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Trip Tucker considered himself a blessed man; he had a wonderful wife that he shared a deep love with, a comfortable house in a nice neighborhood, and two incredible children he would do just about anything for.
He’d suffered a lot of hardship to get here. He’d seen loss, he’d seen death, he’d seen evil.
All of this was to say that, right then and there, Trip Tucker was pretty sure he was looking evil right in its big, ugly eyes once more.
“Dear, you’re staring.” T’Pol’s even, soothing voice broke him out of his trance, though he didn’t take his eyes off of Evil Incarnate herself: Mrs. Olivia Shelley.
She was head of the PTA, head of the fundraising committee for the soccer team, and the mother of Jameson Shelley, who had pushed and teased his eldest child, Elizabeth, a little too much for Trip’s liking.
Of course, it didn’t help that she had shot down Trip’s idea for an astronomy club. Or his idea to have Commander Shran as a guest speaker for the summer science program. There was also that time she had “accidentally” lost the Tucker Family school picture order form so their school photos arrived two weeks late. And that other time she threw Trip under the bus in front of the superintendent for the school float breaking down on First Contact Day even though he had been the one to suggest improvements to the float during planning that would have made the float sturdier and she had ignored his ideas.
Anyhow, the woman had formed a sort of rivalry with Trip that made his blood pressure rise every time he even thought about her.
“She’s plotting something, T’Pol,” he ran his tongue over his lips, “I can sense it.”
He could practically hear his wife stifle an eye roll. “This is a bake sale, Trip. What could she possibly be plotting?”
“I don’t know!” He threw his hands up and turned to face T’Pol, though he immediately wished he hadn’t. Her eyes bored into his with an intensity that forced some of the red from his brain. He took a deep breath. “I don’t know, she might ruin our cookies so no one thinks we can bake. Or she might-”
T’Pol put a hand on his arm. “This is not a competition.”
He huffed out a breath. “I know that, I just-”
His wife’s gaze intensified further and, though he didn’t always look it, Trip was a smart enough man to know when to shut up.
T’Pol took a deep breath and handed him the plate of cookies they had spent all of the previous evening baking with Elizabeth and Charlie. “Go place these on the table while I go find us seats in the stands.” He nodded and turned to go, but T’Pol hung on to the plate a moment longer, tugging his gaze back up into her lovely, terrifying eyes. “Do not start trouble with Mrs. Shelley.”
Trip gave her his most innocent look as she relinquished her hold on the cookies. “I’ll be a perfect gentleman.” He turned away and began his march towards the table before T’Pol could make a sharp comment about “the subjective definition of a gentleman.”
As he approached the extensive array of baked goods, Mrs. Shelley’s eyes flicked up from the cashbox where she was putting away money from a sale to look him over with her usual disgusted gaze.
“Mr. Tucker,” she said crisply, shutting the cashbox just a touch harder than was strictly necessary.
“Mrs. Shelley.” He tipped the brim of his NX-01 baseball cap at her, hoping the gesture conveyed the depths of his loathing appropriately.
She twisted a lip at him; it wasn’t quite a sneer, but it was enough for Trip to know his point had gotten across.
He put the tray down and was about to turn away (“see, T’Pol, I can be civil”) when Mrs. Shelley’s hand reached into his field of view to adjust the pan needlessly. He looked up at the woman as she pursed her lips.
“I hear they’re playing the Blue Team against the Red Team.” She raised a brow at him.
Trip worked his jaw for a moment. Of course the Red Team was playing the Blue Team; Elizabeth was on the Blue Team and Jameson was on the Red Team. Mrs. Shelley, with all her vile influence as the head of fundraising and, therefore, the team’s money, had likely arranged the matches so that this would be the case.
“I believe so,” Trip kept his voice as even as possible.
Mrs. Shelley leaned in close, close enough that Trip could smell the stale brownie on her breath. “May the best team win.”
Before Trip could break his promise to T’Pol and his honor, as a gentleman, by throttling the lady, he spun away to find his wife.
She was seated on the top row of the bleachers right in the middle, where they always sat. In an instant, all the anger he felt towards Mrs. Shelley faded as overwhelming affection for T’Pol and her tendency toward routine and consistency washed over him. A smile rose to his lips and he headed up the bleachers to sit beside her.
T’Pol raised a brow at him as he approached. He simply smiled at her and gently pressed his first two fingers to hers. He had learned recently that this was akin to a gentle kiss on Vulcan and he had to admit that, while it wasn’t the same as “real kissin’”, he was growing fond of the gesture.
