The Shattering of the Mask 24
By MorticiaSee part 1 for disclaimer
Tom whistled as he hurried along the corridor towards Chakotay's office. It was 1605 but he was confident that Chakotay would be waiting for him, otherwise he would surely have passed him by now, as the Commander headed for the Bridge that Tom had just vacated.
He had managed the whole shift. Not only that, but it hadn't even been an uneventful shift. Voyager had passed within range of an inhabited m-class planet and the inhabitants were both warp-capable and, after the usual careful hedging between the Captain and an alien vessel that had intercepted them, it turned out that the natives were hospitable.
Although they had not been invited to actually take shore-leave on the planet, the aliens had indicated a willingness to trade with them, at least, and so Tom had been so busy establishing a geosynchronous orbit that he had barely noticed the time, until Harrison had patted him on the shoulder to relieve him.
It hadn't just been the excitement of the encounter that had distracted him from his usual panic attacks though. He just felt good today, anyway.
That morning he had woken with a stiff dick. Nothing to put in his personal log, or announce on a ship-wide post, obviously, but he had rushed to the sickbay and told the Doctor about it regardless.
His relationship with the Doctor was becoming one of his most important crutches. Now that the Doc understood that Tom's sarcasm over the past few years had been a reaction to the fact that the Doctor had never mentioned all the "incidents" that had happened to Tom at the beginning of the journey, he was falling over his holographic feet to make friends with the pilot.
In turn, now that Tom understood that the Doctor hadn't even retained a memory of treating those injuries and had consequently misinterpreted the reason for his hostility, Tom was trying to treat the Doctor as he found him, much as he was trying to deal with the *real* Chakotay in the same way.
The Doctor was the only person with whom Tom felt able to discuss the physical effects of his captivity.
Since he had been rescued, Tom had been impotent.
It wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to discuss with his *counselor*. For one thing, she wasn't a man so she wouldn't understand, in Tom's opinion. Particularly since she was completely against the idea of him pursuing a sexual relationship anyway. Sex wasn't the point though. For as long as Tom could remember he had always woken in the mornings with an engorged cock.
It was natural.
It wasn't just the lack of involuntary arousals that worried him. He couldn't even masturbate. The fact was that even the touch of his own fingers on himself when he even tried to take a piss caused his dick to shrivel and try to bury itself back inside his body.
The Doctor seemed to understand that Tom felt alienated from his own body because of the way it betrayed him in this fashion. In the course of his numerous, necessary, rectal examinations of the pilot, the Doctor had discovered that Tom's body responded still to anal stimulation, and he had even gently suggested that Tom tried using his fingers in that fashion when he tried to masturbate.
For the last couple of days Tom had tried that as he returned to his quarters after leaving Chakotay's office. He had held the image of Chakotay's gentle smile in his mind's eye as he had lain on his bed and tried to comfort himself. It hadn't worked, but in a way it had helped, and although his cock had stayed limp, the relaxation of his body under his own massage had helped him to drift off to a relatively peaceful sleep.
He had still had the nightmare, of course. The one where he was lying on his back, with Chakotay kneeling between his thighs with the paddle in his right hand and his monstrous cock being stroked to hardness in his left, and Chakotay was laughing at him, saying "your choice." In the nightmare, Tom's own cock would be hard and weeping so that even in the midst of the terror and fear, there was excitement too, and need, and his horror of his own reaction would make him scream and awaken, to find that he had rolled out of his bed and was huddled on the floor, with his sleep pants often wet with urine rather than cum, and his cock would be trying to crawl up inside his stomach in shame.
But last night, the dream had changed. The scenario was the same, he was still helpless, Chakotay was still rearing over him, threatening him with his cock, but his right hand was empty, the paddle was gone, and instead of cruel laughter, Chakotay was saying "What can I do for you, Tom? How can I make you feel better?" and his eyes were soft, and his smile was gentle, and when Tom woke up he discovered that this time he was still in bed and that he was still hard.
He had almost run to the Sickbay to tell the Doctor what had happened, and although the Doctor had been concerned to realise that Tom's reaction seemed directly related to his clandestine visits to Chakotay's office, he couldn't deny that Tom was finally looking brighter and less haunted than he had for weeks.
Doctor/patient confidentiality meant that he did not discuss Tom's decision to meet with Chakotay with anyone, but in view of the monitor implanted in Chakotay, he knew that Tuvok must also be aware of the meetings and he took the Lieutenant Commander's silence on the matter to mean that the Vulcan also could see the improvement in Tom.
Tom was unaware, of course, that his actions and those of Chakotay were being monitored, so he had no inkling of Tuvok's silent support, but the Doctor's failure to betray his confidence had allowed a tiny kernel of trust to start growing inside him. The fact that the Doctor was not, after all, the heartless hologram that he had always thought him to be, only helped him to feel more confident that Chakotay was also, a changed character.
Just as the bad programming had been removed from the Doctor, so had the disease been eradicated from Chakotay, and his dream last night had proven to him, in his own mind at least, that the only way that his body would lose its fear of being touched would be if Chakotay was the one to prove that sex didn't have to be painful.
