Title: The curse Author: Gil Shalos Series TOS Rating: NC- 17, f/f sex Code: U/f Parts 1/1 Disclaimer: Paramount the mighty owns all, and I'm just borrowing these guys for fun, not for profit. Warning: If explicit lesbian erotica is a) illegal in your jurisdiction; b) illegal for your age group; or c) offensive to you, read no further. Summary: "Lester's Curse": The first part of the story is set some time before "Turnabout Intruder", when Janice Lester was still in Starfleet; the second part of the story is set immediately after "Turnabout Intruder". "Uhura's Curse": The first part of the story a recollection of events set some time before "Turnabout Intruder", when Janice Lester was still in Starfleet; the second part of the story recollections of events set immediately after "Turnabout Intruder". ************* Lester's curse. ********** I saw her enter the bar. Not that I was waiting, not for her. I was waiting for him, but she was one of them, and they were part of him the way I never would be. And so I noticed her. It took me a minute to remember the name. She was one more familiar Starfleet face from shared operations and starbase docks and the occasional drink in the kind of bars that catered to off-duty officers. I knew I'd seen her, though, and then I flashed on that dark face in the crowd of Enterprise officers, half turning to laugh at something *he'd* said, said to *her* and not to me, and I knew. She was so ordinary. I think that's why I went over to speak to her. She was so ordinary, unlike me, nothing special, no reason why she should have what I never got, and that made me wonder. Or perhaps it was that edge I always got a couple of days before my curse came on. Period, I should say. That's so archaic, Janice, my room-mate at school said the first time I called menstruation 'the curse'. So anti-woman. It's a natural process, not a curse. Be proud of it. She didn't say that when she was curled on her bed hugging a hot pack, too embarrassed to see the doctor. Silly bint. I looked up curse in the Anglish dictionary after that. 'Curse: imprecation; accursed object; great evil; bane; utterance consigning person or thing to destruction.' Seemed pretty apt to me. It surely was a bane, and it and all it meant to us was a great evil. And aside from the inconvenience there were those few days before I bled when I couldn't sit still easily, when I watched the bodies of those around me as they moved in their clothes and felt that hot throbbing between my legs that made me want to do something stupid, something dangerous, lay myself open before someone. I had felt like that the day I met James Kirk. He came walking into the room, some room I don't remember what one, it doesn't matter. It never did. He came walking into the room all untidy grace and looked at me and that's all he had to do. I went to him like a dog to its master. I hated him for doing that to me, even when I was shouting out his name with my hands digging into his back. The fact that I was only one in a long line of women who lost their minds when he smiled at them was no excuse. The contributing factor of my hormones only made it worse. It would have been nice to take a pill and know I'd never be so stupid, so vulnerable, again. Never feel like *that* again. I was feeling like *that* when I saw her walk into the bar on Starbase 14. That was part of the reason I stood up and went over to her. I meant to talk, at first. "Uhura." She looked up when I spoke to her, looked up and smiled as if I were just somebody, just anybody. "Uhura. What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" She had a laugh like there was nothing wrong in the world. "Sit down," she said. "What are you drinking? Let me - waiter - let me get you another. It's not every day you run into old friends." Is that what she thought we were? "What brings you here?" I asked. My throat was dry, and I took a quick swallow of the drink she'd ordered for me. "The Enterprise, of course." Oh, how could she say that so lightly? "As always. We're on a stand-down before the next survey mission, Scotty wants to rejig the matter- antimatter mix." "I expect it's in response to the latest study on long term stressing on the dilithium in the Constellation classes, due to the inherent wave-rebound effect in the insulator barriers." I said, and cursed myself. As if she cared that I knew as much about running a starship as any of them. As if it mattered that she knew. The only ones who mattered would never hear me, would never listen, just as they'd never listen to her. "Partly, but also he's been monitoring a flux in the Duane lines at medium warp speeds, and I think he wants to get that eliminated." So. She obviously paid attention at staff briefings. I was surprised