fic: Penal as in penalty
Hey guys, hey guys, I wrote femslash. What the fuck, guys! What the fuck!
Fandom: ST XI
Pairing: Yeoman Janice Rand (who is this GQMF?) / Dr. Helen Noel
Warnings: UST, femslash, sex, dub-con if you squint sideways, feminism.
Notes: 5997 words for pervyficgirl over at trek_exchange. This story is kind of the reboot version of the TOS episode “Dagger of the Mind,” which was a recent item of discussion over at tos_rewatch if you’re interested. Therefore, in terms of plot, I blame 1960s staff writers for following items: the Christmas party, dancing at the Christmas party, the deranged prison escapee, the ventilation duct hijinx, and the sexy memory overwrite. Not my fault! I work with what they give me. Thanks so much to estei for looking this over for me and holding my hand.
Summary: Janice Rand didn’t sign up to be a secretary, and Dr. Helen Noel is not your high school guidance counselor.
i.
The morning after McCoy’s so-called Christmas party, Dr. Helen Noel hides in her office with her monitors switched off and her lights dimmed to one notch above total sensory deprivation.
She is exhausted, and dehydrated, and more than a little nauseous, and she doesn’t want to see anyone that she spoke to, or looked at, or danced with last night. Which means that she pretty much doesn’t want to see anyone on the whole ship.
It was strangely popular for such a parochial, half-ironic event. But there was the tree - the ten foot blue pine Christine Chapel had somehow negotiated out of the botanists on the Brisebois - that tree alone had drawn the space-weary crew to the party. And the booze had helped.
And there was McCoy, either drunk himself or just festive, or maybe both, who spent the evening explaining in detail to anyone who asked all the ancient customs associated with the occasion. Gifts wrapped in paper. Open flame burning in wax. And a particularly brutal concoction of sugary milk mixed with rum and topped with cinnamon that irritated the nose of anyone who sniffed it suspiciously beforehand. Commander Spock had been sneezing for five minutes straight.
Noel had drunk a lot of it. To the point where she’s pretty certain she’ll be off dairy until next year’s festivities, at least.
She’d like to be off duty until then, too. She can take some solace in the fact that everyone drank too much last night. Today, everyone must be in the same state of abject misery and remorse.
McCoy is happy to disprove that theory, of course.
He walks in without buzzing first, as always, and then immediately comes to a halt, blind in the dark.
“Jesus, Noel,” he says. “I’m not apologizing for interrupting something you should be doing in the privacy of your own quarters.”
She says into her hands, where her head has been for the past half hour: “I’m meditating.”
“My ass,” he says. And when she brings up the lights he laughs at her. “Meditating on your sins, I guess. You look like hell.”
She rubs one eyeball with the heel of her hand and squints at him. “It’s good that you take delight where you can, I guess.”
He offers her the mug in his hand, and she swallows half of it before handing it back. McCoy has always been a steadfast, unapologetic proponent of hair of the dog. He got a lot of flak for it in med school, but not from her. She’d always been appreciative of his forethought. Or hindsight. Whichever it is.
“Thank you,” she says, clearing her throat.
McCoy settles in the chair opposite. “I actually came to do just that. Take delight. But seeing as your current state of misery overshadows what I was planning, I’ll take pity on you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says.
He laughs, “Of course not.” He doesn’t even pause: “So where’d you and Kirk disappear off to after you finished your romantic dance?”
Noel can’t help it. She rolls her eyes so hard she slumps back into her seat. “McCoy. You’re an ass for noticing. I was trying to forget.”
“I bet he’s saying the exact same thing right now,” McCoy says, pleasant. And she knows he would know. He’s probably come straight from Kirk’s cabin. The ship’s CMO is a sadist who loves to torture his friends even more than his patients.
But either way, they’re all right to regret it. There are better ways to bond with a new crew member than staging what essentially mimics a romantic tryst in the middle of a very public function. Never mind her actual feelings on the matter, or her actual feelings on sex with men in general. In the closed petri dish of a starship, actions are what matter, with denials placing a distant second.
She sighs and gestures. “We went for a walk up to the observation lounge, because I hadn’t seen it. And he gave me an introductory lesson to astrophysics. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I took the same basic training he did at the Academy, probably a good ten years before he did.”
McCoy nods, wise. “Probably he thought an old lady like you needed a refresher.”
“Maybe I did. But I certainly didn’t retain anything in that state.” She’d just been watching his mouth move, considering what it meant to serve under a captain that garnered such absolute trust and devotion from his crew. A kid, really. One still wet behind the ears and jumpy with authority. But already a legend. Noel had been too drunk to stop her psychiatrist’s fascination from showing. It probably looked quite a bit like infatuation, actually. How totally mortifying.
“Lucky for you, I don’t think too many people are talking about it this morning. You owe Chapel for keeping a firm lid on the gossip about last night.”
“Right,” Noel says. Because when does she not owe Chapel for being the most sensible person on the ship and constantly making her job easier in a thousand quiet ways.
“And don’t forget we have a department meeting in fifteen,” McCoy adds, getting up to go.
“Right.” Noel says again. Because when do they not have some kind of meeting. Airborne plagues, combat, alien diplomatic clusterfucks. Noel would take any of them above a meeting with her silently smirking colleagues right now.
McCoy smirks at her because he knows exactly what she’s thinking, and leaves his mug on her desk when he goes.
ii.
Halfway through the night shift, Janice Rand is perched at a table in the empty mess hall, nursing a mug of black coffee and going through a terabyte’s worth of ship’s logs with one finger on the touch screen of her reader. Ostensibly, she’s preparing for Kirk’s weekly pre-briefing briefing tomorrow morning, but in actual fact she’s looking for bits of gossip and slander so that he doesn’t get one-upped by any of his officers. The man likes to appear omniscient. He says it keeps people on their toes.
It keeps Rand awake half the night trying to figure out if Sulu is actually banging that new kid down in engineering, or just acting like he is to mask that other thing with Chekov. Kirk promised he’d let her go on the next away mission if she found evidence one way or the other.
Which is exactly the kind of incentive that has Rand putting in overtime.
She really didn’t enlist in Starfleet to become someone’s secretary-cum-gossip columnist. Back in high school, she was envisioning flight training, alien princesses, brass on her collar. Yet here she is, fresh out of basic training, twenty years old and light years from Earth, typing up memos and booking conference rooms for the Fleet’s darling boy captain.
She sips her coffee. She skims Scott’s weekly report and cross-references it with the engineering crew’s work schedules and sickbay’s patient intake. The kid might’ve been faking sick for a quickie somewhere. Anything’s possible. Sulu is a tricky bastard. She wonders what would happen if she just asked him, point blank: who’re you putting your dick in, helmsman?
The good money’s on a man. With an 80/20 gender split throughout the Fleet, it’s almost always a man. Rand can testify to the impossibility of finding quality female companionship, and she’s only been here three months.
Of course, it’s harder to get a date when you’re the Captain’s personal spy and you missed the traumatic group bonding experience that made Enterprise the most famous ship in the quadrant. People tend to like you less, either way.
Sulu’s a nice guy. But no doubt if she asked him point blank who he’s fucking he’d tell her to fuck herself. She’s just that popular.
She thinks Kirk damn well better make sure her away mission is one for the history books, if this is how she’s earning it.
iii.
Rand doesn’t explain what she wants until the third time they’ve coincidentally bumped into each other in the corridor. Outside sick bay, the mess hall, Noel’s quarters. It certainly is coincidental, too, considering the distance from the bridge to sick bay, and the long hours both their positions require. Actually, up until now, Noel’s been fairly sure that the girl’s just been keeping tabs for the rumor mill, post-Christmas party - maybe mistakenly sussing her out as competition for some love interest or, god forbid, keeping an eye on her for Kirk.
