For Rossy

Part One

"...and, as usual, you haven't been listening to a single word I've been saying, have you?"

The accusation was less petulant than resigned and it was that tone of tired bitterness that broke through his reverie and made him feel ashamed rather than angry.  Still, his automatic response was still defensive instead of apologetic.

Thanking the spirits for the bronzed complexion that concealed his resultant blush, Chakotay looked up from the native ale that he had been nursing disinterestedly for the last half-hour and gave Tom Paris an inscrutable stare.

"Unlike you, Tom, I don't feel the incessant need to fill silence with pointless chatter."

Not surprisingly, the pilot's pale cheeks flushed at the blunt rudeness of Chakotay's words and he sank into pouting, angry-eyed silence.

Tom...it seemed strange to call Paris by that name. He never thought of the pilot as anything other than a rank, a designation, a surname or occasionally, when the old bitterness totally overwhelmed him, he thought of the blond simply as 'the traitor'. He hated the necessity that currently made him acknowledge that Paris even *had* a first name. 

He watched as the angry blond signaled the barkeep and requested a refill of his drink, waited until the sullen-faced alien poured the frothy brew and withdrew, before speaking quietly enough not to be overheard.

"This is an away mission not a vacation, Lieutenant. You're on duty. You're not here to drink yourself under the table."

Paris glowered at him and took a deep defiant draught of his beer before replying equally quietly.

"It's just my second drink. Lighten up. We're supposed to blend in with the natives, Commander," he sneered, "and in case you hadn't noticed, we're in a bar and the natives *are* drinking themselves under the table. Besides, I never get drunk. You should have figured that by now, if nothing else."

Which was a fair point, Chakotay acknowledged to himself, though he was careful to keep an expression of intense disapproval on his face regardless.  Despite rumors to the contrary, he knew Paris had *never* had a problem with alcohol. He'd watched Tom in Sandrine's often enough to know that Paris could drink most of the crew under the table and then still respond to a red alert with barely any noticeable effect on his performance.

According to the Delaney twins, it never affected his other performances either. While they made no pretence of liking Paris, the two sisters were too pragmatic to let such a minor consideration stand in the way of their libidos. They were embarrassingly vocal about his abilities as a lover and took advantage of them frequently. 

Which, Chakotay decided, was probably the problem.  Spending four whole fun-filled days on some dirt-ball pre-technological planet pretending to be Paris's lover. What the hell had Janeway been thinking, assigning Paris to accompany him down here?

"It's a status thing," she'd said. "From what we can tell of the natives, they judge a man's status by the attractiveness of his companion.  They won't take you seriously if you don't have a beautiful concubine, and if they don't take you seriously they won't trade."

Unfortunately, the sex of the concubine wasn't apparently an issue and the local definition of 'beauty' favored the unusual as an attractive quality.  So, on a planet where over ninety percent of the population were brown-eyed brunettes, it had seemed reasonable to choose a blue-eyed blond as Chakotay's companion and there was no escaping the fact that Paris was the best-looking blond on the ship.

Natural blond, anyway. With the technology available to them on Voyager it would have been an easy matter to temporarily transform someone else's coloring to suit.

So, really, it was Seska's own fault. Not that she was likely to accept the blame. Chakotay was pretty damned sure he was going to have blue balls before she let him back into her bed after what she had chosen to term his 'affair'. The fact that he would have more than happily taken *her* with him if she'd agreed to a few cosmetic alterations was apparently not a good enough excuse. Then again, the Doctor hadn't helped by loudly stating that no amount of cosmetic work could duplicate the benefit of Tom's natural bone-structure.

Which, of course, was true.  Seska was an attractive woman but Tom's good looks were in a class of their own.

"...but it's weird, isn't it?"

"Huh?" he asked, as he finally realized the irrepressible pilot had apparently gotten over his last put-down and was talking to him again.

"I said it's weird how Seska made all that fuss about me coming on this mission, but then point-blank refused to have the modifications done so she could come in my place."

Although Chakotay had been thinking exactly the same thing, his spine stiffened defensively. "She's a Bajoran," he snapped. "She's proud of her heritage. Her coloration and nose ridges are as sacred to her as my tattoo is to me."

Paris raised an eyebrow superciliously. 

