Algorithms, continued. In which the collective squeal from the crew overloads the Doctor's holomatrix and Seven's cortical node, sending both into spontaneous orgasm. Just kidding.

"So who won the pool?"

Tom Paris was alone at a table against the back wall of the mess hall, pushing through the final sentences of an overdue report, when Chakotay's shadow fell over him. The captain's announcement had been that very morning, so Paris hadn't yet had time to settle up with his crewmates. The sharks were circling, that much was clear. Paris tapped the last few words into the PADD and looked up as the other man took the seat across from him. It was mid-afternoon by the ship's clock, just after shift change, but the void of space beyond the viewport was as black as ever. Paris rested both hands on the table and observed the vacant tables around them. Chakotay's gaze followed Paris's. Nobody was close enough to overhear.

Paris's eyes went back to Chakotay's impassive expression and thick boxer's hands displayed on the table between them, inches from Paris's own, a subtle show of force. This was no casual inquiry. After Janeway's announcement, Paris had expected to see Chakotay walking the corridors without touching the deck plates beneath him, and certainly there was something expansive about him, but there was also something unanticipated in his look. Paris realized with an uncomfortable twitch that this new Chakotay, publicly partnered with Janeway, was altogether more dangerous than he had been before. Now, Chakotay had something to lose. The man who had so cavalierly tossed away a hard-won Starfleet career had finally encountered something he would fight to keep – and if Chakotay was anything, it was a fighter.

Paris took a deep breath. "Who says there was a pool?" he responded with his blankest face.

Chakotay gave him an incredulous look. "You're really going to try to deny it?" he said. "Spare me – before I get it into my head to demand a cut."

Paris scrunched up his face then let it fall smooth again. "Yeah, okay. There was a pool. Actually, I had book on a number of scenarios."

Chakotay's face darkened. "Such as?"

Paris rubbed his neck. "Is this going into the ship's log?"

Chakotay spread his hands a little farther apart, making his shoulders look even broader. "That depends on how satisfied I am with your answers."

Paris shrugged and smiled in an attempt to lighten things. "Oh, you know. The ever-popular 'busted' scenario where someone catches you in flagrante, or at least finds out something that proves the existence of the relationship. So that one didn't pay out, since the captain made the announcement herself."

Chakotay's eyebrows went up and down, but all he said was, "I see. And?"

Paris rubbed his hands together. "There was a strong contingent who believed you'd sort of back into it. You know, increasing public displays of affection, attending events together, until it just became obvious without any one triggering event. That was the hardest one to handicap, because how could we say for sure, right? The captain's always been touchy feely and you've had your hand planted on her back at every social event for years. There was some debate, but we finally settled on actual lip to lip contact in public."

Chakotay scratched his nose. "I don't know that you'll ever get that. The captain likes to keep her private life private."

Paris couldn't hide a smirk. "Except when she's making shipwide announcements about it. Anyway, I bet heavy against. I figured the first time we'd see liplock would be – "

"Liplock?" Chakotay interrupted with a squeamish look.

"You know what I mean. A real kiss. I figured we wouldn't see that unless there was a wedding, and by that point the cat would be out of the bag, as they say, unless the wedding was a surprise. A few people went in for that possibility." Paris let his eyes wander from Chakotay as a thoughtful look took over his face. "To tell you the truth, I've never figured out at what point in Earth's history cats were kept in bags. I wonder …." His gaze drifted back to Chakotay, who was watching Paris's flight of fancy with a skeptical face.

Paris recovered himself and leaned in with a conspiratorial nod. "So do you think there will be one?"

Chakotay gave Paris as good a blank look as Paris had given him earlier. "A cat in a bag?"

Paris waggled his eyebrows. "A wedding."

Chakotay leaned in as if about to share a secret. He brought his head near Paris's ear and said: "I think it's safe to say that if we were planning a wedding, you'd be the absolute last person I'd tell." He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. "So what else? What other scenarios?"

Paris sighed. "All right. The surprise announcement really paid out on the lower decks. Apparently the lower ranking crewmen had a lot more faith in your ability to keep a secret than the more senior officers did."

"Not exactly reassuring."

