Friend Zoned

The whole C/7 train wreck? You just know whose fault that had to be.

Chakotay racked his pool cue and turned from the table.

"I'd better call it a night," he told Tom Paris. "I'm way off my game tonight."

Tom set his own cue on the felt and took a tentative step forward.

"I know what's bothering you," he said. "I don't mind listening if you want to talk."

Chakotay shrugged. "What is there to talk about? One day I think she cares, the next she's moving in with some alien she's known a week."

"Under mind control!" Tom objected. "B'Elanna and I didn't even know each other down there."

"Sure, under mind control," Chakotay agreed with a dismissive wave. "Fine. It doesn't matter."

Tom turned quickly toward Sandrine, who was wiping down the bar and eyeing her last two customers with badly hidden impatience.

"Two glasses and a bottle of your oldest synthehol," he said to her. "We'll close up when we're done."

After a quick negotiation, Tom had his bottle and Sandrine had disappeared to whatever constituted her holographic personal life. He gestured to the nearest bar stools. "Have a seat."

Chakotay eyed the door, sighed, and accepted the invitation with a nod. "I appreciate this, Paris, but it's not going to" – he began as he pulled out a stool, but Tom interrupted.

"I can't let you go on like this, pal. You've been friend zoned. All the classic signs are there." Tom sat and poured two shots with businesslike efficiency. "I've been wanting to tell you for months – heck, years – but I figured it was none of my business. Then I felt bad because B'Elanna and I are so happy. I felt mean pointing it out."

Chakotay's eyebrows lifted in skepticism as he accepted the glass. "But not anymore?"

Tom shook his head. "Not after what just happened planet-side. You're in pain, my friend, and rightly so. I would've been devastated if I'd been part of the rescue team and I'd gone down there to find B'Elanna snuggled up with some other guy."

Chakotay downed his shot. "Is some part of this supposed to make me feel better?" he asked as he wiped his mouth and slammed down the glass.

Tom drank and poured again for both of them. "Not necessarily better, not right away, but you need to take some action. You can't let things go on the way they are."

Chakotay's face twisted in frustration. "I've tried a thousand times, Tom. She always finds a way to change the subject, create a distraction. There's nothing I can do."

"Exactly. She's turned you into her brother, and you've let her. The only time she pays any attention to you is when some other woman wanders across your path."

Chakotay drank, grabbed the bottle, and poured the refills himself this time. "You're crazy."

Tom stretched an arm across the bar and faced Chakotay. "I'm not! Listen and see if this doesn't sound familiar. She's got you in a place where you exist solely to back up her command decisions and make her feel like she's the greatest thing in high-heeled captain boots. Remember the last time we made first contact on a non-mind controlling M-class planet, and she asked you to help her pick out things for the baby shower at the central market?'

"We had a nice time that day!" Chakotay objected. He leaned onto both arms. "That was one of the last times I really felt close to her."

"Nope." Tom made a slicing gesture. "Friend zone. Women do not take men shopping when they're panting after you. It's a buddy job, not a man job."

Chakotay coughed into his drink. "A man job? Has your brain returned to the twentieth century again, Paris?"

"Did you carry the packages for her?" Tom asked.

Chakotay's shoulders stiffened. "Of course."

Tom sighed. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you used to have dinner in your quarters or hers all the time, right?"

"Right."

"And are you still doing that?"

"Yes. Well. We've both been busy. More often it's the mess hall, and not usually dinner, but that doesn't mean" – Chakotay defended.

"Right." Tom cut him off. "She only wants to see you in public. You're her escort to every crew party, but there's never a party in her quarters, she never has time for that, you get what I'm saying?"

Chakotay pushed away his glass. "This is juvenile, Paris." He didn't look up.

Tom leaned closer, into Chakotay's personal space. "Or how about this. When was the last time she paid you a really sincere compliment?"

Chakotay shifted away on his stool. "She told me – or actually, Seven told me the captain told her that she trusts me more than anyone on board, just a few weeks ago."

Tom sat back, momentarily impeded. "Oh. Well that's nice. But she didn't say it to you, did she? Why do you suppose that is?"

