Happy October!

[fleeftastic]

Title: One Fine Day In Unexplored Space
Fandom: ST: Voyager
Ship: Seven/Janeway
A/N: Probably piig♥’s fault somehow. :)
Wordcount: 5,000
Hard R? nsfw

Warnings: F/F sex. Author's knowledge of canon dulled by the passage of time. Chaste tentacles. Uh. Accidental bondage I didn't notice until I was halfway through? Might also count as 'aliens made them do it'.

:D?



The seed ship arrived on glimmering solar sails and circled the Voyager tenderly as a courting water-dove. It was an artistic dream of curves and colour-retardant reflective surfacing, and Janeway might better have appreciated the sight had the infernal thing not been in the process of engulfing her ship.

"Captain! It's eating the ship!"

Janeway clutched her console, though the expected turbulence never hit. "Dammit engineering I heard you the last few times!"

Kes chewed her knuckles. "Captain, I'm still not reading any hostility. Just a taste like those Bjoran silk-candies, and a little like synthahol."

Before Janeway could ask when the hell she’d had synthahol, Chakotay whirled away from his console and pulled tips of his ears. "It's eating the ship! It doesn't need to be hostile, just peckish!"

"Can *anyone*," Janeway enunciated over the pulse of Red Alert, "tell me what is going on?"

The Gamma-shift science officer's legs jigged so hard her voice shook. "It's. Uh. The attacking vessel appears to be an amalgamation of organics over a carbon/silica mesh. It's. Not eating us, exactly. It's. Forging connections with the Voyager--Captain, it's growing into the ship."

Janeway sat straighter and checked the tidiness of her sleep-mussed bun. The excitement had started two hours before the end of Gamma shift and the bridge was currently crewed with a mixture of Gamma and Alpha shift, all showing varying levels of tiredness. Janeway herself strongly suspected she had pillow-marks on her cheek and resisted the urge to rub selfconsciously at them. "Where will it enter the ship? I want an armed team waiting. Has it affected any of our systems? Is it anywhere near the warp coils? Dammit, someone get me answers!"

The lift whirred open just as the lights flinched, fluttered, and went dark. Curses from all directions in a healthy mixture of languages, some outbursts hastily stifled. Seven calmly demanded that the computer re-establish the lights.

"When did she get here?" Chakotay said, over the computer's assertion that the lights *were* on. The Red Alert claxons bleated then fell silent, and the computer no longer responded to commands.

"The turbolift," Seven said, "Though I do not know if they are still funcitonal." Seven paused, then added, "I have just come from engineering. Ensign Aziz is hysterical and indicates that the coolant tanks have become clogged with what she describes as a writhing nest of prehensile pencil-dicks, and requests permission to open fire. She then preceeded to open fire, to no discernable effect."

Janeway stifled a groan. Phaser-fire and photon torpedoes both had vanished into the ship's glossy exterior with a ripple like a gumball into a still pond, to emerge from the other side and continue into the void, useless as a hackeysack in a snakepit.

Over by the helm the Vulcan Gamma-shift navigator announced, "Lt. Mohammed, I have told you that I am married. Kindly remove your hand from my groin.”

Lt. Mohammed cleared his throat, three sharp cracks, and protested his innocence. "I only groped you the once, nuh man! Just the once and my name it mud fa life."

"Would it be you who's fondling me, then, Captain?" Skernol asked with little hope.

"That's a negative, Ensign. Thanks anyway," Janeway said, and swallowed hard against the fear clambering about in her ribcage. "Why haven't the backup powercells engaged?"

"Then who's that with their fingers in my hair?" Chakotay said, voice cracking. "I thought it was. Uh. I mean. Captain?"

Into the darkness and silence, Kes giggled. Janeway drummed her fingers on her console and dragged a hard breath. There hadn't been a class, seminar, or simulation covering anything of the sort while she had been in training. Even if the communications systems still worked, there was nobody within hailing-distance. Starfleet promised its cadets that they were entering into the truest family the known universe could offer, and that for the rest of their lives they'd be no more than an S.O.S away from an army of their peers. Her crew didn't have that--all they had was her, and each other. She channeled her command voice. "I want everyone with their hands in their laps, now! Is anyone armed?"

A cry of outrage from Lt. Mohammed. "My console's covered in--That’s like it’s *hair*!?"

Cooing, Kes said, "We're all together now," and, from the sound of it, she was approaching Janeway at the central console in confident, skipping hops.

"Kes, report," Janeway said.

"I'm getting a reading!" she chirped. "They love us!"

