Chapter 3: The next breath
Sitting behind her desk, she stares blankly at the PADD in front of her. The report it contains summarizing official documents sent and received in the last round of communications with the Alpha Quadrant.
Strategic information. Reports of two first contacts. One promotion. Two commendations.
Three petitions for divorce.
This last transmission brings the total of such petitions to ten and, to date, it is the largest number in a given period; two having been initiated on Voyager, and another submitted by a spouse in the Alpha Quadrant.
Gathering her work for the evening, Kathryn worries that this is the inevitable fate of her crew. That no matter how content a life some of them come to lead on Voyager, such contentment requires the destruction of past relationships and lives. The decay of marriages; the loss of lovers. The absence of parents from children.
She has decided this week that she was right to worry before Harry's wedding, and wonders if, when they finally get back, her crew will have anything left that can rightly be called 'home'.
At this, she feels immediate guilt for being distracted from her ship's mission. Preoccupied, even momentarily, by . . . other pursuits.
When she makes into to the turbolift, Tuvok comms her, asking if she's spoken to Seven about a report she promised to go over with her.
She hasn't. It's completely slipped her mind. Worse, Seven needs to be briefed before she meets with Tuvok in the morning.
The uncharacteristic lapse makes her mood sink lower, and she calls for a halt to the lift.
"Location of Seven of Nine."
Seven of Nine is in Holodeck One.
She closes her eyes, not wanting to ask her next question.
"Location of Lieutenant Paris."
Lieutenant Paris is in Holodeck One.
She lets go of a ragged breath, realizing that this is apparently the way the rest of her night is going to go.
She isn't sure when her desire to avoid Tom first began, but it's sometime around the last wave of subspace messages from home. Before that, things seemed fine. Eerily normal even, despite what transpired between them one month earlier on shore leave.
Since they returned from Letara, there have been no lingering looks on shift. Their bridge banter has continued just as it had before. No more familiar but no less either. Like the first morning she'd woken up next to him on the planet, she's been surprised by the lack of awkwardness between them. Though admittedly, she can't quite compare Tom's polite behavior toward her back on the ship to his conduct that first morning.
She'd fallen asleep next to him full of worry, the night after the beach. Perhaps thinking she would wake up to an empty bed. Or worse, him laying awake next to her, looking regretful.
Instead she awoke, through the haze of her exhaustion, to Tom dragging his mouth over her lower back.
"Are you sleeping Kathryn?" He paused, biting the soft flesh at the base of her back. "Because I suddenly find myself wide awake."
Her eyes had immediately snapped open at the huskiness of his voice. Her breath then hitching in her chest when she felt his body move over hers, his mouth hot against the base of her neck where he moved her hair from her shoulder.
She froze, not moving her face from its position buried in her pillow; deliciously paralyzed by both his proximity and the continued ministrations of his hands on her back, the sides of her breasts.
He took her refusal to move as instruction, pressing himself against her back. And suddenly, pinned between Tom and the bed, her lungs refused to fill with oxygen.
Her head felt dizzy. She buried it deeper into the pillow as though her next breath might be hidden there, trapped in the center of the cushion, as slowly she maneuvered her hips to allow him access.
She'd never really cared before for not being able to see her partner during sex. Likely, it was the lack of control. The fear of distance even in the most intimate of acts.
Feeling Tom's hands on her skin, his mouth kissing her shoulder delicately as she responded to his movements, she couldn't for the life of her remember her hesitancy.
At some point minutes later, she realized the hand that the long fingers that wrapped under torso, cupping her right breast, were trembling. And it was that epiphany that had pushed over the edge; Tom's arms enveloping her further as her body spasmed, her pillow muffling her half-choked sob.
Pushing her fevered memories away as she walks, she tries to tell herself that it was all a mistake. An error. A lapse in judgment that can't happen again.
She tries not to concentrate on the fact that nothing seems to have fallen apart since she slept with her pilot. Voyager's warp core still functioning and the stars streaking by at their usual pace.
No ship-wide emergency has been declared, the Captain having suddenly developed a sex life.
Standing outside of the holodeck, she wonders exactly how long she can remain in the corridor before crewmembers notice and start to think she's lost her mind. And then she feels frustrated with herself, as she's seen Tom countless times in the last few weeks. Each meeting, however public, feeling natural and easy.
