Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Tom Paris,” says a voice he recognizes.  

Tom looks up from his drink and straight into the face of his father’s golden girl.  

“Kathryn Janeway,” she says unnecessarily, smiling. “I served with your father on the Al-Batani .”  

Tom chuckles; the mere idea that he wouldn’t know who she is is absurd. He reaches up from his table and takes her outstretched hand. “We’ve met,” he reminds her. “A few times, actually.”  

The last thing he needs right now is to be reminded of the existence of this woman who has done everything right in his father’s eyes where he, Tom, has somehow managed to fail. But he’s stuck on this godforsaken transit station until the Exeter gets here tomorrow and company is otherwise scarce. He gestures for her to sit.  

“I wasn’t sure you’d remember,” she says, still smiling brightly as she pulls up a chair.  

“How could I forget my father’s protegée?”  

Janeway doesn’t demur any further; clearly she takes that as a compliment. “He told me you’d been promoted. Congratulations.”  

Tom snorts. “Lieutenant Junior Grade,” he drawls, letting the alcohol seep into his voice maybe a little more than he should. Not that he should be drinking at all, this early in the morning.  

The expression on her face morphs immediately into one of confusion or, perhaps, concern. “By all accounts you’ve earned it.”  

He sips his drink. “I’m not so sure about that.”  

Janeway pauses; when he looks up, she’s staring at him with wide eyes. Damn, he should shut up.  

“Is everything all right?” she asks, point blank.  

He really should shut up.  

“Sure. Yeah.” Tom gestures with his glass. “I guess being stuck here in the middle of nowhere is just getting to me.”  

She sits up straighter, looking all of a sudden like she’s sizing him up. “I have a holodeck booked for the day,” she says after a moment. “Would you like to join me?”  

He almost chokes. “Are you asking me on a date?”  

His question seems to take her aback almost as much as hers had him – good. But then she just laughs. “Yes or no?”  

* * *  

They’re skiing in the Swiss alps. She’s taking him skiing. He wants to ask if this is just for him, if his father has for some reason told her this is something he enjoys – but then he finds out that she’s good .  

He figured he’d run rings around her, but no. She challenges him to a race and he’s fighting to stay even with her, cursing the alcohol he had for breakfast. He is not going to fall, or worse, crash, and embarrass himself in front of Kathryn Janeway. He’s just not.  

And he’s not going to let her win, either.  

She suddenly swerves off-piste and he yells in protest, but her response is just more laughter. Tom has had enough of her laughing at him, even if it does seem good-natured. “Computer,” he calls out. “Randomize slopes!”  

She looks back at him, mouth agape in protest, and it’s his turn to laugh, even more so when she almost falls because she’s too busy staring at him, and he surges ahead of her and finally gains a good lead.  

“Not fair!” she shouts from behind him.  

“Not fair to race someone in a program you know by heart!” he yells back, actually pleased with himself for the first time in forever.  

Unfortunately he’s too distracted by this victory, or too tipsy, or probably both, to notice the tree in front of him. The impact doesn’t hurt too bad – the safeties are on – but both his skis come off and he lands on his back in the snow. More of the stuff is thrown into his face as Janeway surges past him, laughing again.  

He lies back, sighing. But somehow, his high is still there.  

* * *  

They head up and down the mountains all morning and Tom manages to acquit himself significantly better by the end, but Janeway is a force to be reckoned with even when he’s sober.  

They retire eventually to a chalet restaurant in the holographic village, and have replicated fondue with replicated wine for lunch, their ski jackets slung over the backs of their chairs and gloves shoved into the sleeves; dressed only in their Starfleet-issue undershirts, ski pants and boots, the atmosphere feels laid back to an almost scandalous degree. Tom swears to himself he’s only going to drink one glass.  

“So spill,” he says. “Where did you learn to ski so well?”  

Instead of the smug smile he’s expecting, a somberness appears on Janeway’s face. “I was in an accident,” she begins, and Tom’s heart drops. This is not going to be the fun conversation he had in mind.  

“I was with my father and my fiancé,” she continues. “We crashed into the polar ice cap on Tau Ceti Prime. They both died.”   

He’d heard about Admiral Janeway’s death, of course. But for some reason his brain had never really made the connection that Kathryn Janeway had lost her father . “I’m sorry,” he says, suddenly feeling a lot more sober despite the wine. “Sorry for your loss.”  

“Thank you.” She sips her drink. “I couldn’t bear the cold after that. For the longest time I just felt frozen, all over, all the time. But eventually I decided I couldn’t live like that. And I needed to live, really live, or I may as well have died there with them. So I started looking for a way to enjoy snow and ice.” Then the smile is back, if diminished from its earlier brilliance. “And here we are.”  

“Here we are,” Tom echoes, raising his glass.  

She raises hers. “To fathers,” she says, smile brightening again.  

“Fathers,” he agrees, trying to match her enthusiasm. This turn in the conversation has left an unpleasant feeling in his gut. He decides he doesn’t want to drink any more today at all.  

Setting his wine back on the table, he turns to her, morbidly curious. “Did your dad always expect you to join Starfleet?”  

Janeway seems surprised by the question, but she answers honestly. “Yes, I suppose he did.”  

“And that never bothered you?”  

“No, not really.” She looks at him more closely, and he tries not to let it make him uncomfortable. “Did your father’s ambitions for you bother you?”  

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I just feel like I’ve done a lot of things to try to please him, and it’s never quite enough.”  

“He’s very proud of you, you know.” Her voice is serious now.  

“Yes, but at what cost?”  

“What do you mean?” She’s curious, not interrogative, but they’re skirting dangerous territory now. He has to steer them away from this, from another self-made shipwreck.  

“Nothing.” He changes the subject. “Have you ever skied in the real Swiss alps?”  

“No.” She takes the new direction without comment, though she is watching him intently. “No, I never have.”  

“I’ll have to take you sometime.” He swirls his fondue fork in the now-depleted melted cheese. “Feed you some real fondue.”  

“Are you flirting with me, Lieutenant Paris?”  

He is, he realizes. This woman is growing more fascinating by the minute, and he definitely doesn’t want to leave her company and go back to his sterile, tiny bunk to wait for morning.  

Is using his rank a subtle hint to back off? Tom forges on regardless – what, exactly, has he got to lose?  

“What would you say if I was?” he ventures casually.  

There’s that smile again. “I’d say, we’d better not tell your father.”  

That makes Tom laugh. “Ohh, he’d have something to say about it.”  

“Best he doesn’t find out, don’t you think?”  

She leans toward him, and Tom leans in closer. “What exactly is there going to be for him to find out?” he asks. He brushes a hand against hers, hearing her breath hitch when her skin touches his.  

“Nothing,” she says firmly, and his heart drops before she lowers her voice, tilts her head and continues, “But there could be any number of things for him to never, ever find out.”  

Tom swallows.  

“Computer,” he says. “Delete restaurant staff.”  

Janeway says nothing, but the corners of her mouth twitch upwards and she holds his gaze intently, clearly waiting to see what he does next.  

Fortunately, this is something he knows he’s good at.  

Tom reaches again for her hand, covering it with his and guiding it towards him so that he can brush her knuckles with his lips. “So tell me,” he says, matching her low tone. “What sort of things, exactly, do you have in mind?”  

“Well, that depends.” She rests her other hand in her palm, her fingers flexing against her cheek. “What do you have on offer, Lieutenant?”  

She’s putting the ball firmly in his court, so he stands. “Nothing that doesn’t involve getting out of these ski pants,” he declares. Her mouth twitches again, and he holds her gaze as he kneels down in front of her and takes one of her ski boots in his hands. “May I?”  

Janeway nods, still watching him attentively, so he loosens the clasps and then pulls the boot off her foot with one hand, guiding her leg with the other to rest on his knee. He wraps his hands around her foot and massages the sole with his thumbs, gratified when she closes her eyes and groans. “Mmm. That’s nice. It’s a little sore, right there.”  

“Skiing will do that to you,” he points out, moving his fingers smoothly up her calf under the fabric of her pants until he feels the bare skin above her sock. He pulls it off slowly, following with firm squeezes of his other hand, and then drops the sock on the floor and moves to the other foot.  

“You’re right,” she says contemplatively. “Perhaps I should add a masseur as a permanent fixture of this program.”  

Tom removes her other boot and sock deftly. “Should I be offended that you think you can replace me with a hologram?”  

“That depends.” She looks down at him. “Would you like to follow me around as my personal masseur?”  

Tom contemplates this as a career option post-Starfleet. Maybe he would enjoy being a permanent fixture for Kathryn Janeway. “Never say never.”  

Janeway chuckles, stretching her toes and feet now that they’re free from the boots, and Tom rubs the calf muscles flexing under his palms. More intently now, he slowly works his way up and under her pants as far as he can go, caressing her smooth skin and listening to Janeway’s appreciative noises. When he can’t move any farther, he runs his fingertips up as far as they can reach, tracing little circles on her thighs, and waits.  

It doesn’t take as long as he expects it to before she complains. “Didn’t you say something about getting out of these pants?”  

Tom pulls his hands back out from under the fabric and runs them over the outside instead, across her thighs to rest at her waist. “If you like.”  

She meets his eyes and nods.  

His fingers skate across the fastenings and make short work of them, and he gets up on his knees and moves his hands around her waist to glide over the skin of her lower back, dipping beneath the hem as far as he can at this angle.  

This is a bad angle.  

He moves into a crouch and rises to bring his mouth to her ear. “Stand up,” he tells her.  

She complies before he’s even finished speaking, and he finds himself standing flush against her small frame, both hands down her pants, while hers have come to rest on his chest.  

If anyone had told him yesterday this was how he’d be spending today, he’d have laughed in their face.  

But now isn’t the time to marvel at the turn of events. He can do that later, in private, as many times and for as long as he wants.  

Tom works his fingers inside her underwear and pulls pants and panties down in one swift motion, putting himself back on his knees before her as he helps her step out of her clothes. He allows himself to linger a little on the way back up, tracing his path along her skin with his palms until he’s standing up straight again, looking down at her intent expression.  

“Do you concentrate this hard on everything?” he can’t help but ask.  

“Only on things that interest me,” she replies, not breaking eye contact.  

Tom bends his head and kisses her.  

The intensity of her gaze is gone but the intensity of her kiss catches him off guard; all of a sudden she’s not just a passive recipient of his ministerings, she’s taking charge.  

Janeway’s hands glide from his chest to his back and she pulls him closer as her lips part under his, her tongue exploring eagerly, and she whimpers into his mouth in a way that takes his arousal to a whole new level.  

Tom gets a firm grip under her thighs and lifts her onto the table, aligning her hips with his and pressing himself against her until he knows she can feel exactly what she’s doing to him.  

Her eyes are dark when she breaks the kiss to look at him again and tell him breathlessly, “You’re wearing too many clothes.”  

“So are you.” His own breath is just as shaky, and he has to fight to keep his hands steady as he pulls first his shirt over his head and then her shirt over hers.  

He crouches again to remove her bra and work his mouth across her breasts, kissing and nipping alternately, running his tongue roughly over her nipples, and every noise she makes makes him want to hear more. He slips one hand around her waist and dips to other to press a finger against her clit and down into her folds, feeling her buck against him as she gasps. Deliberately, reluctantly, he tones down the pace; he knows it won’t be as good for her if they rush it, and he wants it to be good . He wants to do to her what she’s doing to him.  

As slowly as he can bear, he moves his finger back and forth between her clit and the wetness between her legs, almost but not quite dipping inside with each stroke, varying the pressure between barely there and almost enough . His other hand keeps a firm grip on her from behind, anchoring her where he wants her, where his tongue can wander leisurely across her chest, teeth scraping thin paths intermittently.  

Janeway whimpers helplessly and he grins against her breast, then stands up to give his fingers a better angle to finally slip inside her. She arches her back and he steadies her with the other hand as he curls and uncurls his fingers, feeling her muscles tighten around them, and moves his thumb against her clit as he gently strokes her from the inside.  

Her hand finds its way under his waistband. “You’re still wearing too many clothes,” she tells him, her voice uneven.  

Tom dips his head to whisper in her ear, and nips at her earlobe. “You ready?”  

He feels her cheek brush against his as she nods. Her hands are already working on his pants; he covers them with his and pulls them down with his underpants, stepping out of them and kicking them away.  

She reaches for him immediately, and the warmth of her hand around his hard length reverberates through his body. He can’t take this for long. “Stand up for a second,” he says.  

She does as he says without question, looking up at him with wide, trusting eyes, and he reaches behind her and pulls the tablecloth off the table. All the crockery and the leftover food falls to the floor with a crash, but he knows the computer will clean it up if he says the word. Janeway’s eyes follow the trajectory of a plate rolling across the carpet.  

“I’ve never seen that happen in this program before.” She sounds amused.  

“First time for everything.” Tom winks.  

Janeway’s grin is back, and it looks even better with her cheeks flushed a bright red, her naked chest heaving. She climbs back onto the table without Tom having to ask, and snags him by the wrist to pull him close. He puts his hand between her shoulder blades and leads her gently down onto her back.  

“Ready?” he whispers again, bending to peck her lips.  

“Impatient,” she whispers back. “Come on, Tom.”  

Tom does as he’s told.  

He stands up a little straighter, bringing her legs up around his waist, and she’s holding him again, guiding him, and when he glides inside her she makes the most heavenly sigh yet.  

“Yes,” she hisses. “Come on. Don’t make me wait anymore.”  

Tom suppresses a “yes sir” – she might not be into that – and grips her hips, setting a firm pace. Her eyes flutter shut as he starts to move, and he’s not sure he’s ever seen a more beautiful sight than her lying in front of him like this, skin glowing, mouth gasping with each thrust, totally at ease with him. Her hands come up to rest on his at her waist, her legs curling tighter around him, and he leans forward again, peppering her breasts with kisses.  

The change in angle makes her cry out louder, so he picks up the pace, sucking on her nipple, scraping against it with his teeth. He grinds his pubic bone against her clit and she’s louder still, and it’s doing things to him, and she’s tight and warm around him, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can last but he knows he can’t come before her, not now.  

He straightens just enough to grab her hand and guide it down between her legs, knowing that she can help herself more than he can. He watches her fingers working her clit and she writhes beneath him, her back arching again and her breath coming ever harder, and he feels her muscles start to spasm around him as she shouts, and he falls right into the abyss after her.  

Chapter Text

“You’re nothing like I thought you would be,” he says a while later, pushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. At some point Janeway had asked the computer to give them a bed, and then a bedroom. Tom has never been anywhere so luxurious in real life. It’s a stark contrast to fucking on the restaurant table. He thinks he likes it.  

His observation seems to amuse her. “What do you mean?”  

“I dunno, I guess I thought for my dad to love you as much as he does, you would have to love rules as much as he does.”  

Janeway laughs – a delightful, throaty laugh that reverberates through her body and his, pressed up against her.  

“I have my own rules,” she tells him “Number one being, know which of the rules to follow, and which to bend.” Her finger traces across his jaw on that last word, her fingernail skating lightly over his skin. “Though I don’t think I’ve broken any rules today.”  

Tom’s eyebrows shoot up. “Fraternization with a junior officer?”  

“I’m not your boss. We’re not even serving on the same ship. The code of conduct doesn’t prohibit me from sleeping with any Starfleet officer ever.”  

“My father would say it does.”  

“Your father is, thankfully, not here.” She frowns at him, not entirely seriously. “Although I might need to update my rules to include one about not mentioning him so much when I’m lying naked next to his son.”  

Tom laughs, and promptly breaks this new rule. “Why do I feel like he doesn’t know you as well as he thinks he does?”  

“He knows the professional side of me very well. The rest is none of his business.”  

“Oh, so you’re being unprofessional right now?”  

“I’m off duty right now,” she corrects him. “Now.” She smiles. “Tell me more about you. Apart from how you hate losing at ski races.”  

“Hey, you lost some too.”  

“And I’m not nearly as upset about it as you are.”  

Tom almost – almost – mentions his father again. “I guess I hold myself to pretty high standards,” he says instead.  

The look in her eyes suggests she’s heard the implied my father holds me to high standards .  

“That’s not a bad thing,” she says. “I would say I do the same.”  

Tom considers this. “I guess,” he says after a moment, “if I'm not holding myself to high standards, my default is to have no standards at all. I have trouble with the middle ground.” Hence his current mess. The mess that has gotten worse and worse since Caldik Prime. He’s in nothing but trouble now, no matter what he does.  

Janeway nods, thoughtful. “So is this a high standards or a no standards moment for you?” Her hand sweeps across their naked bodies, but her eyes don’t leave his.  

“I am holding myself to very high standards right now,” he says instantly. At least this is something he’s sure of. “I want you to have a good time. I like you.”  

That makes her grin. “What is it about me that you like, exactly?”  

“Well, you’re a beautiful woman, clearly,” he begins, because that’s the easiest part to explain. The rest is going to need more care. “You’re incredibly smart. You’re a lot of fun. And... you’re your own person.” That’s it, more than anything, he realizes. Tom has never been his own person. “You’re not the cookie cutter Starfleet Officer I thought you would be.” And then, because these thoughts are bringing him back around to his father and he doesn’t want to break her new rule again, he adds, “Also, most people can’t keep up with me on the slopes. It’s always nice to find someone who can.”  

Janeway’s grin widens. “Even if you lose?”  

“Especially if I lose,” he decides.  

Apparently satisfied, she changes the subject. “What do we do with the rest of the afternoon?”  

“More of what we just did?” He gives the obvious answer.  

“No.” She shakes her head. “Show me something you enjoy.”  

“You think I didn’t enjoy it?” He props himself up on his elbow. “Did you not enjoy it?” he demands.  

“That’s not what I mean.” She rolls her eyes, then rolls her whole body until she’s lying on his chest, looking down at him. “Of course I enjoyed it.” She cups his cheek in her hand, and pecks him on the lips. “But I want to get to know all of you, not just your exceptionally beautiful body. Show me the kind of program you’d run if you were alone.” She pauses, and there’s that grin again. “We can get naked again later.”  

“This is the kind of program I would run if I were alone,” he replies honestly. “I love to ski.” An idea strikes him. “Have you ever been ice skating?”  

Janeway raises an eyebrow. “When I was a kid, when the neighbors’ pond used to freeze over.”  

“Ohh, I have something way better than a pond,” Tom says, suddenly enthusiastic.  

She looks bemused, but she sits up. “I’d better find my pants.”  

* * *  

It’s not perfect, but for ten minutes inputting commands manually in the arch so that Janeway can’t overhear, Tom’s pretty happy this rudimentary program will do the trick.  

He turns to look at Janeway, fully clothed again in her ski gear, sitting on the bed fiddling with her bun. “Ready?”  

She nods, standing, hands still in her hair. “Ready.”  

“Computer,” Tom says, “Retain our current holographic clothing and run program Paris One.”  

Holographic clothing is weird , but Janeway hadn’t had anywhere to replicate real ski gear and change into it, and at the start of today Tom had felt the distance between them was too big to invite her to change in his cabin, so they’d changed into holographic clothes in holographic changing rooms.  

Funny how things can be so different after one morning spent together.  

Their surroundings change to a different snowy landscape, completely empty of any people or technology under an orange sky. Rolling out before them is a vast, frozen lake, narrow at the near end and widening out in the distance, where it’s surrounded by snow-capped mountains; on its shore, a single bench and two pairs of skates.  

Tom breathes in – something isn’t right.  

“Computer, lower temperature to minus five degrees Celsius.”  

“Is that necessary?” Janeway asks, looking at the view. She pulls her gloves out of her pocket and over her fingers.  

“It won’t feel authentic if the ice is warm,” Tom points out. “Besides,” – he winks – “I’m going to make you sweat.” He takes another deep breath; the temperature is much better already. Gesturing expansively, he declares, “Welcome to Mars in winter. The lake is one of several emergency water reservoirs, but no one comes up here much. Especially when it’s frozen over.”  

Looking over to gauge her reaction, he’s dismayed to see her staring into the distance without enthusiasm. She looks pale.  

“Are you okay?”   

A small, unconvincing nod. “It looks a lot like Tau Ceti,” she says.  

Tom’s heart drops. He’s an idiot . “I’m sorry,” he says instantly. “Do you want to go somewhere else?”  

“No.” She swallows. “Just give me a moment.”   

Her gloved hand reaches out for his, and he takes it and grips it firmly. Damn, but he’s stupid. He was trying to give her something fun, not trauma therapy.  

But she looks up at him and gives him a little smile. “Help me with my skates?”  

“Are you sure?”  

“Yes.” She nods again, more determined this time. “Show me how to have fun here.”  

He tugs gently at her hand. “Come on then.”  

Tom leads her to the bench and again sets to work removing her ski boots. She hasn’t fastened them properly, no doubt anticipating that she wouldn’t be wearing them for long, so they almost fall off her feet when he pulls. He’s as gentle as possible – not that he was rough before – but he wants to show her that he’s going to take care of her, here, as much as he can. He makes sure her socks are on straight before he picks the skates up, and loosens them as much as he can before slipping them onto her feet.  

He’s chosen vintage, brown leather ice skates for this program. Something about the anachronism tickles him, and they accentuate Janeway’s shapely ankles and calves perfectly – he's enjoying tightening and tying her laces a little more than he perhaps should.  

“Okay, try standing,” he says at length. “They should be tight, but not so much that they cut off circulation.”  

Janeway wobbles a little when she gets to her feet and he catches her, and a quiet laugh escapes her lips.  

“Hey, see?” Tom says. “We’re having fun already.”  

She takes his comment good-naturedly, steadying herself on him and then letting go, carefully shifting her weight on her skates.  

“Think you can stay upright while I put my skates on?”  

“Is that a challenge?”  

“If you want,” he says easily, sitting down and reaching for his own skates. “But I don’t think you’re going to find it that hard.”  

“I’m glad you have faith in me,” she quips. She gazes out again at the lake. “Tell me what you like about this.”  

“You’re not convinced? We can still stop.” He doesn’t, he discovers, need to be looking at his skates to tie them, so he looks at her instead.  

“No.” She’s decisive. “I just want to understand what draws you to it.”  

He has to concentrate to keep working on his laces and give a considered answer. “It feels like flying,” he says eventually.  

Janeway turns to look at him, surprised. “In a different way from skiing?”  

“Yeah, definitely.” This he’s sure of. “Skiing is all about gravity. Flying, when you’re out there in deep space, is more about...” He tugs at his laces, trying to find the right word. “Freedom,” he settles on.  

“Mars still has gravity,” she points out.  

“Sure, but you’re not trying to navigate it. It’s more about the friction, and how you use it to accelerate. And then,” he stands, laces tied, “when you get fast enough, it’s almost like there’s no friction at all. Like you could just keep going forever.”  

“Like in deep space,” Janeway surmises.  

“Exactly.” He offers her his hand again. “Are you ready?”  

She takes it. “Ready.”  

He leads her down the gentle slope of the shore – he may have cheated with the consistency of the snow right here, to make it easier – and onto the ice. She steps out gingerly, but she doesn’t slip.  

“Okay.” Tom twirls around to face her. “Stand with your skates parallel. Bend your knees and lean forward a little. I’m just going to pull you around the ice for a while.”  

He takes her other hand so that he’s holding both, and she nods.  

“Here we go.” Tom moves his ankles from side to side ever so slightly, gliding backwards at a slow pace, and pulls her forward. He's expecting her to wobble, but she doesn’t, and she isn’t too tense, so he picks up the pace. “Let me know if I’m going too fast.”  

She just nods instead of saying anything, frowning down at her skates, the only sign that she’s finding this at all challenging.  

“You’re doing good,” he encourages her.  

