Title: Leadership and Other Serious Matters Discussed at the Shopping Mall from Fashion Hell (Plus Sex Scene)
Series: TOS
Author: jat_sapphire (Jane)
Contact: jat_sapphire@juno.com
Rating: NC-17
Codes: Cha/R
Summary: See title. Lots of chat; no plot. Happens after "Holiday Stress."
Archive: Yes, pleaseDisclaimer: Rand and Chapel belong to Paramount. The wedgies were Mary Ellen's idea. All the subsequent bad taste and chatter are mine.
Notes:
If you like shopping and chatter and f/f sex, that's what's here. And there are more Author's Notes after the story.
Rabble Rouser betaed this (Thanks!). Then I got impatient and posted it. (T'Aaneli and Islaofhope were on vacation.)
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Leadership and Other Serious Matters Discussed at the Shopping Mall from Fashion Hell (Plus Sex Scene)
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"Do you suppose," Janice said in that offhand tone she gets when she's about to say something outrageous, "that there's something about their *anatomy*?"
I looked where she was looking, involuntarily. I had really been trying to pay attention to the little wheeled carts and shop windows and hanging platforms of wares for sale, but frankly, I couldn't see anything that wasn't either ugly or useless, and frequently both. I've been on more promising shopping trips.
But Janice wasn't looking at anything for sale. At least I didn't think what she was looking at was for sale. The two ample behinds bobbing along in front of us belonged to two of the planet's natives, and believe me, she could get a good look at the anatomy in question, because their pants were pulled tight into the cleft between their buttocks. Like every other native we had seen so far.
If Janice was going to pretend this was a scientific discussion, I'd go along. "I don't think so," I said dispassionately. "That's the kind of thing that's usually in a shore leave briefing, especially the medical one - if there are any unusual structures or orifices." She glanced at me, that big-eyed, small-mouthed look, a little startled; I think I was supposed to have been shocked. She's got to stop thinking of me as *ladylike.* One of *my* agendas for this shore leave. "Maybe it's a fashion statement."
"Like, 'Hello, I have no idea what I look like from the back'?"
All right, scientific discussion over. "Like, everything in these windows looks *better* bunched up in your butt."
"We've discovered the planet of the fashion-impaired." We both began to laugh, and got control of ourselves; then paused at a new window, where the clothes were somehow even uglier, and glanced at each other and giggled, gasped, hawed aloud, could not stop.
It wasn't really the clothes, or even the guilt of making fun of what was obviously a cultural difference, or the fact that as usual, we had only gotten shore leave after being strung out with work and intermittent crises for weeks on end. It was also that we had made arrangements to share a hotel room for the express purpose of having sex off the Enterprise, and I don't think either of us remembered who had originally suggested it or knew exactly why it had seemed important. We were anxious. That was stupid.
Of the two of us, I think I've had more experience in feeling stupid over sex. But you know what? It isn't something you get used to.
It was going to be a long afternoon. We had planned to use it up shopping, since this was an absolutely huge mercantile area, supposedly with every imaginable thing for sale, and I had to get Len something for his birthday. *Wanted* to, it's not an obligation, part of the Head Nurse's job, or anything. He's been a good friend to me - mostly - he's no different with me than with anybody else. Easier on me than on - well, Spock.
"So you don't think Doctor McCoy would *like* those trunks?" Janice got out, and we started laughing *again.*
I thought, not only do they glow in the dark, but they're so loud I bet everything *else* in the drawer would start glowing too, but I was definitely not going to be able to say anything that long.
Eventually we started moving again. And got into a leather-work section where things were actually less ugly, if a lot of them were unidentifiable. That long strap with all the metal rings on it, and three buckles, what was that for? The thing like a fly-whisk with an extra-long handle? Well, all right, I did realize, at one booth, that we were looking at sex toys - a humanoid dildo looks pretty much *like* a humanoid dildo, even that size - but I still didn't know what half of them were for. Oh, fine, I needed to feel *more* like a sexual ignoramus. I glanced at Janice. She looked at me, and her color was up. We moved on without speaking. I could have used a laugh just then, but neither of us felt like it.
"Am I blushing too?" I murmured.
"A little." She paused, and then her mouth curved. "Do you know the end of your nose gets pink?"
I sighed. "Yes. A few other people have pointed it out."
"It's cute."
I know I looked sour. Being called 'cute' does that to me. "I don't think Len wants a dildo," I said, trying to lighten the mood.
"You never know," she said, again in that airy tone. "Maybe if it had two ridges. . ."
"*Janice*!"
She grinned. I smiled too, acknowledging that yes, she got me and yes, I was more of a prude than I liked to admit. But not *quite* as much of one as she thought.