Regardless, everyone knows Rand’s a snitch. It’s practically in her job description. But when she clears her throat and brushes her palms over her hips, Noel sees someone else in there besides the Captain’s nosey little helper. She sees a girl: very young, very pretty, very uncomfortable.
And if the cut of the girl’s uniform and the flash of her averted eyes makes Noel want to be a little nicer, so be it. At least she can recognize her own biases at work. She says pleasantly: “We keep running into each other.”
Rand’s eyes flick up and back down. She’s notably embarrassed. “Yeah, I know.”
They’re standing outside Noel’s office, this time. Rand has been lingering, quite obviously. Maybe planning on buzzing in, maybe not. Noel’s on her way out for a much-delayed meal. She has simulations running in the lab. She’s on a schedule. Still, Noel tries to frame the situation in the best possible light and says, “Are you looking for someone?”
Rand casts about, hands twitching. “Yes, I guess.” Those eyes are very blue, and she has a wicked little mouth that is slightly crumpled as she tries a smile but only half-succeeds. “The other psychologist-”
“Psychiatrist.” Noel corrects. “Dr. Ghosh.”
“We’re supposed to go to him if we’re feeling - I don’t know. Stressed, I guess.”
“Certainly,” Noel agrees, sending some gratitude into the ether for sparing her that portfolio. “The rigors of extended space travel, close confines, et cetera.”
Rand nods. “Well, I don’t think I can talk to him about this.”
Noel doesn’t even think before she says, “I’m not your high school guidance counselor.”
Rand looks even more mortified. “Oh god, no. I know, I’m sorry.”
Noel tries to clarify: “I’m the penologist. I’m the person you talk to after you’ve been put in the brig or pumped full of sedatives. You aren’t there yet, are you?”
Rand says, too quick: “I hope not. But look, maybe we could just go for dinner?” This brief flash of assertiveness is instantly followed by a wince and a quick head shake. “Not that I - I meant if you have the time-”
Noel is hungry enough, and curious enough, to pause. She warns: “Nothing is so bad that you’d rather eat dinner with me than go see Dr. Ghosh, trust me.”
Rand just stands and looks kind of wordlessly pathetic. She shrugs.
Noel tries a second guess: “So this is a date, then?”
“No sir. I mean- no. It’s not, of course.” Rand says, quick and uncertain and finally remembering the differences in rank, and age, and education, and experience, and everything else. She makes kind of a pleading face. “You’re new - and I’m new. And I’d really just like to talk to you.”
Noel almost says no. She still suspects that some kind of sobbing confession about a boyfriend left back in Jersey and naughty dreams about Jim Kirk is in the works. Women like to talk to women about that kind of thing, after all. Usually Chapel gets the worst of it: the price of having a pleasant face. “Well, if it’s not a date it’ll cost you a glass of whisky,” is what she says, finally. “Not that green stuff, though. Earth Scotch.”
“Oh, of course. Sure,” says Rand. She looks relieved. Almost relieved enough to stop kowtowing and stuttering, even. It’s pretty cute.
Rand turns out to be a better dining companion than Noel would’ve guessed. Noel gets her scotch, and Rand doesn’t say sir again through the meal. Her eyes just seem bluer and bluer, and her mouth all the more pointed and promising.
Noel makes herself leave when her tricorder reminds her to. She thanks Rand for the drink, and finds herself smirking as she heads back down the corridor. Or maybe not smirking. Maybe just smiling. Because it definitely was a date, after all.
iv.
There is a penal colony on Tantalus IV that Rand has decided is her away mission. Normally they wouldn’t do an away mission to drop off some horse pills and an industrial-strength replicator repair kit, but given that the prison’s insane former administrator has stowed away on the ship and beat up two crew members and is currently lying restrained and sedated in sick bay, there is a good chance something interesting is happening planetside that needs an official Federation investigation.
On the bridge, Kirk rolls his eyes and says to Uhura, “Tell them to drop their shields, I’m going down.” Over the comm he says to McCoy, “Find me someone who knows what the hell a neural neutralizer is, and tell them to meet me in the transporter room.”
Rand follows him to his ready room, where he updates his log and takes a lint brush to his uniform.
She seizes her opening: “Sir, I’m calling it in.”
“What?” Kirk says without looking at her, “How’s my back? How did I get like, what is this, cat hair? Goddamn ventilator fuzz? It’s all over me.”
She doesn’t take the lint brush. She stands with her feet planted and her gaze firm. She figured out Sulu. And in the process she saw things she never wanted to. Spying on crewman extracurriculars is not her favorite hobby. Kirk owes this to her. She says, “You promised me an away mission. I want this one.”
He glances at her. “No way. It’s a penal colony.”
Rand is unclear as to whether he’s deemed it too dangerous for his secretary to brave, or too interesting for himself to miss. She raises her eyebrows to prompt him: “So?”
Kirk shrugs. “So? It’s a planet full of the quadrant’s ugliest minds. And the investigation is just going to be some bureaucratic rundown of the state of their facilities. Don’t you want to check out a derelict ship instead, or a mysterious jungle planet or something? There’s got to be something less depressing.”
Rand doesn’t even ponder it. She knows who else is going on this away mission. There’s only one other person qualified for it. “No, I want this one.”
Kirk blinks at her. “Okay,” he says, and waves his permission as he starts rolling the lint brush down his other arm. “Knock yourself out.”
--
She meets Noel in the transporter room. The doctor’s fiddling with the phaser holster on her belt and looking irritated and nervous and like maybe the former is because of the latter. She’s all leg and coiffed hair in her blue uniform, and Rand pauses to smile at her, and also to savor the moment. Hard labor, ripe fruit, et cetera.
“Hey, so have you ever fired one of these?” Noel asks as soon as Rand steps onto the platform, gesturing with her phaser, “I mean, aside from target practice at the Academy?”
“No.” Rand says, still grinning.
Noel frowns at her, and kind of turns them aside to murmur so the technician can’t hear: “You know I’m not exactly sure what it is we’re even supposed to be doing down there - honestly, I should be conducting the examination of Dr. Van Gelder in sick bay, not going on the nickel tour of some backwater house of horrors-”
Rand has to interrupt, “The investigation needs an expert. But don’t worry, I’ll handle official procedure. You just make Starfleet look good.”
Noel gives her a look, “You mean good as in knowledgeable and professional?”
Rand meant good as in smoking hot, but she doesn’t say so.
Over the comm, Kirk says, “You’ll have to get them to lower their shields again before we can beam you back out. So I suggest you don’t make any enemies down there, alright?”
“Certainly not, sir,” Rand chirps back, and then they dematerialize.
--
The thing about neural neutralizers, Dr. Adams explains - smug chin tucked into his smug neck and smug hands folded behind him - is that they require repeat sessions in order to fully overwrite a patient’s memory patterns. “The brain is a stubborn organ,” he opines. But down on Tantalus IV, the psychiatrists have all the time in the world to neutralize people’s neurons into passive, foggy-brained false amnesia. In fact, it appears to be Dr. Adams’ favorite hobby.
So Dr. Noel wants to test the contraption, of course.
She shakes Rand awake in their appointed quarters that night and starts whispering fast before Rand is half-conscious: “We’re not under guard, or anything. There’s no reason we shouldn’t go check it out - that idiot didn’t say no. This will clear up a lot of questions in your little investigation. And cement my working hypothesis about what happened to Dr. Van Gelder.”
Rand closes her eyes, opens them and says, “Doctor who?”