By the lovely, light green tinge in T’Pol’s cheeks, he guessed she was fond of it too.
Trip settled in his seat and looked around. “Where’s Charlie?”
“The Blue Team was short a member today so Charlie has been brought in as a backup.”
The center of his chest pleasantly warmed. Charlie was about two years younger than his sister, Elizabeth, but had shown such talent in soccer that he had often been called upon as a substitute player for the 3rd grade teams. They had been worried at first that Elizabeth might be jealous of Charlie but, as it turned out, Elizabeth was more than a little excited to be playing alongside her brother. They had been very lucky in the fact that their children got along exceptionally.
(Except, of course, when they teamed up to prank their parents. Or steal Porthos from Admiral Archer. Or draw on their Uncle Malcolm’s face when he fell asleep in the living room chair last Thanksgiving.) (Okay, that last one was actually pretty funny.) (But the point still stands.)
Trip scootched a little closer to T’Pol as his eyes scanned the small figures on the field below. It took him only a moment to spot Elizabeth’s bronze ponytail bobbing as she did warm-up jumping jacks. He grinned a little as he noticed how tall she was next to her teammates. She had hit a growth spurt that summer and, though Trip knew she had grown, this was the first time he had real perspective on just how much. Next to her, Charlie sat on the ground with his legs extended in front of him, trying to touch his toes.
The joy he felt watching his children suddenly turned to ice as he noticed a third figure approach them: Jameson Shelley.
“Aw, great,” he muttered lowly. Nevertheless, T’Pol still heard him (darn her superior Vulcan hearing) and turned to give him a questioning look.
He gestured at the trio of kids on the other side of the field. “It’s the Shelley kid. Talkin’ to Elizabeth and Charlie.”
Though T’Pol kept her face even, he felt her tense slightly beside him. T’Pol didn’t exactly participate in his rivalry with Mrs. Shelley, but she certainly held Jameson in such icy regard that the weather on Andoria would be jealous. T’Pol didn’t take kindly to children who pushed her children and called them names.
Especially when the bulk of Jameson’s issues with Elizabeth revolved around her pointed ears and green blood.
They both watched with baited breath as Jameson planted himself in front of their kids and opened his mouth to speak.
Thankfully, before he could, the whistle blew and the coaches called their players in for a pre-game peptalk. Trip and T’Pol let out a quiet sigh of relief.
It wasn’t as though Elizabeth couldn’t handle herself - in fact, she had been gifted with her mother’s weaponlike way with words and had been able to get Jameson to back off all on her own plenty of times - or even that Charlie couldn’t hold the bully off - he was a little less eloquent than his sister, but he was enough of a prankster to make his own classmates a little afraid of angering the boy - it was simply… agonizing to watch someone pick on their kids for something they couldn’t control.
It didn’t help that Mrs. Shelley’s influence as PTA president made the principal of the school reluctant to believe that Jameson was capable of stepping a single toe outta line. Or that her position made Jameson popular and empowered enough to feel as though he had a right to determine Elizabeth was unfit for friendships. Or that Mr. Shelley was spacey enough to be blissfully unaware of how ugly his wife and son’s attitudes could be.
Anger flared up in Trip’s chest again. He was gettin’ really sick of the Shelley family.
Beside him, T’Pol pressed her first two fingers to his. Trip gave her a tense smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes and threaded his fingers with hers. He was tempted to press a kiss to the back of her knuckles, but he knew she wouldn’t tolerate such a rampant display of affection in front of the other elementary school families.
Still, she squeezed his hand and kept holding it, which eased some of the tension in his shoulders.
On the field, the players spread out and, with the blow of the whistle, the game began.
Elizabeth was starting in her usual place as goalie. Being so tall meant she had a larger range of reach, so the coach had been placing her there more and more throughout the season, to Elizabeth’s delight. Much like her father, Elizabeth wasn’t keen on running.
From the bench, Charlie was cheering. Trip couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it was clear that he was rooting for his sister.
Trip smiled and reached into the cooler T’Pol had brought to fetch a water for her and a Mountain Dew for himself. After a few sips of the refreshing drink and a stellar block in the goal by Elizabeth, Trip’s earlier ire slipped away.
By the end of the first half, the Blue Team had scored three goals and the Red Team hadn’t scored any.
