Sleepers (with feet)

He has to admit that B'Elanna dances with an energy that he can only envy, never match. He loves her tiny body, the control she has over her motion, the sheer aggression that takes her over when she moves. She looks so shockingly natural in the midi dress and flat-heeled shoes that go with the setting tonight. If she looks a little more European than American, blame it on the fact that she has more class than he does. And, of course, the exoticism that the brow ridges give her.

She goes flying past his table in this expanded version of Sandrine's. The old one didn't allow the kind of dance floor you need for a nineteen thirty-seven dance marathon. He raises his whiskey glass to her and she grins.

"Dance with me, Flyboy." Her holographic partner finishes out the song and melts back into the crowd. She holds out her hands.

Tom settles his feet more comfortably on the chair opposite him and looks her over. The skirt has collapsed into controlled gathers now that she's not moving. Cream satin slip under that. He knows; he put it on her before they left. Remembering the taste of her bare skin and the way she crossed her arms over her breasts when he wouldn't stop looking at her.

When he doesn't immediately come to her, she scoots behind him and runs her fingers through his hair from an arm's length away. It's thinning, they both know it, but her touch is affectionate and teasing and it feels good. After a minute, he slides into a nearly prone position and looks up at her. She kisses him on the forehead.

"Dance with me," she repeats.

"Nope." She snaps his suspenders. "Ow!"

"Serves you right. Come dance with me." He gets up and moves with her onto the floor. B'Elanna insinuates herself into his arms and burrows her fingers into the folds of his shirt. "Have I told you that I love your suspenders?"

"No." Running his hands up and down her back to feel the lines of her underwear.

Over her shoulder, he can see the Captain settled in a dark corner. She looks much softer in those men's trousers and white blouse than in her uniform. Reddish hair slicked back to hide the few grey strands. He doesn't need to squint to know who's opposite her, or what that someone's probably wearing. Since the Hirogen, Janeway's spent quite a few nights coaxing her favourite protege into another one of those French town girl dresses. The bobby socks are a nice touch, and the blond hair looks good loose and curly like that. Absently, he wonders if Seven understands the significance of her clothes and the Captain's. He wonders where Chakotay is tonight.

Tom finishes out the slow song with B'Elanna and whispers a command to the computer to change the music. Something brassy and fast. His partner's feet flash after him, both her hands in his, whipping each other back and forth. She jumps and Tom catches her hips an instant before her legs wrap around his waist.

For ten beats, he rocks her there. He knows what they look like, but her legs are beautiful and brown, her slip is showing, he loves that he can pick her up like this. Kiss her and swing her up in the air and back onto her feet. He catches her hand again and lets them swing.

When B'Elanna lets him go and spins away, he looks for an open space on the floor. Finding it, he runs and slides and works his way towards her on the strength of his ankles. Finishes on his knees in front of her with arms around her legs and a face buried in her skirt.

He doesn't need to look to know that the Captain is laughing.

B'Elanna extricates herself from his grip. She says, "We should go." He catches her skirt again and presses it against his mouth. The satin underneath is warm from her body, and damp. She's sweating a little. Laughter close to his ear. "Oh Tom, look."

He looks over his shoulder. The Captain has a very lovely blond in her arms, and they're gaining momentum as the music accelerates. He looks up at B'Elanna, whispers, "Time to go."

---

He has never figured how she can be so shy in the bedroom. He knows, has touched, every inch of her body. He knows she tastes salty, knows the smell of her perfume and her sweat. He trusts her. He loves to dress her up.

Inside the door of her quarters, he kneels and takes off her shoes while she leans against the wall. He whispers into the curve of her knee, "I love you, 'Lanna." Her fingers tangle in his hair.

She must feel him smiling against her leg, because she pulls his head up to look her in the eye. "What?" she asks.

"Tired?"

"No-o." She studies his face, looking for a clue. Cherry lipstick on her mouth, incredible against that latte skin.

"Box under the table."

She finds it. Tom stays kneeling by the door to watch her move, watch the way her skirt pools between her feet when she crouches. The balls of her feet just showing. She opens it without asking and plunges both hands inside. If she think he's making fun of her, the night is over. Then she grins and throws him a mass of blue satin and he knows he hasn't made a mistake.

"Hide and seek," she says. He nods. She kisses him on the forehead. "Go on."

They've played this game before, always in safe territory and careful of the other crew members. One of them seeking the other one blindly, without computer guidance, dressed as if they were children and laughing where no one can hear them. B'Elanna is remarkable at it. Nobody knows the ship as wells as she does. She could find him in the dark. She can hide more perfectly than anyone he has ever seen.

