#yes this is the second love letter i've written to the flyer's manual controls SO WHAT

[grissomesque]

Okay, so for the “I wish you would write a fic where” ask game … you don’t actually have to do this but —

Early seasons Voyager Tom Paris gets technobabbled in a shuttle to SNW. And he’s like, okay, okay, okay. Cool captain (not as pretty), retro tech (not 20th century), fun times (actually, yes, with a more chill and silly crew). But Tom’s also gotta dodge (great?) grandma Paris (the Shohreh Aghdashloo character from the Kelvinverse) and other Starfleet folks to not mess up the timeline and, um, no holodecks so that’s a bummer. And Tom ends up having this really great talk with Ortegas about flying being about trust in yourself and your ship and crew … and Tom misses his ship and crew. He even misses leola root. So he and Ortegas figure out to technobabble him back and — since this is you — when Tom gets back he talks to Janeway about what happened (Temporal Prime Directive? To hell with it.) and how Starfleet was different then. He felt different there. And he liked it. He liked feeling less bound by regulations and more seat-of-the-pants. And Janeway tips her hand that sometimes she feels the same way … about a lot of things (long, lingering look) … and what would Tom do if Voyager wasn’t such a regulations-and-protocol ship? And, of course, he kisses her and she kisses him back and happy, happy, happy.

Ahem.

Anyway.

Yeah.

“The Delta Flyer,” Kathryn says, thoughtful.

Tom frowns. “What about it?”

“What you’re describing. It’s a bit like the Flyer, isn’t? That shuttle is like a thing out of time with all its buttons and dials and manual interfaces. You’ve got both more and less control, in a way. Less of a… safety net.” She smiles, a little wistfully. “And you’re more present at that helm. Me, too.”

Tom is almost afraid to trust what he thinks he’s hearing. But the way he sees it, he’s got two options here: maintain the status quo, just long looks and the occasional brush of her hand on his arm keeping them afloat for the next seventy-five years… Or, pack everything he’s just learned from his trip through time, the fearlessness of Erica Ortegas, the sheer, heart-pounding recklessness of the 2250s, into one grand gesture that neither of them—for better or worse–will be able to go on ignoring.

Because he did imagine staying, on Pike’s Enterprise. He thinks he might've fit in better in the past. But Temporal Prime Directive aside, he’d known that for all the things he might’ve gained—all the modern conveniences he could live without—there is this one thing, this one hope, that he could not leave behind.

So he kisses her.

Immediately, he feels her twist a little, twist away from him, and shit, shit he’s terrified he’s just made a serious mistake, but then he hears a clink and he realizes she was still holding her cup and saucer and now her hands are sliding up his chest, around his neck, and she’s leaning in, and she’s kissing him, kissing him, kissing him back.

And then a thought occurs to him, and he pulls back just enough to see her face.

“But—the Delta Flyer design,” he asks, urgent, breathless. “You like it, right?”

“I like it,” she confirms. Her laugh is low in her throat and her cheeks are flushed and all of this makes him feel a little lightheaded, makes him want to kiss her again, especially, especially when she orders the computer to secure her ready room doors. There is, in fact, nothing else in all the galaxy he wants so much as to kiss her again right this second, because in a way, after all, he did wait over a century for this chance.

And so he does.

[Send me whatever and I'll write you a thing!]

#me: okay I gotta get into Angst Mode so I can work on this Angst WIP #curator - literally: “she kisses him back and happy happy happy” #my brain: 🥺🥺🥺 #no *I'M* not obsessed with the implications of the delta flyer's cockpit *THEY* are #yes this is the second love letter i've written to the flyer's manual controls SO WHAT #curator my beloved thank you for basically writing me a whole fic in my ask box #we are all of us blessed by it and you #@curator-on-ao3 #😘 #fic #fic prompt #ficlet #janeway x paris