textfiles/sex/EROTICA/B/blackout.txt

BLACKOUT

by Your Cruise Director

   There wasn't an artificial light working anywhere on the ship.
   The captain of the Voyager moved slowly along the corridor toward
engineering, keeping one hand on the computer access panel on the wall. 
Although she couldn't see it, Kathryn Janeway knew that the computer still
worked; she resisted the urge to ask for the third time in minutes how
much farther she had to go until the next junction, where she would have
to turn left and struggle across the empty space where the halls met until
she encountered the far diagonal wall.  Every other system on the ship
appeared to be working perfectly, but there wasn't a glimmer in the place
that did not come from a viewport.
   Except for the fire which B'Elanna had built in engineering, she
reminded herself with some trepidation.  They had tried to use
phosphorescent plants to view the panels, but couldn't get enough light to
risk working by.  Desperate for a way to see the controls, Torres and
Carey had borrowed some slow-burning, edible stalks from Neelix and then
had them flash-dried.  Now they had a good old-fashioned bonfire
burning...less than fifteen meters from the warp core.  
   Janeway would much rather have been in her ready room, where at least
some light crept in through the big windows, rather than groping blindly
out here in the corridors which were deserted for the most part; everyone
who was not directly at work on the problem had been ordered to remain on
the living decks.  Nonetheless the captain had almost gotten knocked over
by one crewmember and had her foot stomped on by another.  She considered
wryly that perhaps they should all wear personal security alarms until the
engineers had this latest crisis figured out.  Tricorders weren't much
help in identifying what was coming; they couldn't see to read them.
   She reached the end of the wall her fingers had been tracing and
struggled to see through the murk ahead.  "Computer, how far to the access
panel on the wall backing to auxiliary control?"
   *Four meters*, came the acrid report, oddly comforting here in the
stillness.  Janeway had a sudden urge to ask the computer to talk her
across the blackness, then laughed inwardly at herself for being afraid of
the dark.  Without the ship's chatter, she could have imagined herself
anywhere:  in a cave, on an enemy vessel, even in some form of torture
chamber where things only seemed to be familiar.  Four meters, she could
do that in twelve even steps.  She released the panel under her hand,
turned a little more sharply than she needed to in order to avoid missing
the far wall, and stepped forward.
   "Ooomph!"  Three steps out, she smacked hard into something solid and
warm coming from the adjacent corridor, spinning her around and knocking
her down.  "Shit!" Janeway exclaimed before catching herself; now she had
no idea which direction to turn towards in order to reach engineering.  
   A hand had caught one of her shoulders and was groping for the other
one to help her up, fumbling across her neck and over her breasts before
reaching its destination.  She grabbed at the arms helping her with her
own hands and pulled herself upright, using her crash victim for
leverage.  
   "Are you all right?" a voice inquired out of the dark, as the broad
chest she leaned against momentarily vibrated.  That low musical baritone
was unmistakable.  Chakotay must have been on his way to engineering too,
to see how the work was going.  
   "Yes," she gasped, realizing that the breath had been knocked out of
her when she hit the floor.  "Just winded.  Were you going to engineering
also, Commander?"
   "Trying to, Captain," he replied with a hum of amusement in his voice. 
"Although I'm wondering whether we're not just going to be in the way down
there.  Torres seemed pretty confident that she, Carey, and Kim could get
the whole problem straightened out if they could track down the radiation
which she thinks is causing all this.  And she also thought it might be a
good idea not to expose any more of the crew than necessary."
   Janeway hit at her comm badge, striking the side of her face before
finally touching metal and hearing the familiar chirp.  "Janeway to
Torres.  How's it going down there, Lieutenant?"
   "We're working as fast as we can, Captain."  B'Elanna sounded unusually
annoyed at being summoned.  "We think there may have been some kind of
radiation in that nebula we passed through, we're trying to determine what
might be needed to compensate.  Captain, could you please make a general
annoucement to the crew asking them not to keep calling engineering to ask
if we need help?  Answering everyone is just slowing us down."
