SONGBOOK
by Angelina Vansen (angelina@gunmetaldark.com)

RATING: NC-17
CODES: J/7
SUMMARY: A response to the challenge at Janeway7, celebrating Fire and Ice's first birthday, to write a story featuring none other than a birthday celebration. I have done this, and it also features fire and ice as well! How's that for thorough? This is sort of inspired by the Bjork song "Unison", the lyrics of which can be read by clicking here.


One hand loves the other, and mine looks so small, entangled with that piece of Borg perfection. Each fingertip delicately sucked, and they didn't taste that much of metal. Warm, as well. What do you know? What does anyone know about Seven of Nine?

I love her.

It is in me like a dark, churning tide, under everything in me. I haven't spoken it yet. But I am awake with it, it is solid in my throat, it is a physical presence in me. When I speak it, I expect it will be far too much. A moment that could drive me mad with its power. I am not sure I can handle it.

Today is my birthday. I woke this morning, showered and dressed and went on duty. Everyone said cursory happy birthdays to me, and I pretended to be happy with the cursory gifts I got. Books, mostly. A coffee cup from Chakotay. We got on with the day.

I'm getting a little too old to make a fuss on my birthday.

In the evening, there was a party in the Mess Hall, where Neelix trotted out his usual party fare, including the usual bright blue cake. Everyone came in uniform, but everyone came out of politeness. I run a very polite ship.

I raised a glass and toasted them, my "family". Everyone smiled, and we took a group photograph. My family. It's charades like this that make Voyager such a goddamn lonely place.

Then they sang to me, a grim, cheerless Happy Birthday from a godforsaken piece of space. I thanked them, and everyone hung around, not wanting to be the first to leave.

The party probably went on too long for Tom Paris' taste. He started getting loud and not very funny. It was obvious he wanted to leave. When he came over to me and asked me for a birthday kiss, it was obvious he wanted another thirty days in the brig.

I surprised him, and turned my lips to his. Unsurprisingly, though, he demurred, and placed a soft kiss on my cheek, instead.

"What's the matter?" I asked him, low, but so my voice carried. "Daren't slip the tongue to your Captain?"

His face darkened. "I would," he hissed. "But I don't fancy having my throat torn out by your besotted little Borg."

I looked at Seven. She looked at me, her bloodless face .

After the party, and a soft kiss from Chakotay, I went to the holodeck and turfed out Ensigns Stent and Sigurdsson. It was their allotted time, but I'm the Captain, and it was my birthday.

I ran my program of the glacier head. The interminable uphill march through snow, with snow blowing in my face, blocking my vision. It's not cold snow, so I didn't need to dress up warm. It's just a visual representation. I have never made it to the top, if there is a top, but as I walk uphill, I always lose all sense of myself. It is a very cathartic program.

I got angry with things. Paris, first, and I swore loudly, shouting into the whistling heart of the wind. Angry at my crew that had died. How could I sleep? Angry at Chakotay for being so pathetically in love with me, still. Everywhere I turn, his needy face, and yet he wouldn't make a move. Wouldn't risk my rejection. Angry at Mark for marrying someone else. How could he? Didn't he know I loved him so very much I couldn't begin to tell him?

Then the sadness. The overwhelming fucking distance we still had to cover. All that empty space just hangs in me, in the space between my chest and ribs. Fear of what is in that space. Fear of what it means in me.

Then Seven. Where did that one come from? Her white face looking at me, across the mess hall. Her lips pink and nude. Her eyes wide and so afraid. Besotted, Paris had said. Her eyes said discovery.

As I trudged further, I began to cry. Loudly, snivelling like a small child, wiping my eyes and my nose on the back of my sleeve. Every step crunched in the ice. I ... love .. her. I ... love ... her. With every step.

"Oh, God ..." I cried out loud.

Then, about six feet behind me, the holodeck doors opened in the icy vista. There was Seven.

"What?!" I yelled at her, too far gone to stop the tears pouring down my face.

"Please come out of the holodeck, Captain," she begged.

"No!" I shouted. "Just ... just leave me alone." I walked on, into the blinding storm.

She ran after me, grabbed my arm, pulled me round to face her.

The snow blew across her face, catching in her eyelashes, catching on her silver implants, catching on the dermoplastic fabric of her bosom. Strands of her white hair came loose, and blew across her cheeks.

I threw her hands off me.

"Don't touch me, Seven," I warned her.

"Please ..." she said. "I don't like this storm ...."

"Neither do I," I said. "That's the point."

"I want to talk to you," she pleaded. "I ... I have to."

"Don't say it, Seven," I warned her. I really didn't want to hear it. Besotted, Paris had said. Christ almighty, I didn't need besotted.

Seven started to cry as well, then. Her mouth open, the hot breath of it going right across my face. Everything of her glittered in the light of the snow. Her eyes filled up.

She stumbled off, back towards where the holodeck door was. Not bothering to wipe her own tears off her face. Back to her cold black space, the cargo bay. Travelling through mine.

"Seven," I said. Maybe not loud enough for her to hear. Leaving it to fate.

She didn't hear.

"Seven!" I called, much louder this time. What do you know? What does anyone know about Kathryn Janeway?

She turned back, her face a misery. "Yes?" she asked, her voice choked with the mucus in her throat.

"Come with me," I said. "There's a cabin ..."

We walked West in silence. Always in this program there is a cabin if you walk West. A light on inside, almost snowed in. Smoke coming from the chimney. Inside is a character who makes the tea and accommodates you. Once, I had sex with him, but never again. I hate myself when I have sex with holograms. I deactivated him as we walked inside. He had made up the bed with furs for me.

