love and logic
by Bil!

T – Romance, Angst – Archer/T'Pol – Complete
Summary: "I think I love you," he says, but she doesn't believe in love, only logic. Warning: Mature themes.
Season: Late Two.
Spoilers: None.
Disclaimer: They're not mine, they're just stuck in my head.

A/N: I'm not a romance writer so I don't know where this came from. Written in an angst style but not really angst (I thought it was going to be complete angst, only it turned out not to be). Mostly I'm just confused, but this is normal.

Based on a couple of lines from a Harry Potter fic called Recognition that I read many many moons ago.

Jon is never quite sure how he ends up in bed with his science officer. Too many close calls, too few days off, too many visits to sickbay... All of the worry and awe and responsibility piling up on top of them until they're drowning. The spectre of death haunts them and somewhere along the line it becomes twisted into a desperate desire to feel alive.

To feel not alone.

Enterprise hasn't seen Earth in two years. None of them have been home since the beginning of this crazy, wonderful voyage of exploration and they can never relax on other planets under alien suns and alien scrutinies. They've learnt that lesson, learnt constant wariness and unceasing vigilance. It takes its toll on even the most relaxed of them.

Besides, he's the captain and she's the first officer. For them there's no such thing as off duty.

Maybe that's why he spends too many nights in T'Pol's quarters, why she lets him touch her, why they lose themselves in something primitive and old that requires no responsibility, no risk, just them. He has no idea if anyone else knows about it. If his crew see him leave her quarters an hour before shift change they don't say anything to him.

Maybe they don't see. Maybe they don't care. Everything's different out here, far away from the world they knew, and she's not The Vulcan anymore, she's one of them. Part of them.

He knows he shouldn't do this, knows that the night time visits should stop. It's against protocol, if not quite against regulations; against reason. He's walking a dangerous line between his own needs and the needs of his crew. For the sake of his mission and his duty he should give it up – give her up – and retreat to his dark hole. Become the captain and only the captain and forget about the touch of skin on skin. He isn't strong enough: he never does.

Every time she lets him into her quarters he's surprised. Every time she doesn't kick him out is a miracle. Every time she whispers his name in the dark he stumbles further down a long and winding path.

There is no going back.

Jon doesn't know what T'Pol thinks of it, of this thing, nebulous and undefined, between them. They don't talk about it. They speak of their ship, they speak of their jobs, they speak of their cultures. They don't talk about this thing that binds them ever closer when they should be falling apart. Speaking would make it real, speaking would be an admission of some unseen guilt.

They don't speak.

He doesn't know how Vulcans go about relationships. He doesn't know if they're prudish or casual or if they don't even bother with relationships at all but just grow children in petri dishes. He doesn't guess because he'd probably guess wrong. Too many differences; he's learnt that now: Other races don't think the way he does, other people don't have the same sense of right and wrong.

But in the darkness with her lips on his and his skin against hers they don't feel different. They just feel like two lost souls seeking shelter from the same storm.

Only it's never that simple, even when he's gasping against her skin in the night.

"I think I love you," he says and even in the dark he can see the incomprehension in her eyes.

Love doesn't exist for her, love isn't real to her. It's a fantasy, built by species with too much emotion and not enough control. He knows that, he's always known that. It didn't stop his stumbling steps because he's not that strong. Only human, after all.

"I think I love you," he repeats and doesn't reach out to her through the shadows because that would hurt too much and it already hurts too much.

"Love is an emotion," she tells him, because even here in the dark, lying naked and sweaty beside him, she is never anything less than Vulcan.

"Then why are we doing this?"

The forbidden, never-asked question. Whys and hows and wonderings, dragging a thing of darkness into the light and hoping it won't incinerate.

"It is logical."

And because she is never anything less than Vulcan – and he would hate her if she were – she outlines the reasons with calm precision. Reasons to do with stress release and biological needs and sociological experimentation. Nothing about emotions and wants or the touch of skin on skin and the fundamental right-wrongness of it all.

"You don't believe in love," he says and she agrees because she is never anything less than Vulcan – and sometimes he hates her for that.

He doesn't go to her the next night. Or the next.

For two weeks he keeps away because he isn't strong enough to face her. His sleep is troubled because the sound of Porthos's breathing is nothing like the sound of T'Pol's breathing and he's grieving for a thing he doesn't understand and maybe never had.

Come daytime, though, he almost forgets. It's easier then, when he has his ship and his crew and his mission. In daytime he's unchanged and she's unchanged, standing half a bridge and a whole world away from him just like she always has. In daytime he only remembers he loves her when she's dying or he's dying – and then he's too busy to remember.

But during the nights he remembers.

There's no one to advise him on how to deal with a relationship with a Vulcan, no one to tell him what to do if he takes the fatal misstep he's already taken. He doesn't know what to do, how to cope.

He stays away.

So she comes to him instead; she comes to his quarters and she tells him why it's logical that she should, she gives him reasons why this thing between them should never stop and he's not strong enough to send her away.

Her skin is feverishly Vulcan-warm on his and he knows he'll never be able to touch a human woman again without feeling like he's touching a corpse. Too cold, too pliable. Too not T'Pol, heat and strength and a terrible cold logic.

They lie side by side, sticky and warm and not quite touching, and she lists the reasons that this is right and proper with a desperate grasp at logic and reason that tells him he isn't alone in this unexpected, inevitable, unwanted, welcome thing.

Understanding dawns, and he knows why she comes, why she lets him stay.

Jon thinks it's all right, this is right.

On his bridge and in her bed and on their ship and with their mission – together in something not human or Vulcan, just theirs.

He's stumbled too far down a long and winding path but he's not alone and he never wants to go back.

Because this is right.

She lies beside him in the dark and her hair is soft even if she isn't and he loves her for being Vulcan because if she wasn't Vulcan she wouldn't be T'Pol.

"We can call it logic if you want," he says.

She looks at him, her face pale and cold in the dim starlight while her skin burns beneath his, alien and strange and his normality. "You may call it love if you wish."

His skin is cold and his passions hot and her skin is hot and her passions cold but he loves her and she logics him and maybe they'll last and maybe they won't. But it'll work out somehow.

It always does.

Fin