"Like *you* said, it's an away mission, not a vacation. I'm hardly enjoying being paraded around on your arm like a half-dressed rent boy but I understand how important it is for Voyager that we trade for supplies. I don't see why I should get treated like some pariah by the crew just because I'm doing my duty." He rubbed self-consciously at the slightly pink discoloration on his neck where newly regenerated skin replaced the deep gouges Seska's nails had raked. "Anyone would think we really *were* sleeping together," he added with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

"Not anyone who knows *me*," Chakotay replied coldly. "I've got better taste."

Paris flushed again, this time in anger, and looked away.

Although he felt slightly ashamed of himself for putting Paris down so brutally, Chakotay was more relieved that Paris had apparently no doubts over the sincerity of his words. 

His lie. 

The fact was that his relationship with Seska had never been either serious or exclusive. He'd made his feelings perfectly clear to her and she'd accepted them. If she hadn't, there wouldn't even be a 'relationship' between them. They were friends and they were lovers, but they weren't 'in love'. At least Chakotay wasn't. Well, not with *her* anyway.  The problem wasn't even that Seska knew who he *was* in love with.  She'd always accepted the fact that he'd never act on his feelings, that he actually loathed the object of his affection with as much passion as he lusted after him. So it was beyond him why she'd felt the need to attack Paris badly enough to put him in sickbay and her in the brig.

"People are beginning to stare at us," Paris whispered suddenly, sliding across the bench enough that their thighs touched.  Chakotay tried not to jump out of his skin at the contact. "We're supposed to be lovers and you're sitting there looking like you'd rather be in the Alpha Quadrant than in this bar with me."

"I would," Chakotay replied honestly, and ignored the flash of hurt that sparked in his companion's pretty blue eyes.  They were pretty eyes, he acknowledged sadly to himself. Pretty eyes in a fine-boned face over lips that simply begged to be plundered. If only they weren't Paris's eyes and face and lips. If only they weren't the beautiful exterior of a black treacherous soul.

"Fine," Tom snapped, surging to his feet so violently that his half-full mug of ale spilled over on the wooden table. "I'll get out of your face then."

He stormed towards the door of the bar, his long frame taut with offense.  Chakotay sprang to his feet and chased after him, grabbing his arm and pulling him back so that he could snarl in his ear.

"Where the hell do you think you're going, Paris? What about the mission? We're supposed to be meeting our contacts in less than an hour."

"Fuck the mission. I'm going for a walk," Paris replied, his eyes so bright with anger that they almost seemed tear-filled in the warm orange glow of the tavern's lanterns. "Put me on report if you want. I don't give a damn any more. You've spent the last three days treating me like I'm something you'd scrape off your shoe and I've had it, okay? You've been a complete prick to me since the moment we transported down, trading on the fact that I *can't* react without breaking our cover. You wanted me to lose it, didn't you? Maybe you don't even care whether we get the supplies or not, 'cos I'm the one who'll get the blame anyway. It's a win-win for you as always. Either I sit here and let you verbally kick the shit out of me, or I stand up to you and get fucked over when we get back to the ship because no one will believe me if I tell them the truth. That *I* was trying to do my job but couldn't because you were too fucking unprofessional to even *pretend* to be civil to me."

Like a slap in the face, Paris' words knocked some long overdue sense into the Commander. He was right, Chakotay decided reluctantly. The Lieutenant had taken the whole mission in his stride, continuing to publicly play the devoted lover even though Chakotay's every other word had been a put down. He'd let his own dislike of the younger man put their mission in jeopardy. More than that, he'd let his own fear of revealing his unwanted lust for Paris make him overcompensate by being as cold and rude as possible. It was no wonder Paris had finally had enough. Put him on report? How the hell could he when it was his own fault that Paris had finally snapped?

"Look, I'm sorry, Tom. You're right. I've been a complete bastard to you since this mission began. I've let my personal feelings interfere with my duty and that's unforgivable. Calm down, come back to the table. We've just got to get through tonight, then we go back to Voyager tomorrow."

Tom swallowed heavily, his eyes flashing with barely banked fury, and Chakotay waited for Tom to spew another furious list of slights real and imagined that he'd suffered at Chakotay's hands over the last three days. Instead, when Tom spoke his words were quiet and simple.

"I'm not sleeping with you tonight."

"What?" Chakotay choked, blinking in confusion.

"I'm not sharing a room with you for another night," Tom clarified coldly. "I've had it up to here with your sanctimonious bullshit and your god awful snoring."

"Snoring?"

"Take it or leave it, *Commander*. Either I get my own room after we do the deal or I walk right now and *you* can explain to the Captain why we didn't get the supplies."

