SUMMARY: The crew gets mad at their commanding officers and invokes the happy eight rule.

CODES: VOY, J/C

RATING: R

DISCLAIMER: The characters belong to Paramount and the happy eight rule is Katie's creation.

NOTES: The happy eight rule was created by my youngest sister, Katie, when she found herself home alone with our parents after both my other sister and I left for school this year.

"The Happy Eight Rule"
by Liz VanZandt

I'm not really sure how it started in the first place. I just walked into the mess one morning and there they were. The Captain and Commander, eating breakfast together. Not unusual in itself, but instead of sitting across the table from each other, they were seated next to each other. So close, in fact, that she was practically in his lap, and he was feeding her strawberries off his plate.

Tom was quick to fill me in on the latest gossip which I'd seemed to miss. While the night shift is doing wonders for the professional half of my life, it's hell on the personal side. Anyway, Tom told me that the Captain and Commander had been spotted together all over the ship for the past week and a half. And almost always the two of them had been occupying the space of one person.

Except on the bridge, that is. The Captain would never allow anything unprofessional on her bridge. Especially if she's the one breaking the rules.

But I'm getting off track. I found myself staring at them all morning in morbid fascination. B'Elanna once described it as watching your parents together. And in a way it is. You know they obviously had sex at least once or else there would be no you, yet you'd rather not think of that, let alone catch them in the act. It's almost like you prefer to keep them these sexless entities. But at the same time, even though I know I shouldn't be, I couldn't help but watch them.

For the next two weeks I kept bumping into them together everywhere I went. The mess, the halls, airponics, holodeck, even the shuttle bay. And I shudder just thinking about what I interrupted in that last one. Talk about having the stamina of bunny rabbits. I've never seen two people going at it that many times in so short a time period.

The whole situation came to a head one evening on the holodeck. Someone had resurrected Sandrine's (personally, I wouldn't be surprised if it was them so they could take advantage of the pool table) and we were all gathered around a table discussing what else, our commanding officers and their recent behavior when they walked in, the Captain draped all over Chakotay like she was his shirt or something.

As they ignored us like usual, claiming a table in the back of the room, we continued our conversation. I think everyone agreed that it was terrific that they finally quit fighting the attraction, but we were more than a little sick of seeing them all over each other. Especially those of us who weren't quite so lucky in the relationship department. It was Tom who finally came up with a solution.

'The Happy Eight Rule' he called it. "It's something my sisters came up with for my parents," he explained. "After all of us went off to school, they seemed to become more friendly, almost as if they were getting reacquainted. And you can imagine how well that went over with us kids."

Tom proposed using a similar tactic with the Captain and Commander. His idea met with uncharacteristic unanimous support from the rest of the crew, and somehow Tom and I were elected to pitch the idea to the lovebirds.

So I found myself standing in front of my Captain explaining the happy eight rule to a not-so-happy Captain.

"Let me see if I have this right: unless we're in a room alone, I'm not allowed within eight feet of Chakotay."

Nope, definitely not very happy.

"Care to explain the reasoning behind this ... what did you call it? Happy eight rule?"

I swallowed nervously, wishing I was anywhere but there at the moment. "Well, ma'am ... permission to speak freely?"

"Please, Ensign."

"You and the Commander have been a bit ... overenthusiastic about each other the past few weeks, and well, we don't really care what you do together, just as long as we don't know about it."

I was fully expecting to be busted down and stripped of rank, but the Captain instead surprised me by letting out a laugh. "I suppose we did get a little out of hand." She turned to look at me with what could only be described as pleading eyes. "But you have to understand, Harry, I went without sex for seven years, and then I finally give in to Chakotay, and now I'm having without a doubt the best sex of my life, and I don't particularly want to give that up when I go on duty in the morning."

Well that just about did it for me. "Um, too much information, Captain."

She just laughed again and promised to keep things under control from then on. I was just happy to get out of there with my head still attached to my body.

* * *

"And that," Harry Kim said, "is the story behind the happy eight rule."

"Was it enforced very often?" Admiral Ashlund asked.

"Oh no, in fact, just about the only time we ever invoked the happy eight rule was as a joke or during Christmas parties."

"And you never disapproved of this relationship?"

Harry shook his head. "As long as I didn't have to see it every time I turned the corner, and they obeyed the happy eight rule, I didn't give a damn."

"Very well," the Admiral looked down at the PADD in front of him. "Let's talk about Hanon ..."

Harry sat back in his seat with a sigh. This debriefing was taking longer than he'd expected and they were picking at every little detail of their trip. He smiled inwardly, at least they didn't know the real reason behind the happy eight rule -- as far as the Admiralty were concerned, it had been coined by the Captain and Commander's six year old daughter.

Fin

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