   "Of course, Lieutenant.  Carry on."  Janeway hit her comm badge again
and made the announcement, then shifted toward the man whose hands were
still on her upper arms.  "Maybe you're right, Commander.  I guess we
should stay up here."
   She felt him reach behind himself, keeping his remaining hand against
her elbow.  "I can feel the wall behind me.  I think that's the direction
I came from.  We're not very far from my quarters."  
   She nodded, then realized that in the dark the gesture would be lost on
him.  "We can always check with the computer to see whether we're getting
closer to them."  He turned her with his hands and they shuffled down the
invisible corridor, each keeping a hand pressed to the wall.  After a time
the solid panel dipped into a doorway and she knew that they had found
living quarters.
   "Mine should be about six more."  Janeway reached in front of herself
to touch his back in the blackness and he jumped slightly.
   "Just me."  Her fingers encountered Chakotay's as they fell from his
shoulder and he caught her hand in his own, tugging gently.  A surprised
blush crossed her face but she didn't pull away; it wasn't as though
anyone was going to see them together, and he couldn't see her expression
anyway.  Plus she felt better knowing exactly where he was in the dark. 
He stopped in front of the wrong room first, then drew her forward when
the doors wouldn't open for him.  His own quarters spilled faint light
into the corridor when they finally reached them, and he swung her in
front of him to let her enter first.  
   "It's so good to be able to see a little."  Moving to the window with
her hands out in order to avoid missing furniture, the dim light
nonetheless stung her eyes the way sunlight would have had she come out of
a dark building. She tripped against a chair and Chakotay's arm steadied
her.
   "Come sit," he said, directing her toward the couch by the window;
since they were his own quarters, he had previously walked them in pitch
blackness and could navigate more easily than she.  "You want anything to
eat?  I have replicator rations..."
   "Thank you, I'm fine, Commander."  His title sounded momentarily
inappropriate to her.  "I, um, do you have work you needed to do?  I don't
want to intrude..."
   "I don't think I can get crew evaluations done in a room this dark,"
she could hear his smile.   "If you don't mind, they'll be a little late. 
What's your pleasure?  Shall we discuss scheduling, or are you going to
regale me with stories of your last command?"  
   She chuckled with him as he sat beside her, making the couch shake. 
"I'd rather hear about your brilliant Maquis victories over hapless
Starfleet captains," she batted at his arm in the dimness, but he caught
her fingers before she could swat him.  
   "No, you'll just rush back to your quarters to make a report so that
seventy years from now, you can get credit for busting Maquis strategy." 
He stopped for a moment, sighing.  "It's hard to think about.  By the time
we get back, there may be no more Demilitarized Zone.  My home may be
gone.  Or the Federation and Cardassians may have formed an alliance
against some threat we can't even imagine."  His tone concerned Janeway
and she left her hand resting in his, wishing she could see his
expression.  "If you want, I'll tell you about my checkered past, as long
as you promise me that everything we say is off the record," he offered.
   "Of course," she agreed, pulling back selfconsciously.  She waited, but
he remained silent; she could feel his eyes on her in the darkened room.
"I didn't mean to pry."  A strange feeling passed over her.  She wanted
him to know that he could share his stories with her, overlooking the fact
that she was a commanding officer--*his* commanding officer--in the
organization that had driven him to the rebels.  "Let's drop rank for the
night and just talk, Chakotay." 
   "All right, Captain." Chakotay hesitated on the word.  "Kathryn.  Is
that what they call you, like one of the queens of England?  Or do you use
one of the nicknames?"
   "Tom Paris's father once called me Kat at a command briefing, and I
took his head off in front of two admirals," she smiled.  "I hope he never
told Tom that story.  Or maybe I should hope he did."  They giggled
together.  "Your name is a lot more interesting than mine.  Is it
traditional?"
   "Common name, unusual spelling," he replied, and began to tell her
about his planet, the ritual as an adolescent when he received the first
marks of his tattoo, the slow merger of Native American tribes from both
north and south when the resettlement occurred and what it had done to
their discrete traditions.  Chakotay's voice grew warm and animated as he
spoke.   He brought stone carvings from across the room to let her handle,
which she realized that he must have created since coming on board--he had
few possessions from his own ship, they had all been destroyed in the
battle with the Kazon.  She wondered what else he did with his leisure
hours.  
