Title: Found
Author: Debb
Disclaimer: Lets face it, The whole idea of fanfic is illegal, and if paramount wanted to sue me, a disclaimer is NOT going to help me. But just for the record, i'm not making any money off of this.
Warnings: None. There's not even a shower scene. P/K
Summary: This story is a sequel to "Lost". It's called "Found". Guess what happens.
Archive, sure, why not.

Found

Harry stared at his instrument panel in disbelief. Without Voyager's resources, they didn't have many trade goods to offer, so they'd been doing tug duty around this planet for three days trying to work up enough local currency to resupply before moving on. But now... here, after all this time...

Five years. Just him and Tom; sleeping, eating, working, making love together. Well, okay. Not that last; at least, not the whole five years. But a long time. Long enough.

Suddenly, there she was, limping into view. Wounded; definitely not in good shape, and coming in from the wrong direction, but real and solid and HERE. Voyager. Harry didn't know what to do, think, feel. He'd been watching them for a few minutes now, and hadn't even had the presence of mind to call out to Tom, let him know. He'd be in here in a moment anyway - he knew Harry couldn't stand to be alone at all any more.

On cue, as always, Tom leaned through the doorway. They'd jammed all the automatic doors open years ago, both of them unable to tolerate the silence of being in a room alone.

Harry didn't move, didn't blink, even when Tom wrapped his arms around his lover and tilted his head to see what had Harry so transfixed.

He froze, staring. "Harry..." he breathed.

"I know. I can't move," Harry admitted unhappily. Tom rubbed his cheek against Harry's in an effort to comfort. "What's wrong, he asked intently.

Harry just shook his head. "Nothing," he replied. "It's nothing," he repeated, trying to convince himself more than anything. He set the hailing frequency with trembling fingers and toggled the switch to open it. Unable to speak, he looked to Tom for support.

Even Tom's voice trembled slightly as he spoke. "Shuttle Cochran to Voyager."

There was a brief pause, then Janeway's rough voice flowed back over the com. "We hear you, Cochran," she said jubilantly. They could hear cheering in the background of the transmission. "It's good to hear your voice, Tom. Is Harry still with you?" she asked, suddenly worried.

"Yes, Ma'am," Harry replied quietly, trying to ignore Tom's snigger, and the hand sliding down his belly. He was glad this was an audio-only transmission. Not that Tom wouldn't have stopped if he'd been asked to, but it was reassuring, that Voyager was here and Tom still wanted to touch him. Despite his decision almost three years ago, he'd been half afraid Tom had decided to fall in love with him out of loneliness. Harry pulled Tom's head down for a brief kiss, wanting that familiarity.

Tom looked intently at him, ignoring the captain's voice, then slithered around in front of him and kissed him again, more thoroughly. Very thoroughly. He stared into Harry's eyes, and, though he didn't say them aloud, the words hovered there between them... 'I'm still here; I still love you, nothing will ever change that.'

"Gentlemen?" Janeway's voice finally penetrated his consciousness. She sounded as though she'd said it several times.

"Sorry, Captain," Tom replied, sounding more like himself. He still hadn't taken his eyes off Harry's face. "We had something to attend to. Say again?"

There was another pause from Voyager. "We're coming around to your orbit now," she replied finally. "We'll tractor you into the shuttlebay."

"Yes, Ma'am," Harry replied, wondering what the captain thought of their little lapse in attention. "Cochran out."

Harry returned his gaze to Tom and his lover reached out to smooth away the worried line between his brows.

The Cochran trembled for a few moments as Voyager pulled them into her belly, and the clang of metal on metal reverberated through the tiny craft as they settled onto the landing pad.

He leaned forward, resting his head against Tom's chest for a moment before straightening to tug his clothes back into place properly. He grinned, in spite of himself, when Tom rearranged them again with a fierce hug. Harry pulled free, but kept a hand on his lovers arm as the shuttle's outer doors slid open.

B'Elanna entered first, followed closely by Janeway, surrounding the two men with greetings and enthusiastic hugs.

Tom seemed exuberant enough, but Harry found himself intensely grateful that there were only the two people to greet them. He just wasn't USED to crowds any more. Barring infrequent visits planetside, the only person he'd come into physical contact with in five years was Tom. He was terrified that he wouldn't be able to accustom himself to the relative crowding on Voyager, and ashamed to find himself thinking that it would have been easier if they'd just stayed lost.

