Tomorrow

A/N: This is another re-post from 2014, a direct sequel to 'Saying Goodbye', because Quirkette100 asked if there was one. This one is fluff all the way, although re-posting gave me a chance to take out a couple of lines that always made me cringe in retrospect. I don't think the original was beta'd by Missy, as she'd never have let me get away with those bits!

It was late afternoon. The sun was just beginning to sink towards the horizon in a final blaze of determined glory, flushing the beach in a warm golden glow. Chakotay stood on a path above the bluff, watching the restless ocean and listening to the stir of laughter emanating from the sandy shore below. His casual demeanour – thumbs hooked into his pockets, shoulders loose – belied the nervous flutter in his stomach. He could have just been there to admire the sunset or take a breath of fresh ocean air, but he wasn't. He was standing there, jumpy as a jack rabbit, waiting for Kathryn Janeway to arrive for what could only be described as a… first date.

The term seemed inadequate and ridiculous. He was fast approaching 50, for God's sake, and she wasn't far behind. Quite apart from that, could two people who had meant so many different things to each other for so many years actually date? Was that even possible? He supposed that was what tonight was intended to discover. Isn't that what she'd said? Let's see if we can start again.

Chakotay unconsciously lifted one hand to tug at his ear and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was dressed in a black shirt, which he'd left open at the neck, and dark blue jeans. Both items were brand new, as were his shoes. Not that he'd bought them specifically for this occasion. It had been one of the unforeseen aspects of Voyager's return – the sudden need for goods that would have otherwise been provided for by the ship itself. They'd all returned to Earth with almost no worldly possessions aside from their uniforms. A large proportion of the crew, Chakotay among them, hadn't even had anywhere to live. Starfleet had provided them all with temporary housing, but it had taken Chakotay just one night in a Starfleet Academy dorm room to realise that he was too old to be there for a moment longer. He'd found an apartment with a short rental lease that would do until it was time to make more permanent plans. Whatever they may be.

He glanced back down the path he'd walked along, wondering what direction Kathryn would arrive from. There was over an hour before they were due to take the table he had booked. They had agreed that a leisurely walk along the shore would be a good idea beforehand. When he'd suggested it, Chakotay had been thinking that it might help diffuse any residual tension that may still be lurking following their encounter of the previous evening. Now he just hoped it would calm his nerves.

It's Kathryn, he kept telling himself. You've spent most of your waking hours with her for the past seven years. What's wrong with you?

Watching as a stray wave crested a rocky promontory below, Chakotay wondered just how he had ended up where he was at this precise moment. Yesterday morning, he would never have imagined such a turn of events. He still couldn't quite work out where the fork had occurred, what had suddenly made him confront her in the blunt way he had the previous evening. He certainly hadn't intended to. For a start, his truncated union with Seven was still too fresh. He wasn't a man to skip from one woman to another without taking a breath. Usually, anyway. But maybe that was the point. Maybe he'd never moved on from one woman in the first place, he'd just tried his hardest to kid himself that he had. Why else would he have been so knocked off his feet last night?

Kathryn Janeway had walked into that ballroom and quite literally taken his breath away. Her beauty had been incandescent, not only because of her appearance but because he suddenly knew that he was seeing a part of her that she had locked away for seven years. It was like finally separating two stuck pages of a much-loved old book and discovering an unexpected, vivid illustration within. The thought had thrilled him as much as it had made him ache with a deep emptiness. What else didn't he know about her, this woman whom he'd thought he knew as well as his own skin? What was there still to discover about her that he now would not be able to?

They had been there to say goodbye to that old life. She must have known it as well as the rest of them – and yet, she hadn't come to speak to him. Kathryn had even seemed to be avoiding looking in his direction, until he'd deliberately put himself in her way. She'd smiled up at him, a flash of something unreadable lighting her eyes. Her hand had fluttered up for a moment as if she'd been about to place it on his chest as she had so many times before. Instead, though, she'd hesitated and then dropped both her hand and his gaze. That was when he'd realised that yes, she absolutely did know that this was goodbye and moreover, she was willing to let it happen. She'd let them drift apart without another word. She'd walk away from him, just like that. Just like she did then. He hadn't even realised it until that very moment, but that wasn't what he wanted. What he wanted was -

That's when he'd started drinking. Not too much, but enough to take the edge off. Enough, in fact, to make the edge decidedly fuzzy, which explained where his anger had come from. It seeped in, soaking his pained heart even as he'd watched her tour the room, making sure she spoke to everyone. Her skin glowed a soft ivory in the subdued light, the muscles of her naked back rippled gently as she moved and God what he wouldn't give just to run his fingers-

He'd turned away at that point, the visceral burst of desire taking him by surprise. Chakotay had become pretty good at keeping reactions like that under lock and key, but then, perhaps that was just the difference between alcohol and synthehol. He'd not taken another glass of champagne until Tom had brought her to him.

