Peregrination (a sequel to "Consequences")--part two
by Melissa (with a little help from Laurel)
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"Mother's mother...father's mother...brother's second cousin's uncle...." Janeway laughed as she opened the door to her quarters. They stepped inside and she leaned against the door as it closed.
"Talaxians have a lot of relatives. The winters must be cold there..." Chakotay's smile faded as he stood, eyes absently scanning the room. Janeway touched his arm gently.
"Chakotay. What is it?"
His voice was suddenly very quiet. "He told me he didn't see any of them. Not anyone."
"Chakotay..."
He turned to Janeway. "I'm sorry. I can't seem to--make the adjustment. I think Neelix is handling this...strangely."
"I know. I wish there was a way we could help him."
"There should be." Unconsciously Chakotay's fists clenched. "There should be."
"He certainly outdid himself on this party. Maybe that was deliberate on his part," Kathryn said, her voice even. She was watching Chakotay closely, concerned.
"He's in denial."
"You can't fix it just like that," Kathryn offered, snapping her fingers.
He focused on her now. She was still leaning against the door to her quarters. His thoughts shifted. It was as if she was...waiting for something. For him? Chakotay didn't know. "How are you feeling?" he asked.
"Fine," she said, her eyes closed.
Despite the concern for Neelix that lingered, he was intrigued. Curious. He began to edge closer to where she stood. "Captain, I believe that Neelix fermented that fruit too long after all."
Her eyes flew open, and she was startled to see Chakotay standing right in front of her. "Are you implying that it's affecting my behavior?"
He shook his head once, twice, slowly. Emphatically. "I hope you don't need over-fermented fruit to get this close to me."
Janeway's head was spinning. It would be easy to blame the fruit but she knew better. The proximity of his body was throwing off her whole equilibrium. She had made choices already, choices that had surprised her. She had been taking tiny steps towards a new way of thinking, keeping him firmly in hand beside her, making sure she was in control at all times.
Maybe it was time to give him a chance at the helm. See what course he would plot.
She could always take over. Captain's prerogative.
"It depends on how close you're thinking of getting, Chakotay," she murmured, her eyes fastening to his.
This is new, he thought, trying to discern her meaning. Casually, he brought one hand up and laid it flat on the wall next to her head. "I'm not sure, actually," he said, his tone deceptively light. "I usually yield to the Captain's wishes." His other hand came up slowly, pushed a stray piece of hair off her face. "Unless she wishes me to make a suggestion.
Janeway snorted. "Since when have I ever had to wish for a suggestion from you? You usually just jump in and--"
Her next words, whatever they may have been, were lost in the kiss he brushed gently over her lips. "Well, that's one suggestion," she managed, her voice failing.
"Do you want another?" His voice was low, a hint of laughter warming it. He watched her carefully, seeing the indecision war with the desire he could tell was brewing beneath the surface. Slowly, he leaned into her again, giving her the chance to pull away.
By way of answer, she slid her hands around his back and pulled him flat against her. The kiss that ensued was considerably less gentle and much more animated than the previous one. When Janeway finally pulled back, they were breathing hard, and the look on her face was difficult to read. She brushed the back of his neck with her fingers softly before stepping away from him and walking to the replicator, willing her heart to slow. Easy, Kathryn, you still don't know what you're doing here...
"Something to drink, Chakotay?"
She didn't revert to his title. That was a good sign. He watched her through guarded eyes, trusting her now to feel her way forward in a manner she could deal with rationally and emotionally and believing that the outcome would be the one he hoped for. They were nearly sixty years from home. He could afford to be patient with her still. As long as she needed.
"Whatever you're having." He walked over to the sofa, pulled off his jacket absentmindedly, and sat down. She followed him over, handing him a tall glass of juice and sipping from the other she held.
"It was a wonderful dinner," she said, trying to bridge the silence. "It was. It always is. But I'm still worried about Neelix." If he could get her thinking about something else, she wouldn't have a chance to realize she was uncomfortable.
