Chapter 21—2369
The remaining few weeks of the summer term preceded much the same as the previous few, with a notable exception in a change of sleeping arrangements. Since Academy regulations and curfews were somewhat lax with upperclassmen during the summer term, there was no mandatory check-in to the dorms at night, freeing Cadet First Class B'Elanna Torres to sleep wherever she pleased, which was mostly in Lt. Tom Paris' apartment. Their days of staying in bed until noon were few and far between, however, as work and training schedules usually had them both out of bed early in the morning, but with their late afternoon runs and dinners together, the nights they didn't go to bed together were equally few and far between.
The first Saturday night in August, the last Saturday night before classes resumed on Monday, Paris and Torres were on their usual run through Marina Green, the largest park in the Marina District, close to the Academy grounds on the Presidio. They were deep in a conversation about vacation spots around Earth when Paris heard two distinctly familiar voices calling, "Tommy!"
"Oh, no," he muttered. "Keep running. Pretend you don't hear anything," he instructed Torres at her puzzled expression. Ignoring his commands, she turned her head, seeing two fairly attractive blond women on a picnic blanket near the play structure.
A minute later, he saw streaks of blond hair as the kids ran up to him. "Uncle Tommy! Come play with us!" they pleaded, struggling to catch up.
"Not fair," he muttered. "Well, they asked for it." Without any warning, he let out a loud war-cry, bending down to swoop up a small girl with curly blond hair, throwing her over his shoulder as she cried out in excitement. "Ready to meet my sisters?" he asked Torres with an ironic grin. She raised her eyebrows in reply and followed him to the picnic blanket, the five-year-old still squirming and giggling in his arms.
"I think you lost something, Syd," he said dryly, dangling the girl by her feet. She was now squealing to be let down, even as she was still giggling in excitement.
"Good thing you were around to find it," Lt. Commander Sydney Wyland replied, equally dry. "Now will you please put my daughter down before her face stays that red?"
He swung her into the air, earning him another squeal of delight before putting her down on her feet. She swayed slightly for a few seconds, then gave her uncle a quick hug and ran off to play with her brother and cousins. Paris watched in amusement for a moment before turning back to his sisters. "I didn't know either of you was going to be around."
Dr. Nichole Sanders shrugged a shoulder. "Syd and Jens are in from the Pathrind for a week, so Jason and I decided to bring the kids over for the weekend for some family bonding time."
"I suppose my invitation got lost in subspace," Paris replied with a smirk, crossing his arms over his chest.
Sanders smirked back. "No, midget. You probably just haven't opened it yet. I only messaged you an hour ago to let you know we were having dinner on the Green. Actually, when I saw you a few minutes ago, I thought you were coming to join us." Her eyes went from her brother to the petite half-Klingon next to him and back, a grin playing across her lips. "Mom said she thought you were seeing someone, but she had no idea who. Weird thing was, when she said that, Dad got this really strange look on his face, so I figured this has to be the first time Dad knows something that Mom doesn't."
"You told him?" Torres asked Paris in disbelief.
He gave her a 'yeah, right' look. "I was going to ask you that." She only shook her head in reply. Nicki was still watching them, amused.
"I'm Nicki," she finally interjected, offering her hand. "And that's Sydney. Has he told you the horror stories of his evil older sisters?"
"They weren't exactly horror stories," Torres said, sounding slightly uncertain. Both sisters laughed at this, to Torres' confusion. "B'Elanna Torres," she finally introduced.
Sanders continued to study her. "Would that be Lt. Torres, Ensign Torres…?"
Torres opened her mouth to reply, but Paris was faster. "And why do you care, Dr. Sanders?"
She shrugged. "I don't. Just curious. Anyway, I'm not sure about the state of the food stores, since four kids have already gone through it—I'm assuming you don't want the baby food—but let's see if we can scrounge up something for you." She immediately headed for the picnic basket, focused on the task of getting them something to eat, leaving Paris and Torres standing with Wyland.
"Lt. Commander Sydney Wyland," she introduced to Torres. "I'm the chief of security on the USS Pathrind."
"She doesn't need to hear your entire resume, Syd," Paris said dryly. "You could just say, 'it's nice to meet you.'"