“Dr. Van Gelder? The deranged escapee who karate chopped Ensign Smale in the throat? McCoy wants to call him a refugee and if I can get a closer look at that machine then I could prove his status one way or another. Victim, patient. You know.”
“Right,” says Rand. “Of course.” She sits up, and Noel doesn’t back off, still just a shadow and shining eyes hovering there in the dark.
“Wait,” Rand says, after a moment. “You want to go now?”
“Um, yes, actually.”
Rand is not even close to fully awake, though, so she just says, “Okay,” and they head out.
--
They’re back in their room within the hour. Although this time it feels more like a cell, with the door mechanism disabled and a pair of guards posted out front and their phasers and communicators stripped from their holsters.
“What did Kirk say about the colony’s shields again?” Noel asks as the doors slide shut.
“That they can’t beam us out unless they’re disabled,” Rand supplies.
Noel rubs at her arms, still staring at the door. But when she pulls her gaze away she looks even more worried. She knits her eyebrows at Rand and takes a few steps over: “So how do you feel?”
Rand looks at her and can’t help but feel giddy, and nervous, and like she wants to put her mouth all over Noel’s collarbones. Her hands up that skirt. She feels like she wants to push the good doctor against a wall or a cot or something and pull her hair out of that regulation updo. Find a better use than fretting for those anxious hands of hers.
Rand feels very unprofessional, actually. She bites her lip, casts her eyes away. “I’m fine.”
Noel says, “But the neutralizer? Do you remember what I said? Do you remember the bullshit Dr. Adams was spewing?”
Rand shakes her head. “As soon as I sat down in the chair Adams was pulling me out of it-”
“No,” Noel is frowning, “I spent a good ten minutes pumping you full of memories. Very detailed ones. And then Adams-” she pauses. “Adams gave you some of his own invention. Do you remember anything?”
“There was no time for any of that. I just told you.” Rand doesn’t like repeating herself, and she doesn’t like the way Noel is looking at her. Searching for something, frightened by something. It makes Rand feel like an experiment gone wrong.
“It’s probably part of the machine’s function that it overwrites your memory of it as well as the memories the operator is targeting,” Noel muses, “I mean, it would make sense. Less dissonance between the two realities.”
Rand takes a few steps over, following Noel as she meanders around the cell.
“It makes it harder to tell how literal the overwrite is, though. How much detail your own brain supplies from the exposition we gave you-” Noel stops, turns back to step in the other direction and instantly Rand takes her opportunity: she snakes her arms up around Noel’s waist and tilts her head to rest her cheek against Noel’s shoulder. She hugs her tight, sighing.
“I don’t want you to worry about me, Helen.” Rand tils her face up to look at her: “Listen, why don’t you tell me exactly what you said, and I’ll see if I remember it. Or fake-remember it. Whatever.”
Noel doesn’t respond at all. She’s standing very stiffly, in fact, and when Rand examines her expression she sees a very peculiar mix of understanding and dismay.
“Helen?” Rand nudges her.
“Yeoman, do you recall what happened that night you bought me a scotch at the mess hall?” Noel asks, formal and precise. But even though she’s calling Rand by her rank, she doesn’t disengage, she stands with her hands by her sides, looking down at her with that same twisted expression.
Rand presses forward. She’s sure this is a game. She takes those hands and places them on her own waist, sure and slow. “Well, Doctor. We went back to my quarters,” she answers, smiling. “I got rugburn on my knees. You missed your staff meeting at oh six hundred.”
Noel shakes her head. “That’s not what happened-”
“We could re-enact it,” Rand suggests, head cocked, grin widening. “Maybe you’re the one having memory problems.”
And even though she can already feel Noel trying to slip away, she pulls her in for a kiss. A soft one, like the dozens she remembers in the empty corridors and locked bedrooms of the ship. From the first time they met, to this morning’s quick jack-off in the shower. She pushes her fingers up into Noel’s complicated hair. She kisses her twice. The second time to verify what she found in the first: a slow-burning need, a dozen unspoken wishes. For something that should be so familiar, it’s strangely exhilarating.
“I’m not having memory problems.” Noel’s voice cuts down hard, and she steps away, only barely out of Rand’s reach. One of her hands goes to her hair, fingering the mess of curls and knots there, like she could repair the damage. She stares at Rand, hard: “Yeoman, I have to inform you that while you were incapacitated within the neural neutralizer device, Dr. Adams implanted false memories in you regarding the nature of our relationship.”
Rand smirks. “That smug old jackass? He couldn’t convince me that space is black.”
Noel’s voice strains for authority and fails. She hits a higher pitch of concern. “I’m serious. These emotions you’re feeling. They aren’t real.”
Rand shrugs, “I disagree.”
“Just-” Noel stares at her, frustrated and helpless. “Concentrate on that one date. In the mess hall. I had a simulation running that night, I was in the middle of reading staff reports. Do you think I’d just abandon that for a good time? Am I that unprofessional in your eyes?”
“Heat of the moment,” Rand says, “You weren’t too pleased about it in the morning, I remember that. You pretended you were fine, but I could tell you were pissed that you’d forgotten about it.”
“Well, yes. I would’ve been.” Noel gestures, tosses away the thought. “But what about the rugburn? What about that? Doesn’t that sound like some ridiculous male fantasy to you? The floor? Really?”
“You didn’t give me a chance to get to the bed,” Rand responds.
“And what were we doing that-”
“Strap-on,” Rand answers promptly.
“But I don’t even own-”
“No, you don’t. It’s mine.”
Noel glares, and then goes and drops to sit on her cot. “The human brain-” she mutters.
“Is a stubborn organ.” Rand finishes for her. She inches closer. She wants to crouch down and hold her close but she can tell it would be the wrong move. “I’m sorry I’m not telling you what you want to hear, Helen. But this is how I feel. I love you, and I swear to god, I’m being honest with you.”
Noel looks up, her expression muted. “This will pass. Your neural pathways will re-establish themselves and you’ll go back to who you were before. You’ll remember everything clearly, maybe even what we said to you while you were in the chair. Most importantly, you’ll stop feeling this way.”
“No I won’t,” Rand says, “I’ve felt this way all along.”
Noel just shakes her head, lays down on her mattress and turns to face away. “He told you that, too.”
--
Coming out of it is like a hangover, but uglier. The fog lifts in patches and she’s left with every mortifying thing she’s said. And done. Kissing Helen. God. Even worse, she can still remember the false memories: half a year’s worth of the best relationship she’s ever been in. A feeling like breaking orbit pounding in her chest. Love, and remembered happiness, all hanging in her mind like a vivid dream that just won’t fade.
Rand wishes for the amnesiac mercy of a good binge, actually, as she lies on her cot and stares at Noel’s back. Her long legs and bare feet.
They’ve been in their cell for hours. Probably morning has come and gone. They’ve missed their check-in with the ship. They don’t know where Adams is and the guards don’t respond to their calls. There are hygiene facilities, and water that Noel insists they drink, but no clocks. No communicators. No food.
Rand half-hopes that Noel is still asleep when she starts her confession to the ceiling: “I bought you a scotch. You had the vegetable stirfry with protein supplement and I had the fake fish with the fake chili peppers, which was awful. We talked politely about our positions, how we got transferred, what colleagues we had beat out to get here, all that stuff. You mentioned the tests you were running but didn’t say what they were. You said you went to school in Connecticut, I said I grew up in Hartford. After dinner you nursed your scotch for probably ten minutes before you killed it and I spent the entire time wondering if I’d have the balls to kiss you. But you thanked me, stood up, and walked out before I could get a word in. I almost followed you. But I was too afraid to do it. I thought you might give me a lecture about duty or something.”
On her own cot, Noel has also rolled onto her back. She says, also to the ceiling, “That sounds almost right. I’d give it a few more hours to clear up, though.”