A logical side of Tom was also telling him that the longer he put off a physical reconciliation with the Commander, the harder it would be for all concerned. As the weeks passed, his anal muscles were slowly recovering from the months of enforced dilation. Although one part of him knew that it would be a long time before he would ever be able to trust Chakotay to touch him in that way, he also had another panicked voice in his head reminding him that the longer he put it off, the more it would inevitably hurt him when it happened.
He was also beginning to worry that Chakotay, *this* Chakotay would never agree to a physical relationship with him for that very fact. He could hardly tell the Commander that he was aware of the size of his appendage without giving something away. He had even considered the possibility of replicating himself a butt plug to keep himself stretched.
He had shied away from the thought in fear although, once the idea had occurred to him, he was constantly aware of the feeling of emptiness in his ass. He had become so familiar with the sensation of being filled in that way that it was almost uncomfortable and strange not to feel something inside himself.
The real reason he didn't do it though, was fear of the Doctor's reaction when he inevitably realised what Tom was doing. He didn't trust the Doctor *that* much. He knew he had considerable internal scarring and that the Doctor needed to be sure that he was healing. He had a strong feeling that the examinations were more frequent than actually necessary though, and that the Doctor was under the Captain's instructions to ensure that Tom couldn't break her order about sexual activity without it being immediately obvious.
He knew he was probably being paranoid, but even so, he was being careful. He didn't want to run the risk of being monitored more closely in case his visits to Chakotay were curtailed. In a strange way, they were becoming the high-point of his day. He couldn't wait to see Chakotay's face now that he had spent the whole shift on the Bridge.
He just knew that Chakotay would be proud of him. He could already see that soft, welcoming smile becoming a beam of happy admiration. Tom knew they wouldn't have time for more than a couple of words before Chakotay rushed to the Bridge to take over his shift, but he was going to try and suggest that they met later.
Tom knew his mouth might go dry and the words could stick in his throat before he managed to spit them out, but he was hoping that if he could at least start the suggestion, Chakotay might help him out and complete it. Somehow Chakotay seemed to understand what he wanted without him having to say the words. Which was just as well since he usually lost the ability to talk at all in Chakotay's presence.
There was no point in pretending that he didn't get scared. He did. He would open his mouth to speak, and then fear would take over that he might say the wrong thing and his words would cause that angry mask to descend over Chakotay's face once more, and then Mad Chak would be back.
Yet, he knew the fear for what it was, just fear, and his mind separated Chakotay from the person he now only allowed himself to think of as "Mad Chak" as though he had been a completely different person who just happened to look like the Commander. To tell the truth, they didn't even look that much alike anymore in Tom's head. Mad Chak had somehow been taller and wider. In his memories, Mad Chak had gargantuan proportions. He was a huge, vicious monster. The more Tom thought about it, the less he believed that Mad Chak had looked anything like Chakotay at all.
In this too, he knew that he was only fooling himself. That it was just a way for his mind to separate the bad memories from the good by putting all the bad away in a mythical box named Mad Chak and then burying it. It didn't matter though. He didn't care whether anyone thought that was a good or bad way to deal with his problem. The important thing was that it helped, really helped, to do it, and ultimately, it didn't matter whether he was doing the *right* thing. It only mattered if he did the right thing for himself.
It was the right thing for Chakotay too.
The last few days had given him enough clarity to think about a lot of things. Just the fact that he had finally managed to have some real sleep had helped him start putting things into perspective. Although the Cardassian drug had been the cause of Chakotay's madness, the Commander's *problem* was older than that. Chakotay's problem, to be brutally honest, was the fact that he had a dick the size of a horse's.
Nice in theory, practically damned useless in practice. Chakotay had, to be crude, an appendage that at first made you go green with envy and then, when practicality took over, you realised what a poor bastard he really was. Unless a guy was the kind of bottom who thought a fist in his ass was the height of sexual pleasure, he would take one look at Chakotay's dick and run a mile.
Or, like poor Simon, would find its caress to be fatal.
Which explained why gentle Chakotay was the loneliest guy in the universe.
When Tom looked at it from *that* perspective, he could almost find some sympathy for Mad Chak too, only he usually cut that line of thinking dead because he couldn't afford to go there if he wanted to hang on to his own sanity.
So the real problem was, that even if he could overcome his own fear, and even if the Captain allowed him to do it, *before* his ass tightened up too much again, he couldn't see Chakotay ever agreeing to fuck him anyway. Despite the fact that Tom was damned sure that Chakotay wanted him.
He wouldn't be able to tell Chakotay that he *knew* he could take Chakotay's cock *and* find immense pleasure in it. Because of the story Chakotay believed about the *rape*, he would probably point-blank refuse to ever touch Tom in that fashion.
