Only Human
Summary: What the captain gets up to in her private hours is nobody’s business but hers ... and the lover she chooses to spend them with.
Characters: Janeway, Chakotay, Ayala
Codes: Janeway/Chakotay, Janeway/Ayala
Disclaimer: Paramount/CBS own the rights to the Voyager universe and its characters, which I am borrowing without permission or intent to profit.
Notes: The identity of Janeway’s lover is entirely up to you – it all depends on which ending you choose.
Warning: Dom/sub themes. Dubious consent in the third ending.
Rated E
Ending Three: breaching protocol
He held her close and tight, waiting until she’d stopped shuddering and squeezing around him, and then he pulled out of her and let her feet drift to the deck. She leaned against him, breathing hard, enjoying the feeling of his hands in her hair and spread across her bare back.
“Kathryn.”
“Mm-hm.”
“You’re still not finished.”
She became aware of the hard length pressed between them, and the tension in his frame, and the ragged way he was breathing. She eased back and looked into his face.
“What do you want?”
He smoothed tangled hair out of her eyes. “I want to make you come again. You’ve got at least one more in you.”
“But you –”
“Don’t worry, I’m not missing out,” he said over her protests, and then he was on his knees in front of her, big hands on her thighs, urging them gently to part for him.
Her heart began to race even before his tongue touched her. And then he dove in, licking her lavishly, sucking her clit into his mouth until she cried out and twisted her hand in his hair.
She felt as much as heard him groan as his tongue lapped and probed at her entrance, and she knew that if she let him continue like that, her climax would be so explosive she’d be nothing but jelly after it.
“Wait,” she gasped, pushing his head away. “Chakotay, stop.”
Chakotay eased back, eyes impossibly dark, his lips parted and wet with … her … and Kathryn couldn’t look away.
“You don’t want this?”
She did; too much. That had always been the problem. “This isn’t what I came here for,” she amended, and wondered if that was true.
“I don’t care why you’re here,” he said in that soft, implacable tone. “Maybe you came to argue again, or to plead your case, or maybe to confess. Maybe you even wanted me to punish you. It doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Because what matters is that you need me.”
He rose slowly from his crouched position and stood so close that when she breathed, her bare breasts touched his still-clothed chest. His hands rested on her hips. Without the extra height afforded her by her boots, she had to tip her head all the way back to meet his eyes.
“You’re very sure of yourself,” she managed, floundering, trying to steer this conversation away from the sharp turn it had taken. Trying to regain control.
He ducked his head and smiled. “Is that what you think?”
She didn’t know what to think. Tonight wasn’t turning out at all as she’d expected … although she really had no idea, now, what she’d expected from this.
The slow rub of his thumbs on her naked hips was distracting her, maddening her. Kathryn shifted on her feet and tried to hide the way her breathing had accelerated.
“I just wanted to talk to you,” she blurted, as though saying it aloud would make it true.
“You wanted this man,” he corrected, easing back from her enough to wave a hand, indicating his rough-woven shirt, his worn leather pants. “The Maquis. But that’s not all I am anymore, Captain, and you can’t have that part without accepting all the rest.”
The blood drained from her face as the truth of it settled onto her shoulders.
“You’re right,” she whispered. “This was a mistake.”
He watched her. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m – I was using you.”
“Seems to me that’s what I’m here for,” he countered. “To support you and take care of you. To give you what you need.”
“It’s not the same thing,” she said quietly.
“I know.” Chakotay raised one hand to her face, his thumb stroking lightly across her cheekbone. “But I’m offering anyway. Whatever you need, Kathryn, whenever you need it.”
He gave her a minute to let that sink in. Then, eyes holding hers, he bent his head slowly enough that she had plenty of time to push him away if she wanted to. When she didn’t, he kissed her.
She didn’t stop him. She let her eyes close, let him nudge her lips apart and slide his tongue along her lower lip. She stretched her arms up and around his neck and pressed her body against him, and she didn’t object when he lifted her, walking her deeper into his quarters to lay her on his bed.
