Work Text:
He gets an inkling this might be one of the “bad days”, when she doesn’t respond to his greeting as he enters the ready room with a daily handful of report PADDs ready for approval. She’s hunched over her personal work station, but instead of working at her desk she’s moved to the floor, leaning against the sofa with the computer in her lap. Oops.
“Is something the matter, Captain?” he asks politely, ready to bolt if whatever problem she’s working on so intently has made her more irritable than usual.
“The strangest thing, Chakotay,” she mutters, eyes fixed on the screen. “I tried pulling up some of my old research on shield modifications from the computer’s database, and stumbled upon something… here, take a look.”
She turns the screen a few degrees to the right, but doesn’t get up, so his only option is to kneel on the floor next to her and lean in, furrowing his brow as he tries to make some sense of the scrambled code on screen. “What exactly am I looking at?”
“I think it’s an interactive holodeck program, to which all members of a certified user group may add at will.”
“Like Fair Haven?” he asks, dreading the answer. He still hasn’t forgiven Paris for creating that blasted place, or its blasted barkeep. Kathryn shakes her head slowly, still looking down at the uncooperative code, and he breathes in the smell of her hair, trying to focus.
“Not quite. From what I could tell, this program is more for constructing scenarios to be played out for the users to watch rather than participate in—like the movies Tom used to show us.” Her fingers tap a few more commands into the computer, and another line of code emerges from the data rubble.
“So, all in all, a bit of harmless entertainment?” he frowns, unsure why she would pursue something as innocent as this with such passion and flare.
She finally looks up at him, and they both blink upon realizing how close his face is to hers. Kathryn clears her throat, and he thinks he can actually feel the vibrations from it on the skin of his lips. “Not quite,” she says softly, and blindly taps some more keys. “The program has my name on it. And, if I’m not mistaken—“ The portable station beeps, and Kathryn looks down, checking the result of a finished task, “—yours, too.”
“What?” he leans over her shoulder, frowning at the few lines she’s managed to decrypt. “What isthis thing?”
“I’m not sure. Here’s a subroutine for programming extended parameters, but for some reason it’s called… a prompt thread? And these, I think, are some of the already submitted ‘prompts’. Let’s see…” She manages to override a few more encryption codes, and frowns at the list. “ ‘Berry picking’? ‘Planetary exploration’, and a winking face? ‘Extracurricular activities’… ‘When the red alert is over’… ‘Alien prison rescue gone wrong’?!” She sits up straight, pushing the computer away from herself to the farthest end of the coffee table as if it burnt her. “Chakotay, what is this thing I’m reading?”
He thinks he may have an inkling, but shakes his head with a dumbfounded expression, not about to condemn their entire crew to scrubbing plasma residue off the outer hull with their toothbrushes for the entire length of their journey home. “I am… not sure,” he manages to say in the end, leaning back slightly to give her the space she so clearly needs.
She shakes her head, entering further commands and transferring the salvaged data onto another device. “Come on, then,” she stands up from the floor in one swift motion, her face set, eyes blazing. “We’ve got to investigate this.”
He hesitates, his mind spinning fast and trying to come up with some sort of an excuse—if his suspicions about the nature of this program are correct, there is no way he’d be able to get through this with a straight face—especially if she manages to salvage the ‘alien prison rescue’ scenario. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asks gently, even as he follows her out of the ready room and onto the bridge, throwing a suddenly pale Harry an apologetic look. “This might be nothing but simple entertainment for a few of the crew; perhaps they’ve only used our names to throw others off the game, and—“
She looks up, the coldness in her eyes silencing him—but as the turbolift doors slide closed behind them, she gives him a small, if terse, smile. “I do not intend to persecute whoever’s behind this, Chakotay. I simply need to know.”
“Wheedling again, Captain?” he dares to ask, hoping it won’t cost him a limb before the day is over.
“Watch it,” she warns him out of the corner of her mouth, exiting the ‘lift and heading for the holodeck control panel to bring up the previously transferred data file. “Are you ready?”
No, his mind wants to scream, even as some treacherous part of it wonders who made the simulations, and how exactly did they work on certain… approximations. “Aye-aye, Captain.”
The door slides open and he follows her in, adjusting his all-too-tight collar.
–
When they get into the turbolift almost four hours later, they’re both eerily quiet, although he’s fighting with himself to keep the widest of grins off his face. Glancing down at her and noticing how her blush seems to reach all the way down under her turtleneck, he braves the unknown waters and whispers, close to her ear, “Satisfied?”
She startles a little, but doesn’t pull away, which makes his blood course faster through his veins in hopeful anticipation. “Not quite,” she mutters out of the corner of her mouth. “I’m deeply disappointed by the lack of realism.”
Oh. He nods and makes to step away, freezing mid-motion as she continues, “There is no way you could perform that move—you know, the one on the swing?”
He looks down at her in puzzlement, but she looks dead serious about all this, except for a sparkle in her eyes that makes his uniform suddenly feel much too tight and confining. “Thatsimple maneuver is the only thing that bothered you about the whole scenario? I would have thought you’d have a thing or two to say about your supposed taste in lingerie…”
“What makes you feel there was anything wrong with its depiction?” she counters, worrying her lower lip between her teeth in mock innocence. Chakotay groans and presses his hands to the ‘lift walls on the sides of her head, leaning in close enough to smell the sweat and arousal on her skin. “Kathryn, I—“
“And if you really do think that the swing move was ‘simple’, would you care to provide further instructions for those who’d like to better themselves?”
“I do hope you don’t mean the crew.” His words come out all muffled, as his mouth is currently latched to a sweet spot under her left ear. She purrs and closes her hands around his biceps, pulling him closer. Thank the spirits for the bored-out-of-their-heads crew, he thinks.
“Not exactly,” she admits, raising her arms to tangle her fingers through his hair. “Well? Are you up for the task?”
“You’re so bad,” he declares, leaning back to place a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Thankfully, I feel inspired enough not to be put off by a—“
–
It is very fortunate that Deck Three is so sparsely populated, and there is no one waiting for the ‘lift two minutes later—or the next installment in “The Adventures of a Starfleet Captain and Her Faithful First Officer” would have been created with much less approximation, and much more actual reference.
For the time being, though, they leave the crew in the dark.
At least until they’ve gathered a handful of suggestions for the future featurettes.
/end