--
Eventually, they head through the ventilation ducts to get to the main power supply. Neither of them has really spent much time in the Jefferies tubes on Enterprise, but between them they figure out the layout of the place well enough. There are only so many places to locate an energy source for a deflector shield big enough to shelter an entire colony, after all. And Federation architecture is pretty predictable.
The array has a large switch, and a lot of warning signs. Noel rolls her eyes when she turns it off, and Rand averts her own gaze just in case one of them does get hideously electrocuted.
“This is probably the least secure prison I’ve ever toured,” Noel remarks, as they’re waiting for the bridge to notice the shields have gone down.
“Maybe if Adams wasn’t spending all his energy overwriting people’s memories with pornographic fantasies he’d be better about remembering to lock the ventilator shaft covers,” Rand suggests.
Noel frowns in agreement. “Make a note of that. It’s going in the report.”
Dutifully, Rand consults her screen and adds in the notation.
They dematerialize.
v.
Noel has been fearing their debriefing, convinced that it’s going to be an exercise in social and professional suicide. As the expert, Noel presents their conclusions at the front of the room while Rand sits blank-faced at the table with the Captain and McCoy and half of sick bay’s senior staff and most of Kirk’s favorite officers. Even Mr. Scott is there to see the dog and pony show.
Noel has to explain the pornographic fantasies to them all. And accordingly, she recommends Dr. Adams be removed from his post pending further inquiry from the Corrections Board, and the neural neutralizer be dismantled as an inhumane and morally untenable solution to criminal rehabilitation. Rand has already highlighted the relevant sections of Federation code, which Noel refers to and quotes from liberally, thinking maybe she can bore them to death and avoid any questions about the pornographic fantasies.
“Thank you, Doctor,” says Kirk, when she eventually stops herself. She had another section she was going to get to, but Chekov is blinking extremely slowly and Scott’s eyes are entirely closed. Kirk says: “You guys did good work down there.”
Noel nods, “Thank you, sir.”
Kirk says, “But if I can refer to Yeoman Rand’s field log for a second-”
Noel watches Rand turn a brighter shade of pink. That log is valuable academic material, that’s for sure, in that it contains a near-hourly account of Rand’s psychological re-sequencing. Confessions of love, dirty thoughts, detailed accounts of her implanted memories. And everyone in the room has read it.
“I wonder why you didn’t leave through the ducts earlier if they were unlocked the entire time?” Kirk asks.
Noel is surprised by the question, so much so that she almost forgets to answer. She struggles to not sound like a total idiot. “We - well. We didn’t notice at first, sir. We were quite occupied in dealing with Yeoman Rand’s condition. Escape was not the first priority until I could ascertain her recovery.”
“I see.” Kirk, to his credit, doesn’t even smirk. He doesn’t wink, he doesn’t glance at another officer or make any kind of spanking gesture. It’s incredible. Not just for him, but for anyone. Rand still hasn’t looked up, and her ears look likely to burn right off her skull.
Still, the silence in the room, a dozen men plus them and Uhura, is laden.
Finally, McCoy says, “Jim, are we about done here? Noel and I need to finish up the report on Van Gelder if we want the Corrections Board to shut this travesty down.”
“Sure,” Kirk says. “I’m satisfied. Dismissed.”
Rand is lingering in the hall when Noel walks out of the debriefing room, a step in front of McCoy.
Noel sees her, and finds that she desperately wants to ignore her and get on with her duties. But there is this kind of sad half-smile on Rand’s face, like she’s already predicted that that’s exactly what Noel will do: walk right on past her. Rand looks like she’s resigned herself to that humiliation already, and Noel finds she can’t bear to inflict it on her.
“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” she says to McCoy, and stops.
Rand looks very small, very pretty, in her freshly laundered uniform and clean hair. Her eyes are sunken, though, like she hasn’t slept yet. Her lipstick is a little too pink.
“Doctor,” she says, “I just wanted to say thank you for making that so painless.”
“My pleasure,” says Noel. “Dwelling on the titillating bits wouldn’t have helped anyone, anyway. I can save those for the paper I’m submitting to Stanford.”
Rand laughs a little, like she thinks that’s a joke. Noel doesn’t correct her.
They wait out a long pause while Rand screws up the courage to say, “Do you think we could maybe go for a walk?”
By now, Noel feels that she knows Rand well enough to be certain that the girl is pretty much asking for a make-out session on the Observation Deck. She’s sly that way. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Noel says.
“I just have some things I want to tell you-” Rand insists.
“Maybe in a few months.”
Rand’s eyes flicker down. She’s obviously disappointed. Frustrated. “Are you worried about the rumours?” she asks, then. “Because everything’s going to get around, you know. Everyone’s going to know everything.”
Noel nods. “I guess that doesn’t bother me very much.”
“But you don’t want anyone to see us together. Just in case.” Rand retorts, acidic.
“No.” Noel tries to be slow, clear, concise. “I just want to give you some time.”
“Give me some time.” Rand sounds so much like a teenager that Noel is painfully reminded that she practically still is one. It makes Noel feel very, very old.
Rand is staring at her, spite in her eyes, and Noel can’t hedge around the truth anymore.
“I want you to be able to look me in the eye and tell me that what happened down there. What Adams did to you. That it isn’t clouding your judgement, or affecting-” Noel sighs, and stops, and then forces the words out because she is an adult goddammit and she’s going to deal with this like one. “-your feelings for me. I want to know they’re real, and that they’re yours.”
Rand is very quiet. She is still staring at Noel, but then seems to realize it’s a strange, glassy kind of stare and turns her gaze to the floor instead. She raises a hand to her mouth and bites at her thumbnail for a while. Eventually, she says, “So in a few months then.”
Relieved, Noel nods. “Yes.”
“Okay.” Rand says. “Alright.”
Noel doesn’t smile, as she turns away to find her way down to sick bay. If anything, she twists her mouth at herself and ends up scowling so hard she scares a maintenance crew and a gaggle of ensigns out of the turbolift as she enters it.
vi.
That night, Noel’s door beeps at her at half past midnight. She’s sitting on her floor, trying to meditate on the starfield outside of her single porthole. It’s not working. To the door, she says, “Come in.”
Rand enters, uniform looking hastily assembled and hair already mussed like she’s been tossing around in bed with it. She looks down at Noel on the floor and stands there, awkward.
And then, in a second, she’s on her knees, palms braced on Noel’s thighs, kissing her and then pushing her onto her back so that they’re tipped over onto the floor.
She’s not wearing any underwear under that skirt, and Noel is in a ragged old t-shirt that’s arguably even shorter and she can see that one or the other of them is going to get a severe case of rugburn pretty quickly.
“Janice-” she mutters through a tangle of blonde hair, and then forgets what she was going to say as first Janice’s cold hand finds her breast, and then her warm mouth finds her nipple. And then her other hand rubs wetly down Noel’s clit and her whole body arches up in immediate reaction.
“Janice-” Noel tries again after a long series of gasping encouragements. She pushes her back with her arms, but curls her legs around Janice’s waist as the girl sits up, looking concerned and triumphant all at once.
“I know what you’re going to say-” Janice says, “But listen. I don’t have to wait a few months. I already know how I feel.”
“It’s okay,” Noel is so not even concerned with that right now. She tilts her head to get an eyeful from this angle: rucked uniform, a nipple peeking out from the neckline where the side zipper’s been clawed down. “I just think we should maybe move to the bed.”
Janice frowns. “What? Really?”
And Noel, who was thinking of their uniforms and how skinned knees aren’t any more subtle than hickeys when your hemline is a regulation ten inches from your pussy, shrugs and shakes her head and says, “Nevermind. Fuck them.”