Janeway curled her feet up underneath her on the cushions. "He seemed a little distracted, but that's to be expected."
"I'm not sure," he replied, his breath coming out in a sigh. "I told him to come talk to me if he needed someone to listen."
"Well, that's good, then; you're the best listener on the ship."
"Am I?" He took the glass out of her hand and placed both on the table, sitting quietly while she just looked at him.
"I've usually thought so," she whispered.
He ran a hand through his hair irritably, and felt the melancholy of earlier wrap itself around his shoulders like a mantle. "I didn't know what to say to him. We just knelt there next to his dead body, and I didn't know what to say to him."
She shifted closer to him on the sofa, taking one of his large hands in both of hers, squeezing reassuringly. "What did he say?"
"He said that the afterlife that he had always believed existed wasn't there when he died. That there was a place that the Talaxians believed you went to-the Great Forest-and everyone that ever loved you would be there waiting for you. And they weren't."
"How can he be sure? Would he necessarily remember that if it happened?"
Chakotay stood up, suddenly restless, and began to pace the length of the table and back. "I can't say for sure...I've never been dead...but if I thought I was going nowhere after this life, I know how much it would bother me. How much it would shake my faith, cause me to doubt."
Something in the tone of his voice had her reaching up to him, stopping his path across her rug. "It already has, hasn't it?"
He stared down at her for a long moment, his face stony, and then something gave within him, and he sank back down to the sofa with a slight nod. "It's hard to start doubting a lifetime of faith--but Neelix's experiences certainly have me thinking about things. It was hard--impossibly hard--to lose my family to the war, but knowing I would see them again someday has always been a comfort. I can't imagine not having that to hold on to."
She reached her left hand out, covering his as they enfolded her right. "Then don't let go, Chakotay."
The look on his face at her statement said too much and not enough all at once, and she thought that perhaps her faith was being tested as well.
Her faith in herself. Herself, and her crew...and the man who sat before her, which was probably the strongest faith of them all.
* * *
A sound brought her roughly back to awareness. She shook her head sharply, trying to shrug off the foggy mantle of sleep enough to concentrate on what it was.
A cry from the next room. Muffled. Almost a shout.
One swift movement took her off the bed and on to her feet. Quickly she crossed out of her bedroom and across her living area to the couch where Chakotay slept fitfully. They had both fallen asleep talking, and when she woke several hours ago she hadn't had the heart to disturb him. She'd simply covered him with a blanket and then gone to sleep in her bed.
He was curled on his side on the edge of the cushions, one pillow clenched to his face--the reason for the muffled sound. As she knelt down on the floor beside him, she saw his shoulders jerk, saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead.
A nightmare. She could only imagine the horrors he was living in his mind. Were they they same dreams that had been plaguing him for weeks past? The Kradin, slaughtering everyone--even the children; the Vori, capturing him and using him to suit their own purposes. Chakotay, unable to stop either. Anything that close to his own experiences with the Cardassians must have been impossible to simply put aside, especially since he still didn't know who the enemy had actually been. To be that unsure, that untrusting of his own senses and instincts--that must have been the worst part. Or were his dreams perhaps of Neelix; giving, gentle Neelix who had been filled with despair at the loss of his faith, and Chakotay, the unofficial ship's counselor, unable to find the right words to soothe. To heal. Unable, perhaps, to heal himself.
"Chakotay." She laid a hand on his arm, shook gently. "Chakotay, wake up." A second shake, a little harder. His eyes flew open, snapped to hers. She could see the wildness within them, watched him suck in a labored breath. She reached up a hand and gently stroked the side of his face. "Just a dream."
"Kathryn." Her name rasped from his throat as he struggled to sit up. "We fell asleep."
