Episode Two | Teaser - Good Night

Chapter 3
Thomas
Real

Thomas nodded good bye to Chakotay as he left the bridge. His quarters were simply too small to think he wanted to spend too much time there. But, then, he knew he would be there most of the time. There was nothing else to do. The room's strict dimensions left a lot to be desired, but it was still a luxury compared to what he'd had on the Valjean.

To his surprise, Jadzia stood at the far end of the corridor tapping into the transporter controls back there as he walked past. It was a bizarre configuration to Thomas's view: putting Transporter Room One in what was essentially a hallway behind the bridge and the captain's and first officer's quarters. But, hell, what did he know about starship design?

Warship design. The Defiant was a painfully compact little ship.

"Do you ever stop working?" he asked, putting only a meter or so between them before leaning on the wall.

She shrugged. "When there's something better to do, sure." She glanced at him, and he wondered if that was supposed to be… something. He'd certainly seen less sultry looks, anyway.

"Huh." He reminded himself he was very taken. His girlfriend would kill him. Probably easily. Young Bajorans were still full of the fire of injustice, the invincibility of victory, and the futility of pulling their punches. "So what's so interesting?"

"I don't know if you noticed, but this ship has more problems than just the social aspect," she said, and her tone turned slightly insulting. Not that he personally expected respect. He'd gotten his ship blown up and had a hand in this whole mess. At least, a little. "The Defiant is too powerful for her size, so Engineering has really got their work cut out for them putting this ship in working order. But I'm more concerned about the power we're going to need without access to refuel or refit."

"Very forward-thinking." He peeked at her PADD and then the adjustments she was making to the transporter. "You know, I could probably help with that. I squeezed a pretty nice living out of an abandoned research outpost for eight years. Then again, I was alone. Not a lot of overhead." And right now, he wasn't even sure whether he was joking.

She gave him a long gaze that almost seemed apologetic. "You sure have a knack for getting yourself stranded."

He grinned. "Frankly, it's a miracle I'm as well-adjusted as I am."

Even though he'd intended it as a joke, she didn't seem to find it very funny. Maybe not that well-adjusted. "Well, I wouldn't say no to help," she went on. Okay, so maybe she was just distracted. Her eyes were fixed on the PADD on which she seemed to have done significant figuring on their power requirements. "But I can tell you right now that replicating even half of our food isn't going to get us very far. The cycle of matter-construction and -deconstruction isn't exactly cheap."

"No kidding." Thomas looked at the transporter. "So you think the best bet's going to be hand-washing our dishes and taking shuttles instead?"

"Sometimes." Jadzia shrugged. Didn't acknowledge that crack about hand-washing dishes. Thomas wasn't looking forward to galley duty since… that seemed to be where she was heading. "But in the meantime, I'm just trying to cut use by hibernating systems. Cutting the transporters standby consumption, cycling the phaser coils more efficiently. That kind of thing."

"How long do we have before it becomes dangerous?"

She looked at him, her expression dire. "Well, if we don't change anything at all, three years."

"I had no idea Starfleet ships were so fragile."

"This one…?" Jadzia sighed. "She wasn't meant to be out alone this long."

Thomas sighed and nodded. "I guess we have that in common." She gave him a glance of surprise, but he didn't let her say anything. "I want to talk to you about this tomorrow, so… I don't know, maybe send me a copy of these calculations?"

With a nod, she tapped into her PADD. "Consider it done. I don't know if I'll have the time to meet tomorrow, though. Engineering is understaffed and they need the help so… that's going to be top priority for a while."

"I'll probably see you, anyway."

Jadzia smiled, and Thomas was sure that it had to be sincere. "Probably. It's a small ship."

Thomas nodded, smiled. "Sure is." They wouldn't be able to avoid each other. It was a bigger ship than the Valjean, and only slightly less densely-populated. There would always be someone to keep him company. He gave her a brief wave and turned toward his quarters on the other side of Deck One.

He wasn't surprised to see Seska there, sitting on the mattress he'd put on the floor in the corner. She was dressed in her familiar button-up shirt that hung down to her knees. Thomas had never known her to wear anything else to bed, and it reminded Thomas somewhat of a potato sack. He'd asked her about it once, and she admitted that it was the same style that she'd worn as a child during the occupation. She said everything else felt restraining.

One knee was drawn up, and she was reading a PADD.

"About time you decided to show up," she said, and set the PADD down.

Thomas didn't answer that. He unzipped his vest and kicked off his boots. The replicator looked entirely inviting, but his conversation with Jadzia seemed to have put him off of any food he could think of. So, instead, he looked around the room—fully aware that Seska was watching him like a wolf.

"The set-up of these quarters is really not intended for comfort, are they?" he wondered after taking in the whole thing. He had three days, including today, to get used to it.

It was a wholly efficient design. Two bunks recessed into the wall on the right. There were drawers in the walls for storing clothing and other things on the left—conveniently leaving out the spots where the beds on the other side would take up the other space. Then there was a desk in the corner next to the replicator in the back wall and one chair. The room was only about two-and-a-half meters square, if that, and barely accommodated the two mattresses Thomas had moved from the bunks to the floor to accommodate both him and Seska.

"I don't know. It's better than your room on the Valjean."

Thomas laughed and stretched out on the bed. "I can't argue with that." That room had been inconveniently tiny. The bed was even smaller and could only accommodate two people if they were practically on top of each other… clearly not a feasible long-term arrangement, anyway.

Seska lifted her PADD again, looked at it. Set it back down.

