SPECTER

Disclaimer: Characters owned by Paramount. No infringement intended. Certainly there is no commercial gain.

Rated NC-17

"What would you have done," Kathryn says, "if I had told you no?"

It's her favorite game. She lies over my chest, her breasts flattened between us, her arms braced on either side of my ribs. One of my hands tangles in her hair, combing through the gray and the red. The other cups her buttock. Her grin hasn't changed over the years; it's wide, it's confident. It's tentative and wistful. Kathryn, my contradiction. Kathryn, my love.

She nudges me in the ribs with her elbow when I don't answer. "Chakotay?" She repeats the question slowly, as if I were a stupid child, but the words are punctuated with kisses. "What.... would you have done... if I had said... no."

I humor her, although I know exactly what she's talking about. "No to what?"

"No to you. When you seduced me all those years ago. When you finally kissed me. What if I'd pushed you away?"

I play along, stroking a hand through her hair. "No? You couldn't have said no. I hold your heart. You can't refuse me anything."

She growls, biting my nipple playfully. "I can."

"When?" I treasure these moments, lying together in our bed. Whether it's the afterglow, or a slow buildup to intimacy -- the warmth and the loving are the same. Even when we don't make love -- when I can't or she's not interested -- we still hold each other, and stroke and play and cavort like puppies, softly warm and playfully tender.

She pretends to think, her hips undulating into my groin with casual disregard. I swell slightly against her. She feigns indifference, but her gasp gives her away. "I refused you a second serving of blueberry cheesecake this evening."

I catch her lips with mine. "That doesn't count. " I kiss her slowly, and feel myself engorge against her belly. She wriggles against me. She knows I'm aroused, but she's not giving me the satisfaction of rolling her over and driving into her so that we are both sated. No, my Kathryn likes to tease.

"I refused to let you bring Cholly into the house." Another stalling tactic. Cholly is my puppy, her dog Molly's great-great-great grandson, and as misbehaved and disobedient as his ancestor. Although according to Kathryn, Cholly's bladder control is far worse.

"Doesn't count." My lips settle on the curve of her neck. My hand creeps up her side, insinuating between our sticky bodies to find her nipple. It blooms into my fingers, peaking softly between my fingerpads.

"I refused you on New Earth."

Oh, Kathryn. She only brings this up when she has something on her mind. Like when she wants my forgiveness for something that she's done, or is about to do. Deep down, I understand why she never let me love her then, or if she had, that it would have shattered irreparably once Voyager came back for us. I know now that she did love me, but these days, thirty years later, she only mentions New Earth when there is something on her mind. Something that she knows I won't like. She also knows that I can't let the comment pass unheeded; that I will soothe and stroke and reassure her. Tell her that I know she loved me, that she was worth the wait; and she will then listen to me chant my love in a litany of reassurance, until she can spill whatever is on her mind.

Even now she manipulates me.

I smile into her neck, but she grasps me by the hair -- longer now than in our Voyager days -- and drags my head back, forcing me to look into her face.

Her expression is not one of sly manipulation, not like when she seduces me into letting Phoebe, her sister, come and stay with us. Phoebe intrudes upon us, claiming Kathryn, trying to drag her away from me. When Phoebe is coming, Kathryn's expression is one of trickery. Tonight, her expression is melancholy. She lets me roll her over so that I'm above her, and parts her thighs so that I can press down into the cradle of her hips. The tip of my cock rests at her opening where I can feel the slick wetness of her; she wants to make love. I rock towards her, encouraging my erection to grow, pushing through her outer lips, damp and warm.

She seldom uses sex as a bribe, but when she does, I know it's something serious.

"What is it?" I'm scared. Scenarios of illness and death run through my head in a flickering procession of sound and vision. "Has someone died?" I think of B'Elanna; she was undergoing a battery of medical tests. Maybe Kathryn has learned something that I haven't.

She lifts a thigh, still slender, but without the tautness of muscle that she had when I first knew her. I stroke its softened surface with my fingertips. She is still my Kathryn, I do not love her less. Her fingers tease between my legs, stroking the seam where my sex meets my body. In spite of my apprehension, I respond and the tip of my cock slips inside her. She rocks forward to meet me, and I slide home, sheathed in her liquid heat.

She cradles my face in her hands. "Just love me," she says.