Janeway surged to her feet, hesitated, and settled back into her chair. The polymer-blend cushion gave with an unfamiliar rustle when she sank gingerly against the backrest.

"Captain, my console likewise is overgrown with a coating of unknown filaments. I am attempting to clear them away."

Over by the communications console, a faint, silvery light sprang up; the ensign on duty had found a spare PADD and now shone it about, her face a shadowed oval in the brief bubble that held out against the black. Something glimmered wetly over her console, and she recoiled with a cry.

"Ensign Peters, get ahold of yourself! Good thinking. Are there any more PADDS lying about?"

"I. Uh. I got a gaming system?" Lt. Mohammed volunteered shyly.

"Whip it out, then," Janeway ordered, feeling a surge of fondness for her crew as other weak lights sprang up, powering on with tiny trills or bell-tones. By their combined glow the glimmering wet ropes filled the bridge.

"How intruiging," Skernol said, just as someone began to scream.

"Quiet!" Janeway roared.

"It's all over your CHAIR!" Peters cried. "Captain, you've got to move!" And she threw her PADD at Janeway's head.

Janeway ducked automatically, or tried to; her shoulders jerked but her back seemed fused to her chair. She raised her arms, still free, and squirmed, contracting her belly in an attempt to move her legs. They were stuck fast to the floor by more of that glimmering *stuff*.

"Peters, will you be quiet? Everyone, status!"

"Not stuck," Lt. Mohammed said quickly.

"Nor am I," Skernol said, swiping at his console. "The filaments seem to have thickened. I believe they resemble worms. They are moving."

Janeway swallowed to silence herself. "Seven of Nine, what's your status? If the lift works, see if you can get Kes to sickbay."

"She is not my first priority," Seven said, skirting the side of Janeway's console and bending over her, her hair a fairy blaze in the gloom of the power-dead bridge. "Captain?" Seven said, and wove her hands through the mass that had cocooned Janeway's lower legs, fisting her hands and hauling.

"Ah!" Janeway's discomfort burst out of her; Seven's pulling didn't hurt, precisely, but it felt as if she were gently drawing Janeway's entrails out of her abdomen. "Seven, stop, I can feel that--"

Seven froze. "Captain?"

Janeway scowled. Her skin itched, now, along her back and down her thighs, the itch creeping over her entirely. She coughed a little to clear her throat. "Seven--can you clear the back of my neck?"

"Certainly," Seven said, the metal that curved above her eye a silver accent. Her fingertips along the nape of Janeway's neck were warm, the filaments creeping into her skin standing out cool in contrast to that touch. Janeway closed her eyes, on the bridge of her dead ship, and held to her calm. There was a reason the Kobayashi Maru was still a required simulation for anyone on command track. As Seven tugged gingerly at the soft, ferny growths that connected Janeway to her chair, she said, "I want all of you to the lift, now."

"Captain--" Seven said, "Brace yourself." And she tore a fistful of filaments free from Janeway's neck.

Three things happened. Janeway cried out at the slicing pain, and tensed. Power returned to the bridge in a blow of light. And the no-coloured, glimmering mass reared as a whole, leaping like water to engulf Janeway and Seven in a glittery translucent egg. Seven stumbled, lurching over Janeway and slapping both hands against the backrest of the Captain's chair.

"Dear God," Janeway said. "Seven?"

"I am uninjured. You do not appear to be bleeding," Janeway returned, bracing her knees beside Janeway's thighs and patting her hands over the interior curve of the bubble. Janeway shivered, feeling the light impacts as if Seven were stroking the chambers of her lungs.

"Kes? Ensign Peters?" Janeway called, hoarse. There was no answer, and no sound but the faint brushing of Seven's hands and the rush of Janeway's uneven breaths.

"I want this thing OFF OF MY SHIP," Janeway said, and glared at Seven for lack of a better target.

"Take your hair down," Seven said absently, scratching at the egg.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your hairclip," Seven said.

"I'm not in the habit of wearing metal to bed," Janeway said stiffly. The scrape of Seven's nails made her bones itch.

"Perhaps you should consider it." Seven didn't seem to know where to put her hands, finally settling them on Janeway's console to either side of her own thighs.

"The others don't appear to be moving," Seven reported. "We would be able to see their shadows."

No sound made it through the colourless shell. Abruptly Seven leaned over Janeway, peering at the back of her neck, forcing the Captain to turn her head or risk unintentionally bending the fraternization rule. "If it were metal as opposed to organics I would call this a data plugin or virtuareal jack," Seven said. Her breath stirred Janeway's hair.