"What are you reading?" he asked.

Seska blushed and pressed the button on the bottom center to shut it off. "One of those romance novels B'Elanna suggested. I didn't have anything better to do."

"Hm." Thomas grinned and rolled onto his back to see the ceiling. He was sore from the long hours, but overall today had been a fine day. "Looking for inspiration?"

She slapped his chest as if a punishment.

"What? You did say you were waiting for me."

"Well, I can't imagine what else you're good for." Her smile said she was teasing. Seska crept over the sheets until she was hovering over him. "So very little…" She sighed and drifted down like a leaf until their lips met. "So very little to do around here."

"Just imagine how many novels you'll get through in seventy years." He reached up, his fingertips brushing her abdomen until he found the center seam of her nightshirt. He passed it over in favor of pulling her waist to his.

She only smiled, and braced herself above him.

Thomas watched her bright hazel eyes and tried very hard to think of nothing else. Something about the seventy-thousand lightyears from everything they'd known had made him nostalgic.

For all the benefits to dating some version of a telepath, this was certainly one of the benefits to dating someone just as oblivious as he was. Even though their early exploratory encounters had been… well, overall, disappointing, Seska knew him now. He knew her.

To be fair, their first time couldn't have been particularly noteworthy for her, either. He was out of practice, and there were things he hadn't understood about her expectations, as a Bajoran. Things she didn't realize about him, solitary for a quarter of his life and probably-understandable abandonment issues. And it wasn't her fault that he'd spent eight years pining for Deanna—an empath.

Deanna knew him, better than he knew himself. Because, obviously, she couldn't know him less. He'd never been a mystery to her, and she'd let him see her so that their relationship was on equal ground. He'd missed her shape in his arms, her pressure on his lips, but, even more than that, her touch on his mind. The words he wanted to hear, she said. The feelings he wanted to give her, she returned. Pleasing her, thrilling and satisfying her, was immediately and intimately knowable—and felt like life's ultimate goal every time he held her. He'd never much liked the old-fashioned phrase, making love, until he met her. With her, the euphemism made more sense than any other word or phrase.

Even though he missed hearing his partner's thoughts, feeling her emotions, he was glad Seska had no way of knowing that Deanna was still on his mind most of the time. Even when he was doing other things. Even when he was with other people. Deanna was less a person to him now, and more like a habit.

Whatever he had with Seska was… something else. He was used to being alone, and with Seska…

Well, Seska didn't care what he wanted.

Not like that. She would never be exactly what he wanted. It wasn't her fault it'd been a long time since he'd felt something that wasn't just a leftover imagining from a twenty-six-year-old crying himself to sleep in an empty outpost that creaked in the shifting weather and caverns. That was almost ten years ago now, and eight of those years had just been a consecutively older man still trying to survive alone on that rock. Sometimes he thought he didn't know how to hear or feel anymore.

This was paradise. The Valjean was small and packed, and Seska's orbit was even smaller and more personal. It had been months since he'd been in a room by himself for very long.

But he was still used to wanting something else. He was used to the desperate desire for a word, a touch, the sense of thought about him.

"This whole thing just… I don't know if we're gonna make it out of this." He looked around the room, the seams in the corners between the walls and the ceiling and where the door met the wall. Seventy-thousand lightyears of danger and unknown on the other side of the bulkheads. "We're gonna die in here."

She sighed and nodded. "You're right." The breath of her whisper touched his cheek.

Thomas looked at her. He hadn't expected her to agree. "I thought you were a survivor."

"Everyone's a survivor until they aren't." She flexed her fingers, wrapping the rough fabric of his shirt between them, and pulled her lips close to his jaw. "I'm a realist. I have to…" She hesitated, sighed, and leaned her forehead against his. "I give up. I give up."

Almost reflexively, his hand was on her shoulder… but he wasn't sure what he intended to do with it. "What do you mean you give up?"

"Please, don't push me away." She reached for him.

He turned as she leaned against his chest, and he wanted to draw away.

He wanted to press in.

He didn't know what he wanted.

What if they were right? What if they were going to die on this ship? In this room? He didn't want to be alone, and this, this was as close as he could be to someone. But what he wanted—he wanted…

Deanna.

"Thomas." She breathed, as desperate as she was close. "Thomas, hold me."

Thomas replaced the sounds in his mind with Seska's and said her name instead. "I'm here," he whispered onto her lips. "I'm here; what do you need?"

She pressed her cheek to his and breathed as he rested his kisses on her neck and shoulder. "This can't be real," she said, her fingertips slipping down his abdomen. "Is this it?"

He wasn't sure what she meant exactly, except that maybe she was talking about this room. This ship. This was the rest of their lives. He pressed his lips to her neck, worked his hand beneath her back as she hooked his leg with hers.

He shifted them to cover her, and she bent toward him, whispering his name like an oath beside the Prophets.

The dreams in that empty station felt a little something like this, like a dream or a nightmare… But Seska's touch was real. The breath of her whispers in his ear was real. The taste of his name on her tongue was real.

"How did we get here, Thomas?"

He had no idea how they got here—it was random and unfair... But that was life. Maybe he would have wondered if he were cursed, except part of him strained to wonder if this wasn't better.

Oh, this was so much better. Her lashes fluttered against his cheek and her breath mingled with his soft vows of gratitude and desire. He wasn't alone, and that was all he cared about right now. With the last of his misdirected thoughts, the last of his breath, he decided this wasn't paradise. He was a realist, too—so he held her the way she asked.