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Tom fidgets with the sleeve of his uniform as he awkwardly hovers in front of the door. The fluorescent lights highlight how tired and uneasy his eyes are, dark circles underneath them and irises darting around. He’s uncharacteristically nervous, lacking his usual suave and snarky charm.
Hesitantly, carefully, he lifts his hand and presses the door chime, which sounds a loud, robotic set of blips. A moment of silence hangs tense and heavy over Tom’s head, and then the door opens. Harry Kim stands behind it, a curious look on his face.
“Tom?”
“Harry, hey,” Tom starts stiffly. “I, uh…” he looks around anxiously, as if anticipating that some bad omen will appear right behind him, “I need your help with something.”
Harry raises an eyebrow, curiosity slowly turning into concern. “Yeah? With what?”
Tom bites down hard on his bottom lip. Barely audibly, he mumbles, “...Can I just come inside?”
Tom looks so strangely pathetic, like a kitten left in a cardboard box, that Harry immediately drops any hint of humor and steps aside for Tom.
Harry’s room is small, but thankfully solitary due to his status as Senior Bridge Crew. Tom sits down on Harry’s little bed, leg bouncing restlessly. Harry sits next to him, leaning forward to try and make eye contact with his friend. A way to gently pry Tom’s thoughts from his head.
“So, what’s this about?” Harry asks, patiently and calmly.
Tom pauses, leg still bouncing and eyes still flitting. Then he answers, “I know… that B’Elanna broke up with me three months ago, so…” a tired huff, “I don’t know, maybe this is normal. Maybe I’m overreacting.”
Harry’s interest is piqued, but he takes care to keep his expression neutral. Tom doesn't need any extra stress while he's trying to explain himself.
“But before? I-I swear I was ready to marry her. And now, nothing.” Tom shakes his head solemnly, melancholy taking over his face like the spread of petrifying stone. “It’s almost like I never loved her at all. Like she was just a figment of my imagination, someone I could follow but never touch because she was just an illusion.”
Harry feels bad for Tom— he really does— but he wonders where this sudden poetic prose is coming from. Tom’s not really known for his bookish intellectualism. Still, Harry kind of likes it, even if it's a bit out of character.
Ignoring that thought, Harry reassuringly puts a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “Hey, man, everything will be alright. Feelings are weird and they like to change very suddenly. Maybe B’Elanna just wasn’t the one.”
“But she-!” Tom starts shouting, but then quiets down with a deeper slump in his shoulders. “Oh, maybe you’re right. Now that I’m thinking about it, she didn’t seem to mean all that much to me. And if I’ll be honest,” he continues, voice picking up volume, “I always preferred fucking around on the Holodeck with you for some reason.” His brow furrows. “Weird, huh?”
Harry’s eyebrows are inching up towards his hairline and his lips are tightly pursed. “Yeah. Weird.”
Doing a double-take, Tom notices Harry’s inquisitive stare out of the corner of his eye. Turning to him with an annoyed snarl, he snaps, “Hey, hey, what the hell is that look for?”
“Nothing,” Harry drawls, his face unchanging. “Hey, on an unrelated note, have you ever considered that you just may not be attracted to women?”
That sentence makes Tom look like a petrified victim of Medusa. Eyes wide with shock, mouth hanging just open enough to see his bottom row of teeth, eyebrows meeting right above his nose bridge.
“What.” His voice cracks a little, vocal fry forming scratches at the edges of the word.
“It’s just a theory,” Harry adds, hands held up in defense. “I could be wrong.”
Tom’s face slowly grows more distressed. “Why- Why would you theorize that?”
“Um…” Harry makes a clicking noise with his tongue. “You’re just sounding very similar to my younger self. That’s exactly the kind of thing that made me start really thinking, ‘huh, am I attracted to women?’ And, well, turns out I’m not.”
Tom feels stupid and nervous and utterly helpless . His mouth feels dry and tacky and his hands feel clammy. Somehow, the thought had never even occurred to him; why wouldn’t Tom Paris be attracted to women? When was the last time he actually felt passionately towards a woman?
Has he never known real romance?
The overthinking is like a lifting fog. Since forever, he’d been so sure that he didn’t experiment. He didn’t even try. As he looks back on his childhood, he starts to grimly wonder if his upbringing had led to him being too cautious and shelled-in to consider himself as anything but the cocky, charming girl-magnet Tom Paris. His jaw works in agitation as he mulls it over.
Harry moves over a bit closer, nudging Tom with his shoulder. “Everything okay in there?”
Tom rolls his eyes, feeling close to tears. “What’s it look like, asshole?” He drops his head into his knees, hands pulling at his hair.
Harry pulls himself inward a little. “I’m… sorry, I didn’t realize you would get so devastated over this.”
“Shut up,” Tom whispers. “Shut up and let me think about all the ways I can kill you right now.”
Harry has the urge to laugh, but he shuts up and lets Tom think about all the ways he can kill him. After all, Harry put the thought in his head to question a major part of himself. It’s probably deserved.