that he'd let a woman sit in on briefings that got that technical, and surprised that any woman who took the path she had, to live on his terms in his world, would have the brains to understand them. Maybe she was smarter than I'd thought. Maybe it was guts she didn't have, that kept her locked in the path of what was allowed rather than what was owed. We drank a little too much. I made sure she drank more than I did. I still don't know when I made up my mind, when my intention became clear. I don't think it was in the bar at all. After a while, though, my hand was on her thigh, under the table, just resting there on the silky skin just below her uniform skirt. Those short skirts they made us wear! Oh, for sure, there was the unisex uniform option, but you just knew what would happen to a woman who dared to take it. The whispering. The comments behind your back. "Chick with a dick" would be the least of it. Uhura played the game, the way I never did. How else did she get where she was? She played the game, wore the cock-teasing dress, flashed her legs and her tits and her smile. Traitor. Curse you, traitor to yourself and to me. I moved my hand a little and she smiled a little and I smiled back. "Janice..." she said, low in her throat. I ran my knuckles down to her knee and back up. Her eyes narrowed. "Nice?" I asked her. She laughed softly, and then made another sound as I brushed my fingertips at the edge of her skirt, slipped them beneath it. "Nice?" The skin of her hip was soft and yielding. I traced a circle with my nail, soft, harder, and she lowered her head as if looking into her drink. "Nice?" Around her hip and down the inside of her thigh, feather touch soft. There were no bony edges to Uhura. "Ohhh..." she said, and her eyes were dark when she met my gaze. "Ohhh, yes." "I have a room," I told her, walking my fingers down the inside of her thigh. "I could be - ah - very nice to you there." "Mmmm... I'd like that." As if it were nothing to be ashamed of. As if it wasn't something to hide, in case they found out and marked you down as a woman who wouldn't play their game. As if she hadn't had to lie and smile and fuck the right men to get that bridge posting. "Let's go." I told her. Helping her up, I let my hand brush her heavy breasts, and felt the tremor that went through her, felt it in my gut and between my legs. We left the bar holding hands, and she tickled the base of my thumb with her fingers until I had to tighten my grip to keep her still. My room was small, and cheap, the best I could afford on my pay, the best pay I'd get until I let them break me and make me act like they thought a woman should. It seemed larger and more beautiful with Nyota Uhura in it. That made me angry, but I didn't show it. I didn't want to hurt her. I didn't think I wanted to hurt her. I wanted - She reached for me, but I took her hands and held them away from me. "No." I said. "Not yet. Not yet." Still holding her by the wrists I stepped in close to her, almost touching. Her nipples brushed mine as she breathed. She held my gaze, smiling slightly, until I turned away and bent my head so that my mouth nearly touched her neck. She was wearing some perfume or other, but I could smell her skin beneath it. I breathed her in, inhaling the musky fragrance of her neck, the faint citrus bite of her collar bone, the peach sweetness at the side of her face. I brushed her lips with mine, pulled away, leaned in to lick her jawbone and dodged when she tried to kiss me. "I want to let you go," I said. "I want to use my hands. I want to touch you." "Yes." she said. "Janice, yes." "Promise you won't move." "Oh, god." "Promise. Or I won't let you go." I kissed her throat, the hollow at the base of her neck, and she shuddered. "Oh, I promise." It was easy to strip her out of that uniform and when she was naked I nearly lost my breath. For all they showed, those stupid uniforms concealed as well. They concealed the power of the female body, by making it something for men to look at. Naked, Nyota Uhura was glory and fire and night, the freedom of the stars I longed for, and I took hold of her and kissed her and pressed myself against her and felt her slow, thick breathing and the hammering of her heart go through and through me. "Bed." I said, and pushed her back towards it. She tried to touch me again when I knelt over her and I held her hands above her head. "No. Don't touch me." I think she started to protest but when I bent to her and kissed her off centre, my tongue probing the corner of her mouth, she gasped instead, and when I let her hands go she left them stretched above her head, gripping the headboard as I teased her. I traced her lips with my tongue, delicate licks like a cat with cream, my body stretched