Perhaps it was her conviction that what he'd wanted to say to her would be hurtful. Perhaps it was her declaration that this was his last chance. Whatever temporary insanity had prompted him to speak the way he had, it had obviously stunned her as much as it had him.

And so, here Chakotay was, waiting for her, wondering whether she was actually going to turn up. Their arrangement had been swiftly made, and today had been so busy that they'd had no time alone to reconfirm. Now, standing here, he wondered whether she'd have thought better of the idea. Whether she would have reconsidered and decided that it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie. But if she had, wouldn't she have contacted him? Surely, as awkward as that conversation would have been, Kathryn Janeway wouldn't just leave him standing here like a-

He saw her, then. She wasn't on the path, but below on the sand, her bare feet leaving a faint trail as she made her way slowly in his direction. He watched her for long moments, taking in the shoes dangling from her left hand. She was wearing a long, full skirt in a pale green print that seemed to be split at regular intervals so that when the breeze caught it, it lifted and whipped out behind her, revealing her bare legs. The top she wore was simple, short sleeved, white and gently fitted. Around her neck was a long beaded wooden necklace, something Chakotay couldn't remember ever seeing her wear before. Kathryn's eyes were shaded by sunglasses and her free hand was in her bobbed hair, holding it back out of her face in the breeze as she looked out over the water. The light of the sinking sun gilded her face and arms. As he watched, she turned her gaze inland and looked up at the bluff, scanning it. When she saw him she raised her hand and waved. He waved back, indicating he'd make his way down to her.

She was smiling as their paths met. "Hi."

"Hi."

"I'm sorry if I'm late," she went on. "I just couldn't resist walking on the sand."

"You're not."

They stood looking at each other in silence for a moment, both smiling openly and both unaccountably shy. Barely four hours ago, Chakotay had watched Captain Kathryn Janeway be promoted to Starfleet Admiral, and now he was unexpectedly struck by the evident dichotomy between the rank and the woman. It was never something he would have thought about on Voyager, where her rank was an embodiment of herself, fair and square. But here, with the sound of surf in his ears, with her standing before him dressed in a delicious, unexpected softness and with bare feet just because she'd wanted to feel the sand between her toes, he was assaulted again by the growing idea that he didn't know nearly half of what he thought he knew about Kathryn Janeway. The thought did not cause the creeping horror of loss he'd felt the previous evening. Instead, it lit something within him. A spark of anticipation. A hope that was, perhaps, not as forlorn as he'd so lately thought.

"We can carry on walking on the sand, if you like," he told her, as they turned up the beach. "The place we're going opens straight onto the shore."

Kathryn nodded as they began to walk. "Sounds fantastic."

Chakotay offered a slight grimace. "Well, I hope so. I like it, but it's nothing fancy. It's just a little place that serves good seafood and salads, with an amazing view. It was always one of my favourite places back in my Academy days. I'm amazed it's still going, it must have been there for 40 years. But I did wonder whether you'd prefer something more…"

She looked up at him as he tried to find the right words. "More what?"

"I don't know – up-market?"

Kathryn laughed. "What makes you think that?"

He shrugged, smiling himself. "I think your tastes are perhaps a little more refined than mine, Kathryn."

She laughed again, tilting her head forward and then throwing it back with the kind of free joy he'd rarely seen from her. Her toes scuffed patterns in the sand. "I don't think that can possibly be true!"

"Well, if you don't like it, you can choose somewhere else."

"What could be more wonderful than eating seafood on the beach?" she exclaimed. "Besides, to be absolutely honest, the fewer decisions I have to make this evening, the better. If I thought I had too many to make on Voyager…"

He glanced at her. "Ahh. I was going to ask you how you're finding being an Admiral. They dragged you off to meetings pretty quickly."

Kathryn looked out over the ocean and then up at him. "Ask me again another time, Chakotay. Not this evening. No work. Not tonight. OK?"

He smiled and nodded. She surprised him by slipping her hand into the crook of his arm. They walked on.

"So," she said, after a moment, "last night seemed to go well."