Fandom: ST XI
Pairing: Yeoman Janice Rand (who is this GQMF?) / Dr. Helen Noel
Warnings: UST, femslash, sex, dub-con if you squint sideways, feminism.
Notes: 5997 words for pervyficgirl over at trek_exchange. This story is kind of the reboot version of the TOS episode “Dagger of the Mind,” which was a recent item of discussion over at tos_rewatch if you’re interested. Therefore, in terms of plot, I blame 1960s staff writers for following items: the Christmas party, dancing at the Christmas party, the deranged prison escapee, the ventilation duct hijinx, and the sexy memory overwrite. Not my fault! I work with what they give me. Thanks so much to estei for looking this over for me and holding my hand.
Summary: Janice Rand didn’t sign up to be a secretary, and Dr. Helen Noel is not your high school guidance counselor.
i.
The morning after McCoy’s so-called Christmas party, Dr. Helen Noel hides in her office with her monitors switched off and her lights dimmed to one notch above total sensory deprivation.
She is exhausted, and dehydrated, and more than a little nauseous, and she doesn’t want to see anyone that she spoke to, or looked at, or danced with last night. Which means that she pretty much doesn’t want to see anyone on the whole ship.
It was strangely popular for such a parochial, half-ironic event. But there was the tree - the ten foot blue pine Christine Chapel had somehow negotiated out of the botanists on the Brisebois - that tree alone had drawn the space-weary crew to the party. And the booze had helped.
And there was McCoy, either drunk himself or just festive, or maybe both, who spent the evening explaining in detail to anyone who asked all the ancient customs associated with the occasion. Gifts wrapped in paper. Open flame burning in wax. And a particularly brutal concoction of sugary milk mixed with rum and topped with cinnamon that irritated the nose of anyone who sniffed it suspiciously beforehand. Commander Spock had been sneezing for five minutes straight.
Noel had drunk a lot of it. To the point where she’s pretty certain she’ll be off dairy until next year’s festivities, at least.
She’d like to be off duty until then, too. She can take some solace in the fact that everyone drank too much last night. Today, everyone must be in the same state of abject misery and remorse.
McCoy is happy to disprove that theory, of course.
He walks in without buzzing first, as always, and then immediately comes to a halt, blind in the dark.
“Jesus, Noel,” he says. “I’m not apologizing for interrupting something you should be doing in the privacy of your own quarters.”
She says into her hands, where her head has been for the past half hour: “I’m meditating.”
“My ass,” he says. And when she brings up the lights he laughs at her. “Meditating on your sins, I guess. You look like hell.”
She rubs one eyeball with the heel of her hand and squints at him. “It’s good that you take delight where you can, I guess.”
He offers her the mug in his hand, and she swallows half of it before handing it back. McCoy has always been a steadfast, unapologetic proponent of hair of the dog. He got a lot of flak for it in med school, but not from her. She’d always been appreciative of his forethought. Or hindsight. Whichever it is.
“Thank you,” she says, clearing her throat.
McCoy settles in the chair opposite. “I actually came to do just that. Take delight. But seeing as your current state of misery overshadows what I was planning, I’ll take pity on you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says.
He laughs, “Of course not.” He doesn’t even pause: “So where’d you and Kirk disappear off to after you finished your romantic dance?”
Noel can’t help it. She rolls her eyes so hard she slumps back into her seat. “McCoy. You’re an ass for noticing. I was trying to forget.”
“I bet he’s saying the exact same thing right now,” McCoy says, pleasant. And she knows he would know. He’s probably come straight from Kirk’s cabin. The ship’s CMO is a sadist who loves to torture his friends even more than his patients.
But either way, they’re all right to regret it. There are better ways to bond with a new crew member than staging what essentially mimics a romantic tryst in the middle of a very public function. Never mind her actual feelings on the matter, or her actual feelings on sex with men in general. In the closed petri dish of a starship, actions are what matter, with denials placing a distant second.
She sighs and gestures. “We went for a walk up to the observation lounge, because I hadn’t seen it. And he gave me an introductory lesson to astrophysics. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I took the same basic training he did at the Academy, probably a good ten years before he did.”
McCoy nods, wise. “Probably he thought an old lady like you needed a refresher.”
“Maybe I did. But I certainly didn’t retain anything in that state.” She’d just been watching his mouth move, considering what it meant to serve under a captain that garnered such absolute trust and devotion from his crew. A kid, really. One still wet behind the ears and jumpy with authority. But already a legend. Noel had been too drunk to stop her psychiatrist’s fascination from showing. It probably looked quite a bit like infatuation, actually. How totally mortifying.
“Lucky for you, I don’t think too many people are talking about it this morning. You owe Chapel for keeping a firm lid on the gossip about last night.”
“Right,” Noel says. Because when does she not owe Chapel for being the most sensible person on the ship and constantly making her job easier in a thousand quiet ways.
“And don’t forget we have a department meeting in fifteen,” McCoy adds, getting up to go.
“Right.” Noel says again. Because when do they not have some kind of meeting. Airborne plagues, combat, alien diplomatic clusterfucks. Noel would take any of them above a meeting with her silently smirking colleagues right now.
McCoy smirks at her because he knows exactly what she’s thinking, and leaves his mug on her desk when he goes.
ii.
Halfway through the night shift, Janice Rand is perched at a table in the empty mess hall, nursing a mug of black coffee and going through a terabyte’s worth of ship’s logs with one finger on the touch screen of her reader. Ostensibly, she’s preparing for Kirk’s weekly pre-briefing briefing tomorrow morning, but in actual fact she’s looking for bits of gossip and slander so that he doesn’t get one-upped by any of his officers. The man likes to appear omniscient. He says it keeps people on their toes.
It keeps Rand awake half the night trying to figure out if Sulu is actually banging that new kid down in engineering, or just acting like he is to mask that other thing with Chekov. Kirk promised he’d let her go on the next away mission if she found evidence one way or the other.
Which is exactly the kind of incentive that has Rand putting in overtime.
She really didn’t enlist in Starfleet to become someone’s secretary-cum-gossip columnist. Back in high school, she was envisioning flight training, alien princesses, brass on her collar. Yet here she is, fresh out of basic training, twenty years old and light years from Earth, typing up memos and booking conference rooms for the Fleet’s darling boy captain.
She sips her coffee. She skims Scott’s weekly report and cross-references it with the engineering crew’s work schedules and sickbay’s patient intake. The kid might’ve been faking sick for a quickie somewhere. Anything’s possible. Sulu is a tricky bastard. She wonders what would happen if she just asked him, point blank: who’re you putting your dick in, helmsman?
The good money’s on a man. With an 80/20 gender split throughout the Fleet, it’s almost always a man. Rand can testify to the impossibility of finding quality female companionship, and she’s only been here three months.
Of course, it’s harder to get a date when you’re the Captain’s personal spy and you missed the traumatic group bonding experience that made Enterprise the most famous ship in the quadrant. People tend to like you less, either way.
Sulu’s a nice guy. But no doubt if she asked him point blank who he’s fucking he’d tell her to fuck herself. She’s just that popular.
She thinks Kirk damn well better make sure her away mission is one for the history books, if this is how she’s earning it.
iii.
Rand doesn’t explain what she wants until the third time they’ve coincidentally bumped into each other in the corridor. Outside sick bay, the mess hall, Noel’s quarters. It certainly is coincidental, too, considering the distance from the bridge to sick bay, and the long hours both their positions require. Actually, up until now, Noel’s been fairly sure that the girl’s just been keeping tabs for the rumor mill, post-Christmas party - maybe mistakenly sussing her out as competition for some love interest or, god forbid, keeping an eye on her for Kirk.
