Disclaimer: All Paramount's. Nuff said.
Rated NC-17
Too many people helped keep this story on track. Thanks to Diane, E.J., K.J and Dakota.
Feedback? Please. Shayenne
Kathryn Janeway couldn't sleep, but that was not unusual. She wandered the corridors aimlessly for an hour or so, enjoying the thrum of the engines and the dim lighting of the sleeping ship. She liked to sense the restrained power of both human and starship simmering within the confines of the hull. She liked the power of being awake while others slept. This was when the ship was truly hers, when if she were a fanciful person, she would have said that the ship acquired sentience and shared its secrets with her.
As was often the case, she ended up in the silent messhall. She had the place to herself; it was not break time for gamma shift and it was far too late for late night revelers leaving the holodeck. Too late as well for romancing couples to be hanging out in Voyager's equivalent of a coffee shop.
She ordered a coffee from the replicator and settled into a table at the back of the hall, where she could see the stars through the viewport yet would be hidden by the curve of the wall from any late night visitors. She sipped and let her thoughts drift, still feeling the connection with her ship through the silent throb and pulse of the deck.
The swoosh of the door interrupted her musings and she remained silent and still, hoping that whoever it was would get what they wanted and leave without seeing her. The low voices told her it was two people and she was disappointed when they settled into the table immediately around the curve from hers.
Although low, the voices reached her clearly. It was Chakotay and his latest girlfriend, Ensign Felicia Ellison. She had started to shuffle out of her booth, to alert them to her presence, make her excuses and leave, when Felicia's voice reached her.
"Chakotay, you know what I am going to say don't you?"
There was a pause, then Chakotay's tones, sounding slightly rueful. "I think so. You're dumping me."
To Kathryn's ears he sounded resigned, but not unduly upset.
"I wouldn't call it dumping you, Chakotay, I just don't think we're really going anywhere."
"What do you mean?" Chakotay again.
"Look, you're a lovely man, kind, sexy, generous… good in bed…"
Kathryn could hear the smile in her voice as she said that and she had a sudden vivid picture of the very lovely ensign entwined with Chakotay in his quarters, sated and content after lovemaking. She sank lower in her seat. She certainly didn't want to be discovered now.
Felicia was still talking. "But, your heart isn't in it. Wait, don't interrupt. Hear me out." There was a pause, before she continued. "I know you say that you and the captain are friends, and it is obvious you are. I know you say that neither of you wants to be lovers, well maybe that is true. But you have such a close friendship that there really isn't room for anyone else. There is no room for any more intimacy in your life. I'm not saying that you and she should become lovers, what you have obviously works well for both of you. I'm just saying you don't need anyone else."
"Felicia…" Kathryn could picture Chakotay's mouth opening and closing.
"No, I've nearly finished. I don't think you used me just for sex, Chakotay, as I think you can do very well without that, and who is to say I didn't use you the same way? It's just I want some one in my life who really needs me, really loves me, like you love the captain. I don't want to settle for less."
There was a silence. Kathryn cradled her cold cup of coffee unwilling to even taste it, in case any movement alerted the couple to her presence.
"Felicia, you're a very lovely woman, and too perceptive for your own good." There was the sound of material sliding over the bench seat. Kathryn could imagine Chakotay sliding closer to kiss his lover, no, his ex-lover, goodbye. There was the sound of a soft kiss.
"Besides," Chakotay sounded rueful. "I've heard a similar version of this speech a couple of times recently."
"Be happy, Chakotay. We'll still be friends won't we?"
"Yes. Of course. I hope you find what you are looking for. You are a special person."
Another soft kiss, then the sound of quick, hurrying footsteps as Felicia left the messhall.
The silence stretched out. Kathryn could imagine Chakotay, staring out of the viewport. Was he upset? She didn't think so. The whispers of the crew had told a similar story. Chakotay had dated three or four women over the last six months and had been dumped by all of them.
"Kathryn." His voice was loud in the silent air. "Kathryn, I know you're there. Come and sit with me."
How had he known she was there? Rising, still holding the cold coffee, she walked around the curve of the wall to slide in on the bench opposite him.
"I heard you breathe out when Felicia left," he said by way of explanation. "I know the sound of your breath."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to eavesdrop. But I was here when you walked in. I was going to leave, but you both dived straight into the deep and meaningful stuff and I thought I would embarrass you more by leaving in the middle of it."
He smiled slightly. "I'm sure you've heard it all before."
