Tom
Starfleet Academy
Tom skids into the lecture hall with about six seconds to spare, which is pretty impressive considering he's just sprinted clear across campus. From his podium, Professor Vrba scowls fondly, if such an expression is possible. Tom has the grace to look sheepish as he slides into the last free seat, offering a crooked smile first to Vrba and then to the girl next to him, who is watching this interplay closely.
"I had him last semester," Tom explains under his breath, wiping his face with his uniform sleeve.
"Are you going into medicine, or did you fail it before?" the girl whispers back, and it's a moment before Tom realizes she's teasing him. His grin widens.
"Astrophysics. The other electives were all full, but the uselessness of a second semester of biochem really irritates my father, so I can't be too mad about it."
"Who's—" she starts to ask, but then Vrba strides over to the classroom door and pointedly swings it shut, and everyone falls silent.
Next to him, the girl pulls out a PADD to take notes. Tom tries, and fails, not to notice that she is very pretty, long auburn hair pulled back into a tight braid, a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Now that he thinks about it, is she… familiar, somehow? She seems laser-focused on Vbra's loving detailing of the course syllabus, but Tom must stare for a moment too long, because she makes a face without turning to look at him.
"What?" she hisses.
"What's your name?"
She rolls her eyes, ignoring him. She's very serious, he thinks, now that class has begun. After a moment's consideration of this, he whispers, "You're very serious."
She scrunches her nose at him, and in a flash words come to mind that he has tried valiantly not to involve himself with of late; words like adorable, and interesting, and oh, shit.
Which means he has two fairly straightforward options here: he can drop this class, graduate late, suffer the wrath of his parents but not, at least, the ignominy of falling head over heels for this girl who won't tell him her name.
Or he can stay put, and just do that last bit.
Susie Crabtree! he reminds himself. Danger! Danger!
These, he decides, are Tomorrow Tom's problems. Today Tom opts to live to fight another day, pulling his own PADD out of his bag and dutifully taking notes he does not need and will never look at again. Tom likes Vrba very much, as a person, but his syllabi may as well be etched into the foundations of this building for all that they ever vary. Still, he doesn't want to seem rude. At minimum, it will help him stay awake.
There is a small hope, exceedingly small, that Vrba will break them into groups, invite them to introduce themselves to each other. Considering Tom will have zero extra minutes to get from this class to his next, it would be his only opportunity to talk to the girl. Unless he lets them out early… it is, after all, the first day.
Dare he dream of hope?
He perks up as they reach the last lines of the interminable, fifteen page syllabus—
—and the professor segues, heartlessly, straight into his lecture.
Tom sinks in his chair, hunkering down for the long haul. Heroically, he keeps his eyes front for the remaining hour and a half.
When the class finally wraps up, he picks his bag up off the floor, readying himself for another sprint. His schedule this semester is a nightmare of logistics, each of his classes somehow as physically far apart as it is possible to be without actually falling into the Bay. His stomach growls audibly, and he sighs. Maybe he should start packing ration bars on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
"It's Kathryn," the girl says, and he wheels around to find her holding out half a sandwich, wrapped in brown paper.
Yes! "Tom," he grins. "Are you sure…?"
"You look like you need it more than I do. It's sad, actually. Your stomach is making me sad."
"I'll take sad if it gets me a sandwich," he agrees readily. He's about to ask if he's seen her somewhere before, though she doesn't seem to recognize him, but already she's sliding past, lips pressed together as she fights a smile. Tom watches her go, not even pretending to play it cool.
"Get out of my classroom, Mister Paris," Vrba calls from the front of the room, and Tom checks his watch, crams the sandwich into his mouth, and bolts.
Kathryn
Quarra
"I don't suppose you've got any whiskey," Kathryn asks, slumping onto a barstool and dropping her head into her hands.
"Bad day?" the bartender asks.
"Four hours into my first shift at the Central Power Facility I almost started a core overload," she tells him, her voice muffled. She hears him chuckle, and although she can't explain it her heart leaps into her throat and, startled, she looks up. When she meets his eyes, he opens his mouth to speak, then stops, frowning a little. A pang of something trips through her chest.
