Stranger Things

The bar was dim, one pale lighting tube winding vaguely across the ceiling to huddle and die in a corner. The light it shed reflected on the glasses standing on the low tables and the bar, and on the hair of the men and women who sat and drank. Jenna took a seat in a far corner and punched the button before her.

"Ffiri. Iced," she ordered, and settled back to wait.

She had left the others behind, making her own way into the port as soon as they teleported down. For fifty hours she was her own mistress, and she intended to make the most of it. Six people trapped aboard one ship, even one as large and fast as Liberator, made for unbearable tension at times. She looked forward to two days without any too-familiar voices, even Zen's.

A silent waiter brought her drink, smoking slightly as the cooling unit in the base of the glass kept the colorless liquor at a biting cold. Paying him, she took it and turned slightly in her chair, eyeing her surroundings.

The bar was nearly three-quarters full, with the unclassed jumble of people typical of a frontier world. Some sort of game was going on at a table to one side, and judging by the hushed attention of the players and spectators, more than a little money was at stake. Elsewhere, prostitutes moved among the patrons, men and women, making smiling suggestions. As she watched, one took a burly labourer's arm and drew him through the door in the back wall. The door led, Jenna knew, to an upper floor of small, comfortless bedrooms, each with a coin-operated time lock on the door. She'd been in enough places like this before, had occasionally dropped a coin into one of those locks, and later left a folded bill or two on the table by the bed.

She shrugged and turned away. She sipped at her drink, and icy numbness coated her throat, erupting a moment later into the flame of the alcohol. Her fingers tightened on the glass in surprise; it was purer than she had expected, in a place like this. She took another swallow, feeling the cold fire wash through her body.

"Hi," said a voice at her shoulder. She looked up to see a young man, blond as she was, leaning engagingly over her. His hair was long and curling, and his dark blue trousers were cut low under the tight vest to show his navel and several centimeters of skin. "I'm Mical," he said, and smiled forthrightly.

She grinned back at him. She had nothing against prostitutes personally, had been good friends with Nina on Capri Seven, years ago. But she was easily ten years older than this boy with his teased blond hair, peering so hopefully at her. "I'm sure you are," she said, "but I'm not interested. Run along."

The young face fell a little, then brightened suddenly. "Want to meet my sister?"

"No. Now shoo." She turned her back on him, taking another long swallow of the burning ffiri, and felt rather than heard him move away. Scanning the bar again, she stiffened suddenly.

Avon had come in, outlined in the doorway for a moment before he moved to sit at the bar, almost directly under the light strip on the ceiling. She could see him clearly.

She wondered for a moment if she should leave. Would he see her? But dammit, she was here first, and anyway she was in the back, where the light was poor. He hadn't even looked around since he sat down. A waiter brought him a drink, and his fingers curved around the small glass, but he did not lift it.

She watched him for a while, enjoying the feeling of being unknown. On the ship he seemed to sense eyes upon him with uncanny ability, and when he turned to meet a gaze she could never maintain it. Looks, words, he deflected them all with a skill so subtle one hardly realized what was happening, only that he was never quite what, or where, one thought. But now, unaware, he sat before her, and she took the opportunity.

His back was completely straight, not needing the support that the bar stool did not give. Only his neck curved as his head bent over the untouched drink. The pale light of the ceiling strip brought out auburn highlights in his brown hair and reflected off the metal trim of his shirt. Her eyes slid down his body, noticing how flat his stomach was, between narrow hips. She realized she had finished her drink, and punched for another.

She and Avon treated each other with wary respect, aboard the Liberator. The first time they were alone together, aboard her, they had nearly come to violence, Avon trying to insist on leaving Blake to fend for himself on Cygnus Alpha. That direct confrontation had been a mistake, one they had each silently acknowledged and avoided, since. They moved deliberately about each other, always leaving the other plenty of space and never coming too close. As if sparks would leap, overstressed metal shatter, if they touched.

The ffiri burned in her throat and behind her eyes. Alcohol always made her slow and deliberate, deepening her voice and damping out her thinking. She'd never understood how Vila could be so energetic, so petulant, on the frequent occasions when he managed to get drunk. And Blake, the once she'd gone drinking with him, had become even more intense, more desperately focussed. Whereas she just grew more relaxed, calmer. She shifted slightly in the chair.

