by Novus Homo
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Comments cheerfully responded to; flames cheerfully ignored.

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"And I can't forget,
I can't forget,
I can't forget but I don't remember what. . ."

-Leonard Cohen, I Can't Forget

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The assignment had not gone well. The heaps of raw dilithium Kim had scanned from the ship and gotten it diverted two days for had been radans. Crude, low-grade radans, no less, not even gem quality, dammit. Kim was slow-burning when he beamed back from the planet. B'Elanna and Tuvok met him at the transporter room.

"I guess that one missed, eh, Harry?" B'Elanna asked. Was that a faint smile he saw dancing on her lips? She had opposed this from the beginning; she said that the scan was too uncertain to be sure.

Harry snapped. "What the fuck do you know about it! You didn't even see the scans! Just go fuck yourself, you Klingon bitch!" He flung the padd he had been holding at her. It missed by a mile and tunked against the transparent aluminum of the transporter console.

B'Elanna gasped. "Now just take it easy, Starfleet-"

Tuvok did not gasp. "Ensign, this is entirely uncalled-for-"

But Ensign Kim had already dashed out of the room, leaving in his wake one extremely bewildered friend and one Vulcan.

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"Computer, where is Tom Paris?"

"Lieutenant Paris is in Holodeck One."

Sandrine's. There would be other people there. "Shit!" he yelled. "Shit, shit, shit!" and slammed his fist into the side of the turbolift. He didn't even notice pain which would have brought others whimpering to their knees. Nor did he notice his uncommon rage.

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Lieutenant Thomas Eugene Paris, ship's pilot, convicted felon, former Maquis agent, and ace pool player, lined up another shot.

He was just about to make a magnificent shot, sink the 9 as well as the 8, the last two on the table, and win some more of Chell's replicator rations. The poor blue guy never even had a chance. He looked up when the holodeck doors opened, and in stormed Harry. He barely recognized his lover of six months. This man was furious.

"Hey, Harry! Something bugging you?"

Harry strode over, grabbed Tom by one arm, and started to drag him bodily out of Sandrine's.

"Harry, watch it! I need that to play pool with, you know." He smiled gamely. Harry didn't, and kept dragging. Tom found that Harry was stronger than he was used to, so decided to go with him. Or he would have, if the decision hadn't been made for him.

"Chell! Catch you later!" he called out, just before the doors closed.
Chell put down his cue with a humph.

---

"Harry, I trust you and all that, but just where are we going?"

"Tom, shut up."

They were almost running down the cooridor for Tom's quarters. Kim's combadge chimed. "Tuvok to Ensign Kim. Report to my office immediately!"
With a muffled curse, Kim grabbed his commbadge and flung it aside.

Before Tom could say anything, Lt. Carey had the misfortune to stroll down the cooridor past them. "Hi, Tom! Harry just can't keep his hands off you, eh?" he called. Harry smashed him across the jaw with uncommon force. Carey's blood splattered against a bulkhead and he crumpled in a heap, clutching his broken jaw and calling medical in a slurred voice tinged with panic.

"Harry!" Tom said desperately. "We've got to get you to sickbay. Something's wrong with you. Paris to -" Kim cut him off with a violent, loveless kiss. At that moment, they got to the door of Tom's quarters.

"Computer, deactivate voice channels in this room and initiate privacy lock," Kim gasped out after getting Tom through the door.

"Harry, please! This isn't you! Let me take you to -ugh!" Harry grabbed the older man and threw him bodily onto the bed, face down. He grabbed Tom's waistband and yanked off his lover's pants in a manner wholly devoid of love. He took down his own to reveal his rapidly hardening membrum virile, and started to pound into Tom, dry. The assault lacerated Tom's ass, and he screamed his pain and betrayal into the bed as he was subjected to pain he hadn't known since prison. In less than a minute, Harry came with explosive force and passed out. Tom, in a foreign realm of agony, could barely contact sickbay.

---

Harry blinked and woke up fully.

The first thing he saw was a grey section of ceiling. As his brain awoke, he saw a cluster of concerned faces. Tom, B'Ela, Kes, Doc, the captain, and Tuvok were standing around him. He felt the uncomfortable bed beneath him and realized he was in sickbay.

"Captain?" he said, and his voice sounded haggard from disuse. "Doc? What's going on? What am I doing here?" His voice had his usual sweet, unassuming tone to it.

"Please try to relax, Ensign. You've been under the influence of a virus which you contracted on an away mission," explained the doctor. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Um, I finished the dilithium survey, found nothing, then beamed back to Voyager, then. . . I can't remember."

"Hmm, retrograde amnesia. It should clear up in a few days," the doctor said. "In the meantime, you're perfectly well and there's no reason why you can't return to your quarters."