"Sorry," he shakes his head. "You just looked so familiar for a second there."
"It's fine," she says softly, then offers, "Human," because he seems to be, too.
"I figured that, what with your distinguished taste in liquor. And no, I don't have any whiskey, but I can get you close. It's not Irish, but it's not bad."
Which means they're not only the same race, but he's from Earth, too. He turns to collect a bottle, the content of which is at least the right color, pours two fingers over ice and slides her the glass, apparently awaiting her verdict. Gingerly, she takes a sip.
"Not bad at all," she allows, tipping it toward him in thanks.
"On the house," he says. Automatically, she starts to protest, but he holds up a hand. "For not melting down the power plant. Half my customers work over there."
She can't help it—she laughs. "All right, all right. Thank you."
A large group she does indeed recognize from work comes in just then, and the bartender sets his rag down. "If you need anything, my name's Tom," he says.
"Kathryn," she returns, and she smiles.
She picks up the not-whiskey and moves to a table where she can spread out the manuals she's been assigned. Surreptitiously, she watches the man move around the bar. She's sure she's never met him before, she can't have, but there is something, just around the edges, in the warmth of his voice, and it's more than that they're from the same place. His chuckle earlier had been like… like a well-worn sweater, easy, comfortable. She'd been sure, just for a moment, that she would look up and see someone she knew.
Which is impossible, of course. The only person she's spoken with so far, other than her boss, is—
"I thought you didn't have time to socialize?" a voice says from behind her, and she turns to see to the man who'd really earned this drink today.
"Jaffen," she greets him. "I'm not socializing. I'm reviewing these manuals and having a drink."
"Well, I recommend the Latara wine and the section on thermal coefficients. Mind if I join you?"
She looks down, swirling the amber liquid. When he'd rescued her from her console she'd found him charming, attractive in that effortless way of men who know exactly what they have to offer. He is very much her type—and he very much seemed to know it. If he'd asked her then to have dinner with him, she would've have said yes.
Now, she hesitates. Offers him a rueful, "Really, I'm very, very busy."
She's not entirely sure why she's rejecting his overtures. He seems like a good man. Kind. If nothing else, she doesn't know another soul on the whole planet. But she catches the bartender's eye across the room, pauses a beat too long. Long enough for Jaffen to follow her line of sight, and although Tom has already turned back to the table he's serving, he says, "Ah."
She winces. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he says. "Really. If you're ever in the market for a friend, you know where to find me." He raps his knuckles lightly on the tabletop, then rejoins the group he came in with.
And if she happens to observe that Tom tracks the other man's retreat over his shoulder, well. She ducks her head, and pretends that it doesn't affect her at all.
Pulling Central Power Operations Protocols towards her, she sips at her drink and settles in, letting the white noise of the other patrons wash over her. She's brought altogether too much to read in one sitting, probably looks ridiculous to the more seasoned workers. It's just that she's bursting with an inexpressible gratitude—to have found this job, and the security it offers. This diverse community so ready to welcome her into its fold.
She wants badly to do well here. To put down roots, at last. And then there's the fact that she is a little too used to excelling at most things she attempts, but that to do so here she'll have to master this strange new technology, fast. Learn to speak its language. The science is universal, but the nuts and bolts of it all, the bones of it…
But rather than feeling deterred by the learning curve ahead, the challenge excites her. And it's been a long time since she's felt this way. A long time since anything has captured her interest at all.
Which brings her back to the bartender. Tom.
She redoubles her focus—but she can't help wondering whether he'll check in on her, correctly clocking her interest and capitalizing on it as any man, any bartender, might. She spots him from the corner of her eye, messy blonde hair and a bounce in his step, making the rounds.
He doesn't come to her table.
After a while, an enigmatic older woman replaces her drink with a wink. Kathryn thanks her, keeping the disappointment out of her voice—truly, she's being absurd—then returns to scribbling notes in the margins, questions to ask her supervisor in the morning. The crowd swells around her, and then wanes. She shifts, propping her chin in her hand. She reads and reads, until the words begin to blur together, and then pushes herself a little more.