   Chakotay's fingers lingered over hers on the objects she couldn't see
as he explained what the lines and grooves represented, turning her
fingers over with the stones he pressed into her palms.  They touched more
than necessary, but in the invisible room, the contact was a form of
communication, replacing the glances they would normally have exchanged. 
Janeway was reminded of the unsettling intimacy when he had first taken
her hand in her ready room to put her in touch with her animal guide.  She
asked him questions, he answered enthusiastically, and after an hour or so
they grew quiet.  "Enough about me already.  Tell me about you.  Your
parents are both professors?"
   "Scientists.  I miss my mother," she said automatically, and then was
siezed suddenly by a pain in her chest which traveled slowly to her
throat.  "She kept me focused on pure science when I got distracted by
Starfleet politics.  I talked to her all the time, more than once a week. 
She must think I'm dead by now."  A shiver passed through Janeway as she
thought of her parents, Mark--even Bear had probably given up on her. 
Tears stung her eyes.  "I know you must have trouble feeling sorry for me,
missing my family, when your entire planet is threatened..." she began.
   "No, I don't," he interrupted.  "There aren't very many people you can
talk to out here.  I understand that."  His fingers found hers once again
and closed over them protectively.  
   An acute desire to hold on to him washed over Janeway.  She therefore
knew at once that she should leave.  Her hand stiffened under Chakotay's
and he relaxed his grip somewhat.  "I thought you said no rank?"  His
voice held another question, which she didn't want to think about.  
   "No rank, not no rules." She tried to turn it into a joke, but could
not force the smile into her voice.  "As soon as the lights go back on, we
have to go back to work."
   "Isn't that how mornings after always work?"  The easy grin in his tone
was all too identifiable, and she took her hand back, clenching it tightly
in her lap with the other one.  "I'm sorry. I was trying to make you more
comfortable, not less.  Tell me something else about your mother."
   "I really should go."  It occurred to Janeway that it had been over an
hour since either of them had checked in with engineering, B'Elanna might
be wondering what had happened to them.  "Thank you..."  She froze in the
blackness, wavering between his name and title, again wishing she could
see his face.  If she left now, shutting him out like a dismissal, he
might never talk to her this way again--she would be completely isolated,
even from him.  On the other hand, if she spoke his name, and he touched
her again--
   "Stop."  He spoke lightly, in the tone of a mock command, but there was
a hint of a plea underneath.  "Stop being the captain for ten minutes.  I
won't tell anyone.  You can trust me."  She hung her head slightly, and
was shocked when Chakotay leaned close to her, his mouth almost grazing
her ear.  "I'd let you go if I thought you were doing it because you
wanted to leave," he murmured.  "But I think you're doing it because you
want to stay.  Am I wrong?"
   Janeway lifted her face to reply, but before she could say a
word--before she thought of a word to say--he caught her chin gently in
his hand and moved his lips over hers.  The kiss was soft, assured,
delicious; her body responded instantly, pressing against him before she
could think to stop herself.  By the time she pushed back, she could feel
the appreciative smile turning up the corners of his mouth.  She almost
smiled back, forced to admit to herself that she'd wanted to kiss him for
months...and at occasional moments had suspected that he felt the same
way.  But there were good reasons for not dwelling on the feeling.
"Protocol, Commander," she reminded them both, and felt him shake his
head.
   "No, you said not tonight.  It's not fair to change the rules in the
middle."  Chakotay's hands moved to her collar, and then his mouth
followed, brushing the underside of her jawbone while he pulled off the
round buttons marking her grade.  "Besides, it's too dark for me to see
how many pips you're wearing." She felt his hands drop to her shoulders
and slide very deliberately down her torso, stopping to strip the comm
badge from her chest, then continue without hesitation over her breasts,
around her waist, across her belly and past her thighs before starting
back up again.  His nose nuzzled her cheek.  "It's also too dark for me to
see your face, but I can feel you blushing, Kathryn."