She nodded. "I thought it would be better to let you rest here. I know you're having problems sleeping--obviously." She got up from the floor to get him a glass of water and grabbed a washcloth on her way back. He was sitting up fully by then, head cradled in both hands. He took the glass she held under his face and drained nearly half of it. Reaching out, she cupped his chin in one hand and wiped his face dry with the cloth. She sat next to him as he finished the water and labored to bring his heartbeat back to a normal rate, wiping his neck with the cloth and smoothing his hair back from his face. "Want to talk about it?"
"I thought the nightmares were over--they never go away." His voice was pitched so low she had to strain to hear it, and he would not look at her. "They never go away."
She continued to run her hand across his hair softly, not noticing the muscle pulsing at the base of his neck, or the way his jaw was tightening. "Was it the same dream--as before?" He said nothing, staring down at his hands. "Do you want some more water?"
He shook his head briefly, and they sat in silence, her hand drifting over his face. After several minutes he looked over at her, a rueful smile ghosting about the corners of his mouth. "You'd be a wonderful mother," he finally said quietly.
The color drained out of her face and she froze, an image forming in her mind: her body, swollen with Chakotay's child. Sudden warmth and joy flooded into her, combined with a desire that punched its way into her awareness with a force that left her breathless. She gasped silently as her cheeks flushed hotly, and her frozen hand began to move again. Her fingers brushed his cheeks, his nose, as he stared at her, and as they lingered feather-light on his lips, his eyes slid shut. When he opened them again, the need she saw within them nearly sent her to the floor at his feet. Her own eyes closed briefly, thoughts of protocol and decorum colliding with the desires she had been fighting for weeks.
Sometimes you have to know when to give in.
Her eyes opened, and she nodded, slowly.
When his mouth covered hers, she realized that this was what she had been thinking of all night. Why else would she have worn silk to bed with her first officer sleeping in the next room? Their tongues warred feverishly as he hauled her into his lap, his hands slipping under the hem of the gown to cup her bottom firmly in both hands. Her arms twined around his neck as his fingers kneaded her flesh, rhythmically, hpynotically, curving around her, caressing, stroking. Their mouths were crushed together, bruisingly so, and later she would think they were trying to crawl into each other. Her thoughts were fragmented, the only conscious knowledge being that she had never wanted like this before. She felt the dampness flooding her thighs, felt his fingers rubbing it into her skin, edging closer and closer to its source. His erection was hard in her stomach and her hips moved unconsciously towards it as his fingers dipped into her suddenly and she was crying out, she was screaming with the pleasure and the surprise of it.
And then suddenly he was yanking the gown over her head, one strap pulling free of the cloth in the process, and he was leaning her backwards, naked, over his arm and lowering her down to the couch. His free hand skimmed down her torso, brushing the side of each breast enough to make her muscles leap, and then dipped lower, hovering between her legs. She caught her breath in anticipation, waiting for the moment of contact, and when it failed to happen, she looked up at him.
His jaw was clenched, as if he was trying to hold something inside, and his eyes were darker than she had ever seen them, passion blending pupil into iris. His gaze seared through her, thrilling her, and she marveled that she had resisted the pull of him for so long. She began to reach up for him, but his fingers slid into her, and her hands fell back even as her hips rose to meet him. His thumb brushed the hair aside, seeking the nub underneath, and she gasped as he found it. At that first sound from her, he began to move within her, his fingers thrusting gently and then faster as her breathing quickened, his thumb tracing circles around the sensitive flesh. He bent his head down, captured her mouth under his own, and she curved her hands around his neck to pull him impossibly closer as their tongues mimicked what his fingers were doing in her body. He drove on relentlessly until she cried out into his mouth, and his hands curved around her back and he cradled her as she shook with spasms even stronger than the first.
She opened her mouth to speak but he held two fingers to her lips to silence her, so she drew them inside instead, sucking gently and nibbling at the tips. A groan escaped him and she realized for the first time in many minutes that he was still fully clothed, a fact which seemed to register with him at the same time. As he began to undress, her breath caught in her throat at the beauty of him, the gold of his skin, hard muscle softening a bit around his waist, chest nearly hairless. When he turned to drop his clothes to the floor, she realized he bore an intricately inked design of intertwining circles on his right shoulder--she would remember to ask him about it, later...much later.