"Hey," the bartender interrupts, gently. She starts and looks around, abruptly aware that she's the last one left in the bar. "We're closing up—weekday hours."
She groans. "I'm so sorry, I completely lost track of time."
He cranes his neck to see what she's reading. "Well, who wouldn't. Technical manuals: a thrill a minute. Should help with the meltdowns, though."
"I would've corrected it!" she protests.
He smirks, his eyes twinkling, but says nothing. She has to suppress an impulse—too playful, too familiar—to lean into him, nudge his arm with her shoulder. She busies herself with her drink, draining the last of it in one long pull.
"If you want to wait a few minutes, I can walk you out. Do you live nearby? Maybe you're on my way." He grimaces, then adds, "That's not a line, I swear. I just know how it is to be new around here."
And that's curious, isn't it? After not saying another word to her all night?
She should say no. She doesn't know this man, despite whatever had passed between them earlier, and although the city is supposed to be safe, wouldn't it be foolish of her, naïve even?
On Earth…
"Have you been in the city long?" she stalls, packing her things away.
"Uh, well. Just over a week."
"Practically a native, then. But—"
But there are a thousand reasons to make an excuse and walk home alone.
But she wants to say yes.
"I… guess since I've already gotten lost once today, I'd better take you up on it. I'm in the Osa building."
"Huh, me too. What are the odds?"
A human, from Earth, in the same housing complex. That's… unlikely. She's just about to say so aloud… yet something prevents her, a prickling at the back of her neck and then, just as quickly, the certainty that she's being paranoid—and that she does not want him to think of her as such.
She leans backwards against the bar while Tom makes quick work of stacking chairs. He calls, "You there, Umali?" and the woman who'd served her earlier emerges from a back room. For a few minutes they speak in low tones Kathryn can't make out, until Umali throws Tom a knowing look, graces Kathryn with another wink, and saunters out again.
"Is she…?"
"A telepath? I can't tell if it's that, or if it just comes with owning a bar. She's definitely got a knack for reading people." Tom holds the door open for Kathryn to precede him outside. With the first blast of night air, she shivers.
"It's so cold here at night," she says, pulling her jacket tight. "Do you get used to it?"
"Not yet," Tom admits. "And it'll only get colder."
She can imagine. She'd been warned on the transport in that she was headed for the northernmost city, just in time for the region to enter a polar night. Four months of darkness. She'd thought, a bit romantically, that it sounded cozy. Pictured herself tucked away into her new life, safe, ensconced.
And the reality so far has turned out even better than her hopes. Employee housing is so stunningly generous that after her building manager had left her with her new keys, she'd wondered why there was a labor shortage at all, why anyone would ever want to leave. There is an alcove of her apartment which overlooks the river, walls lined with shelving. A natural reading nook, once the rest of her meager possessions arrive. It's as though someone had plucked the ideal living quarters from her mind and materialized them on the fifteenth floor, just for her.
"It's supposed to be beautiful in the summer, though," he continues. "Where I'm from, the winters were wet, but not quite so dramatic."
Her pulse quickens as she asks, "You're from Earth, right?" Because for all that she'd fled a violent, ruined planet, she feels its pull still, a yearning despite herself. Quarra may be her salvation, but Earth had been home, and time blunts the jagged edge of catastrophe.
"San Francisco, actually."
"Oh," she murmurs. "I'm so sorry."
They reach their building and hurry inside, a rush of heat welcoming them. The guard at the security desk checks their identification and lets them through with a sleepy nod, summoning the lift for them remotely.
Tom waits until the doors slide shut, then says, "It took me a few days to settle in. First job I found wasn't a great fit. But even then, just being here, it felt like a weight was lifted off my chest. You know?"
She does. Her rough start of a morning aside, she feels freer than she can ever remember. It's like waking up, like becoming, all the unwritten chapters of her life drawing her forward, forward.
And perhaps this is why, as the lift opens onto her floor, she teeters for a moment, and seriously considers asking him to join her.
"Well. Thank you again," she says instead, a little awkwardly.