   She started to say, "I'm turning crimson with rage..." and then moaned
abruptly as he silenced her with another kiss, his tongue darting into her
open mouth.  Her own curled forward to meet him as her instincts once
again outpaced her rational mind.  Again she stopped herself.  "Please,
don't."
   Chakotay left his hands on either side of her neck, tickling just below
her hairline.  Surely he could feel her pulse racing in the hollow of her
throat.  "If you're saying no because you don't want this, or because you
left someone waiting at home, I can understand that. But don't use command
hierarchy as an excuse.  We're off duty.  Be honest with me."  
   He waited, his breath warm against her face, while for the first time
she let herself experience the explosion of feeling which shook her body
at the possibility of assenting.  There in the darkness that hid
everything, what would it mean to make love with her First Officer? 
Janeway felt light years removed from reality, not just home and
Starfleet, but the ship, her responsibilities, the ocular reality of his
body and her own.  She sensed his lips brushing her eyelids, the touch
almost worshipful, and pulled back for the last time.  "If we do this,
we're not going to be able to sit in a conference room tomorrow and wipe
it out of our minds."
   "Of course we won't," Chakotay admitted, and although it was the wrong
answer, his directness moved her; she couldn't see his features, but she
could visualize perfectly his expression, open and intense and a little
melancholy.  He shrugged slightly.  "I also won't forget that you miss
your parents.  But that's not going to change how we work together. 
Whatever happens here in the dark is a world apart from what we do out
there."
   It was true:  it seemed as though she were in a dream, and if the
lights came on suddenly she would find herself alone in her own quarters. 
Even if she left now--even if she had left before he kissed her--they had
already taken a turn down a strange corridor, stumbling outside their
usual relationship.  She had a feeling they were not the only couple on
the ship huddled together against the loneliness of the night.  The
unexpected blindness had hidden the order of things.  
   Her arm reached to remove the command insignia from his collar as he
had done to hers, but before she could touch him, Chakotay intercepted her
hand and caught her pointer finger in his mouth, sucking gently on it
while he nibbled the tip with his molars.  She shivered and felt his hands
brush her nipples, which had sprung erect at the odd sensation.  His
fingers moved together, then hesitated at the zipper on her uniform.
   "It's too dark for you to see me naked, isn't it?"  Janeway reached
back to pull her hair loose, her chest arching forward against him as she
unwound the twists, tugging the hair in front of her to fall across her
chest and onto his hand.  His fingers tangled into it, distracted, and she
siezed the moment to slide her hands into his groin, to discover whether
the darkness had permitted him to hide the fact that he was hard for her. 
He was--she could feel him twitch and throb under his clothes, startled by
the sudden contact--and he quickly freed her upper body from her uniform,
helping her pull her arms out of the tight sleeves while she rose to her
knees on the couch above him.  The moment her breasts were accessible, his
mouth was on first one and then the other, his purrs of pleasure tickling
her as much as his tongue.
   She lifted his head with her hands and he quickly shed his own uniform,
tossing it across the room while she wriggled her remaining clothes down
her legs and into a heap on the floor.  Straining to see him in the
almost-blackness, Janeway gave up and let her fingers take him in slowly,
starting at the neck just below his ears and moving down his body in much
the manner he had stroked her earlier.  She could feel the broad muscles
of his chest and arms, the hairlessness of his belly and the coarse curls
on his legs.  His scalp smelled clean and his lower body exuded a scent
almost like fresh bread, salt and yeast and something indefinable that
made her mouth water.
   Meanwhile, Chakotay inspected her with his tongue as well as his hands,
licking her everywhere, humming as though she tasted good.  An urge to
fall back on the couch, driving his mouth between her legs, began to
possess her, but she wanted to hold him there in the dark where she could
explore without his eyes meeting her own.  She pushed gently against his
forehead until his face inclined upwards, letting her fingers trace
lightly over where she knew the tattoo to be, down across his closed eyes,
the bridge of his nose and the sculpted curves of his slightly parted
lips.  He kissed her fingers as they slid by, then turned his face back to
her to kiss her waist while her hands dropped across his ears and neck to
rub his back. Her hips began to move slightly as he licked his way down
her body until he stopped, face buried in her abdomen, and helped her lie
down, supporting the arch of her back with his hands.