Neither had spoken since they began, and she suspected her voice would strangle in her throat were she to try, but she was surprised at his silence. He had barely made a single noise, touching and caressing her with a tenderness that teetered precariously on the verge of becoming roughness. He was holding back from her, restraining himself, and she was suddenly frantic to see the passion he displayed in their arguments and in his convictions played out against the backdrop of her skin. So when he stood finally and moved to pull her up with him, she sat up and curved her hands around his bottom to move him closer to her. Finally, a harsh gasp escaped his lips as her tongue darted out to taste the drop of moisture that had appeared on the tip of his penis, as her small palm curved around the silken skin. He filled her hand, pulsing, and her thighs twitched in anticipation of having him inside her.
But not yet.
She could feel the tension under her hands as he fought to maintain control, but she was not willing to let him keep it. She licked and nibbled her way down the underside of the shaft, one hand stroking the top, the other reaching behind his balls and pressing down on the sensitive spot she knew was there. His breathing grew ragged above her and she reveled in the sound, moving back up slightly and taking the tip of him between her lips. Her tongue circled the head lazily, and she felt his hands thread into her hair. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she began to move her head up and down, taking him in a little at a time, feeling him shudder before her, feeling him swell in her mouth, tasting salt, tasting silk. His hands pulled roughly, almost painfully through her hair, and she knew he was ready. He had passed the point of restraint. She would return to finish this later, after she had tasted the wildness of his eyes.
Her throat relaxed and she let him slide out of her mouth, grabbing his hands and pulling, hard, until he fell to the floor with her. She kissed him, hard, her tongue tangling with his, her arms tightening around him. She would no longer have to urge him; she could see in his eyes that he wanted her, needed her, the way she had imagined it. That she had pushed him, just far enough. His hands were rough on her skin, tight around her upper arms as he rolled them both to the side and began to take possession of her, thumbs rubbing her nipples into hard nubs, fingers teasing between her legs until both of them were slick with her juices, mouth making love to her mouth until her head was spinning wildly. She reached for him and he pinned her arms above her head with one large hand, the other relentlessly stroking her body. Would you serve under me? The memory slid through her mind, and she reveled in the words. This was the Maquis, the angry warrior, who had put away a large part of himself to become her first officer. Seeing him this way now, she knew she would never be content to have him hide it again. Hide himself. Not with her. Not when she had tasted it once.
And then, at last, she was on her back and he was above her, driving into her with one fierce thrust that opened her all the way around him, and she was marveling at the size and power and feel of him. And then he began to move. A sound escaped from his throat, a low growl she could barely hear, and her lips curved into a possessive smile.
The coupling she had dreamed of. The passion she knew sang in his veins. It now sang in hers as he captured her eyes with his, his gaze forbidding her to look away. Her arms reached up, her hands roaming ceaselessly on his back, her fingernails marring his skin as he held himself just above her, his hips moving into a steadier, more frantic rhythm. She could feel them shift, felt their bodies moving, reaching her hands up and bracing herself against the couch as her head threatened to slam into it, heard something--she wasn't sure what, and didn't care--crash to the floor. Her leg scraped against the table and her mind registered pain somewhere, but it didn't matter. The moment when she would have worried that someone in the corridor would hear had been and gone, and she could only think about the tightening within her, the way her stomach muscles were clenching harder and harder as the rush built in her ears. The way they were moving together as one body, the sound of flesh against flesh, his eyes locked to hers.
He shouted above her, his life, his love pumping into her even as she cried out beneath him, knowing that they were joined forever now. There would be no turning back from this union. It was irrevocable.
. . .
He had been frantic with need for her. It was as if, the wall between them removed, torn away in his haste, he could no longer restrain anything. One small corner of his mind had pleaded: go slower, gentler...but he was caught in a vortex. The point where he might have listened to that voice was long past. He had collapsed on top of Kathryn, gasping, hearing her breath sobbing from her throat, but she reached for him and clung to him and he had found himself hardening again, so soon.
