The BLTS Archive -  Will and Colette II
Dying at Parties
by Orlando (ajfgdm@globalnet.co.uk)

---

Second in the spectacularly sporadic "Will & Colette" series.

Note: Use of a couple o' bad!words.  Pretentious use of the present
tense; kinda multi-POV's.   Brit.Eng.

Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek.

Archive: ASC,ASCEML.

Enjoy! :o)

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Colette's sitting pretty much side-saddle across Will's lap. When
she's awake, Will's teenage mistress wriggles her lush ass and gives
him a world-class hard-on doing this. But right now, Colette is still.
Her blonde head is heavy against Will's shoulder even though the rest
of her is as light driftwood. Colette is tucked up tightly under a
lilac pashmina as soft as a baby's blanket. Will holds her in place
with one arm around her waist and the other across her lap. He's found
his way under the soft warm denim of her cut-offs and his fingers have
slid under the tight white strap of cotton that passes for the leg of
Colette's panties. From time-to-time, Will strokes a hip that's
usually as smooth as ice cream melting through his fingers but, right
now, after a day at the shore, is the texture of eggshell. Will knows
that before breakfast Colette will have that remedied with a bottle of
her favourite sparkling water, a luxury she's determined to chase down
even here in the thirsty south of this largely- parched world.

Deep in Colette's sleeping brain, Mr Pookaloo and Miss Makaloo toss
their starred foreheads and prance in dappled moonlight across the big
paddock behind daddy's house. In her sleep, Colette is dreaming of a
bedroom she knows well. It might be her own, with its beamed ceiling
and familiar spider's web cracks here and there in the white stucco,
or, it might be another bedroom she knows well. She isn't sure. All
she knows is that there is a large, sparkling window and a counterpane
as soft as summer and pillows as crisp as winter mornings. All she
knows is that it's a room in a place where there are people who rule
her with an iron rod and she has lain on her bed and fantasised of
what she would pack and where she would go and how she would get there
if only she could leave here.

Maybe she already has. Careful, Colette, use too often and you'll
realize that running away is like self harm and alcohol: it's an urge
that lives in the cellar at the back of your brain and itches to be
unleashed every time the pressure's turned up.

Will, on the other hand, is fighting sleep. Daybreak can't be more
than 15 or 20 minutes away, and he wants to see this dawn. He wants to
see them all. They're a gift he gives himself because no matter how
much fancy gadgetry they pack onto a starship holodeck, the end of
night is something you just don't get to see out there on the final
frontier. And besides, Will and REM are barely on speaking terms these
days. He uses a gadget. Sharp Eye, Will thinks they call the device in
the vernacular. He's not sure of its official name. He's pretty sure
it doesn't have one. Out here, where he's been frittering away his
time on the fringes of things (he prefers to not call it Running Away)
pretty much nothing has an official anything, if you really don't want
it to.

Anyway, when Will's eyelids begin to feel heavier than the innards of
a neutron star, he presses the Sharp Eye, a shiny black metallic leach
of a thing, to the back of his neck, and its tendrils, looking pretty
much like micro optic fibres spun by crazy silkworms, bury into his
cerebellum and spit like tinnitus. They cooked-up this thing out in
the Kniberight Alliance for their snipers who need to be alert for
thirty one hours per cycle. It serves Will well, even if he is so
wired by daybreak that his breakfast of choice is cannabis with a
single malt chaser.

---

Dawn comes and goes, and, like a ritual he must perform before the big
game, Will feels more comfortable for having seen it happen. Of
course, they don't have to spend their nights in this nomadic fashion;
Will and Colette have a perfectly serviceable room (bed; postage stamp
bathroom; a couple of Starfleet uniforms hanging on the shower rail
doubling as closet space) in the eves of Githa Nioss' taverna. It's
fine, even if the ceiling above their bed is low and thatched with
sable grasses that smell faintly of damp moss. But each seems to
recognise in the other a shared fear of sitting still, of staying in
one place. Moving targets are so much more difficult to hit. Or find.

The candles on Will and Colette's table have burned down and Will
leans forward and blows out the last remaining smoking wick. The table
is overrun with empty glasses and an ashtray packed like a commuter
train. Will picks up a glass and knocks back the whisky lurking under
an oily inch of flat Pepsi. He's hungry, and when she wakes up,
Colette will be attacking the breakfast menu. She'll chose a fruit
bowl (because she's watching her figure) and balance it with a sticky
stack of something stagnating in a glue of refined sugar (because she
can't resist the siren of junk food). Or, these would be Colette's
choices, and Will's hunger would already have been satisfied with a
midnight bowl of steaming chili, if Githa Nioss' head cook and chief
bottle-washer hadn't made good his escape the night before with the
woman in her employ.