She flushed slightly, but otherwise ignored her younger brother. "Are you stationed at R&D with Tom?"
Once again, Paris interjected before Torres had the opportunity to respond. "Believe it or not, Syd, most people have more interesting things to talk about than their jobs. How're the kids?"
Torres glared briefly at him, answering Wyland's question before she had the opportunity to answer his. "I'm an engineering major," she said. "At the Academy."
"Oh," Wyland replied, briefly arching her eyebrows at Paris. "So you're a cadet."
"We still have some fried chicken and potato salad," Nicki replied, carrying two containers of food. She sighed deeply at the glares between her siblings and the slightly confused expression on the cadet's face. "Stop fighting already. Tommy, B'Elanna, come get some food before Christopher decides he wants to eat again."
"We'll talk later," Wyland said to her brother.
"Not likely," Paris muttered under his breath.
She did manage to pull him aside about an hour later, while B'Elanna was in the middle of a conversation with Nicki about her pediatrics practice in Denver, Colorado. "You're an instructor, Tom," Commander Sydney Wyland hissed at him.
"He's not my instructor," Torres interjected, her hands on her hips and her chin raised to survey the taller woman. Paris startled slightly; he had been so busy leaning against a tree and glaring down at his sister to notice her approach.
Wyland sighed. "I'm sorry, B'Elanna, this has nothing to do with you. I was just pointing out the dangers of fraternization to my brother."
"It does have to do with me," Torres argued. "You're either implying that I'm too stupid to make the distinction between an officer and a cadet and therefore didn't know any better, or that I'm somehow trying to take advantage of some situation that doesn't exist by sleeping with an instructor. He's not the only one who chose to be in this relationship."
"Thanks, B'Elanna," Paris said with a grin, putting his arm around her shoulder and drawing her close to kiss her temple. Turning back to his sister, he smirked, remembering something. "Are you saying that any officer who dates a cadet is guilty of fraternization?"
Wyland flushed, her eyes narrowing into a glare. "You're an ass, Tom," she hissed before stalking off.
"What was that about?" Torres asked in wonder.
Paris shrugged. "Nothing, really. Jens graduated the year before her, so technically, he was an officer dating a cadet. You ready to go home?" He didn't even realize until he said it how much it sounded like it was their home, and how little that bothered him.
"Sure," Torres replied. "Nicki asked if we were going to your parents' tomorrow night for dinner."
"Well, you've already met my father, sisters, nieces, and nephews. Might as well finish it off and meet the rest," he replied with a quirky grin. "I think the only ones left are my mother and brothers-in-law."
They were quiet as they jogged back to Paris' apartment, where they both sat down to their separate projects from work. It wasn't until they were getting ready for bed that Torres brought up the incident in the park. "Maybe Sydney has a point," she said out the blue.
Paris frowned as he tried to figure out what she was talking about. "That's not likely," he said lightly. "I've known her for twenty-four years and she very rarely has a point."
"I mean about the fraternization thing," Torres replied. He opened his mouth to protest, but she beat him to it. "We both know it isn't improper, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who wouldn't see it that way."
"Don't worry about what Syd says," Paris told her. "She's a security chief. Her job is to memorize esoteric Starfleet protocols and make sure everyone is following each to the letter. The officers who would think anything inappropriate is going on are few and far between."
She frowned. "We should still be careful about appearances, especially with classes starting on Monday," she went on. "Maybe we shouldn't be running together in the afternoons."
He sighed. "B'Elanna, you're blowing this out of proportion," he protested. Seeing the beginnings of an angry frown on her face, he sighed again, knowing already that this would be an argument he would lose. "What is this about? Are you really that concerned about a few words from my older sister?" Her jaw set, she averted her eyes, staring out the window behind him. "Sydney may be a bit of a bitch sometimes, but she didn't mean anything against you personally. Believe me, all of her protests about our relationship are that I'm a lieutenant and you're a cadet."
"It's not Sydney," she finally said. She sighed. "I'm going to be applying for a posting at R&D with the Warp Technologies Development Group after graduation."
"That's a pretty prestigious posting," he said, not at all surprised, considering the extent of her work on warp drive mechanics in Admiral Yasinski's lab. "I don't see what that has to do with Sydney, though."