How is it that she wasn't terrified before this? Why is it that the two minutes they shared a turbolift the day before seemed too short rather than an eternity? How was she able to sit down next him with such ease at the film he showed the crew a week earlier- that she's managed not bolt from her seat when it turned out be a romance, Tom smiling slightly at her when the redheaded lead actress appeared on screen?
Finally summoning the courage to enter the holodeck of her own ship, she walks into the familiar garage.
Tom is leaned over the open hood of a Studebaker, his face twisted in thought.
"Hey," he greets, belatedly noticing her arrival.
"I was looking for Seven."
She cuts to the chase straight away. Never a good sign with her, he thinks.
"You just missed her. She left to have dinner with Chakotay."
She falls silent, realizing that they're alone. He ignores her pinched expression, wiping his hands on a nearby rag.
"He has a meeting in an hour with Tuvok," he assures. "If you need to talk to Seven, I'm sure she'll be free by then."
With this, he drops their conversation, going back to examining the car. His leans further in to look at the engine in front of him, his shoulders bent under the hood.
Despite herself, she moves toward him, joining him next to the car. The only sound in the room for several moments is that of a car radio, the staticy music echoing faintly in the enclosed space.
"What's wrong?" she asks eventually.
"Head gasket," he replies.
She winces and he shakes his head, reaching up to close the hood.
"Not much I can do about it today."
His expression and tone convey his frustration. The two-door coupe is his favorite. Hers, too.
"You could stop letting Seven drive," she jokes, trying to perk him up.
He chuckles, tossing the rag in his hands over the car to the workbench beyond.
"I don't think even she's capable of doing this much damage."
"Are you sure?"
The seeming seriousness with which she asks it sets him off, and he leans against the car laughing.
Tom has given both Kathryn and Seven driving lessons, his Captain taking to it far more naturally than the former drone. His efforts with the Seven have become as much a tutorial in the art of fluidic cursing as lessons in operating an automobile.
The auxiliary objective has thus far proven far more successful than the main one. Seven can now impressively swear in English and French, but still fails to properly shift from first to second.
"I'm honestly not sure why she doesn't give up," he says, smiling over the Studebaker.
"She's stubborn."
"Hmm. I wonder where she learned that."
She rolls her eyes at the comment, but doesn't dismiss the truth of it. She can't, not entirely.
When they grow quiet again, he looks at her with a searching expression.
"You alright?"
The manner in which he asks it somehow conveys that he isn't just talking about the events she's studiously avoided discussing since they got back from shore leave. He's realized, just by looking at her, that some greater worry occupies her. Something that goes beyond whatever seems to have materialized between them.
"It's been a long week," she admits.
"You wonna talk about it?"
She shakes her head, her face betraying her conflict even as she declines. He knows that if tried again he could probably get something out of her, but he doesn't really think to push.
For all their banter, he understands that Kathryn and the Captain aren't separable. The worries of her job staying with her even standing with him in a garage on the holodeck. A weight she can never quite put down following her here from her ready room.
"Want to go for a ride?" he offers, casting his eyes over the other vehicles that are still in working order.
Looking back him, she's obviously tempted. She shouldn't, part of her knows. But right now, time in an antique vehicle with Tom sounds infinitely more rewarding than the silent doubts that await her in her quarters.
It fails to occur to her that only moments ago, spending time with Tom was a central component of those worries.
She nods, and he heads to the rack of keys by the garage door.
"Do you want to drive?"
She shakes her head, though he can't see the movement with his back to her.
"Not today. . . I just feel like being along for the ride."
"Alright," he calls, over his shoulder. "But tell me which car you want to take."
She pauses, understanding the choice being tossed to her. Wherever they drive is largely dictated by the car they choose, the garage being a fixed program, but what exits beyond resting on Tom's whim.
In the last few months, they have traversed the desserts of Vulcan in sports cars. Navigated the forests of Bajor in a jeep. Even tooled around the back roads of Bloomington in the Studebaker.
It never fails to amuse him that Kathryn's one and only accident occurred on a familiar stretch of land in Indiana. Thankfully, both the Studebaker and her ego survived. The latter with no help from Seven's commentary from the back seat.
She affectionately pats the hood of a blue convertible next to her, and he smiles. The convertible means that she wants to feel sunshine and wind. And in this, he is more than happy to oblige.
"Perfect," he says, tapping at the console next to key rack. "I think I have just the place."
Just outside of the car door, he stops, looking at her hesitantly.
"You may want to change before we go. It's going to be too warm for your uniform."