"Yes. I'm sorry, but I have."
The silence lengthened between them, the silence of old friends who do not feel the need to fill the gap.
"She, Felicia," he said at last, "is the third woman in six months to dump me. They all give the same reason."
"The one I just heard?"
"Yes."
"Are they right?" She studied her friend, watching the slight changes of expression flicker on his face as he thought. "Is our friendship the reason you can't get close to anyone else?"
He took her hand and absentmindedly ran his thumb over the back of it. He was not looking at her, but was staring out into the distance, eyes unfocused.
"Maybe a part of it…" He met her eyes. "Okay, maybe all of it."
"Chakotay… I don't want that for you. I think you know I don't." She returned the clasp of his warm hand. "I value our friendship, more then anything. I love you my friend, you know that. But I feel you are missing out on the chance of finding someone who can love you more completely."
"Kathryn, the only way that you don't love me is physically. Apart from that, you give me all the love, companionship, and warmth that I need."
"Yes, but without sex it's incomplete. That's why you've been dating isn't it?"
"Sex? Partly I suppose. But Felicia is right. I can do without sex. I did without sex for years when I wanted to be your lover as well as your friend, and couldn't even consider the thought of sleeping with some one else. I like sex, but it's more then that. I guess I was looking for the intimacy of sleeping next to someone, holding someone skin to skin."
He looked directly at her. "Don't you ever want that?"
She pondered. "Of course. I miss more then anything that feeling of warmth, hearing someone breathe in the bed next to me, feeling warm skin under my hand. The holodeck…"
"It's not the same is it? Is that why you sometimes stay all night on the holodeck? Is that what you are doing?" He was searching her face, not condemning her, just genuinely curious.
"Yes. Often we don't… I don't… have sex with them, the holograms. I just want to lie there and be held." She sighed. "We're a sad pair aren't we? We love each other but can't sleep with each other. We both want to be held at night but we don't hold each other. Neither of us can move on, but we can't move back."
"Do you mind?" he said.
"Mind what? Your girlfriends? No. I don't. Once I would have done. A few years ago, when I wanted you more then my next breath it would have torn me apart if I had overheard tonight's conversation. But now…" she hesitated.
"Go on." His voice was soft.
"Now, I love you, but you're my friend. No more. My very best friend and I want you to be happy."
He smiled. "I'm happy with you."
"That's the problem isn't it? We're happy enough with each other that we don't look elsewhere. Really look elsewhere. We have holograms and pretty ensigns for the physical side and each other for every thing else."
"Yes."
There was a silence. They remained hands clasped over the messhall table for a long time.
She noticed that he wasn't seen with anyone new after Felicia. They spent their customary amount of time together, holodeck, messhall, dinner in their quarters. Sometimes she fell asleep on his couch, and he would cover her with a blanket and retire to his bed alone.
The nights when she couldn't sleep and walked the silent ship alone, she found herself thinking more and more about their relationship. She remembered the days, early in the journey when she had wanted nothing more than to give into the attraction that burned between them. Then she could barely restrain her hand from reaching out to touch him, on the chest, shoulder, arm or hand. Then a charged look from him would plummet her uncontrollably into a sexual fantasy. She had known he had felt the same, but she had always pulled back from him. Not, as many thought, because of protocol, the fear of sharing command with a lover, but rather the knowledge that if they became lovers then she would be subsumed by him. She thought he would absorb her completely, consuming the essence of her being through his skin until she, Kathryn Janeway, would no longer know where one began and the other ended. The focus and the purpose of her life would change completely and irrecoverably. She couldn't afford to relinquish that control, to do so would render her ineffective as a captain and as a person.
But over the years, the fierce attraction and desire she felt for Chakotay had muted into a deeper, quieter love. On occasion, often in the arms of a holographic lover, the only sort she would allow herself to take, she would think of what might have been with him and those thoughts would swiftly bring her to her climax.
Now her thoughts took a new path. A dangerous, but compelling path, and the more she dwelled on them the more they began to make sense.
Suppose, just suppose, that within the confines of their present comfortable friendship they allowed themselves to become lovers? Now that the uncontrollable urgency had abated for both of them, maybe a gentle sort of loving was something they could both accept. Someone to lie with at night. They could do this, expand their deep friendship to include the physical. With the edge of lust dissipated, now that need was replaced by something gentler and less controlling, maybe now they could be occasional lovers as well as friends.
A warm body, a beating heart. Someone who would care without requiring their emotional subroutines tweaked. She wondered how to ask him.
