thanks for hanging in there, all 64 of you. Rep
Taken Chapter 10
The door whooshed shut and suddenly neither of them knew what to do with themselves. They had made their positions clear to one another and now…hesitation and uncertainty.
"Seven, I'd like to go to sleep and I'd like you to lie with me until I do. You can stay after that if it's not too uncomfortable for you or you can go but – but please – lie with me until I fall asleep. Please?"
He sounded woeful and pathetic even to himself. This is not the Sheldon Cooper Seven of Nine bonded with in a collective of two. He had no idea what happened to that man.
"Yes. I'll need your assistance removing my garment. The Doctor was more interested in fashion than utility. I cannot reach the seam to release it, Sheldon."
"You – you want to lie in bed with me…naked?" His eyes were round and his heart was in his throat. The woman of his dreams, the woman he loved, Seven of Nine, needed help to get naked.
"Of course. And you shall be naked also. Nude, if you prefer the more artistic and less coarse term, but either way, I want to feel your skin against mine. Please, Sheldon Cooper, this is harder than I thought it would be."
Her words seemed to give him both energy and strength and he smiled and offered her his hand to guide it to the difficult seam. She turned around and pointed in the general direction of her back and there it was, easily reached and just as easily moved downward, revealing flawless white skin from the tops of her shoulders down to her buttocks and below as the cat suit separated on its seam. The seam ran from the middle of her neck to a point between her legs where it divided into seams going down the inside of each leg.
Seven toed off her heels and sighed in relief. The sigh caused him to smile and he easily opened the seam down one thigh and then the other. He stood and she turned around and he pulled the garment off her shoulders and she easily stepped out of the legs.
Sheldon started to fold the garment but she simply tossed it over a chair and stepped in against him. Apparently the Doctor was not a big fan of underwear because she wore none. He blushed and looked away but she smiled and took his chin in her fingers and turned his head back to face her.
"Do I please you, Sheldon? I've never been naked, nude, with a man or a woman, and I don't know how I…"
"You are aesthetically pleasing to me, Seven. You are perfection while I…I am somewhat less aesthetically pleasing, I'm sure."
"I read your journal entry. You said I was a beautiful Borg. And a beautiful woman. That touched me that you thought someone as ugly as a Borg drone was beautiful."
"Seven, 'let your hair down', please. I have wanted to run my fingers through your hair since that time you came to dinner. It frames your face and…" She shook her hair out and he ran his fingers through the silky softness. "So soft, Seven. Just as I imagined."
He cupped her cheek in his palm, inadvertently touching her Borg implant that half-circled her left eye and she closed her eyes and shuddered and leaned against him. "Did I hurt you? I didn't realize – " She cut him off.
"Do it again. The feeling of your palm against my implant…amazing, Sheldon. It was like nothing I've ever felt." He stroked the implant with the pads of his fingertips and she gasped and shuddered, wrapping her arms around him and holding herself upright.
"Maybe we should lie down, Seven, before you fall down." He was joking and she laughed. He had never heard her laugh before and he had the impression that she hadn't laughed much in her life. He liked it.
"Yes. My limbs feel…strange. Not a bad 'strange', just…strange. All tingly."
She reached for the tongue of his zippered coveralls and raised one eyebrow as if asking permission and he nodded. Sheldon stepped out of his coveralls and pulled off his boots and socks.
"I'm going to shower, Seven. I'll just be a moment." He walked into the small shower and was not at all surprised when she followed him. "Y'know, Seven, on Old Earth, showers were streams of temperature-regulated water and body wash. I miss them. The sonic shower is convenient and efficient and uses no real energy but…"
"Then we will holo-program ourselves an Old Earth shower and you can wash my hair and we will copulate in the shower. I have seen displays sent to me by B'elanna that recount how 'shower sex' is still quite common on some worlds. Earth still has showers, Sheldon. Sonic showers are more efficient on a starship but I do not believe they will prove as enjoyable as one which dispenses liquids all over one's body."
Sheldon's gaze rarely strayed below her collarbones as they turned in the sonic shower. From what he'd seen when he opened the seam, her skin was pale and flawless, almost like it was new.