"How much of the ship has this thing surrounded?" Janeway fretted. Her body ached with tension. She craned her neck, a movement muted by the living fibres that had sunk into her body.

"Tell me what you feel," Seven said. Even now she was calm.

I envy your control, Janeway didn't say. I want to break it. I want to know if you're still capable of blushing, or orgasm. I want you to get off my lap so I can think. I'm terrified this thing is going to kill my crew. I'm frightened it already has. "Angry," she said. "Protective."

Seven blinked, her lashes pale and perfect. She tipped her head and regarded the cocoon, the slim rootlets that had grown into her Captain's flesh. "I have a hypothesis."

"As good as anyone else's fact," Janeway said. "Continue."

"I do not believe we are under attack. I believe we are being contacted."

"I'll believe that when it spits my damned ship out and says 'hello' like everyone else!"

Patiently, Seven said, "Kes showed no sign of alarm."

"Kes seemed to exhibit the euphoria ofan intoxicated teenager," Janeway grumped. "How much of the rest of the crew is bound and who's still active? Did the alarm wake the rest of the crew?"

"I do not believe we can affect that now," Seven said absently.

"Tell me about your hypothesis," Janeway said, meaning, Distract me.

"The ship may itself be sentient. It may be a biocomputer or AI with organic segments. If it has forged connections with your nervous system it may be possible for you to affect it."

"Before it takes me over? Or kills us all," Janeway muttered. Her ribcage felt too small, and the tingling itch had moved into her marrow. She fought down her restless urge to squirm and bit the inside of her cheek at the image, so strong it bordered on sensation, of Seven herself squirming and flushed with arousal.

"Captain," Seven said gently. "Would you try?"

Janeway tensed, thrashed slightly, demanded that the things burrowing into her withdraw, that the transulcent prison open. Instead, it contracted, yanking her flush to her chair and crushing Seven into her lap. Janeway turned her head, her cheek flat to the fabric of Seven's uniform just above the jut of her breasts.

"Are you really so defensive against it? It has not hurt us," Seven said.

Janeway closed her eyes, breathless and palpitating and *trapped*. "If you make any comments about surrendering, futility, or human frailty I swear I will throw you out of the airlock myself."

Seven shifted, not a fidget or a little getting-comfy shift like anyone else, but a deliberate adjustment. Now Janeway's forehead was pressed to Seven's shoulder; Seven's breath a soft rush past her ear. "Captain, you must relax. It seems connected not to the autonomic systems or forebrain but to your body."

Janeway bit her lip, hard, against the flutter of hysterical laughter that clawed at her throat. If there were ever a situation *less* conducive to relaxation--"Somehow I doubt that," Janeway said.

"Hm, interesting," Seven said.

"Have you been spending too much time with Tuvok?" Janeway said.

"Not enough to have learned the nerve-pinch," Seven said.

"Seven!"

"I was joking, Captain. Though it *would* relax you."

"Don't you dare."

Seven didn't answer. Janeway flexed her body, but the filaments had melted firmly into her flesh. Her ship was a fragile bubble of metal and air and life, the lives of her crew, and if Seven were right, if there *was* something she could do, even bound like this--

Seven rested against her, breathing slow, as if there were nothing out of the ordinary. As if Janeway's lap were a perfectly suitable place to perch, Seven's metal-augmented weight warm and uncomfortably welcome. Janeway matched the rhythm, drawing breaths warmed by Seven's body, the soft neutral savor that a sonic shower left, the faint human musk overlaid with a tang of metal. It set Janeway on edge, tense, wanting to touch and posess. It made her want to bite.

Light pressure and motion over the top of her head made Janeway start, and the cocoon flexed. Janeway growled a Klingon phrase she'd deny knowing.

"It's only me," Seven said. "I am stroking your hair."

Perhaps this was a nightmare.

"Captain," Seven said. Crooned, almost. "Do I make you uncomfortable?"

"Of course not," Janeway snapped.

"Focus on me, and release your tension."

Janeway moved to pinch the bridge of her nose, but her arms were stuck fast to her chair. A sensation hovered just out of reach, the sense of herself as vast and hollow and pregnant with life. She recoiled from the feeling, from the fear, but the only other place to go was Seven, a member of her crew, inappropriately close and insufferably calm.

"The doctor and I talk at night," Seven said, seemingly out of nowhere. "He is human enough to grow lonely."

