Chapter 5: Tea and Temptation
The tea was too hot, but Tom drank it anyway, letting the slight burn on his tongue anchor him in the moment. The mess hall was preternaturally quiet, the usual hum of the ship feeling muffled, as if they were suspended in a bubble. Kes’s knee pressed against his, a point of warmth through the fabric of his uniform. Her new dress was impossible to ignore—the burgundy fabric clung to every curve, the geometric paneling drawing his eye along the lines of her body. The keyhole at her chest was a teardrop of shadow.
“You’re quiet,” she said, her voice a gentle murmur in the hollow space.Her fingers traced the rim of her own cup. “Is it the Kazon?Again?”
Tom snorted, a short, tired sound. “Always the Kazon.It’s like swatting hornets. You knock one swarm away, another finds you an hour later. The ship feels… bruised.” He ran a hand over his face, the fatigue of triple shifts a permanent ache behind his eyes.“And everyone’s on edge. Especially…”
“Especially the women?” Kes finished, her grey-blue eyes knowing.He looked at her, surprised. “You feel it too?”
“I feel everything more quickly, Tom.That’s my curse. A day for you is… a significant chapter for me.” She leaned in, the floral scent of her hair intensifying.Her gaze dropped to his lips, then back up. “I see the restlessness.In B’Elanna, her temper shorter, her hands less steady on the plasma torch. In the security teams, the way they look at each other, at you. It’s a hunger that has no right name yet.”
Her honesty was disarming. It stripped away the game, the flirtation he thought they were playing.This was something else.
“B’Elanna almost put two security officers through a bulkhead last week,” Tom admitted, the memory of her fierce, glasses-flashing rage surfacing, followed unbidden by the other, more private images his mind kept conjuring. He shifted in his seat. “I thought it was just exhaustion.”
“It is exhaustion,” Kes said, but her tone implied it was a symptom, not the cause. Her hand settled over his on the tabletop.Her skin was incredibly soft.“A deep, relentless one. For my people, life is compressed.We learn to… intensify our connections. To not waste a moment of feeling.” Her thumb stroked the back of his knuckle. “You’re living in a stretched-out, slow-motion version of that right now.All of you are. The fight to survive here, it’s changing the chemistry of the ship.”
Tom’s pulse hammered in his throat. He was acutely aware of every point of contact: her knee, her hand, the heat of her body so close to his. He thought of B’Elanna in the warp core corridor, the reluctant smirk, the way she’d barely protested his company lately. He thought of the looks he’d gotten in the corridors, the increased frequency of ‘accidental’ touches, the lingering glances that lasted just a beat too long.It wasn’t just charisma.Something was off.
“Kes…” he started, his voice rough.
“Do you know what I see when I look at you, Tom Paris?” she interrupted, her words barely a breath. She leaned closer, her lips inches from his ear. “I see a man who thinks he’s pretending to be better than he is.But you’re not pretending. The man you are here, now, holding this ship together at the helm, giving people like B’Elanna a chance… that’s who you really are. The other man, the one from the penal colony, he’s the ghost.”
Her words struck a chord so deep it vibrated in his bones. He had never heard it put that way. He turned his head, and her face was right there, her lips parted, her eyes wide and unblinking.The invitation was absolute.
The red alert klaxon shattered the moment, its sudden blare vicious in the quiet.They jerked apart. The lights dimmed, shifting to a pulsing crimson that dyed Kes’s dress the color of old blood.
“Bridge to Paris,” Chakotay’s voice crackled over the comm, taut with urgency. “We have three Kazon raiders on an intercept course.Report to the helm. Now.”
Tom was already on his feet, the lieutenant crashing back over the man. The fatigue vanished, burned away by adrenaline. Kes stood with him, her expression shifting from intimate intensity to focused concern in a heartbeat.“Go,” she said.
He took a step toward the door, then stopped, looking back at her.The air still crackled between them. “This isn’t over.”
A smile, both innocent and knowing, touched her lips.“No,” she agreed. “It’s just starting.”
He ran. Through the corridors now bathed in urgent red, past crew members scrambling to stations, the ship’s alert siren a wail in the metal bones around him. His mind, however, was split.One part calculating intercept vectors and shield modulation frequencies. The other part still in the mess hall, feeling the ghost of her touch, hearing her voice. A hunger that has no right name yet.
As he slid into the helm chair on the bridge, the viewscreen filled with the ugly, angular shapes of the Kazon ships. Janeway was issuing crisp orders, her voice a bastion of calm.“Evasive pattern Beta, Mr.Paris. Target their thrusters, tactical. I’m tired of playing with them.”
“Aye, Captain,” Tom said, his hands flying over the controls. The ship thrummed beneath him as he threw them into a sharp dive.But beneath the familiar rush of combat, a new and unsettling awareness throbbed. Kes’s words had named something. He saw it now in the set of Janeway’s jaw, a fierce possessiveness over her crew. He sensed it in the way Ensign Larson at tactical let out a low, furious growl when a hit shook the shields.
It was in the ship itself.A hunger. And he was suddenly, terribly afraid he understood exactly what, or who, it was beginning to want.