"Because you were sulking like a five-year old."

"Whatever."

"Okay. You get your own room. Just come back to the table and make out like this was some lover's spat. People are staring at us," Chakotay hissed.

"Oh, Chak. Of *course* I forgive you, honey," Tom cried, loudly enough that anyone who *wasn't* watching swiveled their chairs around to watch. Then he threw his arms around the shorter man and cheekily smacked a wet, slobbering kiss onto his surprised lips.

Chakotay growled under his breath but hugged the pilot back and then decided to wipe Paris's grin off his face by slipping his tongue between the unsuspecting lips. Paris grunted, the sound somewhere between shock and outrage, struggled uselessly to escape Chakotay's arms and then desperately thrust his own tongue against Chakotay's in an effort to drive the unwelcome invader back out of his mouth.

It wasn't a kiss. It was a stand-up, knock-down fight between them using tongues instead of fists. As hot, angry and brutal as rape, Chakotay's tongue thrust inside to plunder Paris's mouth and  Paris's tongue parried the assault and struck back to plunge between Chakotay's lips in equal anger, until both men were breathless and bruised.

Chakotay could feel the wild hammering of Paris' heart against his own breast, could read the panic in its frantic beat and the white-roll of frightened blue eyes so he was barely surprised when the younger man bit savagely down on his lip.  

He retreated, shaking his head to deny the hot violent promise of the assault that was surging through his whole body, licking his swollen lower lip and tasting the bright copper bitterness of blood where Paris' teeth had ripped at the soft flesh during the duel of their mouths.

Tom Paris, breathing so hard that his entire chest was shaking, was glaring at him with eyes so dark with fury that the bright blue of his eyes was almost eclipsed by his dilated pupils. His hands were clenched into fists, his arms rigid at his sides as though it was taking every ounce of his self-control not to reach out and grab his superior officer and...

...and what?, Chakotay wondered. Hit him? Or retaliate with his own brutal tongue fuck? Neither option seemed to be motivated by any particularly friendly emotion on Paris's behalf but there was no mistaking the way Chakotay's cock was stirring inside his thankfully loose pants at *either* possibility.

So he forced a sarcastic grin onto his face.

"I think we've just re-convinced the natives you're my hot willing slut, Lieutenant. Now, I suggest you sit down before they start asking for an encore."

Paris's head rocked as though he'd been slapped and he sank into his seat, his pale cheeks flaring almost scarlet with combined embarrassment and rage. He opened his mouth but, before he could snarl back whatever rejoinder was flaring behind his furious eyes, their contacts took that moment to walk into the bar.

~#~#~

By the third hour of negotiations, Chakotay was beginning to doubt his earlier belief that Paris never got drunk.  After an initial leer at the blond, as they no doubt judged his value as Chakotay's pretty fuck toy, the two Caton traders had pointedly ignored his presence.  Then, the one time Paris *had* spoken up, the aliens had simply smiled at him with the same stunned but amused amazement one would give to a talking-dog and one of them had patted his hand fondly before returning to their conversation with Chakotay.

The gesture had been condescending and patronizing. It had been so dismissive that it had clearly shown they regarded Paris as little more than a performing pet.  Yet it had also, probably, been the kindest touch Paris had received since Voyager had been stranded in the Delta Quadrant. 

So Tom had just quietly signaled for a large pitcher of ale and had proceeded to empty the contents down his throat.

Chakotay tried to ignore him and concentrate on the trading but his eyes kept being drawn back to the pilot's quiet determined effort at complete inebriation. The angry heat of his earlier outrage had been swiftly drowned by the potent ale and now Paris was hunched over his mug, his whole aura one of dejected misery.

And Chakotay felt unaccountably guilty. 

It wasn't *his* fault that the Caton traders were being so obviously dismissive of Paris. It hadn't even been a surprise. Paris's role here *was* just to play a dumb blond sex toy and thus increase Chakotay's status as his 'owner'. So what was making Chakotay feel so damned guilty was the unavoidable fact that the Caton's casual dismissal of Tom was actually kinder than the way he himself had been treating him for the last three days or even the way that most people on Voyager treated Tom *every* day. 

The contrast was obvious to Chakotay, so undoubtedly was obvious to Paris too, and he suspected it was *that* which was the source of Paris's misery.

It was a sobering thought; that Paris could choose to remain as a mere a sex toy on Caton and would probably be treated with more kindness than he currently was as the best pilot on Voyager.

