Twenty

So here we are tonight,
You and me together
The storm outside, the fire is bright
And in your eyes I see
What's on my mind
You've got me wild
Turned around inside
And then desire, see,
is creeping up heavy
inside here
And know you feel
the same way
I do now

Say Goodbye – Dave Matthews Band

They began the drive back to Maywood in the dark of full night, and even in the scant and intermittent yellow fluorescence cast by the street lamps overhead, she was beautiful. Chakotay wondered if he was imagining the tension that had seemed to wind itself between them, but he didn't think so. It had begun in the moment that her sister had volunteered Kathryn to take him home, in that look they had shared across the table. That look had communicated something between them – had comprised a conversation in a language neither of them consciously knew and yet, somehow, both of them instinctively understood. There is danger here, that look had said, and we both know it.

It was an irony not lost on him that acknowledging the danger had done nothing to remove it, at least not on his part. Rather, knowing that being alone with him at the end of this night constituted a bad idea in Kathryn's view told him something he'd been trying not to think about ever since B'Elanna's offhand quip about time running out earlier in the day. Although, if he was to be truly honest with himself, it went back further than that. He had failed to stop himself wondering how Kathryn Janeway really thought about him since B'Elanna had told him that Tom believed he made her happy. Was that really true? If it was, what did that mean? What should he do about it?

Nothing, you idiot, he berated himself. She's getting married in less than two months. It was too late for you before you'd even met. Forget it. Even if there were attraction on both sides, it would be wrong to pursue it. You know that.

He forced himself to look out of the windshield instead of at the bare curve of her neck.

"Thank you so much for this evening, Chakotay," Kathryn said, into the silence. He heard the slight twang of awkwardness in her voice and regretted it, knowing that it came from this tension that had no right to exist at all. "What you have done for B'Elanna really does go beyond the call of duty."

"I've done nothing," he said, softly. "It's you and Tom who have changed her life. And I honestly believe so, Kathryn – I think tonight will be a real turning point for her."

He felt Kathryn glance across to him, and he studiously avoided her gaze.

"I think that happened when she joined your gym," she pointed out. "If not for that lifeline, I have the sense she would have been lost long ago."

Chakotay smiled slightly. "If it kept her afloat long enough for you to come along, then it was worth it."

They sunk back into silence, and a moment later Kathryn yawned widely, covering her mouth with one hand. "Oh God," she said. "Sorry! I'm too old for these late nights. Truth is, I'm too old for the kind of work we were doing this morning. I've been aching all day." She pressed her fingers into her shoulder in a gesture he'd become used to seeing her make as she tried to massage away whatever recurring ache had settled there.

"I'm not surprised you strained yourself, the way you swung that sledgehammer. I should have taken it away from you," Chakotay said, apologetically.

"Like hell you should," Kathryn retorted, with a sudden bubble of bright laughter that lit the inside of the car as perfectly as the smile into which it resolved. "Swinging that thing was the most fun I've had in months! Never come between a woman and her tools, Chakotay, don't you know that?"

He laughed with her, not only because of her words but also at the brief glimpse of underlying mischief that her little giggle suggested. Their laughter reduced the tension between them, softening it into something more fluid, more navigable.

"I could help with your shoulder," he said, smiling as he watched her profile. The light from outside pooled in gorgeous shadows beneath her cheekbones before sweeping across her lips and away into the night. "Sports physio is one of my best skillsets. I'm not just about moving fenceposts and rescuing distressing damsels, you know. I could smooth out every aching muscle you have."

Kathryn laughed again, tilting her head to look at him so that he could see the sparkle in her eye. "I've half a mind to call Phoebe and tell her you just said that."

"Oh? Why?" he asked, laughing again, thinking she meant her sister had been nagging her about her health. He could easily imagine it was one of the many things Kathryn Janeway neglected for lack of time. "Has she been telling you that's something you need?"

