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They called him ‘the kid’, not just because he was new to the Pegasus — or the youngest bridge officer — or because of his babyface. It had an awful lot to do with his sense of humor. Mischievous, like a little kid. He’d pull faces; his eyes would twinkle; he didn’t seem to care if he was poking fun at a fellow ensign or at the captain himself.
And Captain Pressman liked a kid like that, full of self-confidence, cheeky. On the bridge, he watched Ensign Riker at the helm. A good pilot (secretly they’d all heard he was the best new pilot in Starfleet, and certainly they’d seen the evidence themselves, but none of them would say it to his face). Plenty of common sense. Never tripped over his own feet too badly when an alien encounter went wrong.
He was a good kid. A rule follower. A quick thinker.
But in the Pegasus’ morale center, where officers could treat themselves to a drink or two before turning in, Pressman heard other rumors about Ensign Riker. He could confirm to a reasonable extent that in his five months aboard the Pegasus, Ensign Riker had slept with dozens of crewmen. At the Academy, whispered his classmates, he’d been the same way: always bringing someone new back to the dorm room, always kicking his roommate out.
Ensign Riker was in the bar right now. He was barely old enough to drink, and here he was, sipping a whiskey and eyeing his options, ready to flirt. He leaned against the counter with his glass in hand. Lean and tall and vital, artless body of a born athlete, eyes roaming the room.
He didn’t see Pressman sneaking up behind him until it was too late to hide.
“Ensign Riker,” Pressman barked, and Ensign Riker didn’t jump, exactly, but he hitched his left shoulder up and squinted his eyes. “Meet me in my ready room. Now.”
All around the bar, crewmen struggled not to stare. Ensign Riker — who must have been having an internal conniption, trying to figure out what he’d done wrong — just straightened up and followed Pressman to the ready room, his face perfectly composed. When they were in private, Pressman kicked his feet up behind the desk and Ensign Riker came to parade rest on the other side, eyes shuttered. Braced for the blow.
“You know why you’re here, Ensign?” Pressman asked.
There was that sparkle of mischief in Riker’s eyes. “You wanted the pleasure of my company, sir?”
“Don’t get smart.”
The sparkle disappeared. Pressman fiddled with a data stick on his desk, pressing the edge of it into the synthetic wood. He studied Riker, a low fire burning in his gut now.
“Take off your clothes,” he said flatly.
That perfect poker face fractured. “Sir?” said Riker.
“Did I stutter, Ensign? Are you going to hesitate like this on the bridge? If we’re in a life-or-death battle, when every second counts—”
Riker was already unfastening his uniform, a high, pale blush covering his cheeks. His fingers curled in the opening of his jacket and peeled it back, letting the top half hang around his waist.
“Everything,” Pressman ordered.
Riker mouthed the words, “Aye, sir,” but no sound came out. He was trying desperately for a blank face as he pulled up the hem of his undershirt and slid it over his head. He let it fall to his feet, his torso bare now — the lithe body of a teenager, overgrown; the face of a child, really, and the chest of an oversexed adult, covered in dark curling hair all the way down to his waistband. Pressman lowered his chin and that liquid fire in his gut descended deeper into his body, between his legs.
He curled his finger, a silent gesture for Riker to keep going. His features like a rubber mask now, Riker unclasped his belt and let it slide to the floor. His trousers came down — tight, white underwear, like a child’s, but the bulge underneath, that wasn’t childlike at all. Here too, Riker hooked his fingers in the waistband and forced his underwear down, over the swell of his cock. Half-hard, it bobbed against his thigh and left the vulnerable swell of his balls exposed, the skin there smooth and tender.
“I’ve heard you’re quite the Lothario,” said Pressman conversationally, his own erection hidden beneath the desk. “Seems to me like you follow every Starfleet regulation to a tee … except the ones on fraternization.”
“I don’t fraternize, sir,” said Riker, his voice soft. If he spoke any louder, Pressman suspected his voice would shake.
“What do you call this, then?” Pressman asked, and Riker’s careful blankness crumpled, just a little. “Touch yourself, Ensign. That’s an order.”
Riker obeyed like a sleepwalker. His fingers curled around his cock, just holding himself, not stroking. The column of his throat shifted as he tried — and failed — to swallow, like suddenly his mouth was dry. Pressman watched it all hungrily, his lips pulled back from his teeth.
“You’re not smiling anymore, Mr. Riker,” he said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear himself. “What happened to that famous sense of humor?”
Riker just closed his eyes.
Later, he would tell everyone he loved Risa. He would joke about the exotic food, the jelly-like “stones” that melted on your tongue and heated your blood.
“Those things should be illegal,” he would joke. “Luckily they’re not addictive.”