In the bathroom, he strips and sorts out what she has given him. Navy satin pajamas with delicate white dots. Barefoot. He rinses away the gel and finger-combs his hair. When he comes back out, she'll be gone.

It's impossible to guess where she might have disappeared to, but he can take direction from her mood. Glittering happy as she was, she won't hide in the deep, dark corners. If she wants him, she'll tell him by the place in which he finds her.

Jefferies tubes and hallways, searching empty rooms for B'Elanna. No one in the mess hall, no one in the observation lounge. No one in the network of tunnels that surrounds engineering. For ten seconds, Vorik sees him padding along the catwalk above the warp core. Flash of dark eyebrows and what might be a Vulcan smile. When Tom looks back, the ensign has moved out of his line of sight.

Voyager's carpets are getting threadbare from so many feet and so much time. Four years, now. The texture is familiar against his bare soles. Sometimes he thinks he could move through the ship the way B'Elanna does, by touch. He remembers that she fought against the Hirogen in the dark.

He gets a breath of a sweet, sharp perfume and stops. From his angle, he can see around the corner to the heavy double doors of cargo bay two. Sees the Captain finish the kiss and withdraw a little to smile at Seven. He turns and goes back the way he came.

Without chronometer or communicator, Tom loses track of the time. At some point, the corridor light have dimmed, indicating deep ship's night. He can't for the life of him find B'Elanna, he's lost the taste and smell of her. All that's left is the rhythm of the ship and the strange, protective feeling he has for Seven and the Captain. If he can't come to her, B'Elanna will forgive him. His own quarters are only two decks away.

But she's there when he comes in, curled up on his bed with his uniform shirt hugged to her chest. The grey of it blends smoothly into the steel-blue velveteen encasing her body. The pajamas she chose are too big for her tiny body; they make her look like a child. When she rises and crosses the room, the quilted vinyl soles whisper against the rug. He doesn't remember designing these sleepers. They zip up the front from legs to throat and gather to soft elastic cuffs at the wrist. They have feet. He loves the feet. Only she would dress up like this for him.

B'Elanna is laughing at him.

Tom pulls her close with a hand on the small of her back and strokes the rim of one seashell ear with his lips. She stands close, just holding him.

*found you*

*yes*

He has an impulse to go to bed still dressed like this and cuddle, enjoying the strange feel of their pajamas. He wants to have known her when they were children, when they could have played dress-up together for days at a time and had sleepovers in a back yard tent. She tastes so good. He wants to strip her down and investigate her body and know what's under her skin.

Tom strips the lipstick from her mouth with the tip of his tongue. It's a long, long lead-in to a kiss. He wouldn't be able to do it if she'd spent the day at a console or behind a desk, but hours on the dance floor have tamed her aggression a little, at least enough to let him play. Satin and velveteen rub together and make soft, whispering sounds. B'Elanna's hand on his back counts vertebrae. Her movements are small, precise like her mind.

The kisses he gives her are careful. His mouth closed, his lips recording the texture and temperature of her face and hair. He kisses her eyebrows and her eyelids, her temple and her chin. Kisses her lips and pulls away before she can pull him close or deepen their contact. Dark brown eyes have creases at the corners. B'Elanna is still laughing.

He lets her strip him, unbuttoning the loose, untucked, so old-fashioned shirt. She counts his ribs with gentle touches of her nose. Eases the elastic waist of the pants over his hips and erection and lets the satin pool around his ankles. The boxers she removes more slowly; she watches his skin's reactions to the varied contacts. Goose bumps on his calves. She gives him an open-mouthed kiss on the knee.

Careful not to hit her, he folds himself onto the floor beside her. He's naked; the velveteen against his skin is an unusual sensation, as much comforting as arousing. He pets her, long strokes on her back, until she picks herself off the floor and curls up alone on his bed, waiting.

This is what he wanted. He rolls up close behind and wraps himself around her, a leg between hers, an arm around her waist, his face buried in her neck. B'Elanna smells like sage and cloves, sharp, cutting through his sinuses in something attractive and very like pain. The hard Klingon back ridges mould against his chest and stomach, sharp and soft together. The sensation of her thigh against his erection is unnervingly seductive. He bites carefully, softly at her neck, just getting her attention, and moves one hand from her waist along the sleepers' front until he reaches her throat.