The arrogance, the intransigence he’d displayed earlier were gone now, ebbing away with each quiet and attentive touch he bestowed on her. This was not the man she’d come to berate over what she’d seen as his professional and personal betrayal, to taunt past his breaking point. This was someone tender and ardent. A lover. Exactly the man she had refused to let herself long for.
How had she lost control of this so completely?
But as he brushed his lips over hers, as he clasped her fingers in his and moved inside her, she told herself that maybe it didn’t really matter. Maybe she could allow herself this. Just once, and never again. In spite of his offer.
Tears didn’t trickle from the corners of her eyes when he worked her skilfully to climax. No telling words or promises exposed her as she lay in his arms afterwards. And when she drew away from him, retrieved her uniform and put it back on, she only allowed herself one glance back at the man on the bed.
“Computer,” she said, “end program.”
Chakotay’s quarters shimmered and disappeared, and Kathryn looked around at the empty silver grid of the holodeck before she turned for the exit.
It was far from the first time she’d run a private program that featured Chakotay’s avatar. But before tonight, events had been relatively chaste. She would talk to the hologram, tell it the things she couldn’t tell the real Chakotay, and once or twice it had held her while she sobbed out her rage and frustration and loneliness. She would leave the holodeck filled with remorse and longing for the things she couldn’t have, but eventually, weeks or months later, she would reach the end of her endurance, and she would visit the program again.
There was no regulation against it. But protocol, unwritten, was nevertheless clear: there were circumstances when it was appropriate to create a simulation of a real person, and others when it was not.
What she had done tonight was unquestionably in the latter category.
She should record this in her official log, Kathryn thought as she stood at the panel outside the holodeck door, checking and re-checking that she’d encrypted the program at level ten. She should turn herself in to Tuvok and wait to be censured.
“Good evening, Captain.”
She jolted so violently that the LCARS panel beeped rudely at her fumbling fingers.
“Sorry,” her first officer said as she turned to face him, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s fine, Commander.”
“How was your holodeck time?”
“Fine.”
His eyebrows rose a fraction, and she reminded herself she was supposed to be mending the friendship that had fractured over their recent command disagreement.
“Okay,” he was saying. “Well, maybe someday we can run it together.”
She turned back to the door panel to hide the expression she was sure his polite statement had provoked. “Maybe someday,” she said, keeping her tone light.
“I’ll look forward to it.” He smiled at her – not the warm, lingering smile from before the Borg, but a fair approximation – and gestured to the panel. “I’m running my boxing sim, otherwise I’d ask you to join me.”
“Another time, perhaps.” She managed a more convincing smile this time. “I’ll see you in the morning, Commander.”
“See you on the bridge, Captain.”
She felt his gaze on her as she strode away, along the corridor. Was he reading her guilt in the rigid set of her spine, or the remnants of pleasure in the loose roll of her hips?
She hoped she had adequately covered her tracks. If he ever discovered what she’d done with his hologram, she was sure he’d be rightfully outraged.
Her steps slowed as she reached the turbolift.
Tonight was the first time she had updated the hologram with Chakotay’s personal logs. She hadn’t questioned her motives at the time; she’d just wanted him to respond to her authentically. And, like his flesh and blood counterpart, the hologram had surprised and disarmed her.
And he’d made her an offer she desperately wanted, but wouldn’t allow herself, to accept.
The ‘lift arrived and she stepped in.
If the hologram wanted to give her what she needed, in whatever form that took, did the real Chakotay want that too?
Please state your destination, the computer prompted.
“Deck three,” Kathryn said absently.
No, she told herself; she couldn’t ask that of him, and she couldn’t accept it if he offered.
But oh, it was tempting, and the journey ahead was so long, and she was only human.
Kathryn lifted her gaze. Chakotay was still standing outside the holodeck, watching her. His bearing was straight and his face set in its usual composed lines. But his eyes were dark with something she could only define as hunger.
The turbolift doors slid closed as she teetered on the line between duty and desire.
★
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