Disclaimer: Star Trek belongs to Paramount/CBS/not me. No copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: This one was written for Delwin, whose help and encouragement over the last two and a bit years have not only made me a better writer, but have played a significant part in making my writing endeavours so thoroughly enjoyable. Thank you, my friend.

Many thanks to Sareki02 for beta reading this, for quite rightly telling me (amongst other things) that it needed 'more B'Elanna' towards the end, and for coming up with the title. Also to Missyhissy3 for reading the more-or-less-final draft and making further helpful comments.

Summary: What exactly happened in the lead up to 'The Swarm'? Torres, Paris, special guest. Proto-P/T.

Rating: T

Advance and Retreat

He was there again, leaning back against a bulkhead next to the antimatter stream coil monitoring station, muscular arms crossed casually across his chest as he chatted with Crewman Dell. It was the third time in as many days she'd caught him lingering in engineering – the umpteenth time that she'd found his gaze wandering her way only for it to snap back to the face of whomever he was talking to when he noted that she'd noticed his attention. Flattering as the situation was, it had become a little monotonous. And embarrassing. If Dalby and Tabor didn't wipe those knowing smirks off their faces in the next ten seconds, B'Elanna might be tempted to do it for them.

Not that, if she had to have a secret (or not-so-secret) admirer, Ensign Freddy Bristow would have been low on her list of choices – far from it, in fact. Bristow was more than easy to look at. Tall and athletic, with sparkling blue eyes and a bright smile that could almost inspire the same in a Vulcan, he had no shortage of admirers on Voyager himself. B'Elanna had borne witness to both Golwat and Swinn flirting quite shamelessly with him in the recent past. It was to see Swinn that B'Elanna had initially assumed Bristow was finding excuses to hang around in engineering. But then his intentions had started to become clear. Or perhaps not his intentions exactly, but his true focus. What he intended was still anybody's guess. If speaking with B'Elanna was his goal then why didn't he just get on with it? An Edosian slug would move faster.

It had all started, B'Elanna supposed, on that away mission to gather edible plants from an uninhabited M-class planet last week. As the ranking officer she had been nominally in command, though Baytart had piloted the Sacajawea and Neelix had taken the lead as far as harvesting procedures were concerned. B'Elanna had only gone along because Tom Paris had claimed that there was something amiss with that particular shuttle's starboard thrusters, maintaining that something had "felt off" with the way the shuttle handled the last time he'd flown it – even though no readings had shown up outside of normal operating parameters in a barrage of diagnostics B'Elanna had ordered back on Voyager.

Paris, as she'd expected, had been imagining things. Throughout the shuttle's launch and later as craft and crew had descended through the M-class planet's atmosphere, B'Elanna had sat aft beside Bristow, scrutinising the lists of propulsion stats churned out by the computer on a PADD she'd jacked in to the primary dorsal ODN node. Everything had checked out perfectly and, when she'd interrogated Baytart, Paris's deputy had supported her conclusions. After Baytart had made a smooth, textbook landing, all four members of the away team had ventured outside into the balmy, sweet-scented air. B'Elanna had joined the others in pulling tubers (that, thankfully, looked and smelled nothing like the ubiquitous leola root) out of the sandy red soil. Then Neelix had suggested that the dazzling turquoise fruits hanging in thick clumps from a row of purple-leaved trees a hundred metres to the south might prove suitable for sauce making and preserves. Bristow had volunteered to collect some – he was the only one of the team with any chance of reaching up to the fruit-bearing branches unaided. B'Elanna, eager to escape the incredibly dull conversation proceeding between Neelix and Baytart that revolved around the nutritional properties of Porakan eggs, had sprinted to Bristow's side.

