Look After You- Chapter Fifteen
A/N: Just a warning that this chapter most likely deserves its T rating. Refences and lines from Persistence of Vision. And thanks to Pepper for the beta.
***
As always, just another normal day on Voyager, B'Elanna thought, tapping furiously at the control panel of the warp core. She was desperately trying to set up a resonance burst, in order to inhibit the sionic rays that were currently incapacitating the crew. But as the whole of her staff resembled something more akin to a zombie out of one of Tom's holo-deck programmes, her attempts were proving near impossible.
She gave a sigh of relief as she heard the Engineering doors slide open.
"How's it going down here?" She was surprised to hear Tom's voice.
"Not good," she answered. "I can't get a response from anybody. It's like they're catatonic." She turned to look at him. "What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn't you be at helm control?"
Tom tapped his fingers against the control panel. "I figured helping you is more important right now."
B'Elanna gave him a confused look. "If you say so. But you know, you could have sent Harry. Or Chakotay."
"They're out of action. But I'm glad to know my company's appreciated."
B'Elanna gave him a wry smile. "I'm sorry, Tom. I'm kind of a little stressed here. Trying to set up this burst knowing that the fate of the entire crew rests on it doesn't make for easy working. You could make yourself useful."
Instead, Tom came and positioned himself on her other side. "I think we should take an escape pod out of here. We passed an M-class planet yesterday. The pod should get us there in a week."
B'Elanna stopped what she was doing and gave him an incredulous look. "That's a little dramatic, don't you think?"
"B'Elanna, there's nothing more we can do here. If we stay here any longer, we'll be next."
"I'm willing to take that risk. I need to fix this, Tom. And I'm not going to let some bio-electric field incapacitate me."
"Sheer will alone does not make you immune to deadly alien weapons, B'Elanna."
"It does if you're Klingon. If you're not going to be useful-,"
Suddenly Tom grabbed her wrists, drawing her close to him, and she looked up at him in shock. "Please, B'Elanna. Come with me. It's the only way."
"Tom! What are you doing?"
He didn't let go of his grip on her. "Come with me," he repeated.
"I can't believe you're saying this! You know we've got to stay and help the others."
"Do I have to give you an order?"
"You're the same rank as me!"
"I have seniority."
She snorted. "Just barely," she said, trying to shrug off his grip on her.
He loosened his grip on her hands and instead positioned them lower, so his arms were circulating her waist, and pulled her close. And just like that, everything became clear.
"You're not Tom, are you?" she asked quietly.
"I'm the Tom you want me to be."
She looked at him in confusion. "The Tom I want you to be?"
The intent way he was looking at her was starting to make her feel panicked. She knew that she was strong enough to fight him off, but in that moment, she couldn't seem to send the right messages to her brain to move.
His right hand moved up to her neck, whilst his left arm stayed firmly around her waist, and she drew her face away. He counteracted by drawing his face even closer to hers so that she could feel his breath on her face, and she closed her eyes at the sensation.
"This is what you want," he said, his words slow and deliberate. "Deep down, this is the secret you've been keeping. From him. From others. And from yourself."
B'Elanna opened her eyes, staring at this Tom's eyes, as he tried to make her believe he was real, and slowly, ever so slowly, he was starting to make her believe.
"You want me," he carried on. "You've wanted me since the moment you first saw me. All those pretences of despising me and resisting me. Deep down, you're just like the rest of all the women you try so desperately not to be like. But I see right through you, B'Elanna. And I want you, too."
He began a trail of soft kisses along her jaw, and she let out a moan, resisting him only slightly, and enjoying the feel of his lips against her skin. It had been a long time-too long- since she'd allowed herself the touch of another, and despite the internal battle building within her, the temptation to give in to him was strong.
In her mind this Tom was real, and she was confronting something she'd been quelling inside for a long time, and hadn't even acknowledged.
Her gaze locked on to his. "Yes," she answered, feeling no guilt or objection. "Yes," she repeated.
The next thing she knew, they were in her quarters. She didn't allow herself to question how they had got there.
He had her pinned down to her bed, his weight pressing atop her.
A small part of her, her rational side, was trying to gain control. "We have to…help the…others," she said, in between his drugging kisses to her neck. How was it that he knew to touch her here, where she was most sensitive?
But he wouldn't let her resist, trying to distract her instead.
"I want you," he repeated, his expert hands sliding underneath her jacket and removing her turtleneck from the waistband of her trousers. "I've always wanted you. From the moment I saw you on the Val Jean I knew I had to have you."
She gasped at the sensation of his hands on her waist; his fingers drawing maddening circles on her skin.
"Wasn't…going…to…make…it…easy," she said through gritted teeth.
He chuckled into her neck, and she planted her fingers into his hair in response.
He moved his chin up to her ear; his fingers following upwards.
"Give in to me," he whispered in her ear.
She responded by claiming his mouth and passionately kissing him, barely giving him a chance to respond. And with every taste of him, she felt herself letting go of all of her inhibitions: reality, consequence, her duty and the fact that this Tom wasn't real at all.
***
Later that evening, Harry, Tom and she were sitting in the mess hall, each staring glumly into their cup of coffee. It had been an extremely miserable day, and B'Elanna had no idea why she had even agreed to meet them. Maybe it had something to do with them feeling just as unhappy as she did.
"So what did you see?" Harry finally asked.
"I saw my father, being his usual, deprecating self," Tom muttered dispassionately.
Harry gave him a small smile of sympathy. "I saw Libby, telling me she hadn't given up and asking why I had."
Tom gave him a small smile back. "What about you, B'Elanna?"
B'Elanna looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
"I…," she began, and he noted the way that she couldn't meet his gaze. "I saw Chakotay," she said.
For a moment, Tom's eyes seemed to darken. "Oh," he said with raised eyebrows.
They drank the rest of their drinks in silence, before Tom and then Harry made their excuses and left.
B'Elanna leant back in her seat and sighed.
Well, she thought. I can now cross Tom Paris off the list of men I have not had a sexual fantasy about.
She sighed again, feeling a heavy weight on her shoulders, and cast a gaze around the room. She noticed Captain Janeway sitting by the view-port, deep in thought. On impulse, she decided to go over to her.
"I'm surprised to see you here, Captain," she said, startling the captain out of her reverie. "Isn't this the day you're usually in the holo-deck?"
"I thought after our recent experience, that I'd take a break from fantasy for a while."
B'Elanna smiled. "I don't blame you. I think that it had an impact on all of us." She leant forward, her chin in her hands. "Do you think it's true? The alien was reading our minds? Creating images from our own experiences?"
"It seemed that way," Kathryn answered. "He had an uncanny ability to bring buried thoughts out into the open. Why?"
"Oh, it's just…I experienced something I would rather not admit," she replied.
"I know, me too."
B'Elanna looked at the captain in surprise. Sometimes it was easy to forget that she was a woman too, who felt emotions and had thoughts that weren't permissible for a captain.
"But in a way, it did us all a favour. Maybe it's best to look those feelings in the eye, than to keep them locked up inside," Kathryn carried on.
That's what I'm afraid of, B'Elanna thought. She had no idea how to go about processing the events of the last twenty-four hours; how to deal with feelings she wasn't aware that she had -or had she been? All she knew was that a door she would rather have left closed had been open, and there would be no going back to shut it now.