"Then why not buy it?" I asked. "The captain asked you to look out for something, right?"
She stared, the little rosebud mouth open in a perfect 'o' - the sexiest look she owns, and she doesn't even know it. I *loved* it. I looked away so I could really smile without getting too intense. Only mid-afternoon.
She grabbed me around the shoulder and stretched up to say into my ear, "You - you're amazing! You know that?" and kissed me. Getting kissed in the ear is so *loud.* She backed off, but only to grab my hand and squeeze it. "You surprise me all the time."
"I'm surprising myself." It was true. I never thought I'd be holding hands with Janice Rand and walking down the Federation's ugliest mall. I never thought Janice's voice in my ear could give me these little shivers and make me feel my pulse even in my lips while I *still* felt so swoony over Spock that I could hardly stand to hear his voice over the comm. Life is so strange.
"Did anybody warn *you* that the weirdest alien you'd ever meet in Starfleet was in your own skin?" I asked her.
"I don't remember." She stopped at a cart, fingered some sort of shawl thing with her free hand. It was made out of peacock-purple-blue beads in a kind of net, and I doubted she really liked it. "I already knew it."
I squeezed her hand this time. "Oh, Jan."
We walked in silence for a while, and then Janice said suddenly, "You hungry?" Ahead of us was a small cafe with tables scattered out into the walkway.
"I am," I said, realizing it was true. It might be afternoon here, but my stomach thought it was the middle of beta shift. We sat down at the nearest empty table, a little ceramic one with tiles in a kind of jagged paisley pattern. Our waiter came up, told us the menu, took our orders, and turned to go.
"For Pete's sake," Janice said, looking at the seat of his trousers.
"IDIC," I answered, and we grinned. She took a sip of complimentary water, a sweet old-fashioned custom here, and then looked into my eyes, still smiling. I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding, looking at her.
"Credit for your thoughts?" she asked.
I knew I should let it alone, but I asked anyway: "How do you feel about Kirk asking you to shop for him?"
"Odd," she admitted. "But really, he didn't ask me to *shop,* not to buy anything, like he might ask a - a friend, or - "
"Yes," I said, having hit those unnameable conversational speed-bumps myself a time or two.
"I mean, he's always in the last shore-leave rota, or nearly, and so's McCoy, for that matter, and anyway he was just asking me to keep an eye open."
"What's he *like* to work with?"
"Good question." She smirked at my bafflement. "I hardly work *with* him; ask the bridge crew that, or the landing parties. I’m in his office, mostly, while he’s at work, though I bring him stuff - reports, coffee, sandwich, and so forth. The man can graze all day, you know that? When he's not saving the ship or facing down alien menaces."
I nodded, having overheard 'discussions' of this tendency. "He hates to leave the bridge for meals, that's what he tells Len."
"Yeah. Hates to leave the bridge for anything but landing parties. Hates, *hates,* file work of any kind. So I'm a busy beav - "
I snorted, not a good thing to do as I was drinking water at the time.
"Bee," she said with dignity, and then thumped my back while I tried to get my lungs in working order again and she finished the sentence, " - getting files ready for him, and actually it's kind of nice that he trusts me to. You know?"
I nodded, then gestured at the oncoming waiter. "Two Starfleet Sandwich Specials," he said, laying the plates down with little flourishes that neither of us paid proper attention to.
Even the *food* was dressed funny: little flags, patterned paper bands, frilled doilies underneath the sandwiches, the vegetable sticks on the side garnished up with scallops out of the edges.
"Does your mother know you're out looking like this?" Janice sternly addressed a pickle. Then she picked it up and ate one of the little spiral bits sticking off the top. Then she made a face.
I was doing the same, having undressed my sandwich and taken a bite. Oh, it was *dreadful.* The bread was soggy, the green substance apparently meant to resemble lettuce was limp, the stuff inside the sandwich was completely unidentifiable. I suspected even a medical tricorder wouldn't have told us what it was. I have eaten a lot of pretty bad synthesized food since I joined Starfleet to go where no nurse has gone before, but this was just about the worst. And this, we'd have to *pay* for.
We looked at each other in despair. We could make a fuss and return the food, but what would we get in exchange? Would we just have to fast for the whole shore leave? Smuggle down food from the Enterprise?