He'd seemed startled, at first, then had visibly relaxed as she'd told him that climbing trees had been one of her favourite childhood pastimes. The words 'my' and 'childhood' strung together weren't freely used by her in conversation with those she wasn't close to. But the times she'd spent exploring the woods around Kessik IV's main settlement had been blissful, and, what's more, tree climbing was one human pastime that her mother had approved of. Imbued with rarely felt nostalgia, B'Elanna had laughed – in a polite but not overfamiliar manner – as Bristow had promised that he'd catch her should she fall (which sounded like something she'd expect Tom Paris to say, though she had no doubt that Bristow could indeed catch her with those bulging biceps). Then, Starfleet health and safety regs be damned, she and Bristow had spent the next twenty minutes efficiently gathering enough of the fruit – which, up close, resembled leathery Bolian guavas – to fill both their backpacks and an additional container that Bristow had brought with him from the shuttle. Neelix had unveiled the first batch of his 'Mystery Fruit Surprise' just earlier today. Gerron and Chell had said it was the best thing that the Talaxian had concocted since his Alfarian tripe and firenut sandwiches. B'Elanna herself had found the gelatinous dessert surprisingly delicious and had devoured an entire bowlful. She found herself craving another helping of it now.

The fruit gathering had been thirsty work. Afterwards, they'd sat in companionable silence under the shade of the trees to take on some water. Watching as Neelix and Baytart still dithered around in the heat of the strengthening sun, Bristow had grown restless, eager to offer them aide. B'Elanna had told him to relax, that he'd earned his respite and she'd make sure to mention his efforts in her mission report. With that, he'd beamed her one of those trademark smiles and she'd hoped that the blush she felt warming her cheeks wasn't visible. It was a reflex reaction: it didn't mean anything at all.

At the antimatter stream coil monitoring station, Bristow and Dell were joined by Lyndsey Ballard. Dell clapped Bristow on the shoulder and gestured with crossed fingers before walking off in the direction of the warp core. Ballard took Dell's place at the console as Bristow, responding to something said to him by Ballard, ran a hand across his close-cropped blond hair, straightened, and then turned, strolling towards the exit doors where he hesitated, his back to B'Elanna.

Sensing that now, finally, Bristow might make his intentions clear, B'Elanna took a few paces to her left, further from the nearest potential eavesdroppers. Feigning fascination with a power consumption analysis on the nearest monitor, she sensed Bristow's tentative approach and waited.

And waited some more.

Losing all patience, she twisted around to face him, causing him to flinch and jerk back a step. Then, on a whim – astounded, actually, by the words poised to trip off her tongue – she took a breath and said, "Ensign. I've been meaning to catch up with you."

His smooth, line-free forehead creased into a frown. "You have?"

She hadn't.

"Harry tells me you're a first-rate parisses squares player. One of the best in his year at the Academy." Instantly, she regretted her phrasing. She'd made it sound like she'd been purposefully enquiring, but, in reality, she'd been chatting with Harry yesterday about how she'd never played parisses squares before Voyager and Harry had been the first to mention Freddy Bristow. Had it been some kind of ploy? Surely not from Harry…

Bristow nodded, the frown fading fast and all awkwardness disappearing from his posture. "Sure. I know how to handle an ion mallet."

In for a penny… "So," she cleared her throat, "how about a game later?"

He twitched an eyebrow.

B'Elanna narrowed her gaze. "I can hold my own on a squares court. You don't need to worry that I won't be a challenge for you." She really should have waited a little longer to find out what the hell it was he'd wanted. For all she knew he'd been hanging around working up the nerve to report another malfunction with the weapons locker seals in the armoury. If he was, then his reticence was understandable. She'd lost her temper quite theatrically with Ayala the last time he'd come down to inform her they were jammed up yet again.

But that was not what her instincts were leading her to believe as far as Freddy Bristow was concerned. And her instincts when it came to the attentions of human males were usually right on the mark, a consequence of her half-Klingon heritage. She was hyperaware of his dilated pupils and his rapid intakes of breath. Both those signs could be attributed to anxiety from any particular cause, but there was something else – something not visually observable but nonetheless detectable. Pheromones, perhaps? She'd never been able to discuss such matters with her mother, and, in any case, when it came to those only part-Klingon there was a great deal of phenotypic variation.

"Oh, I'm sure you'd be a challenge," Bristow replied, adding quickly, "On the squares court, I mean. I'd love a game."

