Chapter Text
maybe it's much too early in the game...
Tom stands outside the mess hall with a sense of foreboding. Ahead, a curtain of tinsel looms, glinting at him through the doors’ circular windows. Each silver strand catches the light as it sways in the recycled air and all at once he is twelve years old again, too-long legs dangling over the stairs of the house he grew up in while his mother decorates for yet another Starfleet party, her avowed duty.
“What’s up?” Harry asks from behind him.
“You’ll see,” Tom answers darkly. Harry frowns at him, and when another crewman exists he pushes past, craning his neck to take in the glittering decorations as he crosses the threshold.
Against his better judgment, Tom follows.
“I thought I’d whip up some fancy hour d'oeuvres,” Neelix calls down from where he’s hanging gold streamers from the ceiling, perched dangerously atop a chair, atop a table. “And I’m replicating something called cham-pag-ne…”
“Champagne, Neelix,” Tom corrects automatically. Janeway stands to one side with her hands on her hips, surveying Neelix’s machinations. She looks tired, but uncommonly happy. At the sound of Tom’s voice, she looks over—and Tom, who is not expecting to be so suddenly on the receiving end of her sunbeam smile, has to school his reaction. Next to her, a stack of PADDs sits abandoned. He wonders if she started work early, or if she’s been here all night.
“I suppose you recognize the décor?” Her eyes twinkle, and he understands that it’s less of a question than that she’s seeking confirmation of something she already knows, a fellow child of traditionalists.
“Every New Year’s Eve,” he agrees. “You’ll never get this stuff out of the carpet, Neelix,” he adds, pulling a strand of tinsel off of his shoulder. “Why are you putting everything up so early? It’s still a week away.”
“Don’t mind him,” Harry says. “He’s in a mood.”
He should’ve seen this coming, really. Early on, Neelix had created a sort of calendar out of their many varied holidays and tried to celebrate them all, seeming to think that this would help the crew feel a little closer to home. It’s given them something to do, at any rate. Something to take their minds off the surfeit of species in this quadrant who want them dead on sight.
And even he can acknowledge the appeal, the hopefulness of ringing in a new year in the old Earth tradition. The whole concept of overly-ambitious resolutions implying nothing so much as that they will still be here in the coming months to see these things through.
While Neelix chatters excitedly about balloons and party hats and, god help them, shrimp cocktail, Janeway comes up alongside Tom, a mug in each hand. “Memories?” she asks in an undertone, handing him one.
Surprised, he accepts it gratefully, wrapping both hands around the warm metal. “Not that I was ever allowed at the parties, except for a quick circuit to show me off at the start of the evening.”
“I remember.” At Tom’s expression, she adds, “You wouldn’t. I came in late. My first year at the Academy I finally received a coveted invitation, but the transporters were down, caused a huge delay.”
“And you saw me?” he asks, startled by the idea.
“I saw you climbing out of a second-story window. Bedroom?”
He coughs out a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I started sneaking out. Although if I’d known you were coming….”
It’s out of his mouth before he realizes what he’s saying and he braces himself for her frown, even a reprimand—what would his father have done to him? What would hers? But then she flushes, takes a quick drink of her coffee, and though she angles away from him he could swear that she’s grinning into her mug.
“What d’you think?” Harry asks Tom, oblivious to this interplay. “Wanna go together?” Janeway moves off to help Neelix climb down from his teetering tower of furniture; Tom forces himself not to scowl.
The essential problem of Neelix’s parties is this: for the most part the two crews, Starfleet and Maquis, have integrated better than anyone could’ve predicted. It’s just Tom, the outsider, betrayer of both worlds, who still hasn’t quite found his place. He’ll usually go along with it all anyway, his reputation providing a sort of cover, an armor. But now he pictures himself standing awkwardly alone at the stroke of midnight—insofar as time has any kind of meaning in space—while everyone else pairs off. Because of course Neelix will not be able to resist the lure of that particular custom, the midnight kiss. He’ll be sure everyone knows about it, will probably stop just short of mandating it, whether or not they’re from Earth.