"There were variations, of course," Paris continued, regaining his previous enthusiasm. "Some people figured you'd been together since that time you were stranded together, just keeping it quiet. Then new theories would start up every time you ran a holodeck program or had dinner together. Do you know, there was actually a time when people were checking your locations in the middle of the night, to make sure you weren't in each other's quarters?" He chuckled and Chakotay laughed with him.

"But not lately?" Chakotay asked, suddenly serious.

Paris shook his head. "No, they gave up on that years ago. As far as I know, anyway. And if anyone had ever busted you, I should've been the first to know. Every once in a while I'd get bored and check, but you two are like monks. I've got to wonder – you've never – you know – spent the night together?"

Chakotay examined his short fingernails and ignored the question. "I'm curious about what else you've heard," he said. "Any reactions to the captain's announcement that I should know about?" His eyes came up to catch Paris's.

Paris's gaze fell away toward the worn carpet. "Oh. Well. B'Elanna would be the better person to ask, probably. Women talk about these things more than men. She says the female engineers want to hold some kind of formal dance party so they can see the two of you cheek to cheek. I tried to talk her out of it. My dress uniform's always been too tight."

Chakotay leaned on his forearms. "Men talk too. What do you hear from them?"

Paris made a nervous gesture with one hand and scanned the door of the mess hall, hoping for any new entrant who might be useful as a distraction, but the place stayed quiet. "Just locker room talk, you know. Nothing you need to hear about."

Chakotay's stare didn't waver as his eyes pinned Paris.

"All right, all right!" Paris exclaimed. "It was just a little, you know, wondering who wears the pips in the bedroom. That sort of thing."

"Who wears the pips in the bedroom?"

"Yeah. I mean, who's on top? Is she still giving orders or is our lovely captain putty in your hands?" Paris stopped short at Chakotay's glare. "Sorry. Just joking around, you know. Guy talk."

"I see. And that's it?"

"That's it. I swear. I mean, it used to be all about if you'd ever seen the bun of steel come down, but then she started wearing her hair down, and that brought on a whole new wave of speculation. Like maybe she was telling us symbolically, with her hair. I know, it sounds stupid now." Tom replied to Chakotay's mocking expression and lowered his voice into a wheedling tone. "Come on, I told you what you wanted to know. Can't you let me in on when it started? First kiss. Consummation. Just a couple of stardates. You wouldn't have to say anything else. You'd make a lot of people very happy."

"You most of all," Chakotay retorted. He considered through a long inhale and exhale. "First kiss was while we were stranded together. I have no idea of the stardate. And if you want the other, you're going to have to get it directly from the captain. If she lets you live." He rose and stood over Paris, standing straight to maximize his height. His face grew very stern. "If there's any more of this – locker room talk involving the captain, you will notify me immediately."

Paris scraped his chair to get to his feet. "Yes, sir."

Chakotay left Paris there, a little red in the face, watching his superior officer retreat and wondering what other fascinating revelations might be on the horizon.

#

Janeway and Torres were most of the way through a replicated bottle of red wine that evening at Sandrine's when Tom Paris walked in. He ignored the pool table and Sandrine's flamboyant welcome to install himself immediately at his wife's side, across from the captain, who had unfastened her uniform jacket and gone a little pink in the cheeks. She looked freer and happier than Paris had ever seen her.

"Welcome, Mr. Torres," she teased. "We were wondering what was keeping you."

"Mr. Janeway had me doing some extra sensor analyses," Paris answered, daring to tease back. Janeway's jaw clenched for a second as she lifted her glass to her lips, but the moment passed and she set down the glass with a smile.

"You're buying tonight, by the way. I must have made you a man rich in rations," she observed. Her head tilted a little farther to one side than it usually did when she made a joke. "Chakotay tells me your pools paid off nicely."

Paris put an arm around B'Elanna. "I did all right," he said. "Of course, we'll never be able to settle the biggest pool of all."

Janeway took another healthy sip of wine. "And why is that?"

Paris glanced at B'Elanna, who made an amused face that all but wrote across her forehead: You're on your own. "Well, because I know how private you are. I wouldn't want to invade your privacy by asking."

Janeway sat back and swished the last of her wine in the bottom of the glass. "Ask me what, Paris?" she said in a no-nonsense tone he'd often heard on the bridge.

Paris swallowed hard. "It's about … um … you know, sex. Your first time together. Way more rations riding on that date than anything else."