But in point of fact, it wasn’t the food that got to him. He was on a mission, not a pleasure trip. The second sun of Risa was hot on the back of his neck as he stooped in the fields, aiming his tricorder at the fertile ground while he sank a testing strip into the dark earth and waited for the results. The away team had scattered, leaving Lieutenant Commander Riker more or less alone.
As always, his thoughts drifted to Betazed. Cruel irony that he would break his date on Risa with Deanna only to end up here anyway, months too late. Every time he passed the hotel where he would have met her, his chest clenched tight and his heartbeat drowned out every other noise.
And now, in the hot sun, all he could think about was Betazed. The jungle where he rescued her from the raiders. The pleasant heat of steam curling her hair, sweat leaving their skin slick. The cool relief of that river they slid into the first night, the way he teased Deanna by pretending to sneak a peek at her bare body — and the way she sent him scrambling for cover, blushing beet-red, when she stood up out of the water and let him see.
Riker sighed. His tricorder beeped, the results ready to view, and he filed them away for later and moved on — back aching — to the next patch of land two meters to the south. He’d scarcely sunk his testing stick into the ground when he heard it — sensed it — smelled it?
Someone was watching him.
Riker turned his head, eyebrows furrowed, and caught a definite whiff of … something on the air. Something pleasant, something cloying. Something animal. Like sex, like arousal. He glanced north, to the trees that surrounded this fertile field, and there she was, dressed in layers of green silk and watching him with the come-hither eyes of a professional courtesan.
Riker’s jaw tightened. He turned back to his work, a bead of sweat breaking loose from his hairline to trickle down his nose. There was a soft sussurus of husks brushing against each other as she made her way down the furrows to greet him. Her hand skimmed up the small of his back, over the ridges of his spine.
“I’m not buying,” Riker said flatly, keeping his eyes on his work.
“Who said anything about buying?” Her voice was clear and sweet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it: intricate, curling frescos of black ink wrapped around her wrist, declaring her a member of Risa’s largest courtesan network. “First one is always free,” she purred.
That scent was thicker now. Fresh water and spring greenery poking through the melting snow. It smelled like the Janalan jungle in the morning, just as the dew settled down. And it smelled like Alaska in the early months of summer, when it was finally warm enough to go outside with a tuque.
Riker closed his eyes. Her hand smoothed its way over his biceps, down to his forearm, a touch so gentle, so loving, that he couldn’t help but melt into it. And he breathed through his mouth to avoid the scent of her pheromones, but that just meant he could taste her on his tongue.
“I don’t want…” he tried, his voice thick. He choked on the scent of her, turned his head to the side — wrestled his arm out of her hand — somehow found himself closer to her than ever before. She twisted her fingers in his hair and guided his face down to her breast. “I don’t want this,” he said, so close that he could hear her heartbeat.
And her scent, coercive and irresistible, filled his lungs.
“I’ll help you escape,” she said.
Just minutes ago, the doctors examining him had given him maybe twenty-nine hours to live, if that. A single Malcorian day. His broken ribs had been improperly set, and they burned with every minor movement, every breath — a sizzling rash along the edge of every broken bone, needles sinking into exposed nerves. Internal bleeding. Lack of treatment.
And now the threat of vivisection. And now a rescuer, young, naive, and pushy, her delicate fingers closed around his wrists.
“You’re hurting me,” Riker murmured.
She looked up at him, eyes wet and dark. “I’ll be gentle,” she said.
But she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. Not with his injuries. She laid him back against the hospital bed, the sheets stained with drops of human blood, and her lips against his muffled an involuntary cry of pain as his rib cage stretched and the jagged end of a broken rib stabbed into his flesh from the inside. His breathing stuttered; cool pants of air against her skin, her lips, as she pinned his hands to the bed and straddled him.
“I want to see you,” she said, eyes so bright she looked feverish.
“Lanel—” It hurt to speak. “—this isn’t wise.”
Clever fingers, the fingers of a nurse, undid the sash around his waist and dropped it to the floor. She used her palms against his chest to spread the robe open, the lapels catching against her knuckles. His shirt rode up, exposing lumpy places where his bone structure had been displaced and purple bruises so dark they were almost black. Even the lightest touch there made him hiss in pain.
She didn’t understand what she was doing. She had never slept with an alien before; she didn’t know what this would do to her. Her life. Her career. If she slept with him, this eager young woman might spend the rest of her life in a prison cell. Might be burned in the streets like an effigy. A symbol of betrayal; of cooperation with invaders.
But her hands pressed down on his broken ribs, and Riker couldn’t find the breath to tell her all this. His vision whited out as her hand found his cock; he felt, dimly, like it was happening to someone else, the hot-cold streak of tears down his temples, an automatic reaction to the pain.