"Then how about tonight at twenty-one hundred? I have some holodeck time booked." Time she'd planned to spend sitting on an idyllic beach in virtual Tahiti with just Rorg, M'Nea, and a large glass of Ktarian Merlot for company. But she did enjoy parisses squares. And with Bristow she'd get her fix of attractive scenery…

"Just the two of us?" he asked, not an illogical question given that parisses squares was usually played in teams of four. The tone of his voice echoed that of a kid who'd just been told that Christmas was coming early. He was interested all right.

B'Elanna shrugged. "I was thinking that we'd play alongside holograms."

"Oh, holograms are fine with me. The entire Federation cup winning squad of the Tokyo Raptors is in the database. Or what about the record-breaking late 2360s era San Francisco Blues?"

Definitely not the latter.

"Why don't you choose a few of the Raptors? I'm sure you know better than me who'd make for a good line-up."

"Absolutely. I'll get right on it, as soon as I take my next break." And so, having evidently got what he'd wanted, Bristow turned on his heels and left, an unequivocal spring in his step, leaving her wondering just what the hell she was getting herself into.

And why.

###

Bristow sagged against the wall of the squares court, one hand clutching his ribs as the other waved his ion mallet in a sign of surrender. "I just need a minute," he gasped. "That last stroke took me a little off guard."

B'Elanna abandoned her offensive, her holographic teammates following her cue to retreat from Bristow's shell-shocked form. The holodeck safeties should have softened her mallet as it made contact with his body – or, at least, would have softened the mallet so as not to impart a bone-breaking amount of force. But it was about the twentieth time this evening that she'd landed a blow to his chest, so perhaps he was developing some bruising now.

It wasn't that he was a terrible player. But, where her smaller size and half-Klingon musculature aided her ability to quickly change direction and to duck under most of his blocking moves, his powerfully built body was slow and not particularly well coordinated. The shots that he'd aimed at the goalmouth had packed a real punch, but they'd lacked any finesse and, more often than not, had been slightly wide of the target. Tactically, she would have expected more from a security officer too. She always thought two steps ahead, anticipating how her holographic teammates would deploy in reaction to her manoeuvres. But Bristow would only play the ball in front of him, with no apparent thought for what might follow. He'd been unintentionally embarrassing her for the last few days and now, equally inadvertently, she was getting some revenge. That didn't sit right with her somehow, and she took no pleasure in making him look so inept. She'd never really noticed before that out of uniform he seemed so … young.

"We can stop if you'd like," she suggested, lowering her mallet to the floor. "We have played four sets already and," she added without checking the actual time, "it's getting late." Though it didn't feel late to her at all. In fact, she felt unusually energetic and not remotely fatigued despite a busy day.

He glanced down at his wristwatch – how very retro – then back up at her. "Don't you have the holodeck until twenty-three hundred? It's only just twenty-two thirty. I can go for another set."

If it was winning that bothered him, then she admired his spirit. But his chances on that front were already scuppered. She'd won three out of four sets, and there was definitely not enough time to play another three in order for Bristow to potentially beat that total. Though she didn't think pride was his primary concern.

With a poorly disguised wince, he straightened and lifted his mallet back into a play ready position. "You just got me in a sensitive spot, that's all."

Not in his most sensitive spot. That had happened way back in set two – just the once, but once had been enough to make his eyes water. Hadn't he heard of protective body armour? Not that he was going to need that part of his anatomy this evening – not with her, anyway... Any transient and fantastical thoughts she'd entertained along those lines had gone completely out the airlock the minute he'd shown up at the holodeck looking as youthful as an Academy freshman, doused in a blend of cologne that she could swear she'd smelled in the past on Neelix.

"All right," she said. "We'll continue. If you're sure."

"Honestly, I'm certain."

Talk about a glutton for punishment. But, from her perspective, it would be a shame to waste thirty minutes of valuable holodeck time, and she couldn't exactly dismiss him and stay in here alone. That would look callous. And what other program could they run for a half hour? She didn't want to suggest anything more sedate. It would provide too much opportunity for conversation and might get his hopes up. Depending on exactly how ambitious those hopes were, things could get really awkward. Even more awkward than they were at present.