"Nothing," she snapped before closing her eyes. He knew she was silently counting to ten, trying to stay calm. With a deep breath, she continued. "It has nothing to do with Sydney. I just want to make sure people know I'm applying because I'm qualified, not because of our relationship."
"What does our relationship have to do with anything?" Paris asked, now completely confused. "Just because I work at R&D? There are thousands of officers who work for R&D. I doubt they would even notice."
"It's not that," she said, trying to figure out how to explain without hurting his feelings. "I don't want them to think I'm getting any special favors because I'm dating Admiral Paris' son," she finished in a rush.
He blinked in surprise; that she would feel that way never occurred to him. "So you don't want to be seen with me because of my father," he said flatly.
"No!" she exclaimed. "Dammit, Tom, you're making this out to be something it's not." She sighed again in frustration. "I don't like feeling like people are gossiping about me. I like keeping my personal life personal, and I know you say it's no big deal to you that people might whisper about fraternization, but it's a big deal to me. Now that it finally feels like I'm going to have a career in Starfleet, I don't want to do anything to jeopardize it."
"So what are you saying? That you want to break up with me because you're worried about the impression of impropriety?"
"No!" she exclaimed again. "I don't want to break up at all! For some stupid reason that I can't begin to fathom, I've fallen in love with you, and the last thing I want to do is lose you. I just don't want to advertise that to people who might get the wrong idea."
He laughed bitterly. "Don't you think I know that? Do you honestly think I'm so dense that I didn't see how uncomfortable you were whenever we were walking across campus together in uniform? Why do you think I didn't want you to tell Sydney that you were a cadet? I couldn't care less if Syd yells at me for fraternization; she's yelled at me for much lesser things over the last twenty-four years, but I knew it would bother you."
"I just didn't realize how much it would bother me until she said something," Torres admitted.
"Then trust me for once!" Paris shot back. "Damn, B'Elanna, I know you're not dating me for my father's influence, but why are you dating me? You don't listen to me, you're afraid to be seen with me, we're nothing alike. What is it? The sex?"
In his ranting, he had begun pacing, facing away from Torres. When she didn't say anything right away, he turned to see her still sitting on the bed, looking like she had been struck. "Is that really what you think?" she asked, her voice quiet but anything but small. "That it's all about the sex?"
"What am I supposed to think?" he asked, matching her volume and intensity.
Ignoring his question, Torres finally turned to face him. "You've stuck by me through a lot—plebe year, a coma, all the issues afterwards, the demands for my time and my attention. You've accepted me for who I am from the beginning, and instead of trying to change me into someone else, you've helped me grow into someone I can actually respect. You know what to say to make me laugh when I feel like nothing can. You're still a pig most of the time, but...I'm not used to someone caring like that." The corner of her lip twitched, her eyes glinting slightly. "And the sex is pretty damn good."
Despite himself, Paris softened, his lips curling into a smile. He had been ready with a counter-argument until she threw in that last line, which he knew was only to disarm him. Her demands for privacy were annoying at times, but with her history with her parents and the other kids at school growing up, he was beginning to understand them. Leaning forward on his hands on the mattress on either side of her hips, he kissed her gently. "No more runs," he agreed in a murmur.
She nodded, tilting her head up to kiss him again. "I'm sorry I defined you by your father," she said softly. "I know how much you hate that."
"Yeah," he sighed, resting his forehead against hers. He knew that he didn't have to tell her exactly how much that comment had stung; he had been defined by Admiral Owen Paris for his entire life, and she was the last person he would have expected to do it. "You don't really..."
"No," she said forcefully when his voice trailed off. "I love you because you're you, not because of anyone you're related to." She pulled back enough to force him to look into her eyes. "I know I don't always know how to say it or show it, but I like who I am more when you're around."
"I like who I am better when you're around, too," he replied honestly before giving her an ironic smile. "Even when you try to pretend not to know me." Her chuckle was just as ironic as his smile had been. He kissed her again, pressing forward until she was lying on her back across the bed. "Your curfew starts again tomorrow. You know what that means."
She arched her eyebrows before giving him a feral grin and stiffening her arms, using the momentum to turn him onto his back. "It means we have tonight."