She doesn't consider the possibility that he's trying to get her out of her uniform as a tactic. She still trusts him implicitly, even when she doesn't quite trust herself.
When she emerges from the back of the garage, she's changed into a pair of brown slacks and a cropped cream colored v-neck. She sits down in the passenger seat, and he hands her a pair of sunglasses. An item of apparel she once found as silly as his leather jacket.
She puts them on without comment, and he opens the garage door.
As the car pulls out, they are enveloped by sunshine and warm air. It doesn't take long to realize he was right about changing; her uniform would be stifling in the heat.
Beyond the road they drive, telephone poles and ocean stretch out as far she can see. She recognizes the area after a few minutes, despite that it's devoid of the automobile and human traffic she last saw it congested with.
"Los Angeles?"
"Hermosa Beach," he confirms. "Shame that we didn't get spend more time there without people trying to kill us."
At the word 'time,' she gives him a pointed stare. He looks back sheepishly, an apology for the unintended pun.
After ten minutes of driving, she relaxes into her seat. She's failed to buckle the safety harness, relying on the holodeck safeties to protect her. She slips down easily into the plush fabric, the only sound around her the noise of the engine and the wind.
At some point she reaches over and turns on the radio, suspecting, correctly, that Tom has programmed music. When he looks over at her, her body is relaxed but her face is pensive.
He turns his attention back to the road, content to let her mull over her thoughts in silence.
Turning off the main road and oto the one that will take them down to the beach, a song comes on that Tom knows. He'd heard it for the first time years ago, when he parked with B'Elanna in a 1957 Chevy on one of their first dates. B'Elanna had scoffed at first at the campy lyrics- the singer's plea for a woman to save her last dance for him. But eventually, she'd come around.
The next time he heard it was three years later, several months after their relationship ended, the meloday playing faintly from a car radio in the garage. When he recognized it, he thought for a moment the car he was working under had collapsed on him. The air being forced from his lungs without his consent, his chest feeling the like a heavy weight was crushing it.
But several months after that, he heard it again, alone in the garage with Seven. She was in poor humor, fresh from one of her first driving lessons, and he sung it to her, without much of any thought except to make her laugh. Eventually she smiled, cajoled into dancing with him in the cluttered space.
Hearing it now, next to Kathryn, the familiar melody fails to cause him any anguish. It still brings back memories, bidden and not. But he feels the same as he does when he sees Mike Ayala in the mess hall.
An absence of pain, and then a sense of relief.
Glancing over at Kathryn once more, he knows that she feels pinned by something she can't get out from under. The weight bearing down on her the way it has before, and for so many years now. But he understands, too, that eventually her present worry won't seem so bleak. She'll crawl out from under it, as she has previously; her chest once more rising and falling with unrestricted ease.
Smiling over at her, he winks. Her contemplative expression falls for a moment, and she smiles back at him, her eyes crinkling at the corners he can see beyond the sunglasses.
"Can we stop somewhere around here?" she asks, a minute later.
"Sure."
Rather than stopping the car on the road, he pulls it directly onto the beach.
When he gets out, he pulls off his shoes and she follows suit.
"I wish this beach still existed," she murmurs, once they have been sitting on the beach for a while.
He digs his toes into the sand in front of him, leaning back on his elbows despite that it means getting sand in his shirt.
"It does," he responds. "It exists here. . . For us."
She watches with curiosity as he lounges on the ancient beach as if he doesn't have a care in the world. As though he's never suffered crushing disappointments or nursed the deep wounds left by lost love. And then she fills with affection that he thinks to share this feeling with her.
When she bends down to kiss him, it's slowly and neither of them close their eyes. He reaches one of his hands to her neck, running his fingers through her hair before pulling her gently down to him.
When he breaks the kiss, both of them are breathless. She rests her face against his chest, unable to meet his eyes just yet.
After a moment, she realizes he's chuckling.
"You know. . . My intentions really were pure, bringing you out here."
"I know," she breathes, angling her face to look at him. "I guess we don't have the best of luck with beaches."
A smug grin breaks out on his lips.
"Oh? I guess I can only speak for myself. . . But I feel pretty lucky at the moment."
She smiles briefly before looking at him with feigned suspicion.
"Are you trying to charm me, Tom Paris?"
"Do I even need to?" he teases. "I mean, even when I don't try, you just start kissing me."
She sits up slightly, her posture mildly defiant.
"This time I kissed you. On the first beach, you kissed me."