Climbing to take a position halfway up the centre ramp, B'Elanna gestured to T'Vren of the Tokyo Raptors, her teammate who was currently in possession of the ball. "Let's resume from where we were before the last play," B'Elanna instructed the hologram, before glancing down at Bristow.

He was beaming.

T'Vren began an attacking move with Kirk Rand (Earth player of the year in 2370, according to Bristow) providing support. B'Elanna stayed where she was, waiting for a pass to come her way while hoping that Bristow might finally get his act together and provide somewhat more of a challenge.

Just what had she been hoping to get out of this evening? It was a question she'd been pondering since she'd watched Bristow skip out of engineering. Was it a couple of hours of distraction from her usual routine? It wasn't as if her life was boring. Every week there was some new alien species ready to blast Voyager into oblivion, or kidnap her crew, or mess with their minds. There was never enough time between incidents for stagnation to set in. And her social life wasn't exactly non-existent, so it wasn't loneliness.

Or was it? Definitely not the loneliness that comes from utter solitude: there was no chance of that on a small ship like Voyager. On the contrary, sometimes she felt desperate for breathing room. For even one single day away from questions, orders, and debates. But, if she was truly honest with herself, there were other occasions when she had begun to sense that something was missing from her generally full and eventful life.

T'Vren lost the ball to one of Bristow's teammates – Orth Jorah, the gangly Trill. B'Elanna set off to close on Jorah, but the Trill threw a high spin pass to Bristow before she could land a tackle. Bristow caught it above his head, then fired the ball towards the goal with his usual inelegant technique. This time it worked out for him, the ball ricocheting off the rim of the target and into the scoring zone.

"Nice shot," she called out instinctively.

Another dazzling smile came her way in lieu of a verbal reply.

B'Elanna took the restart, Bristow soon sucked in by a dummy pass she made towards the touchline on her left. Sidestepping Jorah, she used the ramp to gain some height before launching the ball towards T'Vren, now poised on the centre square. The Vulcan woman took on the attack, Bristow sprinting to aide his defenders. B'Elanna stayed back for the moment and observed.

Despite her satisfactory social life, she had noticed that her long established friendships were somewhat in decline. She and Chakotay had grown apart to an extent in the last couple of years. Although he'd always been her superior as well as a friend and mentor, the inequality in their ranks was far more pronounced within the hierarchy of Starfleet than it had been in the less formal environment of the Maquis. He'd had to put some professional distance between himself and his Maquis comrades, just as she, as chief engineer, had also been forced to conduct herself in a less familiar manner with her subordinates.

Bendera and Hogan were gone, Tabor and Jor spent nearly all of their off duty time alone together, and Ayala – while she still got along with him just fine, he wasn't the same man that he'd been at the start of Voyager's journey. But she did now count as friends some of those from the Starfleet crew – like Harry (always easy company) and Nicoletti – and then there was Kes and even Neelix, up to a point. And Tom: he was a friend now, wasn't he? Not that they always saw eye to eye – indeed, they very often didn't, but he'd changed so much for the better in the last two years. She could see in him now many of the admirable qualities that Harry had perceived from the very beginning. Yes, she could consider Tom her friend.

So, what had she thought an evening alone in the holodeck with Freddy Bristow would give her? She wasn't here to satisfy an overpowering craving for physical intimacy. She was only half-Klingon, not such a slave to the most primal biological drives as those of pure Klingon blood. But neither was she looking to start a lasting romantic relationship. Was she? Unlike many of the crew, she wasn't missing the presence of a significant other in her life. She'd never had any kind of long-term relationship except for Max Burke at the Academy – and that had only lasted a few months, so 'long-term' was stretching it.