"Because Seven's the one who questioned my loyalty, when her cortical node malfunctioned." Chakotay gripped the bar with one tense hand. "This is not helping, Paris!" This time his head came up angrily.

"Will you at least agree with me that you've been friend zoned? Because once you acknowledge it, I can tell you how to handle it," Tom said, now pleading with both hands.

"I'm not even sure what 'friend zoned' means! I feel like I'm in the episode where Captain Proton gives his sidekick bad romantic advice," Chakotay answered with a scowl.

Tom pulled back and poured fresh shots. "Okay, listen. The biggest sign – I mean huge – is that you've been after her for what, seven years? And nada. Goose eggs. Have you even gotten a peck out of her?"

Chakotay glared but didn't answer.

"That's what I thought," Tom said. "You must be the most sexually frustrated man in the galaxy. No wonder you looked ready to space Jaffen as he was leaving the ship. Nobody would've blamed you."

"He's not the only one I'd like to space," Chakotay said, but his shoulders suddenly drooped. "So your point is that she doesn't think of me sexually?"

Tom leaned on the bar. "Doesn't think of you sexually anymore. I'm sure she did at one point. We all saw it. But I think it all went wrong around the time she got the Dear John letter from her fiancé. To my mind, that was the one point when you had a shot. If you could have convinced her then that the trip home was too long for all these strict Starfleet protocols, and now she was free from Mark, I think you could have gotten in there. My theory, anyway." Tom looked up to survey Chakotay's thoughtful expression. "Don't you think so?"

"It's not the craziest thing I've ever heard out of you," Chakotay answered. "But still, we're such close friends. Best friends. I think she's just waiting for that wormhole that will bring us home, and then we'll have a chance."

Tom shook his head emphatically. "Nope, that's the worst sign of all. If a woman tells you she likes you as a friend, it's not some game she's playing with you. That's the space you occupy in her mind. Friendarooni. You have to take her seriously."

Chakotay pushed away from the bar in exaggerated surrender. "Okay, I give up. I'm friend zoned. What's the cure, Captain Proton?"

Tom rose, straightened his unzipped uniform jacket, and delivered his prescription with a sweeping gesture: "You have to cut her off."

Chakotay blinked. "How exactly is that going to work? I'm on duty next to her every single day."

"I mean personally. You have to move on completely. Date other women openly. Let her see it. It's your only chance to put this behind you."

"What if I don't want to put it behind me?" Chakotay objected.

Tom jumped back onto his bar stool. "Not an option. If your heart isn't in it, she'll smell it, and you'll just look more pathetic. Nope, you have to make up your mind that as of this moment, Amal Kotay is back on the market. Let the ladies beware! Show them some swagger!"

Chakotay chuckled. "That's absurd. How am I supposed to forget about her when she's right beside me?"

Tom crossed his arms and looked Chakotay up and down. "Maybe by pursuing someone who's nearby almost as often. What about Seven of Nine?"

A coughing fit seized Chakotay. "Seven of Nine? Are you insane? She's almost young enough to be my daughter! I'd be the laughing stock of the ship!"

Tom tilted his head to one side. "I don't think so. I think every man on board from Harry down to the lowest ranking crewman on the lowest deck would look at you like you'd just grown a few inches. I mean yeah, she's Borg, but look at her." He gave a long, low whistle.

"You really think so?" Chakotay stared back at Tom. "I've never thought of her that way at all. She's so stiff and … sterile. I can't even imagine putting my hands on that metal suit she wears. Whereas with Kathryn …"

"Whoa there," Tom interceded with a hand on Chakotay's chest. "Hearing your fantasies about the captain would be just a little too much like hearing my dad's fantasies about my mom. I beg you, keep that to yourself."

Chakotay's mouth fell open. "You don't want to hear how I feel about the captain, but it's okay to pimp me out to Seven? You are in fine form tonight, Tom. I need to get back to my quarters and get some sleep." He slid off the stool, clapped the younger man on the shoulder, and made for the door.

Tom poured himself one last shot as he shouted at Chakotay's departing back, "Just think about what I said! You know I'm right!" He sipped at the amber liquid as he perused Sandrine's collection of bottles behind the bar.

"That ought to liven things up a little around here," he said to himself, and threw back the rest.

END