“I’m not doing anything yet.” She doesn’t look up.  

“Sure you are. You’re not falling. That’s not a given.”  

“I have plenty of time to fall.”  

“I’ll catch you.”  

Finally she looks up at him, a smile twitching at her mouth. “Promise?”  

He smiles back. “I promise.”  

“Let’s go faster, then.”  

“Aye aye.” He grips her hands tighter and pulls her along with him as he accelerates backwards, the cold air biting harder with the increased speed. Janeway’s cheeks are turning red. It’s adorable.  

She doesn’t look back down at her skates, keeping her eyes fixed on him instead, and her smile grows wider the faster they go. Until they widen suddenly. “Tom – ”  

It’s too late. He hits the bank and falls over backwards, pulling her down on top of him in a tangle of limbs and skates. He’s glad they’re on the holodeck; he’s pretty sure he would have split the back of his head open, falling this way in real life without a helmet.  

As it is, he’s being laughed at.  

“Hey!” he protests half-heartedly, wrapping his arms around her, feeling the heaving of her body on his as she just laughs louder. “You could have said something.”  

“I’m sorry.” She’s gasping for air, cheeks redder than ever. “I was too busy staring into your beautiful blue eyes.”  

“If you say so.”  

“It’s true!” She’s calming down a little, but is still full of mirth when she points out, “You did catch me.”  

“Well, I did promise.” He pulls her closer and she indulges him with a kiss; for a moment he’s tempted to abandon this effort and just keep kissing her; but no. He’d promised her a good time on the ice, too, and they haven’t achieved that yet. “Back on your skates, Janeway,” he says, pushing her off his chest and scrambling to his feet. He offers her his hand and pulls her up next to him. “Let’s try to get you going under your own steam now, okay?” He reorients himself to stand next to her facing the ice, still holding her hand. “Give it a go. Remember you want to glide more than take steps, like skiing cross country.”  

She grips his hand tightly but is game to try. Her stride isn’t long enough at first – no surprise for a beginner – but she soon gains more courage and is going longer and longer before switching feet. “I think it’s coming back to me,” she declares after a little while.  

“Are you ready to let go of my hand?”  

Her grip tightens. “Oh, I’m not sure about that.”  

“I’ll stay right next to you,” he promises. “I’ll even keep my hand out so you can grab it again whenever you like.”  

Janeway frowns at him, but she does let go.  

He’s surprised by how quickly she decides to go faster. She’s not looking at her feet at all now, nor at Tom; just starting straight ahead with steely determination. He lets her do her thing for a good while before he suggests, “Do you want to try some turns?”  

Unfortunately the effect this has is that she looks at him, loses her concentration, her skates turn toward him of their own accord and she topples right over. Tom darts in to catch her and somehow ends up on his back, underneath her, again.  

“Sorry,” he says. “I distracted you.”  

“It’s fine,” she declares, getting to her knees and then, impressively, upright on her skates again without his help. “I think I’m getting the hang of it.”  

“I think that’s an understatement.” Tom gets back on his feet as well. “So how about those turns?”  

“Will that be fun?”  

He shrugs. “Sure. I mean, turning is the first step for all kinds of tricks. Pirouettes and things.”  

Janeway frowns. “You don’t sound enthusiastic.”  

“I’m a simple guy,” Tom admits. “I just like going fast.”  

“Maybe it’s time for another race,” she declares.  

“I’m up for that. I’m not holding my hand out for you if we’re racing, though.”  

“I guess I’ll have to manage on my own.” She smiles. “Are you going to let me win?”  

He gives her the answer he knows she wants. “Absolutely not.”  

He was right; her smile widens. “Good,” she says. “Where’s the finish line?”  

“Computer,” Tom instructs. “Paint a finish line for a race on the ice one kilometer from here.”  

“A kilometer?” Janeway sounds surprised.  

“Is that too far?”  

“On the contrary. I’ll be able to build up some speed,” she says confidently.  

“Then let’s do it.” Tom turns to face the finish line in the distance; the computer has helpfully marked it with flags on either side. “Computer, count down from three to go.”  

The computer’s voice isn’t the most inspiring, but it counts down dutifully. On go Tom hangs back for a couple of seconds to give Janeway a head start; he wonders if she’ll look back to see what’s happened to him, but she’s laser-focused on the ice ahead of her. She’s taken his advice about skiing cross country to heart and has a nice flow going now from one foot to the other and back; color him impressed, by her, again.  

“Are you coming, Paris?” she yells, without looking back.  

“Don’t you worry!” He heads after her.  

It doesn’t take him too long to catch her up at his top speed but he takes care not to just sail past her and away; instead, he overtakes and only puts a little distance between them before turning around and skating backwards, facing her.  

Janeway looks up at him. “You’re showing off,” she grumbles.  

“I’m a pilot, it’s what we do.” He spreads his hands innocently.  

“I should have known. Go away.” She makes a shooing gesture – carefully, so as not to upset her balance, he notes.  

“Okay,” Tom acquiesces. He skates off to the side and then back in a big arch that lets him build up real speed without getting all too far ahead of her, and then allows himself to sail across the finish line just in front of her.  

He slows and turns immediately to see her break into a grin when she crosses the line behind him, eyes bright and cheeks flushed.   

“Silver medal, Kathryn Janeway!” he declares in his best sports announcer voice. “Only seconds behind gold champion Tom Paris.” He puts himself in front of her as she starts to slow and lifts her up, letting the momentum twirl them around a few times before he puts her down. “Are you enjoying yourself yet?”  

Her grin widens, and she laughs. “I think we need a rematch.”  

Chapter Text

They’re back in the Swiss Alps program, sitting in a hot tub on the large, snow-dusted balcony of the chalet, sipping synthehol cocktails.   

Janeway’s leaning back against the side with her eyes closed, looking utterly content. Tom looks away from her and out at the holographic mountains. His muscles are sore from the day’s activities, but in the best way. He can’t remember the last time he had such a good day.  

Yeah, he thinks. He’s going to do it. He’s going to go back to the Exeter tomorrow, ask to speak to the captain, and tell her all about the worst mistake he’s made in his life.  

What he hates most is the reason he did it. It wasn’t because he wanted to stay in Starfleet so damned badly. They probably wouldn’t even have wanted him out, if he’d told the truth from the start. But he hadn’t, because he couldn’t bear the thought of his father’s reaction. Even now, that’s what he’s most scared of, because of course by lying about it he’s made it so, so much worse. But it can’t be helped, can’t be fixed now. He can only go forward, and hope they just kick him out and don’t send him to jail.  

And if Kathryn Janeway can walk around being her own person in spite of Owen Paris’ scrutiny, then so can Tom.  

She shifts beside him, sitting up and reaching for her cocktail glass, and Tom smiles.  

“So,” he says. “Is it a common occurrence for you to pick up handsome officers on transit stations?”  

Janeway just smirks. “Life is for living. That means saying yes to things.” She sips her drink. “But that can be difficult, when you’re commanding a starship. I tend to seize opportunities when I find them.”  

“Well, I’m happy to be seized by you any time.” He repositions himself so that he can stretch his legs out and deposit them in her lap.  

She snorts, bringing her free hand up to rest on his shin. “Thanks. It may be a while until the next opportunity. After this review board I’m expecting to be sent on another six-month scientific mission.”  

Tom has no idea where he’ll be in six months, but he doesn’t want to tell her that, and the whole accompanying story, and ruin the moment. “Review board, huh? Sounds fun,” he says instead.  

“I only hope it goes better than the last one. My security officer dressed me down in front of three Starfleet admirals for failing to observe proper tactical procedures.”  

“Ouch.”  

“Yes.” She quirks an eyebrow at him. “He didn’t agree with my interpretation of the rules.” Off his grin, she relaxes. “I think it’ll be fine. We’ve developed a pretty good working relationship, oddly enough.” She smiles at him. “What about you? Where are you headed?”  

“Back to the Exeter ,” he says. “I had some leave piling up so I took some time off. None of it was as relaxing as this, though.” None of it was relaxing at all, he doesn’t say.  

That makes her laugh. “The hot tub is a permanent fixture of this program, by the way.”  

“Skiing and hot tubs? You’re my kind of girl.”  

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She raises her drink.  

Tom clinks their glasses together. “You should. I wouldn’t jump in the hot tub with just any Starfleet captain.”  

“Oh God, can you imagine?” The look on her face is hilarious.   

“I don’t think I want to,” he says vehemently, and they both burst out laughing. Janeway almost bends double over his legs still resting in her lap; her breasts brush against his skin and the hand holding her drink comes up to rest against his shoulder.  

He liberates her glass and puts it with his own on the side of the tub, then moves his legs and tugs her towards him for a kiss. She smiles against his lips, still chuckling, and he sits back for a moment to tease, “You’re not thinking about Captain Picard right now, are you?”  

“Don’t!” She laughs louder again, and rearranges her legs to straddle him.  

“I’m sorry, was it some other captain you were picturing?”  

“Right now I’m happy with the lieutenant between my legs,” she says in a low voice.  

She cups his face in her hands and dips her head to kiss him again. Tom smirks, and he reaches down between them to stroke his fingers through her folds until she moans into his mouth.  

The computer chimes. “Reminder: you have ten minutes left in your allocated holodeck slot.”  

“Dammit.” Janeway pulls back, breathless. “That means my transport is leaving in twenty minutes. I’ve got to go.” She climbs out of the tub, leaving him half hard and bereft, and looks back at him guiltily. “I’m sorry, I should have been keeping better track of time.”  

Tom sighs. “I guess it’s a compliment that I kept you distracted.”  

“It sure is.” She grins at him for a moment, but she’s already holding herself differently, morphing back into the Starfleet captain. “Computer. Remove all the water from the program. Bring me our uniforms. And give me a brush, comb and mirror.”  

Tom finds himself suddenly sitting in a dry hot tub with not a drop on him. He clambers out and stands behind Janeway, who’s looking at herself in the full length mirror that’s appeared beside them, fiddling with her hair.  

“Let me,” he says, reaching up to unpin the half-unraveled bun. Her hair cascades down her shoulders, longer than he was expecting, and he meets her eyes in the mirror. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, pressing a soft kiss to her temple.  

Her eyes flutter shut for a moment and she brings her hand up to stroke his cheek, but it doesn’t last long.   

“You should get dressed too.” She picks up the brush, pulling it through her hair with short, efficient strokes. “There’s probably a stuffy old admiral waiting to play golf in here.”  

“Maybe I shouldn’t then. Just to see his face.”  

Janeway laughs, shaking her head. “It wouldn’t be worth it. You know what stuffy old admirals are like when they see somebody having more fun than they are.”  

Tom thinks that could be the perfect set-up for his confession. It would get him in front of someone important pretty fast, and then, still naked, he could do what he’s now resolved he is going to do.  

But no – he should take it seriously, and he doesn't want to get Janeway in trouble, so he grabs the uniform that’s magically appeared in front of him and pulls it on.  

When he looks up again she’s sitting fully dressed on the side of the tub, hair back up in an almost-perfect bun, putting her boots on. “That was fast ,” he comments.   

“When you’re in command of a starship, you need to be fast. You never know when you’re going to wake up in the middle of the night at red alert.”  

“Does that happen often?”  

“Fortunately not. But often enough for it to be a useful skill.” She stands. “Computer, how much time left?”  

“You have forty-seven seconds left in your allocated holodeck slot.”  

She looks at him. “We should go.”  

He steps closer, putting his hands on her waist. “I’m going to kiss you for forty-seven seconds first.”  

Her arms wrap around his neck and she presses her lips to his.  

It doesn’t seem like forty-seven seconds, or even thirty, before the computer chimes again.  

“ Your slot has ended. Ending program. Please leave the holodeck.”  

Tom opens his eyes and the Swiss village is gone, replaced by the familiar yellow grid of the holodeck. Janeway is looking at him and he looks back, at a loss for what to say.  

“Come on,” she says softly, and heads for the door.  

There are no impatient Starfleet admirals waiting outside – no one at all, in fact. Just a drab, empty corridor.  

“The docking bay is this way,” she says.  

“And my bunk is that way.” He pauses. “I guess this is goodbye.”  

She nods. “Goodbye, Tom. Thank you for today.”  

She reaches for his hand, squeezes, and walks away.  

Tom’s heart suddenly feels like it’s being squeezed so hard he might choke. Dammit, he shouldn’t be this emotional. This morning he had barely met her, and now he’s desperate for her not to leave.  

“Janeway,” he calls, and she pauses by a fork in the corridor. “Will I see you again?”  

She looks back at him and chuckles. “Call me Kathryn,” she says, and steps out of sight.  

Chapter Text

Tom doesn’t pay any attention to the footsteps approaching, though he can hear the gentle swish of the grass. The New Zealand afternoon is warm, and he’s allllmost finished work...  

“Tom Paris,” says a voice he recognizes, and he looks up instantly.  

“…Kathryn Janeway.” He tries not to gape, tries not to let his heart fly right out of his chest and into the sunset. Kathryn Janeway is here to see him, Kathryn Janeway, who he never thought he would see again, has actually actively sought him out. “What the hell are you doing here?”  

Her expression is stern, and his moment of euphoria evaporates instantly. He should have known that she, like every other Starfleet officer, would hate him now.  

“I’m here on official Starfleet business.”  

“Yeah, I didn’t think this was a booty call.” He knows it’s the wrong thing to say and he regrets it instantly, but he doesn’t know how to talk to her if she’s not on his side. He’s always imagined that she would be on his side. He’s imagined this meeting so many times that he’s totally lost now that it’s real. Now that it’s not going how he hoped it would.  

Kathryn – is he still allowed to call her Kathryn? – hesitates. “Tom,” she ventures –  

“Kathryn,” he interrupts, before she can say she’s sorry, that it was a mistake, that he was a mistake. “It’s fine. I get it.” He looks at her, at the wide eyes looking back at him, and tries not to wonder if she might have said something nicer after all. “Tell me about your official Starfleet business,” he invites her.  

She exhales, nodding, and gestures for him to follow her. Tom scrambles to his feet and joins her on the trail leading into the woods.  

“I’m leaving on a mission to find a Maquis ship that disappeared in the Badlands a week ago,” she begins.  

“You can’t do that,” he protests instantly.  

Amusement sparks in her eyes. “You don’t get to tell me what to do,” she says, not unkindly.  

“I’ve never seen a Federation starship that could maneuver through the plasma storms. You’ll be killed .” He doesn’t mean to sound quite so impassioned, but she doesn’t react in any case.  

“You’ve never seen Voyager ,” she tells him lightly. “We’d like you to come along.”  

That takes him aback. He’s speechless for a moment before realization dawns. “You’d like me to lead you to my former colleagues,” he surmises. “I was only with the Maquis a few weeks before I was captured. I don’t know where most of their hiding places are.”  

“You know the territory better than anyone we’ve got.”  

Better than anyone else who might actually agree to help, is what she means . “What’s so important about this particular Maquis ship?”  

“My chief of security was onboard, undercover. He was supposed to report in twice during the last six days. He didn’t.”  

“Is this the same chief of security who dressed you down in front of three Starfleet admirals?”  

The edges of her mouth twitch in an almost-smile. “That’s him.”  

“It could be just him who’s disappeared.”  

She nods, and the smile is gone again. “I know. I need to find out.”  

He stares at her, and wishes the smile would come back. “Starfleet’s really willing to put a starship in the hands of a convict just to rescue this one guy?”  

Kathryn looks away. “Not exactly. Officially, you’d be a Starfleet observer during the mission.”  

“Observer?” And here he’d been, imagining himself heroically navigating them all through the plasma eddies. “Hell, I’m the best pilot you could have!”  

She looks... hurt? “You’ll be an observer,” she repeats. “That’s all we can give you.”  

“What’s in it for me?” he asks at length. “Especially if I don’t even get to fly the ship.”  

“You help us find that ship, we help you at your next outmate review.”  

“Who’s this ‘we’ you keep talking about?”  

“Starfleet.” She breaks eye contact, her professional tone diminished. When she looks back, her demeanor is gentler, no longer the authoritative Starfleet captain. “Me, Tom. I’ll help you.”  

The sudden lowering of the mask throws him. Without thinking, he blurts, “You’re the reason I’m in here, you know.” Off her expression, he continues, “The last time we met. That’s when I realized that my father’s opinion of me wasn’t worth those lies.” He pauses, trying to explain the effect she had on him. “I realized I needed to have my own rules too.”  

She looks at him, and whatever it is he sees in her eyes, it’s not hatred, or even pity. It’s almost... almost how she looked at him before.  

“I mean, I know I’m not here because of Caldik Prime exactly, but there’s a definite chain of events...” he trails off.  

“I knew something was bothering you that day,” she says eventually. “And when I saw the news feed a few days later, I made the connection. I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to you. I should have.”  

Tom brushes this off. “You didn’t need to be associated with a lying failure like me.”  

Her face goes stony, but what she says isn’t what he’s expecting. “That’s not what you are,” she asserts with absolute certainty. “You made a mistake and you did your best to rectify it. That’s all any of us can do.” She exhales. “But you’re right. I can’t be associated with you.” She steps away from him, her hands disappearing behind her back, and his heart drops. “I’ve fought to get you on my ship,” she continues. “And when this is over I’ll fight tooth and nail to get you cut loose. But if anyone finds out that we were intimate, all that is undermined.” Her hands come back up, one on his chest, the other grasping tightly at his elbow, and he instinctively reaches up to anchor them there. “Do you understand?”  

The ferocity of her tone takes him aback, mostly because he doesn’t think anyone has ever fought tooth and nail for him for anything before. “Yes,” he tells her, pushing all the reawakened feelings and daydreams back down to the depths where they belong. “Thank you.”  

“So you’ll do it?” She’s still holding him tightly, and he her, as though he can keep her from ever letting go.  

“Yeah.” He nods. How could he say no to her? “Just one question,” he allows himself.  

She nods for him to go ahead, and he steps as close as he dares and flashes her a cheeky grin.  

“Do I still get to call you Kathryn?”  

Chapter Text

“...Including the lieutenant assigned to conn.” Kathryn gives Tom a look that he hopes, really hopes, he’s deciphering correctly.  

“Me?” he asks. When she’d summoned him to the ready room he’d expected another reminder to keep their past a secret, not... this. Just to be sure: “Did you forget I’m a convicted felon?”  

“After personally springing you from that penal colony? Not likely.” She leans forward at her desk, gesturing for him to sit, and reaches out to cover his hand with hers. “But I very much remember how you commanded this ship in the midst of a battle and piloted her at the same time. Not any convicted felon could have handled that so deftly.”  

“So... this isn’t some kind of favoritism.”  

Her grip tightens, and her answer has a hint of steel. “Absolutely not. I discussed all my personnel decisions with Tuvok and he agrees with me that you’re the best choice.”  

“You discussed us with Tuvok?” He’s taken aback for a moment, but she’s already shaking her head.  

“No. I haven’t breathed a word to anyone and neither will you. I can’t give anyone any reason to question my judgement, not now.”  

There’s hurt in her voice, and Tom instinctively puts his free hand on top of hers, enveloping it in his grasp. “You did the right thing, Kathryn.”  

“Did I?” She searches his gaze, looking for... what? The certainty he’s just expressed? He tries his best to put it there for her to find. “I stranded us seventy thousand light years from home. I broke the Prime Directive, just because I didn’t like the Kazon and felt sorry for the Caretaker and the Ocampa.”  

“You’re oversimplifying. Who knows what the Kazon would have done with that technology? And the Prime Directive only applies to pre-warp civilizations.”  

“You know that interpretation hasn’t held for decades.” Her other hand comes up to massage her temple, and Tom shakes his head.  

“What happened,” he says slowly, waiting to make eye contact before he continues, “to the Kathryn Janeway who had her own rules? Which were mainly, if I recall correctly, about which rules to follow, and which to bend.” He pauses. “As well as when not to talk about my father.”  

Kathryn snorts, and her hand falls from her face to join the rest of their intertwined hands on the desk. She smiles at him, the most genuine smile he’s seen since she made that choice and they all had to start living with the consequences. “I wish things could be different,” she confesses. “I was looking forward to perhaps getting to know you a little better.”  

“Oh, so that was your master plan?” he teases. “Get me out of jail, get me on and then off your ship, all so you could get back in my bed?” He strokes his thumb over her knuckles as he speaks.  

Kathryn chuckles. “Something like that.”  

He risks a little honesty. “If I’d known you felt that way I might have gone looking for you after they kicked me out of Starfleet, instead of looking for trouble.” He leaves I thought you’d hate me like everyone else unsaid, but he can tell from her eyes she’s heard it anyway.  

“But then you might have been left behind in the Alpha Quadrant, and we’d have to wait seventy years to see each other again,” she points out, her tone more serious again. She looks down at their hands and squeezes. “I’m glad you’re here, Tom.”  

“What is it that you see in me?” he asks suddenly. While he can. “It can’t just be my boyish good looks.” He knows that his looks are all most women see in him. But he can’t believe that of her.  

She’s clearly surprised at the question, but answers in good humour. “I would write an ode to your boyish good looks if I had any talent in that direction,” she begins. “Tom. You’re kind. You’re fun. You have a moral compass that I don’t think even you fully appreciate. What is there not to see in you?”  

Her words leave a glow inside him that he’s rarely felt before. “My dad never seemed to see much.”  

It’s more of an observation of the contrast than a lament, but he's not sure it came across right.  

She sits up straight. “Didn’t you just mention the rule about your father?”  

“I’m sorry, I thought that only applied when we were naked in bed.”  

“I may need to table an amendment.”  

He wants to say something to keep the mood light, but nothing comes to mind. They both look down at their hands, still entangled, and the silence stretches until they both, almost simultaneously, start to deflate.  

“It’s going to be a while until we can do that again, isn’t it,” Tom says.   

“It’s been a while already,” she points out, equally morose.  

“Yeah.” He nods, then forces a grin. “What’s seventy more years, right?”  

It’s worth it; her answering chuckle is sincere. “It’ll feel like no time at all,” she asserts.  

One more squeeze of his hands and she’s pulling away, standing, and he tries not to wonder if he’ll ever get to touch her again.  

“I’m granting you a field commission of lieutenant,” she says. “I think I forgot to mention.”  

Tom stops halfway between sitting and standing. “Yeah,” he says. “You did.”  

A grin spreads over his face as she steps around the desk and reaches up to grasp his forearms. “Congratulations. You deserve it.”  

His knees are still bent, the position is awkward, but he can’t help it. He reaches out and hugs her.  

“Thank you,” he says into her hair.  

After the initial surprise, she hugs him back.  

He wonders if he dares to beg one kiss, just one. Her familiar body pressed up against his is doing things to him, bringing longstanding dreams and fantasies bubbling back to the surface where he’s tried his best to push them down, and perhaps this embrace was a mistake. It’s going to be that much more difficult to stay away, when he’s just held her so close.  

And she’s not letting go, he realizes. But then the door chimes, and they both spring apart like guilty teenagers.  

“Just a moment!” Kathryn calls, sounding remarkably composed given the look on her face.  

“Sorry,” Tom says.  

“Don’t apologize.”  

“I’d better go.”  

Kathryn hesitates, but then she nods.  

He’s just turned to leave when she says, “Tom. One more thing.”  

He turns back to face her.  

Her eyes are sad, and she sighs. “Don’t call me Kathryn.”  

He tries not to let it feel like a gut punch, but he can tell she knows how much she’s hurt him. But she’s right , he knows she’s right.  

Tom ducks his head.  

“Yes, Captain.”  

Chapter Text

“Kathryn, stop.”  