Tom shoves his hands into his pockets and smiles. "Any time."
She steps out and turns towards her living quarters, resolved not to watch him go.
"Kathryn, wait," Tom calls, jams his foot between the doors to hold them open. "I—just so you know, I didn't bother you all night because Umali, you know. The reading people thing. But I wanted to."
"You wanted to bother me?" Kathryn clarifies.
"All night," Tom confirms.
She huffs out a laugh. But before she can think of a clever response, Tom stands back with a wave, and allows the doors to shut between them.
Letting herself into her quarters, she drifts through the main room, touching her few mementos as she goes, marveling, still, that she gets to call this space her own. She leaves the curtains open, dotted lights from buildings across the river like stars in the night sky. She pulls her uniform off and falls into bed, tucking an arm behind her head.
She inhales deeply, and breathes out a contented sigh.
She makes a habit of Wednesdays, after that.
"It's quieter!" she insists.
"For the manuals," Tom nods sagely.
"I am a stranger in a strange land, after all."
He scoffs. "You could probably run that place."
Which is nice of him to say, but privately, she thinks, sounds like a nightmare.
Though she can credibly claim to be working, a marginally quieter bar also means that Tom's got more time on his hands. Sometimes he'll concoct new drinks and test them out on her: a nod of approval tends to herald the weekend's special; a wrinkled nose, and it goes down the drain. Sometimes he'll even join her, taking his 'lunch' at her table, having apparently received Umali's blessing to break with professionalism.
Always, he walks her home.
The city edges closer and closer to its long night. The sun hangs low behind a now-familiar landscape, illuminating the sky only at dawn and dusk, all pastel pink and shocks of orange. In abject defiance of the habit of a lifetime, Kathryn wakes early to stand out on her balcony, to simply exist in this liminal moment, hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea and a blanket across her shoulders.
It's this sense of transition that at last makes her give up any remaining pretense, leave behind her pile of work and duck into the bar one night with a new novel, instead. Tom, serving drinks to Jaffen at a booth near the door, notices her immediately. A broad grin overtakes his features. Jaffen laughs out loud.
"All right, calm down, both of you," Kathryn says, exasperated.
Jaffen raises his hands in surrender. "I didn't say anything!"
Tom puts on a show of seriousness, saluting her with a mock-scowl. She rolls her eyes at him, slides in opposite Jaffen instead of making for her table in the corner.
"Be right back with your usual," Tom says, and heads to the bar.
"I'm sorry if we embarrassed you," Jaffen says in an undertone. "It's just nice to see you like this."
"Like 'this'?"
"Like you're comfortable here."
Inevitably, she glances over at Tom. And he must sense her attention, because he looks up, finds and holds her gaze through the crowd.
"Yeah," she says, feeling herself smile. "I am."
"Ready for this?" Tom asks, locking up the bar behind them.
"Is it hubris if I say yes, my first time?"
"Mine too," he reminds her. "It's only hubris if you run out of lightbulbs." She tucks her arm into his, a human shield against the cold. Pulls her scarf up to cover her nose.
Across the city, overwinter preparations are all but complete. The plant issued its workers warmer uniforms a week ago—insulated boots, gloves, hats, the works. Bobbing pinpricks of light now signal headlamped residents heading home for the night. She thinks she's prepared, but she has to admit that it is daunting, the sheer amount of supplies the government advises. The implications of it all.
"Can I show you something cool?" Tom asks.
"'Cool'," she chuckles. "Yes, always."
When they reach their building, Tom takes her up to the seventeenth floor without explanation. Her view from inside the lift is blocked by semi-transparent sheeting draped from the ceiling. It looks like a construction site.
"Can we be up here?" she asks.
"I bribed a guy," Tom says. When she frowns, he takes her hand. "I'm kidding! We're allowed. Let me show you."
He leads her through the barrier and gropes for a panel of light switches. He flips them on one at a time, overhead lights blinking to life down a long line. They're in a kind of lobby, she now sees—on a level without living quarters. A glass door lies ahead of them, and beyond that… a veritable jungle.