…Probably.
“And it makes so much sense, ” Tom mutters. “It all makes sense when I think about it. I always preferred masculine women.”
Harry nods slightly. “You’d prefer a more dominating guy?”
Tom’s head snaps up. “Hey, I said nothing about a ‘dominating’ person.”
Harry’s face falls in slight worry. “Oh, was I wrong?”
The longer Tom stares blankly and stays quiet, the redder his face gets. And after nearly twenty seconds and cheeks that look covered in Mars dust, he mutters with great annoyance, “…No…”
Tom’s been imagining an ogre of a man, muscular and mischievous with foxy eyes. And, damn, he’d marry that man as much as he wanted to marry B'Elanna.
But he glances over at his friend, waiting patiently (waiting! For Tom Paris! Who does that?), with a strange sort of curiosity. Harry’s in decent shape, sure— he and Tom frequent their workouts together (and now that he thinks of it, he’d fold over if he saw those abs again). But Harry is also pretty and soft and honestly kind of pathetic sometimes, and somehow those attributes are what pulls Tom in like a moth to a forest fire.
Tom realizes he’s been staring because Harry’s bashfully tilted his face away, a shy little smile on his face.
“We-What’re you looking at me for?” Harry asks, voice cautiously breathy and hushed.
Tom blinks, sharply inhales, and quickly turns his head the other way, eyes widening in sudden revelation.
“...Tom, did something happen?”
Tom’s name sounds beautiful from Harry’s tongue.
“Tom?”
Tom scowls at the floor. This must be some kind of cruel joke from the universe. What a killer! Tom Paris, famous womanizer, in love with his male best friend. That’s a zinger for the record books!
“Tom, talk to me,” Harry whispers. His breath lands on Tom’s neck, warm and shivery. Tom wants to steal Harry’s breath away.
…That sounds like asphyxiation. Wait a minute! Tom Paris does not want to asphyxiate his best friend to death. He does not want to steal Harry's breath away. He much prefers Harry alive and breathing. Warm breath on his skin…
Tom’s body feels twitchy and trembly with a burning, caffeinated feeling in his chest and throat, like he’d just downed three cups of too-hot coffee. What is he supposed to do next? Tom can’t go back to being normal and perfectly fine and not in love with his best friend. If he feels this ill just by being next to Harry… oh, God, he can never have friends again.
“Hey-” Harry rests his hand in the small of Tom’s back, and a tingly shiver runs up Tom’s spine and through his entire body. Startled, Harry pulls his hand back, eyeing Tom with distress. Tom covers his face with his hands, about to scream.
Harry exhales, a little shake in his breathing. “Holy- God, Tom, you’re scaring me. Is it something I did? Please, let me help you!”
If Tom opens his mouth, the words will be desperate and incomprehensible. Harry won’t be able to help him at all. So instead, Tom grabs Harry by the shoulders and buries his face into Harry’s neck, throwing his arms around his best friend’s torso. Because of their awkward positioning, he also swings his legs around Harry’s waist.
After a moment of surprise, Harry returns the affection, wrapping his arms around Tom. As they stay there, cozy and entwined, Harry’s hand snakes up to the back of Tom’s head and his fingers start running through the short yet thick hair. Tom nearly forgets his dilemma. He could fall asleep like this.
Then Harry’s lips brush Tom’s cheekbone. Another tremor permeates his body, except this one is complete with a high-pitched, dramatic, dainty, almost whimpering sigh. A sound that you would not expect to hear from Tom Paris. A sound utterly unbecoming of a twenty-something-year-old man. A sound that is heard loud and clear in the silence of the room, like a rock falling into a glassy pool.
Harry takes a deep breath. “Was… was that you?”
Tom nods into Harry’s shoulder.
Stifling a laugh, Harry comments, “I, uh, I didn’t think you were capable of a noise like that.”
Tom pulls himself away from Harry, his confidence and charm seemingly regained. Still gripping Harry’s uniform, he murmurs, “Oh, Harry, I’m capable of a lot more.”
Harry’s face wastes no time in turning as red as is possible for a human. His brain has gone haywire from the implications and the closeness, so all he can think to say is, “Oh.”
Tom gives Harry a foxy smirk. Harry’s hands move to Tom’s jaw. They pull each other as close as they can.
They roll and tumble over each other and their legs get tangled up in the blankets and bedsheets. Tom coils knots into Harry’s hair. Harry leaves bruises on Tom’s back.
They stop when their clothes are half-off and they’re called to the Bridge for an emergency. They walk in with hair hastily combed down and uniforms not quite straightened, giggles still bubbling in their chests. The Captain raises an eyebrow, but she doesn’t comment. When Tom sits down at his station, wincing when his chair knocks against a bruise on his shoulder, B’Elanna gives him a grin and a nod of approval.
Tom slams his forehead onto his console, face warming yet again.
"Mr. Paris!"