"Chakotay--" His name tore from her throat.
He pulled her up with him, grasping her in his arms, and carried her to her bed, not bothering with lights, needing her so much that any separation was a physical pain. In the shadows of her bedroom he saw the glimmering of her eyes, the way her body curved into the blankets, into darkness. She opened her mouth to speak again and he smothered her words with his lips, his tongue plundering, possessing, his hands dragging through her hair, down her neck, across her breasts. Her hands reached for him and he pushed them away and into the pillows, holding her down, the look in his eyes stilling her as much as his hands. Her lashes were heavy on her cheeks, her breath came raggedly, as he lay half on top of her, his penis prodding her stomach. He tilted his head, running his tongue up the side of her neck and back. Watching the muscles tense under her skin with every pass. She was rolling beneath him, her skin rubbing against his, her face turning from side to side.
She pushed against his grip, trying to pull her hands free, and he shook his head slowly, stilling her again, slipping inches down her body until his mouth was hovering above her breasts. His tongue bathed each of her nipples in turn, and he grazed each with his teeth, gently at first, and then harder as she moaned in the back of her throat.
He shifted his weight slightly, brushing the tip of his penis just barely between her slick folds, down, and then up again. And again. Teasing, torturing them both. A desperate cry escaped her lips and part of him reveled in the sound, feeling her writhe beneath him again, knowing she was close to orgasm. Again. Already. Power surged through him and somewhere, in that distant corner of his mind, he feared it. The voice pleaded with him again to slow, to handle her more carefully, but there would be no turning back. His hands moved upward from her wrists and their fingers twined, eyes meeting in the dim light as he angled his hips and plunged into her. Another growl rumbled in his throat, low, triumphant; her moans slid into a keening cry as he pushed them both over the edge.
* * *
The starlight outside the viewport cast sharp shadows across the room as he shook before it, cold deep within a place he had hoped to never see again. He heard her shift on the bed behind him, and the wave of disgust peaked and crashed over him again. His self-loathing hung over him like a fog as the hand that held his shirt clenched into a fist around it.
Once more, he had used Kathryn to fill a void within him. He had gone to her and taken what he needed with no regard for her wants. Though he had long dreamed of the day when his body would unite with hers, the partnering had always been slow, gentle, loving. He would worship her body for hours, have her writhing beneath him, and the eventual joining would be the true expression of his love for her.
Nowhere in his fantasies had he ever taken her like an animal on the floor of her living room.
He walked out there now, pulling his shirt on over skin scratched by her nails, and the memory punched through his stomach as he took in the overturned sculpture next to the couch, the coffee cup that had shattered on the carpet, the pillows and cushions that were strewn on the floor or hanging precariously from their proper places. It looks like six Klingons had their way with her in here, he thought with a grimace, his throat tightening, jaw clenching to hold back the emotion. Not here, he commanded himself fiercely, and began to set her quarters at rights. Cushions and pillows straight, afghan neatly folded and laid over the arm, sculpture back on the table. He dumped the pieces of ceramic in the recycler and quietly ordered another cup from the replicator, placing it on the table where the other had rested earlier.
He allowed himself one last look at her, from the sanctity of the bedroom door. The pillow next to her was dented from his head, where he had slept after they had collapsed, locked together tightly. The sheet had slipped down and the shadows still wrapped around the curves of the body that he had become so intimately acquainted with that evening. His eyes closed in remembrance even as his shame grew. Bruises darkened her upper arms, and the sight had nausea welling up within him. Tears threatened for the second time in five minutes and, grabbing his jacket and comm badge off the table, he left as silently as he could.
He spent the few hours that remained before first watch failing to meditate, and frantically changing duty rosters and crew assignments.
And when Janeway awoke and reached for him, her hands met empty air.