"Hey, there, girlfriends," said a sweet voice, and I turned and saw Uhura. "Oh, no, you *didn't* order the Starfleet sandwich?" She looked at our plates and grimaced, one hand warm on my shoulder. She shook me a little and stared at Janice. "Now, listen to the senior officer, here, and remember this: never, *ever,* buy anything on shore leave called a Starfleet Special. Got it? Never." We nodded. "I've been here before, and except for the . . . *ambience* . . . you can have a good dining experience, but eat the native stuff. Really. There's a local form of sushi, called Ki-mihan Zo. That's terrific, if you like sushi, though actually this stuff's vegetarian." She leaned close to my ear. "Mr. Spock *adores* it." Then she said to Janice, "Not a sushi lover?"
"No," said Janice stiffly.
"OK, you like soup? Ramen-type noodle dishes? Oh, good, have I got a dish for you. There's this stuff, hmm, what's the name . . . "
"Uhura, do you get a commission?" I asked. "Why didn't the waiter tell us any of this?"
"'Cause he wanted to sell you the nasty sandwich plate, sugar. You don't think anybody else but a few stray Enterprise folks are buying that thing?"
"Local tastes might differ," I said. "In fact - " looking at the people seated around us, perching on their wedgies - "I *know* local tastes differ."
"Nobody's tastes differ that much. At least, not *carbon*-based life forms. At least not about *food.*"
"Tell me the name of the noodle dish," said Janice, so Uhura did. She flagged down the waiter for us, too, and had him change our order. I felt about twelve years old, like I was being taken care of by my older sister again. Then Uhura patted my shoulder and whispered something in Janice's ear, and said goodbye.
"Well." I said afterward.
"Well?" asked Janice in a make-something-of-it kind of voice, so I didn't ask what Uhura had said to her.
Which left me with zero ideas for conversation. I sat for a second, looking at Janice rather helplessly, and then took a sip of water. Still no clue.
"What's working for McCoy like?" she asked.
"Not so different from any other doctor, any chief of staff," I said, and she looked skeptical. That's a look she has absolutely down, head a little to one side and chin tucked down and eyes glaring a little, that 'don't try to sell *me* a used flitter' stare.
"Oh, all right," I admitted, "It's not much like the city hospital I was working at before. Here you know all the patients. You know all the medical staff. There's this whole small-town atmosphere with big, big city, spaceport problems."
"McCoy," she reminded me. "*McCoy.*"
"Well, it's connected. So I'm not just anonymous Nurse or even work-atmosphere Nurse Chapel all the time to him."
"No," she said with a surprising amount of heat, "sometimes you're 'You never give up hoping, do you, Christine.'"
I winced, wishing I'd never told her about that. She glared. "It's *true.* It's true! I'll tell you, times I've come in and overheard him talking to you, you're like his best friend, and other times, he's nicer to the *computer* than he is to you."
I looked at her, at a loss, shook my head a little, not denying but not understanding why she was upset about it. "That's Len. That's Doctor McCoy, that's who he *is.* You've heard him talking to the captain and to Mr. Spock and - well, anybody."
"You couldn't make that man consistent with - with a *straight-jacket.* I'd rrather spend all my days in the office and know that if I ever run into my boss he's going to be the same he was that morning and the day before and . . . you know."
"Barring the Psi 2000 virus or something."
She looked down at her placemat, or maybe the clashing colors of the tiles under it. "Yeah, barring - something."
I knew she was remembering the transporter accident that split Captain Kirk into his gentle and agressive sides, and I was appalled. How had we gotten to this point? I reached out without looking, pushed her water glass aside. I covered her hand with mine. "Janice. Janice. I'm so sorry. To make you think of that. Janice, honey."
She looked at me then, her eyes big and bright with the tears she was never going to admit to. "Uhu - " her voice was rough. She cleared her throat, swallowed, cleared it again. "Uhura said, show her a good time tonight."
"We'll show each other a good time."
Her mouth curved a little. "Yeah," and her voice was soft.
I've tended to fall for people who made me feel safe. People taller, older, richer, more intelligent, more experienced, professionally more advanced, more in control. I looked into Janice's eyes and didn't see any of those things, and tenderness took me by the throat and almost would not let me speak.
"When does the hotel let us in, again?" I asked, and stroked the back of her hand. She was the one who had made the reservations.
"It's what now, around 1500 hours? We can't get in until 1700."
"Forever." Yes, it was going to be all right. When she smiled like that I knew.
"Well, we've ordered this food. Twice. That's something to do." She lifted her hand, put her fingers through mine. Her thumb rubbed from the base of mine to the tip.
Eventually the food came, and it *was* good. And it was so very nice to sit outdoors, sun on our heads, breeze wafting - well, sometimes it wafted harder thann others, and I did have to chase my napkin twice. But that was a small price to pay for fresh air. And making Janice laugh. And seeing her tip her head back and sit with her eyes closed, soaking up the sun.