Regardless, everyone knows Rand’s a snitch. It’s practically in her job description. But when she clears her throat and brushes her palms over her hips, Noel sees someone else in there besides the Captain’s nosey little helper. She sees a girl: very young, very pretty, very uncomfortable.
And if the cut of the girl’s uniform and the flash of her averted eyes makes Noel want to be a little nicer, so be it. At least she can recognize her own biases at work. She says pleasantly: “We keep running into each other.”
Rand’s eyes flick up and back down. She’s notably embarrassed. “Yeah, I know.”
They’re standing outside Noel’s office, this time. Rand has been lingering, quite obviously. Maybe planning on buzzing in, maybe not. Noel’s on her way out for a much-delayed meal. She has simulations running in the lab. She’s on a schedule. Still, Noel tries to frame the situation in the best possible light and says, “Are you looking for someone?”
Rand casts about, hands twitching. “Yes, I guess.” Those eyes are very blue, and she has a wicked little mouth that is slightly crumpled as she tries a smile but only half-succeeds. “The other psychologist-”
“Psychiatrist.” Noel corrects. “Dr. Ghosh.”
“We’re supposed to go to him if we’re feeling - I don’t know. Stressed, I guess.”
“Certainly,” Noel agrees, sending some gratitude into the ether for sparing her that portfolio. “The rigors of extended space travel, close confines, et cetera.”
Rand nods. “Well, I don’t think I can talk to him about this.”
Noel doesn’t even think before she says, “I’m not your high school guidance counselor.”
Rand looks even more mortified. “Oh god, no. I know, I’m sorry.”
Noel tries to clarify: “I’m the penologist. I’m the person you talk to after you’ve been put in the brig or pumped full of sedatives. You aren’t there yet, are you?”
Rand says, too quick: “I hope not. But look, maybe we could just go for dinner?” This brief flash of assertiveness is instantly followed by a wince and a quick head shake. “Not that I - I meant if you have the time-”
Noel is hungry enough, and curious enough, to pause. She warns: “Nothing is so bad that you’d rather eat dinner with me than go see Dr. Ghosh, trust me.”
Rand just stands and looks kind of wordlessly pathetic. She shrugs.
Noel tries a second guess: “So this is a date, then?”
“No sir. I mean- no. It’s not, of course.” Rand says, quick and uncertain and finally remembering the differences in rank, and age, and education, and experience, and everything else. She makes kind of a pleading face. “You’re new - and I’m new. And I’d really just like to talk to you.”
Noel almost says no. She still suspects that some kind of sobbing confession about a boyfriend left back in Jersey and naughty dreams about Jim Kirk is in the works. Women like to talk to women about that kind of thing, after all. Usually Chapel gets the worst of it: the price of having a pleasant face. “Well, if it’s not a date it’ll cost you a glass of whisky,” is what she says, finally. “Not that green stuff, though. Earth Scotch.”
“Oh, of course. Sure,” says Rand. She looks relieved. Almost relieved enough to stop kowtowing and stuttering, even. It’s pretty cute.
Rand turns out to be a better dining companion than Noel would’ve guessed. Noel gets her scotch, and Rand doesn’t say sir again through the meal. Her eyes just seem bluer and bluer, and her mouth all the more pointed and promising.
Noel makes herself leave when her tricorder reminds her to. She thanks Rand for the drink, and finds herself smirking as she heads back down the corridor. Or maybe not smirking. Maybe just smiling. Because it definitely was a date, after all.
iv.
There is a penal colony on Tantalus IV that Rand has decided is her away mission. Normally they wouldn’t do an away mission to drop off some horse pills and an industrial-strength replicator repair kit, but given that the prison’s insane former administrator has stowed away on the ship and beat up two crew members and is currently lying restrained and sedated in sick bay, there is a good chance something interesting is happening planetside that needs an official Federation investigation.
On the bridge, Kirk rolls his eyes and says to Uhura, “Tell them to drop their shields, I’m going down.” Over the comm he says to McCoy, “Find me someone who knows what the hell a neural neutralizer is, and tell them to meet me in the transporter room.”
Rand follows him to his ready room, where he updates his log and takes a lint brush to his uniform.
She seizes her opening: “Sir, I’m calling it in.”
“What?” Kirk says without looking at her, “How’s my back? How did I get like, what is this, cat hair? Goddamn ventilator fuzz? It’s all over me.”
She doesn’t take the lint brush. She stands with her feet planted and her gaze firm. She figured out Sulu. And in the process she saw things she never wanted to. Spying on crewman extracurriculars is not her favorite hobby. Kirk owes this to her. She says, “You promised me an away mission. I want this one.”
He glances at her. “No way. It’s a penal colony.”
Rand is unclear as to whether he’s deemed it too dangerous for his secretary to brave, or too interesting for himself to miss. She raises her eyebrows to prompt him: “So?”
Kirk shrugs. “So? It’s a planet full of the quadrant’s ugliest minds. And the investigation is just going to be some bureaucratic rundown of the state of their facilities. Don’t you want to check out a derelict ship instead, or a mysterious jungle planet or something? There’s got to be something less depressing.”
Rand doesn’t even ponder it. She knows who else is going on this away mission. There’s only one other person qualified for it. “No, I want this one.”
Kirk blinks at her. “Okay,” he says, and waves his permission as he starts rolling the lint brush down his other arm. “Knock yourself out.”
--
She meets Noel in the transporter room. The doctor’s fiddling with the phaser holster on her belt and looking irritated and nervous and like maybe the former is because of the latter. She’s all leg and coiffed hair in her blue uniform, and Rand pauses to smile at her, and also to savor the moment. Hard labor, ripe fruit, et cetera.
“Hey, so have you ever fired one of these?” Noel asks as soon as Rand steps onto the platform, gesturing with her phaser, “I mean, aside from target practice at the Academy?”
“No.” Rand says, still grinning.
Noel frowns at her, and kind of turns them aside to murmur so the technician can’t hear: “You know I’m not exactly sure what it is we’re even supposed to be doing down there - honestly, I should be conducting the examination of Dr. Van Gelder in sick bay, not going on the nickel tour of some backwater house of horrors-”
Rand has to interrupt, “The investigation needs an expert. But don’t worry, I’ll handle official procedure. You just make Starfleet look good.”
Noel gives her a look, “You mean good as in knowledgeable and professional?”
Rand meant good as in smoking hot, but she doesn’t say so.
Over the comm, Kirk says, “You’ll have to get them to lower their shields again before we can beam you back out. So I suggest you don’t make any enemies down there, alright?”
“Certainly not, sir,” Rand chirps back, and then they dematerialize.
--
The thing about neural neutralizers, Dr. Adams explains - smug chin tucked into his smug neck and smug hands folded behind him - is that they require repeat sessions in order to fully overwrite a patient’s memory patterns. “The brain is a stubborn organ,” he opines. But down on Tantalus IV, the psychiatrists have all the time in the world to neutralize people’s neurons into passive, foggy-brained false amnesia. In fact, it appears to be Dr. Adams’ favorite hobby.
So Dr. Noel wants to test the contraption, of course.
She shakes Rand awake in their appointed quarters that night and starts whispering fast before Rand is half-conscious: “We’re not under guard, or anything. There’s no reason we shouldn’t go check it out - that idiot didn’t say no. This will clear up a lot of questions in your little investigation. And cement my working hypothesis about what happened to Dr. Van Gelder.”
Rand closes her eyes, opens them and says, “Doctor who?”
“Dr. Van Gelder? The deranged escapee who karate chopped Ensign Smale in the throat? McCoy wants to call him a refugee and if I can get a closer look at that machine then I could prove his status one way or another. Victim, patient. You know.”