The smile faltered on Kathryn's face. She blinked. "Yes," she said, quietly. "She has. All evening, actually."

His heart stopped in his chest. Suddenly the tension was back, thicker than before, filling his throat and lungs and sparking along every nerve ending he had.

"I liked Phoebe," he said, eventually. "Any chance she'd ever come down and muck in with us at the garden?"

Kathryn laughed quietly. He could see how tightly she was gripping the steering wheel and something about that small detail set a tornado loose in his gut. "Not really her thing, I'm afraid," she said, with a jocularity that did not match her posture. "Although she'd come every day if I asked her to."

Chakotay smiled around the heavy thump that constituted his heartbeat. "You're close."

"I suppose we are," Kathryn agreed, with a slight smile. "She's still as infuriating as she was when we were children, and now she's frequently inappropriate, too, but I can't imagine what I would do without her or even how she could possibly be any different. And she knows me better than anyone does or ever could, I think. Which is incredibly annoying."

"Annoying? Why?" Chakotay asked.

She didn't answer for a moment. When she did, her words were accompanied by a glance that pierced him right through the chest. "Because she has a habit of making me think about things that would be better off left unacknowledged, for all manner of reasons."

Her words were a careful warning shot for them both, he surmised; a deliberate projectile slicing through this tension between them and dragging behind it a line that marked where neither should dare to cross. Yes, here is the danger, she was saying. This is what it is, and this is what we cannot let it become. Chakotay found himself nodding. He took a breath and accompanied it with a firm mental step back as he turned away to look out of the window once more.

She's engaged, he told himself. Just remember that. She's getting married.

Yet there in his head was B'Elanna's voice – unbidden, unwanted, but echoingly insistent.

She's not married yet, it said. Tick tock, Coach. Tick tock.

Chakotay rubbed his fingers into his eyes. Just let her drive you home and when you get there, get out of the car and don't look back.

But by the time they reached the street on which his apartment block stood, Kathryn was yawning heavily. It was touching 2am. She had another long drive ahead of her and Chakotay was genuinely worried about her making it when she was evidently so tired.

"This is my fault," he said, cursing himself. "I should never have let you drive me home."

"I'm fine," Kathryn told him, as she pulled up where he indicated she should. "Really. I'll head back via that drive-through McDonalds we passed a block or so back, pick up some coffee. That'll keep me going."

He paused with his fingers on the car's door handle, "I can't let you stop there. Not alone, in this car, dressed like that. You'd be a sure target for a hold-up or a jacking in this neighbourhood. Besides," he added, aiming for humour as she opened her mouth to protest, "Surely you'll combust if you have to drink McDonalds' coffee?"

She laughed. "Needs must. I'll survive!"

Chakotay hesitated, glancing up at the window of his first floor apartment. "Look," he said. "I can make you coffee. You don't have to drink it here, I know you must want to get home. I'm sure I've got a travel mug somewhere you can take."

Kathryn looked at him steadily for a moment. "Didn't you give me your coffee maker? I thought you didn't really drink it?"

He smiled, dropping her gaze. "I got a percolator. Just a small one. I thought it would be a good idea, just in case… I ever had a guest that… wanted coffee."

He caught her silent nod from the corner of her eye. He thought she was going to refuse, but as usual she surprised him. "Well," Kathryn said, quietly. "That's a very kind offer, Chakotay. If you're sure…?"

Chakotay opened the door. "Of course I am. It's the least I can do. Come on, come inside."

Following Chakotay up the stairs and into his apartment went against everything Kathryn had been telling herself to do ever since Phoebe had landed her with the task of taking him home. Drive him to his door, say goodnight, leave, was the mantra that she'd been silently chanting ever since he'd stepped up and opened her car door for her as they'd left the Paris's place.

