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Beta'd by VesperRegina, to whom I am, as always, indebted.
If he hadn't been so tired, it might never have happened.
Tired? He was beyond tired, actually. Exhausted was more like it – so worn out that he wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep the clock round, when at last the ship finally left orbit and resumed her voyage. Or at least – if a good 24 hours' worth wasn't possible – to at least skip dinner and crash out in his cabin, secure in the knowledge that he should have a good 12 hours of uninterrupted slumber before his alarm summoned him back to a spell of ordinary duty.
Instead of which, here he was, dressed up to the nines in full dress uniform and steeling himself for what must surely be the last chapter of a series of diplomatic meetings on Orlhax II that had been a tactical officer's worst nightmare.
It was, he supposed, a tribute to Captain Archer's growing reputation that he'd been invited to mediate in a quarrel between two neighbouring systems that had been going on for more than a quarter of a century. Nevertheless, although the captain had accepted the invitation, the situation had been so dangerous that it had been against his tactical officer's frantic representations. Once it had become clear to him that they were considering taking the ship into a war zone, Malcolm had been firmly of the opinion that they should stay out of the whole damned thing.
He should be used by now to having his advice ignored; there had been plenty of times when he'd wondered what the hell the captain had hired him for in the first place. But the delegations from Orlhax and Manaa had decided that they didn't trust Starfleet security personnel either. If the captain was to mediate, he had to go alone – and Enterprise had to sit motionless, all weapons kept sedulously offline, under the unblinking gaze of four massive warships while her captain was removed and taken away for ... talks.
Sleep? It had been out of the question. When he wasn't on duty he'd alternated between battering hell out of the punch bag in the gymnasium or going desperately through what little information the Vulcan database could provide about the two civilisations and their bloody little war, trying to formulate a way of rescuing the captain and keeping the ship intact long enough to escape if the negotiations went pear-shaped. The conditions imposed on their presence had been so restrictive that they were virtually blindfolded. As well as weapons, scanners had also had to be switched off; the Orlhaxians apparently disapproved of outsiders gleaning information about their home world. So there the ship had sat, blind and helpless, while the chronometers grew lethargic and tempers grew frayed, and even T'Pol had declined to contest Trip's umpteenth remark that these damned talks were taking waaay too long if you asked him.
But finally – finally! – some kind of a deal had been hammered out. The captain had been returned safely to the ship, and had announced that in gratitude he and his senior staff had been invited to a banquet that evening.
By which time, Malcolm Reed's nerves had been reduced to extremely well-chewed straws, and it had only been with the greatest difficulty that he'd achieved the 'Yes, sir,' that his commanding officer so clearly expected.
So here he was. Washed and brushed and the first into the launch bay, and as edgy as a cat on a hot tin roof. He consoled himself with the thought that there was just this one thing left to get through, and then they could all get out of here...
Tired. Oh God, he was just so tired.
He leaned against the side of the shuttlepod and closed his eyes briefly, anticipating sleep. Sleep, wonderful, enchanting, beguiling sleep, with the steady pulse of the warp engine for a lullaby...
He must actually have nodded off for a second, because when his eyes opened she was in front of him, and he hadn't even heard her come in.
Long afterwards, it occurred to him to wonder whether he'd ever actually seen her at all before that moment, or simply accepted some mental construct in the form of a technically female communications officer, with whom it was his duty to interact in the service of the ship.
He'd seen her around the place in leisure clothes, of course, and saw her daily on duty on the Bridge. But never, ever like this.
She was in peach-coloured silk, a long dress that clung to her slender form in a way neither her coverall nor her gym clothes had ever done. Instead of being severely caught up at the back of her head, her silky black hair was swinging free, framing her face, which he suddenly realised was absolutely beautiful. Possibly because it was smiling up at him, and at that moment in time he would have traded his immortal soul – if he'd believed he possessed such a thing – for the right to lean forward and kiss her.
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