NEW:Ghost in the Machine-VOY/TOS NC17 m/m 1/5

[Killashdra]

Okay, guys. A little 30th Anniversary crossover story
of my own. It's something kinda different, and I hope you
like it. If you're under 18, or can't stand the idea of
two guys having some consensual fun together, don't read
it!! Paramount owns them. I hope they don't mind me
borrowing them a little.

* * * * *

Sometimes the things we do come back to haunt us.
Literally.
If there's one thing that prison teaches you, it's
this: in the end there's always a payback, and nothing we
do comes free. The shadows of the choices we've made never
entirely disappear, even on the brightest day. Call it
kismet if you want. Whatever you call it, it's something
we've all had to learn, out here seventy thousand light
years from home. Your ghosts will follow you no matter how
far you run.
And sometimes it's the ghost you least expected.


"Hey, Tom, what's in the box?"
I'm attempting to tame the chaos of my quarters and
Harry's, um, helping.
"What box?"
I don't turn around, because I'm sitting on the floor
buried in a pile of half-functional components I've
salvaged over the last few months. I was meaning to build
something out of them. For some reason that busted
generator with the thermal inducer made me think 'coffee-
maker' at one point; now it just looks like scrap. There's
not a single coffee bean to be had in the Delta Quadrant
anyway. Why do I always seem to collect things like this?
"This gray one in the back of your closet."
"Dunno. Dead body maybe?" I pick up a strange,
spidery-looking object. It looks like it might once have
been a hydraulic hair accessory, or some weird sexual toy.
I seem to recall I got this one from the Doc. Hmm, maybe
there's something he's not telling us...
"No, it's flat and square, not long and thin and
smelly."
"Beats me. Why don't you open it and see?"
"You sure?"
"Yeah. Say, Harry, what does this look like to you?"
I hold up my find so he can see it over my shoulder.
There's a thump and the rustling sounds from the closet
stop for a second.
"Um... an orthoscopic polycaliper? No, a juicer."
I shrug and toss the thing back into the pile. The
rustling sounds have resumed, and finally I can't resist
the temptation any more. I turn and look.
Just as I'd suspected, Harry's down on his hands and
knees rummaging in the aforesaid box. His head, arms and
shoulders are buried in the depths of the closet; only his
legs and posterior are visible.
And oh, man, what a view.
We're off-duty, and he's wearing black denim jeans and
a white t-shirt tucked in, and from where I'm sitting, the
view looks so sweet I can hardly stand it. It's not the
first time I've done this, sneaking a peek when he's not
looking.
Okay, more than a peek. Let's face it, Paris, you eat
him alive with your eyes when he's not looking.
Ah, shit. Why do I do this to myself? Just watching
him like that makes me hard. I try to make myself look
away, anywhere else but at my best friend's ass, but the
temptation is too great. I don't get many opportunities
like this one, and it's been months since I had any release
besides my own fantasies. My cock is pressing on the
zipper of my own jeans, uncomfortable as hell. I'm
miserable and ashamed, but it feels so damn good that I'm
afraid I'm going to do something unforgivable.
Then it hits me.
"Harry, wait!"
I say it, and then realize what I've done. He's gonna
look at me because my voice was too loud, almost panicked.
Shit, I can't let him see me like this. I grab a data padd
and position it strategically just as he turns around.
It's too late, I can see that immediately. It's too
late because what he's got in his hand is a book, and I can
see its cover from here. I meet his eyes, knowing that my
face must be bright red. My cheeks feel like they're on
fire.
The rest of me does, too.
The book is Paradise Lost, and that's so trite I could
almost laugh out loud. But I can't laugh, because
something's in my throat. I don't know if it's my desire
for him, which has never been stronger, or if it's the
worried look he's giving me, or if it's some other thing
altogether--but I've just realized, as if someone has
struck me in the chest, how much I love him. And I can't
laugh because that makes me so happy and so sad that what I
really need to do is cry.
I don't, of course. Because now there's going to have
