Chakotay swirled the red liquid, knocked back a hefty swallow, and then made a satisfying thunk with the glass on the bar top. Sunlight streamed down on him from above, ocean waves broke on the shore in foaming white eddies, and smiling people wandered in and out of his view.
Every damned bit of it was artificial in the middle of the night. Not that night meant anything on a starship with thousands of light years of black space left to travel. A meaningless reading on the chronometer. A lowering of the lights intended to trick the mind and maintain the circadian rhythm essential to sleep. Sometimes, the mind refused to be lulled under false pretenses.
After another swig, he turned on his stool and rolled his eyes. The woman sashaying her way to his side was as artificial as the rest of the scenery. The hologram might be Paris' idea of beauty, but Chakotay knew better. From the brassy red, bad dye job, to the impossibly perky breasts staring him in the face, to the legs that went on forever - okay, maybe the legs were shapely - he had enough experience to be turned off by the unnatural shell blatantly flaunted in a string bikini.
When the beach babe's arm brushed his hip, he turned away from her and gripped his glass tighter. The cranberry juice hid the burn of alcohol as he drained the liquid. Kathryn would wear something classier, he thought, as a barely confined large boob entered his peripheral vision. He didn't bother to rebuff her as she leaned back on the bar, propped on her elbows, with her thigh rubbing against his.
Apathy. Chakotay recognized his mood for what it was. He grew tired of the daily struggle and facing decades left to get home, the responsibility for almost hundred and fifty other lives, and trying his damnedest to do his job without screwing something up that could doom the ship. Then, there was Kathryn.
It seemed that lately, they butted heads on everything. He did his best, she wanted better. He voiced a concern, she shut him down without a thought. He laid out a carefully plotted plan, she tossed it aside and refused his counsel.
He loved her.
Therein lay the problem, the tightrope he walked between being her first officer and best friend but unable to show his deepest feelings. He said all the wrong things, so caught up by her boundaries that he stumbled over himself attempting not to push them. Even when things happened that were not his fault, he had been responsible.
After New Earth where he and Kathryn had fallen in love, there had been Seska, the child she claimed was his, and the deaths of Hogan and Suder. Chakotay had piloted the shuttle struck by an ion storm that almost killed Kathryn. He'd answered the distress call that got Kaplan killed and formed a new Borg collective. Oh, and Riley Frazier. Can't forget fucking the good Doctor Frazier, now can we?
Chakotay stared at the bottom of his glass and then looked around for the bartender before returning to his tortured musings.
He understood Kathryn's position on a relationship, and even agreed with it most of the time. But sitting on a bar stool with his third drink, and hopefully a fourth soon, warming his insides, Chakotay wished like hell things could be different. Kathryn was real, complex, and naturally stunning with her soft curves, auburn hair, blue eyes, and legs that made her just the right height to tuck against him in his arms.
With a sigh, he glanced at the hologram that had practically draped herself over him to get his attention. She was the female version of Chez Sandrine's Gaunt Gary, only pushier. Maybe he could practice on her how to talk to Kathryn without making a fool of himself.
Before he could open his mouth, the lady trailed a fingertip along his jaw and down his chest. He grabbed her wrist and placed her hand back on the bar, realizing the futility of pretending she was the woman he loved. "I would rather drink alone."
Her high, girlish voice grated in his ears. "No one comes here to drink alone."
Chakotay was lonely, but not for the fleeting attentions of a substitute body. Even if that body was, at the moment, attempting to crawl into his lap. He gripped her waist to stop her, and then his arms went rigid, his face paled, and his brain froze at the oh-so-familiar husky voice behind him.
"I thought since we were both awake, you could use some company. I see I was mistaken, Commander."
His neck corded with the tension rolling through him as the bartender finally arrived. The photonic man's gaze slipped over Kathryn, narrowed at the sight of the other woman caught between Chakotay's hands, and then dropped to the empty glass.
"Another Red Headed Slut, sir?"
***V*V***
See chapter 2 for drink recipe