~#~#~#~

"You said I could have my own room."

"I asked, there's no vacancies," Chakotay replied shortly. "It's just one damned night, Lieutenant."

"Fine," Tom snapped, turning his back and talking a purposeful step back towards the staircase.

"Where are you going? I told you there's no other rooms."

"I'm going for a walk, okay?

"Not okay. Quite apart from the fact you've had more than enough to drink, we're on a strange planet and away mission protocol says we stay together."

"So you never intended to get me my own room," Tom challenged belligerently.

"Dammit, Paris. There's a hell of a difference between you sleeping in the next room and waltzing off into the dark on your own. We've only got the vaguest knowledge about this planet and its inhabitants. We *do* know that your role here is perceived as little more than a sexual plaything. It's highly probable that if you walk out of this tavern unaccompanied you'll be propositioned."

"Yeah?" Paris drawled, a smirk spreading across his features. "Well, you never know my luck. At least I might find someone who *asks* before they stick their tongue down my throat."

Although at some level he knew Paris was just being facetious, the words were like torch paper to Chakotay's already uncertain temper.

"I don't think it's your mouth they'll be after."

"All the better."

"Got a taste for gang-rape in Auckland, Paris?" he snarled.

Paris's face drained of color, except for two high-spots of angry red that stained his cheeks, but he replied with surprising dignity.

"That's a cheap-shot, but nothing less than I'd expect from *you*," he stated coldly. "Sorry to dash your hopes, Commander, but the only thing I suffered in prison was terminal boredom. I'm sure you and your Maquis buddies have spent countless nights rubbing your hands with glee over what you 'hope' happened to me after you ran off and left me high and dry, but the truth is I just had an eight-month holiday. Three meals a day and a sun-tan thrown in for free."

"Ran off? What the hell are you talking about?" Chakotay demanded furiously.

"Funny thing. I'm sitting there in a crippled shuttle, waiting for my 'buddies' to come rescue me and, guess what? I look out the viewscreen and all I see is three Federation ships closing in for a piece of my ass and this little disappearing speck in the distance as my so-called crew-mates hare off to safety. And you call *me* a traitor," he ended bitterly.

"Don't try and mess with my head, Paris. You set a trap; I didn't take the bait. You can try and re-write history as often as you like but it won't work. The computer logged your transmission."

"What fucking transmission?"

"The one that told the fleeters where to find us. You disabled your own shuttle and called us for help. If we'd come to your aid, we would *all* have been captured."

"So I was a spy?" Tom challenged. "Then why the fuck did *I* end up in Auckland?"

"To get a sun tan?" Chakotay suggested nastily. "Didn't stay there long, did you? It's a bit hard to play the innocent victim when you turned up 75,000 light years away from Auckland on the bridge of the ship sent to capture us."

Paris just shrugged and began to stride away. Chakotay reached out and grabbed him by the arm.

"Get your hands off me, Commander," Paris growled quietly.

Chakotay released him. "Listen, Paris. I meant it when I said you can't re-write the past. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try and work together now for the sake of everyone. I also meant what I said earlier. I *am* sorry for the way I've been treating you. Letting my personal feelings get in the way of our mission was petty and unprofessional of me. I don't like you, but I do respect you as a valuable member of our crew. The important thing is that our mission has been successful. By this time tomorrow we'll both be back on Voyager with the supplies. It's just one more night. I'm sure we can manage to be civil with each other for that long."

"Yeah. I got it. You hate me but you're willing to put your feelings aside for a single night," Tom snapped back, his eyes dark with fury. "I got the point, Commander. You don't need to ram it home."

"I don't hate you," Chakotay denied stiffly. "I just found it hard to pretend we were lovers. I let my own discomfiture affect..."

"I said I *got it*, okay?" Tom virtually screamed at him, then turned and charged down the stairs.

Chakotay started after him, then stopped and gave a tired sigh as he replayed their conversation in his head and realized he was lucky that Tom had simply fled rather than punching him in the jaw. He didn't 'like' Tom Paris, but that didn't justify the way he'd been treating him. The truth was that he didn't like several people on board Voyager, Maquis included. That was life. In a large group of people, like the Voyager crew, it was inevitable that *some* would rub him up the wrong way. He accepted that, lived with it, and never let it influence the way he dealt with them professionally.

Except for Tom Paris.

But it was hard to relate appropriately to someone when your hands wanted to wrap around their throat and choke them, while your dick had a totally opposite agenda.