The use of her first name has the desired effect, at last. She stops pacing the tiny room they’re locked in and looks at him. “Tom, we can’t do nothing. That polaric explosion is going to happen in a matter of hours.”  

“Nothing is all we can do right now,” he retorts. “We’ve tried everything we can to escape. They’re going to take us to the plant with them tomorrow morning. The best thing we can do is get some rest so we can think on our feet when it matters.”  

It takes a moment, but she sighs, then nods. “You’re right.” She throws up her hands. “I wish we had something to sleep on.”  

Tom looks around. The furnishings are sparse, their captors having removed most of the things from the room before locking them in. The kid, Atika, had been offered a couch in another room to sleep on, but no such luck for the “spies”. The floor is carpeted, which is something. There are shelves full of empty boxes and a single, hard chair, and not much else.  

He grabs one of the boxes. It’s made from something like cardboard, but it’s a little more springy to the touch. “We could take some of these apart for bedding,” he suggests. “It’ll be better than the floor, at least.”  

She takes one from the shelf and they make short work of tearing them apart and lining a corner of the room with them. Tom sits on top of the pile and almost bounces.  

“Not bad,” he declares. “You ready?”  

He regrets the question instantly because it takes him straight back to that holographic restaurant, the table he’d bent her over, the way she looked when she told him she was impatient for him.  

Come on, Tom.  

The way she looks now tells him she’s made the same connection.  

“That switch controls the lights,” she says at length, crossing the room.  

It goes dark. He hears her footsteps come back over to the corner, and she lies down beside him.  

Tom lowers himself onto his back and into an awkward silence.  

The pile of boxes isn’t big enough for them to lie side by side without touching. He can feel her warm body pressed all along his, especially where the skin of his bare arm meets hers. Should he have made separate piles? No, he thinks that torture would be even worse.  

He tries to distract himself by concentrating on the mission, but all that does is send a stupid question to his lips before he’s considered it properly. “What if we can’t prevent the explosion?”  

She doesn’t reply straight away. He expects her to say something like don’t think that way, we need to be professional . But what she eventually tells him is just, “Then we’ll be caught up in it.”  

“I don’t really want to die tomorrow,” he says, more honestly than he probably should.  

Suddenly her hand is on his arm. “I don’t want you to die either,” she whispers.  

Tom doesn’t let himself stop to think about it, in case he decides against it. He just rolls over and gathers her into his arms.  

Kathryn tucks her head into his chest and says nothing.  

“I like your hair this way,” he says, after a moment. Anything to lift the mood.  

She laughs softly, and he feels her relax against him. “Goodnight, Tom.”  

“Goodnight.”  

He doesn’t sleep, but she does.  

* * *  

He gets himself shot, in the morning. There’s no way to not get himself shot. One of the goons fires at the kid and the choice between him taking a bullet or Tom is no choice at all. His only regret it that it means he’s no help to Kathryn; suddenly he’s a burden, weighing on her mind when she needs her wits about her.  

“I’ll be back for you,” she tells him, and she kisses him on the forehead.  

* * *  

Tom wakes with a gasp, still feeling the pain in his side, and it takes him a moment to realize he hasn’t been caught in an explosion, he hasn’t been shot, and he’s not on some alien planet.  

He’s in his quarters on Voyager , alone and apparently unharmed.  

For a little while he tries to go back to sleep, but the dream feels too real, and his imaginary wound still hurts. He stands up and goes to the replicator, then remembers he’s out of rations, so he steps into the bathroom instead to get some water.  

In the mirror, he looks like death warmed up.  

Water isn’t going to cut it, he decides. He’s going to the mess hall.  

He pads out of the door and down the corridor in the shorts and t-shirt he’d worn to bed. It’s late, he’s not on duty, and he’s not going to look any better in his uniform. Besides, he’s not expecting anybody else to be there at this time of the night.  

He's wrong.  

Kathryn Janeway is there, staring out at the stars.  

He almost backs away and leaves, but she’s heard the doors and she turns and sees him.  

“Tom.”  

Nothing for it. He steps inside, heading immediately for the dark kitchen. “Captain. I couldn’t sleep,” he says, rifling through the leftovers Neelix has left out. Nothing looks appealing, but Tom helps himself to a plate of vegetables anyway.  

He’s too tired and wound up to want to deal with the complicated knot of feelings between him and the captain right now, but he has no choice, so he walks across to the window and takes one of the low seats near where she’s standing.  

Kathryn sits down across from him. “I couldn’t sleep either,” she tells him, cradling a steaming mug in her lap. “I had a very unsettling dream.”  

“You look a lot better than I do for it,” he says – but when he looks closer he decides that maybe that’s not true. She’s fully dressed, hair and makeup immaculate, but her eyes are tired and frightened. “You wanna talk about it?” he offers.  

“I’m not sure.” She looks at him, considering. “You were in it.”  

“You were in mine.”  

“You were shot.”  

“Yeah.” He points at where he can still feel the pain. “Right here.”  

Her eyes follow his finger. “Not a normal dream, then. No wonder it doesn’t feel like one.”  

Tom sits up straight. “What do you think is going on?” Suddenly he’s feeling better. He’s not overreacting after a nightmare, he’s caught up in some kind of weird space phenomenon. He’s not sure why that’s an improvement, but it feels like one.  

“I don’t know.” Kathryn looks back to the window, frowning. “But Kes said something, about the planet we passed.”  

“She did!” He can’t believe he’s just now making the connection. “She had a bad dream. They all died in an explosion.”  

“In my dream, I prevented the polaric explosion.” She meets his eyes again. “What if...?”  

“What if it all really happened?” Tom supplies.  

“And then we stopped it from really happening.” She looks better too; alert, interested, she’s in scientist mode now.  

He sits back. “It’s as good an explanation as any.”  

She sips her coffee, and stands. “In the morning, we’ll do some scans, talk to Kes again. But we should try to get some real sleep first.”  

Tom looks up at her looking down at him, and wonders if she’s thinking about a pile of boxes in a locked room, and her head tucked into his chest.  

“Yes ma’am,” he says.  

Kathryn nods slowly, steps closer, and bends down to press a kiss to his forehead.  

“Goodnight, Tom.”  

She leaves without looking back.  

Chapter Text

“Reporting as ordered, Captain.”  

He steps into her ready room having done his best to look presentable, but he knows he has bags under his eyes from the last few nights; nights he’s mostly spent thinking about Pete Durst, and about how close B’Elanna came to dying too, and about how powerless he, Tom Paris, senior officer, had been to help either of them.  

The captain is sitting on the couch by the window, padd in hand, a pot of coffee and two mugs on the table in front of her. She looks taken aback for a moment when she sees him, but she gets ahold of herself quickly.  

“Tom, sit down. Would you like some coffee?”  

“Sure. Thank you.” He sits what he deems is an appropriate distance away from her, and takes the mug when she hands it to him. It’s warm, and even the smell is calming. It helps, a little.  

“I’m writing the eulogy for Lieutenant Durst,” she says after a moment. “I had hoped, after the service we held for the people killed in the displacement wave, that I wouldn’t have to perform this particular duty again for a while. I guess I was being too optimistic.”  

It hurts, when she says Durst’s name. He tells her one of the things he’s been telling himself; one of the many, many things that don’t help at all. “We couldn’t have anticipated coming across the Vidiians, Kathryn.”  

He hadn’t intended to use her first name, but she doesn’t comment. “I was hoping you could provide some insight,” she tells him. “Unfortunately, I’d barely met him. I want to emphasize who he was when he we was alive, not the awful way he died.”  

“I can try.” He doesn’t want to talk about Durst, or any of it, but he will if she wants him to. “I didn’t know him very well.”  

“No one did.” She sighs. “He was a last-minute transfer before we left Deep Space Nine. According to the computer, there’s not a single person onboard who had served with him before.”  

Tom swallows. “Then maybe,” he ventures, “it doesn’t matter that much what he was really like. Maybe what matters is what the crew needs to hear.”  

“Maybe.” She looks down.  

“All I can tell you is that he was brave. He stayed calmer than me or B’Elanna. Which somehow makes what happened to him all the more unfair.” His voice wavers a little, at the end, and he curses himself for it; even more so when he sees the look on Kathryn’s face.  

“The Doctor told you to take a few days off,” she says. “I hope it helped.”  

“Not really.” He tries to shake it off, with only mild success.  

“I was worried about you. I’m glad you’re safe.” She reaches out and puts her hand on his knee, and somehow that makes it worse. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”    

“I’ll be okay.” He’s aware they’re skirting the boundaries of normal captain-helmsman relations, but he looks into her eyes and asks anyway: “Are you, Captain?”  

It takes her a moment to answer. “I will be.”  

“I’d better go.” Before he crosses the boundaries. He stands, but he can’t help himself; he can’t leave on this note. “You want to beat me at pool again sometime soon?”  

He’s hoping for a smile, but what he gets from her is a somber nod, and, “It’s a date.”  

Dammit, he’s trying, but she doesn’t make it easy. He’s sure that’s not intentional. But sometimes he thinks she’s struggling with this even more than he is. Sometimes he wonders how long they can keep it up.  

“A platonic date,” he clarifies.  

“Very platonic,” she confirms, but the way she’s looking at him doesn’t feel platonic at all. Her voice is smaller when she speaks again, a long way from the steady, confident tones she uses on the bridge. “Thank you, Tom.”  

He nods, and leaves before either of them can venture into even more dangerous territory.  

* * *  

Tom spends most of his free time on the holodeck, fine-tuning his recreation of Sandrine’s while other people drift in and out. He’s happy to have something to do in his off hours, and even happier that it’s something the rest of the crew can profit from, and not just because it’s helping him to make inroads in mending all his burned bridges. Tom likes feeling useful, and while of course flying the ship is useful, this is more tangible. So he enjoys watching the crew come and go around him, sharing drinks, playing pool, and dipping in and out of those activities himself while he’s tinkering.  

When Kathryn Janeway graces them with her presence, he always dips in.  

He wonders if anyone notices how much more present he is when she’s there; serving her drinks, challenging her to games, in general being more attentive to her than he is to anyone else. But he doesn’t feel like he crosses the line, and she’s never commented. As far as anyone else is concerned, the extra attention is just because she’s the captain. Maybe they think he’s sucking up to her.  

Maybe he is sucking up to her.  

She doesn’t come in here too often, but not to the extent that it’s unusual to see her. Sometimes he wonders if she carefully calibrates the number of visits; if she’s as conscious as he is of how closely they interact when she’s here, and wants to make sure it doesn’t happen so often that the crew draw the wrong – or the right – conclusions. There’s no logically discernible pattern to her visits, but Tom has somehow developed a kind of sixth sense about it. He’ll know at the start of the evening if she’s going to drop by, even if she doesn’t appear until hours later.  

Tonight is one of those nights.  

He gets her a drink. They play pool. He actually wins more than a few games for a change.  

There hadn’t been a lot of people in tonight to begin with, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Tom is too preoccupied with his winning streak to notice until he goes to order a victory drink that the holodeck has completely emptied of real people.  

He turns back to look at the captain. She’s facing the exit, motionless. She’s noticed too.  

“I should go,” she says, still not moving.  

Maybe it’s the high from the win, but Tom doesn’t feel like just giving in tonight. “Why’s that?” he challenges her instead, moving back toward her until he can see her face.  

She rests her hands on the pool table and drops her head. “We can’t be here alone together, Tom.” There’s regret in her voice – a crack in her Starfleet Captain armor.  

“We’re not doing anything we wouldn’t do if we were surrounded by people,” he points out – and then makes himself a liar, because he stands closer to her than he should.  

She looks at him. “Aren’t we?”  

He shrugs. “We played pool. I was about to offer you a drink. Nothing we haven’t done dozens of times. If anyone walks in that’s all they’re going to see.” He turns, leaning back against the pool table beside her. “Don’t you trust me?”  

The captain hesitates, but when she replies her voice is firm. “Implicitly.”  

“Well then.” He presses the drink he’s carrying into her hand. “Take this, and find us a good table.”  

Tom goes over to the bar without looking at her, keeping his back to her while he orders and receives another drink. When he turns around he half expects her to be disappearing through the doors, but no, there she is sitting in a corner, drink still in hand.  

Tom slides into the chair opposite her. “Cheers.” He raises his glass.  

She clinks her glass against his, a small smile playing on her lips. “Cheers, Lieutenant.”  

“So.” He takes a sip, and watches as she does the same. “What a week.”  

“You can say that again.”  

“You know, I have an Amelia Earhart program in my files somewhere. I’ll have to go over it, make it more like the real thing.”  

Her smile widens, but there’s something else lurking behind her eyes. At length, she lets slip, “I thought you might stay. On the planet.”  

“Me?” He’s honestly surprised. “It never crossed my mind.”  

“Good.” She looks down at her hands, both wrapped around her drink. “I’d have missed you.”  

Tom ducks his head in an attempt to make eye contact, but she’s avoiding his gaze. Maybe she wants to pretend he’s not really there, or that she hasn’t said what she’s just said, but he’s having none of that. He puts his drink down and his hands over hers.  

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says.  

It has the desired effect, which is that she looks up, but what he sees in her eyes isn’t what he wants at all. There’s no mirth, not even her Captain Janeway stare. Just sadness.  

“I want to touch you,” he confesses. He doesn’t even mean sexually, just now. He wants to give her a hug, or twirl her around the room like he once twirled her across a frozen lake, or anything else that might alleviate that look on her face.  

Her eyes fall back to their hands. “You are touching me,” she points out.  

“It’s not enough.”  

“I know.” She sighs, shaking her head. “This is why we can’t be alone together.”  

He wishes she was wrong. He wishes things were simple. He wishes they were back on that damned transit station, and that he’d just never let her go. He hates the way he has to second-guess every interaction he has with her – how does it look, has he gone too far, what does she mean, what does she want from him? He hates how he knows she’s doing the same, and failing to act totally unattached just as much as he is.  

The problem, he knows, is that what she wants from him is something she’s convinced she’s not allowed to have.  

Tom is becoming less convinced by the week, as the months in the Delta Quadrant stretch out and the reality that they’re not getting home anytime soon sinks in more and more. But he doesn’t know if he can ever get her to see it that way.  

“You’re right,” he tells her, and lets her go.  

He starts to avoid her, after that. It’s just easier to hide behind the bar, or better, to listen to his sixth sense and not be there at all when she comes in, than to try to keep going with the balancing act. He times his mess hall visits to stay out of her way. He doesn’t linger to chat on the bridge or in the briefing room.  

He hopes that he might get a grip on his feelings by limiting his exposure this way, but it doesn’t work.  

Even after months, nothing works.  

Chapter Text

“Enter.”  

Tom walks into the captain’s quarters. The lights are dim, and he has to squint around the room until he sees her.  

She’s sitting at her desk with her hair down, resting her chin in the palm of her hand, frowning at him.  

He notices her uniform jacket is missing and spots it draped over the back of a chair.  

“Uh,” he begins uncertainly. “You wanted to see me?”  

The captain nods slowly. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”  

“No.” He takes a few steps closer. “I haven’t been sleeping that well, since the whole incident with the alien reaching into our minds and impersonating our loved ones.” The incident that had started out with the captain convinced she was going crazy and Tom using every shred of self control he possessed to not go down to sickbay and stay there until she was well again. It’s that memory more than the image of Owen Paris that’s been keeping him awake.  

She nods again. “Me neither.”  

Narrowing his eyes, Tom takes the liberty of sitting down across from her. She doesn’t reprimand him for taking a seat uninvited; doesn’t even seem to notice he’s taking liberties at all. She just leans back in her chair, watching him.  

“Captain,” he begins carefully. “What’s going on?”  

It takes her a moment to respond. “You said you saw your father.”  

“That’s right.”  

She exhales slowly; her hands come down to meet on the desk, and her eyes follow them. “So did I. He berated me for thinking about you when I should be commanding the ship. How dare I sleep with his son anyway. He was disappointed in us both.”  

Tom can’t help it; he snorts. “That sounds like something he would do.”  

“The other person I saw was you.” Her eyes meet his again, suddenly, sharply. “You told me not to listen to him. That I could do both. You kissed me.”  

That confession hits differently than the first. Tom swallows. “That sounds like something I would do.”  

“Did you know,” she says softly, “it’s a year ago today that we met again in New Zealand.”  

He has no idea where this is going, he tells himself firmly, even as his stomach does a back flip. She’s probably going to tell him again why they can’t be in a relationship. Maybe berate him for making puppy dog eyes at her in the briefing room or something. Not that he can help it. Or, worse, for how it always takes him a second longer than it should to turn back to the helm when she calls for red alert with her hair all disheveled after an impact or attack. That’s really something he’s been meaning to work on, it just... it reminds him of that day they spent together, so long ago, and how she looked right before she fixed her hair and left.  

Tom does his best to push all of that out of his mind and come up with a quip instead. Anything to lighten this bizarre mood. “That’s a very charitable way of saying, ‘when I came to see you in jail’.”  

The captain sighs, studying him. “I have a problem.”  

Tom knows he’s being willfully obtuse, but he can’t help himself; “You mean beyond the stuck in the Delta Quadrant problem? The Seska problem? The–”  

“Stop it,” she commands.  

Tom shuts his mouth. “Sorry.” He clears his throat. “What are you trying to say?”  

Sighing again, she shakes her head. “I don’t know what to do with you. I keep thinking about you. About us. I thought it would get better with time, but it’s only gotten worse the more I get to know you.” The words are tumbling out now, and Tom has to fight to pay attention to what she’s really saying because there’s a red-hot heat flashing through his body that’s threatening to overwhelm him. “Every time I’m sitting on the bridge with you at the helm I just want to reach out and touch your neck. Every time I’m sitting on the bridge with somebody else at the helm I just want it to be you. It’s ridiculous. It’s unprofessional. And at this point I think it’s becoming dangerous. I’m so distracted.”  

She looks at him helplessly, and he has no idea how to reply. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out – what does she want him to say? “I feel the same,” he confesses eventually, just because it feels good to be able to say that out loud. Beyond that, he’s powerless to respond.  

“Damn.” Her reply surprises him, but only until she clarifies: “Part of me was hoping you’d tell me you’d moved on. Maybe that you’d found somebody else. Then it would just be a question of my accepting reality and moving on too.”  

“I’ve tried,” he tells her honestly. “Sometimes with disastrous consequences, as you well know. But no, I can’t pretend I’ve moved on. Even if you want me to. I’m not going to lie to you.”  

The captain looks defeated. “So what do we do?” she asks, getting to her feet and striding toward the window.  

Tom rises too, more slowly. “What do you want?” he says, joining her in looking out at the stars. “If nothing else needed any consideration. What would you want?”  

“You,” she says simply, turning to face him. “I want you. This alien attack at least made that crystal clear to me.”  

He reaches out to take her hands in his, and is gratified when she doesn’t resist. “And why can’t you have me? Because I’m yours for the taking, I want to make that clear.”  

“Tom...” She sighs, gripping his hands tightly. “If we were back in the Alpha Quadrant, I would just put you in for a transfer. Then I wouldn’t be responsible for you, I wouldn’t be able to put you in danger, I wouldn’t be able to favor you if I had to make tough decisions. And we could see each other in between missions, just like other couples do. I don’t know how to navigate this when that’s not possible. The captain should not be in a relationship with her helmsman. She just shouldn’t.”  

“Whose rule is that?” Tom prompts.  

“Starfleet’s.”  

Tom accepts this statement, nodding, but then counters: “And do you think Starfleet gave any consideration to a situation like ours when they made that rule? Did they ever think it could mean that someone could be forced to be on her own for the rest of her life? Because I doubt it. I can’t believe that would be their intention.” Tom steps closer; his fingers, still clutching hers, brush the fabric of her uniform. “I think perhaps our unique situation warrants a different interpretation.”  

The captain inhales forcefully. “The crew–”  

“– would like to have a happy captain,” he cuts her off. “No one onboard is going to come out and say, no, the captain should be alone for the next seventy years, just because she’s in charge.” He pauses, and adds, “Also, I’m not the ex-con who just got out of jail anymore. People like me. I haven’t heard a snide comment in months.” 

She looks offended on his behalf. “Tom, that was never–”  

“Yes, it was. And rightly so.” She’s never outright said it, it’s true, but it’s obvious that the captain jumping into bed with the criminal she’d just liberated from a penal colony would have been a bad look. “But it is different now,” he asserts, and means it. He’s different now.  

“But the conflict of interest...”  

“...is already there! At least this way you get something out of it.” He wiggles his eyebrows, but then adds a more serious response to her concern. “I’m sure Tuvok would be happy to call you out on it, if necessary. And I know you’d listen to him, because that’s who you are.”  

She exhales, shakily, and leans into him. He brings his arms up around her, wondering if she can hear his heart thundering in his chest.  

“Tuvok would argue that he can’t feel ‘happy’,” she says after a moment, voice muffled by his uniform.  

“He would though,” Tom asserts. “You know how much he loves making sure you adhere to regulations.”  

She laughs, and he joins her, pulling her closer, and feels her hands come up to rest against his back.  

“I like this,” he says.  

“Me too,” she admits.  

“Let’s do it again sometime.” He starts to pull away, and she slaps his arm. “What now?” he says gently, pulling her back in.  

He feels her nod her head against his shoulder, considering. “It’s late. We should probably get some sleep. Talk more in the morning.” She looks up to meet his eyes.  

“Yes, Captain.” He’s fine with that, he is .  

They look at each other. He doesn’t think he’s stared into her eyes for so long since... since then.  

He’s fine with it, but there could be things that are better than fine.  

Suddenly her lips are on his, and he laughs with delight, returning the kiss, cupping her face in his hands, feeling her skin under his fingertips and her body pressing against his.  

“You have no idea,” she says, coming up for air, “how often I’ve thought about doing that.”  

“I think I do,” he tells her. Her hands are on his chest, fiddling with the fastening of his uniform jacket. “What happened to ‘let’s get some sleep and talk in the morning’?” he teases, steering her toward the bedroom.  

“I stand by that,” she declares. “Just maybe not right away.”  

 “Yes ma’am.”  

She stops. “Tom.” Her tone is serious, but a grin creeps across her face.  

“What?”  

“Call me Kathryn.”  

Chapter Text

“...Including the lieutenant assigned to conn.” Kathryn gives Tom a look that he hopes, really hopes, he’s deciphering correctly.  

“Me?” he asks. When she’d summoned him to the ready room he’d expected another reminder to keep their past a secret, not... this. Just to be sure: “Did you forget I’m a convicted felon?”  

“After personally springing you from that penal colony? Not likely.” She leans forward at her desk, gesturing for him to sit, and reaches out to cover his hand with hers. “But I very much remember how you commanded this ship in the midst of a battle and piloted her at the same time. Not any convicted felon could have handled that so deftly.”  

“So... this isn’t some kind of favoritism.”  

Her grip tightens, and her answer has a hint of steel. “Absolutely not. I discussed all my personnel decisions with Tuvok and he agrees with me that you’re the best choice.”  

“You discussed us with Tuvok?” He’s taken aback for a moment, but she’s already shaking her head.  

“No. I haven’t breathed a word to anyone and neither will you. I can’t give anyone any reason to question my judgement, not now.”  

There’s hurt in her voice, and Tom instinctively puts his free hand on top of hers, enveloping it in his grasp. “You did the right thing, Kathryn.”  

“Did I?” She searches his gaze, looking for... what? The certainty he’s just expressed? He tries his best to put it there for her to find. “I stranded us seventy thousand light years from home. I broke the Prime Directive, just because I didn’t like the Kazon and felt sorry for the Caretaker and the Ocampa.”  