And when Tom thinks about who he’d want to spend New Year’s Eve with… well. He compares this impossible vision to the welcome he’s likely to receive by his fellow revelers, and he knows he’d rather sit the whole thing out than be alone in a room full of people.
“I’ll think about it,” he decides to say.
Harry rolls his eyes and abandons Tom, finally, in pursuit of breakfast. As he goes, Tom catches Janeway peering around Neelix, plainly eavesdropping. She smiles guiltily when he catches her, but then she doesn’t look away, and neither does he… and for one thrilling moment, he thinks she might be about to ask him to attend the party. Will I see you there? he imagines her saying, and he would go, of course. He would for her.
But she doesn’t. She holds his gaze for another beat, her smile softening into something else, something that makes him want to be bolder, less careful. And then he blinks, and she’s scooping up her pile of PADDs; a moment later he finds himself, presciently enough, alone in a corner of the mess hall, feeling as though all the air has been pressed out of his lungs.
*
There’s a frivolity in the air in the days leading up to the party. Even crewmembers who’ve never set foot on Earth get into the spirit of the thing, which is, Tom recognizes, objectively positive, and yet somehow has an inverse effect on his mood. He doesn’t even really know why. He could just take this opportunity to try to be part of a community again, if he wanted to. If he’d put in even a modicum of effort. But something holds him back, something that feels at once like hope, and fear.
Which is why he is currently under the hood of the 1936 Ford they’d recovered last week. It’s not the real one—they don’t have room to store a rusted out antique truck just to make Tom happy—but before they’d jettisoned it he had scanned it within an inch of its life and programmed an ultra-detailed holo-recreation, down to the old manure smell. And then, figuring he might as well do the thing properly, he’d created a garage to store it in and, unlike Sandrine’s, hadn’t told anyone else about it.
A late-summer breeze wafts through the open door—not at all befitting his state of mind, but he hasn’t gotten around to seasons and weather yet—and rock and roll blares through truck’s tinny old speakers, and it’s almost enough to distract him. Might be enough if he could just unstick this damn bolt…
“Tom?”
His grip slips. He shoots upright, slams the top of his head into the propped-up hood, and curses loudly. Janeway rushes to his side, gripping his arm.
“I’m so sorry, Tom. I chimed, but I see now why you couldn’t hear it. Here, bend down,” she urges, coming up on her toes to inspect the damage. Tom practically has to bend in half for her to get a good look at him. Her small hands gently part his hair, and she is so close that he can feel her breath warm his skin, thinks that if he looked up he could probably see the dusting of freckles across her nose that she tries to conceal on duty.
“Will I live, doc?” he jokes, ignoring the thunder of his pulse in his ears.
“I think so,” she says wryly, taking a step back. “But I—,” she stops, watching his jaw work with a mystified expression. “Tom, what in the world is in your mouth?”
“What? Oh—ancient technology. Here,” he adds, pulling a stick of gum out of his pocket. “Don’t swallow it.”
She looks at it so dubiously that he can’t help but laugh. “It’s called chewing gum. It helps me think.”
She glances around, takes in the oil-slick disarray of his garage—so quintessentially him, he now realizes, that he’s more than a little embarrassed to be caught out—and says, “And what are you thinking about in here?”
Her tone is teasing, but because the honest answer to this question is not one he can say aloud, his brain seems to short out. Maybe it’s the incongruity of her, of all people, here, of all places. What’s a woman like you doing in a place like this? he thinks, a little wildly. He wishes suddenly that he had not programmed the horse manure smell. He remembers the look in her eyes the other day, the feeling of almost she’d left in her wake, and the flippant remark he is known for making at a time like this catches in his throat.
“Why are you here?” he says, finally. In a world where there is mercy and plausible deniability, this could, conceivably, pass as an answer to her question, rather than being so utterly revealing of everything he is determined not to let himself want. It comes out a little too quiet—fearful, Tom thinks, his gut clenching—and he is certain that she’s going to call him on it.