They can forget sandwich plates. The real Starfleet Special is getting off the starship and just sitting outdoors. Ask any ten Starfleet people their hobbies and at least eight of them will be outdoor sports: hiking, camping, fishing, climbing, swimming, hang-gliding, cliff-diving, on and on. How often? Um, on shore leave - some shore leaves - practically never, really. OK, the real hobbies we do every day are chess or poker or tai-chi or something. Crossword puzzles. Knitting. Len reads romance novels. I *swear* it. Or porn. Something he switches off the terminal whenever I come into his office unexpectedly. If I only knew what it was, I'd get him a subscription or some book tapes or something.
"What *can* I buy that man?"
"Liquor," said Janice without even opening her eyes.
"Buy Saurian brandy *here*? It'll cost half my salary."
"Yeah . . . we should be *selling* it . . . if we weren't so - "
"Aware of regulations?"
"Brainwashed, is what I was going to say." Now she was looking at me with that mischievous curve to her mouth. "We could run a regular import business on the side."
"We could be court-martialled, if not executed. Black marketeering is definitely frowned on."
"Even after 28 days in space?"
I just looked at her.
"Sorry. History joke. *Obscure* history joke."
"I thought it was the Captain who was the history buff."
"Well," her eyes dropped, and she pushed her chopsticks around the plate a little, though the noodles were really gone, "no reason I shouldn't learn something from this experience."
I waited for her to look up and smiled straight into her eyes. "*I* certainly have."
We paid the bill; as the waiter left with the credit vouchers, Janice leaned over and said, "Is it me or is he *wiggling* that butt?"
"Maybe he thinks we didn't notice his very fashionable wedgie."
We did more wandering, and we saw more really ugly things, but even when they weren't ugly, I couldn't tell whether Len would like any of them.
I sighed. "It's like buying something for my dad. I wish I could just make Len a shoe tree."
"A card made out of paper," Janice joined in.
"A Christmas ornament made out of a plastic cup."
"Or no, I know. A tie! I bet they wear ties here!"
"Have you ever *seen* a tie?" I was genuinely curious. I'd only seen them on old family pictures, not even holos, just flat still images, some not even in color. Very old. I was never allowed to touch them.
"Only as a sex toy."
"I do *not* want to know that story." All right, I guess there is some reason for her to think I'm ladylike.
She grinned, but didn't say any more.
Actually there was a paper-card store, and I bought one with minty-smelling herbs embedded in the handmade paper, that said "Happy Birthday," and a pen to write in it with. I was getting impatient, and looking at chronometers that were very slowly flipping up numbers between 1630 and 1700.
"It's only fifteen minutes now," said a low voice in my ear while I was putting away my change.
I turned my head and pecked at her cheek. "Let's go, then."
We hardly looked at the room, which was probably a good decision. I couldn't help noticing the icky muddy swirls of mismatched color on the blanket, but we pushed it off to one side and the sheet mostly covered it.
We unzipped each other's uniforms and wriggled out of them, peeled down our tights, stepped out of our boots, as if synchronized. Like the native dress, those uniforms just are intrinsically funny, and we were both grinning as we turned to each other. And then the grins faded, probably also at the same time.
She's so beautiful. Her hips are so narrow, and her breasts fill my hands. They brush against me with such sweetness as I lean forward and kiss her. The softest skin in the universe is on a woman's breasts. Now, I can't stop brushing the sides, even after she pulls me close and I have to bend my arms at an odd angle. Her mouth is smiling under mine and I step forward to bring more of our skin together and she strokes my hips, my too-large hips, she runs her hands round and round and makes them beautiful too. I have never been so beautiful as I am with her. Everywhere she touches, she remakes, and she'll touch me everywhere.
Last time, when I was on her bed, head tipped back, she kissed my throat and her tongue was so warm I flash-fantasized Spock's mouth on my skin - *Spock* - I almost said it, and that would have been awful. None of that. Now I grab her shoulders and say "I'm doing this. I'm going to do this for you," and she sits on the bed and I push her down, gently, and straddle her, on all fours over her.
She lets her arms fall to the mattress, pulls them up above her head, laughs. "I never would have thought you were a stone butch," she teases me. But it doesn't matter that she's amused. It only matters that I can be the giver this time, that she'll follow me, that she'll take the pleasure she gave me.
That I can focus on her and not on fantasy. I balance on my knees and run the backs of my fingers from her armpits to her elbows and back - maybe I'm wrong about the softest skin - this is exquisite. Little patches of short hair under her arms which I tickle a little, asking "What's this?"