to be an explanation. He's not going to let it go without
one.
"Tom? What's wrong?"
See?
"Nothing." I shake my head. It doesn't seem to help;
that thought I had a second ago is still in there.
He looks at the book in his hand. "Paradise Lost... I
love this book."
"Mmm." I can't manage anything more coherent. I've
got to get myself under control, or I'm going to blow it
for sure. I can live with loving him, I think. But I
couldn't deal with his pity. Or worse.
He's looking at me again. "You okay? You look kind
of green."
"Fine. Just... dizzy for a second. I didn't eat
breakfast."
Oh what a glib liar you are, Tommy boy.
He's opened the box. I'm not sure how I feel about
that, really. With all the other things I'm feeling right
now, it seems like that box hardly matters. I suppose it
was time--past time--and if it was going to be opened, I
suppose I'm glad it was Harry that did it.
I take a deep breath, trying to steady my heart, which
is racing like I've just run a marathon. For months I've
known I wanted him. It's gotten so bad that I can't even
face the thought of making it with anyone else. I've
fantasized about him and been ashamed afterward, and tried
to make it up to him in the ways that friendship allows.
I've dreamed about him.
Not until just now did I realize I'd fallen in love
with him.
The box. He's digging around in it again. I've got
my traitorous libido reasonably under wraps, so I get up
and go toward him. He's begun taking the things out of the
box and stacking them on the carpet around him. I go and
sit beside him, the piles of stuff between us.
More books. Paradise Lost goes on the bottom of the
stack, and is joined by The Fountainhead and Dr. Faustus
and The Magus. To those he adds some Poe, a Philip North,
and a couple of Lovecrafts. Funny, I never realized what a
gothic soul I was in those days. I guess I still am; you
can't get much more gothic than forbidden desire, after
all.
Next to the books he places a display that holds eight
holopics, my father smiling menacingly up at me from the
one on top. I ignore him. I watch Harry's graceful hands
disappear into the box again.
It's not a large box, and it's not fancy. It's just
gray, and squarish, with my name imprinted on the side and
on the lid. They delivered it to me when I arrived at Deep
Space Nine, and some crewman put it in my cabin. It got
shoved to the back of the closet, to wait for the day when
I could open it without it hurting. I've never touched it.
Harry's hands reappear holding a folded piece of
cloth: a blue tunic. Placed neatly on top of the tunic is
a Bajoran earring.
I surprise myself by being able to look at the earring
without flinching. Maybe it's only that in the face of my
recent realization, nothing can faze me.
Well, almost nothing. I'm sitting a meter away from
Harry, and I can smell the faint scent of his shampoo.
He shoots me a sidelong glance, questioning.
"A friend," I say, and he nods. I know that some day
he will ask me about it, and I will tell him the story.
The earring belonged to a woman named Kai Morena, who died
saving my life because, for some reason, she saw something
in me worth saving. You and Morena had that in common, I
will tell him when he asks. But for now, he doesn't push.
He places the tunic and earring next to him on the
floor. Next comes my old uniform, folded less neatly, the
threads loose where they pulled the pips out of the collar.
This, too, he sets aside, and then he looks at me,
obviously uncomfortable.
"You sure you don't mind me poking around in here?"
I swallow. I have to remind myself to watch it; he's
very sensitive, and doesn't miss much. It's hard not to
let my heart show in my eyes. "It's okay. I want you to."
"Tom... what is this, exactly?"
I look down at my hands. "This is the box they sent
from Auckland. It's the stuff I had on me when I was
arrested."
I can feel his eyes on me, but I can't meet them.
Finally he turns back to the box, and the few items
remaining inside. There's a copy of my discharge papers,
which I've looked at only once before. Who knows why I
carried the things around with me in those days? Guess I
thought the chip I was carrying on my shoulder wasn't
weight enough.
There's a ring, silver, that I'd forgotten about,
though I wore it every day for six and a half years.
