ugly bag of mostly voyager

1. Mark Johnson

You're faithful to the better man, I'm afraid that he left

She’s been on edge since the encounter in the turbolift, and it doesn’t matter that she was kissing a fabrication, a facsimile of the man she loved and left behind. It felt real. And the feelings that churn inside her now, the feelings that, months ago, she scrunched into a ball and shoved deep, deep down so that she could ignore them… Those are real, too.

Her steps quicken as she approaches her quarters, and it’s fortunate that the corridor is deserted because by the time she reaches her door she’s almost running. Her fingers fumble the entry code. She pushes through the gap and is wrenching off her jacket, kicking off her boots, before the doors have fully closed behind her.

She reaches up to unpin her hair, and stops.

Mark always preferred her hair up, especially when he wanted to make love. She can’t count the times she’d trudged into his apartment, exhausted after a long meeting or a long day or a long mission, her uniform starched and tight as a sausage skin, longing to loosen her collar and take down her hair. He would greet her with a glass of wine and a smoky gleam in his eyes, and he’d bend to brush her lips with his, and instead of lingering there he would let his mouth drift across her cheek and under her jaw …

You used to love it when I kissed you there, the Bothan hallucination had murmured when she’d tried to push him away. And now, as then, the memory of Mark’s lips tracing the long line of her neck sends a shiver arrowing all the way to her toes.

Kathryn unfastens her turtleneck and tugs the sleeves down her wrists, unhooks her bra, unbuttons her pants. Lightly, experimentally, she skims her palms upward over her abdomen and cups her breasts. She pinches her nipples, the way Mark used to, and her breath catches.

She leaves her hair pinned up.

“Computer, lights out,” she calls. “Hold all communications bar emergencies until further notice.”

The breathy hitch in her voice excites her further. Sinking onto the bed, she spreads her thighs and slides her hand between them. She’s slick and eager and there’s no time for teasing. No need for it either.

There’s just enough starlight to cast a glimmer across the planes and angles of her body as she looks downward, but seeing the taut arch of her wrist, the dance of delicate bones in the back of her hand as she plucks at her own flesh, is a distraction.

Kathryn squinches her eyes closed and imagines Mark’s silvered head between her thighs, his big capable hands holding her wide to him. She recalls the callous on his forefinger as he curled it and rubbed it inside her, and the sounds he’d make, almost groaning, as she began to buck and quiver.

She thinks about the way he would hold her hips, his dexterous tongue and his diligence, and the way he’d look at her as she floated down from her high: entranced, focused, almost reverent.

He was always so good at this; could make her fly without effort or pause. Nobody compares to you, she used to say. Nobody touches me like you do.

But the thing she misses most of all is that look in his eyes as he gentled her down.

The joint of her thumb aches and her wrist begins to cramp, but she grits her teeth and ignores it. She’s so close …

Someone else is in your thoughts now.

Kathryn’s rhythm falters. The edge of her climax ebbs away.

Biting her lip, she rubs harder, faster, spreading her legs wider. Come on, she pleads.

And, yes, maybe she has imagined, maybe she has fantasised … But fantasy isn’t reality, and thinking about another man doesn’t mean she’ll act on it.

“I haven’t been unfaithful,” she entreats aloud.

The sound of her own voice punctures her daydream like a balloon.

The motion of her fingers slows and her wrist sinks and loosens. The gathering frenzy dissipates. Her eyes open.

She stares at the ceiling, breathing hard. Then she pulls her hand from between her legs and rolls onto her side, blinking against the sting of tears.

Fantasy isn’t reality, she reminds herself harshly, and pretending he’s here with her doesn’t make it true.