“You’re oversimplifying. Who knows what the Kazon would have done with that technology? And the Prime Directive only applies to pre-warp civilizations.”  

“You know that interpretation hasn’t held for decades.” Her other hand comes up to massage her temple, and Tom shakes his head.  

“What happened,” he says slowly, waiting to make eye contact before he continues, “to the Kathryn Janeway who had her own rules? Which were mainly, if I recall correctly, about which rules to follow, and which to bend.” He pauses. “As well as when not to talk about my father.”  

Kathryn snorts, and her hand falls from her face to join the rest of their intertwined hands on the desk. She smiles at him, the most genuine smile he’s seen since she made that choice and they all had to start living with the consequences. “I wish things could be different,” she confesses. “I was looking forward to perhaps getting to know you a little better.”  

“Oh, so that was your master plan?” he teases. “Get me out of jail, get me on and then off your ship, all so you could get back in my bed?” He strokes his thumb over her knuckles as he speaks.  

Kathryn chuckles. “Something like that.”  

He risks a little honesty. “If I’d known you felt that way I might have gone looking for you after they kicked me out of Starfleet, instead of looking for trouble.” He leaves I thought you’d hate me like everyone else unsaid, but he can tell from her eyes she’s heard it anyway.  

“But then you might have been left behind in the Alpha Quadrant, and we’d have to wait seventy years to see each other again,” she points out, her tone more serious again. She looks down at their hands and squeezes. “I’m glad you’re here, Tom.”  

“What is it that you see in me?” he asks suddenly. While he can. “It can’t just be my boyish good looks.” He knows that his looks are all most women see in him. But he can’t believe that of her.  

She’s clearly surprised at the question, but answers in good humour. “I would write an ode to your boyish good looks if I had any talent in that direction,” she begins. “Tom. You’re kind. You’re fun. You have a moral compass that I don’t think even you fully appreciate. What is there not to see in you?”  

Her words leave a glow inside him that he’s rarely felt before. “My dad never seemed to see much.”  

It’s more of an observation of the contrast than a lament, but he's not sure it came across right.  

She sits up straight. “Didn’t you just mention the rule about your father?”  

“I’m sorry, I thought that only applied when we were naked in bed.”  

“I may need to table an amendment.”  

He wants to say something to keep the mood light, but nothing comes to mind. They both look down at their hands, still entangled, and the silence stretches until they both, almost simultaneously, start to deflate.  

“It’s going to be a while until we can do that again, isn’t it,” Tom says.   

“It’s been a while already,” she points out, equally morose.  

“Yeah.” He nods, then forces a grin. “What’s seventy more years, right?”  

It’s worth it; her answering chuckle is sincere. “It’ll feel like no time at all,” she asserts.  

One more squeeze of his hands and she’s pulling away, standing, and he tries not to wonder if he’ll ever get to touch her again.  

“I’m granting you a field commission of lieutenant,” she says. “I think I forgot to mention.”  

Tom stops halfway between sitting and standing. “Yeah,” he says. “You did.”  

A grin spreads over his face as she steps around the desk and reaches up to grasp his forearms. “Congratulations. You deserve it.”  

His knees are still bent, the position is awkward, but he can’t help it. He reaches out and hugs her.  

“Thank you,” he says into her hair.  

After the initial surprise, she hugs him back.  

He wonders if he dares to beg one kiss, just one. Her familiar body pressed up against his is doing things to him, bringing longstanding dreams and fantasies bubbling back to the surface where he’s tried his best to push them down, and perhaps this embrace was a mistake. It’s going to be that much more difficult to stay away, when he’s just held her so close.  

And she’s not letting go, he realizes.  

Tom doesn’t want to either, but he pulls back just enough to look down at her face. It doesn’t help; he doesn’t know how to read that sadness in her eyes, and he wonders if he should let her go, but he really, really doesn’t want to...  

And she kisses him.  

She kisses him with such ferocity that he’s taken aback and almost loses his footing; he’s still half crouching above the chair, so he grasps the backs of her thighs and lifts her onto the desk as he stands, bending over her, pulling her closer, and she wraps her legs around his and whimpers into his mouth as he puts a hand up to cup her cheek before he finally, regretfully gathers the strength of will to step back just enough to look her in the eyes again.  

Her cheeks are flushed and she gasps when he breaks the kiss, and if she’s expecting him to just forget this now she is going to be very disappointed, Tom vows – but not half as disappointed as he will.  

Kathryn swallows, and she speaks unsteadily. “We can’t do this here.”  

Tom has to bite his tongue to keep from pointing out that she kissed him , that her hands are still on his back and her heels are digging into his legs. “I thought we couldn’t do this at all,” he says instead. But he doesn’t move his palm from her cheek.  

“I said that, didn’t I.” She nods slowly.  

Tom nods back.  

Kathryn nods again, and then she sighs, searching his eyes. It’s a long time until she speaks, quietly, unexpectedly, vulnerably:  

“Come to my quarters tonight?”  

Chapter Text

Tom has no idea what to expect as he makes his way through the corridors to the captain’s quarters.  

He’s been asking the computer for Kathryn’s location every ten minutes for what seems like forever. Finally, just after 2200, it had told him she was in her quarters. Then he’d given her another ten minutes to get herself situated, or settled in, or whatever she wanted to do, and then he’d gotten in the turbolift.  

No one else is around on Deck Three, for which he’s grateful, and he stands at her door and tries to breathe his nerves away before he hits the chime.  

He doesn’t even know why he’s nervous, anyway.  

The door slides open and Kathryn is standing there in the middle of the room, hands on her hips.  

“Hey,” Tom says, stepping inside.  

“Hi,” says Kathryn. She exhales. “I didn’t think you were coming.”  

“You didn’t specify a time,” he points out, approaching her cautiously. He doesn’t tell her that he knows she’s only been here for fifteen minutes, or how he knows that.  

“No,” she admits. “I didn’t.”  

The closer Tom gets, the more clearly he can see the tension in her frame. “Are you okay?” he asks. Perhaps he’s not the only one who’s nervous. Perhaps he’s not the only one who doesn’t know what to expect.  

Her hands fall from her hips immediately, hanging heavy by her side, and she shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”  

“That’s okay,” Tom ventures. “Neither do I.”  

That ears him a small smile, and she seems to relax a little. “Would you like a drink?” she asks, gesturing towards a small table by the couch.  

“Sure.” He lets her direct him to a seat.  

“I think we’ll need to limit replicator use for the time being, but I do have some whisky,” she says conspiratorially, reaching into a drawer and producing a bottle and two glasses.  

“A real drink?” Tom grins. “Even better.”  

Kathryn sits beside him and pours a finger of whisky into each glass, handing one to him and clinking hers against his. “Thank you for coming,” she says, knocking it back.  

Tom sips his more cautiously, and it still goes straight to his head; he’s reminded that he hasn’t had dinner. “Have you eaten?” he asks.  

“No.”  

“Are we allowed to use the replicator for food? Because otherwise I may get very drunk, very fast.” He actually has no idea what his tolerance is like, after all that time in jail.  

For some reason she seems to find that amusing. “Go ahead.”  

Tom gets up again and orders pizza; Kathryn is practically salivating as he carries it back across the room.  

“That smells good,” she says, making space on the table.  

“It tastes good, too,” Tom declares, setting it down and helping himself to a slice. “Just what you need after the last couple of days.”  

Kathryn takes a bite and sighs. “You’re right. That helps.”  

“Do you often skip meals?”  

“Do you?”  

“No,” Tom answers honestly. He doesn’t press her further; the fact that she deflected his question is answer enough. “I can’t resist a good pizza,” he says instead, finishing one slice and immediately reaching for another.  

“You’d better enjoy this one, then. We may have to make do with ration bars and whatever we can barter for, for the foreseeable future.” Kathryn helps herself to more whisky; Tom shakes his head at her offer of a refill.  

“You make it sound pretty grim,” he comments.  

“Isn’t it?”  

“I think it depends how you look at it.” He shrugs. “We’re the first humans ever to see this part of space. It’ll be an adventure.”  

“It’ll be rife with dangers we have no way of foreseeing. No starbase to call at for repairs, no backup in any conflicts...”  

“...No one to tell us what to do,” Tom says slowly, looking at her. His heart thunders in his chest and he wills for it to quiet down. He knows why he’s here. And he doesn’t think Kathryn is going to change her mind, not now they’ve come this far. They just need to walk through to the inevitable conclusion.  

She looks back at him. Swallows.  

“If we do this...” Kathryn says carefully. “It can’t get out. Not to anyone.”  

Tom puts his drink down, turning to face her more fully. “If we do what, exactly?”  

“Pick up where we left off,” she says, watching him intently.  

Tom nods, his eyes not leaving hers. “I’m okay with that.” He pauses. “Are you?” Because that’s the most important question, isn’t it?  

Kathryn hesitates. “I wouldn’t normally consider it. I tried to put you at arm’s length, but...” She shakes her head slowly. “ Normal doesn’t seem to apply anymore. I had you in my arms again and something in me couldn’t let go. I think...” she trails off, and doesn’t finish the thought.  

“You want to know what I think?” Tom offers, shifting closer. “I think you’re right that this adventure is going to be tough. And maybe you’re going to need someone to remind you that you can’t just be Captain Janeway for the next seventy years. To make sure Kathryn doesn’t go forgotten along with your dinner.” Because he sure hasn’t seen much of Kathryn since he’s been aboard Voyager. Apart from what happened in the ready room earlier, she’s been in Captain mode all the way. No wonder there’s a crack in her armor, after everything they’ve just been through.  

The corners of her mouth twist upward. “And you’re that someone?”  

He cocks his head. “If you want me.”  

Kathryn closes her eyes. “Tom, you know I want you.”  

“Good.” He nods again, and picks up the plate. “You’d better eat some more. I don’t want you fainting from hunger in the middle of whatever we do next.”  

He winks at her, and she laughs, and dutifully takes another slice. Tom puts the plate back down and wraps an arm around her, pulling her close, and she melts into his side.  

“I’m glad you’re here,” she tells him again.  

“Me too,” he decides. “This beats prison.”  

Kathryn chuckles, and when she’s eaten the last of her pizza Tom turns her face towards his and kisses her.  

It’s nothing like their fervent kiss earlier today. Tom takes his time, conscious of the fact that she must be even more exhausted than he is; he is gentle and reverent, and when she sighs into his mouth he reaches up again to cup her cheeks, her skin warm under his hands, and if being stranded in the Delta Quadrant is the price he has to pay to touch Kathryn Janeway again he can’t say it’s too much. Nothing would be too much for this woman, this woman who is too good for him by far but doesn’t seem to see it, who just pulls him up to her level without even trying.  

Kathryn’s hands are on his back and she’s pulling him down on top of her, pushing her body up to meet his. He goes along with it for a minute, running his hands over her uniform, but then he stands and pulls her up with him.  

“Where’s the bed?” he asks, and she grins wickedly and tugs him through the doorway at the end of the room. He reaches for the fastenings of her jacket and she for his, and they undress each other in a tangle of arms that he’s half surprised doesn’t end in knots, until their hands are trailing over warm flesh instead of fabric and he’s marveling again at how this messed up situation can bring him something so magnificent.  

“You’re just as beautiful as I remember,” he whispers in her ear, nipping at her earlobe, and the sound she makes is divine.  

Tom pulls her onto the bed with him and kisses her again; he kisses her mouth, her neck, her breasts, her stomach; he moves down her body until his head is between her legs and his tongue is caressing her folds, exploring her clit, and the noises she’s making reverberate in his own body like she’s part of him, like she’s always been a part of him.  

Her hand grabs a handful of his hair and she guides him firmly back down, her other hand taking over at her clit, and he thrusts his tongue inside her, curling it as he withdraws, following the steady pace she’s dictating. Her feet come up to rest on his shoulders and he feels her heels dig in as her breathing grows more ragged and she cries out, everything clenching and releasing around him.  

Tom keeps at it at a more leisurely pace as she rides out the aftershocks, and then her fingers are in his hair again, pulling his face up to meet her lazy grin.  

He kisses her soundly, their lips slick with her juices, and she sighs into his mouth. “God, I’ve missed you, Tom.” Her hand strokes his hair and then snakes down between them to grasp his erection, her thumb swirling around the tip.  

“I’ve missed you too,” he gasps. Swallows. “In case you couldn’t tell.”  

Kathryn chuckles, kissing him again, and she brings a leg up over his waist. “I’d never have guessed.”  

He almost makes a joke about how easily he can keep his feelings a secret, but he’s not sure it’s funny, and then she’s grasping him more firmly and teasing her entrance for a moment before she guides him inside her, and then he stops thinking about anything else.  

Kathryn brings her other leg up over his back, cradling him between her hips, and he kisses her again before he starts to move, and again to help him set the leisurely pace he’s going to keep for as long as possible.  

She whimpers softly, coming down for the moment from the heights of her first orgasm, but Tom is determined to bring her back up along with him. Her fingers run over his back, fingernails lightly trailing across his skin, and she moans and then smiles under his mouth as he moves to kiss her yet again. He kisses his way across her jaw and down her neck and then nips at her with his teeth, soothing the mark with his tongue before biting again. Her hand moves up his back to rest on his neck, holding him in place, so he keeps it up, biting harder and sucking at her skin until she cries out louder, and he repositions himself so that he can grind his pubic bone against her clit with every thrust. “Faster,” Kathryn gasps, her legs tightening around his back, and he obeys with more than a shred of relief, finally allowing his body to move at the pace it’s been begging for from the start.  

It doesn’t take long before she’s coming apart around him again with a shout, and he moves so he can see her face, her open mouth and her flushed cheeks, and the sight of her beneath him is enough to send him over the edge with her.  

Tom peppers her with kisses until they’re both breathing more steadily, and then he collapses beside her. He nuzzles her neck and she reaches for his hand, and they lie there for a moment in silence, drinking in each other’s company.  

Then Kathryn sighs and sits up. “I should shower before I pass out,” she says. She doesn’t let go of his hand; Tom follows her through the bathroom door and into the sonic shower.  

Kathryn tells the computer to activate the shower and leans into him, closing her eyes and sighing into his chest. Tom runs his hands down her back, feeling the sonic waves do their magic and turn her sweat-soaked skin dry and smooth again. She turns in his arms to let her front get the same treatment, and raises her hands above her head. “Help me with my hair?” she says.  

“I thought you’d never ask.”  

Tom loves her hair. It’s probably a good thing she doesn’t wear it down; the temptation to reach out and touch it would be unbearable. So he relishes the chance to unpin it and watch it cascade down her shoulders. He thinks it’s even longer than it was the last time he saw it this way, and he’s so entranced as he runs his fingers through it that it makes Kathryn laugh.  

“I’ll let you play with it some other time,” she promises, turning to face him again and wrapping her arms around his neck. She tucks her head back into his chest, and Tom laughs softly.  

“Back into bed with you, Captain,” he says, giving himself a once-over for cleanliness before he turns the shower off and steers her back toward the bedroom.  

“Aye aye,” Kathryn murmurs. She gives him a lazy salute and climbs under the covers.  

And it occurs to him that maybe she really could use someone to tell her what to do sometimes.  

Not in the big, professional ways – she’s more than capable as a commanding officer – but in the small, personal ways.  

Don’t skip meals.  

Get enough sleep.  

Don’t empty that bottle of whisky too fast.  

Don’t sleep with your helmsman, his brain supplies, and he very carefully ignores this as he climbs back into bed with her.  

“Is it okay if I stay here?” he asks.  

“I want you to stay,” Kathryn tells him, eyes already closed as she snuggles closer. “We’ll figure out the rest in the morning.”  

Tom falls asleep before his brain can give him any more annoying advice.  

Chapter Text

“Kathryn, stop.” 

The use of her first name has the desired effect, at last. She stops pacing the tiny room they’re locked in and looks at him.  

Technically he’s breaking one of their rules. 

No calling her Kathryn anywhere other than her quarters.  

No flirting, no touching, nothing but professional interactions anywhere else. 

And no verbal code, they’d agreed on that pretty fast – too easy for someone to notice. If she leaves her coffee cup on the bridge, that’s the signal for him to go straight to his quarters after his shift and remove his commbadge, ready for her to initiate a site-to-site transport and bring him to her. He’s not sure exactly what she’s done to keep them from registering in the transport log, but it’s a better solution than anything he could come up with. 

If he’s being honest with himself, he’s kind of enjoying sneaking around. It reminds him of his teenage self, and the girlfriends his father had disapproved of. 

He would disapprove of this one too, for entirely different reasons. 

Kathryn speaks. “Tom, we can’t do nothing. That polaric explosion is going to happen in a matter of hours.” She doesn’t mention the rules at all. 

“Nothing is all we can do right now,” he retorts. “We’ve tried everything we can to escape. They’re going to take us to the plant with them tomorrow morning. The best thing we can do is get some rest so we can think on our feet when it matters.” 

It takes a moment, but she sighs, then nods. “You’re right.” She throws up her hands. “I wish we had something to sleep on.” 

Tom looks around. The furnishings are sparse, their captors having removed most of the things from the room before locking them in. The kid, Atika, had been offered a couch in another room to sleep on, but no such luck for the “spies”. The floor is carpeted, which is something. There are shelves full of empty boxes and a single, hard chair, and not much else. 

He grabs one of the boxes. It’s made from something like cardboard, but it’s a little more springy to the touch. “We could take some of these apart for bedding,” he suggests. “It’ll be better than the floor, at least.” 

She takes one from the shelf and they make short work of tearing them apart and lining a corner of the room with them. Tom sits on top of the pile and almost bounces. 

“Not bad,” he declares. “You ready?” 

Kathryn nods. “I think that switch controls the lights.” 

The room goes dark, and she makes her way across the carpet to lie down with him. She turns her back to him and pulls his arm over her chest, and Tom takes the hint and pulls her in close. 

“I don’t really want to die tomorrow,” he says, more honestly than he probably should. 

Kathryn sighs. “Me neither. I don’t know if I can sleep, with this hanging over us.” 

Tom pauses. “...We don’t have to sleep,” he ventures after a moment. 

He feels Kathryn’s low chuckle reverberate in his chest more than he hears it. “I take it you have something else in mind.” 

“Perhaps.” He leans in to nuzzle her neck and elicits a pleased-sounding sigh, so he takes that as permission to continue. 

Gently, slowly, he presses his lips against the soft skin under her jaw, and he kisses his way down to her shoulder and back up again. Kathryn’s hand tightens around his wrist, and she guides his hand across her shirt until it pushes against her breast. Tom cups her through the fabric, squeezing and stroking while his mouth continues to work her neck, and she sighs again, louder. 

Tom smiles against her skin. 

He flexes his fingers and finds her nipple, running his fingernails across and around it in a swirling pattern and pinching, gently, before he nips not quite so gently at the base of her throat. He continues pinching, nipping and swirling alternately and all at once, and the sighs turn into gasps, and then Kathryn reaches up to loosen the laces of her shirt, grabs his hand again and pushes it very firmly underneath. 

Her skin is warm under his and Tom grins, working his fingers under her bra and pushing it away for unimpeded access to both breasts. He runs the palm of his hand over one pebbled nipple and then the other, intentionally teasing her by keeping his fingers relaxed and his fingertips away from where he knows she wants them. Instead his hand wanders her whole chest and across her stomach at a leisurely pace, coming to a rest for a moment under her hip so he can pull her closer still and push his growing erection against the back of her thigh. She whimpers helplessly and he relents, bringing his fingertips back up to play with first one nipple and then the other, and Kathryn retaliates by bringing her hand up and then behind her legs to stroke him through his pants. 

His breath hitches when she touches him and she laughs smugly, her shoulders shaking against his chest, and he puts more effort into torturing her nipples, pinching and soothing until she’s writhing almost out of his arms and he decides she’s suffered enough. 

Tom lets his hand snake down away from her chest, under her waistband and between her legs, gratified to find her wet and slick against his probing fingers. She keens when he circles her clit, arching her back, but he continues his assault on her neck instead of touching her where he knows she wants him to. The thought of what she’ll look like in the morning, love bites all down one side, turns him on more than he’d care to admit; normally he isn’t allowed to leave a mark on her, not even under her uniform, just in case, but no one from the ship is likely to see them tomorrow so this is a rare pleasure. He wonders what their captors will think, in the morning, and the thought of their faces just makes him more aroused. He groans into her neck as he digs his teeth in again. 

“You’d better not do that when we get back to Voyager ,” Kathryn gasps, reading his mind. 

“Oh, I’m enjoying it while I can,” he confesses, retrieving his hand for a moment to run his fingers over his handiwork. He’s only disappointed he can’t see it in the darkness. 

Kathryn has clearly decided he’s had enough distractions; she shoves her pants and underwear down and presses her bare skin back against him before reaching behind her into his and grasping him firmly. Tom gives in without too much regret; he kisses her neck one more time before he grabs his own waistband and helps Kathryn push the fabric down and out of the way. He has to shimmy upwards to align himself with her entrance and then her neck is out of reach; he busies himself dropping kisses into her hair instead, until she gets impatient with him. 

“Tom.” She slaps his thigh. “Are you going to make me wait until after the explosion?” 

He laughs, dutifully taking himself in hand and teasing at the slickness between her legs. “No, you’re right,” he says. “We should incite some more minor explosions first.” 

That makes her laugh, her shoulders shaking against him again, and the laugh turns into a moan and the shaking into a shudder as he finally does as he’s told and pushes inside her. 

He’s fully intending on taking it slow and torturing her some more, but the moment he feels her warmth around him there’s something about the angle, or the intimacy of their position, or perhaps the whole insane situation that makes him realize he’s not going to last that long. He slides his hand over her hip and between her legs, tapping his forefinger against her clit just for the joy of seeing and feeling the jolt it induces in her, and then settles his fingers into a firm and steady rhythm, working in counterpoint to the slow pace he’s forcing himself to keep inside her for now. 

All his teasing and torturing of Kathryn is paying off though; she’s moaning loudly already, her breathing growing unsteady, and she puts her hand over his and directs him to faster and harder ministrations. He allows himself faster and harder thrusts in complement, until she’s crying out and he is too, and she’s clenching around him and they come hard, together, alone in the dark. 

Their breathing is ragged, chests rising and falling in synchrony, and Tom slides his hand up over her arm to tighten around her chest again, pulling her closer where their exertions have pushed her away. He presses another kiss to the top of her head. 

“Do you think they heard us?” he says. 

Kathryn sighs, not unhappily. “If we’re lucky these walls are more soundproof than we think,” she says. “But I must look a mess.” 

Tom smiles. “How’s your head?” 

“It’s fine. Whatever that was that they gave you to put on it, it works.” 

“Good.” He presses a kiss to her temple. 

They sort out their clothing as best they can, and they sleep. 

* * * 

He gets himself shot, in the morning. There’s no way to not get himself shot. One of the goons fires at the kid and the choice between him taking a bullet or Tom is no choice at all. His only regret it that it means he’s no help to Kathryn; suddenly he’s a burden, weighing on her mind when she needs her wits about her. 

“I’ll be back for you,” she tells him, and she kisses him for longer than she should. 

* * * 

Tom wakes with a gasp, still feeling the pain in his side, and it takes him a moment to realize he hasn’t been caught in an explosion, he hasn’t been shot, and he’s not on some alien planet. 

He’s in Kathryn’s quarters on Voyager , apparently unharmed, with her stirring in the bed beside him. 

"Are you okay?” she asks, sounding a lot more awake than he would have expected. 

“I think so.” He frowns in the dark. “I just had the most vivid dream.” 

Kathryn shifts to look up at him, her eyes reflecting the starlight. “So did I. You were shot.” 