It wasn't too difficult in the end. Dinner in her quarters, warm conversation, a night like many others. After dinner they sat on the couch the conversation drifting over a myriad of subjects. Kathryn twirled the glass in her hand, studying the pattern of the ruby wine as it clung to the rim.
"Penny for them." Chakotay was watching her watching the swirl of liquid.
"I'm trying to build up the courage to ask you something." She did not meet his eyes.
"You can ask me anything." He took her hand and removed the glass setting it down on the table, before taking both of her hands in his.
His steady touch gave her the courage she needed. "Will you be my lover?"
The words hung in the silence. She met his eyes, trying to read what she was seeing there. His expression normally so open, seemed guarded. She counted her heartbeats as she waited for his reply. When she got to thirty she needed to know.
"Chakotay?"
He smiled slightly and shook his head as if his ears were buzzing. "Maybe you had better elaborate. I'm not sure what you are really asking."
"I've been thinking." He nodded, a quiet signal for her to continue.
She spread her hands wide, suddenly uncomfortably inarticulate under his gaze. "We both seem to need someone to hold, some one for sex. Now that we don't… now that we aren't…" she tailed off.
"Go on." He was still reserved.
"Hell." She stood up and moved to the viewport. "I thought I would be able to say this to you and not get embarrassed."
She concentrated on the movement of the stars outside and took a deep breath. She hadn't expected the nervousness that was gripping her, the fluttering in the pit of her stomach.
"We could make love. Spend nights together sometimes. We share everything else Chakotay, why not this? It couldn't have worked a few years ago, it would have been too intense." She met his eyes. "You scared me then, I was scared of how you affected me."
"And now I don't?"
"Not in the same way. Now I think we'd be two people who care deeply who could expand to something more. I don't think it will change our friendship or our working relationship. Before it would have shattered both."
"I think I see. You surprise me, Kathryn, I thought I was past being surprised by anything you do, but you've taken me unawares yet again."
"Can we do this?" She was still unsure.
"One condition."
"What's that?"
"If either of us thinks later it isn't working, then we can pull out. No strings. And we try our hardest to hold on to our friendship if that happens. I don't want to lose you, Kathryn. If becoming your lover means I lose you as my friend, then I'll decline."
The feeling of relief and quiet joy was overwhelming. She moved back to stand in front of the couch. He stood and rested his hands lightly on her waist. She looked up at him. His expression was still reserved, but he was smiling.
"When?" The single word he uttered dropped into the suddenly charged air.
"Now?" She was hesitant.
In answer he dropped his head and kissed her, wrapping his arm around her back and taking her mouth with a lazy assurance at odds with his earlier hesitation.
She moved her hands up to his shoulders and kissed him back. The feel of him was familiar but the taste was new. She knew so much about this man, his feel, his smell and his sounds, but his taste was the unknown missing sense. His tongue pressed into her mouth, confident and demanding. She felt him tangle his tongue with hers, sweep around the roof of her mouth before withdrawing and running gently around her lips. Smoke. Musk. Apples. Wine. She should have known his taste would be as unique as he was, as addictive as the man himself.
His hand was running up her arm, his touch sure as it moved to cover her breast. Moving away from him, she took his hand and led him into her sleeping quarters.
The light in the room was dim, but it was enough for her to see his expression. His face was still and shuttered, even as his hands moved across her body with practiced skill. He was slow and deliberate in his approach, but curiously detached. He removed her clothes and his own and lay beside her on the bunk. His mouth covered hers, his hand on her breast. Even as she gasped at the feeling, one part of her mind was analyzing the encounter. This methodical approach was unexpected. Chakotay was a man of passion, of tenderness, and she had expected more eagerness from him, more emotion.
He was slow and considerate. His fingers teased, his mouth suckled, he rubbed and insinuated himself along and inside her body. The first time, she came under his mouth. The second under his stroking fingers. The third was with him inside her, as he thrust into her with slow and measured strokes before bursting into his own climax. She watched him, his face contorted above her with his release, but still controlled. Was this what she had wanted?
He moved off her, and took her in his arms and sighed. They lay together for a while, letting the aftermath of love spiral down. She rested her face on his chest, feeling his skin hot and smooth under her cheek. Her body was relaxed, sated and lethargic with the release he had given her.
"Kathryn?"
"Hmmm?"
"Do you want me to stay?" He seemed unsure of her response.
"Yes. That's part of it Chakotay. Some one to hold."