"Why don't you play this program cold?" Seven asked me in a small voice.

"Sometimes I do. But I wasn't equipped tonight," I told her. "It's more of a mental release, anyway. Walking into the snow like that helps to clear my head."

"I dislike it," she said, but she didn't explain why.

Perhaps it was too chaotic. Perhaps it was because she had dreamed of an icy wilderness while she and the Doctor were in charge of the ship. When she was one. Perhaps she just didn't like the winter.

She sat down on the rug and watched the fire, mesmerised by it. Her face looked so lost and fragile that there again I could see the little frightened Annika the Borg took. Also I could see the bloodless drone behind the forcefield in my brig. "I'll kill you," she had told me. Now I was willing to see where she could.

"Computer, activate the temperature of the fire," I said, and the warmth spread slowly throughout the room.

Seven watched me for a moment as I dimmed the oil lamps, doing everything so slowly even though my heart was beating hard. When I came and knelt beside her on the hearth rug, she was still so silent. So lovely. The rich light of the fire rolled across her skin in waves.

I took her hair down first, pulling out the two efficient pins and rubbing her scalp where I knew it would be tender. Her eyes remained wide, on mine. She wasn't saying anything. She didn't know if I was seducing her or not. I wasn't completely sure myself.

"Seven," I said, and the voice that came out of me was rich and hearty. "Do you know how to kiss?"

She moved in close, and held her lips to mine. They felt full, and fat, and pursed, and her skin was so much warmer than it looked. I thought of Mark, oddly. This was the first time I'd felt need since him.

When she pulled away and looked at me, she looked so young! A teenager on her first date, maybe. Is this how I'd looked when I was with Cheb? How could he bear to break me? I didn't think I wanted to make love with Seven then.

But her lips were back on mine just then, with soft, soft pleasure. Trying again, and this time, she seemed to succumb to her instincts. Mouth open, and she smelled so good in this odourless place that was so obviously the holodeck. Just the scent of her skin and her hair, the taste of her breath. I had forgotten what it was like to kiss another human being. For a while, I was consumed with that, just kissing her.

We had broken apart and were placing light kisses to the sides of each other's mouths when she spoke it. My eyes were closed, and I was panting. My hand was on her breast, rock solid through the dermoplastic suit, but something to hang on to. Something to caress.

"Should I copulate with you now?" she asked. "In the bed?"

I was on fire. That was probably the most clinical, sterile proposition I'd ever had, but it turned my stomach into warm glowing oil.

"Ohhhh ..." I moaned. "Ohhh, yes." The sounds came from my throat like a song. What a birthday gift.

I got up, still fully clothed in boots and everything, and took her by the hand across the room to the bed. Her eyes watched me solemnly. Waiting for her cues.

Underneath her suit, Seven was quite naked, and her skin was very soft and pink from being nurtured all day by the dermoplastic. Everywhere I put my mouth, it yielded like it was filled with soft gel. Maybe it was Seven, or maybe it was just because she was a woman. Here I didn't think of Mark at all.

Everything I did to her, she seemed surprised. Tickled by my breath on her neck. Stirred by my gentle lapping on her nipples. Shocked when I bit down on one, thinking I was hurting her. Trying to pull my head away and then crying out at the feeling of my teeth pulling that tender tip. All the time, the sound going through my head was the song of the snow outside, crunching beneath my feet, and the rhythm of it. The words. I ... love ... her. I ... love ... her. Every footstep now every heartbeat. Still I didn't say it.

I noticed how her skin went dead around her implants. I wondered if the suit was helping that. I hoped to God she wasn't dead between her legs. I thought that would be too much. I thought that I would cry if that were the case.

I moved my head from her breasts and moved down. I hoped to God I could make her come. Make her feel some sort of pleasure, some reason to cling to me in this dark little hut on a dark little ship in the back end of space.

She sat up as I slid my mouth onto her, crying aloud. She couldn't have even masturbated, this was completely unknown to her. Her Borg hand went into my hair as she held me against her, rocking her hips quite instinctively.

I must have looked ridiculous. I can think that right now, in the cold light of day. A Starfleet Captain, in uniform, four pips at her collar, giving oral pleasure to a liberated Borg drone. Animal noises of lust came from my throat. This was all I wanted for the rest of my life. Seven of Nine. Seven of Nine. I ... love ... her. I didn't say a word. My mouth was full.

She clutched me to her and suffocated me while she came, bucking her hips up into the air. Crying loudly. Oh, God I felt such elation. She was happy. I could do it. Make her happy.

I stood up and undressed myself and my panties were so wet when I took them off. Seven raised herself off to lap at the wetness on the tops of my thighs. Nuzzling for my scent.

I settled on top of her, spreading my legs the way I do when I masturbate, rippling against her. My nipples against hers, our hips rocking together. Panting and crying out into her mouth as she kissed me in a long, breathy sigh. Her hand worming between us, plunging two fingers inside me. She brought it to her face to suck my taste before offering it to me to suck, as well. I tasted salty and rich off her metal implants. Hot. I climaxed then and there, silently, screwing my face up and burying it in her shoulder to shudder, and shudder and shudder.

Afterwards, we didn't say a thing, and Seven went to sleep then, me holding her. I am holding her now. Her mouth slightly open, her breath only just audible. Part of her looks like the tortured corpse of a little girl, the other part looks like the pale bald statue who walked out of her alcove on that cube. Hissing and strong. One part goes with the other, holding hands.

Holding my hand. One hand loves the other, and there's so much on me.

"I love you," I whisper to her sleeping ears, and I survive.

THE END

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