Just before the ref called the end of the first half, Jameson had made his fourth attempt at scoring, which Elizabeth blocked with ease. Each time she had prevented him from scoring, his cheeks got redder and redder, his movements more stilted, and his brow more furrowed. As the ref called for halftime, Jameson’s building frustration exploded.
He shouted something Trip couldn’t quite make out - though, upon later reflection, he was pretty sure involved the words “pointy-eared freak” - and shoved Elizabeth hard enough to send her sprawling into the dirt.
Trip and T’Pol were on their feet quicker than lighting, but, as they reached the bottom of the bleachers and dashed out onto the field, they realized Charlie had been even quicker. Their son pulled Jameson off his sister and, before the refs pulled them apart, landed one solid right hook to Jameson’s jaw.
“You’re all freaks!” Jameson shouted as one of the refs pulled him back, his jaw reddening.
“Better to be a freak than a sore loser!” Charlie yelled back.
T’Pol stooped in the dirt to help Elizabeth up as Trip took Charlie from the ref. He kneeled and took his son by the shoulders, drawing his attention away from Jameson.
“Hey, hey!” Charlie’s chest heaved for breath as he met his father’s eyes and, after a moment, his anger faded into annoyance. The boy looked over at his sister, who was sitting up now with her mother, a shallow cut on her forehead but, otherwise, no worse for wear.
Trip looked over at Jameson, who had been released by the ref and was now tucked behind his mother. The fire in Mrs. Shelley’s eyes seemed to Trip to be a reflection of hell itself.
He mused to himself for a split second that everyone must carry a bit of home in their eyes, and Mrs. Shelley was no exception.
“Your son just struck my son!” She stormed toward the Tuckers as they all stood to face her. The refs lingered a short distance away, clearly unsure of how to handle the situation, especially now that Mrs. Shelley had arrived on the scene.
Trip licked his lips and put his hands on his hips. “And your son pushed our daughter!”
“Yeah!” Charlie chimed in. “And he called Elizabeth a-”
“A simple push at a sporting match is hardly the same as a punch to the face, Mr. Tucker!” Mrs. Shelley’s voice was shrill, her face red, and her hands shaking.
“Halftime was already called!” Trip took a step forward. “The shove was unprovoked and not part of the game!”
Mrs. Shelley scoffed. “Oh please! Unprovoked!?” She took a step closer, putting herself close enough to Trip that, once again, the stale brownie scent could assault his nostrils. “Your daughter hasn’t been playing fair the whole game!”
The rage sitting in Trip’s chest squeezed his lungs a bit tighter. “The hell is that supposed to mean?”
Mrs. Shelley worked her jaw and lowered her voice. “You know exactly what it means.”
“Do I?”
She raised her chin to look down her nose at him. “Your children can never play fair. They’re half Vulcan.”
Suddenly, the fire in Trip’s belly turned to ice. He took another step closer to Mrs. Shelley, pushing his sleeves up. “You really wanna go there?”
Something almost gleeful took root in her eye. “You know what? Yes I do! Everyone knows Vulcans are stronger than humans, and your son just proved that hybrids have trouble controlling their emotions. Your kids aren’t safe for our’s to play with!” She turned to look at the wide-eyed referees and pushed Jameson, who looked a bit uncomfortable himself, towards them, pointing at the red mark on his jaw. “Look at what their son did to my boy!”
Trip opened his mouth to unleash a few choice phrases on the infuriating woman, when T’Pol appeared at his side, a hand resting on his chest. She pushed past him to approach Mrs. Shelley with a look so icy, the Florida sun was suddenly insufficient.
“Mrs. Shelley.” T’Pol’s voice was even in a way that Trip knew signaled she was about to express some of her tightly bottled emotions. “Charlie is out of line for striking your son, but using my and my children’s race as an excuse for your son to continually bully Elizabeth, and for you to discriminate against my husband and I, seems to be a result of your own insecurity in your seat of power on the PTA.” She stepped close enough that her nose nearly touched Mrs. Shelley’s, which made the taller woman’s eyes widen a bit. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I wonder if people would still follow you if they realized how much you manipulate them into following your orders with money and false promises of popularity.” T’Pol considered her for a moment. “I hope, one day, you realize that your bigotry towards those you do not understand will, in the end, land you without allies. Before it’s too late.”
T’Pol turned away, stalking back towards her family. “Seeing as the referees are too incompetent to handle this situation properly I suggest we leave.” She looked to Trip, who, suddenly, realized he probably had a stupid grin on his face.
Gosh, he loved his wife.