Blake. She'd finally worked up the nerve to proposition him, two days ago. And he had only looked at her from under those thick eyebrows, and said sadly, "No. I'm sorry." And walked away, leaving her standing in the hallway before her cabin, clenching her fists in frustrated humiliation.

He had treated her exactly the same, since. Scrupulously the same. That only made it worse.

Avon's motion caught her attention again, as he abruptly tilted his head back and downed the amber liquid in one swallow. She could see him react, his eyes widening slightly as the alcohol hit his throat. He dropped his head forward again over the empty glass, and dragged the back of one hand across his mouth. It was not a gesture she had ever expected to see, from him.

Her glass was empty. The cold fog that had hovered over it now roiled slowly in her brain. The light picked out every detail of Avon's clothing, the seam of his tunic curving slightly as it rounded a hip, his pants disappearing neatly into the knee-high boots. The tight line of his mouth, impeccable as always, with no sign of the awkward, casual gesture of a moment before. Leaving her empty glass on the table, she swung to her feet.

She slid onto the stool beside him, and he did not look up. "Buy you a drink?" Her voice was rough from the ffiri.

His head turned slowly, and as those dark eyes rose to hers she looked away, catching at the sleeve of a passing bartender. "Ffiri. And another of what he had." The man nodded and moved away. She turned back to Avon, who met her gaze for a moment. Then he nodded, once, and looked back at his glass. The light bar curved in miniature in the last drops in its bottom.

The drinks arrived, and she paid for both. She rolled her glass in her hands, not speaking, feeling the condensation forming under her fingers, the cold leaking even through the insulated glass. Sipping, it burned to her stomach and lit hot wires through her lungs, her thighs. Avon took his small glass between two slender fingers and drank it all at once, then set it back on the bar.

She looked at the door in the back wall, standing slightly ajar. Turning, she met his eyes returning from the same place. They held hers for a long moment.

Well, she thought. Still not speaking. Speaking would shatter the glass-thin line of anonymity between them. Strangers in a bar. She was drunk, or she would never have thought of it. Was she thinking of it?

He said nothing. Only watched her, eyes strangely bright. His pupils were huge in the dimness. The light bar crawled through them, reflected in the faint wetness of his eyes. She absently traced its curves, until he blinked and she abruptly realized that she had been staring. Flushing slightly, she gulped at her ffiri, then winced at the flare of iciness.

Then he stood. Still silent, he waited by her stool. She could feel the dark eyes resting on her hair. She looked at the mist above her drink, brought it to her lips and inhaled it, pulling it inside her. Then she slid off the stool and moved with him to the back of the bar. To the door, and the dingy stair beyond.

He had a coin ready for the lock. It latched with quiet finality behind them, and as he turned from pulling it closed she put out her hands, running them over his chest, pulling his shoulders to her and his mouth down. His tongue slid inside her mouth, wetly hot after the burning ice of ffiri, and she sucked, drawing his saliva into her throat. Fingers were unlacing her shirt.

She squeezed her eyes shut as it parted and fell away from her breasts, and reached out blindly, feeling for the pressure seam of his tunic. Then he pulled away for a moment, away from her hands, and before she had time to wonder the room went absolutely, completely dark. She opened her eyes, closed them again. A hand found her shoulder, and her shirt was gone, vanished in the anonymous blackness. Fingers slid under her bra to cup her breast.

He undressed her, and she him, feeling in the dark for the closures of his trousers. Their clothing was gone when it left their skin, eaten by the pressing darkness. The bed touched the back of her knee, and she pulled him down onto it.

His legs were slim and muscular, wrapping around hers and forcing them apart. She ran a hand along his back, then gasped and arched upwards as his lips fastened on a nipple and sucked, his tongue flicking the upthrust tip. She bit his neck and felt a moment's satisfaction when he moaned and rolled his head, baring the tender skin.

His erection probed between her legs, slipping in the wetness smearing her inner thighs. He rolled his hips against her and thrust, exploring, but she worked an arm under him and pushed him heavily over onto his back, pinning him down with her elbows on his legs. He lay still on the bed, not resisting, only breathing rapidly as she fingered him, then took him into her mouth. She sucked hard, using her weight to hold him motionless; his shallow breaths began to catch in his throat.