He sighed and settled himself on the pillows. She felt his lips brush her hair, but he seemed oddly distant. She waited for the post-coital buzz to give way to warmth and contentment, but strangely she was still unsettled. She sensed he wasn't entirely relaxed either, but the shell of reserve she had seen in him earlier was still firmly in place and she didn't want to challenge it.
She lay on his chest, closer to him then she had ever been and yet seldom had he been so distant. Eventually she slept.
The nights fell into a pattern. Two or three nights a week he would come when she asked and they would spend the night together and he would hold her through the darkness hours. Outwardly their relationship hadn't changed. He was professional on the bridge and a lighthearted friend in the mess hall. He provided the silent support to her command decisions as he always had, questioning on occasion, sometimes arguing a point he felt strongly about. She would listen to him and vehemently disagree with him if that was the case.
But at night, in her quarters the commander vanished and Chakotay her lover appeared, insinuating himself into her sheets and her body, taking and giving in equal measures.
There were still nights when she couldn't sleep. Some nights it was enough to pillow her cheek on his chest, hear his rhythmic heartbeat drum in her ears and take quiet pleasure in the way he held her so closely even in sleep. Other nights, she would slip away from him, dress and leave for a solitary tour around her sleeping ship.
When she returned from walking he was there for her. Always awake enough to pull her down to him and envelope her against his body, wrapping a leg around her hips to hold her with him, as if he feared she would leave him for more then insomnia.
And the lovemaking. He learned her body better than she knew it herself. He knew exactly how to tease and stroke her, building her slowly and inexorably to her peak until she came apart in his arms. She knew she pleased him too. His groans and sighs as she stroked his hard body with hands, hair and mouth, and his cries as he spilled himself inside her told her he was getting as much out of their arrangement as she.
She was always the one who initiated their nights together. He never refused her, but he never suggested it either. Once, as she lay on his chest, the ripples of orgasm fading from her body, she looked up and saw his face. He was studying her, with a tender expression, but mixed in with the cat-like contentment of a sexually satisfied man was a palpable sadness. His mouth drooped as if he carried a burden that was momentarily too much to bear. He saw her looking, and his face cleared as quickly as the retreating waves smooth the sand. He smiled at her and the lazy sensuality was back. She pushed the momentary disquiet she felt from her mind as he deliberately started to tease her nipple, guiding them back into their dance of love.
It was enough, wasn't it?
One night, a few weeks into their arrangement, she had a quiet night alone. Chakotay, she knew, was out with Tom and Harry. They had resurrected the old Sandrines bar program, and planned a few changes. She had not asked him to come to her that night, so she took a long bath and retired to bed.
She woke unexpectedly to the certain knowledge that someone was in her quarters. Another heartbeat and she knew it was Chakotay, she knew his breath, his very presence. As her eyes adjusted she could see him standing by the bed, swaying ever so slightly as he gazed down at her.
"Chakotay? What are you doing here?" She raised up in bed to see him clearly and was surprised to see him standing rigid, his hands clenched into fists by his side.
"I came to tell you I can't do this anymore." His words were slurred, and she realized that he was slightly drunk. "I came to say…" His voice broke and he sat heavily down on the side of the bed.
She reached for him, meaning to enfold him in her arms, comfort and reassure him as he had done for her so often. He turned as her hand slid over his shoulders and his mood altered. Fiercely he grabbed her, pressed her down on pillows, trapping her wrists in one large hand. His eyes glittered like ice.
"Damn you Kathryn. I can't take this. You rip my heart out with every move you make." His mouth covered hers; harsh, bruising and uncaring of how he ground her lips against her teeth. He wound a hand in her hair, holding her captive as he continued his assault on her mouth.
She struggled against him, he was hurting her slightly, but it was a surprised reaction to his aggressiveness that had her instinctively fighting. She pushed a hand on his chest but he captured it with his free hand and pressed it to his body.
"Kathryn…" He continued to kiss her savagely, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, his chest shuddering against her hand with the intensity of his emotion. One section of her mind was horrified in the change in her gentle lover; but a feral part of her was responding fiercely to his crushing kiss, the need and desire for him already starting to spiral up from the pit of her belly.
He shifted, still trapping her hands against his chest, but his other hand moved to rip the nightgown from her body. His mouth moved hot on her breast, tonguing and biting her nipple. She moaned and pushed her breast further into his mouth.