Will realises his wallet is missing just as Githa Nioss approaches.
She crosses the flagstone floor like a sandstorm - all amber skirts
and scarves the colour of parched grass. Her skin is the tone and
texture of tree bark, and when she smiles, (something she does often
for Will's benefit, for various reasons) it almost seems possible to
date her from the lines around her eyes. Her appearance is typical of
the woman who live and work here on the southern shore, and Will is
vain enough, when he looks at her, to help himself to Colette's face
cream at the next earliest opportunity. Githa Nioss is carrying Will
and Colette's bill for board, lodgings and sundry extras. Her guests
have availed themselves. It's a long list, but the Starfleet man can
afford it; he has access to a fat bank account on some safe, distant
Federation world, and Githa Nioss has invented something she calls
Delivery Tax at a rate she thought of after doubling an arbitrary
number, to take full advantage of her guest's affluence and
imprudence. At the very most she will want Will's thumb- print on the
ledger, guaranteeing her access to high-value, highly-liquid
Federation credits. At the very least, she'll be wanting fistfuls of
the local currency. And Will now knows he no longer has either of
those things.

Will pats the pocket in the ass of his jeans. He's already searched
the lining and alcoves of his waistcoat, and scanned the rubble on the
table top. He's looking for a pocket book he picked up in the Vatta
Vhal Markan market. It's intricately detailed calf leather, and caught
Will's eye the way Colette also attracted it a couple of minutes
afterwards. A guilty pleasure reeled him in: animal hide. Hell, if
Picard could wander the decks of the Federation flagship with half a
dead cow on his back, Will was pretty sure a couple of folded squares
of leather weren't going have him Hell-bound. And in any case, Will's
always been strictly non-PC away from the weight of a Starfleet
uniform.

It isn't there. It's nowhere. Will rips open Colette's rucksack.
Colette has come awake and demands to know what the hell he's doing as
a couple of reference books and half a dozen text books rain onto the
table amid brightly- wrapped sanitary products, a hairbrush and
pictures of her ponies back home.

Shit! Shit. Shit!

Will spreads his hands towards Githa Nioss in a conciliatory gesture.
He doesn't know he's doing it, but twenty years of
Starfleet-indoctrinated diplomacy live in his posture. It's obvious,
then, that you can take the boy out of uniform, but you can't take the
uniform out of the boy. Will wants to explain to Githa Nioss that his
imminent failure to settle her account is a genuine although not
insoluble problem, but Colette is haranguing his back. Does he think
that she's lifted his wallet? Does he? Is that why he's raiding her
stuff? Jeez, Will!

Will's fist clenches. Everything he has, everything he has access to,
everything he is, has gone with that pocket book. His way off this
fucking world is lost! His identity is lost in the dunes that were
washed at high tide, or worse, much worse, is in the hands of some
light- fingered thief. Federation citizenship always was a high value
item, and now it's probably a commodity on some fucking black market!
He ignores Colette's indignation. He knows it's born more of panic
than any real insult. He knows she doesn't want to be marooned here
any more than he does. That knowledge makes Will catch himself like a
sharp intake of breath. He doesn't know what to think any more. He's
too wasted to think. He's been too wasted to think since he arrived
here. It has brought him swiftly to this.

Will appeals to Githa Nioss; they can come to an arrangement, surely?

Githa Nioss is not stupid; she understands the severity of Will's
cursing. Her universal translator translates it well and, with it, all
the attendant anger and recrimination and sincerity of the predicament
in which Will finds himself. And besides, Will has a habit of flashing
blue eyes and curving his appetizing mouth into a libertine smile, so
Githa Nioss can find it within herself to cut him some slack. She
might look as dried as desiccated coconut on the outside, but on the
inside she can still appreciate a handsome face when it's carried
through her door on broad shoulders. She's still alive. Alive and
without staff. Will, she decides, will work for her. Even without
Delivery Tax, he owes her not insignificant sums for bed, board, drink
and drugs. The Sharp Eye alone is a lottery-win purchase. He will
enter employ until the debt is settled. What can he do? Can he cook?
Hers has absconded. He will transfer to her also, and without delay,
his one remaining asset.

Will plucks the Sharp Eye from the back of his neck. It comes away
from his flesh with an audible clutching sound. For a moment, Will's
dizzy without the electronic drug fizzing in his brain and he needs to
grip a chair back to keep himself upright. He's aware of Colette's
small hand on his biceps offering support. After a moment, and with a
reluctance that is obvious even to himself, he returns the Sharp Eye
to Githa Nioss' palm and slips his arm around Colette's slender
shoulders. He isn't feeling too good. He tells himself that he doesn't
deserve to.

The Sharp Eye disappears into the large pocket in the front of Githa
Nioss' apron. It isn't alone in there; Will can she the hard edges of
some kind of weapon. Will knows full well she isn't afraid to use it.
She's part of the reason Will keeps his back to the wall. Githa Nioss
shakes her head. That isn't what she meant, although the Sharp Eye
will do for a start. Her gaze fixes on Colette - Colette who is young
and succulent, and who men will pay handsomely for the pleasure of
possessing for the night, or just renting by the hour. Surely, an old
man like Will, of all people, knows the market value of tight meat?
Colette won't clear Will's debts, but she will go most of the way to
keeping the interest in check.

That is Githa Nioss' proposition.

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The End