I rock with her, in the rhythm we have perfected during our years together. She gasps, moans a little, and holds me so tight, deep in her body, close against her skin. But I feel her tears dampening my shoulder and I fade and soften.

"Tell me," I say.

A small gasp, and she hides her face in my shoulder for a brief moment. Then she looks me in the eye, and I see the sorrow in her face. And I'm worried, as I know it's something that she wants to spare me.

"It's Seven," she says.

"Seven?" She hasn't spoken her name in many years. At first, Seven was the specter between us, the most serious of my lapses away from Kathryn. An indiscretion I would rather forget. But we couldn't forget, for she had been Kathryn's lover too, and her blonde perfection would always be between us. We moved on, Kathryn and I, put Seven behind us, and finally found ourselves and our love in the Alpha Quadrant. And Seven was rarely mentioned. Even in our most bitter disagreements, the unspoken pact was that she was to be kept out of it.

"Her cortical node is failing again. She's dying." Kathryn speaks the words in a flat voice. Those who don't know her like I do would think her uncaring. But I catch the slight break in her voice, and feel her thighs tighten around my body.

"Did she tell you?" Even after all these years, I'm hurt that Seven would contact Kathryn and not me.

"No. The Doctor told me. Seven..." she hesitates, and I hear the pain in her voice. "Seven doesn't want us to know."

And the pang of regret shoots though me, so fast and hard it's like phaser fire. For Seven left me and Kathryn alone too, abandoning us as we did her. She left us alone to love each other, never visiting, never contacting us. Her ex-lovers are lovers and partners in life, and I wonder what she thinks of that.

My cock slips out of Kathryn and lies stickily against her thigh. She holds me close, and weaves her fingers through my hair. "I don't know what to do," she says.

And I understand, as I don't know either. We lie together, and our hands communicate what our voices cannot. I stroke her hip, she grasps my hair and pulls my head to her breast. Our love is as strong as ever. I sense her uncertainty, and open my mouth over her breast, biting softly, leaving my mark on her skin.

"How long has she got?" I voice the question finally, although I'm not sure I want to know the answer.

"A few days. The Doctor said it's been failing for many months. She was adamant that we weren't to be told, but he thought we should know."

The doctor-patient relationship between those two was broken years ago as the Doctor was the one to pick up the pieces of Seven's shattered shell and put her together again, after I left her for Kathryn. And they, like us, have been together ever since. I'm sure Seven told him; told him the sad and true tales of me, and of Kathryn, and of love betrayed, love conveniently forgotten, promises abandoned. The new shuffled out in favor of the old. I've wondered what he thought, but I like to think he thanked us for allowing him to find the path to Seven's heart.

Kathryn's hands stroke up to my shoulders. "When Seven and I were lovers," she whispers, "she would call your name sometimes."

For a moment I'm silent with the implications. Seven had been with Kathryn before she was with me. "And when she was with me," I begin. My voice catches slightly, and I bury my face in her shoulder so that the words are spoken into her skin, "she cried out for you."

We are both mute, lying there entwined. I wonder if she is thinking of Seven. I start to kiss her, a longer deeper kiss, a demanding kiss, rife with the sort of desperation I had felt in our early days as lovers, when we were proving something to ourselves as well as each other. I harden against her again. She wriggles, breaking the kiss and guides my mouth down to her nipples.

I've always loved Kathryn's breasts. Their pertness, her nipples, so small but so sensitive. She holds my head to her breast and strokes her way down between my legs, teasing with knowing fingers, spreading moisture and fluid until I'm engorged and hard. She guides me into her, and lets me thrust, a pounding rhythm, fierce and needy. And I'm thinking of Seven as I make love to my wife, and I think Kathryn is too.

Kathryn climaxes in a soundless clench around me. Her eyes are squeezed tightly shut, but I can see the tears in the corners. And as I come as well, deep inside her, I'm crying too. We hold each other afterwards and cry, and I know that in our hearts Seven is already dead, and maybe has been for thirty years.

I kiss Kathryn softly. "I love you so much," I tell her.

She knows of course, how many thousands of times have those words been said during our three decades together? She lays her palm against the side of my face, and I see love -- and relief -- in her eyes. "Oh, Chakotay. I've only ever loved you."

And I allow her the small lie, for right now we need each other more than ever, and who is to say what is love, and what is not?

FIN

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