Seven's eyes were everywhere, taking in the childhood scars on his knees and elbows, the new scar where the Croom blade had almost taken him from her, and the sleek planes of his body. She vowed to force him to increase his caloric intake as well as strengthen his cardiovascular system through period exercise in the ship's gym.
Her fingertips barely grazed his chest and abdomen but lingered along the fine line of hair that led downward to his genitals.
"I wish to copulate, Sheldon Cooper, if you are not too tired. I know all about copulation, coitus, intercourse, from the databases, You will insert your sex organ and thrust a few times and ejaculate and then roll over and sleep. I will rise and dress and occupy my time with research into our situation. I do not see the experience interfering with your REM cycle."
Sheldon lost it. It was too much. He started to giggle and wheeze and then he almost collapsed into a pile of laughing bones and flesh. Seven of Nine was too precious for words. Her dry delivery of facts left him defenseless. He leaned back against the wall and drew her close to him.
"Seven, do not believe everything you read in those databases. You describe a mechanical process and leave out the preparatory steps necessary for coitus, or 'copulation' if you prefer."
"Elaborate, Sheldon Cooper. The databases and the recordings provided by B'elanna Torres – "
"No wonder she's in a bad mood all the time. Listen, One of Two, that in no way describes how it will be between us. For one thing, you've totally forgotten about foreplay."
Seven immediately noticed the use of 'One of Two' and found that for Sheldon Cooper, it was the implied intimacy of the sentence he used it to modify.
"Foreplay?" The databases she'd accessed had been clinical and descriptive of physical preparation and changes of her body during copulation. Nothing was mentioned about this 'foreplay'.
"Preparation for coitus. It constitutes a series of physical and emotional touches and exchanges that increase arousal, stimulate the hypothalamus and prepare the body for coitus. It is more physical than simply touching or exchanging words and glances as we have done so far. It implies trust and - "
"I trust you, Sheldon. Continue, please."
"Very well. In some – "
"I meant, Two, to continue with actual 'foreplay'. I think I understand the mechanics of copulation. Proceed," Seven whispered, "but isn't the bed in your quarters far superior to the floor of the sonic shower?"
[A/N: The obvious sex will appear in my LJ page once I post it. Check my profile for notes and access. Rap]
Six weeks later
"Two, I must regenerate. I shall see you in the mess hall for breakfast." She placed a long, lingering kiss on his lips and smiled, something she seemed to do a lot lately, and pulled herself from his grasp and dressed and left.
Sheldon thought about rolling over into the spot she'd vacated but knew that if he did that he'd fall back to sleep and miss the opportunity to 'run into' the Captain in the mess hall without Seven's knowledge.
He showered, dressed in his black coverall and made the bed, something that Seven often remarked on. "We're just going to tear it up tonight, Two. Why do you expend energy uselessly?"
He dropped by Engineering to speak with B'elanna. She and Tom had 'broken up' and Tom was in limbo re quarters and it was a 'golden opportunity' to kill two birds with one stone.
"Good morning, B'elanna Torres. Are there any tasks with which I might occupy my time after breakfast?" He was bored. He had no duty station on Voyager and so he scrounged around looking for tasks to keep him busy.
"The plasma packs on deck 2, section 6, need a hands-on diagnosis, Sheldon, if you think you're capable." She knew he was. He was constantly surprising people with his ability to learn new tasks and frequently improve upon how things got done.
"Fine. I'll see to it. Now, you and Tom – " B'elanna interrupted him with a raised hand.
"Don't go there, Sheldon Cooper. Tom and I are finished. We don't want the same things and I'm tired of being pushed and shoved someplace I don't want to go!" Her voice grew in pitch and volume until Sheldon felt his eardrums might suffer permanent damage.
"B'elanna Torres, Tom requires you in his life. You know he does. This sudden abruption of a strong and lasting relationship makes no sense. Surely – "
B'elanna swung her fist and almost hit Sheldon. He had been prepared for her response just as he had been on those days when he had to awaken Penny before 11am. He deftly dodged her punch . Overextended, B'elanna fell forward into Sheldon's arms and he suddenly found himself in a crushing embrace with a sobbing Klingon-human hybrid.