The zipper grates softly as it slides down, millimetres at a time and always closer to her breasts. He doesn't release it until he's reached her waist. Dips his hand down to caress her navel, up to draw the opened sides back and off one shoulder. He can feel her skin now against his face, warm and sharp-smelling and damp. Tom doesn't need to raise his head to find her breast. It settles by instinct into his hand. Stays like that, him memorizing the size and texture of the nipple, the way the skin shifts a little under his touch, its weight and temperature and the way she likes to be touched there. Wanting sleepily to lick it.

Then she shifts, reaching down between her legs to his, and strokes him. Just a return of pleasure, it's an appreciation of what he does to her body and what she does to his. They tie themselves in knots, sometimes, doing this; he can imagine the path her hands might take along his scrotum to his cock, pressing her torso back against him to make the reach a little less difficult. There are nights when he comes from that alone. He slides his hips back out of her reach: easier than trying to move her hand away, and he still wants to touch her. B'Elanna worms closer. It's then that he raises his face from her hair and leans over her shoulder to kiss her collar bone. She's put herself in reach.

He needs her to be naked. Kisses follow the trail of his hands while he strips her down. His mouth on her shoulder, her elbow, her breast, waist, the hollow of her hip. She understands enough of what he's doing to keep her hands close in to her rib cage, out of his way. Later, he'll take those fingers up individually and taste them. He'll gnaw at them and feel the tiny creases of the joints with his tongue. Until then, she'll wait and watch him out of the corners of her eyes.

Stripping down B'Elanna, running fingers through her public hair and up and down her thighs. He doesn't want to release her even to let her finish undressing. Hands hook under her knees and draw them up to her chest so he can extricate her feet. There's soft, dark skin inside the warm stocking ends. If he could only just bend and lick her toes and know the way she tastes after having those sleepers wrapped around her. Tom holds her close and fetal until she kicks him softly and rolls to face him.

She has never been this passive in their lovemaking. Right now, she is watching him with a calm, predatory look that whispers tales of hunting and wild pounding sex, but the laughter in it is patient. They can save the rest for later.

Tonight he kisses between her legs, tonguing her labia until she soaks him and growls gently in warning. He isn't going to fight her for control. He needs for her not to stop trusting him.

Tom settles back on his knees and lets her watch him. What he sees in the bathroom mirror when he looks can't be what she sees. No woman who saw a sweet-faced greying blond boy who lives to act out fantasies would look at him like that. No woman who saw that would take such a person and lower herself into his lap, bracing his heavy cock with one hand while he eases her onto it. Such a woman wouldn't drip arousal down his thighs, wouldn't be so tight around him that she still whimpers when he thrusts too fast. Such a woman couldn't be so aggressive and so fragile and she would never let him love her the way he loves B'Elanna.

Their lovemaking is mutual, a shifting of bodies to find the greatest pleasure with the least expended energy. Even B'Elanna's Klingon side is exhausted by the dance floor hours and the too-late night. Tom thrusts carefully upward; she arches in response. How could he not take one of the offered breasts into his mouth and soak the nipple with his tongue.

*oh *yes *please *gods *love you*

Just his thumb dips between her thighs to rub against the tight nerves gathered in her clitoris. Once, twice, that's all it takes. Her orgasm never reaches screaming proportions. It's a sweet, long growl that ends with her sinking her front teeth gently into his shoulder. He has old scars there from her. He rides her out, feeling the tremors in her vaginal walls, thrusting when he feels her starting to relax.

She takes his distraction and rips control away from him. The B'Elanna laid out across his knees is glittering and riding him; she wants him to come. Her hands scrape over his scrotum and cock-base and the prison knife scar that's a little too much reality for him, most days. She kisses just under his chin. It's all of her, his beautiful, sexy, occasionally dangerous baby, flashing sharp teeth near his throat. Tom drags her mouth up to his and kisses her and answers her growl as he comes inside her. He'll kiss her until they fall back in a pile of arms and legs. When he touches her afterwards, her clit's too sore and she flinches away.

He stays there, losing body heat to Voyager's ship's night. B'Elanna peels herself away from him, crawls over the bed looking for something. Comes back with the sleepers in her grip and wriggles into them on her knees. In the morning, she won't be nearly so willing to display herself for him. She has flashes of human shyness that he reads as a disbelief in her own beauty.

Tom curls his naked body around B'Elanna in her sleepers and listens to her breathing. His fantasy plays itself out. They were children together. He knows every detail of her thoughts, what she feels, why she loves him. He danced with her in public places, showed the bites off that say she owns him.

Tonight they're in their tree house, bedded down with comic books and cookies. The outdoors smells like faint rain and mock orange flowers. There's no pain here. She's his velveteen sweetheart, playing hide and seek with him between the leaves.

---

The End