The problem was, though, that despite her best intentions, despite the fact that there were warning klaxons wailing in every part of her mind, she couldn't quite bring herself to turn down his offer. She couldn't bring herself to let him get out, shut the door and walk away without her. It was sheer insanity, this inability to drive away at this moment, especially given the tension that had ratcheted up during their drive and the look in his eye that, thanks to Phoebe, she couldn't pretend to herself wasn't there. She knew it, but she ignored it. She wanted to see his apartment, for one thing. And, God help her, this frisson that was skating like electricity through her veins every time he looked at her – she didn't want that to end. Not just yet.

Neither of them said anything as he unlocked his door and held it open for her. Kathryn walked into a small hallway that had been painted a soft cream colour. There was a line of hooks opposite the door from which hung an assortment of coats and jackets. Below, on the floor, was a shoe rack populated mostly with different styles of trainers. It brought her up short, the normality of this arrangement, this glimpse into the most humdrum aspects of his life. For some reason seeing these things seemed far more intimate than it should. She put her purse down beside his shoes.

"Go straight ahead," he told her, nodding his head to indicate that she should follow the hallway.

She did, and found herself walking into a spacious room that comprised an open-plan living space and kitchen, the large window looking out over the kerb at which her car was parked.

"Make yourself at home," Chakotay said, as he headed for the kitchen, loosening his bow tie and pulling it off as he went. "I'll get that coffee on."

Kathryn eschewed taking a seat in one of the armchairs or the large blue sofa in favour of wandering to his large floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. It housed not only books, but framed photographs of what must be family and friends. There were trophies too – not just for boxing, but for other sports besides, and also what on closer examination seemed to be artefacts – fragments of carved wooden statues and pieces of pottery.

"What are these?" she asked, carefully picking up a restored bowl and cradling it in her hands.

"Ah," he said, pausing the sound of his domestic clattering to look at what she held up to him. "Remnants of a life that might have been. Once, many years ago. I was a student of archaeology."

She put the bowl back and turned to look across the room at him, surprised. "Oh?"

Chakotay opened yet another cupboard. "It was what I wanted to do, originally. But – well, circumstances dictated something else. I got a scholarship which paid my way to college, but that was on the basis of my sporting abilities rather than anything else."

"You couldn't do both?" Kathryn asked. "That seems harsh."

He shrugged, his back to her as he searched the shelves in front of him. "It wasn't possible to juggle the demands of a team season with a course that meant I had electives that put me in the middle of nowhere on digs for six weeks at a time," he explained. "And it was the scholarship that let me attend college in the first place. It's all right. I'm happy with the path I took." He dropped his arms with a sigh. "I can't find this damned travel mug anywhere."

"Is that what you're looking for?" she asked, with a laugh. "You don't need to worry about that. I'll drink it before I go – if you don't mind me keeping you up for an extra few minutes, that is? I'll drink quickly, I promise."

He shut the cupboard door and turned to her, smiling, his dark eyes just too obscenely warm. "You can take as long as you like," he said, softly.

Kathryn broke his gaze but only succeeded in letting it drift a few inches south. He'd undone the first couple of buttons on his white shirt and a triangle of his dark skin glowed there like bronze. She turned back to the bookshelf again. "I'm not sure I would have had you down as a Shakespeare reader," she said, to cover the hammering of her heart.

"Haven't actually read a play for a long time," he admitted, pouring the coffee. "In truth I get very little time to read."

"I can believe it," Kathryn said, reaching out to run her fingers along the spines of his books. "I have the same trouble myself. You have a lot of travel guides here," she observed, as his footsteps crossed the room toward her. "Have you really been to all these places?"

Chakotay reached her side and put two mugs of coffee on the shelf in front of them. "I-" he began. Then he broke off, several seconds of silence filling the space where his answer should have been.

She glanced around just in time to find him staring at her bare shoulder. He was standing very close, so close she could feel the warmth of his body reaching out to touch hers. His gaze lingered for an agonised second, hot and dark and illicit. Then it left her shoulder to trace slowly up her neck and over her face to meet her eyes, and Kathryn felt its path as surely as if he'd stroked his tongue over her skin.