“Yeah.” He takes her hand and guides her fingers to where his imaginary wound still hurts. “Right here.” 

“Not an ordinary dream, then,” she deduces. She probes at the spot on his side and apparently finds nothing wrong, because she relaxes a little. “No wonder it didn’t feel like one.” 

“What do you think is going on?” 

“I’m not sure.” Her fingers are still stroking his skin, and he can’t deny that makes it feel better. “But Kes said something, about the planet we passed.” 

“She did!” He can’t believe he’s just now making the connection. “She had a bad dream. They all died in an explosion.” 

“In my dream, I prevented the polaric explosion.” She meets his eyes again. “What if...?” 

“What if it all really happened?” Tom supplies. 

“And then we stopped it from really happening.” 

He nods. “It’s as good an explanation as any.” 

Kathryn is quiet for a moment. Then she says, carefully, “Normally I would say we should run some scans. Talk to Kes. Try to get to the bottom of this.” 

“But you’d prefer not to have to explain why we were comparing dreams in the middle of the night,” Tom surmises. 

“Is that okay?” 

“You mean, leave the mystery unsolved?” He nudges her, teasing. “Won’t that drive you crazy?” 

“Yes.” She chuckles, and then gasps. 

“What is it?” 

Kathryn just laughs again. “My neck is sore.” Her fingers fly to her skin, which, like Tom’s, is completely unblemished. 

Tom grins, and he kisses it better. 

Chapter Text

“Can you meet me on the holodeck later?” Tom asks, sitting on Kathryn’s bed to pull his boots on.  

Her face falls, and she stops brushing her hair, hand suspended above her shoulder. “Tom...”  

“It’s a strictly Captain Janeway and Lieutenant Paris meeting,” he assures her. “I designed a program for the crew, I’d like your opinion.”  

That mollifies her somewhat; the hand holding the brush falls to her side. Still, “Why are you asking me here, then?” she says.  

“You think I should just turn around on the bridge and say, ‘Captain, wanna go to the holodeck with me?’”  

Kathryn smirks. “Maybe not,” she relents.  

“Well then.” Boots on, uniform straightened, he stands. “Will you?” He slips one hand around her waist and brings the other up to play with the hair falling over her shoulder.  

Kathryn rests her free hand on his chest. “I’ll schedule a meeting for after our shift ends.” Her fingers slide to his neck and she pulls him down for a kiss. “Are you ready?”  

“Yeah.” Tom steps back. “I’m meeting Harry for breakfast, I should get going.”  

Kathryn nods. “Computer, execute command Janeway epsilon three.”  

The transporter takes him, and his view of Kathryn with her hair down is replaced by the far inferior view of his own quarters.  

He grabs his commbadge and runs to find Harry.  

* * *  

He’s not sure why Kathryn chooses to come to the mess hall while he and Harry are eating. Did she forget that he told her that was where he would be? Or was she just so desperate for coffee that she didn’t care?  

He hopes it’s not the latter because he knows there’s no coffee left in the kitchen, but either way, her conversation with him and Harry is the most awkward he has ever seen her. He’s glad when she excuses herself and goes to find Neelix, even though he knows he’ll try to foist his godawful coffee substitute on her.  

And then Harry tries to tell him they should invite her to join them.  

Tom can’t tell him the real reason that’s a terrible idea. That their careful deception is only going to keep working if they stick to their very strict delineation between work and pleasure; that he can’t sit down in public and have breakfast with her as her almost-a-stranger helmsman when less than an hour ago they were having sex in the shower; that he’s worried enough about what their not-a-date on the holodeck later is going to do to that delineation and how she’ll react even without having to make small talk with her for a whole meal with the whole mess hall watching.  

Especially if it’s going to be anything like the one-minute preview he’s just had and never wants to live through again.  

So he feeds Harry some crap about distance and respect that would be more accurate for his father than for Kathryn, and prays he won’t suggest this or anything like it again.  

* * *  

He’s having second thoughts about the holodeck after this morning, but after promising Kathryn a strictly professional meeting he doesn’t want to cancel it for unprofessional reasons.  

Especially since he may have been stretching the truth a tiny bit about his planned professionalism. He’s going to have to play this very, very carefully.  

He starts the program before Kathryn arrives and spends a moment making sure everything is where it should be and that no characters are active yet; then he stands behind the bar and waits.  

She steps into Sandrine’s with a smile already on her face; he knew it was a good idea to program the alley in front of the entrance. “A French bistro?” she says, striding towards him.  

“I spent most of my second semester at the Academy here,” Tom confesses. “In Marseille, for my physical training.” He shrugs. “It’s a little taste of home. Speaking of which...” He pulls out the bottle of wine he’s been hiding behind the bar, and pours her a glass. “For authenticity,” he says. “The idea is to serve the crew holographic wine, but I couldn’t offer the captain something so subpar.” He winks.  

Kathryn narrows her eyes, but she takes her glass in good humor and sips the wine. “Mmm.” She looks surprised. “Where did you get this?”  

“I saved my replicator rations for it. So I also had to settle for Neelix’s coffee substitute this morning,” he tells her.  

She looks at him. “Was it as bad as it smelled?”  

“Worse.”  

Kathryn laughs, looking around. “Oh, a pool table?” She wanders over, running her fingers over the green fabric.  

“Do you play?”  

“A little.” She grins at him. “I think the crew will love this.”  

“That’s what I’m hoping.” He hesitates. “There’s something else.” He clears his throat. “Computer, activate holographic characters.”  

The room fills with a smattering of people, programmed for the moment not to interact unless prompted. Except for Sandrine and Ricky, who drape themselves over Tom and look at Kathryn, just like he’d intended. He’s not sure if he regrets it, now, seeing the surprise on Kathryn’s face.  

He forges ahead. “We spoke about being seen to be interested in other people,” he reminds her. “I thought this could be a solution.”  

“I don’t like it,” Kathryn says.  

“Sorry,” Tom says immediately. “Computer—"  

“No,” Kathryn cuts him off. “It’s not a bad idea. I just...” She smiles, rolling her eyes, suddenly bashful. “I suppose I just don’t like seeing you pay attention to other women,” she says. As though that’s some kind of weakness.  

“Computer, delete characters,” Tom says anyway. He looks at her. “It didn’t feel right for me either.”  

Her whole body relaxes as soon as Sandrine and Ricky are gone, but Kathryn shakes her head. “Thank you. But that doesn’t solve the problem.”  

“Remind me again what the problem is, exactly,” Tom presses. He leans forward, glad the bar is between them so he can’t just reach out and touch her – at least if someone walks in they could still look like they might be having a professional conversation.  

“The problem.” Kathryn leans against the bar, far too close for a captain speaking to her helmsman. Professionalism has gone out the airlock, then. “Is that we’re on a ship full of young, healthy officers in a difficult situation, and I fully expect people to start pairing off as a coping mechanism. As captain I have an excuse to behave like a monk, but you...” she trails off, holding eye contact pointedly.  

“Fine,” he admits. “I don’t.” Not to mention his reputation as a ladies’ man, at least among the Maquis, which he’s sure Kathryn is not unaware of.  

“Sooner or later, people will notice,” she presses.  

Tom wishes he’d poured some wine for himself, too. “Maybe I’ll flirt with some passing aliens,” he essays. “But no one on the crew. That wouldn’t end well.”  

Kathryn hesitates, then nods once, slowly. “I don’t want anyone getting their hearts broken.” Her eyes search his, and he’s not completely sure that she’s talking about some crewmate he might hurt by leading them on.  

“Neither do I,” he says. Not his, not hers, not anyone’s.  

Kathryn holds his gaze a moment longer, then nods, draining her glass and putting it back on the bar. “Thank you for this productive conversation, Lieutenant Paris.”  

He stands up straight. “Thank you, Captain.”  

“I’ll see you on the bridge in the morning,” she says briskly, picking the wine glass back up and putting it down again more carefully, directly in front of him. She looks up at him, raising an eyebrow. “After my... coffee.”  

Tom tries to keep a neutral expression on his face, he really does, but a smirk still makes its way to his lips. “Understood.”  

* * *  

A couple of weeks later, Tom is seriously regretting what they agreed that day.  

If he had just kept to himself and not tried to walk the fine line between flirting with Lidell Ren and letting her think he wanted anything more, he’d be home by now. Probably lying in Kathryn’s bed instead of the uncomfortable cot in his cell, and none the wiser about the intricacies of the Banean legal system.  

And then to top it all off, he blurts out Kathryn’s name the moment he sees her.  

He blames the Baneans for not telling him where they were taking him, and Kathryn doesn’t react at all, but Tuvok is there watching them, and if there’s anyone who can put the truth together from a tiny clue like that it’s Tuvok.  

“Are you alright, Tom?” Kathryn asks, but she can get away with first names better than he can. At least, she could if it weren’t for the sea of emotion in her eyes.  

“I’ve been better,” he quips.  

He tells them the whole sorry tale. How he’d let her kiss him (when he’d thought Harry might see), how things never went any further than that (when he knew Harry wouldn’t see), and how he’d woken up in a cell.  

He wants desperately to apologize to Kathryn, to explain, to tell her how much he never wanted to do any of it in the first place, but Tuvok is there, and then Tolen Ren’s impossible memories crash over him again, and he passes out.  

* * *  

He’s barely conscious for most of the next few hours, and when he is, Kes or the Doctor are hovering around him. He tells Tuvok everything, again, but the person he wants to tell is Kathryn, and she doesn’t appear again until Tuvok does, declaring his intention to witness Tom’s torture through a mind meld.  

“So you’ll be able to see all my thoughts?” Tom wants to clarify.  

“I will focus on what you experience during your reliving of Tolen Ren’s memories,” Tuvok says. Which doesn’t answer Tom’s question at all.  

He looks at Kathryn, knowing she’ll know what he means, and thanks God for the way her eyes always reflect everything going on inside her. She nods, once, almost imperceptibly.  

Tom nods back.  

He tries to push thoughts of Kathryn down to some hidden pocket of his mind, but when the memories take him he has no control over anything.  

* * *  

“This is all your fault, you know,” Tom tells Harry in the shuttle later, more to distract himself than anything else.  

“My fault?” Harry says.  

“Yeah.” Tom fiddles with the fabric of his pants. “I consider you the conscience I never had. You’re supposed to keep me on the straight and narrow.” Not that anyone could have kept him away from Kathryn, and that’s what this is all about, in the end.   

“I tried to warn you,” Harry tells him.  

“Funny, so did she.” And he should have listened. He was just trying to start some gossip, and it was in no way worth all this trouble.  

“If it had been me,” Harry says, “I would’ve stayed as far away from her as possible.”  

Which was exactly what Tom would have done, if it weren’t for what he’d promised Kathryn. “Someday it will be you, Harry,” he says. “You’ll meet her, and you’ll know with total clarity that you’ll do anything she asks of you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”  

And if Harry doesn’t understand that he’s not talking about Lidell, so much the better.  

* * *  

She’s there when he wakes up in the Banean hospital, and she’s stroking his hair.  

“Captain?” he says, and he’s a little proud of himself for getting it right, this time.  

But Kathryn shakes her head, and she smiles at him. “It’s okay. We’re alone.” It’s the first time since this whole mess began, and Tom struggles to sit up, but she puts a hand on his chest and shakes her head. “Take it easy, Tom. We don’t know how difficult your recovery might be.”  

He lies back down obediently, but he couldn’t care less about his recovery right now. “I’m sorry,” he says; the words he’s kept bottled up inside himself since he woke up in jail. “I fucked up, I fucked up so badly...”  

“Tom.” She sighs. “I know you were just trying to do what I told you to do. You couldn’t have predicted any of this.”  

“Harry did,” Tom says darkly.  

“Harry did not,” Kathryn says firmly. She exhales. “At least now you have an excuse not to be involved with anyone for a while.” She says it lightly, but her expression is serious.  

“Yeah, no kidding,” Tom agrees. “It’s been traumatic enough to put me off women for life.”  

Kathryn raises an eyebrow. “Does that include me?”  

He reaches for her, and even in this alien hospital she feels like home. “Never,” he declares.  

* * *  

He finds Tuvok in the mess hall.  

He almost expects his thanks to fall on deaf ears, but he slides into a seat at the table because he needs to express his gratitude anyway, for his own sake if not for Tuvok’s.  

Besides, it gives him a segue to... the other question.  

“When you were digging around in my mind,” he says carefully, “Did you see the thing I was trying not to let you see?”  

Thankfully, Tuvok doesn’t beat around the bush. No please elaborate, no technically what happens in a mind meld isn’t seeing. He just looks at Tom and says, “Yes.”  

Tom shakes his head. This is bad. “What are you going to do?”  

“I do not intend to do anything,” Tuvok says, as if that should be obvious.  

It’s not at all obvious to Tom. “What do you mean?”  

Tuvok clasps his hands together. “Captain Janeway is in a uniquely challenging position. In my experience, in times of crisis she has a tendency to put the needs of the crew above her own to such a degree that it impacts her mental and physical health. Since our arrival in the Delta Quadrant, I have seen less of this behavior in her than I would have expected.”  

Tom’s not sure he’s hearing right. “So you’re saying... I’m good for her?”  

Tuvok raises an eyebrow. “It would appear so.”  

“Wow.” He’s more than a little shocked, but Tuvok does have a habit of surprising him. Still, he has to double check: “So you’re not going to say anything?”  

“Your secret is safe, Mr. Paris. It may not remain so if we continue to discuss it in public.”  

Tom looks around the mess hall, but no one is obviously eavesdropping. Tuvok is right, though.  

“I’m glad she has a friend like you,” Tom tells him honestly, and leaves him alone.  

Chapter Text

Tom teases Kathryn about Gathhorel Labin, at first.  

He is flirting with her so hard , and she’s clearly having a difficult time finding the right balance between keeping her diplomatic distance and not offending their gracious Sikarian host by refusing him outright. And he is charming, Tom will give him that. Tom tells her to enjoy herself and that maybe it’s her turn to show some public interest in somebody else, doesn’t she think?  

It takes a turn though when he’s leaving Sandrine’s with B’Elanna and Seska. Seska is complaining about not having a chance yet to take shore leave on the planet, and they run into Kathryn and Harry outside the transporter room. Harry looks upset, Kathryn is in civilian clothes and looks grave; “What’s going on?” Tom can’t help but ask.  

“The Sikarians,” Harry says, while Kathryn looks at her feet. “They have a technology that could send us halfway home, but they won’t share it with us.”  

Tom gapes; B’Elanna and Seska exclaim, and Kathryn holds up a hand to quiet them. “We’ll discuss it in the morning, Ensign,” she says, and Tom’s pretty sure she’s not happy with him for spilling the beans. “For now, let’s all get some sleep.” Her gaze sweeps across all of them, but lingers for a moment on Tom, a question in her eyes. He nods, hoping it will just look like an acknowledgement of her order. Which it is, but... not the verbal order.  

“I was headed for bed anyway,” he says. “Come on, Harry, I’ll walk you.”  

Thus getting Harry away from Kathryn, who’s clearly had enough crap for tonight, and Seska and B’Elanna, so they can’t interrogate him and cause more drama.  

It has the bonus effect of getting him up to speed before Kathryn beams him to her quarters, and that’s not a bad thing either.  

Her quiet composure from the corridor is gone when he materializes; she’s pacing the room, unpinning her hair from the casual style she’s sporting tonight, and barely stops when he arrives.  

“Hey,” Tom says, offering her his hand.  

Kathryn takes it, perforce coming to a stop, hair half unraveled. “Tom.”  

“Harry told me the whole story,” he says, pulling her into a hug. She relaxes somewhat in his arms. “What a situation, huh?”  

“That’s an understatement,” she huffs. After a moment, she says, “You know what the funny thing is? At first, when Harry came bursting in, I was relieved. Gath tried to kiss me, and I was glad to be interrupted.”  

“He did?” A surge of jealousy manifests itself as nausea in Tom’s throat; he pushes it away forcefully. “I’m glad too.” He pulls her a little closer, and she lets out a hollow chuckle.  

“Still, it suddenly seems like a much more minor dilemma.” She shakes her head. “It’s almost ironic. They’re willing to give us anything except the one thing we really want.”  

“Gath might think that’s fair,” Tom jokes gently. “Seems like what he really wants is you.” He presses a kiss to her hairline.  

Kathryn looks up suddenly. “Tom, you don’t think...?”  

Suddenly there’s a nasty feeling in his gut. “Don’t think what?” he asks slowly.  

“It’s just...” she sighs. “People are much more willing to bend the rules when there’s romance involved.” She brings her fingers up to gesture lightly at the very small space between them. “Case in point.”  

“You want to seduce Gath?” Tom deduces.  

“I don’t want to,” Kathryn protests. “But I can’t help but wonder... if it might help him see things in a different light.”  

“Kathryn...” Tom takes a small step back, anchoring his hands on her elbows, so that he can make better eye contact. “Look, I’m not going to tell you it’s a terrible idea, or try to stand in your way if you really think it’s in the best interest of the crew. But that’s a big thing to take upon yourself, and it might not turn out the way you want it to. Maybe we need to try other strategies first.”  

She searches his eyes for a moment, then lets out a big sigh and leans back into him. “You’re right. You’re right. My head is spinning, I’m not thinking straight.”  

“You need some sleep,” Tom says gently. He puts a hand around her waist and steers her toward the bedroom. “Come on, I’ll tuck you in.”  

Her hand comes up to cover his. “Stay with me.”  

He pulls her closer. “Always.”  

It’s the first time he’s spent the night in her quarters and they’ve just slept. Neither of them comments.  

* * *  

Her plan backfires spectacularly, anyway.  

After they’ve tried to tempt Gath with the Federation library; after Harry’s encounter with Jaret and Kathryn’s decision not to accept his under-the-table offer; she beams down to talk to Gath one more time and, by her own account when she returns, what Tom had assumed would involve him squirming uncomfortably at the helm trying not to imagine what’s taking her so long instead ends with them insulting each other and Gath ordering Voyager out of Sikarian space.  

Tom can’t say he’s not relieved.  

On the one hand, he doesn’t want to share Kathryn with anyone, even an alien they’re never going to see again.  

And on the other hand, he’s reluctant to admit it but he’s been a little preoccupied wondering what getting back home would do to their relationship. Even if he’s not sent back to prison, he doubts they’d still be serving on the same ship; he doesn’t even know if he could stay in Starfleet.  

So he’s pretty okay with how the situation has turned out.  

Kathryn on the other hand is pissed .  

Whatever happened with Gath is just the tip of the iceberg; when it turns out that the engineering team have gone against her orders and made the deal with Jaret, and then almost destroyed the ship with the trajector technology, the atmosphere on the bridge is probably the worst Tom has ever experienced.  

And then when she comes out of her ready room after speaking to B’Elanna and Tuvok, it’s worse.  

Even Tuvok’s stiff Vulcan demeanor seems more stiff than usual, and Kathryn spends most of the rest of the shift in silence, barring some very curt routine orders.  

She practically slams her coffee cup down just before the shift change, and Tom has no idea what to expect when she beams him to her quarters.  

Even so, he’s surprised to find her in tears.  

“Distract me,” are the first words out of her mouth. “Please. I need to think about something else.”  

He doesn’t insult her by asking what kind of distraction she means.  

Tom steps forward and reaches out for her, pulling her in close and bringing his thumb up to wipe away her tears. He sweeps it across her cheek and down under her chin, nudging it gently to tip her head upwards until he can bring her lips to his.  

Kathryn sighs when he kisses her, a kind of head-to-toe sigh that he feels along her whole body as she melts into him. Fresh tears spill onto her cheeks and stick to his, and he breaks away again to cup her face in his hands.  

“It’s okay,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to her forehead.   

Kathryn’s eyes flutter shut, and she nods, and Tom brings his hands up over her head to unpin her hair, combing his fingers through it as it falls down over her shoulders. He buries a hand in it and kisses her again, tenderly, and her hands come up behind him to anchor themselves on his shoulders.  

Tom is always happy to be Kathryn’s anchor; bringing her back from herself when she gets too lost in the mess of guilt she feels for getting them stranded out here, and for all the consequences of that decision. And he knows that guilt is only going to be amplified today, when she’d come so close to getting them all home again, and that what Tuvok did hurts so much in part because it was what she’d wanted to do so badly but hadn’t allowed herself to.  

He wonders if anyone else knows how tightly she keeps herself in check, and what it costs her.  

He snakes his free hand up between them and unfastens her jacket, helping her to pull one arm after the other from the sleeves without breaking their kiss, and then again for her undershirt. He can feel the relief in her body when she’s free of her uniform, of her pips; today is one of the days when they weigh more heavily than others, and he knows that something inside her just needs to be rid of them at times like this; times when being Captain Janeway has been particularly difficult, and she needs to just be Kathryn for a little while.  

Tom takes his own jacket and shirt off, to be even, and to get rid of all evidence of their relative ranks and positions. In their matching tank tops, pants and boots they’re equals, and that’s important today.  

He runs his hands down her arms and steers her gently backwards until she bumps against her desk, and he crowds her body with his until she’s pinned between the desk and him, his erection pressing into the hollow of her hip. Bending down, he whispers in her ear: “Distracted yet?”  

She chuckles, a welcome response, and runs the backs of her fingers over the bulge in his pants. “Getting there,” she says.  

“Not good enough,” Tom says immediately, shaking his head. He walks his fingertips under the hem of her tanktop, tickling her ribs until she giggles and slaps his wrists, and then pulls it up over her head to pay more serious attention to the bare skin underneath. He cups her breasts with his palms and bends his head to plant a trail of kisses across them before bringing his mouth up to meet hers again, brushing his thumbs back and forth across her nipples.  

Kathryn moans into his mouth, always a good sign, and she pulls impatiently at his tanktop until he steps away enough to take it off. Her hands come back up to his shoulders and she presses herself against him, skin touching as much skin as possible, raising her leg up against his hip insistently.  

Tom allows his fingers to skim down above her waist and around to the small of her back before dipping under her waistband, squeezing her buttocks and pulling her closer still. Kathryn whimpers, bringing her leg up farther and wrapping it around him, and he pulls his hand on that side back out of her pants to stroke between her legs through the fabric.  

She presses her forehead into his chest. “Tom…” she whines.  

“Yes?” he says innocently, nuzzling the top of her head.  

“Too many clothes,” she complains.  

“You’re always so impatient to get undressed,” he teases. He finds her clit through her clothes and rubs vigorously, and she bucks into him, whimpering more loudly. Tom lowers his voice. “I can make you come without taking your pants off at all,” he tells her.  

“Get on with it, then,” she orders, and Tom stifles a yes ma’am and chuckles into her hair.  

“Turn around,” he tells her instead, and she obeys immediately, flexing her fingers against the surface of her desk, while he rearranges his hands to grab her breast firmly with one and shove the other down her front and back into her underwear, finding his way to the dampness between her legs and teasing her slick folds.  

Kathryn’s head falls forward and she moans, growing louder when Tom bends down to kiss her exposed neck. He curls a finger, barely inside her, and then trails it back up to circle lazily around her clit. He lets his other hand relax over her breast and extends a finger to mimic that same circling pattern over her nipple.  

A minute or so of this and she’s whimpering with every breath, but Tom waits patiently for her to protest again before going any further. His reward is her labored, throaty complaint, “You call this getting on with it?”  

“I do,” he confirms lightly, changing nothing until she practically growls with need and he relents, grinning, by swiftly changing to quick, hard strokes across her clit, until she comes undone with a cry in his arms and falls forward against her desk, her hair swinging over her propped-up elbows.  