The ring is quite striking, an intricate design of
Celtic origin. Brogan gave that to me--gods help me, I
remember the day he did. I was fifteen then. Another best
friend from another lifetime, and seeing the ring glinting
in Harry's palm, I realize that I haven't thought of my
first love in over a year.
Harry tries to give the ring to me.
"No," I say. "You keep it. I'm allergic to the
metal."
He's not fooled. He looks at me a long time before
slipping the ring on the middle finger of his right hand.
It looks really striking there, burnished silver against
the rich walnut of his skin.
There's only one thing left in the box, and now he
takes it out and turns it over in his hand. The puzzled
frown he's wearing makes me look down at what he's holding.
It's a storage wafer, and for a moment I'm as puzzled
as he is. I can't remember if I've ever seen that disk
before, or what might be on it. Wherever it came from,
it's some serious data; the thing is at least half a
centimeter thick.
Harry turns to me and I shrug, baffled. I can't
remember transporting any data for the Maquis. It's the
kind of disk I favored back then, though, the kind I used
to store programs I had written. You could cram a fully
rendered holoplanet on one of those things, right down to
the mosquitoes.
He reads off the faded label. "NCC1701-K. That's
weird. It sounds like a Starfleet registry--but as far as
I know there was never a ship with that designation. The
Enterprise sequence only goes up to E..." He's talking to
himself, trying to puzzle it out.
But I'm not really listening, because now I've
remembered what's on that disk.
I put out my hand, and Harry places the wafer in my
palm. I stare at it, trying to cross the vast distances
of space and time and circumstance between that long ago
day and this one. It's so surreal that for a moment I
think I must be dreaming.
I thought this little gem destroyed years ago. All my
sim disks were lost when the Feds fired on our ship, the
case of wafers incinerated along with half a deck and four
of my Maquis comrades. All my disks except this one,
apparently. I remember now that I'd kept it in my
carryall, wrapped up in Morena's tunic for safekeeping.
"What's on it, Tom?" He asks deferentially, like he's
afraid of invading my privacy.
Imagining his face if I told him makes me want to
laugh out loud. I shake my head. "You wouldn't believe me
if I told you."
He can see from my face that it's not personal, and
now I've awakened his curiosity. "Aw, come on. That's not
fair."
"You're never gonna know what's on it, Harry, so
forget it."
"I won't tell anyone. I promise."
This is a little known fact about our Ensign Kim:
keeping a secret from him drives him crazy.
"I said forget it."
We're still sitting on the floor, cross-legged now,
facing each other. I'm teasing him mercilessly, and he's
getting desperate. It's cruel of me, because I really
won't ever tell him what's on the disk.
He really wouldn't believe me.
On the other hand, I think, the cruelty of his beauty
is sufficient tease in kind, and if I can sit here with him
and not kiss him, not shock him senseless with the things I
would do to him, then he can certainly live with some
unanswered questions.
But I haven't counted on his persuasiveness.
"Please," he says, looking hurt. "Can't you just give
me a hint?"
"No."
"Is it a holoprogram?"
"No!" But I'm weakening, and he knows it.
I am, of course, the world's most terrible liar.
That's always been my problem. People who can't tell a
decent lie should keep themselves honest, or they end up at
the Auckland Federation Penal Settlement.
"What kind of program is it?" He gives the closest
thing to a leer that someone so unsullied can manage. "Is
it something ah, personal?"
I take this as evidence that my efforts to corrupt him
have not been entirely wasted. His head may not yet accept
that Libby is a distant dream, but his body knows that he
is a young man, with needs dreams can't fulfill. It's only
a matter of time before his head realizes it too.
But that, my dear Mister Paris, is not a direction
your thoughts ought to be taking right now. Not when he's
sitting so close, and your defenses are shot to hell...
"Yeah," I say, getting up. "It's personal. So stop
asking me about it!"
He keeps trying, but I stick the wafer in my pocket
and refuse to say another word.

(end part 1)