Jonathan Archer woke slowly. It took him some moments to recall where he was.
The sunlight falling through the bedroom´s windows was dazzling. The house lay silent. The only sound to be heard was the singing of some birds outside.
Then he realised that something wasn´t exactly right.
***
Breakfast was ready. At least, everything looked like it. The table was set. Still, there was no sign of Liza. Or Porthos.
He approached the table, picking one of the still warm bread rolls. Their delicious smell mixed with the scent of fresh coffee.
The door opened and Lisa and the beagle entered.
"Good morning!" she greeted him, watching with a smile while Porthos hurried over to his owner.
"What the hell did she offer you to lure you away from me ?" Archer asked the dog lowly. "Cheddar ?"
"No reason to get jealous", Lisa told him. "He wasn´t very eager to leave at all at first."
He looked up to her. She was wearing a casual sports dress. She had obviously been jogging.
"Still an early riser ?"
He glanced at a nearby clock. It was just about 7:30.
"I´ll just have a shower", she told him. "But you two don´t have to wait for me with breakfast!"
Archer eyed her up for another moment, then cocked his head.
"We´re gentlemen, you know – we´ll wait!"
"Alright!"
She headed for the bathroom.
"But Liz ?"
She turned to him, throwing him a questioning look.
"Hurry up!" he ordered with a smile.
She left for the bathroom, shaking her head in amusement.
***
Trip moved slowly. Carefully, trying not to wake the woman right next to him.
There he was, Charles Tucker III. Right next to the woman he loved.
He smiled.
An alien.
A Vulcan, of all species.
His eyes wandered to the one pointed ear visible in the twilight of her quarters.
A misery of a woman.
His smile widened.
A hell of a woman as well.
He was still not able to predict when she would allow herself to lower her emotional suppression far enough to make love to him. Bad enough that the volatile earthling in him would have been ready for that every goddamn night. Because of his lucky choice, he was often forced to wait just too long until she decided to grant themselves that intimacy again.
Still, he could call himself lucky, regarding that Vulcan mating cycles usually only happened every seven years. He sighed silently, shaking his head in his mind. What a horror.
He had come to enjoy these silent moments in the early morning. It sometimes surprised him himself.
She wouldn´t pretend to sleep. Still, she wouldn´t move either. For a member of a species so reluctant regarding any physical contact, lying right next to her, spending the rest of the night that way was a privilege and exception of its own. He was under the impression that she felt still unsure how to face him in these moments. Still, her body didn´t feel tense against his, though the experience was probably giving her as much trouble as it gave him sometimes.
He mused that the neuro pressure thing alone had been quite a challenge for her. He remembered that in the beginning, he had once even seen her hesitate when a crewman had slipped climbing down one of the ladders leading up to the warp reactor. She had still managed to help the crewman fast enough to get his balance back to prevent a fall. Still, all instincts had told her to avoid that physical contact in the first place.
She had come a long way since then.
He knew that she would most possibly never touch him or allow him to touch her that way with other people around. He didn´t care much about that, anyway. Still, he was much more used to get in touch with people. Shaking hands, padding backs and shoulders. Hugging somebody. Touching somebody for comfort.
For her, these things were normally out of question. It was simply not in the Vulcan culture
He recalled the day about two months ago when the small ship they had managed to steal to flee from Romulan space had crashed on the planet so luckily close to the Andorian space. The captain had been severely injured during the crash.
The memory sent a shiver down his spine and made his muscles tense for a second. They could all have died in that crash if it hadn´t been for Archer´s piloting skills. And again, he had almost gotten himself killed trying to rescue his crew. Trip had watched T`Pol and Hoshi trying to stabilize him. There hadn´t been even a split second of hesitance on her side. She and Hoshi had worked well together, fast, silently, while he had attended to Malcom´s broken leg.
Hoshi and T´Pol, the linguist and the science officer, the human and the Vulcan. Like fire and water. They hadn´t gotten along that well in the beginning, either. Though Hoshi was usually quite unsure regarding her own capabilities, Trip had never seen her fail to do the right thing in a dangerous situation. Her instincts had never betrayed her. After that trip to the drifting Klingon vessel she, T´Pol and Malcolm had finally managed to safe, T`Pol had worked with her, teaching her some kind of meditation to control her fear. Hoshi had achieved quite some self confidence since then.
T`Pol reached out for his hand. She had obviously felt him tense.
Trip understood the silent question perfectly. He squeezed her delicate fingers softly, letting her know that he was alright. He placed a soft kiss at the back of her neck, the gentle touch causing a shiver on her skin.
Tucker took a deep breath, carefully tightening his lose embrace. For a change, he was happy that he had somehow lost the ability to sleep for more than five hours at once.
It granted the two of them another silent hour before it was time to get up again.