   Janeway rolled her legs under her and dropped, taking him with her.  He
nuzzled the coarse hair between her legs with his nose while his tongue
probed lower.  Then he sat back unexpectedly, losing contact with her. 
She lay alone in the dark for what seemed like several minutes, tension
building in her.  Just when she was about to call out for him, she felt
his palms pressing the bottoms of her feet, kneading her soles, working
gradually up to her ankles and then her knees.  Chakotay moved his hands
very slowly up her body so, caressing and massaging, although she had the
distinct feeling that he was also trying to create a visual picture of her
from the tactile sensations.  She lay still for him, tracing idle patterns
on his back with her fingernails while she wondered whether there were
other tattoos on his body hidden by the darkness.
   Sliding his hands over her thighs, spreading her wide around him,
Chakotay hunched down and paused for a long moment as though he were
studying her.  Janeway felt herself blushing at the sudden image of what
they must look like: she on her back with her hair falling off the couch
and her knees drawn up, he curled between her legs gazing hungrily at her
invisible naked body.  His fingers searched her delicately as if he were
prospecting for treasure, until she felt a trickle of heat well up in her
and bucked against his mouth.  He pressed down confidently, tongue moving
over the places his hands had been a moment before.  
   She closed her eyes, then opened them again, suddenly uncertain whether
she usually made love with her eyes mostly open or shut.  In the black
room she could have pretended Chakotay was anyone, which made her fiercely
aware of her joy that it was he who was kissing and sucking the aching
well of her desire; if she had been with anyone else or even alone that
night, she knew she would have imagined him there instead.  She wanted to
see his face at that moment and pulled him on top of her, level with her,
her fingers tracing the outines of his eyes and his damp, smiling lips. 
Words Kathryn Janeway never would have used if he could look at her
threatened to spill out in the privacy of the blackness, but she did not
want to awaken from the dreamlike dark, the silence where no intrusion of
rationality disturbed their communion.  
   Chakotay drew in a slow breath of anticipation.  She could feel him
hesitating, pressing and retreating, pushing a little further each time,
until a flood of want made her so slick that he surged into her.  They
both gasped.  A long, slow withdrawal, and then he slid forward again
inside her as she moaned in pleasure, her legs wrapping snugly around his
back.  The too-slow rhythm allowed him to keep enough control to brush his
fingers lightly over her torso, dipping to stroke her pelvis as he pulled
himself away again.  The deliberate thrusts fell into a secure cadence,
his upper body moving as well as his hips, possessing her completely and
then pulling back until she lifted herself to him.  Soft needy whimpers
began to escape through her nose.
   He kissed her, rolling his tongue to the same tempo as her own
clenching and releasing, increasing speed and urgency as she did.  Feeling
the slow contracting of her lower back, the tightening beginning in her
belly, she freed her legs from around him, suspending them in midair the
way she herself was suspended on the edge of the peak.  His groan vibrated
through her, she was going to drop first, slamming her feet down to propel
her body upward to him when the tremors began, she shrieked into his
mouth, her hips almost throwing him off her and the couch with the force
of the wave that crested up through her body.  Through the burst she felt
him stiffen, arms crushing her sides as his weight came down on her, the
careful rhythm disintegrating into frantic, uneven spurts forward, while
he made a sound from the back of his throat like a wolf howling.  
   She caught his parted lips with her own as his head lowered, feeling
wildly energized as he grunted her name into her own mouth.  Panting, they
slowed to resting, their limbs growing damply attached to one another
while his heart pounded against her chest.  She inhaled deeply, locking
her arms around him.  His hands came up to caress her shoulders as they
lay still together, breathing in the darkness.  
   "Too fast?" he whispered finally.
