Path: newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!atl-c03.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!newsread.com!newsstand.newsread.com!POSTED.newshog.newsread.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated Approved: ascem@earthlink.net Organization: Better Living Thru TrekSmut Sender: ascem@earthlink.net Message-ID: From: "lyrastarwatcher" MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list ASCEML@yahoogroups.com; contact ASCEML-owner@yahoogroups.com Subject: NEW TOS: Apollo Physician 6/7 (K/Mc)[NC-17] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Lines: 620 Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 05:55:16 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.198.142.218 X-Complaints-To: Abuse Role , We Care X-Trace: newshog.newsread.com 1100325316 209.198.142.218 (Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:55:16 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:55:16 EST Xref: news.earthlink.net alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated:85563 X-Received-Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 21:56:20 PST (newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net) Title: Apollo Physician [NC-17] part 6/7 Author: Lyrastar url: www.geocities.com/lyrastarwatcher/apollo for easier reading ---- Chapter 12 --If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive. --Mother Teresa The day of the funeral, Jim called me up. I took it on the vid screen. "Do you want me to go with you?" he said. "No, it's alright. I'll have people there." "I see. You'll have people there." The words sounded different when he said them. "It's not that." I bristled. "In fact, I've been thinking about the whole family thing. I'm not worried about appearances anymore; it really is okay. Things have settled down to a--kind of peace. Sad, but peace. I don't want to pull you away from school." "Sure. I'm glad it's better. Let me know if I can help." "You already have." I smiled. "Really. You don't know how much." "Want to come by later and tell me?" "Love to." "See you then." He signed off and the screen went dark. It was only then that I realized what had been strange; he was in full dress uniform. I wondered if it was for an Academy ceremony, or for the invitation that hadn't come. The funeral service wasn't too bad--all considering. LJ wanted to ride with Gramma to the interment; after being told she couldn't ride with Grampa this seemed like the next best thing. I caught Jocelyn on the way to the flitter lot. "Can I talk to you?" "Please, Lenny, not here. Call my lawyer if you have anything new to say." "No, it's not that. In fact I've decided to give up custody. I told my lawyer this morning. He'll have the final papers drawn up by tomorrow, if you'll agree to unlimited visitation." She stared openmouthed. "Of course I will. LJ loves you; I want you to stay close. But what brought this on?" I shrugged. "I realized that I wasn't cut out to be a father. Medicine'll always come first, and that's not fair to LJ. I'd rather see her sometimes and have it be good than see her half the time and have it be--" I looked toward the hearse and didn't finish. I didn't have to. Joey followed my gaze. "You don't have to be like him, you know. Genetics are building blocks, not our destiny." "That's just it," I said. "It's not so terrible to be like him. I've demonized him for so long, I never stopped to realize that he was just an average man. A great scientist, but an average man. And I am a lot like him. I'm just as obsessed with my career--but I do want my family to be happy." I shook my head. "I love her so much; I just want her to be happy. And I can't be a good father with my career." When she looked up at me, her eyes held more compassion than I had earned from her in a long time. "I think you've just proved that you can be--in your own way." She rose up on tiptoes and kissed my forehead. "Thank you," she whispered. As she flipped her hair and ducked into her hovercar, the same sweet smell I remembered billowed in the air. It wrapped around me and followed me to my car waxing and waning in strength with each breath. I thought vaguely to myself that that smell would likely be my last memory of her to go. Hoopdy fired right up. Something glinted in the sunlight as I eased back the throttle. It was the fourth finger of my left hand. With one last twist, I pulled off the ring; a pale indentation remained where it had been. I tried it on my right hand, but it felt funny there--sort of clunky and in the way. The joint of my middle finger was too big for me to work it past. I couldn't reach my pocket seated like I was, so I replaced the ring on the same finger--just for now. I think it must be a terrible thing, but my keenest