out full on hers. I moved so my uniform rubbed against her body, harsh on smooth, as I ran my hand up from her waist to the curve of her breast and tested its generous weight. The skin of her waist was smooth, the skin of her hips was ridged slightly with the puckers and stretch marks of an adult woman, the skin of her breasts was soft and the flesh beneath yielded to my touch. I could have lain for hours feeling the way she gave beneath my fingers, watching her face as her lips parted and her eyes closed. I travelled down her body to those weighty, rounded hips and thighs and traced the stretch marks with my tongue. They were barely visible on her dark skin, but I could follow each path with my mouth, even when she moaned and moved. I could smell the juices of her cunt, like the tang of the ocean on some world I have never visited. I thought of lying with her on a beach, both of us naked to the sea, feeling her on my skin. I wanted to take off my clothes and tell her to touch me. That wasn't why I was there. I brushed my fingers across the thick dampness of her pubic hair and used the moisture to write my name across her belly. "Say my name." I ordered her. "Janice." "Say my name." "Janice!" The skin of her dark nipples was like the velvet petals of a black rose until arousal hardened them. I sucked at her breasts and felt her breathing quicken. I could hear her heart pound when I laid my head against her chest. "Janice..." she said, pleading, pushing her hips against me. She wanted so openly, so freely, I could tell she had never known what was possible, had only known what men called sex, called love. I touched the inside of her thigh, the outer lips of her sex. When I touched her clit she came at once, grunting. Her face twisted. It doesn't matter what you look like when it's another woman, you don't have to try to be beautiful when you only want to let go. I kissed her, bit her lower lip where it was plum dark with excitement. She tried to tell me to stop as I kept stroking her, slowly, hard. She tried to tell me to stop but my mouth was over hers and a moment later she was crying out against me and her body shook again beneath mine. I was breathing as hard as she was by then. That wasn't the way it was supposed to go. I hadn't expected her body to have so much power over mine. Curse you for what you do to me, Nyota Uhura. When I put my hand to her mouth so she could smell herself, taste herself, she took it as permission to reach for me and for a second I let her. I let myself have the feel of her hands on my back, at my waist, just for a second, and then I slipped away from her and knelt between her legs. "Oh, no, god, not more," she said when I nuzzled her cunt, but her body contradicted her. She opened and closed beneath my lips like a sea anemone. I put my tongue to her clit and slipped one finger inside her, then another. She said no, no more again and then again and then she called my name and I felt her contract around my fingers. Will you remember this, Nyota Uhura, when next you lie in the bed of one of them? Will they touch you like this, Nyota Uhura? Or like this? Or like - ahh, you like that. Do they make you cry out like that? Do they have the power to make you feel like this? Or this? Curse them for what they never give you. My fingers found the little nub of nerves high inside her and mapped around it. Uhura groaned, straining against me. I don't think she knew who it was touching her, by then. I know she didn't care. I wondered what the men who took her would have thought, to see her as she was then with me. Her face was flushed dark, contorted, glistening with sweat. Her mouth hung slack. Rolling her hips, she moved against my fingers, moaning as she fondled her own breasts. No doubt any man who'd seen her would have run for his life. I pulled away from her, capturing her hands again when she reached to replace my touch with her own. "Do you want me to stop?" I teased her. She arched off the bed. "Do you want me to go on?" I brushed her lips with my fingers and she raised her head to suck them before I pulled away. "Do you?" "I - want - I - god! Please!" "You have to tell me." I whispered in her ear, letting her feel my weight on her, letting my lips just touch her. "You have to tell me, Nyota. Tell me." "Yes." she panted, barely intelligible. "Yes. Yes." "Yes, what, Nyota?" "Yes, touch me, yes, please, damn it, yes..." 