He lets her ride out the aftershocks before he pulls his hand up and around her hip, sliding back under her waistband there, and brings his other hand down to mirror it on the other side, running his thumbs lightly over her skin.  “ Now we can take your pants off,” he declares, and Kathryn chuckles bonelessly as he divests both of them of their boots and remaining clothing.  

Tom grasps her firmly by the hips and pushes her up farther onto the desk; she assists by pushing a pile of padds out of the way and laying down fully on her front. She’s on tiptoe in front of him, feet barely touching the floor, and it’s adorable but Tom decides to keep that observation to himself, glad she can’t see his smile.  

He lines himself up with her entrance and reaches down to stroke his fingers through her dripping folds a couple more times. The noise she makes when he pushes himself inside her is, as usual, just short of heaven; just short of making him come there and then. He takes a moment to settle himself, determined to stay in control, but then sets a quick, sharp pace, slamming into her again and again from the get-go, confident that her first orgasm will make it that much easier to reach the second.  

Kathryn cries out loudly with every thrust, and Tom reaches down to bury his hand in her hair and pull her head up from the table, watching her fingers flex and curl against the smooth surface. His other hand is anchored firmly at her hip, keeping her exactly where he needs her, and if she isn’t distracted by now he doesn’t know what else he can possibly do.  

But soon enough her cries grow louder still, more ragged, and she comes violently around him as he continues to pound into her relentlessly, just like he wanted, just like he knew she would.  

“Tom,” she croaks as she comes down from her high, and he lets go of her hair so that she can lean down and press her forehead against the desk. “Tom,” she breathes again, and he allows his name on her lips to push him over the edge too.  

His rapid movements stutter and slow. “Kathryn,” he whispers back in belated response, stepping back, stroking her sweat-slicked skin with his hands, and she lays her head on one side and closes her eyes with a satisfied shudder.  

Tom kisses his way from her hip up her back, over her shoulder and ending on her cheek, and her lips twitch into a smile. She pushes herself up on shaky arms, and he helps her to stand and turn to face him.  

“Any better?” he asks.  

“Better,” she sighs, folding herself into him. But her muscles are soon tense again under his hands, and she sighs again, this time without comment.  

He makes sure that she showers, and that she eats, but she tosses and turns all night.  

Tom wishes he could do more.  

* * *  

It’s no time at all before they hit the next crisis.  

“Attention all hands, this is Seska. If you’re hearing this message, I’ve had to leave you. I’m sorry. Many of you are fine people. And that’s why I’ve decided that you need to know: your captain has been lying to you. She may pretend to be better than all of you, with her mighty Starfleet principles, but that’s only when it suits her. The code of conduct would seem not to suit her, as evidenced by the fact that she’s been sleeping with Tom Paris since the moment we arrived in the Delta Quadrant.”  

Tom’s stomach drops at least three decks.  

“Yes, Thomas Eugene Paris, the traitor, the felon, is the person she’s chosen to warm her bed. I’ve collated the evidence in file Seska-114, which has now been unencrypted and is available for every crew member to access. Transport logs she tried to hide. Codes and covert glances and bottles of wine on the holodeck. Audio, if that’s your thing. Take a look. I’ve no doubt some of you will wish I was lying, but I’m not. Enjoy. I’m sure we’ll see each other soon.”  

The bridge has gone very, very quiet. Tom doesn’t dare to turn around, but he’s sure the back of his neck is bright red and the focus of everybody’s attention.  

Kathryn’s voice comes over the comm, cold and dangerous.   

“Senior staff. Briefing room. Now .”  

Chapter Text

“First things first,” Kathryn says once everyone is around the table, in a voice that brooks no argument. “How the hell did Seska do what she just did, and what other surprises has she left for us?” She turns to B’Elanna. “I want a list of every single file she’s accessed since she came on board, and every modification made to those files.”  

“Yes, Captain.”  

“Tuvok, I want a full review of all tactical systems, we need to know if she’s meddled with those as well. And keep watch for any Kazon ships on long-range sensors, as well as anomalous readings that could indicate a concealed vessel like the one we encountered orbiting that planet.”  

Tuvok nods. “Very well.”  

Kathryn nods back, and turns to Neelix. “Neelix, this is where you prove your worth as morale officer. Who knows what effect this incident is going to have on the crew.”  

“Yes ma’am.” His expression is serious.  

“As for the other matter,” she continues, her voice still like steel. “Lieutenant Paris and I have known each other for a long time,” she states. “And yes, it’s true that we have become... closer, recently.”  

Tom wonders if anyone else will notice alllll the things she’s left out from that statement.  

“So is this love?” Chakotay demands immediately. “Or are you just fucking?”  

“That’s none of your goddamn business,” Tom growls.  

“Isn’t it? I was under the impression that I was the first officer on this ship. This is all the crew’s going to be talking about. I’d appreciate having all the facts.”  

“The crew should be our priority,” Tuvok agrees calmly, before Tom has to leap across the table and strangle Chakotay. “We cannot allow this to create divisions or unrest, as was clearly Seska’s intention.”  

“Too late for that,” Chakotay mutters.  

“Nevertheless,” Tuvok persists. “Our strategy must be one of damage control. It will be vital for the senior staff to present a united front, with a single message.”  

“That message being?” B’Elanna speaks up.  

Tuvok looks at Kathryn. “That our captain’s private life is a private matter.”  

“There is nobody on this ship who would be a worse choice than Tom Paris,” Chakotay insists. “Captain, the entire crew will be questioning your judgement over this, Starfleet and Maquis alike. And I’m not sure how I’m supposed to reassure them, but I know Mr. Tuvok’s message isn’t going to cut it.”  

“Ouch,” Tom mutters.  

“I agree with Tuvok,” Kes speaks up. “Whatever the captain does in her personal time shouldn’t make a difference. Clearly it hasn’t so far.” She smiles. “I’m glad you have someone, Captain.”  

Neelix, who is not Tom’s biggest fan, seems to mellow at this. “Well said, dearest.”  

Harry and B’Elanna stay silent; Chakotay deflates, just a little.  

Kathryn waits a moment to see if anyone has anything else to say about her personal life, but no one else pipes up. She nods. “Could you give us a moment alone, please.”  

It’s not a request. The other officers file out silently; Harry is the only one who looks back. Tom tries to wave reassuringly, but he doesn’t like the look on his friend’s face.  

The doors hiss shut. Kathryn looks at him.  

“Shit,” he says.  

“No kidding.” Her head drops into her hands, and she rubs her temples.  

“Chakotay’s just sore because of Seska,” Tom offers. “He’ll come around.”  

“Perhaps.” Kathryn sighs, shaking her head before she meets his eyes. “He’s not the one I’m most worried about. It’s the lower ranks; the ones who weren’t happy with my decision to destroy the array. The ones Seska’s been stirring up – and don't forget she was involved in that business with the Sikarian trajector, much as B’Elanna tried to protect her.” She looks at him. “The ones who were just starting to come around to the idea that you aren’t some good-for-nothing scoundrel, but perhaps hadn’t made their minds up yet.”  

Tom nods; she’s not wrong. “How the hell did Seska find out?”  

Kathryn arches an eyebrow ruefully. “Clearly I wasn’t the only one digging around in the transporter protocols. I knew none of the Starfleet officers were likely to stumble across what I was doing; they had no reason to be looking at those systems short of a full system overhaul at a starbase. Apparently I should have worried more about the Maquis.”  

“Or the Cardassian posing as a Maquis.”  

“To think I’ve had a Cardassian on my ship all this time…” She sighs, and Tom moves closer and takes her hand.  

“What do you want to do?”  

“Ha.” Kathryn laughs dryly. “What I want to do is curl up in a corner somewhere until this blows over.” She stands, and instead of relinquishing his grip on her Tom stands as well. “What I will do is soldier on, as always.”  

“As always,” Tom echoes. He hesitates. “What do you want me to do?”  

“Be your charming self.” Kathryn sizes him up. “Maybe stay out of my quarters for a little while.”  

He nods again, more reluctantly. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”  

At least she doesn’t seem happy about it. “We need to tread carefully, Tom. We can’t rub people’s noses in it, we don’t want to make things worse.”  

“I know.” He pauses. “But I don’t think we should be making an admission of guilt, either. It won’t help if we act like we’ve been caught doing something wrong.”  

“No,” Kathryn admits. “Perhaps you’re right. Let’s just... see how it goes.”  

* * *  

It is not going well.  

Chakotay is stalking around the ship like an angry beast, saying the bare minimum he needs to to anyone who has the misfortune to interact with him. The atmosphere on the bridge is miserable; there’s no banter, no fun, just everyone following Chakotay’s lead and sitting in sullen silence beyond whatever their duties actually require them to say. Chakotay is defending Kathryn fiercely if anyone so much as looks at her wrong, so at least there’s that. Tom doesn’t receive equal treatment though – in fact he’s pretty sure Chakotay enjoys hearing people insult him. Tom wonders if the only reason he’s standing up for Kathryn is that he knows he’s next in line for Captain and he doesn’t want that thankless job for himself.  

The entire mess hall goes quiet whenever Tom or Kathryn dare to venture inside for something to eat, despite Neelix greeting them with his usual cheer. In fact any group Tom goes near anywhere either stops talking or pushes their conversation into overdrive as soon as they catch sight of him. Even Sandrine’s isn’t welcoming anymore.  

And Harry isn’t talking to him.  

Tom can deal with the other stuff, but he’s worried about Harry.  

He’s still treating Kathryn with absolute courtesy and respect, but he’s not trying to impress her anymore. He’s stopped looking at her with stars in his eyes, which probably wasn’t good for him in the first place, but it was better than the cool politeness he’s giving her now.  

And he’s going out of his way to avoid Tom, even to the extent of requesting to be reassigned to the night shift. Tom suspects that Chakotay approved this because he knew it would annoy Kathryn. She could have overruled both of them, of course, but that wouldn’t exactly have improved the situation.  

B’Elanna is still speaking to him, just about, but she refuses point-blank to pass on any messages. “Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to hear it,” she tells Tom. “He feels betrayed. I think it’s the first time he’s really realized that Starfleet is just made up of people. You need to give him space if you want him to get over it.”  

So Tom gives him space, but he doesn’t get over it.  

* * *  

A couple of days into the whole debacle, Joe Carey gets into the turbolift with him.  

Tom sighs inwardly. Every turbolift ride recently has been a guessing game of who’s going to ride with me today and how will they treat me? 

Mostly the answer is not well , whether that be downright verbal abuse or awkward silence. Tom is seriously considering taking to the ladders in the Jeffries tubes to avoid the turbolift.  

He hopes at least that Carey will be the silent type.  

Carey looks taken aback for a moment to see him, but he nods reasonably cordially and stands beside him, hands behind his back. “Deck fifteen,” he says, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.  

He glances at Tom. Tom looks ahead resolutely and prays that Carey won’t say anything else.  

“Tom,” he says hesitantly.  

Dammit.  

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Tom says as neutrally as possible.  

“Look.” Carey clears his throat. “I don’t really know what’s going on between you and Captain Janeway, and I’m not exactly sure how to say this. But if you’re feeling... under pressure, at all. To do certain things. You can come to me. I know Tuvok is a close friend of the captain’s, and it’s no secret that Chakotay’s not your biggest fan. I don’t want you to feel like you have no one to turn to.”  

Tom has no idea what he’s trying to say, but at least he’s not being hostile.  

“Thanks?” Tom ventures.  

Carey nods. “Right.”  

They ride the rest of the way in silence.  

* * *  

When he’s given Harry as much space as he can bear he decides to take a different approach, and he catches up with Jenny Delaney in the corridor after her shift ends one evening.  

“Hey, Jenny,” he calls from behind her.  

She turns, and he can tell by the look on her face that he’s made a mistake.  

“What is it?” she says. She doesn’t stop walking, and her voice is cooler than he’s ever heard it.  

Stupidly, he forges on regardless. “Uh, I was just wondering if you’d spoken to Harry lately?” he says, scurrying to match her pace.  

“I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”  

“Probably not, but he’s not speaking to me, and I just wanted–”  

“Tom.” Now she stops. “There’s a reason he’s not speaking to you, and I’m sure you know what that is.”  

“I, uh... not exactly?” The conversation is going badly, and he’s not sure now how to get out of it.  

“Oh, did it slip your mind that you’re sleeping with the captain?” She puts her hands on her hips – a very Kathryn-like gesture that has him distracted for a moment before she continues, “Did it slip your mind while you were flirting with my sister, as well?”  

That takes him aback. “I never flirted with your sister!”  

“What about all those double dates that you organized? Did we all go to Venice together just for the hell of it?”  

“I was – we were doing it for you and Harry,” Tom says, horror dawning. “We discussed it, even, Megan and I.”  

Jenny rolls her eyes. “You expect me to believe you missed all the little signals she gave you? All the looks, all the innuendos? Really?”  

“I’m sorry,” Tom says honestly. “I never – I need to apologize to her. I never meant to lead her on.”  

“Don’t you go anywhere near her.” Jenny steps closer, threateningly. “Because she’ll believe your bullshit, because she’s a kind and caring person who doesn’t deserve what you pulled on her. Is a lower-ranking officer not good enough for you when you can have the captain?”  

“That’s not–” Tom shakes his head, frustrated with himself, annoyed that he can’t seem to make any kind of inroads with anyone . “It wasn’t like that. Look, the captain and I go way back. I was never going to be interested in anybody else. Hell, she’s the one who got me out of jail, Jenny,” he says, trying to explain the depth of feeling he has for Kathryn, but he can tell by her expression that that is not what’s coming across.  

“So she made some excuse to get you on this ship so that the two of you could fuck? Is that what you’re saying?”  

“No! Jenny...” Except, actually, the answer to that question is sort of partly yes , and he thinks Jenny must see that in his eyes, because she makes a face of pure disgust and shakes her head.  

“Clearly you two bring out the worst in each other,” she says. “If I had known what kind of person she was I never would have asked to be assigned to Voyager .”  

“Kathryn Janeway is the best person I have ever known,” Tom says, raising his voice. He knows he should stay calm, but he can’t stand hearing her insulted like this.  

“Then you must not know very many people,” Jenny says nastily. “Stay away from me, Tom. Stay away from my sister, and stay away from Harry Kim.”  

She turns on her heel and stalks down the corridor, leaving Tom with the knowledge that he has, most definitely, only made things worse.  

* * *  

Tom is getting lunch, at the busiest time of day – a mistake, he realizes as soon as he steps through the doors. But all eyes are on him, so he can’t turn around and leave now.  

The stares and whispers are far worse than what he’d experienced when he first came aboard in the Alpha Quadrant, and he’d thought they were bad enough then. He ignores them as best he can and helps himself to some kind of grains and what he assumes is a type of fungus.  

Kes is helping out in the kitchen today, and she smiles at him. He’s not sure when anyone last gave him a genuine smile, and he smiles back in appreciation.  

“How are you doing, Tom?” she asks.  

“Oh, you know,” he says, trying to sound cheerful. “Muddling through.”  

“And the captain?”  

“I don’t really know,” he has to admit. “I haven’t seen much of her lately.”  

“I see,” says Kes, nodding understanding. “That can’t be easy for either of you.”  

“My main problem right now,” Tom lies, turning to face the room, “is that none of my esteemed colleagues are going to want me at their table.”  

“Tuvok is in the corner there,” Kes points out. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”  

Tom’s not enthusiastic about interrupting Tuvok’s private reading time, but Kes is right. He’s the best option.  

“Thanks,” he tells her, and he wanders across the room as nonchalantly as he can.  

“Is this seat taken?” he asks, standing opposite Tuvok.  

He looks up. “It is not.”  

“Great.” Tom sits down, conscious that the conversation all around him has intensified. “I don’t need to make small talk,” he reassures Tuvok. “I just need somewhere to sit.”  

Tuvok nods, returning to his reading.  

Tom eats a few forkfuls of the mushroom thing, and pauses.  

“Can I ask, though,” he says eventually, because he needs to know. “Have you spoken to the captain? Is she okay? She asked me to stay out of her quarters, which is fine, it makes sense, but it makes it difficult to have a real conversation with her.”  

Tuvok looks up again. “We have not spoken about any personal matters. She has been very focused on her work.”  

“Could you? Speak to her?”  

The pause is so long that Tom worries he’s going to say no. But when he looks back down at his padd he says, “Very well.”  

“Thank you,” Tom says, and shuts up.  

Chapter Text

Tom has barely seen Kathryn since the whole incident; they’ve exchanged a couple of words here and there, but he’s been staying out of her quarters as ordered, and he can’t say all the things he wants to say in public.  

He’s surprised when his door chimes one evening and it’s her.  

“Don’t look so disappointed,” she says, stepping inside. It’s the first time she’s ever been in his quarters. Thank God they’re reasonably tidy.  

“I’m not disappointed,” he protests. The door hisses shut behind her. “Just surprised. I thought it might be Harry, but I guess that would be even more surprising.”  

“He’s still not speaking to you?”  

“Not a word.” Tom gestures at his replicator. “Do you want a drink?”  

“Please.”  

He replicates two glasses of wine and carries them over to the couch, where they sit. “What shall we drink to?” he asks, contemplating their unenviable situation.  

“To wine.” Kathryn takes her glass and raises it. “With thanks for its existence.”  

Tom smiles. “To wine,” he says, and drinks. “Not that I’m not happy to see you,” he tells her, draping an arm over her shoulders, “but what the hell are you doing here?”  

“Something Tuvok said.” She sips her drink. “According to him, certain people think I’m still secretly beaming you into my quarters every night.”  

“It wasn’t every night.”  

“We know that. They apparently don’t, despite Seska’s thorough documentation.” Tom feels a rush of fury at the mention of Seska’s name; from the look on Kathryn’s face she feels the same way. But she shakes it off. “Anyway, I decided it would be better to openly come here and spend some time with you than to have people rely on speculation.”  

“Better for me, definitely.” he confirms. He kisses the top of her head. “I’ve missed you.”  

“Me too.” She snuggles into his side, and sighs. “What have we done, Tom? This is such a mess.”  

“We knew it would be, if it got out,” Tom points out. “That was a choice that we made. Addled by stress and exhaustion, maybe, but we knew the risks.”  

“Not to blow my own horn, but the risks I take usually pay off,” Kathryn says gloomily.  

“Are you saying I’m not worth it?” Tom teases gently.  

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” She sighs again. “I just don’t like problems I can’t point a phaser at.”  

“Aren’t you a scientist? Do you point phasers at interstellar phenomena and order them to spill their secrets?”  

That makes her laugh, at least. “Maybe I should give that a try. Actually,” she tells him, becoming more animated, “There’s a protostar nearby that’s giving us some very odd readings on photonic activity. I’m wondering about changing course to take a look.”  

“We should do that,” Tom says. And not just because of the look in her eyes when she talks about it. “Give the crew something to think about other than us and Seska.”  

“Speaking of Seska, B’Elanna finished analyzing all the files she’d accessed. Among other things, there was a holoprogram she’d modified to turn off the safeties and trap the player inside. The idea being to kill them, presumably.” She shakes her head. “I’m glad she’s off the ship, even if this is the price.”  

Tom thinks a booby-trapped holonovel is a fascinating concept, but somehow he doesn’t think that’s the response Kathryn is looking for.  

“It’ll blow over,” he says instead. “You’ll see.”  

* * *  

In the meantime, Kathryn’s exciting photonic energy nearly kills Harry.  

It’s Tom’s idea to send the Doctor to the holodeck to investigate. Kathryn and Tom both work with B’Elanna to figure out what’s going on; they discover the existence of the photonic lifeforms.  

Normally Tom wouldn’t really care about the Doctor getting all the credit for the rescue; he’s certainly earned it. But he’s sure that if only Harry knew how much Tom and Kathryn had contributed it might go a little way toward ending the silent treatment he’s been giving Tom, and put his esteem for Kathryn back up a notch.  

Eventually Tom even stoops so far as to ask B’Elanna if she could mention it to him.  

She does actually consider it for a moment.  

But then she shakes her head and says, “No. No messages. I promised him.” She looks sympathetic, at least. “He’ll come around, Tom.”  

He hopes she’s right.  

* * *  

Kathryn at least is appreciative of his efforts, but by her account Chakotay is as unimpressed as Harry.  

“I keep wanting to tell him he has you to thank for not having to spend the rest of his life being non-corporeal, but I don’t think it would sound right coming from me,” she sighs.  

“At least he’s speaking to you,” Tom says.  

“Only as much as he needs to,” Kathryn counters glumly. “The rest is sullen silence.” She pauses. “He’s stopped lecturing me about how I’ve lost the crew’s respect. That may be progress, of a sort.”  

Tom is in her quarters, for the first time since the whole mess erupted. They’d agreed to meet for dinner and splash out a few replicator rations, but the mood is not what Tom had hoped it would be. Kathryn is only picking at her food, and he’s shoveling it in more out of habit than anything else.  

“Do you think it’s going to get better?” he asks. “Or is this going to be the status quo for the next seven decades?”  

“Oh, I hope not,” she groans, reaching for her wine.  

“How is the crew treating you?” Tom wants to know. “I hope your position grants you at least a little respect.”  

“A lot of very cool and correct behavior from the Starfleet officers,” she says. “Some insubordination from the Maquis. A very interesting array of facial expressions. And just a general atmosphere of… tension. Everywhere I go. It’s lucky I haven’t had any difficult command decisions to make lately. There could be a full-on mutiny over something like the Sikarian trajector.” She looks at him. “It’s worse for you, isn’t it.” It’s not really a question.  

Tom shrugs it off. “Nothing I can’t handle. A few nasty remarks. Some creative innuendos.”  

“You’re sugar-coating.”  

“Maybe a little,” he admits.  

“How are you sleeping?”  

“Not great,” he confesses further. “And you?”  

“Me neither.” She pauses. “I miss you.”  

“I miss you too.”  

He reaches for her hand, and she grasps his and looks down at their intertwined fingers. “Do you want to sleep here tonight?” she says softly.  

Of course he does. “Is that a good idea?” he queries.  

Kathryn leans forward, resting her forehead in the palm of her other hand. “I don’t know.”  

“Hey.” Tom stands, pulling her upright with him. “Come here.”  

She lets him pull her into his arms with a soft sigh, and she tucks her head into his chest. “Am I going to have to let you go?” she asks, her voice small.  

“Never,” Tom vows, fighting the sinking feeling in his gut. “Not in a million years. We’ll work this out.”  

“I hope you’re right.”  

“I’m right,” he declares. He pulls away just a little, raising one hand to lift her chin. “I’m right,” he promises, and kisses her.  

The hint of desperation in the way she kisses him back tells him that she doesn’t quite believe him. He’s not sure if he does, either, much as he wants to.  

The door chimes, and Kathryn almost jumps out of her skin.  

“Hey hey hey,” Tom says reassuringly, resting his hands on her shoulders until she meets his eyes and nods, turning to face the door.  

“Come,” she says, back to her Captain voice.  

Tuvok steps into her quarters.  

“I apologize for the intrusion,” he says solemnly. “But I have just received a document I think you should see.”  

He hands Kathryn a padd.  She glances over it and visibly pales.  

“Petition,” she reads. “Calling for the immediate resignation of Kathryn Janeway.”  

Tom’s stomach drops, and he watches Kathryn’s expression turn steely as she reads the rest.  

She looks up at him, and then at Tuvok.  

“We need to speak to Chakotay.”  

* * *  

They assemble in Kathryn’s ready room. Tom hasn’t exactly been formally invited, but no one tells him to go away, despite Chakotay’s frown in his direction. He tries to stand there unobtrusively, not too close to Kathryn but not too far.  