He takes on an absurd seriousness, realizing this is a real debate.
"I most certainly did not. I mean, I admit I'd been thinking about it. But no way I kissed you first. I was too terrified by the possibility of being transferred permanently to Sickbay- or spending the next year confined to my quarters."
She wants to challenge his contention, but is derailed by the admission included in it.
"You'd been thinking about kissing me?"
"For weeks," he admits.
She searches his face for a moment, and he waits for her to find whatever it is she's looking for.
When she kisses him this time, her mouth is impatient and it takes him a second to match her speed. When he catches up, he flips her onto her back in one deft motion, never breaking contact with her lips.
He's pinned her with his weight and is tracing her collar bone with his mouth when her comm badge chirps.
"Tuvok to Janeway."
She doesn't bolt up or spring away from him. She simply closes her eyes with a frustrated look, and he taps her comm badge for her.
The contact requires him to brush her breast, and she regards him with an arched eyebrow as she responds to the hail.
"Janeway here. What can I do for you, Commander?"
"I thought it prudent to inform you that I have just apprised Seven of Nine myself of the tactical report. You should not concern yourself with finding her this evening."
Tom rests his chin on her stomach as Tuvok speaks, watching her with twinkling eyes.
"Thank you, Tuvok," she responds, managing a patient tone. "That was very considerate of you. Janeway out."
When the line is closed, neither of them makes any move to continue their previous activity. But she remains lying on the sand, and he doesn't shift his body away from her.
"Do you think Tuvok has some kind of tricorder that goes off when someone on board the ship is having too much fun?" he asks, tapping a rhythm on her torso with his index finger.
"Doubtful," she says, closing her eyes again. "I think it just alerts him when I'm having too much fun."
Sitting up, he waggles his eyebrows.
"I'll take that as a compliment."
She smirks back at him but doesn't respond, and slowly they get up from the sand.
When her face takes on a pinched expression as they walk back to the car, he worries her previous mood has returned.
"Tom," she begins, her voice indicating gravity.
He looks at her expectantly, fearing the worst.
"I have sand in my pants."
He chuckles at her, biting his lip to keep from offering aid in getting the particles out.
. . . . .
When Vorick almost catches them kissing in the turbolift, Kathryn becomes convinced that there's something wrong with her.
Certain that there are aliens are tinkering with her brain chemistry, or that she's being telepathically manipulated by some force outside the ship.
Suspicious that Q is somewhere around a corner, giggling at her expense these last six weeks. The omnipotent bastard.
She is Kathryn Elizabeth Janeway. Captain. The fifth in her family to attain said rank. She does not kiss her officers in turbolifts. She does not sleep with them on shore leave, or roll in the sand with them on the holodeck.
And she most certainly does not drop by their quarters on the pretext of work, only to leave the blank PADD she brought with her on a table, neglected for several hours.
She is not this reckless. And she is too old- far too old- to be running around like some hormonal teenager.
"I think something's wrong with me," she announces, as soon as the Sickbay doors behind her.
The Doctor looks at her with surprise as she hops on one of the bio beds, ready for examination.
As much as he values his friendship woman in front of him, she still flees from him when it comes to his professional duties. She puts off routine physicals for weeks, ignores signs of illness or else injury until they have already become crippling.
She does not stroll into Sickbay, unordered, and announce that something is wrong with her.
"What seems to be the problem?" he asks, reaching for a tricorder.
"I don't feel. . . like myself."
He looks at her with concern as well as confusion. This isn't exactly a helpful description, and it isn't like her to be anything but exact.
"What do you mean you don't feel like yourself? Do you think you're having neurological symptoms? Or that you're having strange physical sensations?"
"I don't know," she says pensively, looking down at her dangling feet.
This is even more unlike her. The holographic worry lines that have appeared on the Doctor's face deepen.
"Have you any specific symptoms- difficulty sleeping, mood swings? Do you feel lightheaded or have shortness of breath?"
She bits back the comment that she only has trouble breathing around a certain pilot; her head and all her common sense spinning whenever he touches her, putting his lips against her neck, her stomach, her-
"Captain? Are you alright?"
She realizes that she hasn't responded to his question, and he looks at her with interest as he notes her spike in pulse.
She doesn't bother to reply. Even with her limited medical training, she knows that his medical tricorder will reveal signs of recent sexual activity.
