by Ami
---
Posted: 16th December 2003
Author Notes: Betad by WillSheNillShe and Orithain.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money. Feedback would be nice,
though. :)
---
Tom held back a yawn as he left the bridge after his shift. He smiled
kindly to the various crewmembers he passed in the halls, all of whom were
rushing to be ready by the time Voyager docked at the Kirellian space
station. It wasn't often the crew got some shore leave, especially on
'holidays', and everyone was more than ready to take advantage of
it. Everyone but Tom.
Tom had never been a big fan of this particular holiday. It wasn't
that he didn't like all the romance and mushiness the holiday tended
to bring out in everybody, and the presents were great, of course,
but… What he mostly remembered about Christmas from when he was
a kid was his mother not being there. She'd died when he was ten, and
after her death, Christmas was never the happy occasion it used to be. By
the time he was a teenager, Christmas had lost its luster.
Once he'd entered his quarters, he quickly shut the door against the
noise of people rushing to and fro through the halls. He sighed, then
stood looking around his room. He had no idea how he was going to spend
his time off.
As he mentally ran through the many holoprograms he was working on, trying
to figure out which ones needed the most work, his eye caught on something
bright.
On the shelf above his bed was a flat box, wrapped in red paper with
Oriental symbols imprinted in gold relief. Curious, he picked up the gift,
for that was obviously what it was, and carefully removed the paper. He
knew he would most likely only end up recycling it back into the
replicator, but he wanted to prolong the suspense. He hadn't expected
to get another gift; most of the ones among the crew had been exchanged at
the party on the Holodeck. Aside from a Holoprogram of the Kenyan Falls
that both Harry and B'Elanna worked on, and the Captain's gift of
four extra replicator rations for each crewmember, most people had just
told him that he didn't need to pay back the replicator credits
he'd borrowed from them.
Deciding to stop fiddling with the wrapping and just open the present, he
removed the paper to discover a holo-image. He pushed the button at the
base to turn it on. . . and froze. It was a holo of his mother, Grace
Paris. She was standing the middle of the Academy Rose Garden. The time
stamp said it was two years after he'd been born.
Who. . . How? he wondered. He had almost no pictures of his mother,
and the ones he did have were back in the Alpha Quadrant. After she'd
died when he was ten, his father had locked them all up in the attic. Tom
had managed to sneak a few from the photo albums and hidden them under
his hoverboard. Once he left home, he took them with him.
Almost no one knows how much I miss her, he thought. They know
she's dead, but not how old I was when she died. Since Dad never
talked about her, most people who didn't know first hand thought she
died in childbirth. The only person I ever told about her was. . .
"Harry," he breathed.
---
Harry paced nervously over the grassy fields of the Kenyan Falls program.
He hoped that Tom would like his present; he didn't want the picture
to depress him. He figured it wouldn't take long for Tom to figure out
that Harry gave it to him, what with the two-fold clue: the wrapping paper
with the Korean symbols, and the fact that Harry was the only one on board
Voyager that knew how much Tom missed his mother.
It had taken him hours of searching the databanks to find a picture of
her. He'd actually had to take a group picture from the annual Academy
picnic and manipulate the pixels so Grace Paris was the only one in the
image. That part had taken over a week, and two more to extrapolate the
rest of her that had been covered by other people in the holo.
Now he was waiting for Tom in the Kenyan Falls program he and
B'Elanna had designed. There was a modification from the real Falls
that neither Tom or B'Elanna knew about: A secret cavern behind the
walls, outfitted with a bed and all the comforts of home – if your home
were a palatial bedroom in a cave.
The sound of the Holodeck doors opening reached his ears, and he took a
deep breath, turning to face his friend.
"Harry. . .;" Tom said softly. "Why?" He held up the
framed holo-image.
Harry let out the breath he'd been holding. "Because I love
you," he said simply. "The best gifts are ones that come from
the heart, and the night you told me about how much you missed your mother
was the night I realized I was falling in love with you." He stood,
waiting for Tom's verdict.
Tom blinked, astonished and overjoyed. "You…love me?
Really?" he asked, awed.
Harry smiled briefly and nodded. "Yeah, I do, Paris."
"Oh, Harry, I love you too!" Tom exclaimed, throwing his arms
around the other man. He continued in a quiet voice, "I have since we
were in that awful prison camp and you said I was your friend. You risked
your life for me. No one's ever done that for me before."
Harry pulled back slightly to look into Tom's eyes. "I meant
every word of it, Tom. You're worth it." He leaned in and
captured Tom's mouth in a gentle kiss.
Long moments later, when they finally parted for air, Tom whispered,
"Hey, Harry, you wanna check out that bed behind the waterfall?"
Harry look at his friend in surprise. "How'd you know about
that?"
"Harry, Harry, Harry," Tom chided the young ensign. "You
can't keep anything from me. Not for very long, anyway."
"Especially my love for you," Harry said warmly, pulling Tom
down for another kiss.
---
End
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