by Elizabeth Dunn
---

Disclaimer: Not mine, yadda, yadda, yadda.

---

Harry and Tom walked back to Tom's quarters from Sandrine's. This wasn't an unusual occurrence- since Tom had broken up with B'Elanna about a week ago, Tom had been spending lots of time with Harry, almost as if he was afraid of being alone. Not that Harry was surprised. He knew that, with himself at least, that when you were used to the companionship of a serious relationship, one tended to get clingy to other people after a breakup, as if trying to fill that empty space.

Look at all the time Harry had spent with Tom after they had been first stranded in the Delta Quadrant, missing Libby so terribly and trying to hide his loneliness with someone else. Now it appeared that Tom was employing the same strategy. Not that Harry was complaining. He had been secretly in love with Tom for quite some time now. Only the wish not to hurt B'Elanna had held him back from saying anything to him. But now, with the relationship ended. . .

Harry steered his thoughts away from that particular track and concentrated on steering Tom down the corridor. He had had a little too much to drink. Finally, they reached Tom's quarters. Harry punched in Tom's code and guided the man into his room and on to the couch. He turned to leave, but Tom's hand on his arm stopped him. Tom pulled him down beside him, and leaned forward. Softly, he said, "Har, do you know how much you mean to me?"

"About as much as you mean to be Tom. We're best friends." Harry repressed the small surge of sadness that came with that, his hopes that they could be more than friends.

"No, it's more than that. I think. . . I think we could be. . . more. Like me and B'Elanna were."

Harry ignored the small flare of hope and concentrated of his friend. There was more than a small possibility that this was just the drunken rambling of a lonely man. "Tom, I don't think you mean that."

Tom grabbed Harry's wrists and pulled him in close. "But I do, Harry. I. . . I think I'm in love with you. I broke up with B'Elanna because I felt so strongly about you. And, if I read you as correctly as I think I have, you love me too."

Harry was shocked. The mere thought that Tom loved him was enough to make him well on his way to being hard, but still. . . The man had been drinking all night, real alcohol too, and it was entirely possible that Tom was turning his good feelings from the drink and amplifying his feelings for him. How to approach this then. He thought for a second and decided on a combination of truth and damage control. Drawing in a deep breath, he said, "Yes Tom, I do love you. But, I don't know if you really love me."

"I do, Harry, I really do."

"I know you think you do, but-." Harry's words were cut off by Tom's mouth as he bent his head down and kissed Harry. Harry moaned and leaned into the kiss, opening his mouth to Tom's exploring tongue. After untold minutes, he pulled back, breathless and harder than he'd been in a long time. Maybe ever. Harry looked into Tom's eyes and saw passion and love shining out at him. "Well," he said shakily. "Where do we go from here?"

Tom began to unbutton Harry's shirt and trailed his fingers over the golden skin exposed. As he bent his head to kiss and nibble on Harry's neck, he whispered, "Well, I thought that we'd go to my bed next."

"Good idea," Harry said, his words turning into a sharp cry as Tom's mouth found his nipples and began sucking on them. Harry writhed in ecstasy as Tom kissed and nibbled his way across Harry's chest to give the same attention to the other one. With a small gasp, Harry's knees gave out, and he fell to knees in front of Tom, on eye level with his straining erection. Tentatively, Harry reached out and stroked it and whispered, "Let me love you Tom. Let me love you like I've always dreamed."

Any coherent thoughts left in Tom fled as Harry unfastened his pants and drew out his hard cock. Suddenly his only priorities in life had narrowed to the ultimate goal of coming as hard as possible in his best friend's mouth. In a distant corner of his mind, he was wondering exactly where this seemingly innocent man had gotten such talent at blowjobs, but the rest of him was too busy enjoying to care about silly details. Harry worked him skillfully, by turns gently kissing and licking, and swallowing all of him and sucking him hard. It felt so good that Tom couldn't hold back for long. With a hoarse scream, he came, hard, pumping into his friend's-lover's-mouth. Tom collapsed to the floor, trying to regain the powers of speech, then kissed Harry, enjoying the taste of himself on Harry's lips. Pulling back he said, with a wicked grin, "Let's try making it to the bed this time, and we'll see how good I can make you feel."

---

Harry walked quietly into his quarters a few hours later, feeling absurdly like sneaking in even though they were his quarters and he hadn't been doing anything wrong. In all honesty, he wished he was back in Tom's arms, sleeping with him, but they had agreed to keep their relationship quiet, and Harry leaving early in the morning in his clothes from the night before was a sure way to start the rumors going. This way, it would look to any curious passerbys that they had merely been talking. All things considered, Harry was felling pretty good.

That is until he noticed the form lurking in the shadows of his quarters. He had no idea how B'Elanna had overridden his lock, but she was there now, and she was not happy.

B'Elanna advanced on him, growling softly. "How could you?" she hissed.

"How could I what?"

"You were with him! You slept with him! And you knew he's MINE!"

"He's not yours, B'Elanna. He broke up with you remember?"

"Ohh, that was not smart, Harry. And here I thought you were intelligent."