Whatever was going on in her head, one thing was clear: Freddy Bristow, beneath his appealing façade, was not remotely appealing relationship material. Not for her. He might have been only a couple of years younger than she was, but it seemed like she had a couple of decades more emotional baggage and maturity. And, actually, now that she'd seen those biceps unclothed (he was wearing one of those sleeveless jerseys that only the professional squares players favoured), Bristow did look a little too muscular than was quite natural for a human. And there was something about his hairline in that it seemed too close to his eyebrows somehow... There weren't many people who looked better in a Starfleet uniform than in civilian clothes, but Freddy Bristow was one of them.

Jorah toppled T'Vren. Bristow rescued the loose ball, but was promptly relieved of it by B'Elanna's fourth teammate, an Australian man whose name she couldn't recall. It was time she got back to the action. She felt jittery just guarding the rear, unable to keep her feet stationary. Racing into the thick of it, she called to Rand, now in possession, to pass her the ball. Rand's pass was sloppy and the ball bounced a metre in front of her. But she managed to gather it, and lifted her mallet as Bristow closed in.

She didn't need to use it. A sidestep was enough to get her in the clear, Bristow's last ditch effort to impede her with an ankle tap ending only with him sprawled flat on his face on the floor, a fact she didn't notice until she turned after scoring the equaliser. He was up before she could get to him, primed for more punishment. And so the set continued.

When the final klaxon sounded, the scores were tied at three points apiece: not an entirely accurate reflection of the teams' performances in this last set, but a result that B'Elanna could live with. Bristow had indeed dug deep to end the night on a more respectable note, though he looked now like he might be regretting his efforts.

Limping to meet her, he balanced his mallet between his knees then reached out with his empty right hand. B'Elanna shook it with her own, deferring to etiquette, but extricated herself from his clammy grip as soon as politely able.

"I've been a little off my game tonight," he said, scratching at the stubble on his scalp. "Sorry. First date nerves, I guess."

Shit. "Um, Freddy … you meant first match nerves, right?"

His sunny demeanour clouded over. "Oh, yeah, sure… I meant … first match nerves. That this is the first time we've played squares together. So, uh, I think I was a little nervous."

"Great. I'm glad we've got that clarified."

"Absolutely."

It seemed like he'd got the message. As they said their goodnights he didn't press her for a post-game drink or suggest they hold a re-match at some point in the future. He had a simple crush on her, that was all, and he'd soon get over it. He didn't know her well enough to have developed any serious feelings: in two years they'd hardly ever been in the same room. It took more than one short and straightforward away mission to build up a genuine connection.

And while Bristow hobbled off towards his nearby quarters (though she was sure once she'd gone he'd be taking the next lift up to visit sickbay), she headed straight for the mess hall, that craving for Neelix's 'Mystery Fruit Surprise' having failed to subside.

###

Freddy collapsed onto the sofa in his quarters, too exhausted to first grab an isotonic energy drink from the replicator. After parting from B'Elanna outside the holodeck, he'd first made his way to sickbay, hoping that the holographic Doctor could treat the painful bruising on his chest – and, possibly, offer a quick fix for the cramp he was experiencing in his hamstrings. Then, just as Freddy had finished explaining his problems to the tricorder-wielding hologram, Tuvok and Ayala had arrived, half-dragging and half-carrying an inebriated Chell between them, the Bolian enveloped in what looked like a non-Starfleet issue bedsheet.

A sheet bearing a print similar to one of Neelix's more lurid Talaxian outfits.

And then there had been Neelix himself, following behind anxiously in a bathrobe. Freddy, feeling more than a little bewildered at that point – wondering if, possibly, he might have a touch of concussion – had been ushered out, the Doctor assuring him that his injuries weren't serious and he could come back in the morning should he need to. He'd passed a green-faced Gerron on entering the turbolift, Tabor appearing equally worse for wear on the younger man's heels. Something, clearly, was afoot.

He really should get up and do some stretches, but he couldn't will himself to move a single aching muscle. B'Elanna had whizzed around the squares court like a pro and she hadn't even raised a sweat. And here he was more battered than he'd been since his Academy days.

He'd faced aggressive opponents in the past. Games in Earth's intercollegiate parisses squares league were played on real rather than holographic courts, with solid and unyielding duranium ion mallets. On one memorable occasion when the Academy's freshmen had played the notoriously hard-hitting Oxford University senior team, Freddy had fractured a fibula. But even after that brutal encounter with a fine art student's mallet he hadn't felt quite this … hammered.