'Oh Lord, who knows what debilitating ailment I'll catch from the mucus and other fluids she's spewing all over me!'
She calmed down enough to be understood. "Sheldon, take me to sickbay. I need the doc – " and promptly lost consciousness leaving Sheldon carrying 130 pounds of limp Engineer to sickbay. 'She is much heavier than she looks.'
Sickbay
While Leonard fussed over some minor gadget, B'elanna pulled Sheldon to the side of the bio-bed and whispered, "You can't tell Tom, Sheldon. It's too late anyway. It'll be all over by the time he gets back from his away mission. Just do me a favor, okay?"
"Sure. Anything." Sheldon had never see the gruff engineering officer look so sad and afraid.
"Tell him that I love him. That my last thoughts were of him and that I'm glad he was away when I died. Do that for me, please?"
"You're not dying! You're just tired, exhausted, yes, but not dying, B'elanna" He was terrified of death in others, especially those he felt a connection with. He could handle his own death but not the thought of any of Voyager's crew passing on.
"Yes, she is, Dr. Cooper. She's in the end stage of Roshmir's Syndrome, a type of cancer that is incurable and is only found in Klingon-human hybrids. It is aggressively quick and painful and sadly, B'elanna has only hours or days at most to live. I can make her comfortable but that is all. We've held it off for months but now it occupies too great a volume of her organs and she is close to her death."
"You're giving up? Surely there is something you can do? What good are you if you let people die 'comfortably' but wouldn't allow me the same dignity? You're a hypocrite and don't deserve to bear my friend's name."
"Sheldon, perhaps you should leave and allow…"
"No! Can't you operate? Cut it out? Buy her some time?" He was panicking. He was terrified of death in others. He didn't want to be 'left behind' again.
"Go, Sheldon. You're not making this any easier…"
"Easier? Easier? There is an Old Earth poem that perhaps you people have lost track of, just as you seem to have forgotten that it is human nature to fight Death. It goes 'Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.' You people have lost your 'rage', Doctor."
The Doctor pushed Sheldon away from the bio-bed and made some adjustments to instruments and then gave B'elanna a hypospray of some sedative.
The bed glowed and B'elanna's body suddenly looked like a holographic CT Scan. "See the areas in green? That's the cancer. See how it's taken over everything? There's nothing that can be done."
"That is totally unacceptable, Leonard, totally. Computer, query 1. Can cellular structures shown in green on the doctor's display be 'tagged' and separated from the remaining display? Query 2. Can the transporter lock onto those cells and transport them into a collection vessel? Run query."
"Query 1: Affirmative. All cells have been 'tagged'. Query 2: Transporter has a lock on those cells. Interrogative: provide location of the containment vessel and prepare a level 4 containment field and initiate transport of tagged cells."
The doctor answered and the computer droned on in monotone. "Beginning transport. Duration: 7.6 minutes." A transporter scan beam began slowly making its way from the top of B'alanna's head towards her feet.
The EMH seemed vaguely disturbed by the turn of events and began making notes into a padd. "I can have a paper to present upon returning to Federation-controlled space on Non-invasive Tagging and Transport of Various Carcinomas. It is truly remarkable."
"Excellent! Leonard, start thinking outside of the box. It's why I gave you the name of an experimental physicist instead of one of the theoretical ones. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to see about those pesky plasma packets on Deck 2, Section 6. And tell B'elanna to quit being so difficult and just marry Paris and put us all out of our misery."
He stopped by the mess hall but Neelix told him he'd just missed Captain Janeway and that it was a good thing, too, since she was in a 'crappy' mood.
Sheldon perused Neelix' various breakfast offerings and decided to skip eating entirely and head for Deck 2. Between the nasty thing that was growing in the Level 4 Containment Vessel in sickbay and the 'used food' that Neelix was offering, he'd lost his appetite.
Next: Sheldon goes home, sort of…