"I don't take it all off," she says. "Ohh, because I like that . . ." and now that I know I nuzzle there too. It *is* nice to have the contrast of smoothness and fuzziness, the two soft textures. It's very nice to kiss from there to her breast, feeling her quiver, quivering inside myself.
When I loved Roger, he was gentle and romantic, but he never paid much attention to the details of my body, and I never thought I wanted it. I thought it was passion, it was love, that made him hold me tight and almost motionless, kiss me deeply and look into my eyes, rubbing against me until he was hard, and then after that it never took long before he was finished and asleep.
That first night with Janice, I didn't believe how long it all could take. I never noticed before how my breasts would gradually grow warm, the area near the nipples full and swollen, and then I'd cross some threshold and the aureoles would crinkle up.
Now she's there, and it's so sweet. One breast, the one I'm kissing, has tightened and the nipple is erect, and I run my tongue over and around it. I open my eyes and look sidelong at the other and see that it's still soft, puffy, flushed pink as a rose or the nightgown she wears on board.
She's so fair skinned, even more than I am, so pale that in some places, like her breasts, the skin is translucent and I can see her veins. Sex rash skin, and I'm going to see that rash. I leave this nipple, blow a little to make her shiver, then rub my face across to the other, and almost miss the moment when it crinkles and the nipple hardens under my tongue. I lick, long slow strokes, and she pushes up, and I hold her shoulders down and pull my mouth away.
"I'm going slow," I say, in the closest I have to a stern voice. Drop one kiss in the center of her chest. "Slow." Pushing her breasts together, I lower myself so our hard nipples meet, our softness pushes together, and then I lift myself again. "Right? All right?"
"Yeesss," she says, straining against my hands and then relaxing, boneless.
I drop another kiss on her rib. Another below the floating rib on the other side. More kisses, pausing in between. Sometimes using my tongue. Sometimes not. Uneven intervals. My breasts hang down and brush her, and I use my hands here, there, fingertips, palms, knuckles - and she makes little sounds that have no names and no spellings, open vowels of pleasure, drawn out, musical, a song I have rarely sung and more rarely heard.
I lose myself in the pleasure of giving this pleasure. I don't know how long it lasts. "Oh, I can't -" she says, pushing up with her hips while I'm back at her breast. "Oh, please, inside me, please, when I come," and I slide my hand between her wet thighs and stroke up and down her vaginal lips, swollen and textured and more beautiful than a flower. She spreads her legs, and I see that she clips her hair here, too, but doesn't suppress it, and again I think how right a choice this is, how lovely the color of her flushed skin is and the way her erect clitoris shows, round and bright, bright red. She *is* ready. She is flushed - I take a moment, as I stroke her, to look back up her writhing, sweat-glistening body patched with pink, the rash I have wanted to see, at her eyes closed and her small mouth moaning, and her hair. Amazing sunset pink and gold. I push in my fingers, and she lifts to take them, grips and pushes and shakes and moans.
And I have given her this.
I move my fingers and she shudders again. "More?" I ask.
"I can't stand more," she says slowly. "Later. Maybe." I slide my fingers out and lie down beside her, pull the blanket over us, and hold her.
"I didn't get to do half what I planned," I said smiling.
"We have all night," she says. "I had a few plans, too."
"Good."
She snuggles in tighter. "I'm going to make you scream," she says in a sleepy little girl voice.
"Yes, your turn next," I say, and we lie under the ugly blanket, in the galaxy's most beautiful place.
Len won't find what I found. But I think I'll get him a night in a hotel on Wrigley's, and he can look for it. I'll tell him never to give up hoping.
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Author's Notes:
I never knew this about myself before I started posting to ASCEML: I only have to type "I don't think I could possibly write about . . ." and the idea starts germinating.
Some time ago, I wrote to Mary Ellen that I didn't believe I could write about Chapel. Then I wrote "Holiday Stress." Then she asked for more Rand/Chapel, and I said, oh no, not possible. I'm writing K/S. Later, Animasola started a thread about a video ("Butt-Hungry Aliens: The Final Orgasm"), and in the course of that, after an anecdote by Fennec, ME posted that she wanted a story with a race of aliens who all had wedgies.
I read the post, laughed to myself, and thought, not me.
Then I clicked my word processor icon and started it. Strangest thing.
I thought for a while that my muse could deny Mary Ellen, Doc Science and mother of stand-up comics, nothing - but as a matter of fact, the Mack the Knife filk that I said I'd try to fit in just didn't happen.
There are also traces here (see the title) of the ng discussion Judith Gran and I were having about Kirk's character and leadership. Faint traces, actually. And thanks to skazki for the history joke about how long at sea made sodomy not a capital crime after all.
It's just a 'way newsgroup story.
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