When B'Elanna had asked him to the holodeck (he would have worked up the nerve if she'd given him five more seconds) he'd felt elated. They'd gotten along so well on their recent away mission. He'd been certain from then that she liked him – as in liked him. And, despite her assertion that they hadn't been on a date, he still wasn't entirely convinced that she wasn't interested. Aggression – wasn't that how Klingons showed they were attracted to a potential mate? And B'Elanna had hit him multiple times, with some of those blows hardly necessary and landing a little late. The referee had even penalised her for two of them. But if that was what she was like during a friendly squares match then… He wasn't sure he could take having heavy objects thrown at him. Wasn't that something else that Klingons did? Sure, she was only half-Klingon, but he didn't think he wanted anything thrown at him by her ever again, heavy or otherwise.

The women that he worked with daily in security were so boring though. He'd been on a holodeck date (at least he'd thought it was a date…) with Crewman Jarvis to watch the 2364 Timbuktu Olympics, and all she'd rambled on about was how fun the Rigelian mud wrestling looked and how they should try it sometime. But Voyager's security team did things like that almost daily thanks to Lieutenant Tuvok's affinity for holding self-defence training drills in extreme holographic environments.

No, Freddy didn't want reminders of his duties while he was fraternising. He wanted diversion, a peek into the more exciting world of the scientists and engineers. He'd thought B'Elanna could have been the one for him, but there were a few others that had caught his eye. Lieutenant Nicoletti might be his next best option. She was nice: a little old for him, maybe, but he didn't mind that. And, if it turned out Nicoletti wasn't interested, there was always Ensign Harper or Ensign Jetal. Or Ballard, even though she scared him a little.

Engineering was still the place to be.

###

Two days later.

He was there again, standing just inside the blast doors to engineering, purportedly reading from a PADD. How many times had Tom seen him down here these last few weeks? More times than could be explained by routine shipboard duties. Freddy Bristow was a security officer, not an engineer or technician. When Voyager was cruising through uneventful open space he should be up in the armoury polishing his phaser rifle or participating in training drills or working out in the gym or on the holodeck. Whatever it was Tuvok's security contingent did during their on-duty-downtime.

It had started, Tom surmised, last month when Neelix had asked the Captain's permission to take an away team to forage for edible supplies – foodstuffs that the chef might use to 'liven up' the menu from the galley. Tom had been supposed to go along and pilot the shuttle. He'd been looking forward to the mission – after all, B'Elanna would be along for the ride. But Kes had been held up in airponics and the Doctor had asked for some help in administering routine but time-sensitive vaccinations to the crew. As a qualified field medic, Tom had been nominated for the task in sickbay, and Baytart had been charged with the flying duties.

Something must have happened down on that planet. Tom had asked Baytart, but Baytart was clueless. All he could recall was that Bristow and B'Elanna had wandered off into some trees and they'd been gone for ages, B'Elanna looking somewhat dishevelled on their return. A subtle enquiry to Neelix had yielded nothing concrete. Fruit-picking was all the Talaxian had to offer.

Tom knew better than to draw any inventive conclusions from Baytart's summary. And, in any case, Bristow didn't seem like B'Elanna's type at all. He was too eager to please: like a bulked up version of Harry. Certainly not … adventurous? enough for what Tom imagined were her preferences. But what did he really know. B'Elanna had shown no obvious romantic interest in any of Voyager's crew nor any of the aliens they'd met along the way. At least not that Tom knew of and not until now. She'd been living like a Tabern monk as far as he could tell.

Though B'Elanna didn't seem any different since the away mission, Bristow had been wandering about in a semi-permanent daydream. Tom noticed these things and pretty soon, if Bristow wasn't careful, Tuvok would notice too. Rumour had it that Bristow and B'Elanna had spent time – alone – on the holodeck a couple of nights ago. Shortly afterwards, Bristow had been seen entering sickbay.