'Do you want me to fuck you?" "Fuck me, yes, fuck me..." In the end she forgot all about trying to touch me back. She was mine, utterly. Gloriously out of control, incoherent, eyes unseeing, her body writhing obediently, involuntarily, under my touch. When I finally let her rest she fell asleep almost immediately. The flush of blood beneath her skin was like the last moments of red dusk as the sun goes down into night and the stars shine. I stood and watched her for a while, as the bite marks on her skin faded and the sweat dried. I knew why I'd brought her there, then. This is my curse on you, Nyota Uhura, I told her silently. May you know what you could have. I paid for the room up until the next day and returned to my ship. ************* She came to see me when it was all over. I don't remember what she said. I don't remember what I said. I remember the way she looked, leaning against the wall outside the brig, as if she was too tired to stand upright. She looked so weary and so sad that I wanted to take her in my arms and rock her like a child. Who hurt you, Nyota? I'll kill them. Except there was a forcefield between us; and the one who'd hurt her was me. I gambled and I lost and it was worth it, Nyota, it was worth it for the chance. Do you understand? I played for higher stakes than you. I played for freedom while you were playing it safe. Which of us loses more? Did you hear what he said, your captain? Better to be dead than live in the body of a woman. Remember that next time you look at him. But oh, why add to the weight she has to carry? I'm no fairy godmother, Nyota, I can't bless you and ease your way. All I have is my curse. This is my curse for you, Nyota Uhura. Curse them if they hurt you. Curse them if they let you down. Curse them for all they do to us. I wish I could remember what she said. Oh, I wish I could remember what she said. **** *************** Uhura's curse. ************* A lot later, I was telling Christine about that night on Starbase 14 and she said that there used to be a word for women who acted the way Janice Lester had that night: stone butch. I don't know, it doesn't fit her somehow. Well, maybe half. Somewhere along the line, someone turned her to stone. You get it sometimes with men, young men in particular, who seem to think that the measure of their manhood is how many times you come. That wasn't quite it with Janice. She was proving something and using my body as her proving ground, sure, but she touched me ... she touched me as if she wanted to, it wasn't just technique. I should say that I knew from the moment she wouldn't let me hold her that there was more going on than just a sexy mind game. I should say that I looked into her eyes and saw that she was empty inside, that a chill ran up my spine, that I stayed in that room because she wove a spell over me and I couldn't leave. I should say all that, but none of it would be true. I felt guilty, of course. You always do, when sex turns out to be all about your pleasure and not your partner's, but that time it was her call and not mine. I felt a *little* guilty. I wonder if anything would have been different if I'd felt a *lot* guilty and gone looking for her the next day. I wonder if anything would have been different if I hadn't gone along with her game so readily. I doubt it. Looking back on it, I'm still surprised how little we actually said to each other. Usually, with women, there's that rush for emotional intimacy before you even get to bed, the chitchat between bouts and hours of gossip afterwards. Janice was in a hurry. I think we talked Starfleet gossip and then her hand was under my skirt and she was looking at me with her eyes dark with lust and that mocking smile... I was surprised. I mean, not just because I remembered when she'd been the captain's lover. It's hardly a novelty if a man or a woman takes a partner of a different gender to the last one they'd had: hell, it's not a novelty if they take a partner from a different *species* to the last one, out here in the deep. I was surprised because I'd never picked Janice as someone who'd take her pleasure where she found it. She'd seemed ... well, she hadn't seemed like she was that comfortable with herself, to me. And then we were in her room and she kissed my neck, my jaw, and I felt it all the way down to the soles of my feet. It felt good to let her take charge, to be selfish and not to worry about what she wanted, what she needed. At first I assumed it would be turn and turn about and after a while I'd be the one touching, kissing, caressing... and then, as she traced fire over my skin with her lips and fingers, I stopped thinking clearly enough to assume anything. She knew where I needed to be touched before I knew myself. She made me wait and then she wouldn't let me stop and then she stopped when all I wanted was for her to go on... When I remember Janice Lester, that's how I think of her, in a Starfleet uniform in a dingy little room, leaning over me. Face flushed, her hair damp at the temples. I remember her and I can almost feel her fingers on my clit, her breath hot on my