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Una doesn’t have much experience. It comes from having to hide who she was for twenty-five years, and from it being the body itself that she had to hide. In practice, she could take someone to bed if she wanted to; it wasn’t secret tentacles or illicit pointy bits that were the problem, or even some kind of unexpected post-orgasmic glow. But in practice, that didn't really help.
Erica Ortegas, however, is a super-hot butch flygirl pilot who helms the flagship of the fleet.
“And that probably does help,” Una says blurrily. “I mean, with getting girls. Probably. I don’t want to assume.”
“It helps,” Ortegas—Erica—says. “How do you wanna do this, honey?”
Excuse you, Una wants to say. Lieutenant-Commander Chin-Riley, or Number One. But even given where they are and what they’re doing she’s being ridiculous. Starfleet doesn’t do summer break but if it did this would be it, long days of languorous shore leave while the ship’s hum sounds like crickets and garden sprinklers and Captain Christopher Pike of the Federation starship Enterprise has retreated to his quarters to practise Uhura’s mom’s ugali recipe. It’s a nowhere time, for Una and Erica, and a busy one for the box of things under Erica’s bed.
“I, uh,” Una says awkwardly. “I was interested in what we talked about.”
“I was too,” Erica says. “Scoot over, honey.”
Una shuffles over the bed. They’re in Erica’s quarters, which she tidied up because Una gets anxious otherwise, and Una is stretched out naked across the sheets with the warp starlight shimmering across her body. Erica persuaded her to take off most of her clothes, and rid Una of her pants, bra and socks-with-little-Starfleet-insignia with her own two hands. During that process, she herself stripped down efficiently to her own bra and shorts. Una hated all of that; she hates that part. Where one second you have rank and rules and clear intentions, and the next, you’re just marooned in a body, looking across from someone that’s much better at it than you.
“It’s okay,” Erica says, though Una said literally none of that out loud. The box is surprisingly nicely-made—that cannot be Vulcan calligraphy on the lid—and contains… well, not that much, actually. A vibrator Una’s seen before. A dildo that has some kind of sensate tech inside it; Erica got it on Andoria, says it’s nice but nothing special. And the same harness and strap that they looked at, when they talked about it. The dildo is clear transparent silicone, and the harness made of dark red fabric. The sight of it gives her a pleasant kick like alcohol, only it’s between her hips. Una tries to remember that she does have a body.
“Let’s get cosy, huh?” Erica says. She pulls Una to her, rolls her over and kisses her. That’s nice. Una likes that. She just doesn’t like feeling like she doesn’t know what she’s doing.
“You have to get it over with,” Erica says, and Una needs to start keeping better track of she does and doesn’t say out loud. “Like, you want to have sex with people, you kinda have to have an awkward sexual adolescence. You don’t get out of it, even if you have it late.”
“But,” Una says, but Erica puts a finger on her lips, leans over to kiss her and it turns out that Una really likes that. Erica is a flygirl pilot; she’s tough, strong, in command of herself. Una likes the weight of her muscles, the way they move beneath her skin. She herself knows what it’s like to be in command. Not so much the art of yielding.
“Huh,” Erica says, taking her finger away. She kisses Una again and pulls back contemplatively. “Should have seen that coming. What was your first-year dorm at the Academy?”
“Uh,” Una says, spread out naked on Erica’s bed while Erica spreads out a handful of lube lovingly on a silicone strap. “That is, uh. A weird question for you to be asking me right now.”
“Which one?”
“Kitty Hawk.”
“Cool,” Erica says. “Okay. I think you’re all stuck in your head and you want me to drive. I can do that. You don’t wanna do it any more, you say Kitty Hawk, and we’ll stop. Good by you?”
“Uh,” Una says. She thinks she knows what Erica just did for her; she’s read about it. Sex would be easier if was just reading about it. “I think so. Yeah.”
“Great,” Erica says, still amending the lube situation. “I had this girlfriend in San Francisco who used to be, like, Erica, isn’t it like this major failure of trust, for me to have recite some coercive mantra when I have the utmost faith in your ability to realise my vision? And I was like, buddy, your trust is absolute, your vision is epic, it has, like forty-four plant pots and a St Andrew’s floral cross, I have the hand-eye coordination of a doofus. We broke up a while after. On your back with your hands in front, honey.”
Una takes a second to realise she is being told this as a funny ex-girlfriend story, not a morality fable or the prelude to a psychotic break. She realises, with minor horror, that she would trust Erica with nearly anything, not just the Federation starship Enterprise.
She's on her back with her hands raised up in front. She doesn’t remember doing that, but part of Una’s brain just wants to do what Erica tells her. Not in a complicated plant pot kind of a way, but just because if she does, then it’s okay. She doesn’t have to worry that this, like so many things in her life have done, will go horribly wrong out of a clear blue sky.