She hands the padd to Chakotay. “Tuvok’s received a petition calling for my resignation,” she informs him. Her tone is serious but level, and Tom’s esteem for her goes up yet another notch.  

Chakotay looks at the crewmembers’ names, and his brow furrows. “On what grounds?”  

Kathryn almost laughs. “What do you think?” she asks, sitting down on the couch. She glances up at Tom. “My inappropriate relations with a junior officer.”  

The furrows on Chakotay’s brow deepen. “I can’t say I disagree with that criticism. But your resignation can’t be the answer. We need you.” He throws the padd on the coffee table; Tom picks it up.   

“Agreed,” says Tuvok. “However, the petition was signed by forty-three crewmembers. To ignore it would be unwise.”  

“Forty-three.” Kathryn shakes her head. “That’s almost a third of the crew.”  

“At least we’re bringing the Starfleet and Maquis crews closer together,” Tom quips, scrolling through the surprisingly mixed list of names. Nobody laughs.  

“If my resignation isn’t the answer, then what is?” Kathryn asks, spreading her hands. “Tuvok is right, we can’t leave this unaddressed.”  

“If we were in the Alpha Quadrant,” Tom ventures, “what would be the procedure in a case like this?”  

She sighs, looking down at the floor. “There would be a disciplinary hearing. Then, depending on the outcome, anything from a carry on to a dismissal. I’d almost certainly be reassigned, given the circumstances.” She raises her eyes again to look at Tom. “You could be, too. Especially as I was the one who gave you your position on the ship in the first place.”  

“We do not have the required personnel to correctly conduct a disciplinary hearing for someone of your rank,” Tuvok points out needlessly. “Nor any other ship to assign you to.”  

“And a dismissal would amount to the same as a resignation, in practical terms,” Chakotay says.  

Tom can’t say he’s sorry about any of this. Avoiding another disciplinary hearing sounds like a highlight of this otherwise unpleasant situation.  

Kathryn is silent for a moment, with that look on her face that means she’s considering something difficult. Finally, she speaks. “Put me in the brig.”  

Tom blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”   

“I did break the code of conduct. I’ve never disputed that. It stands to reason that I should be punished.”  

“Isn’t the brig a little extreme?” Tom asks.  

“Tom.” Kathryn shakes her head again before she meets his eyes. “Think for a moment about how this looks from the outside. I got you out of prison, I gave you your field commission, and you immediately jumped into bed with me? I can’t blame anyone for thinking that seems transactional.”  

“You seriously think people could believe you’d promote me in exchange for sexual favors?”  

“This is a new crew, even without the Maquis additions. Most of them don’t know me that well. And within that crew, you’re in a more vulnerable position than anybody else. There’s  been a lot of animosity toward you from both Starfleet and Maquis. Who could you have gone to for support, if I were putting pressure on you?”  

“… That’s what Joe Carey meant,” Tom finally realizes. Off her expression, he explains, “He told me I could go to him if I thought I had no one to turn to.”  

“Clearly he’s not the only one who came to that conclusion,” Kathryn says.  

“But that’s not what happened,” Tom insists.  

“You and I know that, but I don’t see any way to prove it. Your word alone won’t mean anything, I could still be putting you under duress. Nor can we disprove the other obvious theory – that I got you out of prison and took advantage of the opportunity to promote you because we were already involved.”   

Especially because that one is a lot closer to the truth.  

She brings a hand up to rub her temple. “Anyway, it doesn’t change the fact that we did break the rules, and there should be consequences for that.”  

“I agree with Paris,” Chakotay says unexpectedly. “The brig seems extreme.”  

“However,” Tuvok says. “Our disciplinary options are limited. Some time in the brig would be a clear and public consequence and may help to put the matter behind us.” He looks at Kathryn pointedly. “As well as limit speculation as to the current nature of your relationship, at least for the duration of your sentence.”  

Kathryn looks back. “You mean it will stop people from assuming we’re at it like rabbits.”  

Tuvok, wisely, doesn’t respond to this.  

“How long of a sentence are we talking about here?” Tom wants to know.  

Kathryn gets to her feet, stands up straight, and nods.   

“Thirty days,” she says. “Thirty days in the brig.”  

Chapter Text

Tom is in command of the ship.  

He’s still not completely sure how this happened; this is exactly the situation Chakotay and Tuvok had decided was unlikely, during their long discussion of how to handle Kathryn’s brig stint. But that same Chakotay, and that exact same Tuvok, have been away for two days on a trade mission, and Kathryn is still in the brig.  

Chakotay hadn’t really wanted to leave Tom in charge, but Tuvok had pointed out, in a very detailed and logical argument, that arranging the exchange with the Ilidarians had been a long and protracted process, that the Ilidarians were expecting exactly these two officers, about whom they had demanded a large quantity of information, and that rearranging the details of the transaction at this late date would unnecessarily complicate the matter, or worse, derail the planned trade completely.  

Besides which, all Voyager would be doing was proceeding in a straight line from here to the rendezvous point. Tom just had to sit in the chair.  

Chakotay seemed to like that last part least of all, but he’d bowed to Tuvok’s logic in the end.  

Tom is feeling pretty conflicted about sitting in Kathryn’s chair.  

One the one hand, he’s kind of enjoying occupying her space, especially since there’s currently a forcefield preventing any intimacy between them. To keep his mind off this he’s been imagining a real role reversal, with her at the helm in front of him, but the mere thought of it distracts him more than he’d care to admit, even to her. How does she manage to sit here all day with him right in front of her and not just imagine all the things they could do up against his console?  

Or maybe she does. He’ll have to ask her sometime.  

On the other hand, the only reason he’s here is that she’s in the brig. His hands tighten on the arms of her chair with residual anger that things had to come this far. He just hopes that when she gets out everything will have calmed down a little.  

Being in charge is interesting, though, for the fact that people have been treating him with a little more respect again. He assumes that’s just an artefact of the command structure and they’ll go back to being vile as soon as Chakotay’s back, but it’s been a nice little breather. Even Harry has been forced to talk to him, reassigned back from the night shift to support him in the absence of all the most senior officers. Tom’s set himself the goal of getting at least one non-work related remark out of him while they’re here, but so far he’s failed miserably.  

He hears Harry’s console beep behind him. A few seconds later Harry tells him, worried, “I’ve got Chakotay and Tuvok’s shuttle on long range sensors. It’s badly damaged. I’m reading multiple hull fractures.”  

There goes all you have to do is sit in the chair . “Life signs?” Tom asks.  

“Two, but they’re very faint.”  

“Helm, set an intercept course,” Tom says immediately. “Let’s get them onboard as soon as possible.”  

The minutes crawl by, and Tom seriously wonders what will happen if they both die. That would make him first officer by default. He can’t imagine that going across well with the crew. Not at all.  

Finally Harry informs him that they’re in transporter range, and Tom orders them beamed straight to sickbay and the shuttle retrieved.  

“Ensign Kim, you have the bridge,” he says formally, and he rushes off to see if fate is going to be kind or cruel today.  

* * *  

The Doctor’s report is a mixed bag; Tuvok is concussed but will be fine shortly, but Chakotay is functionally brain dead.  

Which makes Tom very definitely still in charge. Dammit.  

He goes back to sit on the bridge and fidget while the shuttle is brought in and everybody waits for Tuvok to wake up, and tries to tell himself it could be worse. Tuvok is not dead; Tuvok is going to take charge again in a minute and Tom can go back to the helm. That’s all he wants, at this point.  

He’s never wanted to be a command officer. He’s fine with taking over sometimes as a member of the senior staff, he knows that’s part of the package and he likes to think he can do a reasonable job, but he can’t wait to hand the chair back to somebody else.  

He would like to hand it to Kathryn, in a situation like this, but Tuvok will do.  

Tom isn’t supposed to be speaking to Kathryn at the moment, as part of her punishment. Chakotay has been briefing her on what’s going on every few days, and that’s all the interaction she gets apart from Neelix visiting with her meals. Tom thinks she should be told what’s happened to Chakotay, but he’s not going to take it upon himself to go down and see her without discussing it with Tuvok first, no matter how right he thinks he is. He doesn’t want to jeopardize what she’s trying to do, the message she’s trying to send with her confinement.  

But it is nearly the first thing he says to Tuvok, after he wakes up and explains the attack on the shuttle.  

“I know the captain’s in the brig,” Tom says determinedly, “but she needs to know about Chakotay.”  

“Agreed,” Tuvok says shortly. “Please inform her before you resume your post on the bridge.”  

Tom just about manages to hide his surprise; he’d expected to have to convince Tuvok to let him be the one to tell her, with a list of logical arguments. But instead of giving Tuvok any reason to reconsider he just says, as professionally as possible, “Yes sir. Please let the brig officer know I’m coming.”  

“Very well,” Tuvok says, overrides the Doctor’s protests about his incomplete recovery, and heads on up to the bridge to resume command.  

Tom doesn’t look this gift horse in the mouth. He hurries down to the brig.  

* * *  

“Tom.”  

Kathryn looks as surprised to see him as he is to be allowed in here; she stands immediately from her seat on the bunk, concern on her face.  

She looks tired, but otherwise well. He can well imagine how badly she must be sleeping; his experience of brig bunks has been that they’re even less comfortable than they look, and God knows what’s been going through her head when she’s had nothing to do in here but think.  

“Captain,” he says, letting both her and the officer on duty know that he’s here in a professional capacity.  

Kathryn nods, message received. “What is it?”  

“Chakotay and Tuvok completed their trade mission,” he tells her briskly, “but they were attacked on the way back. Tuvok is okay, but Chakotay is effectively brain dead. The Doctor doesn’t sound optimistic.”  

“Brain dead?” Kathryn repeats, eyes wide.  

Tom nods, and he repeats what the Doctor told him about Chakotay’s neural energy, as well as Tuvok’s description of the attack. “Is there anything you’d like me to pass on to Tuvok?”  

“Yes,” Kathryn says gravely. “Get those bastards. And if there’s any way to help Chakotay, you’re to do it.”  

“Yes ma’am,” Tom says.  

He doesn’t know if Kathryn realizes it, but when he turns to leave he sees, out of the corner of his eye, how she collapses back onto the bunk with her head in her hands.  

He feels bad for leaving her there alone to figure out how to deal with Chakotay’s death. But he knows she wouldn’t forgive not being told.  

* * *  

Tom almost ends up in the brig himself a little later, though he’s sure they wouldn’t let him share a cell with Kathryn.  

The knowledge that he’s changed the ship’s course, twice, without realizing it is more than a little unsettling, but so is the fact that it’s not the first time he’s been accused of something he didn’t do recently.  

At least changing course is better than murder.  

He wonders how Kathryn is doing in the brig. He wishes he’d been able to ask her. Then again, she probably would have lied.  

He doesn’t know if she’s ever spent much time in a cell before. Tom is not exactly an old hand at it, but he’d spent plenty of time in one brig or another between being captured with his Maquis colleagues and finally starting his sentence in New Zealand. The penal colony had been luxurious in comparison.  

At least Kathryn has had regular briefings and therefore ship’s business to occupy her thoughts. He hopes that’s what she’s thinking about; that she’s using her impressive self-discipline to keep her mind from straying into places where it really shouldn’t go. But he knows that there are plenty of dark corners for her thoughts to wander into, and she doesn’t always succeed in steering them clear of those. And he isn’t there right now to pull her out, and she’s sitting there alone with the knowledge that Chakotay is functionally dead.  

He hopes she’s okay.  

* * *  

A while later, he’s not sure things have improved.  

He’s not under suspicion anymore, at least not more than anyone else is. But he’s stuck in sickbay during a crisis where he’s supposed to be second in command, and the analysis he’s just finished on Kes’ injuries has him seriously questioning the reasons for that.  

He’s not a hundred percent sure of the result, given this isn’t really his area of expertise. But he has a suspicion now that Tuvok has stationed him down here on purpose, to keep him out of the way. Without Kathryn, Chakotay or Tom, the only other senior officer on the bridge is Harry. Would he challenge Tuvok? Perhaps Tuvok doesn’t think so. Or perhaps Harry will also find himself put conveniently out of the way.  

Tom doesn’t know what the hell is going on with Tuvok, but he knows he can’t just leave him there unchecked.  

“Security to all hands,” Tuvok’s voice sounds over the comm. “Captain Janeway has escaped from the brig. She is to be apprehended by any means necessary.”  

Okay. Now he has to get to the bridge.  

* * *  

When he arrives, Kathryn is already there.  

She and Tuvok seem to be in a standoff.  

“Come on, Tuvok,” she’s saying when Tom steps out of the turbolift. She stands by the security console, tension in her frame. “We both know I’ve been in the brig voluntarily. But I will not sit idly by while Chakotay is incapacitated and you appear to be making very questionable decisions.”  

“I am merely attempting to discover what happened to Commander Chakotay, in the hopes of finding a cure for his condition,” Tuvok states.  

“By following this ion trail into that nebula,” Kathryn says skeptically.  

“Precisely.”  

Kathryn moves to the console behind the command chair, and Tom follows wordlessly. “I haven’t been able to pick up any ion trail. What bandwidth are you on?”  

“I'm using a multiphasic scan,” Tuvok states. "If you examine the alpha K band, you will see it.”  

Kathryn inputs the commands, but she doesn’t spend more than a second looking at the results. “Yes,” she says. “Here it is. A very interesting ion trail. There's no sign of any subspace distortions in its wake.” Her voice goes low, dangerous. “According to these readings, it's a ship without engines.”  

Swallowing, Tom speaks up. “Captain. I’ve just finished my analysis of Kes’s injuries. According to the readings, they’re consistent with a Vulcan neck pinch.”  

Everyone’s eyes move back to Tuvok, who just raises an eyebrow in typical Vulcan fashion. “Perhaps I was inhabited by the alien at the time.”  

“Perhaps,” Kathryn allows. “And perhaps you are now. I’m not allowing this ship anywhere near that nebula until we get some answers.”  

“Captain Janeway.” Tuvok pulls his phaser; Tom has to keep himself from pulling her behind him, out of harm’s way. “I must insist that you return to the brig.” He looks at Harry. “Follow that course.”  

“Don’t do it, Ensign,” Kathryn says evenly.  

Harry thankfully has his head screwed on straight and refuses Tuvok’s order, but it doesn’t help; Tuvok threatens them all with a phaser set to kill and herds them into the center of the bridge before laying in the course himself.  

Tom finds himself standing flush against Kathryn, wishing the circumstances were better, and steadfastly ignoring the urge to reach for her hand.  

And in the end, she’s the one who saves the day.  

Kathryn intuits that there are two aliens and that one is Chakotay; Kathryn is the one who activates the magneton flash scan at the right moment.  

And then, when they’re free from the nebula and they’re sure that Tuvok has recovered, Kathryn is the one who nods briskly and says, “I’ll return to the brig now.”  

Tom is expecting someone to cry out that that’s ridiculous, she’s just saved all their lives, surely the time she’s served is enough, but no one does. An awkward hush descends and they look at her; probably half of them had forgotten she was locked up in the first place.  

“Mr. Paris,” Tuvok says into the silence. “Please escort the captain.”  

“Yes sir,” Tom says gratefully, and he and Kathryn step into the turbolift.  

The doors hiss shut and he sees the tension in her shoulders ease, just a little. He puts an arm around her and she leans into him.  

“Brig,” she says, and the lift whirrs into motion.  

“How did you escape, anyway?” Tom asks, holding her closer.  

Kathryn shakes her head. “It must have been Chakotay. Lieutenant Ayala deactivated the forcefield and handed me a padd showing a message to go to Engineering. Then B’Elanna filled me in on what was happening. It was almost half an hour before Tuvok made that announcement to apprehend me.”  

“Lucky for us,” Tom says. “We’d have been those aliens’ dinner by now.”  

“You’d have figured it out,” Kathryn asserts.  

The doors open and Tom lets go of her reluctantly, following her down the corridor.  

“How are you holding up in there?” he asks.  

“I’m fine,” she replies, though he notices she doesn’t meet his eyes. “I haven’t been able to do this many push-ups in years.”  

“In that case I look forward to seeing your new muscles,” Tom tells her suggestively.  

Kathryn laughs, and she stops before the final turn in the corridor to squeeze his hand. “How are you? How are they treating you now?”  

Tom shrugs. “Same old. Maybe it will improve now that you’ve saved the day for us all, again.”  

“I hope so,” she says. They round the corner and step into the brig, and then she’s all business again. “Let me know if the Doctor is able to help Chakotay.”  

“Yes, Captain,” he replies.  

Kathryn walks into the cell and nods at Ayala, and the forcefield flickers back into place.  

* * *  

For a while, things do seem a little better. Fewer people are giving him hostile stares, and even Harry has gone from stony-faced to a more neutral expression.  

But then Jonas jostles him when they’re in line in the mess hall and says, “Does she make you call her Captain while she’s sucking your dick, Paris?”, and he isn’t the only one who follows that with a nasty snigger.  

Tom sighs. So much for that.  

Chapter Text

Lieutenant Pete Durst is getting on Tom’s nerves.  

He gets it, really. They’re in a bad situation. They can’t contact the ship; they don’t know what the Vidiians have done with B’Elanna. And Tom is getting antsy too as they approach the time when Voyager is meant to arrive back in orbit. But Tom isn’t trying to pick fights with armed guards. And he certainly isn’t letting it all out by being so damned unpleasant to his fellow officer.  

The Talaxian on the top bunk, for all his gallows humor, actually answers some of Tom’s questions, even if those answers increase his concern for B’Elanna. But Durst pisses him off even more when he extends his snide comments to their tentative new friend.  

“Don’t worry,” he says. “Tom here is our captain’s special pet. She’ll come for him.”  

Tom’s had enough of this. He slams his hand onto the side of the bunk as a substitute for Durst’s head. “Dammit, Pete, give it a rest.”  

“Am I wrong?” Durst asks brazenly. “I hope I’m not. But maybe she’s found a replacement boy toy already. Remind me, are there any other handsome young felons on board?”  

“Stop,” Tom says forcefully.  

“That’s not what she said to you, is it? How did you manage to seduce someone like her, anyway?”  

Tom exhales forcefully, shaking his head. “You know what, actually, why don’t you keep talking? Just let it all out. In the meantime, I’m getting some sleep.”  

He climbs onto a bunk and closes his eyes. There’s no way he can actually sleep, but at least Durst shuts up.  

Tom wonders if Kathryn will come for him. She still has several days to go in the brig, and he doesn’t know if anyone would even brief her on what’s going on. Not that there is anything going on at all yet as far as Voyager is concerned; they’ll be on their way back now to meet the away team none the wiser. Then they’ll have to figure out that they’re missing, and then what happened to them, and then how to mount some kind of rescue – if they don’t decide that’s too risky and just leave them there to rot.  

He doesn’t expect that, for all that Tuvok’s logic could dictate it as the best course of action. But not because of Kathryn’s feelings for Tom – she isn’t going to have a say one way or the other. Chakotay, on the other hand, would never abandon B’Elanna, Tom is as certain of that as of anything. He wonders if anyone else would see the irony in that. Because the first officer is surely just as compromised in this situation as the captain would be, even if he’s not romantically attached as far as Tom knows. He cares for B’Elanna probably more than anyone else on the ship, and he’s never going to leave without trying to save her, no matter what Tuvok might advise.  

Which means the only question is whether they’ll succeed. And Tom is not nearly as certain of that.  

* * *  

He’s almost glad when the Vidiians take Durst away.  

“I’ll give Kathryn your regards,” is his parting shot.  

Tom sighs, sitting down next to B’Elanna, who is curled up into a ball at the end of the bunk. At least she’s back and not, so far, being stripped for parts, even if what they’ve done to her sounds borderline impossible.   

“Sorry about him,” Tom says at length.  

“Don’t worry about it.” She looks up slowly, and he can’t get over how different her body language is from the B’Elanna he knows. “Do you really think they’ll let him contact the ship?”  

“I hope so,” Tom says. “But I don’t know. I don’t have enough of a handle on the situation to even guess.”  

B’Elanna nods slowly, looking down. After a while she says, quietly, “Chakotay has a crush on the captain. That’s why he’s being such an ass.”  

“What?” That takes Tom by surprise. “Seriously?”  

A weak smile plays on her lips. “Seriously.” She pauses, and the smile is gone. “But I think what Kes said was right. It’s nice to have someone. And what Seska did to you was messed up.”  

No one has put it that way before, but she’s right.  

“Thanks, B’Elanna.”  

* * *  

But then B’Elanna is gone too, and Tom has to seriously contemplate the likelihood that he’s going to die.  

What will that do to Kathryn, he wonders?  

Who would comfort her, who would let her know that whatever happens to him isn’t her fault? Is Tuvok up to that kind of emotional support? Or – his stomach turns – will Chakotay sweep in and turn the whole thing to his favor?  

He almost wishes B’Elanna hadn’t told him about Chakotay, now. It had been almost funny; now it feels more like a threat.  

Tom’s not even sure that Kathryn knows how he, Tom, feels about her, let alone Chakotay. He thinks she knows. She must know, right?  

But he’s never told her, not outright with all the important words. Not unmistakably.  

Dammit, he should have told her.  

He should have told her when they put her in the brig, or before that, when Seska first spilled their secret to all and sundry.  

He should have told her before they parted on the transit station years ago, because he knew , he knew right from the start.  

He should have told her.  

* * *  

When Chakotay swoops in and saves him, it feels almost ironic. But he’s too late to save Durst, or to save Tom the sight of his peeled-off face plastered onto the Vidiian doctor like something out of a nightmare. He’d rather have endured years of taunts than see that, and he wonders if he’ll ever be able to sleep again.  

* * *  

Tom is shipped out of sickbay in short order so that Kes and the Doctor can tend to B’Elanna, with a sedative on reserve for the anticipated sleeplessness and the instruction to report straight to the mess hall and start making up for the malnourishment of the past three days.  

He proceeds a little reluctantly, knowing how welcoming the mess hall has been to him recently, but while he’s dithering near the doors he hears Harry calling his name.  

Tom turns to find him running to catch up.  

“Hey,” Harry says. “Mind if I join you?”  

“Sure, I guess,” Tom says, with no clue where this is going. With any luck, Harry’s presence will at least keep people from insulting Tom to his face.  

They step into the mess hall to find it mostly empty; Tom realizes he has no idea what time it is on Voyager . By the dimmed lights, he guesses they’ve missed the evening rush.  

The bright side of this is that all the reaction he gets is a few solitary crewmates looking up at him and Harry and then back at their food. The downside of course is that pickings are pretty slim for Tom’s dinner.  

“The algae are actually edible,” Harry says, pointing at the dregs of some slimy purple stuff. “And those tuber things are okay with some salt on them.”  

“Thanks,” Tom says, more than a little nonplussed, and he helps himself according to Harry’s instructions and sits down at a table.  

Harry takes a seat opposite, looking awkward, but Tom is too exhausted to try to help him say whatever it is he wants to say. So he takes a bite of his food, and waits.  

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, sounding genuinely contrite.  

Tom looks at him, not sure how much he wants to participate in this dance. “Go on,” he says after a moment.  

“I… look. I was surprised,” Harry ventures.  

“You were shocked,” Tom corrects.  

“A little.” At least he has the grace to look embarrassed. He sighs. “I felt like I knew you, and then like I didn’t know you at all.  Or the captain, for that matter.”  

“And what exactly is it that makes me suddenly a different person, Harry?” He’s really not sure he has the patience for this, tonight, as much as he’s been yearning to talk to his friend.  

“The lies,” Harry states.  

Tom shakes his head. “Harry, you’ve known that I’m a liar from the first day we met. It never seemed to bother you before.”  