feeling on that trip was freedom. It was a dreadful, disorienting kind of sudden lightness, like a rat that has gnawed off its own leg to escape from a trap. I had severed all the ties to my past and handed my daughter over to a woman who would be happy to never see me again. There's probably a special circle of hell for parents--for children--like me, but it felt so damned good to not have to think about anyone else. As I launched into the funeral procession with the sun in my eyes, I was suddenly reminded of Daedalus finally breaking out of the labyrinth, stretching his new wings and flying free into the sun. Or was that Icarus? And which was the father and which was the son? I always got that part confused. ********* Chapter 13 --No physician is really good before he has killed one or two patients. --Hindu Proverb I didn't stop after the cemetery; I flew straight to San Francisco. It was still morning there, but already parked up, so I left the hovercar in Sausalito and took the Golden Gate Bridge National Monument pedway across the Bay. I watched the water roll along underneath me as the pedway moved, and I twisted my ring out of habit. On an impulse I pulled it off and said a mental good-bye as I prepared to drop it into the depths of the Bay. At the last moment, I stopped my hand; after all, it was perfectly good platinum. Such symbolic gestures are for children. I tucked the ring into my travel medipouch and closed the flap. With the high morning sun in my eyes, I wandered through the park and over to the Haight-Ashbury historic district for a while. It still drew the searching and disenfranchised youth--or would be youth--from around the continent, and I felt right at home. I ordered myself an organic falafel and just sat--for the first time in since I can't remember when--with absolutely nothing at all to do. I walked most of the way to the Starfleet dorms, taking in the sights and the sounds of the city. The sky was packed with traffic, much of it taking off across the ocean or through the exosphere and into space. I played the game of imagining where each one was going, as generations of boys before me have done with wagons, ships, trains and planes. As a kid it was only a game; as a free man I could buy a ticket to anywhere right now. I had only to decide where. My neck began to cramp from craning, so I looked back down where I was going. Good thing too; I'd almost missed my turn. I set my sights on the pedway ahead and rechecked the location of the next turnoff; I didn't have to look up. Just knowing the flights were there gave me an easy feeling. I could get on one any time I wanted to--but right now I had a date. A date. I could call this a date! Reflexively, I reached to twist my ring, but my fingers touched bare skin. There was nothing there. Jim was horsing around with some cadets in the common room. It looked like he was losing, but to someone blonde and busty and he didn't seem terribly upset. She took him down and sat on her conquest. Funny you'd think the two-time winner of the Academy Iron Man contest could put up a better fight. "Uncle, uncle!" He laughed as she bounced on his bare chest. "Hey Jim, someone's here for you." He stood up, picked up his shirt and came for me with a smile. "Len! I was worried when you didn't call. You alright?" "Yeah, I'm fine." He was sweaty and smiling and looked so damned good that on impulse, I kissed him right on the mouth. The crowd went wild. He pulled back, but not right away. Not for a good long while as a matter of fact. "Well, that's a nice surprise, but I thought you, uh-- " He gestured around the room. "Things change," I said. He put his arm around my waist and steered me across the room to the door. "One of the nicer aspects of life." "But what about you? Mister Navy and all." My conscience began to prickle and I sidled out from under his arm. While First Contact had brought enormous philosophical and social changes, the Christian churches and the military had been the last two major agencies let go of their prohibitions on same-sex marriages. I'd often thought it odd how frequently those two strange bedfellows--one purporting peace on earth and the other deadly force--were caught rolling around together in the dark. "Maybe I shouldn't've--you know." Now I gestured in the air. Jim shrugged and put his arm back around me as someone whistled in our direction. "They're used to it." Blondie tossed a sweaty, black T-shirt at him. "Hey Jim, you forgot this." I rolled my eyes. I'll bet they are. "Hey, I wasn't always like this. You should have seen me as a freshman. The nerd to end all nerds. Three years and the only dates I had were Stardates," said Jim as he escorted me through the door. "They much teach a lot more than flying at