“Right,” says Rand. “Of course.” She sits up, and Noel doesn’t back off, still just a shadow and shining eyes hovering there in the dark.
“Wait,” Rand says, after a moment. “You want to go now?”
“Um, yes, actually.”
Rand is not even close to fully awake, though, so she just says, “Okay,” and they head out.
--
They’re back in their room within the hour. Although this time it feels more like a cell, with the door mechanism disabled and a pair of guards posted out front and their phasers and communicators stripped from their holsters.
“What did Kirk say about the colony’s shields again?” Noel asks as the doors slide shut.
“That they can’t beam us out unless they’re disabled,” Rand supplies.
Noel rubs at her arms, still staring at the door. But when she pulls her gaze away she looks even more worried. She knits her eyebrows at Rand and takes a few steps over: “So how do you feel?”
Rand looks at her and can’t help but feel giddy, and nervous, and like she wants to put her mouth all over Noel’s collarbones. Her hands up that skirt. She feels like she wants to push the good doctor against a wall or a cot or something and pull her hair out of that regulation updo. Find a better use than fretting for those anxious hands of hers.
Rand feels very unprofessional, actually. She bites her lip, casts her eyes away. “I’m fine.”
Noel says, “But the neutralizer? Do you remember what I said? Do you remember the bullshit Dr. Adams was spewing?”
Rand shakes her head. “As soon as I sat down in the chair Adams was pulling me out of it-”
“No,” Noel is frowning, “I spent a good ten minutes pumping you full of memories. Very detailed ones. And then Adams-” she pauses. “Adams gave you some of his own invention. Do you remember anything?”
“There was no time for any of that. I just told you.” Rand doesn’t like repeating herself, and she doesn’t like the way Noel is looking at her. Searching for something, frightened by something. It makes Rand feel like an experiment gone wrong.
“It’s probably part of the machine’s function that it overwrites your memory of it as well as the memories the operator is targeting,” Noel muses, “I mean, it would make sense. Less dissonance between the two realities.”
Rand takes a few steps over, following Noel as she meanders around the cell.
“It makes it harder to tell how literal the overwrite is, though. How much detail your own brain supplies from the exposition we gave you-” Noel stops, turns back to step in the other direction and instantly Rand takes her opportunity: she snakes her arms up around Noel’s waist and tilts her head to rest her cheek against Noel’s shoulder. She hugs her tight, sighing.
“I don’t want you to worry about me, Helen.” Rand tils her face up to look at her: “Listen, why don’t you tell me exactly what you said, and I’ll see if I remember it. Or fake-remember it. Whatever.”
Noel doesn’t respond at all. She’s standing very stiffly, in fact, and when Rand examines her expression she sees a very peculiar mix of understanding and dismay.
“Helen?” Rand nudges her.
“Yeoman, do you recall what happened that night you bought me a scotch at the mess hall?” Noel asks, formal and precise. But even though she’s calling Rand by her rank, she doesn’t disengage, she stands with her hands by her sides, looking down at her with that same twisted expression.
Rand presses forward. She’s sure this is a game. She takes those hands and places them on her own waist, sure and slow. “Well, Doctor. We went back to my quarters,” she answers, smiling. “I got rugburn on my knees. You missed your staff meeting at oh six hundred.”
Noel shakes her head. “That’s not what happened-”
“We could re-enact it,” Rand suggests, head cocked, grin widening. “Maybe you’re the one having memory problems.”
And even though she can already feel Noel trying to slip away, she pulls her in for a kiss. A soft one, like the dozens she remembers in the empty corridors and locked bedrooms of the ship. From the first time they met, to this morning’s quick jack-off in the shower. She pushes her fingers up into Noel’s complicated hair. She kisses her twice. The second time to verify what she found in the first: a slow-burning need, a dozen unspoken wishes. For something that should be so familiar, it’s strangely exhilarating.
“I’m not having memory problems.” Noel’s voice cuts down hard, and she steps away, only barely out of Rand’s reach. One of her hands goes to her hair, fingering the mess of curls and knots there, like she could repair the damage. She stares at Rand, hard: “Yeoman, I have to inform you that while you were incapacitated within the neural neutralizer device, Dr. Adams implanted false memories in you regarding the nature of our relationship.”
Rand smirks. “That smug old jackass? He couldn’t convince me that space is black.”
Noel’s voice strains for authority and fails. She hits a higher pitch of concern. “I’m serious. These emotions you’re feeling. They aren’t real.”
Rand shrugs, “I disagree.”
“Just-” Noel stares at her, frustrated and helpless. “Concentrate on that one date. In the mess hall. I had a simulation running that night, I was in the middle of reading staff reports. Do you think I’d just abandon that for a good time? Am I that unprofessional in your eyes?”
“Heat of the moment,” Rand says, “You weren’t too pleased about it in the morning, I remember that. You pretended you were fine, but I could tell you were pissed that you’d forgotten about it.”
“Well, yes. I would’ve been.” Noel gestures, tosses away the thought. “But what about the rugburn? What about that? Doesn’t that sound like some ridiculous male fantasy to you? The floor? Really?”
“You didn’t give me a chance to get to the bed,” Rand responds.
“And what were we doing that-”
“Strap-on,” Rand answers promptly.
“But I don’t even own-”
“No, you don’t. It’s mine.”
Noel glares, and then goes and drops to sit on her cot. “The human brain-” she mutters.
“Is a stubborn organ.” Rand finishes for her. She inches closer. She wants to crouch down and hold her close but she can tell it would be the wrong move. “I’m sorry I’m not telling you what you want to hear, Helen. But this is how I feel. I love you, and I swear to god, I’m being honest with you.”
Noel looks up, her expression muted. “This will pass. Your neural pathways will re-establish themselves and you’ll go back to who you were before. You’ll remember everything clearly, maybe even what we said to you while you were in the chair. Most importantly, you’ll stop feeling this way.”
“No I won’t,” Rand says, “I’ve felt this way all along.”
Noel just shakes her head, lays down on her mattress and turns to face away. “He told you that, too.”
--
Coming out of it is like a hangover, but uglier. The fog lifts in patches and she’s left with every mortifying thing she’s said. And done. Kissing Helen. God. Even worse, she can still remember the false memories: half a year’s worth of the best relationship she’s ever been in. A feeling like breaking orbit pounding in her chest. Love, and remembered happiness, all hanging in her mind like a vivid dream that just won’t fade.
Rand wishes for the amnesiac mercy of a good binge, actually, as she lies on her cot and stares at Noel’s back. Her long legs and bare feet.
They’ve been in their cell for hours. Probably morning has come and gone. They’ve missed their check-in with the ship. They don’t know where Adams is and the guards don’t respond to their calls. There are hygiene facilities, and water that Noel insists they drink, but no clocks. No communicators. No food.
Rand half-hopes that Noel is still asleep when she starts her confession to the ceiling: “I bought you a scotch. You had the vegetable stirfry with protein supplement and I had the fake fish with the fake chili peppers, which was awful. We talked politely about our positions, how we got transferred, what colleagues we had beat out to get here, all that stuff. You mentioned the tests you were running but didn’t say what they were. You said you went to school in Connecticut, I said I grew up in Hartford. After dinner you nursed your scotch for probably ten minutes before you killed it and I spent the entire time wondering if I’d have the balls to kiss you. But you thanked me, stood up, and walked out before I could get a word in. I almost followed you. But I was too afraid to do it. I thought you might give me a lecture about duty or something.”
On her own cot, Noel has also rolled onto her back. She says, also to the ceiling, “That sounds almost right. I’d give it a few more hours to clear up, though.”