With an immense effort she freed her hands and she moved to the waist of his pants, unzipping him and freeing his penis. It sprung out at her, heated and ready. She grasped him and tried to position him between her thighs, but he was still caught up in his own maelstrom of emotion and knocked her hand away. He grasped her hips and lifted her onto him, impaling her with one fierce thrust.
"Damn you, Kathryn." His eyes glittered in the half-light. "Damn you to hell for what you do to me."
He was not gentle. He pounded and shook inside her, his movements were almost brutal as he withdrew and plunged again with frantic motions. He clenched her hips so hard that she could feel every individual fingertip bruising her skin.
Words were pouring out of him in a torrent. The floodgates were breached and nothing was holding him back. She tried to concentrate on his words, even as her body reacted to his possession, his thrusting carrying her up to a plateau of sensation.
"Damn you, Kathryn. I can't do this…. I can't go on loving you like this… I need more of you; I need all of you…" Words were spilling out of him. "It's not just sex, can't you see that? It never was. You're my lover, my everything, you hold my soul and you're crushing it… I have to leave you…"
She felt pinpricks of fire burn her neck and realized tears were leaking from his eyes and falling on her skin. His words flowed over her like lava and she realized what he was saying. Knew in a blinding flash of clarity what had been missing from their loving. He had. He had given only the outer edge of Chakotay into their relationship, holding back his heart and soul as he feared he would be trampled. He loved her, she realized, with the passion of the early unconsummated days. He loved her with the intensity she had feared.
He was still thrusting into her, branding her his, until with a howl he came and his body fell forward bonelessly on hers. She could feel the tears on his cheeks against her neck; it mirrored the dampness between her legs.
His reason returned with his climax and he lifted up from her. His eyes watered as he realized how he had just taken her.
"Kathryn… I'm sorry… sorry…"
She cradled him as he had often cradled her, soothing him, stroking his tawny skin and thick hair. She murmured words of love and comfort, trying to convey to him with her body that she understood and that it was all right. His actions had breached the wall around her own heart, the one keeping her from him. She not only understood his actions; she embraced and returned them.
He pulled away from her and sat up.
"I have to go."
"No," she whispered. "I want you to stay."
"I can't… Not after that."
"Especially after that."
"I love you, Kathryn, but I can't give you the safe, undemanding love you want. I've tried, but I can't. It's all or nothing." He dropped his head to his hands. "I was scared when you asked me to be your lover, scared that this would happen. If you don't want my all, then it has to be nothing."
"Chakotay…" She gripped the sides of his head and forced him to look at her. "You're right. I wanted a safe kind of love. But I was scared too; scared I would love you too much. But don't you see? You equal me. Your passion is mine. The depth of your love is equaled only by mine. Please. Don't leave now. I want you. All of you. Forever."
She punctuated her words with swift, fierce kisses, punishing his mouth as he had ravaged hers earlier.
"You… You're mine… I'm yours…"
Still he hesitated.
"Chakotay… please.
She stroked his face, the tenderness in contrast to her earlier ferocity. "How have you done this?" she asked him. "How have you crept into my heart and soul so completely that I want nothing more than to stay by your side?"
He said nothing.
"When I'm with you, I don't know who I am anymore, but I don't want that to change."
She dropped her head to his chest and felt his arms rise hesitantly to enclose her.
"You're wrong, Kathryn. You haven't changed. Except here." He placed his hand over her heart. "Now you let yourself love me." His voice was stronger, more assured.
She studied him, the man who held her heart carefully cradled in his big hands, the man who was by her side in so many ways, his stoic strength always supporting her.
"Tell me," she said. "When we became lovers, did you know this would happen?"
"I thought it might." His words were quiet, but his eyes never left her face. "I was afraid you would consume me, that I would love you to the point of my own extinction and you would leave me as ashes. I was afraid you wouldn't be able to love me as completely as I have always loved you, and that in becoming your lover you would destroy me."
He paused for a shuddering breath before continuing; "Tonight Kathryn, you gave me your heart. You might not realize it yet, but now we have the love we feared to give ourselves in the early years. The only difference is that now I love you more then ever if that is possible."
She was silent. His fears were her fears and they were without substance. He was as strong as she. Equals.
She dropped her head to his chest and let him enclose her in his arms.
"You're right." She lay in his embrace, skin to skin. "I love you. I don't want to be without you ever again. This is more then I ever thought it would be. You are my only love."
His arms tightened around her as he answered her quietly, "My eternal love."
© Shayenne, November 2000 Please email me to post/distribute elsewhere.