Smokin' Hot
Summary: In which Janeway lays off the coffee, Seven tests a hypothesis, Tom is confused, and Chakotay uses his imagination. Some time during Season 7. Trace amounts of J/C, EMH/7, P/T, with a smattering of J/7 just for silly fun. Total crackfic, no redeeming value.
Disclaimer: All characters mentioned in this story are the property of Paramount, and this story is just for fun and not making any money, for more reasons than that writing generally has to be good to make money.
"Captain! You're smoking!"
Kathryn peeked over her shoulder in the direction of this startled observation, and sent him a unsteady grin.
"Why, thank-you, Commander."
Waving away her slightly slurred reply impatiently, he gestured toward the smoldering cigarette in her hand.
"No, you're smoking!"
She looked down at the tiny object and gave a noise of feigned surprise.
"So I am! I hadn't noticed."
With a sigh, breath puffing out in the artificial cool night air, he leaned up against the brick wall next to her and took a quick look around. He had to admit, this little outdoor addition to the Sandrine's program did add a certain something. The holographic drunk vomiting into the holographic gutter was particularly striking.
The woman next to him took another puff, finishing up with a slight cough, and he sighed again.
"Seven said you were, but I didn't believe her. I thought maybe you were brushing your teeth or something and she misunderstood."
"I'd have to be brushing pretty hard," she said with something suspiciously like a snort of laughter.
"I know you like to be thorough." He sent her a sideways look. "So, why are you smoking?"
She shrugged.
"Well, I've cut back on the coffee from six gallons a day to four, so I had some space freed up in my list of vices. I figured I should hurry up and fill it before I took up something worse."
He made a noise of deep exasperation.
"That's ridiculous, Kathryn! I'd rather see you drink ten gallons a day than take up something like this."
"Hmm. Are these ten gallons a day going to come from your replicator rations?
"What rations?" he asked with a brief snort of laughter. "You've already cleaned me out for the month."
She pouted.
"Oh; right."
At this juncture, the door leading back into the bar opened, and a tall willowy blonde stepped out.
"Commander," Seven of Nine greeted. "You see what I mean? The captain is engaging in a self-destructive and inefficient use of time and resources, and I suspect that it may be a sign of psychological turmoil."
"The captain is also standing right here, Seven," Kathryn pointed out, leaning forward and peeking around Chakotay. "And I can't say that I'm feeling particularly turmoil…ous. Just a little tipsy," she finished sheepishly.
Chakotay shook his head helplessly.
"I'd say it's good to know that you only stupidly destroy your health for no good reason when you're drunk, but I think we all know that isn't true."
"It's not my fault! Whiskey makes a lot of people want to smoke. Besides which," she added defensively, swaying slightly as she attempted to draw herself up to her less-than-considerable full height. "I'm not drunk. I'm tipsy. A little. And Tom went to so much trouble with this new addition, it seems a shame not to use it."
Chakotay eyed her suspiciously.
"Somehow, I don't think this is exactly what he had in mind."
"Good evening, Seven, Commander," that same fair-haired young man greeted as he stepped out of Sandrine's, lighter in hand. "Captain, can I bum one off you?"
"I beg your pardon!" Kathryn exclaimed, rather shocked.
"A smoke," Tom explained patiently, gesturing to the pack she was holding.
"Oh; right." She opened the pack, tapped one free, and handed it over.
"Okay, maybe this is what he had in mind," Chakotay admitted to no one in particular.
"At least Captain Proton is not present," Seven pointed out.
He sighed, eyes flickering uneasily over the drunk, waiting for the distinctly queasy hologram to morph suddenly into one of the top ten cheesiest holocharacters of all time.
"You just had to go and jinx it, didn't you?"
"Didn't you have a whole pack three days ago?" Kathryn was meanwhile asking Tom curiously.
Tom grinned sheepishly.
"Yeah, but when B'Elanna started going through my pockets for chocolate, I got nervous and recycled them."
"You kept them in your quarters?" she snickered.
He frowned.
"Well, yeah; where do you keep yours?"
"In my quarters," she replied easily, and then huffed in annoyance when he hid a grin. "But I don't have a fiercely protective wife with raging pregnancy hormones who could remove most of my internal organs from halfway across the room if she wanted to."
"Yeah," Tom grinned dopily. "I'm the luckiest guy ever."