"Harry," said the captain, "I'm granting you a leave of absence for the next week. Take some time in the holodecks to relax."

"Yes, Captain," responded Harry, getting to his feet, all Starfleet and regulation. "Thank you very much."

After politely acknowledging the doctor, Kes, and the others, he and Tom started out the door. On his way out, he overheard the doctor, Tuvok and the captain discussing a security risk.

"Tom? Did you hear what the Captain was talking about just now with Tuvok and the doctor?"

"Um, no," replied Tom. He seemed a little distant now, and when they made love that night. Harry couldn't put his finger on it.

---

Harry was having a dream.

A vague phantasmal world, which reminded him absurdly of Voyager when it got twisted. He was in the mess hall. Tuvok and B'Ela were there. Tuvok was melding with B'Elanna, who picked up a padd and flung it across the room, mechanically, like a robot or a mechanical doll. Tuvok took off his comm badge and did likewise. . .

. . . and Carey was there, in the holodeck, playing pool, and he was lining up a shot, and he said, eight-ball in the side pocket, and the eight ball was Harry's head, and he made the shot, and the Harry ball exploded in a shower of sparks and blood on the green baize. . .

. . . and in sickbay there was the doctor who said, put up the forcefield, and Kes who said, begin sterilization, and Kim's body melted and vanished. . .

. . . and he was on the bed, and he turned over and Tom's dead body was there, bloody, naked, and before he could say anything, he felt a pain in his chest, and a feral monster was there with an immense dagger with which he had transfixed Kim through the heart, and underneath the monster's black matted hair was Kim himself, and he screamed. . .

---

"Harry! What is it! Wake up! You're having a nightmare!"

Harry snapped out of sleep screaming, and he continued to scream, long and high and terrible, and it was because he remembered, oh god, he remembered every detail of it, what he had done to whom, and oh god, this isn't me and I'll never live it down! What have I done! And he said it over and over, "What have I done! What have I done!"

Tom took the tortured form of his love into his arms, and held him gently until Harry dissolved into tears.

"Oh, gods, Tom! How could I do it! What a disgrace! I've disgraced myself, I hurt you, how could I have done it. . ."

"Shh, Harry. It's all right," Tom crooned. "That wasn't you, I know it wasn't you, you'd never do anything like that, I love you."

Harry's frantic lament continued unabated. "How! How can you still love me after what I did to you! Oh gods, what I did to you, to Carey, to B'Ela, to everyone. . . How could I!" And he kept going until he couldn't anymore, then he just lay in his boyfriend's arms and sobbed, while Tom murmured soft words of comfort, solace, forgiveness.

Finally, Tom became aware that Harry's soft tears had dwindled away to nothingness. He looked, and Harry was asleep. He looked as innocent as ever, with his round face stained with drying tears. Tom gently stripped off Harry's uniform and his own, quietly told the computer to turn off the lights, and crawled into bed with Harry.

Their sleep was uninterrupted.

---

Tom awoke with a start. Harry was kissing his neck.

"Oh, ah, Harry. . . Oh jeez. . . what a way to start the day!" he got out.

"Shh, Tom, just lie back and enjoy it. I'm paying you back," Harry said quietly in between light feathery kisses.

"Harry, seriously, you don't need to. . . ahh!"

"Yes I do," said the ensign, and that was that.

Harry moved down Tom's body, nuzzling his chest, lightly swirling the older man's tits with his tongue, playing with Tom's golden chest hair, and generally driving Tom crazy with lust. Finally, he drew his lover's cock into his mouth. He gently nibbled on the plum-coloured head, not enough to hurt, just enough to stimulate incredibly. He moved further down the shaft, bathing it, stroking Tom's legs and balls with his hands. Finally, he began to deep-throat his lover's member, until Tom started to moan dangerously and get close. He pulled his head off Tom's cock until just the head was in his mouth, and when Tom came, Harry drank it like the sacred nectar it was.

Tom fell back on the bed in a daze. As he recovered, he noticed that Harry's cock was still hard. Harry reached for it, but Tom was on it sooner than Harry was.

Harry gently pushed Tom away. "No, Tom, don't do this for me. I have to go without it for a while, as a sort of penance, I guess. Bear with me, okay?" Harry smiled hopefully at Tom.

"Oh, okay, Harry, if you like. But don't penance for too long, okay?" He broke into a grin.

"Right, right," said Harry, also grinning, and he stood up as the erection subsided. He started to pull on his uniform pants. "Right now I have to go apologize to Carey."

"Lucky guy," mused Tom, and they couldn't help nearly falling over in hysterical laughter.

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End