Chapter 3: Morning Light
The morning light wasn't kind. It was a dull, gray seep through the thin curtains, revealing every particle of dust in the air, every stain on the carpet. It outlined the chaos of the room: Jake's uniform slumped over the chair like a deflated person, Amy's meticulously arranged toiletries line on the bathroom counter already beginning to migrate.
Jake surfaced from sleep slowly, the deep, heavy kind that comes from too much tension finally snapping.His body was warm, mostly.The room was cold. At some point in the night, he'd kicked off the thin, scratchy blanket. A draft traced a line across his stomach.Consciousness arrived in stages.First, the awareness of the sagging mattress. Then, the faint, perpetual smell of cheap air freshener over stale coffee. Then, the distinct feeling of blood flow, of a pronounced and insistent physical reality pressing against the fabric of his boxers.Oh, crap.It was just a morning thing. A completely normal, biological, non-indicative thing.He’d adjust, casually, under the pretense of stretching. No big deal. He started to turn his head, to gauge if Amy was still asleep, to plan his stealthy maneuver.She wasn't asleep.
She was lying on her side, facing him, her head propped on her hand.Her dark hair was messy, falling across her cheek. Her eyes were wide open, clear, and utterly awake.And they weren't on his face.
They were fixed, with a stunned, unblinking focus, directly on the tented fabric of his boxers.His brain short-circuited. Every instinct to joke, to deflect, to make a sound—it all evaporated. He just lay there, frozen, caught in the act of being blatantly, obviously male. The treaty wasn’t just broken; it had been nuked from orbit.Her gaze flicked up to his face.She’d been caught watching. A violent flush spread from her neck, over her cheeks, up to her temples. But she didn’t look away.Her lips were slightly parted.She didn’t say a word.
The air in the room changed.It wasn’t awkward. It was thick, charged, like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks. All the teasing, the pranks, the silent pinky-swears and accidental hand-holding—it all crystallized into this unbearably intimate, silent stare.
“Um.” His voice was a gravelly crack.“Good morning.”
“Good morning.” The words hung between them, stupid and inadequate. He watched her swallow, the movement tight in her throat.
Then the floodgates of his panic opened. He didn’t move, still pinned by her gaze and his own mortification. “Okay, look. I am so sorry. For that.” He gave a slight, desperate nod downward, his face burning. “It’s a whole… autonomous system. I have no control over the launch sequence.”
He braced for her recoil, for the lecture on professionalism and appropriate bedside manner.
Amy’s posture didn’t change. Her eyes finally lifted fully to his, and the shock in them melted into something else—a weary, almost fond exasperation. She let out a breath that was half a laugh. “Peralta. I grew up with seven brothers.” She shrugged one shoulder against the pillow. “The surprise morning announcement is not a new phenomenon for me.”
The profound normalcy of her statement deflated the crisis. The charged air didn’t disappear, but it transformed, becoming something they could maybe navigate. He managed a weak grin. “Seven? No wonder you’re so good at drafting treaties.”
“And enforcing them,” she said, but the edge was gone from her voice. She finally looked away, sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The back of her neck was still pink.