“That was different. This just feels… shameful.”  

“Harry.” Tom is getting tired of this non-apology. “Have you ever stopped to think that maybe that’s your problem and not ours?”  

“It’s just...” Harry shakes his head, clearly frustrated. “It’s such a blatant breach of regulations. Maybe I could have expected that from you, but the captain?”  

“The captain,” Tom reminds him, “is a human being. Do you really expect her to be on her own for the next seventy years,  just because she’s at the top of the food chain? Don’t you think that maybe she of all people needs someone to lean on right now?” He leans in closer. “Weren’t you the one pointing out how there aren’t a lot of captains and admirals around for her to talk to?”  

Harry pauses. “I never thought of it that way.”  

“Well, now you have.”  

Harry is silent. Tom finishes his food.  

“Was there something else you wanted?” he asks.  

“Yeah,” Harry says. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I was worried about you when we found out the Vidiians were down there. I’m glad you’re safe. It would be nice if we could still be friends.”  

“Yeah.” Tom nods agreement. “It would.” He pauses, then asks, “Do you know if anyone’s told the captain what’s been going on? Or is she in the dark about all this?”  

From the look on Harry’s face, this is another thing he hasn’t thought about. “No, I don’t know.”  

“I need to talk to her,” Tom says. He pauses, then decides to plow ahead. Who else is he going to tell, after all? “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”  

Harry’s eyes grow so wide that Tom wonders if they’ll pop out of their sockets. “You’re what?”  

“I’m going to propose,” Tom says patiently. He feels the side of his mouth twitch into the start of a smile; maybe he can enjoy this a little. “Ask her to be my wife.”  

“I...” Harry blinks, finally. “I didn’t realize you felt that way about her. I thought it was just... you know. Physical.”  

“Now why would you think that, Harry? Who have you spoken to who actually knows how we feel?”  

Harry blushes, looking down, and nods. “You’re right. I’m sorry. That just... that puts things in a different light.”  

“Yeah, probably not the light Seska wanted.”  

“Probably not,” Harry agrees. He shakes his head. “I feel very stupid right now.”  

“That’s okay,” Tom says. “I feel stupid most of the time.”  

“You’re not,” says Harry sincerely.  

“And neither are you,” says Tom. “Look, I know Seska backed up what she said with a file full of evidence. That’s a lot more difficult to question than two officers ambushing you with their version of my life story. And I know that we lied to you, and that’s a lot more difficult than hearing about lies I told other people. I get that.”  

“Way to make me feel worse, Tom.” Harry smiles self-deprecatingly. “I should have stuck with what I knew from the beginning.”  

“You should be my best man,” Tom says, “That’s what you should do.”  

His friend’s eyes widen again. “Are you serious?”  

“Of course I’m serious, who else am I going to ask? Tuvok?” Tom slaps his arm. “You’re my best friend, Harry. I want you by my side.” He pauses. “Assuming she says yes.”  

“Why would she say no?”  

“Well, for one thing,” Tom says with a sigh, “the brig is not the most romantic location for a proposal.”  

* * *  

But the brig is where it will have to be, because Tom has a feeling he knows what she’ll say to him when she gets out.  

Something along the lines of It’s been hard being without you for the last month, but.  

Something about duty and regulations and the good of the crew, and the sacrifice of being a captain.  

And Tom doesn’t want to hear it. She’s probably rehearsing in her head already, and he’s determined not to give her a live audience. At least not until he’s said his piece.  

So he shamelessly ambushes Chakotay in sickbay where he’s talking to B’Elanna before her medical procedure, and she backs him up when he begs to be allowed to see the captain, given all he’s just been through, and she only has a few days left in the brig anyway, and doesn’t she deserve to know that Tom is okay?  

And, however reluctantly, Chakotay says yes.  

Now all Tom has to do is hope Kathryn will too.  

Chapter Text

He’s replicated a ring.  

He can’t help but fiddle with it on the way to the brig, slipping it on an off each finger in turn. It gets stuck for a moment on his right middle finger and he has a small panic in the middle of the corridor until he manages to coax it off again, further stressing his already pounding heart. The only silver lining is that no one sees him making such a fool of himself.  

He’s not nervous, he tells himself. He’s not having second thoughts. He’s not about to make the most painful mistake of his life. He knows what he’s doing.  

He knows what he’s doing.  

Kathryn is sitting on the bunk when he arrives, but she rushes to her feet and right up to the forcefield as soon as she catches sight of him walking through the doors.  

“Tom,” she says, and he can tell from her face and that one syllable that someone has informed her that he was missing but not, apparently, that he’s safe and well.  

Reasonably well, he amends, pushing away another image of Durst’s face plastered onto an alien head.  

“Are you okay?” she asks, stepping somehow even closer to the forcefield. Another millimeter and it will shock her, he’s sure.  

“I’m okay,” he tells her, stepping as close as he dares, cursing the barrier between them.  

Kathryn frowns. “You don’t look okay. You’re pale. You look exhausted.”  

“I am on my way to being okay,” he corrects himself, doing his best to sound reassuring. “Harry helped me find something edible for dinner, and the Doc has given me three days off duty, so I can catch up on my sleep.” He flashes her a grin.  

“Harry’s talking to you again?”  

Tom nods. “As of today.”  

“How did you manage that?”  

He grimaces; this isn’t exactly the direction he wants to steer this conversation in. “Apparently getting kidnapped by the Vidiians had something to do with it.” Maybe he can work with it, though. “It did give me a lot of time to think.”  

“Think about what?” she asks – and there it is, right there in her eyes. That look that says I’ve been thinking too, and I don’t like the thoughts I’ve been having.  

Tom swallows, and he turns to Ensign Chell, who’s serving as brig officer this evening. “Could we have a minute?” Then, off his hesitation, “Don’t worry, I won’t let her out.”  

It takes a moment, but finally Chell assents, and exits.  

Licking his lips, Tom turns back to Kathryn. “About us,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about us.”  

She sighs, looking down – as if Tom needed another sign that he’s right about what’s been going through her head. “Me too.” She meets his eyes again, and hers are full of sadness. “Tom–“  

“Don’t,” he cuts her off. “I mean,” he takes a deep breath, “let me speak first, okay?”  

Her eyes search his, but it seems he’s not such an open book as she is today. She nods.  

Tom frowns, suddenly not sure where to begin. He wants to touch her, to take her hands, but he can’t. This is as close as they’re going to get.  

“I thought I was going to die,” he settles on. “And all I could think about was whether you knew how much I love you.”  

Kathryn’s breath catches in her throat, and her eyes glisten.  

He continues: “So I need to tell you now, before anything else: I love you. I’ve loved you ever since that day on the transit station. I can’t imagine a time when I could ever stop loving you. Which is why...” He twists the ring off his little finger, where he’d finally put it for safekeeping. “I want to ask you to marry me.”  

She gasps, and her eyes finally stray from his to land on the ring. “Tom. I don’t know what to say.” She looks back up at him, pauses, then opens her mouth again as if she’s going to protest, so Tom cuts her off again before she can start.  

“You don’t have to say anything. In fact, I’d really prefer it if you didn’t say anything like ‘for the good of the crew’, or anything to do with duty or sacrifice .” She frowns, so he explains. “Look. I know that perhaps we didn’t go about our relationship in the most sensible way, and we’re paying the price for that. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to make it work.” He looks down again at the ring, and her gaze follows his. “Some people,” he says carefully, “seem to think that what we were doing together was purely physical. That we were hiding it because it was morally wrong. Shameful,” he says, recalling Harry’s words. “But a marriage is something people see very differently. It could make us seem more... legitimate. Morally safe.” He looks up again to find her watching him carefully; at least she’s listening to him. “I know that technically that would still be in breach of regulations, but those regulations were never meant for a situation like ours. They were never meant to keep people apart, only to keep them from staying in the same hierarchy. They were definitely never intended to force the captain to be alone for the rest of her life. Like Tuvok said, there’s no other ship to be reassigned to.” He pauses. “Though I am willing to resign my commission and just follow you around as your personal masseur, if that’s what it takes.”  

That makes her laugh, and Tom smiles; not just because she’s allowed herself a moment of levity, but because she got the joke, and somehow thinking back to that day they’d spent together before it all got complicated makes today perhaps just a little less complicated too.  

“On the other hand,” he says, “We could publicly break it off and some people would still assume we’re at it like rabbits, as you put it the other week.”  

Kathryn snorts. “You make a very compelling argument,” she says softly.  

“I’m not trying to argue you into marrying me, just to make that clear,” Tom tells her. “Hell, I’m not doing this right.”  

He gets down on one knee.  

“I love you,” he says. “And I’m pretty sure you love me too. All I want is for you to be a permanent fixture, in my life and in my heart.”  

“Tom.” Her voice is low, and her fingers caress the air across from where he’s holding the ring aloft. “I do love you. More than I can say.”  

They both start when the doors hiss open behind him, and Chell steps back into the room.  

“Oh my,” he says.  

And there goes any shred of privacy they might have had. Chell is as bad as Neelix when it comes to gossip.  

Awkwardly, Tom gets to his feet.  

He turns back to Kathryn. “I’m going to leave this in your quarters,” he says. “You can decide what you want to do with it.”  

Kathryn nods, straightening her back; he can tell she’s not happy about Chell’s interruption.  

Tom nods in return.  

“See you in a few days,” he says, and leaves.  

* * *  

Of course, the news is all over the ship long before Kathryn is released from the brig. She’s going to hate that, Tom knows, but the cat can’t be put back in the bag.  

Besides, it’s been kind of... good?  

People are smiling at him again. Some have even offered congratulations, and despite his main response being she hasn’t said yes yet they seem genuinely happy for him.  

Of course that isn’t everyone, and he’s still getting the glares and remarks from some people, but the atmosphere is genuinely more pleasant than it was even a week ago.  

He thinks he might actually have been right about this.  

Kathryn is experiencing none of it of course, and he has no idea what Chakotay is feeding her in his briefings. Maybe nothing. Or maybe he’s been telling her what a terrible idea it is to marry Tom Paris and that she shouldn’t even consider it. Tom has no way of knowing, and he can’t fully enjoy his newfound likeability until he does.  

Because she could still say no.  

It gets more and more agonizing as the days go on and more and more of the crew are treating his marriage to the captain as a done deal despite his remonstrations. He really hopes she isn’t going to be bombarded with congratulations the moment she steps out of the brig – although , come to think of it, maybe that would help to convince her to say yes? But he doesn’t know if he wants her to say yes because of what other people say or do. He thinks he wants her to say yes because of him .  

She’s due to be released halfway through his shift on the bridge, and those last couple of hours are another kind of torture. Because he’s stuck here while she’s there, out and about – probably in her quarters? But he doesn’t know – and he doesn’t know what she’s doing or thinking.  

Did she go straight to her quarters, straight to the little box and the vase of flowers Tom had convinced Tuvok to allow him to put in there? Is she sitting at her desk picking out wedding dresses, or is she rehearsing a speech telling him that it’s a bad idea and that this is the end of their relationship?  

The fact that he doesn’t know is killing him.  

Finally, finally Hamilton arrives to relieve him at the helm and he’s released, free to run down to Kathryn’s quarters and see what fate has in store for him.  

Except he doesn’t run; he forces himself to walk at a respectable pace. And it’s not really fate who is going to dictate his future, it’s Kathryn.  

He stops in front of her door, trying to calm himself down, and has a flashback to doing the same thing, months ago, the first time he’d snuck into her quarters.  

It turned out okay last time, he tells himself, and presses the chime.  

“Come in!” she calls.  

Tom’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it’s not Kahryn Janeway bundled up in a bath towel, practically flinging herself on him as soon as he steps into the room.  

“Hey,” he laughs, hugging her close. “I see you’re enjoying your freedom.”  

“I missed you almost as much as I missed my bathtub,” she declares.  

“High praise,” Tom says into her damp hair. He pulls away to look at her. “You took a bath without me?”  

“You weren’t here,” she says.  

“It’s not my fault Chakotay scheduled my duty shift to clash with your release,” he argues lightheartedly.  

“Chakotay,” Kathryn says, clutching at his arms, face suddenly serious, “has agreed to officiate at our wedding.”  

“Wait.” Tom freezes, replaying what she’s just said in his head in case he misheard. “Our wedding? The answer’s yes?”  

A slow, sincere smile spreads across Kathryn’s face. “Yes.”  

Tom laughs in disbelief, picking her up and twirling her around until she shrieks to be let down and he deposits her back on the floor so he can kiss her thoroughly.  

“I’m not going to lie,” he tells her, coming up for air, “part of me was terrified you were going to say no.”  

“Part of me was afraid it was the wrong choice,” Kathryn admits, snaking her arms around his waist. “But with even Chakotay telling me it could be a good idea, I decided it was worth the risk.”  

“Chakotay convinced you to marry me?” Tom has to double-check what he’s just heard.  

“He told me,” she cocks her head, “that there’s been a palpable shift in the atmosphere onboard since Chell started spreading rumors around the ship, and that perhaps it would be wise to take advantage of that.”  

“That’s big of him,” Tom says, only a little reluctantly.  

“He’s a good man, Tom.”  

“That may be,” Tom allows. “But I can’t believe you told me yes by bringing up Chakotay.”  

She looks at him and counters, “I can’t believe you proposed to me in the brig.”  

“I dunno, I think there’s a certain poetry to it. Given where I was when you walked back into my life.”  

Kathryn raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Very poetic.”  

Tom laughs, and he bends down to kiss her. “We’ll make up for it with the wedding,” he promises.  

Kathryn smiles under his mouth, but then steps away. “I should get dressed.”  

“That,” Tom says firmly, reaching out to pull her back into his arms, “would be a complete waste of time.”  

Chapter Text

Kathryn’s approach to wedding planning is something else.  

Tom had been impressed with how well she’d handled being locked up for thirty days until he’d realized this was where she was letting it all out; Kathryn is someone who likes to be busy all the time, and now she’s not just back to work but has taken on an additional full-time job to compensate for being forced to do nothing for so long.  

It was Tom’s idea to get Neelix involved, but his intention had been to leave the bulk of the work in his more than capable hands. Kathryn however is meeting with him every other day to talk about music, and food, and flowers, and the pros and cons of the mess hall, holodeck or cargo bay as a venue, and is dress uniform the right dress code?  

Kathryn says it’s important to get it right; that it’s not just about them and what they want but about the crew and what they need. And Tom absolutely agrees with her on that. He just doesn’t think she actually needs to beam down to planets with Neelix and help him to pick fruit.  

She’s working herself too hard, Tom knows, but she doesn’t see it that way. So the only thing he can do is to support her as best he can and try to guide her to a smooth landing when it’s all over, and hope she doesn’t crash and burn.  

And then Doctor Jetrel shows up.  

Both Kathryn and Neelix are distracted for a while with the spectre of Neelix’s illness, and then Jetrel’s failed experiment, and finally his death. Tom expects it to take some time for the wedding activity to ramp back up, but no – the very next evening he and Kathryn are summoned to the mess hall to sample something called Jibalian fudge cake.  

“It’s Kes’ favorite,” Neelix says, grinning ear to ear when Kathryn closes her eyes in bliss at the first mouthful.  

“It’s really good,” Tom says, trying not to sound too surprised. It’s probably the best thing to ever come out of Neelix’s kitchen, in fact, at least as far as Tom is concerned.  

The grin on Neelix’s face somehow widens further, and he takes a seat opposite them at the table. “I’ve been reading about Earth customs around wedding cakes,” he says eagerly. “I saw that more traditional tastes prefer a fruit-based cake – now, I have several suggestions for fruits I could bake into the fudge cake—”  

“Neelix, don’t change a thing,” Kathryn interrupts. “This is perfect as it is.”  

“Agreed,” Tom says instantly. “Anything else could ruin it,” he adds a little too honestly.  

But Neelix is still beaming regardless. “I’ve also been looking at images of tiered wedding cakes,” he tells them, excitement oozing from every pore. “I’ve never seen that kind of presentation applied to a cake before, it’s really quite something. So.” He leans forward. “Five tiers? Or maybe seven, or even ten?”  

Kathryn smiles. “I think four will be sufficient for a hundred and fifty people.”  

“Very well, Captain, but people may want seconds,” Neelix says.  

“We can’t use all our resources on cake, Neelix,” Kathryn counters.  

“If you insist,” says Neelix. “But, speaking of resources, I wondered if I might use the replicators to create some sample cake toppers. Kes has some very creative ideas...”  

The meeting takes well over two hours, and Tom is frankly exhausted by the time he and Kathryn head back to her quarters.  

“He seems very chipper, given the last few days,” Tom ventures as they step out of the turbolift.  

“He’s keeping himself busy,” Kathryn tells him, setting off down the corridor at a brisk pace. She shakes her head. “I would too.”  

“You would?” Tom says carefully. “Or you are?”  

She looks at him, narrowing her eyes. “What are you saying?”  

“Just that it might not hurt you to slow down a little.” They’ve reached her door; he takes her hand as they step inside.  

Kathryn shakes her head again. “We can’t afford to mess this up, Tom. It needs to be as good as it can be.”  

“I’m not disputing that. But you’re not the only person who can achieve that.”  

Kathryn looks skeptical, and Tom doesn’t think he’s going to get anywhere tonight.  

“Look,” he says. “Just... take care of yourself.”  

She sleeps, so that’s something.  

But he worries.  

* * *  

“Tom!”  

He turns around and is surprised to see Megan Delaney – or is it Jenny? He hopes it’s not Jenny – running down the corridor behind him.  

“Hey,” he says neutrally, slowing his pace to let her catch up.  

“Listen,” she says, coming to a halt, “I know my sister said some nasty things to you. I wanted to apologize.”  

Tom tries to hide his internal sigh of relief. “You don’t need to apologize for your sister.”  

Megan smiles, embarrassed. “No, I think since she was attacking you on my behalf I do. Besides, I’m better at apologizing than she is.”  

“I’m sorry,” Tom says sincerely, “If you felt like I was leading you on. That wasn’t my intention.”  

“No,” Megan says, “I was reading too much into it. That’s not your fault.” Her smile widens. “Congratulations on your engagement, by the way.”  

“Thanks.” Tom smiles back, then shakes his head and confesses, “But I’m really hoping my personal life will stop being ship’s business real soon.”  

“When you’re married to the captain? Not a chance,” Megan tells him, not unkindly. “But with Harry Kim as your ambassador I think you’ll be okay.”  

Tom frowns. “What do you mean?”  

“He’s been telling the whole ship how he was wrong to judge you and that he didn’t know the whole story, and spinning some kind of star-crossed lovers tale about the two of you.” She smirks. “It’s adorable, actually. And I think people are really listening to him.”  

“What?” This is the first Tom has heard of this. “Really?”  

“Yeah, really.” She looks at him shrewdly. “I think perhaps they would rather believe the picture Harry is painting than Seska’s, you know? Given that we’re all stuck on this ship together no matter what. Maybe they would actually prefer to attend a wedding than an execution.”  

“Wait, execution?” Tom sputters.  

“Maybe a slight exaggeration. Don’t worry. Anyway.” She resumes walking, leaving him standing there still a little unsettled. “From what Neelix is saying the wedding won’t disappoint!”  

It seems hard to believe, but perhaps the gossip mill really is starting to turn in their favor.  

* * *  

Neelix nearly falls out of Tom’s good books though, when he brings aboard The Cheese.  

He suggests serving it at the wedding, but Tom puts his foot down. The smell alone would be enough to ruin the whole event as far as he’s concerned, and the taste is worse.  

So Tom would admit to a small amount of schadenfreude when it’s confiscated and taken to sickbay.  

At least until it really starts interfering with Voyager ’s systems, at which point Tom’s main thought is, what a stupid way to lose the ship. He imagines having to launch the escape pods just because of a lump of cheese. Repair crews in spacesuits retrofitting all the systems for months on end while the rest of the crew languish – where? There are no planets nearby. Or worse, the ship could actually be destroyed by this; a warp core breach isn’t beyond the realm of possibility if the containment system fails.  

All because of some stupid cheese.  

When the Doctor calls with a solution that sounds like it will work it’s a relief, even if the heat quickly becomes unbearable.  

Tom’s hands sweat so much he worries about them sliding off the helm controls.  It pools in the corner of his mouth, filling it with the taste of salt every time he speaks. His uniform is stuck to his body like a wetsuit, and his mind is swimming.  

He really hopes the Kazon won’t suddenly show up and require him to perform evasive maneuvers; he’s not sure he could do it. He might accidentally ram them instead, another way for the ship to be destroyed by the cheese.  

Finally, the Doctor gives the all clear.  

Tom frowns when he hears Chakotay’s voice responding instead of Kathryn. He turns around as fast as he can without getting dizzy.  

Kathryn is slumped in her seat with her eyes closed. Chakotay, orders given to start getting things back to normal, shakes her gently by the shoulder.  

Tom stumbles across the bridge to kneel in front of her. He feels her pulse; it’s irregular, and her skin is much too warm even given the ambient temperature, which thankfully is coming down again now that the cheese menace has been defeated.  

“Take her to sickbay,” Chakotay says.  

“Yes sir,” Tom says gratefully. He looks at Harry. “Are the transporters working?”  

Harry’s hands fly over his controls, but he shakes his head. “Not yet. The best I can give you is the turbolift.”  

“Better than nothing.” Tom steels himself, then picks Kathryn up with Chakotay’s help and slings her over his shoulder. “Let me know if they come back online.”  

He makes his way toward the turbolift a little unsteadily, and he hopes he can get all the way to sickbay without dropping Kathryn. But by the time he exits into the corridor on Deck Five the plummeting temperature is making a palpable difference, and he arrives in sickbay without any unfortunate incidents.  

There are a couple of other crewmen in there receiving treatment, probably also for heat-related ailments, but the Doctor rushes over as soon as Tom enters and helps him to lower Kathryn onto a biobed.   

“She passed out on the bridge,” Tom says. “I guess from the heat. She’s very warm.”  

The Doctor is already running a tricorder over her. “Heat exhaustion,” he proclaims. Kes hands him a hypospray, which he applies to Kathryn’s neck. “She’ll be fine.”  

“Why was she affected worse than the rest of us?” Tom wants to know.  

“Any number of reasons. Most likely her body was already under significant strain, making her more susceptible to complications from the high ambient temperature.”  

“She has been working herself pretty hard recently,” Tom says.  

“Well, there’s your answer,” the Doctor says brusquely. “She should regain consciousness momentarily. You may return to your station.”  

“Can’t I stay until she wakes up?”  

“With your superior officer’s consent.”  

Damn.  

Tom considers it, but he still feels like he’s on thin ice with Chakotay. He doesn’t want to push his luck. And Kathryn will be fine without him.  

“Never mind,” he says reluctantly. “But can you talk to her about pushing herself too hard? I haven’t had much luck.”  

The Doctor gives him a hard stare. But then he nods, and says, “As her physician, it would be remiss of me not to.”  

Tom thanks him, and returns to sit on the bridge in his sweat-soaked uniform for the next three hours.  

* * *  

By the time he hits the chime outside Kathryn’s door he’s almost dry, but he doesn’t feel any less disgusting.  

“Come,” she calls, and he steps inside.  

She’s standing in the middle of the room, looking somewhat at a loss, but she smiles when she looks at him. “Tom.”  

“How are you doing?” he asks, going over to take her hand.  

“I’m fine,” she says immediately. “The Doctor just released me from sickbay with orders to relax for the next twenty-four hours, but he told me I couldn’t take a bath.”  

“Is that the same uniform you had on earlier?” Tom asks, thinking of the state of his own.  

“Yes.”  

“Then you need a bath.”