Suddenly she couldn't breathe and she couldn't look away, and her brain was telling her to run, to get out, to get out right now, but her body, her whole body, her whole self was begging for something else-

"I know," Chakotay began, in a low voice that slowly thrummed a chord so deep in her that she would feel it for decades, "that I don't have any right to feel this way. But God- Kathryn-"

She would never know who moved first, or whether they had moved together and anyway how could that knowledge possibly matter? For in the next second their lips met in a touch that instantly electrified every millimetre of her skin. She felt an explosion detonate white-hot in the pit of her belly. It shot down to her toes, turning her legs to jelly before it surged back up to send her heart into overdrive and her mind beyond the point of no return. She couldn't get enough of his mouth, of how full his lips were, how deliciously they fit over hers, between hers; of the taste of his tongue. She wanted him badly, immediately, now. Every nerve ending she had was so over-sensitised that even his hands stroking over her shoulders was enough to make her moan. Chakotay held her against him, his free hand running down her arm as they kissed and kept kissing, constantly returning for more. His fingers danced across her wrist, then laced with hers before letting go to find her waist, then her torso, working his way up, up, until his hand rested beneath one breast, thumb stroking the swell through the layers of silk, the touch not quite reaching where she needed it to, not quite what she wanted, and then he was kissing her neck as he carried on caressing her breast and before she knew what she was doing, Kathryn was reaching behind her, angling her arm to get at the zip, releasing it just enough to loosen the bodice, just enough so that it slackened across her chest, so that the next time he moved his thumb the stroke would brush directly over her naked nipple. When it did they both moaned and staggered a little and then he brought his lips back to hers in a kiss so impossibly passionate she thought she might climax just from the knowledge that such want existed, and for her.

Her fingers found that triangle of bare, burnished skin at his throat and then she was undoing more buttons, touching his skin, his hot, gorgeous skin, when out of nowhere she heard a voice and it wasn't his.

It was in her head, and it wasn't his.

It's not that I don't trust you. Of course I do.

-Kathryn gasped, tried to shut it out, kissed Chakotay again-

You're the most trustworthy person I know.

And just like that, her desire was drowned in a tidal wave of shame and guilt. She stumbled backwards. She wrenched herself out of Chakotay's arms, horrified at what she'd been so willing to do, to him, to Mark.

"Oh God," she said, hoarsely, disgusted at herself as she had to pull her dress back into place.

Chakotay reached for her again but Kathryn raised her hands, stepping back. "Don't. Stop. Chakotay, I can't. I can't do this!"

He backed away, breathing hard, and she could see how shaky his legs were. He found himself against the arm of the sofa and reached down to grip it for support.

"I'm sorry," she said, hiccupping over the words, over the dismay, over the regret. "I have to go. I have to-"

She turned and ran for the door.

"Kathryn, wait," Chakotay said, following her down the hall as she grabbed her purse and made it out of his door. "Don't go. Not like this. Wait, please."

She didn't stop and he followed her to the main door of the apartment block. Chakotay reached her as she dragged open the door, catching her arm and pulling her to a stop so that they stood in the open doorway, the stars above them only just visible through the haze of light pollution overhead.

"Please," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Let's just talk, just for a moment, clear the air. Kathryn, ple-"

She heard the sound of a speeding motorbike roaring past. Then she wondered why anyone would be letting off firecrackers when it wasn't even the fourth of July:

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

- and then there was rain on her face, on her blue Armani dress, except that it was too warm for rain and too red, far, far too red-

-and then Chakotay was stumbling backwards, huge flowers of bright scarlet blooming against his white shirt as he crashed against the wall and then to the floor-

-and then she was screaming, screaming for someone to help, just screaming, trying to hold his chest together, trying to keep him alive with her bare hands-

-trying to stop the blood, so much blood-

-SO MUCH BLOOD AND-

[TBC]