Janeway raised an eyebrow. The bridge lighting was diffused by the dome until it seemed that Janeway and Seven were trapped in the luminous heart of a pearl. Seven's uniform seemed full of distant stars or moonlit seafoam, pulled back toward the sea to the chime of shelldrift.

"Seven, I'm losing my mind," Janeway said faintly. "I don't suppose I could coax you into attempting a nerve pinch? Or a decent right hook ought to do it."

“Meditation? Seven suggested. “Or-” she traced the curve of Janeway's ear, ticklish-light, and ignored that comment. "As I had been saying; The doctor has frequently praised the value of therapeutic massage to those with difficulty relaxing."

"My back is fused to my chair," Janeway said dryly.

"Do you have an alternate suggestion?" Seven smoothed her thumbs over Janeway's eyebrows and firmly over her temples.

Janeway winced. "Lighter, please."

"I fail to see how a faint touch will relax your muscles." Seven didn't let up, settling into a firm circuit along Janeway's brow, then dragging tense fingertips down the sides of Janeway's throat. On the third stroke Janeway broke out in gooseflesh, a cold prickle over her ribs and along her thighs.

"Captain, you've a flush."

"I blame you," Janeway said indistinctly. Surely all her tendons were fossilized, all her muscles white-flecked red marble stiff and cold. Seven kneaded the tops of Janeway's shoulders, rough pressure through her fingers and the heels of her hands. A shiver worked down Janeway's back as some of the tension broke, escaping as a soft vocalization.

"You made a noise," Seven obvserved.

Reluctantly, Janeway allowed herself to lean against Seven. Just a little. "I did not."

"I ought not to confess, then, that the doctor did indeed mention therapeutic massage, and I never never would mention that he *also* mentioned an orgasm as being a superior relaxation technique."

Janeway coughed and pulled away as far as the chair would allow. "Did he now."

"With your permission, Captain," Seven said. Her request may have had more weight had she stopped her hands.

"Regulations forbid such--"

"Captain," Seven said, and Janeway stopped at the uncharacteristic gentleness of her voice. "It is imperative that we release the ship and bridge crew and establish meaningful contact with the unknown vessel. I believe this will work but I will require your cooperation."

"Seven. I'm tied to the chair."

"Are you implying that you would prefer to withhold verbal consent?"

What do you do when duty coerces you into something you don't want to admit to wanting? "Permission be damned. You have to write the report, then," Janeway said. "Chakotay will be an adequate Captain, if he picks a first officer who can balance him out."

"Captain."

"Of course, I don't know who's going to court-martial me. Or what I'm going to do till we make it back to Federation space."

"Captain Janeway--"

"And you'll need to see the Doctor for counselling, afterwards, of course. I don't think we need to worry about a pregnancy but he’ll want to check us both for--"

"Elizabeth!"

Janeway stopped. "Why, Seven. I'm not sure I've ever heard you take that tone before."

Seven actually frowned. "Is your junction with the ship affecting your mind?" Janeway wanted to touch her nose to the little confused scrunch of Seven's brow.

"No. I don't think so. Of course it is--"

"It ought to have merged with me," Seven remarked, smoothing the edges of Janeway's bun. "I have been subsumed by a whole before."

Janeway grimaced. "Don't talk like that."

"Documented fact?"

"As if you're expendable. You're a valuable member of my crew, as fine an officer as Starfleet could ever want, as any Captain could ask for--"

Janeway stopped abruptly at the curve of Seven's palm to her cheek. "I owe Neelix a forfeit. He's convinced you have sexual inclinations towards me."

Dimly, Janeway resolved to have a conversation with the morale officer. Seven tucked her face against Janeway's and murmured, "Don't over-examine." She curled her free hand against Janeway's neck, her thumb riding Janeway's carotid. "Tell me where the other ship has connected with ours."

"Cargo holds two through four," Janeweay said, without thinking. "Engineering, but nowhere near the warp coils or nacelles. All outlying cabins, including the bridge. It hasn't affected our weapons systems, and it just ignored the shields," she finished in a tone of surprise.

"Can you affect it? Try opening," Seven told her. Janeway swallowed, an audible click in a dry throat. She squirmed as much as she could, and Seven rode the movement with an easy arch of her hips, making Janeway seize and draw a sharp breath.

"I wish I could move my hands."

"That will not be necessary." Seven stroked down Janeway's arms and dabbed soft circles in the hollows of her palms.

It tickled, but the sensation built until a sympathetic thrum shot through Janeway, a shiver as all her body woke up to pay attention. She closed her eyes. "If we're going to do this, you should kiss me."