   "Wouldn't have wanted it any other way."  His voice brought her back to
herself, the head of this starship, lying with her second in command in
the repose of passion. She was suddenly glad neither of them had been in
condition for slow, adoring lovemaking, she did not want to know just how
good a lover he could be.  She was afraid of the conversation they might
be about to have.  "There's no time.  We should contact engineering."
   "Next time then," he said, and she let it go, not wanting to ask
exactly what he meant.  He shifted off her to let her sit up, but did not
move away, keeping in physical contact with most of her body. 
"Kathryn..."  Chakotay stopped whatever he had planned to say, reaching to
touch her face instead, the contact an unexpected thrill in the
blackness.  She thought that she had never felt so able to read his
thoughts as here where she could not read his expression.  Then he placed
something in her hand, surprising her.  "Here--your comm badge. I, uh,
deactivated it."
   She did not bother with the glare she did not truly mean, which she
knew would be lost in the shadows, as she activated the communicator. 
"Janeway to Torres."  She did wonder whether her hoarse voice would sound
different to the people she commanded so soon after she had consciously
discarded protocol.
   "Captain...we've been trying to reach you. I think the intercom in your
quarters may be..."
   "I wasn't in my quarters, and my comm badge was inadvertently turned
off, Lieutenant.  What's going on down there?  Did you track down the
radiation problem?"
   "We did, and we know why it isn't affecting any other ship's systems. 
It's because the problem is with our eyes.  All artificial lights are in
the same part of the visual spectrum, and the radiation apparently caused
our own eyes to stop seeing any other radiation within certain
wavelengths; it's why we can see the natural light sources, they have a
much broader range of output.  We don't need to fix the ship, we just need
to get away from the source.  Once we get beyond the nebula, treat
everyone, and decontaminate the ship, there shouldn't be any problem."
   "Did you ask the Doctor about this?" Janeway was surprised; she'd never
heard of such a problem.
   "He thinks our eyes must have reacted defensively somehow to the
radiation; our retinas were damaged but the nerves didn't relay
information to our brains.  It isn't that the fire was weak or that the
phosphorescent rocks weren't bright enough; it just looked that way to our
damaged eyes.  Look out the window, even the stars seem dimmer than
usual."  Janeway took a good look out the port for the first time since
entering Chakotay's quarters and reflected that Torres was right; they
just hadn't been paying attention, they had been so certain the problem
lay in the ship.
   "We can control the course from down here," B'Elanna was continuing. 
"So unless you have another plan, I think it's probably safest for
everyone to remain where they are for the next few hours, until we're
completely out of the nebula's range.  Then we can begin treatment and
decontamination."
   "Very well.  Good work.  Carry on, Lieutenant, I'll inform the crew."
Janeway broke the connection, reported on their status to the rest of the
ship, then turned back to the man waiting beside her.  "I guess we're
stuck with each other for the next few hours."
   "And stuck to each other."  He shifted his leg slightly and her own
skin clung moistly to him.  "Sorry about the comm badge.  I wonder why
they didn't contact me?"
   "They probably suspected you didn't deserve to be trusted with command
decisions," she griped, shaking her head.  "I should have known you were
up to something."
   Chakotay's voice filled with familiar humor.  "Well, we're all a little
blind about certain things.  Are you hungry?  I'm starving.  Let's use up
all our replicator rations on something we shouldn't eat in the dark
because it'll make a real mess."
   "Fruit, cheese, and chocolate fondue," Janeway said immediately.  "With
whipped cream.  Much better without any clothes on to stain."  
   "My pleasure, Captain."  The warm rumble of surprised delight moved
over her like a caress.  "Anything else you want?"
   She resisted the dozen ironic answers which leaped immediately to mind.
"Yes.  Don't call me by that title for the rest of the night.  Whatever
happened here was between you and me, not between the Captain and First
Officer of this ship."
   His laughter shot across the room like a beacon as he moved toward the
replicator on the far wall.  She thought, one day we'll be in the kitchen,
surrounded by people, and someone will say something about chocolate, and
we'll look at each other and remember this.  Her eyes closed in
anticipation of future embarrassment, then opened again; silly to shut
one's eyes in a black room, silly to be ashamed of what was almost a
dream.  Almost.