Chakotay thought he detected a sudden edge of nervousness in her voice. "Yes, I think it did. Did you enjoy it?"

She smiled somewhat enigmatically, looking out at the sand that stretched ahead of them. "I did in the end. How about you?"

He nodded. "It became… unexpectedly happy, for me," he said, softly.

Kathryn stopped and turned him toward her, lifting her sunglasses away from her eyes and pushing them into her hair. "You were so angry with me."

He grimaced again. "I'm sorry. I-"

"No," she said. "Don't be. If you hadn't been… I don't think we'd be here now. Doing… what we're doing."

He smiled down at her. "And what are we doing?"

She sighed. "I'm not sure. I've been trying to work it out since. What are we doing, Chakotay? Trying to turn back the past? Trying to pretend that the last seven years never happened?"

He shrugged, gently. "Kathryn, all I know is that I can't just let you walk away. Not without…"

"Not without what?"

"I don't know… getting to know you?"

"And there was I thinking we knew each other pretty well already."

He nodded. "We do. But I don't know all of you. And I want to. I want to know everything."

She took a breath, and smiled. "I always did have a feeling you had a secret romantic streak."

He laughed. "I don't think many would agree with the word 'secret' in that sentence. I'm pretty good at wearing my heart on my sleeve."

Kathryn sighed. "What if it all goes wrong? What if we can't make this work? What if you don't like what you get to know about me?"

"What if you don't like what you get to know about me?" he countered. "I think you might find that Chakotay out from under your command is quite different from the one you think you know."

"Last night being a case in point?" she asked, only half-playfully.

He nodded. "Yes, frankly. I'm not always a pushover of the sort you've been used to, Kathryn."

She made a sound in her throat. "You've never been a pushover, Chakotay. But I can see what you mean. Although," she added, with a decided glint in her eye, "if last evening is anything to go by, I don't think I'll have too much trouble adjusting."

He laughed. "You are extraordinary."

"I thought I was infuriating?"

"That, too."

"Hmm," she muttered. "I've never been one for pulling rank, but suddenly it's seeming a rather useful weapon in the arsenal…"

"You've forgotten the other way I described you last night."

The sudden tint in her cheeks belied her studied, "Oh?"

He moved a step closer. "You are beautiful, Kathryn Janeway. Incredibly beautiful. I could never say that before."

She was staring hard at his chest. "I'm not entirely sure you should be saying it now."

"Why not?"

She sighed. "Because I have a feeling we should be taking things at a snail's pace, and what you do to me when you say things like that is frankly not conducive."

He grinned as the spark in his belly turned into a full flame. "'What I do to you'?" he repeated, taking another step forward, so close now that his hands brushed her arms. He ran his fingers gently over her skin, remembering how it had felt to trace his fingers down her back.

She looked up at him with narrowed eyes. "There's no need to look so smug."

"I'm not. I've got nothing to be smug about. I believe I've already told you what you do to me."

"Oh, for God's sake," she said suddenly, her eyes fixed on his lips. "Please just kiss me before I crawl out of my skin."

It turned out that seven years of anticipation made for quite an astounding first kiss and moreover, the levels of passion Kathryn had been hiding under her uniform were more than even he had speculated on.

Later, they completed the walk to the restaurant hand-in-hand. The sensation was strange to Chakotay – getting used to the feel of other fingers linked between his, finding the way most comfortable for both of them. That it was Kathryn beside him, laughing and joking, teasing and talking – he could hardly take it in. And yet they seemed to fit. The tension was gone. His nerves had dissipated. They sat at one of the ramshackle benches and played the 'I like…' game like two teenagers meeting for the first time, eating and talking and simply being until the sun had long set and the stars were so bright above them that they could name the constellations from where they sat.

"Do you want to come in?" she asked, when they arrived at the door to her apartment. Mark had lent it to her, Kathryn had told him earlier. It was hers for as long as she needed it, but she was looking for somewhere permanent. She was leaning against the lintel, the light in the hallway behind her refracting through the fabric of her skirt, her legs tantalisingly outlined as lithe shadows beneath.

He sighed. "I don't know if I should. I don't know if I can promise to take things… slowly… if I do."

She smiled at him. It was slow and heated. Then she shrugged. "I told you," she said, softly, "any decisions tonight are yours. Tomorrow… that might be a different story."

Kathryn disappeared inside, leaving the door open and Chakotay standing on the doorstep. He turned and looked up at the stars, almost clear and close enough to touch.

The door began to swing slowly shut.

He stopped it with one hand.

[END]