Title: A Present For Paris

Author: Ami

Email: SciFiCatGirl18@aol.com

Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager

Pairing: Paris/Kim

Rating: PG-13

Archive: Sure, go ahead.

Summary: Harry gives Tom a gift from the heart.

Author's Notes: Betad by WillSheNillShe and Orithain.


A Present For Paris
By Ami

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