good to know he'd be there if it went south. "Same, you and Pheebs, but I've got a feeling that'll work out fine."