The Contractor: Chapter 6

It had been four months since the last time Paris has flown the Val Jean, so the last person he expected to see when he stepped off Chakotay's smaller shuttle was anyone from the Val Jean.

But there, standing at the end of the docking port, was B'Elanna Torres.

"Chakotay asked me to check on the shuttle," she said brusquely, brushing by him on the way to the shuttle.

"Uh… hi," Paris said in response. He waited a second, and then turned and followed her back up to the shuttle, very glad that he always made a point to clean the ship and refresh everything before he docked.

By the time he caught up to her, Torres had already had a panel off and was studying the relays hidden behind it—EPS? Navigational array?—with a tricorder. "Hey, new tricorder?" Paris asked.

"Apparently some Starfleet officer left it behind at a star base," Torres commented, her eyes not leaving the small machine.

"Huh."

"I know, right?" Her lips quirked in a smile but her eyes were still on the tricorder when she asked, "Have you found a ship yet?"

"I haven't looked for one," he replied.

"You should get on that."

"Listen, Torres," he said, more sternly than he anticipated. "I know you have this thing against mercenaries, but we've known each other for less than a year, and you've been trying to get rid of me ever since we met."

"It's just…" her voice trailed off, and then she turned to face him.

And then did the last thing he expected.

She kissed him.

Hard.

Since he had gotten kicked out of Starfleet and begun his drunken binge that took him to the fringes of Federation space, sex had been a transactional thing for Tom Paris. Not in an 'exchange of currency for sex' type of way, but a 'we both want something for the other without it meaning anything' kind of way. Maybe because moans of pleasure drowned out the memory of Divya's whimpers of pain for the three minutes it took her to die.

He hadn't thought of Torres that way, and then wondered why he hadn't. She was sexy as hell, even when she was angry and exhausted and covered in grime from the Val Jean's shitty engines.

And currently working on the clasp of his pants.

"Torres…"

"Shut up, Tom."

"Right," he agreed.

Sex with Torres was pretty much the way Paris would have expected, had he given himself the moment to contemplate sex with Torres—hard, a little fast, just on the safe side of violent—and as he tried to catch his breath and do a self-inventory for any sort of bodily injury afterwards, he had the fleeting thought that he was again really glad he made a habit of cleaning the shuttle and refreshing the bedding on the cot before he returned to port. "What was that about?" he asked when Torres sat up.

She looked over at him, her expression as unreadable as always, and for a long moment, neither said anything. "Chakotay's going to ask you to fly the Val Jean again."

"Okay?" he asked, then shrugged. "Nothing I haven't done before."

She shook her head. "No, this is different," she said. "It's…not just a delivery run. He's going to be on the mission, too. You don't have to do it."

He blinked. "What?"

"Find your ship, Tom," she said, her voice emphatic. "Get some shuttle and just get away from here."

"Come with me," he blurted out, the words out of his mouth before he could think about them, and then he realized that it was a perfect solution. "With your engineering skills and my flying, we can do anything. We can get some junker for cheap and fix it up."

She shook her head. "I'm not going to give up this fight, Tom."

"This isn't even your fight, B'Elanna! It's not like you grew up out here!"

"It became my fight, Tom!" she replied.

"Why?" he asked emphatically. "These aren't persecuted minorities—okay, the Bajorans are, no argument from me on that one—but not the Federation citizens. It's not like anyone is taking ripping them from their ancestral homelands. They're not fighting for their heritage. They're fighting for the right to continue to be allowed to be imperialist colonizers."

She glared at him for a long minute. "So what if they are?" she finally asked. "Who cares if they've been there for five years, or fifty, for five million? Who are you to decide what a home is?"

"Who are you?"

"Do you even know what the Cardassians are doing to these 'imperialist colonizers?'" she asked, her tone mocking on the last two words. "This isn't some peaceful transition of power, and most of the time, it's for nothing. They're being brutal just because they can."

"It wouldn't be an issue if the people had just done what they were told!"

"Failing to evict is not a capital offense!" she shot back. "Okay, so staying when they're told to leave wasn't the best idea. It's breaking the law. But do they really deserve to die just because they don't want to give up their homes? The Cardassians are power-hungry bullies, and someone needs to stand up to them!" She looked at him hotly, breathing hard from her yelling. "This is my fight now, Tom," she said a minute later, her voice significantly calmer and colder. "And I have to see it through, because that's the kind of person I am." She paused, looking at him. "It's the kind of person you are, too," she added, her voice soft.

He snorted and shook his head. "Don't go ascribing qualities to me that I don't have."

She rolled her eyes. "Stop acting like you don't care, Tom," she ordered. "You're a good person, whether you can see it yet or not. You could have stayed on Earth and gotten drunk until you died in a gutter, but you came out here for a reason."

"Yeah," he replied. "So I can fly. So I wouldn't drink myself to an early death in a gutter."

"There are a lot of other places in other fringes of the Federation that need pilots, but you came here," she pointed out. "And I'm sure you've saved more than enough credits by now to buy yourself a shuttle and fly away from this mess, but here you still are."

"I've told you this already," he said. This was probably the first time he had been so impatient while naked—with a woman who was just as naked—after sex instead of before. "Why are you pushing me so hard about this?"

She looked at him for a long minute with that penetrating look of hers, before she rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Do whatever you want, Tom," she said, turning away as she began gathering her clothes.

"Wait, Torres." He said the words to stop her, and then realized he didn't know what he was going to say after getting her attention. He sighed. "What's the mission?"

She stopped and turned back to him and then also sighed. "It's a raid, on a Cardassian station by the Badlands."

"Cardassian raid by the Badlands," he repeated, then gave her his best grin. "Sounds like you're going to need a pilot."

"Chakotay does okay," she said. "He's a bit heavy handed, but he hasn't killed us yet." He gave her another grin. She frowned as studied him, then rolled her eyes and gestured vaguely around them. "Don't just do this because of… this."

"Don't flatter yourself, Torres." She glared briefly, then rolled her eyes again. "You're the one who said it—there were other places I could have gone to fly, but I'm here. Jury's still out on whether or not I'm a good person, though."

"Good is a relative term out here," she said, and he saw the corners of her lips quirk as she tried to stop a smile. She rolled her eyes, and he saw the resignation—and maybe something else—in her eyes. "Put your clothes back on, Tom," she said.

"Are you sure? This could be the last time—"

"See you on the Val Jean."

The Val Jean was exactly where Paris expected it to be, and for a minute, he stared at the docking port, unsure if he really wanted to do that. If he continued, if he walked through those doors, he knew that his time as a contractor—as a mercenary—would be over, and he would be a full-fledged Maquis, for whatever that would mean. He still had his credits in savings, he knew that; as long as he stayed one step ahead of the law, he could leave whenever he wanted and buy that ship that Torres was always getting on him about. But until then, he would be doing whatever it took to be a thorn in the sides of the Cardassians and the Federation.

He would have to grow some convictions, and fast.

He was going to have to learn to care about other people. And maybe someday, learn to care about himself again.

He didn't know if he was ready for that.

But if not now, when will you be ready?

He took a deep breath, and then stepped forward and keyed in Chakotay's access codes.

Standing there, just inside the Val Jean, her arms crossed over her chest and a smirk on her face, was B'Elanna Torres. "Took you long enough."

A/N: And that's a wrap, folks. Thanks for reading. And just a reminder: I've moved over to Archive of Our Own. There are a lot of great writers over there, and I hope to see you soon!