by Amiroq
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Disclaimer: Character theft? Me? Never!

Notes: I got this title by looking up 'lust' in my big fat quote dictionary, going to 387.4 ("l. in perjury", I think), deciding that one was crap, and looking at the next one down. Nothing to do with lust, but it's cool.

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Fuck, Tom thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

It wasn't even that there was any particular reason he was fed up - he was just in a bit of a funk tonight. If he'd had his druthers, he'd have been hanging in Sandrine's with Harry right now, but he was down babysitting Naomi tonight and wanted to get some work done while he was at it. In the old days, he might have hunted out B'Elanna on a night like this, but he didn't really feel up to spending an entire evening with the person who for the past month and a half had been consistantly proving to him that Harry was straight as a zither. (What was a zither, anyway? he wondered. It was obviously something straight, but how straight, and was it possible to bend it a little?)

As if on cue, his door chimed, and B'Elanna stalked in without waiting for him to answer. Yeah, stalked, that was the word. Like a cat, the cat that got the cream (he just didn't want to think about any literal slants to that) or the canary or however the saying went, with that damned smug expression on her face that for some reason started to annoy him about six weeks ago.

Fuck.

"What do you want?" he asked tiredly, sitting up a little from his spread-eagled collapse on the sofa. B'Elanna made no move to take advantage of the spare seating space, simply folding her arms across her chest.

"When were you going to tell him?" she countered. She didn't have to explain what she meant. The look on her face was enough.

The best defence was an offence, and all that, but barring that, innocence was a good second-best. "Tell who what?"

"Harry. About the reason you've been staring at him like he's a piece of meat for the last god-knows-how-long."

Okay, innocence wasn't getting him anywhere. It was time to break out the smart-alec comments. "Oh, so you did notice I existed! I was beginning to wonder."

"Get serious, Paris. Harry doesn't deserve to be used as a jack-off fantasy, and he sure doesn't deserve to be the last one to find out. So if you don't tell him, I will."

Shit. He could just imagine that discussion. 'Hey, uh, Har? We gotta talk.' 'Oh, I can't. I'm meeting B'Elanna for--' 'No, I-- Harry, I like you. Like, like.' '. . .' Yeah, that would go down well. He could almost see the look in his friend's eyes going from bewilderment to pity to disgust. Or something like that.

Looked like it was time for the big guns - serious, rational discussion. Or at least, an attempt at it. "Is that what you think this is? Just some lustful little game? God, I would - and have, I might add - give my life for him. So don't talk to me about jack-off fantasies."

"And some great life it is, too," she shot back. "My offer stands." She turned and started for the door, and Tom could almost feel the air starting to warm up again where she'd been standing.

"Can you blame me?" he demanded sarcastically. "You're screwing the guy, you know how guapo he is. You think--" He stopped when the door slid shut, leaving him speaking to an empty room.

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End