Chapter Text
Day 25 - Lazy Mornings || Soft blankets, familiar arms, and the morning light.
These kinds of days were vanishingly rare. The first morning light slanted through the window—light from Earth’s rising sun, no less, glowing a faint pink and orange in the eastern sky. It should have been familiar—had been familiar for so many billions of humans—but not for them. They stirred awake under the unusual light, and then drifted back to sleep in each other’s familiar arms. This day, there would be no alarms, no duty shifts, no throb of a reactor, no red alerts, no orders.
It was cold—that part was familiar—but it was the cold of the winter solstice, not the deathly absolute cold of space. The blankets tucked around them were soft and worn, heavy and warm. Sol wouldn’t be in the sky for long today, and was approaching its zenith when they finally stirred, blinking lazily at one another.
“What were we supposed tae do today?” Scott asked, his head on McCoy’s shoulder, tracing lazy patterns in his bare chest.
“Nothing,” McCoy answered in complete contentment, and turned his head to kiss his love, heat rising in the kiss, in the slide of hands over skin, knowing they wouldn’t leave this bed today.
In the coming days, there were expectations. Not harsh ones, but there were people who loved them who were desperate to see them. Joanna and Scotty had been co—conspirators against McCoy for years now, but had never met face to face. They had a day planned in Georgia with her. McCoy had actually met Scotty’s people—his grandmother, his uncles, his sister, his nephew. Granny had shown up on McCoy’s doorstep in San Francisco between the two Enterprises, and he had immediately fallen in love with the fierce woman. But none of Scott’s family had seen him in a decade, and they were eager to have them both visit Scotland for a few days.
They were looking forward to those visits, and others with dear friends spread over the Earth—there would be plenty of laughter and food and drink and stories. But today was just them without plans or expectations beyond utter pleasure. A hot tub. A refrigerator full of food. This massive bed. And each other’s bodies, as often as the mood struck. Today they would be thoroughly and indulgently human, here on this most human of worlds.
They’d saved this planet, once or twice. There would be no sunrises, no snow-capped mountains, no lovers gasping together on a winter’s morning, if they hadn’t stood in the sky with their crew, and fought for this place. For home, even if it was so seldom where they rested.
The world moved beneath them, and they moved against one another in ancient rhythms. Unending, a human might be tempted to say, but the universe knew better. They weren’t eternal, not any more than this world or her star, than the galaxy or the universe itself. But here, now, in this moment and in this place, there was peace on Earth.