“There,” Erica says, with satisfaction. Not at the dildo in her hands, but at Una. “You’re beautiful, you know that? Like... always. I have to be like, yes, sir, to you, when I’m thinking about how much I want to like, do you over a console. Don’t worry, I am never going to do you over a console. I know how you value our consoles.”
“Erica,” Una says, and she’s actually smiling.
“You’re really beautiful, though,” Erica says. “Like this, all ready and willing. Though with your legs maybe slightly further apart—that’s my girl. Oh, I love this for you.”
It seems like there’s more stuff in the box. Erica fishes out some rope from the bottom of it and unfolds it over her hands. Just by looking, Una can tell it isn’t scratchy or replicated; it’s smooth as silk and oiled, possibly Earth-made. “Uhura, she’s got class,” Erica says approvingly. “Kinda skeevy to fuck a new ensign so I wouldn’t do it, but she told me where she gets this stuff.”
Erica uses it to tie Una’s wrists, more loosely than any of the various people who have kidnapped Una in the line of duty ever have, and then adds a length of rope securing Una’s hands to the headboard. It’s all gentle as a kiss. Una could stop it from happening, but she doesn’t. Erica finishes up with that and puts on the harness, humming to herself. “How do you feel about having your eyes covered?” she asks, curiously.
“I feel okay about it,” Una says. “Uh – I think it would be good.”
“Cool.” Erica nods. “Look, I’m really sorry about this. It’s just, we’ve got finite space for personal effects out here in outer fucking space, right?”
What Erica is sorry about is not having a custom-for-sex-purposes blindfold but actually something made of novelty chiffon from Risa with cocks from a dozen species embroidered in ritually significant pentagrams. “You’re the one who actually has to look at it,” Una points out, feeling stupidly happy, and not sure why.
“That kind of smart thinking is why you’re in charge around here,” Erica says. She puts the blindfold around Una’s eyes, tests the bonds to make sure they’re not too tight. “Remember your first year dorm. Great.”
A pause. Una can’t see her, or what she sees, but can imagine what she herself looks like in that warp-pitch starlight, making slices of light over the skin of her bare back and thighs. It’s a beautiful image. Maybe she is beautiful.
“Okay,” Erica says, her voice low and hoarse. Her fingers come to the outside of Una’s cunt, slick and cool from more of the lube. It smells like nothing, so Una can smell herself a little underneath and also whatever might be happening in Erica’s flygirl shorts. For some reason that makes Una want to laugh a little and she holds it back.
“You’re supposed to laugh,” Erica says firmly, “you’re supposed to be happy.”
She works her fingers in and out, sweet and slow, until Una realises she’s melting, like butter on the sheets. It feels like she wants more, much more, to turn that delicate glowing pleasure into something hard and coruscating, but also for it to go on just like this, just soft as it is, in a place where time means nothing and nothing hurts.
“There, that’s nice,” Erica says, softly. “All good, honey? Great.”
She lines herself up, the tip of the dildo lined up with Una’s cunt but going no further. “Okay. Now, you hold still, and let go. Can people do both of those things at the same time? If anyone can you can. Let’s do it.”
Now there’s more energy in her, more energy in the air. Erica leans over Una again so her breasts skim Una’s hypersensitive skin, and Una gasps at the press of her body on hers. Erica runs her hands down Una’s inner thighs and around the curve of her hips and ass. The loose bonds mean that Una can turn from side to side to follow the touch, but without feeling like she has to do something—like she has to respond a certain way; like she has to figure out how to make Erica feel something, when she herself isn’t sure of the ways people can feel. It ends with Erica pushing Una’s legs apart, so the cold air on her tender places makes her shiver. The dildo tip had slipped away, but Erica lines it up again the edge of Una’s cunt, and suddenly Una's entire awareness has narrowed down to that tip. Erica has touched her and warmed her until she’s lit up from inside, until all Una wants is this. She wants the friction of it against her clit, or she wants it in her, and she can’t have both at once but she wants it anyway.
“Please,” she says.
“Yeah, honey.” Erica places a gentle hand between Una’s legs, covering her clit, for a second, and then moves away. “So people have a bunch of thoughts and feelings about this, right? This, and basically everything else people can do. What it means, what it says about you that you like it, all that shit. I’m saying this because you’ve gotta have seen porn.”
Una has seen porn. She hasn’t liked it that much; it seems to be made for people who knows what they’re doing.
“And real life isn’t like porn.” Erica’s voice is soft and certain. “So this doesn’t have to mean anything till you decide what it means for you. You get to decide that, Una. No one else but you.”
She pushes inside. Una gasps with the feeling, with how it’s all good and slick and slow for a minute, and then it’s fast and hard. In that moment of transition Una understands it: why people want to do this, why it’s weird and undignified and scary but people want to do it anyway, to make desperate noises and cry and laugh and say things to their lover that otherwise they’d never say out loud. To live in bodies that have this way of being alive. It only lasts a moment. But Una thinks she could find that moment again; now; that it could be something that was in her to be found.
“I need,” she says, and stops, because the word clit doesn’t come naturally; it’s not the anatomical term, and she can’t point with her hands tied.
“You gotta, Una,” Erica says. “You have to say what you want. It’s like your command and your pips. It’s tough but it’s not optional.”
Una musters herself. “I need you,” she says, all Number One down from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, “to touch my clit.”
“Sure, baby.” Erica laughs, circles Una’s clit with a fingertip, applies her tongue to it with devastating precision, goes back to a fingertip, goes on fucking her with a dildo because Erica is just that much of a multitasking prodigy. Then she turns to get a better angle, moves her hips, and something goes wrong. Una swears, because it hurts—it hurts so much, like something has kicked her inside—and then then whimpers. Erica doesn’t wait to hear about anybody’s shitty paint-peeling first-year dorm. She pulls the trailing ends on the bonds, whips off the blindfold, and hauls Una up to a seated position. The dildo has disappeared somewhere as though it had never been. Una is realising she’s embarrassed, as well as in pain; that actually, she’s not even in pain. The bright agony has faded, and the tears standing in her eyes are there because she was feeling something wonderful and now she’s feeling something else.
“Okay, what the hell happened there,” Erica says, mostly to herself. “I was… and you were… and it hurt?”
Una nods.
“Fuck, I’m sorry.” Erica groans and reaches out over the bed. The dildo hasn’t vanished from this plane of existence, it’s just rolled across the sheets. Erica picks it up and inspects it in annoyance. “We’ll get another one,” she announces. “Shit, I got it on Risa. Every Federation species catered for, they say! Well, you’re not.”
“No,” Una says, not sure she understands.
“Do you know where you are, like, statistically?” Erica asks. “Like, are you small inside, for an Ilyrian, or—actually, you know what, who cares. The Federation ones are too long for you, so we’ll just order some more. We’ll be at Starbase K-7 in a couple of weeks, we can get them delivered for pick-up.”
They’ll come in a nice box. Una suddenly knows this, as surely as she knows her own name. Erica will order dildos from one of several dozen commercial suppliers and they’ll come in satin-lined boxes, with pretty ribbons sewn on the outside. Erica will ask if she likes them, if she wants to try them. If she doesn’t, it’s fine. They'll get more. It will be fine.
In the meantime, Una looks Erica right in the eye, and does what isn’t optional. “I’d like to keep on going. For a little while. If you want to.”
“I’d love to.” Erica’s face lights up. “Come here.”
No more bonds, which should be scary; Una has to find something to do with her hands, now, and she’s worried that she’ll get it wrong. In the end she just puts one arm around Erica’s neck and sits in her lap, which is kind of awkward given how much taller she is than Erica, but Erica puts her arm around Una and they make it work. Una puts her free hand on the bed, to balance herself, and Erica makes good use of hers. When they’re balanced, she runs it down between Una’s breasts and back between her legs. More soft circles around Una’s clit; no fingers inside her cunt, not doing anything that might hurt her. Una comes very gently, after all of that. A long low shudder, that makes her breathing hitch and her legs tremble.
“Oh, you’re gorgeous,” Erica says, happily. “Was that good? Did you like it?”
“Yes,” Una says. “I did.”
She did. She really does. She looks around at the room, the tidy shelves, the rumpled sheets, the view of space. It ought to make her feel vulnerable, that she’s seeking out a new kind of life on this dull shore-leave afternoon in bed on the Enterprise. There’s no warping away from this if the mission goes south. It scares her. But this isn't like the old thing, the old terror etched inside. Not when the stars out there are freedom, and she has a guide to lead her. A guide that Una would like to lead, in due course. She wants to learn to do, as well as be done to; to make Erica laugh and gasp.
Right now Erica seems somewhere else, looking up with her mouth dropping open. It's a lazy afternoon in bed, but in her eyes are new life and new civilisations.
“Fuck, Una,” she breathes. “Wow.”
Una looks down at herself, then at light reflecting off the ceiling, off the walls and off the whiteness of the bedcovers. “Oh,” she says. There it is, that post-orgasmic glow. The literal golden light of the Ilyrian body, set aflame by passion and delight.
“I cannot say,” Erica says, after a minute, “that that is not very good for my ego.”
“It should be,” Una murmurs, drifting away on the feeling. Starfleet will never unmake her as Ilyrian. But there are so many ways to be.