But, on the other hand, a lot of this wasn't about sex anyway. What Tom really needed was Chakotay to love him. To touch him. To hold him. If that happened, eventually the rest would fall into place. The love would come first, and maybe one-day the rest would follow, and if it didn't, well, even so, just having Chakotay sleeping in his bed to ward away the specter of Mad Chak would maybe be enough.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he hit the door of Chakotay's office before he even realised it didn't open for him. Rubbing his nose, and furtively looking over his shoulder in case anyone had seen his embarrassing faux pas, he pressed his hand to the entry panel. It remained dark and unresponsive.
He checked the time, realised it was almost 1615 and realised that somehow Chakotay had taken a different route to the Bridge.
He felt tears stinging his eyes. He had been sure that Chakotay would wait for him. Then he realised he was being stupid. Chakotay had a job to do. He couldn't just sit in his office and neglect his duties just in case Tom decided to saunter past, even if he wanted to.
Tom forced himself to straighten his shoulders and walk to his quarters.
This wasn't a rejection, he told himself firmly. It was just bad timing on his part.
~~~
At 2030, Tom flung his comm badge across the room then proceeded to throw every other loose article in his quarters on top of it, in a fury of tears and temper.
He had been so sure that Chakotay would call him during his break.
Then he looked at the destruction of his living quarters and began to cry in earnest.
When he finally crawled into bed, so exhausted by his crying that he fell quickly into sleep, the nightmare came back.
This time it was different again. He was in Chakotay's office but instead of a welcoming smile, Chakotay greeted him with a feral sneer. No. It wasn't Chakotay. It wasn't Chakotay at all. It was Mad Chak.
"What do you want, Paris?" he demanded with a leer.
He opened his side drawer and started to empty it's contents onto his desk, one by one.
"This?" he purred, placing the paddle on the desk. "Or this? Or this?" and the paddle was joined by whips, and butt plugs, and chains and restraints until the desk was overflowing with objects of abuse and humiliation.
Tom tried to run but found that he was tied to the chair, and when he looked down, he was naked.
He started to sob in terror as Mad Chak rose from his chair and began to walk around his desk, slapping his left hand with the paddle in his right.
"You didn't come to see me today, Tommy."
"I did. I swear I did. You weren't there," Tom whimpered.
"You were LATE," Chakotay replied, smashing the paddle against the top of the desk with a resounding thud.
"NOOOOOOOOOOO," Tom howled in terror. "It's not you. You're not *him*. He's not *you*."
"Of course it's me. It was ALWAYS me, you stupid little fuck," Mad Chak grinned.
Tom's bladder cut loose and the spreading wetness of the warm liquid threw him out of his nightmare and into the dark, lonely humiliation of his quarters.
He spent the rest of the night huddled on his bathroom floor with the door firmly bolted from the inside. He was still there when the Doctor arrived in his quarters the next morning.
~~~
"Are you alright, Tom?" The Doctor asked as he pressed the hypospray against Tom's neck. Overnight, the dark circles had returned to Tom's eyes and he seemed jumpy and on edge.
"Yeah, I just had a bad dream," Tom whispered.
"The usual one?" The Doctor asked.
"Yeah," Tom lied.
"Perhaps we should increase your medication a little," The Doctor answered, adjusting the hypospray slightly and pressing it back against Tom's neck.
Tom didn't resist the additional anti-depressives, but he knew it wasn't a dose of chemicals that he needed.
"He wasn't there," he mumbled.
The Doctor turned away abruptly and started to pick up the broken pieces of the data padds that Tom had thrown against the wall the night before so that his back was towards the pilot before he replied, "He wasn't?" with a pretence of casualness.
"I left the bridge too late. I missed him and then I had a bad dream," Tom whispered.
"Well," the Doctor said briskly. "I think that it's probably been a bad idea you seeing him after all, then. You've been using the visits as an emotional prop and when that prop was taken away, you fell apart. I think that proves that the Captain was right, after all."
Tom looked up at him in disbelief.
"I thought you understood," he wailed. "I thought you were my friend."
"I'm your Doctor, Tom, as well as your friend. That's why I told the Captain what you did. She's very disappointed in you and as a consequence you are to be confined to quarters for 48 hours. That's why I am here. She doesn't want you to be left alone."
"YOU BASTARD!" Tom howled.
The Doctor shrugged.
It was only after Tom spun around, raced into his bedroom and flung himself onto his bed in tears, that the Doctor allowed his granite expression to soften into genuine remorse.
This deception was a bad idea.
The sedatives that he had just injected into Tom alongside his normal medicine would soon take effect and they would be far from V'xt'n space before he woke again.
He understood why the Captain wanted Tom kept out of the way, but he didn't appreciate being made the fall guy here. Not because of his own sorrow that Tom would hate him for his part in what was happening, but because he had, in one fell swoop, destroyed the tiny kernel of trust for him that had begun to gestate in Tom's heart.
On the other hand, the Captain was setting herself up for most of Tom's hatred.
When they were clear of V'xt'n space and Tom was told that the Captain had banished Chakotay from the ship just because Tom had been seeing him in secret, against her express orders, Tom would be inconsolable.
The only reason the Doctor had agreed to the deception was that the reality was far worse.
At least, this way, Tom would never have to be told that Chakotay had discovered the truth about what he had done.
TBC