Tom holds the door open for her, and as she steps through the humidity hits her first, at least ten degrees hotter inside than out. Around them, the walls are alive from top to bottom with varieties of plants she's never seen before, not that she'd have had occasion to. Some are even flowering, somehow. An artificial creek runs adjacent to the center walkway, and as she looks closer, she sees silvery fish—or anyway, something like fish—lazing between smooth stones.
"What is this place?" she whispers.
"It's an arboretum!" Tom says. "More and more buildings here have them, apparently. One of my regulars is on the gardening crew. He told me the lights will actually simulate day and night, when it's all done."
She's never seen anything like it. This whole floor must have some kind of full-spectrum lighting to keep everything so green and lush. It's nearly labyrinthine, the way the planters have been arranged to form winding paths through the space. She can just make out a bench down and around one corner. She runs a reverent hand across a fern-like bush.
"Mid-level, so it stays warmer with less power?"
Tom laughs. "You can take the girl out of the power distribution plant…."
It's overwhelming, frankly. She hadn't noticed that she missed being in nature. She spends so much of her time below ground these days, her shifts ending well after dark, and it's been fine, entirely fine—yet, pointlessly, she thinks of cottontail rabbits, a last holdout of Indiana's decimated wildlife population. Emotion wells inside her, clogs in her throat. She bites her lip.
When she doesn't respond, Tom looks down at her, scanning her face. "You know what I miss?" he says, after a beat. "Birds. We used to have these parrots, wild parrots, just unbelievably loud. For a long time everyone thought they'd gone extinct. They always seemed so out of place… but then again, so did I."
He trains his gaze on the bank of shaded windows. And Kathryn understands the things he does not say.
"Thank you, Tom." She leans her head against him, and he shifts his weight to accommodate her, drapes an arm across her shoulders.
"It isn't… real," he says, almost apologetically.
It isn't Earth.
"No," she agrees. "But it is beautiful."
They stay like that for another few minutes, until, reluctantly, she looks back to the lift. "Oh. You're upstairs," she realizes, accustomed as she is to him dropping her off at her floor.
"Um," he says. "About that. I'm actually on three."
She stares at him. "…You've been riding all the way up to fifteen, and then back down?"
"Bought me a few extra minutes with you, didn't it?"
Her heart stutters and, quickly, she looks away. She never knows what to make of these comments, which seem like flirting except that he's never asked her for more—never, for instance, invited her to come home with him, however long she lingers. In the lift she is acutely aware of his closeness to her, the physicality of him. She is, admittedly, never not aware of this, but she has been careful so far to toe the line of friendship, wary of ruining what they already have in pursuit of something she's not sure he wants. His friendship means a great deal to her.
More than he knows, probably.
And with a flash of insight that makes her feel like a perfect idiot, she thinks: Oh.
It takes less than a minute to reach her floor, but it's long enough. She gathers her belated courage, and when the doors open, she faces him.
"Maybe this is crazy," she says. "You've never…." She stops, regroups. Tries again. "Tom. Would you like to come in?"
He blows out a breath and laughs, and the way he looks at her then makes her feel at once giddy and a little faint. "Kathryn. I thought you'd never ask."
It's on the tip of her tongue to counter, in her defense, but we hardly know each other, really! Except that she knows just what he means: that an age may as well have passed since that first night at the bar, for all that she has wanted him ever since.
She leads him to her door, steps inside, switches on a lamp. Her back to him, pulse racing, she toes her boots off, starts to shrug out of her jacket. "Do you want anything to—"
Before she can finish, he grasps her arm lightly and turns her towards him. His other hand, steadier than her own, comes to rest at her waist. "I'd like to kiss you now, actually," he says, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "If that's all right with you."
"I wish you would," she breathes. He bends to meet her even as she comes up on tiptoes, winding her arms around his neck. But at the first lightning touch of his lips to hers, she pulls back.
"Is something wrong?" he murmurs.
"No," she says slowly, shaking her head. "No. Just… a little dizzy. Déjà vu."
His thumb traces the line of her cheekbone. "Does that make me destined to kiss you?"