"Come on, Kathryn, let's go get you a cup of coffee," Chakotay suggested, taking her arm with one hand and carefully plucking the cigarette from her fingers with the other.
"I don't want coffee, I want to finish that," she retorted, snatching back her half-finished Marlboro.
"No, you don't," he insisted, having apparently never received the memo advising strongly against attempting to tell a woman what she wants. "It'll destroy your health—"
"Having one cigarette every two or three months is going to destroy my health? I must have asked for super-duper strength!"
"—it'll eat up all your replicator rations and most likely mine, and it'll turn your fingers funny colours. And believe me, nothing is worse than kissing a smoker – it's like licking a fire pit."
Kathryn crossed her arms huffily.
"Then I suppose it's a good thing that I'm not doing much kissing these days, isn't it?"
It occurs more often than one might think that just as a person has commented on his or her circumstances, the aforementioned circumstances change completely. In light of this, it is rather apt that barely had these words left Kathryn's mouth, when she found herself seized and thoroughly kissed.
"Mmph!" she noted pleasantly, with only the most congenial of struggling and flailing.
"Seven!" Tom exclaimed, aghast, as the blonde wound herself with iron strength around his normally unflappable and tough-as-nails captain, currently making these throaty little noises, clinging to their resident Borg's slim shoulders, protests entirely forgotten. "Could you hold that thought until I have a holoimager handy?"
Chakotay shot a glare at Tom, whose exclamation had quite irreparably shattered his enjoyment of this unexpected bit of shower-daydream material. Sonofabitch; he'd just started to imagine some flying feathers from the aftermath of a pillow fight and a change of wardrobe to skimpy pyjamas, too.
"Why don't you get out of here and go find one?"
"Dear God, Seven, who taught you that?" Kathryn was meanwhile demanding, cheeks flushed and breathing slightly unsteady.
Seven quirked one elegant eyebrow.
"I did not require instruction, although I have been honing my skill with the doctor's assistance."
Tom narrowly escaped inhaling his entire cigarette.
"And you don't think he'll be a little annoyed that you're honing with someone else?"
Seven's lips quirked up in a slight smile.
"I believe that he will appreciate the result that further practice with an expanded variety of partners will have on my technique."
Kathryn blinked, not entirely sure if the faint spinning of the world around her was courtesy of the whiskey from earlier, or from Seven's unexpected and clearly thoroughly honed skills.
"Uh, glad to help?"
Ignoring this entirely, Seven turned to address Chakotay.
"Commander, your statement requires further research. Kissing Captain Janeway bears very little resemblance to licking a fire pit. I suggest that in future, you work to acquire reliable information before making such statements."
With a brusque nod to all present, she swept back into the bar, smoothing her hair into place as she went.
"Uh..." Tom began, rather helplessly. "Do you think it would be dangerous to ask where she got that firsthand information about licking a fire pit? Okay, I'm going," he added quickly as he caught Chakotay's eye and read severe unpleasantness and possible dismemberment within its depths.
Kathryn, who had been alternating between staring bewilderedly after Seven and thoughtfully at Chakotay, stopped Tom with a hand on his arm.
"You know what, Mr. Paris, why don't you hold onto these for me?" She tucked a nearly full pack of Marlboros into the front pocket of his plain white shirt, and then patted it absently as she turned to go.
"Okay," Tom agreed hesitantly. "Are you sure you don't want them?"
"Absolutely," she replied. "Commander, I believe we have some research to get started on?"
Tom watched, rather startled, as she seized her equally startled First Officer and dragged him bodily towards the door.
While Chakotay may have been horrified by this turn of events, little of this sentiment showed in his expression, a grin that prodded insistently at the outer boundaries his face in its desire to break free.
"Night, Tom," he called cheerfully, the words growing gradually quieter with distance as he flapped merrily in the breeze behind his captain.
Once the pair had departed, and the mental images successfully tamped down for the good of his own mental health, he shook his head and snuffed out his cigarette and tossed it into the gutter, where the holographic drunk - good old Steve, I always liked him - promptly scrambled for it.
After tossing Steve his lighter, he tapped his comm. badge.
"Torres," came the brisk reply.
"Hey, B'Elanna," he greeted. "Feel like helping me with a little research?"
End Notes: Aaaaaaaaaaaand, that's that. Someone really needs to take my computer away.