Nothing else, he told himself, and he forced his hands to close on her hips, to steady her as she straddled him.
Nothing else. Just pain.
He’d never had a sister. He’d never had a mother.
He didn’t particularly want or need either of them, he thought. But the Enterprise was his home, the people here were his family, and slowly — whether he wanted to or not — he started to see Beverly the same way she saw him. It was the way she treated his injuries, always gentle, sometimes teasing, almost always affecting exasperation. And the way he teased her back, and that she always left him alone when he needed to be, so his dignity wouldn’t break when there was an audience around to see it.
She patched him up after Malcor III. She didn’t know what happened with Lanel, but she didn’t need to. She had a sixth sense for when her patients got too close to tears, when a clinical touch was suddenly too much, so she pretended to see something on his scans, made an excuse to leave, left him alone.
He would always be grateful to her for that. For not pushing. For seeing the evidence on his skin, drying on his stomach, and never ordering him to complete a rape kit. The issue with Lanel wasn’t so much as mentioned in Beverly’s official report.
Maybe this, more than anything, was why he volunteered to host Odan.
Because Beverly loved Odan. Because Beverly was his friend. His sister. And because he was grateful to her.
But this…
Locked away in his own body, Riker’s mouth was not his own. It could smile without him ordering it too. His lips stretched and his teeth parted. Foods he didn’t care for touched his tongue against his will and clung to the roof of his mouth. Alien spices left his throat raw. He could think, but he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t make his vocal cords hum or his tongue curl.
He couldn’t scream.
Riker’s body moved of its own volition. It took long scorching showers, one palm pushing down against his cock, too rough and fast. Like Odan was used to a less sensitive body. At night, his body laid itself down on Riker’s bed and that same hand snaked between his legs, cupped him as he fell asleep.
The body’s eyes closed. The body’s breathing evened out.
Riker stayed awake.
And in the evening the next day, locked up and paralyzed, Riker’s body invited Beverly Crusher into his room. It was his lips smiling at her, his mouth telling her to come inside. It was his body angling toward hers, his palm rough and hot against her hip, his chest heaving as he came up for air after a kiss so long and hard it made him dizzy. It was his cock in her hand. His body, responsive and needy and overwhelmed, by Beverly’s touch.
She was his friend.
She was his sister.
She couldn’t hear him saying no.
The attendant’s name was Mavek.
In the mental hospital on Tilonus IV, Mavek was in charge of the unnamed patient’s showers. In the morning — when he had a sense of morning, when he could remember where he was — it was Mavek who woke him by flicking the blanket back and ordering him, in that clipped, booming voice of his, to get out of bed.
The patient who had once been William Riker (in a dream or in a memory) shuffled to the bathroom. The head. There, with Mavek at his back, he removed his scrubs. He wasn’t allowed to turn the water on by himself; he wasn’t permitted to handle the soap. He had to stand there, shivering and nude, with his palms cupped until Mavek deigned to squirt a thin stream of liquid cleanser into his hands and turn the water on.
Four minutes.
Four minutes to scrub the cleanser through his hair and beard. Four minutes to wash the suds down his body and dig his fingernails into the layer of grime over his chest and down to his thighs. Four minutes, no more, to wash his face, his feet, his genitals, all while Mavek watched.
Sometimes, when he was finished, Riker got back into the same dirty clothes he’d worn the night before. Other times, if Mavek was in a good mood, he would present a freshly-laundered set, like a reward for good behavior. And he’d watch Riker get dressed either way.
Outside the bathroom, those indignities continued.
He could eat if Mavek said so. He could get a drink of water when he was thirsty … if Mavek said so. He could launder his only pair of underwear every few days, if he let Mavek inspect them first, if he endured the red-hot humiliation of standing in the common room while Mavek unfolded Riker’s briefs and held them to his nose.
“Do those smell clean to you?” Mavek asked innocently.
Choked by his own scent, Riker said no. So he was allowed to use the laundry that day, but the flush of shame didn’t fade for hours.
Similarly, he could use utensils at lunch if Mavek thought he’d earned it, and if he hadn’t, then a bowl of pasty gruel would be put before him and Mavek would cross his arms, eyes gleaming, and wait for Riker to eat it like a dog.
And if he was good, Mavek would take a wet rag and wash the gruel from Riker’s beard when he was done.
If he was good.
But at night…
At night, every patient needed an attendant to watch them. At night, the doors closed and Riker curled up beneath a too-thin blanket and listened to his own slow, shallow breath. He could sense the attendant at his back, always watching. Sometimes it was Mavek. Sometimes it was someone else.
When it was Mavek, Riker didn’t sleep at all.
Thirty-two days.