"Let's get you both checked out in sickbay," Janeway said finally, giving them both a small push towards the open doors.

~~~~~~

With a clean bill of health, and a fresh reminder of how smug the doctor was, even when he was being nice, they were sent on their way to their newly assigned quarters.

Harry let Tom lead the way, trying to ignore the way their footsteps echoed up and down the corridor. He hugged people, shook hands and smiled as though he were as glad to be here as everyone else seemed to be, and tried to keep that tiny part of himself that was terrified of the open spaces and crowded corridors of Voyager locked away in the back of his mind so no one would know it was there. Not even Tom. Not until they were alone.

The doors hissed closed behind them finally, and he nodded and smiled at the captain until she took the hint and went away. Tom just looked worried. "Harry..." he said hesitantly.

Harry's knees buckled, and Tom rushed forward to catch him as he fell. They collapsed on the floor in a heap, and Harry just lay there in his lover's arms, trembling.

"What's wrong?" Tom demanded urgently.

"I don't know! It's just... too much. Too many people, too much space, i can't..." He trailed off, unable to express his feelings any more coherently.

"Harry... we were planetside just a few months ago," Tom said quietly. "It was a lot bigger than Voyager, and a lot more crowded, but it didn't affect you like this."

"You don't understand," Harry whispered.

"Then MAKE me understand!" Tom cupped his face between both hands, forcing him to look into worried blue eyes. "What is it about Voyager that's so frightening?"

"When we were... planetside," Harry said after a moment, "I FELT the way i feel now.Only... it was temporary. At the end of the day we'd both head back to Cochran and take off, and it'd be just you and me again. I could DO this if I knew it was going to end." He looked helplessly at Tom. "Here on Voyager... there's no time limit. We'll have all of these people and all this damned SPACE surrounding us forever, and i don't think i can DO this any more, Tom. I don't... I can't... Harry suddenly found that he was crying, and he couldn't stop.

Tom's arms tightened around him. "It's okay, Harry," he whispered. "It's okay. I love you. Everything will be all right.

Harry just rocked back and forth while Tom tried desperately to comfort him.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Harry stood behind Tom in the captain's briefing room, unwilling to remove eyes or hands from the other man.

"What happened, Captain?" Tom was asking. "When we came out of the asteroid field, you were just GONE."

"We don't know," Janeway replied. "We waited for you for three days, as we agreed, and then we went in after you. We found no sign of you or your shuttle. Nothing. Just empty space and asteroids. So, we dropped another shuttle to keep an eye out for you, and we headed for the nearest M Class planet. We hoped to find answers there if you'd been captured for invading someone's territory. There was no sign of you there, either, and the shuttle picked up no traces of you while we were gone. We searched for over a week, but there was nothing to say you'd ever been there. We just had to hope that you'd head toward home and we'd find you again farther on. We stopped hoping years ago," she finished quietly.

Tom shook his head, frustrated. "The same thing happened to us," he said in response to the captain's raised eyebrow. "I'd love to know what happened," he added dryly.

"So would we all, Tom. Everything all right, Harry?" She asked. Harry suppressed a spurt of annoyance at the 'speaking to a frightened child' tone that crept into everyone's voice these days.

"I'm fine, Captain," he replied, still without looking at her directly. He ran his fingers over and over again through the soft hairs at the back of Tom's neck. There was a doubtful pause from the captain direction, and he continued reassuringly, "I really am. Well... okay, maybe "fine" is a bit inaccurate," he added honestly, "but i'm better than i was, and still improving. I'll get over it." (I think.) "I just need to work on it some more." (And Tom. I need Tom to lean on.)

Janeway nodded, tapping the padd on her table. "The Doctor tells me you've come farther than he'd expected in the last couple of weeks."

Harry just nodded, not sure if she wanted a reply or not. The captain's console signalled at her before he had time to worry about it, and she waved a dismissal at them before turning to answer it.

Harry held Tom's hand in comfortable silence on the way back to their quarters. He collapsed on the couch in the living area, pulling Tom down on top of him.

"Wanna go to the mess hall for dinner tonight?" Tom asked, head pillowed on Harry's lap. Harry grinned. Must not have made his three hour group exposure quota tonight.

"No," he replied. "I don't want to spend tonight accustoming myself to people again. I don't want to accustom myself to anything," he said firmly, ignoring Tom's frown. He wriggled out from underneath the older man and straddled him instead. "I want to stay here,"   he added, leaning forward as he spoke. "Just you, me, and a nice.... warm... bed." Harry breathed the last word into Tom's mouth, lips touching lips.

One long, satisfying kiss later, Tom raised his head and offered, "Maybe we should put in just a little appearance..."

"No," Harry repeated. He slid his hands up under Tom's shirt while he kissed the sensitive spot right behind his ear. "I really will be all right, Tom," he said softly, trailing warm, wet kisses down his lover's throat.

"Look at me...," Tom whispered. Harry met his eyes steadily. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'll be fine, Tom. You'll see." And he smiled.

end.