Starfleet." "You better believe it, mister." The door closed behind me, and he kissed me as if to prove the point. There was a mesh divider down the middle of his dormroom, with a small bunk and desk on either side. I took it one side was his, but there was no one else in the room. His side looked a lot like him, neat and to the point. There were posters of ships and men in uniforms. I guessed that the one on his desk was his dad. Books, real paper books were stacked everywhere. I leafed though the top one of the nearest pile--Amundsen's record of his trip to the South Pole. Underneath that was something by Nabokov, and then a text on World War III. On top of the next pile was "The Collected Works of Neruda." Never heard of him. I flipped through it. Poetry. It looked like love poetry--go figure." "Yours?" He sat in the single chair behind the desk. "You don't have to sound so surprised." "I didn't mean it like that--" I stopped. I suppose I did. I knew the soldier and the hero; I didn't know the man at all. "I mean, you're right. It was a surprise." "I don't have a lot of time to read, but when I do I want it to be good." He stood up and walked to the replicator. "Get you anything?" "Any chance of a beer?" "I thought you didn't drink?" "That was my dad. I don't have the problem." "Rationed to one a night for cadets," he said as the glass materialized. "One's all I want." I took a decent gulp. It tasted like wet, rotting bread and I barely stopped from spitting it across the room. The glass thumped as I set it back down on the table. He laughed at the face I made. "You do this a lot?" He took a big swallow behind me. "No. Only when I bury a relative." He stopped and came to stand quite close to me. "You okay?" A warm flush traveled through my body, seeming to start in my stomach where the alcohol sat, and work its way out along my arms and legs-- and especially to my head. I rubbed my cheeks; they felt hot to me. "Yeah, I'm alright. But I don't want to talk about it, okay?" "Okay." He put his arm around my back and up and under my shirt and it was spontaneous combustion. With my last conscious thought, I reached for the tube and sealant in my medipouch. Something tinkled to the floor. Within a minute we were naked on the bed with me sliding myself against his body. I was rough, but he matched me move for move. I pressed him hard where I wanted him; he didn't fight, but worked his hands against my body just as fiercely as I used him. We tumbled over and over. It ended with him on hands and knees, me rocking my hips and sliding along his crack. I used all of my strength against him, pushing him up the bed with my thrusts. He grabbed a pillow and held it under his face and chest, but soon his head was up against the wall. He gripped the mattress, and curled up tighter. By now we were locked in the corner. I pulled back to let him reposition. Instead of lying down, he knelt, legs splayed, flat against the wall. I pressed myself into his cleft and wrapped one arm around his waist, pulling him tight against me. I was so hard I could barely breathe; I needed him too much. I bit his shoulder and squeezed his waist, feeling the heat of his cock leak against my wrist. His skin flared red where my mouth and fingers dug in, but he made no attempt to stop me. We both needed it too much. I humped him from behind and jacked him from the front. The pressure had built within me to where I felt more pain than pleasure; I had to get off. I came with sweet relief and fell limp against his back. When it was over, he slid down the wall. I hooked my arms under his shoulders and followed him down. With some difficulty, we made a place for the two of us to spoon on the bunk; it wasn't exactly comfortable, but it was just where I wanted to be. From behind, I slid one hand down the silken ripples of his body. His cock was soft, but I couldn't tell if he had come. "You okay?" I sounded drugged, even to myself. "I'm great," he said in a voice that left no room for doubt. I kissed his shoulder in the dents where my teeth had been. It would bruise, I thought. I could see it starting already. He grabbed my wrist, pulled it tighter against his middle, and pressed his ass back against my groin. The only sound I could hear was the pounding of our hearts. The air was thick and heady with the scent of us. My skin itched where my semen grew sticky, but I didn't care to move. The speed of my easy fall back into this kind of intimacy both comforted and alarmed me at the same time. Jim's hair rubbed against my cheek as he strained to check the chronometer. 