"AFTER FIRST CONTACT"

BY CLARE HOLBOROW

Will Riker and Deanna Troi watched as the Vulcans greeted Zephrane Cochrane,
the eccentric inventor of Warp Drive. She felt Will's arm around her shoulders.
They were both pleased at the outcome of their mission, never had they shared
such an important task. If they had failed to get Cochrane to launch his ship,
the Vulcans would have passed by unnoticed and Earth would not have become part
of the Federation.

They had come very close to failing their mission, and Deanna had risked losing
her dignity. Luckily for her, he had been the only person other than Cochrane
himself who had seen her in her drunken state. It had been very amusing to him,
but he had also felt the need to protect her, and to make sure no one else knew
what had happened.

Of course, she was much more sober at this point and the incident seemed to
have happened a long time ago. She had not sensed his concern because of the
nature of the alcohol. He wished he could tell her how he felt about her, and
had no idea that she felt the same. He thought that she thought of him as one
of her closest friends, nothing more.

She didn't mind him putting his arm around her, a gesture which Cochrane would
have thought confirmed his earlier suspicion about the two being a couple.
Luckily, the inventor was too busy trying to teach the Vulcans to dance
properly to his strange music to observe their actions.

Will did not mention how he thought of her when they were apart, or how her
sweet voice comforted him in his darkest moments. He tried to forget the number
of nights he had woken screaming Deanna's name after a nightmare, or the
pleasant dreams where he saw himself with her in a beautiful countryside
setting beside a clear flowing river, the sun making her lovely features even
more attractive. He knew it was not the right time to mention all his thoughts
and feelings about her.

Deanna failed to tell him how she longed for the wonderful feeling of safety of
his arms around her, his open attitude and mind that she basked in after
dealing with so many raw emotions and fears from her appointments. She didn't
want to tell him how jealousy consumed her whenever he was with another woman,
or how she wished each of her men she became involved with was really Will
Riker. She couldn't tell him.

And they both stood there, silently sharing the incredible atmosphere that
emanated from all the people who were seeing people from another world for the
first time. It was a shame that the beautiful ship's counsellor and the
handsome First Officer had such a communication problem. One day they would
re-discover their feelings for each other, but that's another story....

*** THE END ***