Summary: Contest challenge - write a story with this title. Not your typical dance.
Copyright 2001 Cassatt
If I didn't know better, Kathryn, I'd believe there is some omnipotent force that is playing with us. Not from the continuum, not Q, just somebody up there who doesn't like us, who'd prefer to move us around the chessboard unimpeded by simple human emotions. Why else would we each have gotten stuck out here in this hell-hole of a quadrant and have to keep doing this? Because I can feel it starting up in me again. I'm going to do it. I can tell it's going to happen and there's not a damned thing I can do to stop myself.
I'll request the pleasure. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Don't let the word fool you, it's actually quite excruciating. Then you'll agree, or concede, or give in, or whatever the hell it is that you do. Then we'll come together and begin. Sometimes you'll touch me and sometimes not. Sometimes I feel like screaming and sometimes I don't. The trouble is, every time we do this I hear it. The music. It plays in my head, quietly, smoothly, over and over. I can't escape it, no matter how loudly our voices try and drown it out. It's always there.
There have been others since I met you but only with one did I hear this. Riley. When I made love with her I heard the melodies running through my brain, even as the images of her life played out behind my eyes. I imagined that's what making love with you would be like. And after, when I knew the devastation of being completely used, standing in sick bay with you and no one else you said those words to me. You told me that I was gentle and kind and would always help someone who asked, that was just who I was. I wanted to scream at you right then, that's not all there is to me, Kathryn! I am passionate, angry, intense! But the words died on my lips. And the music began again, this time with you near me once more rather than her.
And so here I am, hitting the door pad to the ready room, awaiting the summons. I'm going to do it, particularly now that I see the fatigue in your face as you drop yet another PADD onto your desk at the sight of me. Hey you, up there, are you enjoying yourself?
"Kathryn, may I have the pleasure of your company this afternoon? Your shore leave and mine coincide and I hear there's a lovely spot for walking. We could have a picnic."
The smile on your tired face almost makes it worthwhile. I know that my sleep tonight will be fitful and dream-filled. The music will join images of the two of us. Images of you in my bed, images of never-to-be-had experiences.
Chakotay, do you know how happy I am to see your face right now? Am I showing it well or not at all? I don't know anymore. If you hadn't come in to ask me I would have found a way to ask you, I would have. And you'll never know how hard I worked to arrange our shore leaves this way. The crew who promised to keep quiet. Tuvok's eyebrow when I told him was almost worth it. Seeing your eyes when I say 'yes' is the real reward.
I sometimes think forces must continually and deliberately work against us, to burden us with one more crisis, one more enemy, one more attempt at trade that somehow ends up with the need to show force, one more time our command relationship has to suffer. One more hurdle for us to jump. And yet still you approach me. Ask me so sweetly. And we do this again, and again, and again. How would I survive without it?
And what will you think when I show you the biggest surprise of all?
Will it finally bring you the peace you so deserve? Bring us to the place
we both want? Need? For I've decided that I can no longer lead, that you
should no longer be led. Well at least after tonight. I have to get you
to the cabin, after all, and you don't know where it is or what I have
planned. I am imagining that my sleep tonight will be restful and deep,
at least for those few hours when we might actually be unconscious. Then
the images of my dreams will finally be replaced by the sight of you laying
next to me, by memories instead of wishes.
The End.