When she hears the sound of the tricorder snap shut, she closes her eyes. Wishing, strangely, that he were about to deliver the opening lecture of the menopause speech she knows damn well he has been rehearsing to himself the last several years.
He puts the tricorder down. A motion, had he a respiratory system, that would be accompanied with a long, low exhale.
When she climbs onto to the bio bed next to her, his holographic feet come into her view, dangling neck to her own enfleshed ones.
"Even from my limited experience, I know first-hand that romantic feelings can be alarming. Even terrifying."
His voice is kind. Patient. She thinks it would be so much better if he were lecturing her.
"But as you have on many occasions reminded me, fear, too, is part of being human."
She still doesn't look at him, and so he falls silent. Patiently waiting for the bravest person he's met to draw the strength to confront her own personal life.
"It's like I've lost all sense of judgment," she confesses, glancing at him. "I'm finding myself doing things that I shouldn't. With someone I shouldn't be doing them with."
Both statements encourage his already piqued interest, and he tries to put aside his curiosity for her sake. At least, for now.
"We've been out here for eight years, Kathryn. I suspect the standards for should and shouldn't aren't exactly as they were when we began. . . Nor should they be."
It occurs to her as he speaks that none of them, none even their holographic Doctor, speak of being in the Delta Quadrant the same way they once did. Phrases like 'stuck here' or 'stranded' have been replaced by vague gestures to their distances. Neutral expressions such as 'out here' decree their predicament neither good nor bad.
A few weeks earlier, the realization would have worried her.
Sitting in Sickbay, thinking about her feelings for Tom, she doesn't know what to worry about anymore.
When she falls silent again, he realizes that he needs to offer her something more. As a physician, as well as a friend.
"Typically," he begins, choosing his words cautiously, "if a patient believes a stimulus is causing an adverse reaction, I recommend staying away from it for a certain amount of time. Seeing if the problem clears up on its own. Or even whether it was the stimulus in question at all."
She nods, thinking it good advice, before getting off the bio bed.
"Kathryn" he calls, after she has thanked him but yet to exit.
She pauses, turning around to face him as the doors swish open in front of her.
"Do I even get a hint who it is?"
She looks at him, mustering a frustrated look that she doesn't at all feel.
"No. And I would advise you not to go conducting research, either."
He scowls at her rather than agreeing. And when she turns from him, she allows herself the smile she has repressed.
. . . . .
Eleven days after talking to the Doctor, she thinks the advice he gave her was garbage. Complete and utter crap.
Vaguely, she recalls the curses she thought when Voyager was low on power seven months earlier. And sitting at her desk in her ready room, she tries to string them together again with the same fluidity.
She has distanced herself from Tom at every turn. Avoided places he might go; staying away from the mess hall at lunch and steering clear of the holodecks entirely. She doesn't look at him when he smiles at her. She doesn't linger in turbolifts when they find themselves together, or invite conversation by staying behind after meetings.
And all of her efforts have completely backfired, as now, only meters from her bridge, she thinks of him and nothing else.
When her shift ends, she finds herself going to Tom's deck rather than her own. He left the bridge three hours earlier, and with a small glance at her chair as he got on the lift.
It was a quick look, and their eyes met for only a moment. But she could tell, even in that short exchange, that she's hurt him. The faintest trace of pain appearing in his expression before he pushed it away.
Standing outside his quarters, she tells herself that she owes him an apology. An explanation, however polite and friendly, for avoiding him over the course of the last week and a half.
Her pulse quickens when the doors slide open and he's only centimeters from her, but her heart abruptly stops in her chest when he greets her by rank.
"Captain," he says, awkwardly.
She steps into his quarters without a direct invitation, though he makes no move to block her entry. Once inside, with Tom staring at her, she quickly loses the confidence that has led her to his doorstep.
"Is there something I can do for you?" he asks, going to the replicator to get her a cup of coffee.
His voice isn't cold. But it isn't warm either.
"Tom," she manages, "I came to apologize for. . ."
Her voice trails off, and she runs her hand through her hair, trying to remember what she planned to say
"Running away every time you see me at the other end of a corridor?"
He says it with a smile, but it's a smile that doesn't make it to his eyes.
"Yes," she breathes, looking miserable. "That."
"It's alright," he responds, handing her the coffee cup.
She immediately puts it down rather than drinking it, and he looks at her with curiosity.
"It wasn't about you," she explains. "It was about me. I've had some things on my mind."
He looks at her, waiting for her to go on. But she doesn't. She turns from him, ready to leave, having accomplished her very specific mission.