One thing was for certain, the fruit that Neelix had obtained from that planet had livened up the menu from the galley. And not just the menu but the corridors on deck three. Twelve hours after eating an abundance of ice cream smothered in Neelix's 'Mystery Fruit Surprise', Chell had been found wandering in the corridor outside Neelix's quarters, naked as the day he was born and 'singing' a Talaxian love song. Not long afterwards, Golwat had propositioned Chakotay over the pool table in Sandrine's.

On further investigation, it turned out that the fruit contained a range of psychoactive chemicals that acted as stimulants and lowered social inhibitions in susceptible species. Thankfully, humans appeared to be able to detoxify the chemicals very effectively. Neelix and Kes had also suffered no symptoms and the Vulcans hadn't indulged in the concoction. But Voyager's four Bolians and three Bajorans had all eaten significant helpings. Naomi Wildman had apparently only swallowed a single spoonful of the stuff, but she'd then not slept for twenty-four hours straight, much to her mother's dismay. The Captain had ordered the Doc to look into why initial tricorder scans had passed the fruit as fit for general consumption. "It had damn well better not happen again," she'd snapped at the hologram, before rushing out of the chaos that was sickbay and leaving Kes and Tom to don hazmat suits and help deal with the multiple cases of hangover-induced vomiting.

Tom spied B'Elanna emerging from her office, and wondered if she'd sampled any of the fruit herself. She saw Bristow, frowned slightly and then sighed with exaggerated heaviness as she spotted Tom. "Ready to head out?" Tom asked her, smiling.

She approached, stopped right in front of him, and crossed her arms tightly across her chest in a way he found highly alluring. "You know this is just another figment of your imagination. Like that so-called 'wobble' with the Sacajawea's thrusters."

"Time will tell. Think of it as an excuse to go for a joyride. Just you, me and the stars."

She narrowed her eyes, taken aback for a moment, it seemed. "And galactic background noise," she eventually re-joined with a hint of a smirk.

"They were energy signatures," Tom protested, falling into step beside her as she started for the exit. "I'm sure of it."

"Hmm."

They had nothing to lose by investigating. Voyager would be stopping in a nearby asteroid belt to take on iridium. He and B'Elanna would catch up with their comrades later in the day.

"Oh, come on. You'll enjoy an excursion." He didn't wait for her response before continuing, "Don't you ever wish you had some windows down here?" And he noted that she wasn't all that subtle when, on passing Bristow (who, actually, now looked to be checking out Susan Nicoletti), she deliberately diverted her gaze.

"There's nothing to see out of the window," she said, as they made it into the corridor. "We're on a starship usually travelling at warp, not cruising on a … pleasure boat."

Pleasure boat – now there was an idea. Maybe she'd enjoy a leisurely sail on Lake Como. He knew she liked relaxing near the water: Harry had told him that she often ran a Tahitian or a Mediterranean beach program during her holodeck time. Tom had developed the Lake Como program himself using a combination of geographical information from Voyager's database and features he recalled from visiting the region when he was studying in neighbouring France. He was sure he'd like sailing even better with a companion – especially a companion as fascinating as B'Elanna Torres.

Choosing not to offer a rebuttal for now – she was right: the view at warp could be somewhat tedious – he instead said, "I think we'll take the Cochrane. Is that OK with you?"

Nodding her assent, she stepped into the turbolift, calling for deck ten once Tom had joined her. "Any particular reason for your choice?" she queried, worried, perhaps, that he'd discovered some new shuttle fault for her to analyse.

He hadn't. "The Cochrane's the least temperamental," he told her, savouring the look of exasperated amusement she endowed him with.

Sailing on Lake Como… As they exited the turbolift, Tom pondered how he might weave that subject casually into conversation. What did he have to lose? He'd test the waters, so to speak. Throw a hint about the program into conversation while on the mission – with or without an additional query regarding Freddy Bristow.

Arriving in the shuttle bay, he decided then that he should put those thoughts aside while he focused on the pre-flight checks. It was a good thing B'Elanna wasn't often on the bridge. He'd recently started to find her presence somewhat of a distraction.