The Enterprise was lit by a soft glow. He knew these comfortable white walls, the fragrance of house plants resting in their niches, fertile earth and healthy green leaves. In private rooms, if you listened closely, you could hear families laughing, children shrieking at each other as they played tag and stumbled over furniture, lone crewmen practicing their instruments — flutes and violins and keyboards, stumbling over each other from one song to the next.
Thirty-two days in a Tezwan cell, and Riker had almost forgotten what it felt like to be home.
“You’re looking better,” Deanna told him.
He gave a weary smile. His beard was gone; he’d had to shave it off entirely, too matted and tangled with moldy food and raw sewage to be salvaged. His skin wasn’t quite so pale anymore, after his stint in sickbay, but he was still thin — and his infected, lacerated feet still ached — and Deanna still gravitated toward him instinctively, supporting him as he walked.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“No.” His kidney twinged, still in that tremulous phase of regrowth that always followed a major trauma. Cloned organs were tricky like that. And every time it twinged, it sent a pulse of fire out to the blackened scar on his stomach and lower back, entrance wound and exit wound, both of them permanent. Riker grimaced, froze mid-step, and waited for the pain to pass. “Just tired,” he said finally.
Deanna squeezed his forearm. She was careful to avoid his fingers. Thirty-two days of lying cramped in a cell to small to sit up in, cold water and moldy remnants of food and the ferric scent of his own blood, his own waste, filling his lungs. Thirty-two days with raw wire wrapped around his wrists and ankles, preventing him from eating like a human, from using the uncovered drain in his cell as a proper latrine. A sour scent coated Riker’s tongue; he shook the memory away.
Thirty-two days of dreaming of Deanna.
That was the truth. She’d been there with him every step of the way. He’d spent more hours locked in his own mind than in that prison cell, if he were honest. Long days and nights retreating into memory more vivid than a holodeck. The Janaran Falls. The Enterprise, and all his evenings in Ten-Forward with Deanna. He could construct a nightclub in his head, Deanna at his side, the soothing music of Junior Mance and his band filling his ears.
So even though it hurt his fingers, and even though he still couldn’t grip anything with strength, Riker took Deanna’s hand and let her guide him to their shared quarters. To their bed. She helped him out of his hospital clothes and into his pajamas; she let her palm rest, soft and warm, against his bare cheek.
She kissed him. Finally, she kissed him. He never thought he’d get the chance again. His lips parted; his arms locked up and started to tremble where they supported his weight on the bed. A knot of anxiety tightened and burned in his gut.
And Deanna pulled away. Not far. Just enough to look him in the eyes, to study him.
“Deanna—” he started, desperate to fix things, to take back that flare of emotion she must have felt.
“Will,” she said, and he closed his eyes. “It’s okay.”
He lowered his chin. Her hand skimmed up, fingers tangling in his close-cropped hair, freshly washed and sanitized. Her lips found his forehead just as a cold flush flowed down his body from his scalp to his toes.
“Don’t be ashamed,” Deanna whispered into his hair. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I—”
“You’re allowed to say no,” she said, and she squeezed his arm comfortingly, just once, but she didn’t pull him into a hug. She backed away before he could lean into her by instinct, desperate to prove that he was okay, that he did want this. Want her. Thirty-two days of wishing he could see her again, could touch her. And now…
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice broken.
And Deanna just gave him that look of hers — patient and weary and exasperated and affectionate, all at once, a look he’d come to memorize before he ever left her behind on Betazed. When she slid under the covers, fully dressed, it was a helpless instinct that drove Riker to lie down beside her. He didn’t reach for her. He choked on a second apology, eyes burning.
“How about we just do this?” Deanna asked, her voice soft. He couldn’t focus his vision well enough to see what he meant. He just lay there, lost in his own mind, until he felt her body against his — her chest against his back — her arms wrapping around his waist and tucking his arms close to his body. Deanna’s knees slotted against the backside of his atrophied legs, forcing him to bend his knees too, to curl up into a ball. It was the same position he’d been forced to take inside his cell, except his arms were forward now, and untied.
And damn it, he was comfortable like this. It was the position that had broken him, made him less than human, and he was comfortable. He took a shuddering breath, his numb and useless fingers curling into loose fists.
Deanna was there to hold him. She guarded his back; she worked her hand between both of his and rubbed her thumb in soothing circles over the palm of his hand. She breathed slowly, deeply, modeling it for him until he started to catch on. And if she saw the helpless tears rolling down his cheeks, staining his pillow, she didn’t say so.
Thirty-two days, and he hadn’t broken once. Through all the torture, he hadn’t cried. But now…
You’re safe, said Deanna’s voice in his head. You don’t have to do anything, Imzadi. You don’t even have to sleep if you don’t want to.
Just breathe.