He watches her with confusion.
"Kathryn, wait."
He catches her wrist as she moves past him. And the second he touches her, she freezes.
He worries at first that he's upset her, stopping her this way. Until she looks up at him, and the charge of energy travels from her body and into his.
She has been imagining his hands on her skin for eleven long days. Has spent ten sleepless nights kicking twisted blankets away from her feet, willing away memories of slick flesh and hot breath. Her thoughts, conscious and unconscious, invaded by echoes of low moans muffled by the other's body.
The remembrance of sharp inhalations, accompanied by the clenching of fingers in sheets.
She's tugging at his jacket the moment she kisses him, her current movements more forceful than either of them have thusfar been with each other. She pushes him back, onto the couch, and he hits the cushion with a thud, grasping at her hips as he half sits half falls.
She moves to straddle his lap immediately, pulling his body flush with hers as she runs her lips hungrily across his mouth, his jaw, his neck. His mouth is just as eager as hers at first, but after a minute, he stops entirely.
When he pushes her upright, forcing space between them, her entire body cries out with need.
"Let's slow down," he manages, his breath ragged and his lips already swollen. "Before this goes any farther. . . again. .. we need to talk."
His voice is serious, although he looks at her with a brief smirk when he says 'again'.
"Talk?" she repeats dully, her fingers still clutching his shirt.
She resists the urge to press her body further into his, grinding her pelvis against his lap. But only barely.
"First we kiss, and then you avoid me for days. And now we're kissing again." He adds, the grin sliding from his face, "I need to know what we're doing here."
He doesn't come right out and ask her what her intentions are- whether she's using him for sex- but the question is written all over his face.
She moves off his lap, recoiling at the implied accusation. She isn't angry. But she is hurt. Guilty, too, that her actions have allowed room for this worry.
"I don't know what we're doing," she confesses. "I've never done this before."
At another time or place, he would make a dirty joke at her statement. Here, however, he worries that all there is between them is friendship and occasionally a romp when she gets bored. Innuendo has lost its charm.
"I understand that," he responds, angling his body to where she now sits. "But I'm not the same person I was a few years ago, and I'm a little too old to just be playing around. . . No matter how enjoyable it's been."
Later, she will darkly amused by the fact that this man, almost a decade her junior, informed her that he's no spring chicken. But presently, she's too hurt by his characterization of their time together to feel anything else.
"We aren't just playing around," she says, her voice slightly rising with indignation.
He glances away from her a moment. When he looks back, it's obvious he doesn't believe her.
"Other than this," he begins, gesturing between them with his hands, "we don't spend time together. And I know that we see each other every day on shift, but that's not quite the same thing."
His voice is even, non accusing. He wants to have a discussion, not an argument.
"We do things together," she retorts, crossing her arms defiantly. "We eat meals together. We spend time on the holodeck."
"Not alone. We eat lunch in the mess hall, surrounded by people. When we spend time together elsewhere it's almost always with Seven or someone else."
"You're worrying because we haven't gone on dates?" she exclaims, her voice rising further. "Tom, I have an exhausting job! And so do you."
He looks at her, obviously unswayed, and she charges on.
"We've known each other for eight years."
"And for seven of those I didn't even call you by your first name. You think I'm just being silly. But there's a reason people go on dates. There's a reason that time alone together is necessary."
She falls quiet, realizing that he has a point, though she can't shake the feeling that he's also wrong. She genuinely thinks their time together over the several months, even if in the company of others, has served some kind of purpose in their relationship.
"You know. . . In some cultures, it's traditional that courtship be supervised by a third party. At least, until a certain period of time elapses."
He narrows his eyes at her.
"What cultures?" he asks suspicously.
"Ancient Ireland, for one."
Her responses befuddles him at first. But then he remembers the film he showed several weeks earlier. The one about the American man who moves to Ireland to flee his own demons, only to fall in love and eventually court a stubborn Irish woman.
"You're using John Wayne against me?"
She doesn't understand the reference, so she remains looking at him defiantly with her arms crossed.
"We're not Irish, Kathryn."
She cocks an eyebrow at him.
They are, both of them, part Irish.
"You know what I mean. We aren't in ancient Ireland."
"Yet the ritual makes sense. At the very least, spending all that time together with Seven allowed us to talk about our feelings- our past failures, our private hopes- without added pressure."
He crosses his arms, mirroring her own position of defiance.