In answer, Seven tipped her head so their mouths brushed, a ruffle of mixed breath between them. Janeway strained into it, waiting, waiting till it ached, but Seven's mouth remained closed. With a pang Janeway wondered if she even knew how.

"Here," Janeway said, helplessly focussed on the warm crush of Seven's weight on her thighs. She nuzzled into a more elaborate kiss, catching at ths silky undercurve of Seven's lip with her teeth. Seven gripped her hands, squeezed goodbye and took hold of Janeway's jaw like an order. "Messy organics," she muttered, then licked Janeway's mouth in a long swipe, more like an enthusiastic puppy than an amorous woman.

Oh dear, Janeway thought, and bit Seven's lower lip before she could do that again, taking her time with a teaching kiss, slow lush sweeps over the fine skin of Seven's lip, and in. Seven went still, dead-in-space still. Janeway persisted, a little grimly; let her react as she would, but Seven *would* react. Janeway flexed her fingers, longing.

Seven didn't melt or groan or even hitch her folded legs higher up Janeway's lap, but she did tip her head and cautiously press into the kiss.

"*God*," Janeway muttered, and strained forward. "God, Seven--"

"Here," Seven said, and stroked posessively through Janeway's hair, mussing it. A laugh choked itself off in Janeway's throat. "Seven. Try the neck."

"That isn't one of the listed primary-sexual-response sites," Seven protested.

In answer, Janeway turned her face away, tipping her chin up. The diffuse light of the bridge spilled over her face.

"Remember to relax," Seven told her, and traced a ticklish-thin and mathematically-precise line up Janeway's carotid with the tip of her tongue.

In the unnatural quiet of the membrane every tiny noise took on unwarranted significance; the rasp of Seven's uniform against Janeway's, every breath that hitched out of sequence or the soft cling and part of peppered kisses. Seven hovered over Janeway as much as the cramped quarters would allow, proceeding as if she had a list she followed faithfully; this many kisses, then a touch to the throat. This much attention to the throat, and then the shoulder may be touched.

"Are you cold? You keep shaking," Seven said, and pressed her teeth against Janeway's trapezius before applying careful pressure.

"Mhn. No," Janeway muttered. Her forearms ached from straining against the connecting fronds. She wanted to touch Seven, she wanted to finger-comb that blond hair until it frizzed like the downfeathers of a new bird, she wanted to cup Seven's waist and urge her closer, to touch those magnificent breasts or *god* get Seven out of that uniform--

"Captain, you must try to relax," Seven said, and unfastened the hidden catch at Janeway's throat.

Janeway took a cramped breath, her ribcage tight. "Easy to say--"

"Focus."

Janeway picked a fleck of light in the egg-membrane above, let it take the whole of her vision as Seven pressed firm, dragging strokes across her shoulders and down her arms, squeezing her wrists before her hands lifted like birds to repeat the sequence. Over and over, Seven's slow touch and drugging proximity, until Seven dotted soft, damp kisses to the corner of Janeway's mouth. "I'm going to proceed to the next step, Captain,"

"I believe I'd have gathered that when you, oh."

"There is an aural aspect to increasing your partner's arousal. When Chakotay and Kim allowed me to watch it was clear that Chakotay derived as much stimulation from what was said as from what was done."

Janeway squinted one eye closed and resolved to forget that image as quickly as possible.

"I am going to slide my hands into your shirt now," Seven said.

Janeway flushed and arched immediately, hating the glittery engulfing entity and her uniform equally. "Seven--"

"Let me," Seven said. "Focus on a reduction of tension."

A return to the fleck of light, then, but the tension at Janeway's core only increased, even as she focussed on unravelling her muscles limb by limb. She timed her breathing to the slide of Seven's warm hands, not noticing when the fronds relaxed too, allowing Janeway to slump into a welcoming curve that Seven could curl into. She felt jittery, still worried about her crew, but her body was lighting up, distracting her. As Seven nuzzled her breastbone a pulse started somewhere in the entity the Voyager had become, the tangling tendrils softening their clutch.

"Seven, would you get on with it?" Janeway said, growling to hide her lack of breath.

"I am following the steps the doctor gave me," Seven protested.

"Wait. Steps. He--"

Seven scrunched sideways, squirming into the gap between Janeway's side and the left arm of her console, draping a thigh over Janeway's and stroking the regulation trousers warmed by Janeway's body. "There," Seven said. "I have skipped two steps."