A very pleasant distraction.

…

Despite the scepticism B'Elanna had expressed to Tom over the existence of those energy signatures, she was beginning to appreciate the prospect of a break from engineering – from Voyager. And, on this short and straightforward away mission, she wouldn't be inadvertently helping to intoxicate herself and eight of her crewmates.

She'd been a little taken aback at Tom's flirtatious 'joyride' comment, but that was just Tom being Tom, wasn't it? Nevertheless, knowing what she knew about the Cochrane, she felt it necessary to establish some ground rules for this mission – to save her ears, if nothing else.

They reached the shuttle's open rear hatch. "I don't suppose your choice of the Cochrane has anything to do with those twentieth century music files you've loaded into its memory banks," she enquired, enjoying the sight of Tom's jaw dropping down towards the deck.

"How do you know about that?" he asked, stepping aside to let her board the ramp before he did.

"Harry can't keep a secret. Though I think, actually, he assumed you'd gone through the proper channels and gotten the chief engineer's authorisation first."

"I need authorisation for that?"

She took her seat at the co-pilot's console, started to power up the displays she would need. "Technically."

Tom sat down beside her, an eyebrow raised. "And you're such a stickler for trivial regulations."

A fair point, and it drew from her a smile which Tom returned.

"I guess I can put up with a little background music for a while." She swivelled to face him squarely. "As long as you don't start singing."

He didn't miss a beat. "Worried I might serenade you, Lieutenant?"

She hadn't been…

"Don't worry. It's all Earth music. 1950s rock and roll. No Talaxian love songs."

Like she needed a reminder of that damn toxic fruit.

When news of the chaos in sickbay had filtered up to the mess hall, she'd been hunting for a spoon behind the galley counter, about to serve herself up another helping of the food that would turn out to be responsible. Tuvok had arrived to quarantine the suspected culprit, a flustered Billy Telfer on hand to assist him in that task.

Later, she'd made some discreet enquires, asking the Doctor in an offhand manner whether ingesting the fruit could have 'put strange ideas into susceptible people's heads'. It didn't work like that, he'd told her: the psychoactive compounds would only make it more likely for a person to act on impulses that were already lingering in the background of their minds. (He'd phrased his explanation using a lot of pharmacological and psychological gibberish, but Kes had been helpful and translated.) The Doctor had assured B'Elanna that, as she was a fully grown half-human, he wasn't at all concerned that she'd suffered any intoxication. It wasn't impossible, he'd conceded, but he was confident that her liver produced enough of some enzyme that he named to render the psychoactive compounds harmless. 'Mystery Fruit Surprise' had been, nevertheless (and without anyone hearing a single word of protest from Neelix), permanently excluded from the galley menu.

Tom starting working through the pre-flight, and she broke off from her own task to assist him in the protocols, unfocused all the while.

The unfortunate fact was that she'd never really know how much the fruit had influenced her behaviour. Her human 'half' had no doubt protected her from the worst of its potential consequences, thank Kahless. But as a stimulant, at least, she was sure it had had a noticeable effect, although, due to her larger body mass, she hadn't suffered such protracted insomnia as little Naomi Wildman, and her own restlessness could well have been adrenaline-induced. The fruit's influence on her social inhibitions was much more difficult to estimate. Even if she had been intoxicated then it seemed that she must have wanted, on some level, to invite Freddy Bristow to the holodeck, knowing that he had a crush on her and how easily he could suspect that she liked him in that way too. Or maybe she'd just had the subconscious desire to put herself in a date-like scenario, and if Bristow hadn't been so obviously available she would have found someone else to invite along.

One thing she did know was that she didn't want to go on anything even vaguely resembling a date again anytime soon.

"All set?" Tom asked, watching as she finally finished configuring the shuttle's sensors to the necessary settings, the bay outside depressurising ready for the space doors to slide open.

She nodded. "If there's anything out there we'll find it."

Obtaining final clearance from the bridge, Tom engaged the manoeuvring thrusters and pointed the shuttle's nose towards the widening darkness of space. "Then let's get started."