Author's Note:

Jumping onto the Icheb/Naomi bandwagon! My husband just got me all 7 seasons of ST:V on DVD! Yay!

OK, first attempt at present tense first person. Bear with me.

(And layafel, if you read this, just so I don't feel guilty, I just want to say that I will get back to Sarra and Weiryn. Just a bit blocked on that right now )

A Possibility

Fine strands of strawberry blond hair fall into my eyes as I stretch further into my closet, my fingertips just brushing the damn duffle bag that I have somehow managed to store away in the least accessible space of my dorm. My feet almost slip on the chair I am using as a ladder and in trying to compensate, I lose my balance altogether and land, gracelessly but thankfully, on my bed. I just lay there. Overwhelmed.

God! I've been trying to pack for the last leave I'll get before my last term in the Academy and literally everything has been going wrong. First, my roommate came home last night in tears after she found out that creepy Krespin was cheating on her, then, after handling that whole thing last night, this morning Captain Chakotay sends a communiqué that my parents won't be able to meet me at HQ and I'll have to make my way to Voyager with one of the family on Earth. And now, I can't even pack. My exasperated and inarticulate expletive is answered by a deep male chuckle from my doorway. My hands fall away from my face and I prop myself up to take in a very amused Icheb standing there.

"Icheb!" I bounce up from the bed to hug him. I haven't seen him in over two years since he earned his commission to go on a deep space mission. Although why he was willing to be gone from home for so long is beyond me. Most of us tend to stick closer to home base, so to speak. But I guess, not really being from this quadrant could mean his ties weren't as tight. Why that thought slightly hurt, I didn't want to look at too closely.

For now, it is enough that he is here. My arms are around his neck, my toes barely touching the ground as his own arms come around me. He is over six feet now, almost a giant of a man, compared to the skinny teenage self I met almost 15 years ago. I missed him so much.

I turn my nose into his neck and give him a good sniff. "Whoa, Naomi!" he laughs and sets me a little apart from him. His warm eyes are taking me in, though there's a flash of something that sets my heart racing and his hands move up from my arms to my shoulders, sending a rush of excitement through me. I'm not entirely sure what all this is and then it's gone.

I feel unsettled. This is Icheb. He was the only person closest in age to me for so long and my rock in the excitement of coming back to the Alpha Quadrant, the debriefings, the dispersal of the only family I had ever known, the introduction to a father I hadn't met and the adjustment of living somewhere besides Voyager. His big hands are still on my shoulders, the warmth of them seeping into me. I smile up at him, wanting to cover up what is becoming an awkward moment and I'm beginning to suspect why that is. "What? Your sense of smell is one of the main perceptions that stimulate one's memory. I just wanted to make sure I hadn't forgotten you."

He gives his quiet Icheb laugh and shakes his head. His eyes move past me to take in the clothes on my bed and the general disarray of my quarters. "Still packing? You know our transport leaves in 15 minutes." He already is moving towards the fallen duffle bag and picks it up, placing it next to the pile on the bed. He methodically picks up the first piece of clothing and folds it neatly before sticking it in the bag.

The next article he selects, seemingly at random, is a pair of lacy red panties that I bought on a wild shopping spree a few months ago. His hand pauses in lifting it and I can feel my face flame as I fixate onto that scarlet piece of cloth while his dark eyes stare at me. I rush forward to jerkily grab it out of his hold and stuff it into the duffle bag. "Th-thanks, Icheb, but I think I can take over from here," I mumble as I angle the bag away from him and frantically pack.

I can't look at him and he just stands there. The man's practically a heater, the amount of body heat that is coming from him. And I can't seem to get my body to cool down. My frenzied movements are probably not helping.

After a few moments of silence, where the tension in the room has increased to the point that if I'd been a plasma manifold, I'd be leaking right now, Icheb speaks, tentatively. "Naomi…" I glance up at him and am arrested by the look in his eye, the one that had flashed briefly when he'd first come in. He doesn't say anything more but moves one hand upward as if to touch my face before he drops it and leans forward in slow increments towards me.

Oh my god, he's going to kiss me. Icheb. OK, I have to admit something here. I've held a torch for this guy for what seems like eons and not once has he showed any interest other than brotherly love for me. When he started dating when I was only 10 years old, I had been devastated. My mother and Seven, who'd become surrogate mother to Icheb, had been unable to console me for weeks. Then when I'd finally grown up enough to start garnering interest from boys, Icheb seemed to still see me as the 6 year old he'd met back in the Delta Quadrant. Not once, in all my girlish attempts at seduction—the flattering dresses, the loud recountings of my dates, the not-so-innocent-or-accidental brushes against him—had he reacted in any way that I wanted: no desire touched his brown eyes, no declarations of undying love, nada.

But now, in a completely unlikely moment, here was this beautiful man, with all that delicious heat and that look in his eyes, about to kiss me!

My eyes drift close on their own volition and I'm breathless with anticipation. I'm getting a tingle that starts at my toes and moves up to the top of my head. I feel electric. I feel like I'm in a cluster of wormholes where I can go anywhere I want in the galaxy and all I have to do to is move forward. I feel—

Unfulfilled.

Nothing has happened. I slowly open my eyes to find Icheb has turned away and is poking at the PADDs on my desk while I was standing there with my eyes closed like an idiot. Well. I'm beyond embarrassed. I wish that a portal would open up into the realm of Species 8472 so I can step through and die a horrible death.

He looks up and gives me a small uncomfortable smile. "I guess I'll leave you to packing then? Since you have it under control?"

I turn away to dejectedly put the rest of my things away as he moved back to the door. "Yeah." I don't look at him as he steps out.

I had always thought it was a possibility. Icheb and Naomi. But this, I don't know what to make of it.

Naomi. What had happened? Before walking into her room today, she'd been a little sister in my mind's eye, an innocent.

Then she'd wrapped her arms around me and brought her soft lithe body against mine and all the brotherly affection I'd had for her flew out the airlock, sucked into the vacuum of space, never to be seen again. Sure I had been eager to see her after so long away but this, this feeling, this desire had not been what I had been in anticipation of. Had I?

Then I had almost kissed her when she'd looked up at me with her big bright eyes, embarrassed over a scandalous piece of clothing. What was wrong with me? I was having the hardest time keeping my hands to myself and so I left before all sense of decency left me.

I stand outside her dorm and try to calm myself. This is something that has never entered my thoughts until now. Naomi and Icheb. A possibility?