She chokes out a startled laugh. "Oh, god, that's an awful line."
"I'll make it up to you," he promises. He gives her another moment to pull away, then closes the space between them—and if she has struggled these past weeks to voice her desire, her body, now, does not. His tongue slides against hers and the whole of the world narrows to this moment: to the perfect fit of their bodies, his purposeful fingers slipping beneath the hem of her shirt, tracing a white hot trail across the coolness of her skin, the sides of her breasts.
She groans into his mouth, drops her arms down to his hips to urge him closer, closer, closer. She can hardly believe she was ever unsure of this, feels the joy of it, the rightness of it in her every nerve ending, it sings through her blood, and when together they stumble, laughing, through the doorway of her bedroom, his voice, thick with need, whispers more promises into her skin, words that make her tremble, that make her buck against him, as he lays her across her bed, and takes her apart.
The next morning, a pale sun rises for what seems like the span of a heartbeat, then slips again beneath its horizon, and does not return.
Kathryn
Starfleet Academy
Kathryn arrives early to her second biochemistry lesson, as is her wont as a serious student, and not, certainly, because she wants to save a seat for a boy named Tom with a boyish charm and blue, blue eyes. If she drops her bag onto the desk beside her, it's only so she can keep it off the floor while she rummages through it, extracting her PADD and, well, okay, there's not actually anything else she needs right now. Impatient with herself, she blows a stray hair out of her face. Pulls up Professor Vrba's syllabus and reviews it again, as though she hasn't already highlighted the most pertinent information.
She can hardly pretend to much interest in this class, when her focus is quantum cosmology. But she can't graduate without it, and so here she is, determinedly not thinking about how she could be working on her thesis right now instead of mucking about with proteins and enzymes.
All science is important, she reminds herself sternly, her personal mantra this semester.
When Tom arrives, he's a few minutes earlier than before and not quite so disheveled, probably because he couldn't run flat out with the paper cup in his hand. Coffee, she thinks, longingly. Swiftly, she slides her bag under her own desk.
"Kathryn," he says, nodding solemnly.
"Tom."
"I bring you an offering," he says, holding out the cup. "In thanks. For the sandwich."
Involuntarily, she gasps. "How did you—"
"I took a guess. Recognized the logo on the wrapping and figured you weren't at a coffee shop for their PB and J's."
"Good guess," she confirms, bringing the cup up to her nose and inhaling deeply. Hazelnut hits her first and then dark chocolate, maybe vanilla? She takes a sip, letting her eyes flutter closed, and oh, it's a good blend, smooth, medium-dark; perfect.
When she looks up again, Tom is staring at her. "So, big coffee fan," he says, fighting to keep a straight face.
She feels herself flush, but is spared having to answer by Professor Vrba dimming the lights, signaling the start of class.
After that, Tom starts bringing coffee for both of them on a semi-regular basis. She tries to object, but each time he overrules her, saying either, "I'm there anyway," or, "I know a guy," or just a good-natured, "Shut up, Kathryn." She can't figure how he's doing it. She knows he has to make it here from north campus. Did he drop his morning class? Is it possible he really does have a secret coffee supplier?
"You don't know about the coffee cart?" he says, when she finally voices her confusion.
"The what?"
A wide, slow grin spreads across his face. "Well, if you don't know, I can't tell you."
"What? Why?" she demands.
"Because then what'll you need me for?"
"Tom," she says seriously. "Tom, where is there a coffee cart?"
"Gotta go! See you next week!" he waves, and vanishes.
In the end, it's not that hard to find. She's never gone up to the top floor of the Biology building, because why would she? She's essentially here under duress. The coffee cart is tucked into a corner of the short wing, nothing fancy, but it's near the 'lift and it's fresh and there's no line, which makes its discovery on par with a spiritual experience, surely.
And yet, having solved the mystery, she finds she wishes she hadn't. She catches herself smiling a little wistfully, and she decides that, though it will pain her on the days he doesn't bring her coffee, she won't come up here again. She'll let him keep his secrets.
She'll let herself need him in this small, sweet way.