Then fingers clamped on her shoulders, pulling her away, and he rolled over on top of her, using one hand to guide himself in. She cried out at his first thrust, feeling the hot burn down the inside of her legs from her crotch to her feet. He took his weight on his elbows and buried his face in her hair.

She could see nothing, less than nothing, in the smothering dark. The muscles stood out in his arms and back, and the only sound was his hoarse breathing, and the slapping thrust of his body against hers. The sweetish smell of sex and perspiration filled her mind.

She raised her legs higher, around his waist, and he straightened his arms, arching above her until their bodies touched only in their groins, in the frantic sliding thrust of arousal. She gritted her teeth and dug her fingers into the corded muscle of his forearms. The hard thrusting was a torture of frustration; her clitoris throbbed and burned, crying out for direct touch.

She clenched her eyelids together, grinding them shut until flashes of purple light lit the darkness. Blake, she tried to think, tried to imagine him rearing above her. But the hips between her thighs were too narrow, the stomach flat above her own. She couldn't sustain the illusion.

Instead, Avon's face began to etch itself above her in the smothering blackness. Were his eyes open, shut? He was breathing through his mouth, raspingly; she could almost see the desperate, agonized concentration on his face as he thrust, and felt her tighten around him, and thrust again. She clenched tightly, deliberately around his shaft, and heard his breath choke off, and then a hoarse, sharp cry, surprising her with its sudden ripping of the silence. His elbows locked and she felt the tiny pulse, throbbing at the base of his penis.

He hung for a moment, gasping; then his arms collapsed and he fell heavily across her. She wrenched a vicious, half-sobbing breath, silently cursing him with each frustrated nerve. He pulled his hips back, slipping from between the swollen lips of her cunt. She clenched her fists at her sides.

Then he slid down, pulling a trail of wetness from between her legs along his stomach and chest, until his mouth found her and fastened explosively on that one desperate spot.

She gasped, pushing frantically up to meet his tongue. His shoulders forced her legs still further apart, and two fingers slid inside her, moving slowly and deliberately while his tongue circled faster. She threw her head back; the pleasure built unbearably, swelling in her groin, washing in burning waves down her legs, until she swayed for eternity on the brink before plunging into the welcome abyss.

She almost cried his name, strangling herself on it as she jerked half upright with the strength of the contractions, feeling herself tight around his fingers. It came out a long wordless cry, and she collapsed back on the bed, his hand and mouth a firm pressure against her as she was wrung by the slowly fading rhythm of orgasm. He licked her once, and she shuddered in response, and then he moved back up to lie across her, skin to skin the full length of their bodies. Gradually her gasping slowed, until it matched the slow tide of his chest. The room was close and strong-smelling.

Well, she thought. The drinks seemed to have been burned out of her, and she wondered with sudden rationality what would happen next. They were hardly lovers; still strangers, even after these weeks on the Liberator. Strangers in a bar.

He lifted himself on one arm, then rolled beyond her touch. "Light," he said in warning. It was the first word spoken since they had left the bar downstairs.

"All right." Sitting up, she looked down as the ceiling panel came on, but the light still seared, blinding her for a second until her eyes adjusted. When the white flare faded, she glanced over at him.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her. One leg was folded neatly under him, and his penis, shrunken and wet, nestled in curling black hair. She met his eyes, and saw no answers there. He waited.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood. Their clothes were scattered across the floor, half-undone and forgotten. She found her underwear and stepped into it, then hunted for her pants.

They dressed in silence again. She watched the slight bulge of muscle as he pulled up his trousers and buttoned them, appreciating it abstractly. Because it would not happen again, she knew. Nor would they mention it, after they left this room. After all, they had been two different people for a time. Strangers in a bar. Jenna Stannis was someone else, aboard a ship more powerful than dreams, with a man who swore to bring the Federation to its knees. The woman of this bed would stay here when she left.

She looked at the bare, low table by the bed, and suddenly wondered what he would do if she pulled out her wallet, laid two crisp bills on the scratched plastic. She laughed, and he looked at her oddly. Dangerous thought, she admonished herself, still laughing inside. Playing with fire...

She put a hand on the door latch, and it clicked open. They went together down the dingy stairs, but when they came into the bar again she lengthened her stride, moving ahead of him through the door and out into the noisy bustle of the port. She knew, without looking, that he would not follow.