0348. "My roommate will back soon." I rolled away. "Right. I should take a shower anyway." "Turn left, end of the hall." "The hall?" "This isn't the Fairmont. Group shower." I weighed the two options, but it was no contest. "I'll wait 'til I get home." I rolled up to sit on the side of the bunk and pulled my shorts off the floor and on. When I reached back for my pants, I bumped his leg. Suddenly, he was standing there before me. "Let me go home with you." "Huh?" He bent down and nibbled the secret spot behind my ear. He repeated it in a whisper, each word blown softly against the skin of my ear. "Let. Me. Go. Home. With you." "Why?" He pulled back and cocked his eye with a pointed glance towards my crotch. I blushed. "I mean, why now? It's a three-hour trip. You'll just have to turn around and come back." "Not if we transport." Oh no. "I don't transport." He put his hand on my thigh, and pushed it up and under my shorts. "I'll make it worth your while." I chuckled. "My car's here. I'll be off work and home by 0100. Why don't you just come over then?" Jim stood up and paced the short span in front of the bunk. "I still have four months until graduation. I told you about one medal. Did I tell you I've received two? The only cadet to be twice decorated." He gestured to the posters on the walls. "I do have a reputation, as you put it, but not like you mean. Here I'm expected to be a leader, to be a hero all the time. Do you know what's that's like? Don't you just ever want to let some one else be strong?" Son, release me. "Yes." I stood up and hugged him fully against my body. "So, what do I do?" I said when he let me go. "Just stand there; I'll have some of the plebes bring your car back for you" "Oh. Okay. You'll need my code key. Got a memory chip?" "They won't need it." Jim stepped into his pants as he spoke. "But you might want to put some clothes on. We have to go through the transporter bay." "I've never liked transporters," I mumbled as I sealed my slacks. Looking down, I saw my wedding band had fallen to the floor. I picked it up and stuck it on a finger--just for now. "I'd offer to hold your hand," said Jim with a smile, "except it's not a good idea. Sometimes the molecules get accidentally scrambled between two people. "Energize." He flipped his comm and spoke into it. Scrambled? "Now just a damn minute--" His impish grin was the last thing I saw before my eyes exploded into golden sparkles. My words faded as my middle shivered into nothing, to be followed shortly by the rest of me. For a second or two I was in a large room. A blonde with big hair stood behind a console. My stomach reeled and pitched and disappeared again, and then I was in my own living room. I made a dash for the bath. When I came out he was at my desk looking at a press holo of my dad from when he'd received the Clarnynium Award. "What was he like?" Jim asked. "I don't really know." "I'm sorry." "So am I." We made love again and Jim fell asleep in my bed. I got up at 1230 for rounds and decided not to wake him. I found my car parked two spaces away from my usual spot, batteries charged and ready to go. When I came home that night, Jim was gone and my single bed felt strangely large. The next few weeks were like a whirlwind. I barely slept, moving on some kind of strange adrenaline high. My father's estate was easy enough to settle. He'd left me a sizable account. I took his medical collection and left all the rest for Shirley. She tried to argue, but I told her I didn't want anything else. I told her that he gave me a love of medicine and that was enough. I told her I'd come visit- -maybe change my mind if I wanted anything else. I said it as a formality, but after I had left her alone with her grief in the remnants of the home she had made for them, I realized I had meant those words, every one. My patient rounds flew by. My research seemed to flow on its own with me content to watch and record. I saw Jim almost every night that I wasn't on call and many that I was. I even got used to the damned transporter, but I never told him that, so he mostly came to stay with me. There was one night I told him he couldn't come--the night we signed the papers. Joey called me and said everything was ready. "I was thinking tomorrow after you get off, but if that's too soon--" "No, it's fine," I said. "0100?" "Okay." She gave me a curious look through the vidscreen. "You'll be there?" "Yeah, of course. I said I would." "I just thought--" "That I'd be childish? Joey, if you want out, I can't stop you." "No. No, you can't anymore. But you don't know how much I wish that you still could." The look she gave me reminded me so much of my old Joey that it hurt. In a second it was gone and she was again my daughter's mother. "See you at 0100 tomorrow." "Yeah. 