He tucked an arm around her waist and reached for Charlie’s hand as T’Pol took Elizabeth’s. Charlie looked at his father’s hand for a moment before turning back to Jameson. Trip felt something sour in the back of his throat as he noticed Jameson and Mrs. Shelley flinch as Charlie approached, but the boy didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m sorry I decked you.” Charlie said. “Wasn’t right for me to do that, even though you pushed Elizabeth.”
Jameson simply peered out at Charlie from behind his mother. Charlie turned away and returned to take Trip’s hand. The Tuckers headed for their home.
Trip shouldn’t be smiling. He really shouldn’t. Mrs. Shelley had said some of the most atrocious things she could say about his family and it was something they would probably be healing from for a long time.
But dang it , he was so proud of all of them: his son, for standing up for his sister and then being the bigger man and apologizing for violence - no matter how deserved it was - because it was the sportsman-like thing to do; his daughter, for wearing the green gash on her forehead more like a crown than an injury; his wife, for so eloquently and fiercely protecting their family with that sharp, quick tongue of hers.
As they arrived at home, Trip complimented Elizabeth’s goalkeeping, which sparked a discussion of what a great game it had been before the incident; Elizabeth excitedly regaled them with detailed dramatizations of her moves, supplemented with interjections from her brother. Trip cleaned up Elizabeth’s wound, dressed it, and then they settled down to dinner.
Later, after they tucked their children into bed, Trip found T’Pol sipping a cup of tea, watching the sun slide down through the trees along the creek in their backyard. He slid an arm around her waist.
“Well,” he swallowed, “that was a day.”
“Hm.” T’Pol took another sip. “Mrs. Shelley will likely try to retaliate.”
Trip nodded. “I know. She’s a piece of work.” He squeezed his wife’s waist a little. “But I think you changed the tides a bit today. Your bark is worth more than my bite.”
The huff T’Pol let out might have been a laugh. “I suppose.” She sighed. “She’s not the only one who thinks that way, though. There are others who feel our children have an unfair advantage.”
Trip turned her towards him and raised a hand to cup her cheek. “Hey.” She looked up at him with those big doe eyes that never failed to melt his heart. “We’ve taught our kids to be tough. No matter where they go, there will be people who will be a bit hostile because they’re different. But, by the looks of them today, I think we’re on a good track. I’m proud of them, and they know to look out for each other.”
T’Pol pressed a kiss to his cheek, and turned back to the darkening sky. “I am proud of them too. And I’m glad they have each other.” She swallowed, shifting her grip on her mug. “I’ve been thinking lately, of how they would handle an… expansion to the family.”
Trip’s lips quirked into a grin. “You sayin’ you want more kids, T’Pol?”
“Yes.” She lifted her mug to her lips, pausing before she took a sip. “Although, the matter of simply ‘wanting’ another child is no longer a point of consideration.”
His brow furrowed as he processed her words; she had a tendency to veil emotional confessions in a lot of fancy, complicated phrases that he had to unravel like a spool. After a beat, his eyebrows shot up and he gently turned her to face him again. “T’Pol? Are you sayin’-”
She looked at him expectantly, with an expression that would have revealed nothing to anyone else, but he could see a spark of nervous, excited energy in the depths of her eyes and the corners of her mouth.
He smiled. “You’re pregnant?”
“8 weeks.” She said, eyes softening. “I found out last night.”
With a whoop, Trip pulled T’Pol into his arms, spinning her around once before setting her down to beam at her with teary eyes. “Oh, darlin’,” he chuckled as more tears came to his eyes. He wiped one that escaped down his cheek away with a thumb. “I love our family, and I love you.”
“I love you too, Trip.” She blinked and her eyebrows lifted a touch.
With an even wider smile, Trip pulled her in for a kiss, holding her close. She kissed him back with equal fervor, the only indication to anyone who might have seen them from afar that she was just as thrilled as Trip.
“Well,” Trip said as he pulled back to look at her, still smiling, “I suppose we don’t need to have the kids on the school soccer team anymore."
T’Pol raised a brow.
His smile turned teasing. “We’re well on our way to having our own lil’ soccer team.”
Her eyes widened a bit. “Soccer teams have at least 11 players.”
“Yes, they do.” He grinned wider, reveling in her mild expression of shock.
T’Pol rolled her eyes. “Very well. You can carry our next child, since you have experience.”
Trip’s hearty laugh echoed across their backyard as the last bit of red sun faded out, and the stars above shone a little brighter.