Janeway finished her wine and settled the glass on the table between them. "Exactly how many rations are we talking here?" she asked with an inscrutable little twitch of her eyebrows.

Paris blew his breath out. "Whoa, a lot. Easily enough to keep you in coffee all the way to the Alpha quadrant, even if we take the scenic route." He settled an elbow on the table with the air of a negotiator.

"And what kind of cut would I get if I give you the necessary information?"

Paris felt his eyes grow wide and his mouth fall open in spite of his own best intentions to play cool. "I – well, it's – I guess I – I guess I could go as high as 30%."

Janeway crossed her legs without taking her eyes off him and tossed her hair. "Nothing less than 60%, in exchange for nothing but the stardate."

Paris mastered himself and folded his hands as he pretended to consider. He'd give her way more than 60%. Hell, he'd give her the whole kitty just for the personal satisfaction of having the answer, but he couldn't let her know that.

"For 60%, I'd have to have a few more details," he parried.

Janeway's eyebrows shot up. "Details?" Her voice had a dangerous edge and Paris twitched nervously in his seat. He straightened up.

"Location. Who initiated. Planned or spontaneous. Those are my terms. Take it or leave it."

Janeway sat still for a moment, then rose and came around to stand beside him. Paris had a moment of terror when he expected her to remove the pips from his collar, but then she sat down beside him and put an arm around his shoulder so that she could whisper directly into his ear.

"Stardate 52334.3. My quarters. Spontaneous – on my part at least. And I suppose you could say we both initiated it. And Paris?"

"Yes?"

"If I ever hear anything but that stardate making the rounds, I will bust you back to ensign."

#

When Janeway wandered back to her quarters from Sandrine's, she was surprised to find Chakotay there, out of uniform, reading the volume of Dante she had loaned him years earlier. La Vita Nuova - the new life, Dante's love hymn to Beatrice. She couldn't stop a small smile, just at the corner of her mouth. Chakotay's happiness with their new arrangement was as transparent as the portal behind his head. Paris had caught him humming on the bridge a few days ago, even before her now-notorious announcement. She should have known then that their days of secrecy were running short.

"Somebody's in a good mood today," Paris had declared for the entire bridge crew as he turned to stare at the first officer with that insinuating grin of his. Janeway had moved to the science station display, where the blush creeping up her neck would be less visible to their dangerously observant helmsman, but in retrospect, that movement was suspicious too. Surely Paris would have been the next one to bust them if she hadn't beaten him to it. When she'd glanced over her shoulder toward Chakotay a few minutes later, as surreptitiously as she could, he'd lowered his head studiously toward the PADD he was reading, but he couldn't quite hide the dimple that his secret smile had squeezed into his right cheek.

So much had changed in a matter of hours. This evening was the first time Chakotay had ever let himself into her quarters outside of emergency situations. As the doors slid shut behind her, Janeway stopped short, a touch wobbly from too much synthehol. She steadied herself with a hand on the back of a chair.

"Hello," Chakotay greeted her. He lowered his feet from the table and sat up. "How was your evening?"

Janeway maintained the distance of nearly the entire room between them. "It was … nice. B'Elanna and I had a good talk. How was your boxing scenario?"

Chakotay stretched his arms and rubbed his biceps. "A good workout. Mostly Boothby had me jumping rope and doing pushups. I'm going to feel it in the morning."

Janeway lightly rocked the chair under her hand. "And then … you came here?"

Chakotay set the book on the low table in front of him and laced his fingers as he studied her cautious pose near the door. "I took a shower in my quarters. Then I thought I'd come over and wait for you to get home. I spent so much time in engineering today that we hardly saw each other after you dropped the bomb this morning." He paused and looked more closely at her hesitant expression. "Aren't you glad to see me?"

She smiled automatically. "Of course I'm glad. It's just – it's been a long time since I came home to someone. You caught me off guard." She let go of the chair and took a few steps forward, leaving a chaise and the low table between them, taking very small steps. Her eyes spent more time than necessary hovering on the cover of the book, which she had recognized instantly, that significant book that had marked a change in their relationship as it passed from her hand to his. "We never had a chance to talk about what my announcement would mean," she said.

"No. Although we seem to be the only ones on board who haven't," Chakotay replied.

"Really?" Her response was quick, anxious. "Have the crew been talking?"