'Nite." It went off without a hitch. We were both very cool and adult. On the way home I passed a jeweler--the kind that mostly sold to kids and wannabe retros, but what the heck. On impulse, I stopped short and turned in. I think I almost caused a wreck. The ring was still in my medipouch, and I presented it for his decision. After all, the memories weren't all bad; some of them were downright good. I could almost believe that in time I would find some of them wonderful again. "Should work," he said. "Where do you want it?" "Pinkie, I guess." "Hold out your finger. You want it loose or tight?" "Just a little loose. I'm planning on bulking up a little." It only took a second under the Autocrafter, and I was done. I twirled it on my pinkie as I left. Resizing had made it thicker and wider as well. It didn't feel like the band I'd worn for years. Well, fair's fair. I didn't feel like the man I had been either. Jim called; I lied and told him I was busy with the hospital. I settled in with a stack of back journals and read almost all the way through the night. The next night Jim asked me to come over. He was running a hyperwarp simulation and had to take hourly readings. His simulation seemed to have something to do with fondling Blondie's fingertips; he dropped her hand as I materialized. "I missed you," he said, and kissed me thoroughly in front of Blondie. Blondie coughed. "I'll just be going then," she said, gathering her books. "See you tomorrow, Helen." Jim tossed the comment over his shoulder. "You said something about your reputation?" I managed around the pressure of his mouth and tongue. "You're helping me keep it, Blue Eyes," he said, and slid his hand under my shirt. I tried to take it slow, but there was too much built up inside of me. I couldn't separate the emotional and the physical and it all came out in one violent spurt. I was caught too much by surprise to even cry out at the climax. Beneath me, Jim clamped his cheeks and came into the mattress. I had wanted to touch him, but it all happened so fast. When I could breathe, I rolled over onto my back. "Oh man." My chest still heaved. "You alright?" Jim unclenched his arms, pulled his head out of the pillow and rolled over beside me. He chuckled, "Never better. You?" "Oh yeah. Right as rain." I rearranged myself. "Oh no!" "What?" Jim bolted up on his elbow. "I forgot the bioshield." How could I be so careless? I should know better than that. "You don't have to worry," I said to him. "You're safe. You're the only one I've been with since Joey." Jim dropped back to the mattress with an easy sigh. "Oh, that. I told you, I've had all my shots. Those regular boosters the fleet gives us for everything. Says we never know what we might run into." I snorted. "Right. You get the double strength ones?" I rummaged in my medikit for a general viricide. "Huh?" "You know," I tried my falsetto, "'Hey Jim, you forgot your T-shirt'." Jim laughed. "You're jealous of Helen? Don't bother. She's engaged to one of the infirmary nurses." "A woman?" I asked, kicking myself a minute too late. Old southern thinking dies hard, as the hospital nurses were always reminding me-- especially the men. "I don't know actually. Her fianc=E9 is Kiclidian. You know how hard it is to tell with their clothes on. I've never asked. But Helen's taken, either way." "Too bad for you," I mumbled, pressing the hypo into my arm. Suddenly Jim's hands were on my shoulders, digging into me with feral vigor. I dropped the hypo. My eyes flew open and looked into his only centimeters away at the very limit of my ability to focus. His pupils were dilated wide leaving an eerie, almost inhuman visage fading in and out of the edge of my vision. He held my gaze. "Would it surprise you to know that you're the only one I've been with since we met?" I blinked. Well, yes, actually it did. "Why's that?" He let me go and propped up on one elbow still holding onto my eyes. "Haven't wanted to." His eyes took on a distant haze and he looked up over my shoulder, somewhere beyond the ceiling. "In the recruiting ads, they tell you that possibilities in space are endless. Then you sign, and they tell you there's one catch. Spacemen can have everything except love; their ship takes all that they have. Sometimes I think that's too bad." "I dunno. It's probably for the best. Ties are the last thing I need right now," I said. "Right. I'm sure you're right." His smile seemed to lack conviction. I could still taste myself on his lips, as he kissed me goodnight. "Can I stay?" I asked. "Sure, I'd like that. If you don't mind Reveille in the morning." "Trumpets, right?" "Close enough," he chuckled. "Just stick with medicine, Doc. It's what you're good at." ~end part 6/7 ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ ASCEM messages are copied to a mailing list. Most recent messages can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCEML. NewMessage: