Kylie Lee | Slash fan fiction

*** 1

I said yes. Because he asked, because he wanted, because I needed. I said yes.

I'll only seduce you if you want me to, he joked. Just say the word.

A date.

Friday night on Earth: nightclubs, flirting, smiling, exchanging numbers, making connections that occasionally go somewhere. Friday night on Enterprise: date night movie night, Ensign Baker and Baker's quirky sense of appropriateness choosing "date" movies. Everyone goes. There's little enough to do. Malcolm likes movies with explosions. Trip cries at the sad parts of sappy movies. I like musicals. Travis likes action-adventure science fiction films with unlikely aliens. We all sit in the dark together, all of us alone.

When Travis, at breakfast, said he thought maybe he'd see the movie, and he named it, I said I love that movie! We should go together, just the two of us, and he gave me the oddest look.

Are you asking me out on a date? he asked and I didn't know.

But.

A date date, it was decided.

Who asked whom? I'm not sure.

I like Travis. This is Travis: He's big and solid, but he can move fast. He's smart but nobody seems to realize it. I don't know why. He's a party boy. He plays practical jokes. He likes to drive too fast. He's always on time for his shift. He always has a pen. He comes by and gets me for dinner every night, and we walk to the mess, even though we don't always sit and eat together. He's handsome. Women smile at him, wanting something, and he smiles back, not noticing. Or maybe noticing but not caring--not interested back. I like that he comes by and gets me for dinner. I like that mark of attention. He doesn't do that with anyone else.

Now, I take the dress off its hanger. I steamed it in the bathroom to get rid of the wrinkles. And I smile.

Dress, heavy red silk, sliding against my skin, falling like water over my body. Tug against my shoulder, pull against my breasts, swirl against my thighs. Hair, thick, heavy, glossy, put up. It's a special occasion. A little perfume. High heels, to make me taller, to make me feminine. My hair, dress, scent, makeup, shoes all conspire to tell a story, to make a statement. My uniform makes a statement about my competence, about my place in the closed society that is Enterprise. My dress makes a statement about my social and sexual role in the larger human society.

I could have danced all night, I hum, and I twirl around. My skirt bells out. Someone rings the doorbell--Travis, coming by for dinner in my quarters, ten minutes early.

*** 2

He's neatly dressed in a loose, silky white shirt and tight black trousers. He tells me I look wonderful, and he admires my hair. I tell him he looks wonderful, and I admire his hair, and he laughs. Because he's early, he has to help. He makes the rice. He brought dessert: two pieces of Key lime pie. It's incongruous, but it will be delicious.

Table for two--small, intimate. My quarters, crowded with just the two of us. I smile, I admire his technique with chopsticks. We talk so easily together. We always have things to say. There is rarely subtext with Travis, at least with words. He says what he means. If he doesn't understand, he says that too. You're so good with words, he told me once. You forget we're not all so articulate. And so I do.

Now I listen to his words, to the slight cadence that says "Boomer" to me. Language variation is common as a result of geographical separation or isolation, but now, the media makes us all sound alike: the same stretched-out a's, the same pronunciation of words that used to have different pronunciations, such as "either." Now, once again, after a period when it wasn't fashionable, the way you talk has to do with status and class. Travis and I--we're the same status and class, down to rank, down to socioeconomic standing.

And now I listen to the subtext, what his body tells me. He's a little nervous, but it dissipates as we fall into our old patterns of talking. It was the initial formality of our dress-up clothes, symbolizing a presumption of a change of stance between us. When he relaxes, I relax. He's reading me, just as I read him. It's just Hoshi, he decides, and It's just Travis, I agree, and it's just us, together.

We eat, we laugh, we talk, we gossip. The captain and Malcolm have been extra formal with each other lately--we speculate about why that is. Chef became insulted over a trifling matter and his sous chef was forced to make the captain's dinner while Chef stomped around and got it worked out of his system, with hilarity in the menu the result, the result of the sous chef's panic at preparing food for such an august personage as Captain Archer.

When it's time to go, Travis gallantly offers me his arm, and I take it. When I step out, Travis right behind me, Trip and Malcolm are there, lurking in the hallway. They knew about the date--tried to invite themselves along at breakfast. I shake my head and look heavenward, and we all laugh. The four of us take the same lift, and then Travis and I manage to ditch them--or so we think. I lean against Travis, whispering in his ear, and as the lights dim and the screen flickers to life, someone taps me on the shoulder: Trip. And someone taps me on the other shoulder: Malcolm. I can only laugh.

The movie a blur--singing, rain in Spain, a film about linguistics, about calling a fair lady into being. Travis puts his arm around me, then turns and grins at Malcolm. My leg presses against his. I put my hand on the inside of his knee. Right behind us, Trip and Malcolm make fun of us, and we ignore them at first, but then we give in and react, and that's part of it too. Hoshi and Travis against Trip and Malcolm, bringing us together. Our words pit us against them. We create a temporarily adversarial relationship, for fun.

We could be a couple. We could. Tall, dark, and handsome--I like tall, dark, and handsome.

*** 3

I remember what he said, at breakfast, when he asked me to the movie: I'll only seduce you if you want me to. Just say the word.

Outside the door to my quarters. Trip and Malcolm nowhere in sight. Suddenly the words aren't right--they're awkward. Travis senses this, so he stops talking, and then he smiles, and I love the way he smiles. He leans down and silently asks permission, and I give it: I kiss him.

I say the word. I say yes without speaking. My mouth says it, and when he pulls away, he takes my hands in his. He's much bigger than me. He treats me as though I were delicate, made of porcelain. I like that.

I should go, he says. He heard the word, but he's giving me another chance. A chance to say no.

Don't, I say, and I open the door. My quarters still smell like dinner. Don't. He can call me into being with his touch. I want that more than I can say. The ship is crowded with people, but we're all alone. I am so lonely it hurts. I long for touch so much it hurts.

He follows me in. I turn to shut and lock the door, and I see Malcolm, a meter or so from my door. He stops. His eyes hold mine, and then he drops them. He's ashamed--ashamed that their little game has impinged in our privacy.

I hear Trip say Malcolm, where are they? and Malcolm turns and calls I don't know--I think we missed them and then he gazes at me, eyes level. His eyes shift, and I know he's looking at Travis. Then Malcolm nods, and I shut and lock the door.

I turn to Travis and I say the word.

*** 4

When I wake up, he's watching me. I smile and he smiles and something's wrong. A touch on my cheek, a caress, and I remember last night and how much I needed it, and that was wrong too.

Tell me, I say.

Someone else I want he says, and Someone I can't have he says, and You're perfect--you're the right rank. You're pretty. You can cook. I like you.

All those words mean one thing. A babble of meaning with a single message behind it. I can read the message. I can interpret language. The word, the meaning, is no.

Language can create reality. Language, the always already. Nine billion names for God, two words for love. If I utter the right word, can I invoke love? Is that what magic spells are--saying the word, calling it into being, creating it, dragging it, kicking and screaming, into existence, where nothing was before?

I can't say that word. I don't know what it is. I realize now that I would say it if I could. I would cast a spell and make someone--Travis? Trip? Malcolm? the captain?--someone--love me. I would love him back. I would. Because I want, so very much. I want.

I'm sorry he says, Not fair to you he says, and I say It's okay, Travis and he says Really it's not. It's not okay at all.

I'm the right rank. I'm pretty. I can cook. I speak his language. My body fits with his. I like him. He likes me. We are in accord.

It's not enough. I'm not what he wants. And he's not what I want. Everything's right, but it's all askew.

I touch his chest and my mouth feels wrong. The back of my mouth hurts and it is painful to swallow. I can't find words. I can always find words. Words are what I am.

I want, but I don't want him. I want and it hurts.

Palm flat against his bare chest, and I watch him watching me, and he takes my hand off his chest and holds it in his. Big hand enfolding mine, as he enfolded me in his arms, enfolded me with his body. Warmth, and comfort, and affection, but without desire.

Travis, I say, and I am naming him. I can make him present. I can make him exist. I say his name, and he is. He's Travis, and the word means so much more: it states my feelings of affection, and it implies the smile I feel when he smiles at me, and it is synecdoche for our friendship, and it is metonymy for everything that makes him himself. Never just Travis but all the things his existence invokes and implies.

Friends, he says, and the word is weighted with meaning, with always already. We want. We don't want each other. We know that now--we know that pretty, and handsome, and nice, and available, and the right rank do not call it forth.

I can only nod, and he nods back, and he gets dressed and leaves, and then, when he's gone, the tears fall.