He spread his arms along the back of the sofa under the viewport and crossed his legs with an easy smile. "We knew they would. Nothing unexpected. They weren't all that surprised."

Janeway finally came to a full halt on the other side of the table, hands clasped behind her in a contemplative stance. "I suppose they wouldn't be, after all this time." She opened her mouth as if to say more, then fell silent and stared down at the book.

"What is it, Kathryn?"

She held still as she spoke without looking up. "You know, I don't believe I ever would have married Mark. I liked my freedom. We never did move in together, and every time he tried to set a date, I came up with an obstacle."

Chakotay sat for a minute with those words in the air between them. He pulled his arms in. "Are you trying to tell me something about us?" he asked at last.

Janeway looked up to give him a nervous little smile. Her arms hung at her sides but her fingers twitched. "Yes and no. As captain, I'm the one who's supposed to have the answers. But relationships – that's where I fall down. I've never been any good at compromise, or showing vulnerability, or, to be honest, sharing – physically or emotionally. And now we're in this relationship where I really want to get these things right. I have to, not just for you and me but for the good of the entire crew – and I have no idea where to start." Her voice caught on the last words.

Chakotay uncrossed his legs and leaned toward her. "Kathryn, I've seen you compromise. And we've shared – well, I don't know about you, but I've shared more with you than I've ever shared with anyone. I don't think you have an accurate perception of yourself."

He reached out a hand to draw her to him, but she stood apart and shook her head. "That was all within the context of command. It was being a good leader, not a good partner. What's gone on between us these past months has been very circumscribed, which is the way I like it." She stopped and reflected for a moment. Her eyes grew wet. "Do you know, the last time I spoke to Mark, I was asking him to pick up something from my place, to take care of my dog. I was gone most of the time, but I still insisted that I needed my space. I couldn't share, even with him. I treated him like a servant."

Janeway's gaze had drifted out the viewport to the well of space. Chakotay tried to catch her eye but she wouldn't throw it his way. Finally, he asked in a soft voice, "Are you trying to tell me that you don't want me lurking around your quarters uninvited?"

"No!" Janeway said emphatically. She came around the table then, sat on it, and grasped his hands in hers. Her words came haltingly, but her gaze was intense. "I'm trying – badly – to say that intimacy is hard for me, but I want to work at it. I want you to help me work at it. All my life, I was groomed for command. I was taught not to cry, not to blame myself for loss of life in the line of duty, all those cruel lessons command candidates have to learn. I had them since childhood. My father wasn't being cruel, he just knew how hard it was. He wanted to prepare me. And then there was Tau Ceti Prime." She hung her head and hesitated a long moment before fixing Chakotay with an imploring look. "I worked so hard never to feel again what I felt then. I thought it would destroy me. But if I don't want to wind up alone and bitter in my old age, I have to stand up to this fear too."

He squeezed her hands and brought them to his lips for a gentle kiss.

"I understand loss, Kathryn. I know what it is to protect your heart at the price of any true intimacy. It's how I wound up involved with Seska. She wasn't interested in knowing me, she just wanted to share the thrill of battle and a hard fuck afterward." He examined the reaction in Janeway's face, but it shone with compassion and no shadow of judgment.

She pulled his hands in close to her, drawing them together. "I always wanted to know you, Chakotay. Even when we were angriest at each other, I still wanted you for my friend. And as much as I will resist, I want you in my life." With a gulp, she added, "And I want you in my quarters. I think you should move your things in here."

"Are you sure?" he asked. His head tilted closer with a little smile. "You didn't see the look on your face when you came in and saw me here. I thought you were going to call off the whole thing."

Janeway squared her shoulders. "I've made the decision. I won't go back on it. I will learn intimacy if it kills me."

Chakotay reached out a hand to cup her jaw. "It might not be as unpleasant as you think."

Janeway closed her eyes and let her cheek relax into his hand. "Nothing about this has been unpleasant," she said as her eyes opened again. "That's half the battle. I'm – I'm not accustomed to feeling this vulnerable to another person. The last time I let it happen …." Her voice trailed off.

"I know," he answered. "I can't promise you won't lose me, Kathryn. We're in a dangerous line of work, in a dangerous place. But I can promise I'll make every moment together worth living, for as long as we have."

She nodded against his hand. "I know."

"Time for your rubdown?" he asked.

"I thought you'd never ask."

END