After a moment, his defiance gives way to a rueful expression.
"I should get used to not winning arguments, shouldn't I?"
She smiles, realizing he's conceding. Or at the very least, is offering an olive branch.
She moves back into his lap, wrapping his arms around his neck.
"You should get used to thinking of draws as victories."
He chuckles softly, the sound vibrating against her own body.
"I should have paid more attention to that film," he pouts. "The moral of the story was clearly that redheads are far too much trouble."
"That's not the way I remember the movie," she purrs, kissing his cheek.
"Hmm."
When she draws back her face is serious again, the mirth gone from her eyes. He pushes a lock of hair over her ear, waiting for her to voice whatever worry possesses her now.
"I can't go into this promising much, Tom. It's entirely possible that I won't be able to manage the burdens of being Captain and those of a relationship."
"Is that what this is- a relationship?"
"Of course," she responds quickly, worrying that they've fallen back into the same trap.
"Well, most people in relationships tend to talk to their partner rather than their physician if they have concerns. . . But then I've never dated a Captain before."
She blushes at the realization she's been caught, relieved at least he isn't upset given his teasing tone.
It doesn't take long for anxiety to catch up to her thoughts and her expression.
"Don't worry," he soothes. "The Doc has no clue. And I wouldn't have had any idea what he was after when he peppered me with questions, was I not the. . ."
When he pauses, she knows that he's disqualifying terms one by one that imply guilt. Culprit. Suspect.
"Lucky man."
Her face twists in thought, her mind turning to what will happen when the crew finds out.
"I don't want to advertise this immediately. I'd prefer to keep things quiet for as long as we can."
She doesn't voice the possibility, beyond all her other worries, that things between them will dissolve as fast as they've materialized. That going public will only make the pain of her failure- her personal failure- that much worse to bear.
Even without the words, he understands.
"You won't get any argument from me on keeping this quiet," he says, looking at her pointedly.
It should be a relief. She expected him to fight her, arguing that they aren't doing anything they should have to hide.
When he agrees, he sees her face fall a bit.
"I'm not ashamed of this," he clarifies quickly, touching her face.
He considers his words as she stares at him, tracing his neck with her finger.
"It's just that my last relationship was more public than I would have liked. . . Everyone knew when B'Elanna and I are started dating. There was practically a ship-wide announcement whenever we fought or made up."
"Seven of Nine studied your mating behavior," she adds, and he favors her with a put off look.
"I could do with some privacy this time," he finishes.
"So then we're agreed," she announces, as though rising from the table in the briefing room, rather than settling further into his lap.
"So what are my orders now?"
The huskiness of his voice alone would be enough to completely undo her, if the twinkling of his eyes didn't give her ideas.
He's remarkably compliant when she pushes him down onto the couch. Even when she strips him of his clothes, she herself retaining her everything but her blouse.
When she moves his hands above his head, pinning them to the cushion, he begins to squirm.
"Kathryn, please," he begs, after she pushes his hands for the third time to the couch. "I want to touch you."
Despite the fact that she has initiated some of their encounters, he has almost always taken the lead and she hasn't minded. She has privately that Tom should teach a course on sex at the Academy. Perhaps a compulsory seminar for the first-year male cadets.
Advanced Anatomy and Sexual Techniques, with Tom Paris.
Hearing his near whimper as he wriggles beneath her, she feels a delicious rush of power.
"You have your orders, Mister Paris," she chides, in her best command voice, before tracing his chest with her tongue.
His hands obediently remain above his head after this, but his legs and arms continue stirring slightly as she touches him.
When her mouth gets to his thigh, his whole body freezes. She stops, looking into his face.
She understands his trepidation. They haven't engaged in this particular activity before, and there's probably been a reason for that. Like the corollary act, it requires a certain kind of trust. But, unlike its counterpart, it also can used to force submissiveness on the bestower. An act that can be as much about subjugation, objectification, as it is about empowerment.
Strange, she thinks, that he is more concerned by the shifting balance of power in this than she is.
She smiles slightly against his leg, realizing that his hesitancy is a little sexy, too.
"Tom?" she asks, looking into his eyes, past his chest that neither rises nor falls.
He, absurdly, wants to laugh or shut his eyes at her implied question. Her chin resting just at the top of his leg, her eyes dilated so much that he can barely see the grey as he looks down at her.
"Engage," he says, letting go of the breath he's been holding.
She smirks against his thigh before resuming course.