Look After You
Chapter: 3/?
Rating : T
Pairing: P/T
Summary: Set after the episode "Faces." After their ordeal in the Vidiian mines, two very different people find they share a common ground.
Disclaimer: Paramount owns everything, apparently. The title comes from The Fray's song Look After You.
Author note: Thanks to Pepper for the beta!
***
"I woke up this morning, with this feeling inside me that I can't explain, like a weight that I've carried, been carried away." Rascal Flatts, Feels Like Today
Harry was surprised to see B'Elanna walking up to their table the next day at breakfast.
"Mind if I join you?" she asked, looking at Harry who was facing her.
Harry gestured for the seat next to him, unable to speak with his mouth full of Neelix's [rather disgusting] leola root omelette.
Harry was slightly overjoyed at having B'Elanna sit with them. His invitations for her to join them were always turned down flat, and he always suspected that B'Elanna felt uncomfortable around Tom.
But instead, he watched as B'Elanna exchanged a shy smile with Tom, and Tom gave her one back. He noticed something that his tired mind hadn't noticed earlier; that Tom seemed considerably brighter than he had been the last few days, and B'Elanna too seemed a lot more comfortable with herself. He wondered if the two had talked about the Vidiian incident.
It had taken a while for Harry to extract what had happened on their away mission, and when he heard the details, he wasn't surprised at Tom's reluctance at sharing the information. Since Tom had been back, he'd watch him fall in a downwards spiral and nothing Harry said or did could bring him out of it. Maybe B'Elanna, the very person he shared the ordeal with, could help him through it, although she hadn't seemed too focused the last few days either.
"How are you this morning, lieutenant?" Tom asked B'Elanna, with a playful emphasis on the word 'lieutenant.'
B'Elanna looked at him, eyes gleaming. "I'm fine. Really good actually." Harry still couldn't get used to B'Elanna's softer, gentler voice. "How are you? Both, I mean."
"Well you know, it's too early in the morning for my brain to function, but I couldn't be better," Tom answered, grinning back at B'Elanna.
Harry raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so you're implying that you have a brain, are you? I'm good B'Elanna. It's nice seeing you for breakfast."
Tom stood up to leave. "Yeah you know you should join us for lunch."
B'Elanna nodded. "Sure," she answered. "I'd like that."
Watching the two, he suspected that he was finally getting his two friends back again. That they seemed to be more comfortable with each other was an added bonus.
***
B'Elanna watched from the sidelines as Harry and Tom played pool in Sandrine's, each egging each other on. Every time one got the other, she couldn't help but laugh.
And she hadn't laughed in a long time.
Ever since she had made the decision to join the two of them for breakfast two weeks ago, free time by herself wasn't an option anymore. Harry and Tom dragged her everywhere, and seemed to misunderstand the word "no," no matter how insistent she made it sound. At first she had regretted deciding to sit with them, hating their intrusion of her alone time, but as the days grew on she found that she enjoyed their company.
She had never really had a proper friend before. Chakotay didn't count as their relationship was that of siblings, and sometimes she forgot that he wasn't actually her brother. Their bond had been instantaneous, and she could honestly say that he was the only person she ever trusted on sight. In retrospect, Seska and she had been acquaintances rather than friends. Seska had been far too absorbed in Chakotay to care much for B'Elanna, and B'Elanna never felt the need to think much for her when she was pulling the jealous-possessive act. Harry and Tom…well, they were different. Harry was so trusting and child-like that she couldn't help but be drawn in by him from the moment she met him. Since then, she hadn't had much of a chance to spend time with him, and with Tom hanging around him all the time she'd made a conscious effort not to, lest she ripped his head off.
But ever since she had talked to Tom, things had been different. She found he was more tolerable than she expected, and hanging out with the two of them could be fun, if she let it be. At breakfast, they shared each other's company in companionable silence, none of them being awake enough to exchange more than a handful of words. If they had a chance to grab lunch together, they always gave each other words of encouragement to get them through the rest of the day and dinner in either Harry's or Tom's quarters usually accumulated in mayhem of some sort, but she found she looked forward to that part of her day best.
She considered having these two people as her friends ridiculous. Five year olds had friends. Surely by her age, there was no such thing? Irrelevant perhaps. Yet there was something compelling about having two people who cared about her. Though they'd only been doing this for two weeks, she could have sworn that it felt like they'd been doing it for a lifetime. She wasn't quite sure if they had alternative motives for suddenly befriending her. Harry surely not. But Tom? Despite her words to him, there was still something about him that put her on the edge, but she couldn't tell what.
She watched as Tom sunk the last ball in, and Harry groaned.
"There goes my rations," Harry said, walking off and muttering something about daylight robbery.
Tom was grinning from ear to ear, and there was something boyish and charming she found about that smile.
"Hey B'Elanna, want to play?"
She raised an eyebrow. "I don't think so."
Tom walked up in front of her, and leaned on his pool stick, eyes level with hers.
"And why not?"
She refused to recoil beneath that gaze. "I hate pool." The truth was she couldn't actually play pool. As much as she wanted to pretend that she couldn't and bluff him just as the captain had, she didn't quite contain that trick up her sleeve. Though she was curious about the game, having Tom revel in teaching it to her would be too much. She hated the idea of him thinking of her as some quaint little girl who needed a man to show her the way to Deep Space 9. Kahless knew that he'd already seen the most vulnerable side of her, and that was something she didn't want to have to repeat anytime soon.
He didn't seem satisfied by her answer. "You hate pool?"
"Is that so surprising? It's not exactly the most challenging of games."
Tom gawped at her. "Well, what would a person with such good tastes as yourself, consider challenging?"
The look in her eyes matched the challenge in his. "Parrises Squares."
Tom raised an eyebrow. "Oh really?"
"Yes, really."
"Well then, let's play lieutenant."
"Are you sure about that? I may just whip your ass."
Tom grinned. "Is that a challenge?"
She grinned back. "You bet it is."