"*What* steps? Seven, did you *plan* to--," But then Seven curled her palm where Janeway ached most for her touch, and talking just wasn't worth the effort, not when she could lift her hips and fight her breathing down to something less desperate, more befitting a Starfleet captain, and then Seven pulled away and Janeway bit a curse off to a grunt. "Seven?"

"If you won't relax there's no point in this," Seven said.

Janeway clenched her teeth. "I believe a lessening of tension is the final stage in the process."

Seven's thumb rode Janeway's hipbone, the steady eyes *merry*, or near enough.

"You missed, Seven," Janeway play-growled.

"Missed what?" Seven said.

Janeway knocked their foreheads together, softly. "Seven?"

"Aye, Captain?"

Janeway had to drag a full breath before she could answer. She hadn't *thought* she'd had a kink for being called Captain in bed, but she suspected that having Seven in her lap would result in any number of new kinks.

Seven nuzzled into Janeway's neck, prying the waistband of Janeway's uniform away from her belly and worming one hand inside. Janeway knocked her forehead against Seven's breast as she arched into the touch, spread as far as the confines of her chair would allow, desperate and sweaty and still fully dressed.

"Seven--"

"There was supposed to have been a bed," Seven murmured, her fingers careful against the slick soft skin. Janeway jerked, even so soft a touch a shock after waiting so long.

"And I wanted to sit with you on the obvervation deck. You could have had wine which I would taste from your mouth."

Shivering, Janeway twisted her hips in short pulses, her belly tensing with the sliding stroke of Seven's fingers. It made her head swim, her vision an underwater blur. "I'd have wanted to stay, if you would have allowed it."

Janeway nodded senselessly, head tipping back against the breathless pressure expanding in her chest, as if her next breath were immeasurably far away.

"Captain, tell me why this is so appealing," Seven told her, "It is messy and undignified."

Laughing only cracked the breathless feeling tighter, and Janeway yanked against her living restraints, wanting to scratch though Seven's hair or clutch her back. Fine tremors started in her thighs and up along her ribs. When Janeway pried her eyes open for a glance at Seven she found her watching, that steady focus, as if Janeway were beautiful instead of mussed and sweaty. "What can I give you?" Seven asked, and tucked her face against Janeway’s.

"Just this, just this--" Janeway said, a gasp buried in the words. "Seven--"

"Elizabeth," Seven said, oddly tentative, and Janeway seized, tensing all over, desperate for something just out of reach. Seven crowded closer, offering the warm curve of her neck for Janeway to hide her flushed, damp face. Seven slowed but pressed harder, swirls of her fingertips over Janeway's clit, wavelets of pleasure all through her as the water rose, filling Janeway up intil it shimmered and broke. Teeth clenched and breath stuttering, Janeway arched so hard she slid part-way out of her chair, connecting fronds stretched, Seven rising with her and curling her free arm around Janeway, solid and protective.

"Seven--.”

"Here," Seven said, and flexed her hand, and Janeway broke again. Seven snuck a kiss into the dishevelled strands by Janeway's temple, and she leaned into the touch, tension draining until she was a limp, slumped-over afterglow of an officer. "Seven," Janeway rasped.

"Aye, Captain? Do I get a commendation?"

"Come to my quarters after this is over, and we'll discuss it."

Seven hitched closer and stuck her nose in Janeway's hair.

Distantly, someone coughed, and Seven tensed. Janeway nuzzled closer, not bothering to open her eyes. Someone would say something when the enveloping bubble withdrew.

Adrift in Seven's warmth and the pleasure still thrumming along her nerves, Janeway almost didn't hear the chiming of the other ship, the almost-voice that travelled into her through the living tubes. It may have been calling all this time.

"What's that?" Janeway mumbled and tipped her head, listening.

"Captain--" Chakotay ventured.

"Shh," Janeway said, absently tugging at her uniform. The bell-voice rang again, soft as distant windchimes. Janeway straightened, over-sensitive enough to flinch as she closed her thighs. "Sure, come aboard. Via shuttlecraft, please; your current method of communication is confusing my crew."

"Actually I'd say YOU'RE frightening and confusing us at the moment," The Doctor muttered, waving a tricorder over Janeway and winking covertly at Seven when he saw the readings. "All the ferny tentacle things but yours have sucked back into the other ship, by the way. Only an umbilicus remains."

"Oh, hush," Janeway said. "Let's prepare a conference room for a first-contact team, and get someone to draw up the standard Starfleet hi-how-are-ya pamphlets."

"Sir, Yes sir," Chakotay sassed.

Fuck what you heard, Starfleet Captains never blush.