He gave one last lingering look down the now empty staircase, then shrugged and walked to their room. Despite what he'd said to the younger man, he was positive that Paris would be safe on his own. The Caton weren't technologically advanced, but they seemed to have an almost Ferengi-like appreciation of the idea of personal property and he had clearly established his role as Tom's 'owner' over the last three days.

Even if Tom *was* looking for company, it was highly likely he'd be disappointed. 

The thought was curiously reassuring to Chakotay, and he decided not to investigate it to closely.

~#~#~#~

"Bastard," Tom snarled. "Damned tight-assed, stuck-up, sanctimonious prick."

He was in hell, he decided. He couldn't work out what he'd done in a past life to work up this kind of karmic-debt, but whatever it was it had to be a doozy. As if it wasn't enough that he had been tossed 75,000 light years into the fucking Delta Quadrant, living on board a spaceship filled with a mixed crew of Maquis and Starfleeters who all hated his guts in equal measure, some karmic joker had decided to throw Chakotay into the mix for added amusement value.

"I loved you, you prick," he sniveled angrily, leaning against a shadowy wall and finally letting the tears he'd been fighting for three days escape and trickle down his cheeks. "I really fucking loved you."

It hurt to say it out loud. It hurt less than keeping it inside, though. Unspoken the words just boiled and steamed like a warp core on overload. Here, in the dark, he finally allowed a little of his anguish to escape and release that burning pressure.

He remembered the day he'd first met the Maquis Captain. Splendid in leather, tanned and tawny like a timber wolf, heavily muscled yet lithe as he'd prowled across the bar to introduce himself. He'd heard Chakotay describe that meeting, how Tom had sold himself to the Maquis cause for nothing more than Latinum and a chance to fly. Later he'd heard Chakotay's new version of that meeting. How Tom, the traitor, had deliberately infiltrated the Maquis for a chance to sell them out to Starfleet and thereby restore himself in his father's eyes. Buying himself the respectability he'd thrown away at Caldik Prime by betraying his new comrades into Starfleet's hands.

He'd heard both versions and both felt like knives ripping at his heart. Because the sad and embarrassing fact was that neither were remotely true. Tom hadn't sold himself to the Maquis. He'd just whored himself to the promise he'd *thought* he'd seen in Chakotay's eyes. When he'd shook hands with Chakotay he hadn't been offering his skills as a pilot, he'd been offering his own sluttish ass to the first guy he'd seen who'd made his blood burn with an almost electrical excitement.

Which just proved the fact that his cock's auto-guidance system had been as fucked up as the navigational controls on the first shuttle he'd flown for the Maquis.

The night was warm and humid, but he still shivered a little as he head the herald of an approaching storm and drew his loose tunic a little closer around his body. The thunder was so quiet that it sounded more like a low, grumbling purr directly over his head than a far-off rumble of thunder. An omen, he decided, of the approaching storm in his own life. There was nothing remote about the trouble he could see brewing on his own personal horizon.

Maybe he should stay here on Caton.

There had been no mistaking the interest he had seen in many of the aliens' eyes as they had stared at him over the last few days. Though they had all been courteously proper in deference to Chakotay's 'ownership', their eyes had whispered private promises that had been impossible to ignore.

Ironically, he'd seen the same secretive speculation in the faces of other 'concubines' as they had raised jealous eyes towards Chakotay.  

Perhaps that was what hurt. Not so much that Chakotay despised him but that for a few days he'd lived the lie of Chakotay 'pretending' to like him in the face of those jealous strangers.

Wouldn't they laugh if they knew the truth? That Chakotay wouldn't fuck him if he were the last person alive in the Universe. That today had been the first time that Chakotay's lips had met his and that instead of a kiss, it had been a brutal, vengeful assault that had panicked him so much that he'd been forced to bite the older man to escape before he'd *really* fucked his life up by...

...by coming in his pants right there in front of them all.

Shit, he was pathetic. The man hated him, despised him, treated him like dirt and forced to 'kiss' him in public had turned the experience into a violent, bruising rape of Tom's mouth. With each thrust of his tongue, Chakotay had left Tom in no doubt of the depth of hatred that raged beneath Chakotay's normally calm exterior.

Not that he'd really been in any doubt after three days of being verbally flayed every time Chakotay opened his mouth.

Yet that kiss, that wasn't a kiss, had still almost destroyed him.

Maybe it still would.

A kiss of midnight velvet, as dark and suffocating as a noose around his neck. Like a taunting promise. A forbidden taste of poison, sickly sweet, addictive and deadly. 