But she doesn’t. Now she looks embarrassed, her smile fading, becoming apologetic. “Oh, I’m—you’re overtime,” she says, and she isn’t looking at him, anymore.
“Oh! Damn, I—sorry, Captain, time got away from me. Here, let me just—”
“No, no, it’s fine. Actually, is this… this is the truck we found, Hayes’ truck?” He hears the question in her voice, genuine enough, but also, if he’s not mistaken—if he’s not projecting—he’d almost swear she’s… stalling?
“It’s a hobby,” he says slowly. “I thought I’d tinker with it, see if it can’t be restored.”
“Were you going to try to clean the carburetor, or replace it?”
He stares at her, and she laughs, apparently despite herself. “You know I grew up on a farm, Tom.”
“Well,” he says, floundering. She saves him from having to finish his sentence by popping the gum into her mouth at last, a look of serious consideration on her face.
“Huh,” she declares.
They share a moment of amicable quiet, before Tom summons a smile and says, “Well. I’ll clear out.”
“Can I confess something?” she asks, halting him with her fingertips on his wrist, light and immobilizing. “I don’t actually have anything to run. The Doctor ordered me in here and then checked that I’d booked the time, but—”
“You could stay,” Tom says quickly. “Here, I mean. With—with the truck.”
She beams at him, and helplessly, he waves her over to the extra set of coveralls that he knows will be four sizes too big for her.
He pretends it doesn’t occur to him to replicate a smaller pair.
*
Harry makes one last attempt to drag Tom out when the time comes. Shows up at his door dressed to the nines, and when Tom pops his head out he spots Torres, Ayala, and the Delaney twins waiting a few paces down the hall. They look for all the world like proper partygoers, which does absolutely nothing to improve Tom’s dark mood.
“Go on without me,” he tells Harry. “Maybe I’ll make an appearance in a bit.”
“It won’t be that bad, you know. You’re making this worse for yourself than it needs to be.”
Which is undoubtedly true. But Harry doesn’t understand what it’s like, being the odd man out. He’s the golden boy, Starfleet through and through. Everybody likes Harry. Harry belongs.
“I’ll try,” he says again.
Harry sighs dramatically. “Suit yourself.”
“I will,” Tom mutters.
He leaves the lights low and kicks around his quarters without much to do. Overhead, some twentieth century singer croons, fools rush in, so here I am, and Tom glares upwards as though the computer can sense his displeasure over its choice of music. He should just go to bed, as would a responsible adult with a duty shift first thing in the morning. Instead, he replicates a bourbon and throws himself onto his couch.
You’re wallowing, he thinks. This is pathetic.
“Shut up,” he says, to fill the silence. He takes a long pull of his drink, feeling the warmth spread down his throat and into his belly, and wishing—wallowing, textbook wallowing!—that he didn’t have to rely on synthehol to sate the hollow chill behind his sternum.
He could go to Sandrine’s. The party’s in the mess hall, and he doesn’t really want to be caught out in the corridors but thinks he could probably rig a site-to-site transport, if he put his mind to it. Probably no one is monitoring the transporters tonight. The company of holograms is likely to make him feel more pathetic rather than less, but he could disable them, shoot a little pool…
But it’s no good. The heart wants what it wants, and Tom has to admit that his heart wants, yes, to wallow. Deciding to give into the time-honored tradition of despair on New Year’s Eve, he swallows another mouthful of liquor and leans his head back, stretching his legs out on the ugly gray ottoman that came with these guest quarters that accidentally became his own.
Not that he’d rather be anywhere else. He’d have been out of prison in a handful more months, if Janeway hadn’t come for him, but then he’d have been free to do—what? He swirls the ice in his drink and sees a version of himself in its depths that limped back to Marseille, hustled pool for a living ‘til he crossed the wrong mark or drank himself to death, whichever came first. And much as he’d prefer to refute this maudlin vision, he knows—with the benefit of some distance from that person he used to be—that it is indeed the path he was on. He wonders if Janeway knew it, too, somehow. If she came for him not for his so-called expertise, but out of something horribly like pity.
