The BLTS Archive - The Back of His Head
by Riss (usc_mam@yahoo.com)

---

Disclaimers - Paramount owns Star Trek.  What, you didn't know that?
I'm just a humble fan borrowing the characters for fun.  While
Paramount owns the characters, the ideas are mine, so please keep my
name attached to copies of this story.

---

I sit there everyday just looking at him.  I wonder if anyone realizes
just how I feel about him.  Some days I wonder if we will ever get
together, despite the obstacles.  Other days I yell at myself for even
thinking about having these feelings.

Feelings, something I can no longer deny myself.  When we were first
lost in the Delta Quadrant, I locked myself away.  All feelings beyond
friendship were locked inside the walls of my heart and mind.  I said
that nothing would get through the walls I built around my feelings.
However, two people have managed to get through.

First to enter my heart was Chakotay.  Actually, maybe not the first,
but the first one I allowed myself to think about.  From the start we
flirted.  In the beginning I did it because I had this handsome enemy
sitting next to me for an eight hour shift on then bridge.  It helped
break the tension and promoted a working relationship.  For a long
time, that was all it was, another way of relating to the person
sitting next to me.

It was only later that the flirting actually had feelings behind it.
I remember thinking when we were stranded back on New Earth that I
could fall in love with this man.  He is beautiful in the dark,
handsome stranger type way.

I used to flirt with him on the bridge, I guess I still do.  I loved
the feeling of danger that it brings.  A forbidden love, taking place
in front of everyone.  I think that's what I clung to even long after
I realized that his place in my heart was as a friend.  It was
something that I could express, without being bound to explain myself.
Everyone expected the two of us to flirt, but I can never do that with
him.

Now, my heart has taken in a second invader.  A man who shows no signs
of departing.  This is one who I never really flirted with.  Someone
even more forbidden than Chakotay.  I hear the rumors out there about
how much time I spend with Seven.  How our mentor relationship has
turned into more.  Everyone thinks I am with her because she is my
lover.  We are too combative to ever be lovers.  Also, I think, no I
know, that is to make up for the ache I suffer in my heart.  The ache
for the love I can never have.

It is not my current 'protege' who I pine over, but the man I brought
into the Delta Quadrant.  Sure, I met Tom long before I even dreamed
of falling in love with him.  Back in my academy days I saw him
practicing on the piloting simulator.  This little kid, maybe ten
years old, flying better then some of the academy standouts.  Though
he had grown up from the little five year old who had first practiced
on them, he still was dwarfed by the machinery that surrounded him.
He was just a little kid then, but I knew he would be beautiful when
he grew up.

The next time I saw him, besides pictures and news reports, was at the
prison in Auckland.  When I arrived, I had every intention of hating
him.  I thought he was just a cocky, reckless, spoiled brat who
deserved all that was coming to him.  His attitude that day almost
convinced me that there was nothing more.  Except for the fact that I
needed his help, I would have done everything in my power to avoid
that man.

But, there was more to him than the attitude.  For one moment I saw
the man he would become on Voyager.  When he realized that I was not
going to let him do any more than give directions, I could see the
disappointment  in his eyes. For a moment, they glowed with the desire
to change my mind and prove himself.

At that point I realized that I could improve him.  No, if I'm to be
truthful, that's the moment I first started falling for him.  When he
volunteered for the away team to the array, I knew that I could count
on him.  The moment I knew that he deserved another chance in
Starfleet and with his peers was when he went back for Chakotay.
Saving an enemy redeemed him and earned my trust. I am proud that I
was the one who started him on the road to redemption.

I enjoyed my time with him as his mentor.  Coaching him along,
praising his improved behavior and most important, whipping his butt
in pool.  I tried to bury any personal feelings I had.  Even when I
read the medical reports from the first few days, before Chakotay was
able to control the Maquis actions, I distanced myself.  When he left
the ship to join the Talaxians, I convinced myself that he was just a
member of my crew.  I don't know when the barriers fell.

I think the first time I acknowledged that I actually had these
feelings was when the whole Pon Farr incident with B'Elanna occurred.
I couldn't deny that I was jealous.  For a few days, it took all my
willpower not to glare at the back of that beautiful head.  But, I
controlled my urges.  I don't think that even Chakotay had a clue.

When I first admitted to myself that I loved him was shortly after I
told Chakotay about my letter from Mark.  That letter freed me of my
bonds to home,the last wall left around my heart, and forced me to
look at the desires of my heart.  Chakotay still had a glimmer of
interest for me, but I found myself instead thinking of the
unattainable man in front of me on the bridge. The man who I lost into
the arms of my chief engineer.

I am not angry at her.  I know that she had the guts to admit her
feelings, a lot more than I've been able to do.  But that doesn't help
the hurt that I feel when he smiles at her.  I know that they are
happy, but I want him.

I love Tom Paris.  I love the cocky, self assured man as well as the
vulnerable, troubled soul that lies within.  There are days I wish I
was a salamander again, just so I could be with him.  Though I don't
remember anything, I know that I was the one who initiated anything,
because I am the one with the feelings.

So, I sit in my chair and look at his beautiful head.  I gently lay my
hand on his shoulder when I come down to the conn, but he doesn't know
why.  He doesn't realizes that I crave even that moment of contact
with him.  I dream of having him, even when the reality of his
relationship with B'Elanna stares me in the face.  I love my
unattainable man, whose face I rarely see.  I love the man who sits in
front of me.

---

The End