Harry couldn't resist provoking her, even though he knew it was at peril to him. "I thought you were too. I thought that surely such a brilliant engineer would realize when a relationship is over. Tom isn't yours anymore." Harry looked B'Elanna in the eye as he said, "He's mine now."

"He's MINE!" B'Elanna was desperately clinging to that thought. "He just needed some. . . space. But he loves me, and he'll come back."

"Sure he will. That's why he spent the last few hours fucking me and declaring his love for me."

B'Elanna paled. "He didn't."

"Sure he did. We did. Watch," he sat down, and B'Elanna watched as he flinched. "You want to know why I flinched? Because I was just fucked, very enthusiastically I might add, up my ass by Tom Paris. Now don't you think that if he was yours he would've been doing that to you?"

"You bastard," she hissed, the shock outweighing the anger for the moment.

"Sorry. My parents were firmly married when I was born. Now, I invite you to leave my quarters."

"This isn't over, Starfleet."

"It is. Tom is with me. Deal with it." With that, he literally shoved a very stunned B'Elanna out of his quarters and locked his door. He was pretty sure she wouldn't try anything that night, but it never hurt to be careful.

---

That little fight established the pattern for the next few weeks. After the argument, Harry and Tom decided to make their relationship more public. It was Tom's idea, in the hopes that B'Elanna would leave Harry alone sine the news was out. They hadn't come to blows yet, but every time Harry and B'Elanna were in a situation off duty, the inevitably came to words. On duty, they were professional and polite, their concern for Voyager the main thing. The situation concerned Tom, but all he could do was sit back, watch. . . and worry.


A month after their first confrontation, things finally came to a head. Tom had had to leave the ship on a shuttle mission, and B'Elanna decided that it was the best time to force a confrontation. Checking the computer for Harry's location, she set off for his quarters, determined to finish this. . . winner take all, and loser left broken.

She stalked into his quarters without even ringing first. Harry was at his music stand, practicing his clarinet, but stopped when he saw B'Elanna. With a sigh, he put his instrument down and faced her. "B'Elanna, I thought this was over. Tom and I are together now."

"Now, yes. But he will be mine again." She moved forward, faster than he would have thought possible, and landed a right to Harry's jaw. Before he could react, she had punched him a few more times. Harry came out of his surprised daze and began giving back to B'Elanna. The two of them began beating each other up, but pretty soon, B'Elanna's Klingon genes and stamina gained the upper hand, and Harry was left unconscious on the floor. She stood up and surveyed her handiwork with an air of satisfaction and said to his crumpled form, "He's mine now. I won him." She looked at the chronometer and saw that the shuttle was due in. "And now I'm going to claim him." She turned on her heel and left Harry's quarters without a second glance.


Tom docked the shuttle perfectly, but his mind was on Harry. Maybe it was just the flush of a new relationship, but the few hours they had just spent apart seemed like forever. He thought about it and realized he had never felt that way before, not even with B'Elanna. In all of his other relationships, he had craved time alone and apart, but now he craved Harry and almost hated being without him. He exited the shuttle, intent on finding Harry, but was drawn up short by B'Elanna's presence.

"B'Elanna, hi," he said, trying to brush past her, but she was having none of that. She reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him close.

"Where are you rushing off to?" she purred. "Say hi to me . . . properly." She pulled Tom in and kissed him with all of her passion and skill. Tom jerked back hurriedly, looking at her with shock in his eyes.

"Are you crazy?" he asked. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Claiming what's mine." She tried to kiss him again, but Tom pulled back and retreated to the other end of the shuttle bay.

"What do you mean, what's yours? I'm Harry's now, he's mine, and we'll belong to each other forever. Can't you understand that? We're over."

"You're mine now. I won you."

"Wait. 'Won' me?"

"I fought him," she said, almost bragging. "He lost, you're mine."

"WHAT!? My God, what did you do to him?" Without waiting for an answer, he rushed out the door to Harry's quarters. Tom raced in and skidded to a halt at the sight that greeted him. Harry's bruised, bloody, battered body was crumpled on the carpet. Tom hastily checked for respiration and pulse, then called sickbay, demanding an emergency beam out.

---

Tom was more worried than he could ever recall being in his entire life. He paced around the waiting area of Sickbay, occasionally glancing in to see the Doctor working over Harry. B'Elanna had been incredibly through with her beating and it seemed that Harry had suffered some rather serious head trauma. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the Doctor came out and smiled briefly at Tom. "He'll be fine," he said.

"Can. . . can I see him?"

"Go right ahead."

Tom quickly went to Harry's side, where he was just waking up. Harry licked his lips and asked, "Tom?"

Tom grabbed Harry's hand. "Right here, buddy."

"I was. . . so scared. I thought she might hurt you."

"Well, I was scared too. She did hurt you."

"Doesn't matter. I love you too much to let her hurt you."

"Oh, Harry. I love you too." Harry's eyes started to drift shut. Tom started to quietly turn away until Harry's hand shot out to stop him.

"Don't go."

"Don't worry, Harry my love. I'm not going anywhere. And I never will." Tom sat down on the biobed next to his lover and held him close, healing Harry as much with his touch as the Doctor had done with is instruments. In his heart, Tom promised them both that they would never be parted again, by anyone.

---

End