But even so. Even given….
He runs a hand across his stubbled jaw, huffs a self-deprecating laugh. Not even in the privacy of his own mind can he let himself think it.
He’d just rather be here, all told. For all sorts of reasons. That’s all.
He does not ask the computer for the time. He drains his bourbon and orders another, returning to his post on the couch. After a while he feels himself start to slip into a doze, his glass loose in his grip, and he gives into this, too, a comfortable heaviness in his limbs. He spares a thought for the blanket on the end of his bed, but he knows that if he moves an inch it’ll be all over. The perfect fit of his body sunk deep into the lumpy standard-issue couch will never be so cozy again, if he moves. He starts to think he might just sleep here tonight—why not, after all?—when the door chimes.
He'd bet his last replicator ration that it’s Harry, emboldened by champagne, come to harangue him for the umpteenth time. He can hear him already, ever-earnest but no longer totally sympathetic: You might try to make friends here.
I might try to stick a fork in a plasma conduit, he imagines himself replying, just to needle him.
He does not open his eyes. He saw an old movie once in a holosuite designed for such things, something about dinosaurs. What was the line? He can't see us if we don't move! It must be nearly midnight. Maybe Harry will go away if he thinks Tom’s asleep.
The door chimes again.
He blows out a breath.
“All right, all right,” he calls, hoisting himself up. He walks all the way over to the door, because for his crimes Harry should have to contend with the full force of Tom’s irritation. He readies himself, leaning artfully against the doorjamb… so that when he thumps the manual override with the palm of his hand and the doors slide open onto Kathyrn Janeway, he has to rear back.
“Captain!” he yelps, immediately aware of his rumpled uniform, the watery drink in his hand. He stares at her for a moment too long while his brain catches up to this unexpected reality, before he thinks to ask, “Do you want to come in?”
“No, I… thank you. I was just passing by, and I wanted to….” She stops, looks unaccountably sheepish. “You weren’t at the party. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Oh. It’s—you know,” he offers, though she doesn’t, of course. He steps back and takes in her appearance properly, notices she’s wearing a dark velvet dress he’s never seen before. There is tinsel in her hair and a pretty blush high on her cheeks, whether from the warmth of the party she’s just left or something else, he doesn’t venture to guess. He swallows.
“Okay,” she says softly. “Well, good. I should get to bed.”
“Wait.” He shifts a little closer and reaches out, his hand hovering just above her hair. Her eyes widen, and he pauses, waiting, but she doesn’t stop him. Gingerly, he lifts the strands of tinsel up and away, and if he lingers a little longer than is strictly necessary, carding his fingers through her long hair even after he’s sure he’s gotten it all, she doesn’t seem to notice.
“There,” he says, holding it out for her like the spoils of victory. “I tried to warn Neelix.”
She laughs, a sweet, tinkling sound. She takes it from him, the tips of her fingers brushing his. “I’ll be sure to note it in my after-action report,” she murmurs. “Goodnight, Tom.”
Her smile stays with him like sun spots as the doors slide shut. As he recycles his glass, brushes his teeth. He sees it instead of his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. And as he lays in his bed, one arm folded under his head, it occurs to him that her quarters are four decks up, and that no path there from the mess hall could have involved just passing by guest quarters.
A glimmer of all-too dangerous hope swells in his lungs, like the first gasp of fresh air after being held too long under water. Like being filled instead with pure, golden light—an utterly foreign feeling, but not, after all, unwelcome.
He’s never gone in for new year’s resolutions, of course. He has long been of the opinion, proven true by the events of his life time and again, that it’s easier to want a thing than to have it, and better still not to want it at all. But his mother used to say that he should ring in the new year as he meant to go on, and maybe—having nothing left to lose—he could stand, this year, to be a little less gutless. To tuck away a seed of hope, just in case it might grow under this newfound light.
If nothing else, he resolves to attend the next New Year’s Eve party.
It gives him twelve whole months to change the habit of a lifetime.