nipples. Do you want me to stop, she asked, her teeth grazing my ear. Do you want me to go on, she asked, running her fingers over my mouth. It's strange how so simple a touch can make you feel like your whole body has been plunged in fire. And I want to go back, and say, stop, Janice. Stop. Just stop here, now, and maybe we can - maybe it would be - maybe you would - ********************** I went to see her in the brig, afterwards. After we caught her, and reversed what she'd done to the captain and to herself. She looked like less than herself, collapsed inward somehow as she sat on the edge of the bunk. I thought she might hate me for the part I'd played in her defeat, but when she looked up and saw me there was nothing but weariness on her face. "Nyota." Nothing in her voice, either. "Come to gloat?" "No." "No. Sorry. I didn't think you would. Sorry I can't offer you a seat, but -" She indicated the bare room, the force-field at the door. "I guess this proves you were right all along." "Right about what?" "About the only game in town. I thought I could win without playing. I thought without this goddamn woman's body I could be - they would have to -" Her eyes filled with tears suddenly. "Not the first time I've been wrong. And the damned thing is, I've never been able to learn the rules." I leaned against the wall by the force-field, looking for the right words. "Do you think I've been playing a game?" I asked her at last, with a bright flash of anger that she would dismiss me that easily. My years of effort, my studies, my qualifications, my professionalism, just 'playing their game'. "Is that what you think?" "Oh, I know you can't admit it," Janice said, and the pity in her voice was hard to bear. "But it's their game. Their rules. You play it well. Congratulations. I hope - I hope it's worth the price. Now you know the price." I remembered her touching me the way she wouldn't let herself be touched. I remembered the moment I thought I'd seen hatred in her face, in the bar. I remembered the way she'd been gone when I woke, aching between my legs from her relentless touch. "I'm sorry," she said, "that I showed you. Better to be happy in ignorance, than - " "What makes you think it was any kind of revelation?" I asked her, and her eyes went wide with shock. "Is that what you thought? That women are the only good fucks and you're the only woman who ever wanted me?" Janice sighed. "So you've done it before. Good for you. Good luck keeping them from finding out. I guess it gives you something to think about when you're putting up with one of them ogling your ass or on top of you, pumping away." I wanted to say to her, men are not the enemy. I wanted to say, do you think I'd wear something I wasn't comfortable in? I wanted to explain that it was never as simple as she thought, between men and women, between people, that it was about trust and vulnerability and pleasure and there were no rules of gender attached to that, but it would have taken days and I had only a few minutes, and besides, it was something she had to figure out for herself. Most of all, I wanted to kiss her the way she'd kissed me, with longing and desire and respect, and touch her the way she wanted to be touched. Oh, I had known, in that little room on Starbase 14, that she was giving to me all she was longing to have. I should have rolled her over and held her down and kissed her. Kiss the princess, and break the curse. Or perhaps I could have proved my grandmother's stories right and held her until the power of the goddess poured through me and brought her back to life. But she was not a princess, and I was not a goddess. We were only women, and there was a wall between us, now. "Good luck, Janice." I said, and turned away. When they took her off the ship everyone relaxed, none more than the Captain. "God save us," he said, "from women who want to be men." "She didn't want to be a man, sir." I said, and held his gaze when he drew breath to interrupt. "She wanted to be a person." He frowned, puzzled, but credit where credit's due, the Captain was never as narrow as you might have thought. He'd worry at that until he understood it. I thought about telling him about the line I'd learnt to walk, being an officer and being a woman instead of being an officer *despite* being a woman. I thought about telling him how difficult it could be, how strong you had to be, how you had to learn to get tough without getting hard and how some women just couldn't do it and it wasn't fair that they had to. We'd have had the time, with two years ahead of us, but I didn't say anything. It was something he'd have to figure out for himself, as well. Bless you, I cursed him, that you may one day understand what you can have. ****** FINIS **********