--
Eventually, they head through the ventilation ducts to get to the main power supply. Neither of them has really spent much time in the Jefferies tubes on Enterprise, but between them they figure out the layout of the place well enough. There are only so many places to locate an energy source for a deflector shield big enough to shelter an entire colony, after all. And Federation architecture is pretty predictable.
The array has a large switch, and a lot of warning signs. Noel rolls her eyes when she turns it off, and Rand averts her own gaze just in case one of them does get hideously electrocuted.
“This is probably the least secure prison I’ve ever toured,” Noel remarks, as they’re waiting for the bridge to notice the shields have gone down.
“Maybe if Adams wasn’t spending all his energy overwriting people’s memories with pornographic fantasies he’d be better about remembering to lock the ventilator shaft covers,” Rand suggests.
Noel frowns in agreement. “Make a note of that. It’s going in the report.”
Dutifully, Rand consults her screen and adds in the notation.
They dematerialize.
v.
Noel has been fearing their debriefing, convinced that it’s going to be an exercise in social and professional suicide. As the expert, Noel presents their conclusions at the front of the room while Rand sits blank-faced at the table with the Captain and McCoy and half of sick bay’s senior staff and most of Kirk’s favorite officers. Even Mr. Scott is there to see the dog and pony show.
Noel has to explain the pornographic fantasies to them all. And accordingly, she recommends Dr. Adams be removed from his post pending further inquiry from the Corrections Board, and the neural neutralizer be dismantled as an inhumane and morally untenable solution to criminal rehabilitation. Rand has already highlighted the relevant sections of Federation code, which Noel refers to and quotes from liberally, thinking maybe she can bore them to death and avoid any questions about the pornographic fantasies.
“Thank you, Doctor,” says Kirk, when she eventually stops herself. She had another section she was going to get to, but Chekov is blinking extremely slowly and Scott’s eyes are entirely closed. Kirk says: “You guys did good work down there.”
Noel nods, “Thank you, sir.”
Kirk says, “But if I can refer to Yeoman Rand’s field log for a second-”
Noel watches Rand turn a brighter shade of pink. That log is valuable academic material, that’s for sure, in that it contains a near-hourly account of Rand’s psychological re-sequencing. Confessions of love, dirty thoughts, detailed accounts of her implanted memories. And everyone in the room has read it.
“I wonder why you didn’t leave through the ducts earlier if they were unlocked the entire time?” Kirk asks.
Noel is surprised by the question, so much so that she almost forgets to answer. She struggles to not sound like a total idiot. “We - well. We didn’t notice at first, sir. We were quite occupied in dealing with Yeoman Rand’s condition. Escape was not the first priority until I could ascertain her recovery.”
“I see.” Kirk, to his credit, doesn’t even smirk. He doesn’t wink, he doesn’t glance at another officer or make any kind of spanking gesture. It’s incredible. Not just for him, but for anyone. Rand still hasn’t looked up, and her ears look likely to burn right off her skull.
Still, the silence in the room, a dozen men plus them and Uhura, is laden.
Finally, McCoy says, “Jim, are we about done here? Noel and I need to finish up the report on Van Gelder if we want the Corrections Board to shut this travesty down.”
“Sure,” Kirk says. “I’m satisfied. Dismissed.”
Rand is lingering in the hall when Noel walks out of the debriefing room, a step in front of McCoy.
Noel sees her, and finds that she desperately wants to ignore her and get on with her duties. But there is this kind of sad half-smile on Rand’s face, like she’s already predicted that that’s exactly what Noel will do: walk right on past her. Rand looks like she’s resigned herself to that humiliation already, and Noel finds she can’t bear to inflict it on her.
“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” she says to McCoy, and stops.
Rand looks very small, very pretty, in her freshly laundered uniform and clean hair. Her eyes are sunken, though, like she hasn’t slept yet. Her lipstick is a little too pink.
“Doctor,” she says, “I just wanted to say thank you for making that so painless.”
“My pleasure,” says Noel. “Dwelling on the titillating bits wouldn’t have helped anyone, anyway. I can save those for the paper I’m submitting to Stanford.”
Rand laughs a little, like she thinks that’s a joke. Noel doesn’t correct her.
They wait out a long pause while Rand screws up the courage to say, “Do you think we could maybe go for a walk?”
By now, Noel feels that she knows Rand well enough to be certain that the girl is pretty much asking for a make-out session on the Observation Deck. She’s sly that way. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Noel says.
“I just have some things I want to tell you-” Rand insists.
“Maybe in a few months.”
Rand’s eyes flicker down. She’s obviously disappointed. Frustrated. “Are you worried about the rumours?” she asks, then. “Because everything’s going to get around, you know. Everyone’s going to know everything.”
Noel nods. “I guess that doesn’t bother me very much.”
“But you don’t want anyone to see us together. Just in case.” Rand retorts, acidic.
“No.” Noel tries to be slow, clear, concise. “I just want to give you some time.”
“Give me some time.” Rand sounds so much like a teenager that Noel is painfully reminded that she practically still is one. It makes Noel feel very, very old.
Rand is staring at her, spite in her eyes, and Noel can’t hedge around the truth anymore.
“I want you to be able to look me in the eye and tell me that what happened down there. What Adams did to you. That it isn’t clouding your judgement, or affecting-” Noel sighs, and stops, and then forces the words out because she is an adult goddammit and she’s going to deal with this like one. “-your feelings for me. I want to know they’re real, and that they’re yours.”
Rand is very quiet. She is still staring at Noel, but then seems to realize it’s a strange, glassy kind of stare and turns her gaze to the floor instead. She raises a hand to her mouth and bites at her thumbnail for a while. Eventually, she says, “So in a few months then.”
Relieved, Noel nods. “Yes.”
“Okay.” Rand says. “Alright.”
Noel doesn’t smile, as she turns away to find her way down to sick bay. If anything, she twists her mouth at herself and ends up scowling so hard she scares a maintenance crew and a gaggle of ensigns out of the turbolift as she enters it.
vi.
That night, Noel’s door beeps at her at half past midnight. She’s sitting on her floor, trying to meditate on the starfield outside of her single porthole. It’s not working. To the door, she says, “Come in.”
Rand enters, uniform looking hastily assembled and hair already mussed like she’s been tossing around in bed with it. She looks down at Noel on the floor and stands there, awkward.
And then, in a second, she’s on her knees, palms braced on Noel’s thighs, kissing her and then pushing her onto her back so that they’re tipped over onto the floor.
She’s not wearing any underwear under that skirt, and Noel is in a ragged old t-shirt that’s arguably even shorter and she can see that one or the other of them is going to get a severe case of rugburn pretty quickly.
“Janice-” she mutters through a tangle of blonde hair, and then forgets what she was going to say as first Janice’s cold hand finds her breast, and then her warm mouth finds her nipple. And then her other hand rubs wetly down Noel’s clit and her whole body arches up in immediate reaction.
“Janice-” Noel tries again after a long series of gasping encouragements. She pushes her back with her arms, but curls her legs around Janice’s waist as the girl sits up, looking concerned and triumphant all at once.
“I know what you’re going to say-” Janice says, “But listen. I don’t have to wait a few months. I already know how I feel.”
“It’s okay,” Noel is so not even concerned with that right now. She tilts her head to get an eyeful from this angle: rucked uniform, a nipple peeking out from the neckline where the side zipper’s been clawed down. “I just think we should maybe move to the bed.”
Janice frowns. “What? Really?”
And Noel, who was thinking of their uniforms and how skinned knees aren’t any more subtle than hickeys when your hemline is a regulation ten inches from your pussy, shrugs and shakes her head and says, “Nevermind. Fuck them.”