The eerie thunder rumbled over his head once more, raising his skin into gooseflesh.

No, maybe he couldn't stay on this planet after all. Not when the wind whispering through the night forest sounded like the heavy breathing of a dozen predators, and the shadows around him moved and shifted with the flowing ease of nightmares. Not when the surrounding trees suddenly seemed filled with invisible eyes and the rolling rumble over his head now sounded like nothing other than what it clearly was; the hungry purr of a huge cat.

On a planet that *had* no cats, large or otherwise.

"Chakotay," he whispered, a prayer, a plea, or perhaps just a farewell, as the sky cracked with lightning and the trees around him lit up for just a fraction of a second in hues of luminescent blue, outlining the huge cats draped over their branches.

A padding sound behind him and to his left, as he spun in wild panic beneath the low rumbling purrs of the nightmare creatures above his head. 

He was dreaming, he abruptly decided.

Not that his frantically thudding chest wanted to believe it and admittedly, as the storm broke overhead and cascaded fat, heavy rain that 'felt' cold and wet, it seemed an unusually vivid and realistic dream.

Yet it was undeniably true because the largest lifeforms on Caton were humanoid. Not black-shadowed cat-beasts that appeared out of no-where to prowl around visitors foolish enough to disobey their commanding officers and take unaccompanied moonlit walks on alien planets.

So he *knew* he was dreaming, and that was why he didn't even try to run as the creatures slowly dropped one by one from the branches until he was surrounded. Maybe that was also why, after the first flush of mindless panic, he suddenly felt calm and unafraid.

He felt hot, wet pelts brush against his body. Like swathes of midnight velvet. Like that noose tightening around his neck. Like tasting something so irresistible that not even the knowledge it was poison would prevent him from taking another sip.

Tom threw back his head and laughed wildly into the storm overhead, letting the rain splash down his face like heavy tears, barely flinching as the dark shadows prowling around him turned as though at some secret signal and moved like one creature in towards the kill.

~#~#~#~

"I didn't hear you come in last night," Chakotay announced, in a surprisingly non-judgmental voice.

Tom looked over his shoulder cautiously, saw nothing but a mild relief in the older man's face such as he'd expect in someone who didn't *really* want to have to explain to the Captain why he'd lost the only other member of his away team, and turned back to the mirror with relief to trace his fingers wonderingly over the smooth, unblemished skin of his throat.

"Vanity's an ugly thing, Paris," Chakotay growled, in a far less friendly tone, as Tom continued to gaze into the mirror as though he'd never seen his own reflection before.

Tom shook himself and flushed.

"I had a weird dream," he admitted quietly. 

"Oh?" Chakotay asked, sounding as though he didn't really give a damn but was trying to at least be polite.

"I dreamt I walked to the edge of the forest and got eaten alive by a pack of vampiric wildcats," Tom explained. "One of them ripped my throat open and then they all took turns to drink."

He waited until Chakotay gave a slight shudder of distaste and then smirked mockingly.

"So what do you think it meant, Commander? Your people are hot on dream interpretation aren't you? Or have I got the wrong tribe again?"

"No. I'm a great believer in dreams. In my considered opinion," Chakotay started, then paused dramatically.

"What?" Tom demanded.

"It means 'don't get drunk on alien ale."

Tom blinked, then twitched his lips into a cautious smile.

"You made a joke. To *me*.  Hell, I wish I'd recorded that."

Chakotay just gave an uncomfortable shrug and turned away, cursing himself under his breath.  He had little doubt of the meaning of Tom's dream and it made an already uncomfortable feeling of guilt ten times worse.

Why the hell had he turned Tom's kiss into something so dark and violent that the poor bastard had evidently had a nightmare about it? It was no surprise Tom had dreamt of being eaten alive after Chakotay had assaulted him so violently.

He couldn't even blame his actions on temper. While Tom had undoubtedly intended to embarrass him with the kiss it had been a harmless gesture and one fully in character to the role he was supposed to be playing here on Caton. Since Tom was supposed to be his concubine, it was more surprising that they had only kissed once in public than that they had kissed at all.

Instead of just accepting Tom's 'joke' with good grace, he'd savagely assaulted the younger man's mouth, turning the kiss into something dark, brutal and frightening enough that Tom had bitten him in panic.

Maybe *he'd* had a little too much alien ale too, Chakotay decided reluctantly.

Go to Part Two