by Merri Todd Webster

THE OVERTURE: Paramount owns the characters, the ship, and the universe generally. I, however, own a certain doctor, two nurses, a boringly peaceful planet, and another character who appears later on (but I'm not giving anything away).

Believe it or not, this story will contain m/f, f/f, and m/m sex--all between the same two people. Am I weird, or what? If any of these concepts bother you, please leave now, and go watch "Three's Company" or something for a less imaginative view of sexuality.

I really don't know where this came from. Honest. It snuck up behind me and hit me over the head while I was trying to think about two other stories. Harry made me do it, okay? Satisfied, Har? You oughta be, after this much sex....

Okay to post to PKSP and BLTS and to archive at R'rain's, the PKSP site (when we have one), and the BLTS site (if there is one).

This story has to be dedicated to Amirin and to my husband, John. Amirin, because she proved herself as true a friend as Our Boys are to one another, by talking over this story with me every night that I was writing it. Without her help, it would be far different and probably much less interesting. John, because he is, always, the Tom to my Harry and the Harry to my Tom. Love to them both.

---

"Space... the final frontier."

prologue to "Star Trek"

---

"Let's take each other's hand
As we jump into the final frontier
Mad about you, baby...."

theme from "Mad About You"

---

"So what do you want to do, Tom?" Harry asked.

Tom frowned into his cup of thick magenta "coffee." As the sun set in the eastern sky, the rings around the planet gradually became visible against the deepening darkness, like a curved blade of silver, violet, and blue. Beneath that striking arch, the citizens of Moshnesh, capital of Grethi province on the planet Harrogeth, were hurrying home with the single-mindedness of starlings heading for their nightly roost. It was barely 8 pm local time, but it was obvious that, provincial capital or no, Moshnesh was about to roll up its sidewalks for the night. The two men were faced with the choice between searching for a hotel, when everything was closing up, or else giving up and beaming back up to the ship for the night, resuming their shore leave in the morning.

"I'll settle up," Tom replied. He got up and went to the service counter, digging in his pocket for the temporary credit card he'd been issued. The tired-looking counterperson took it with a relieved smile. "Is there a hotel nearby that could give us a room, this time of night?"

The counterperson stuck out his tongue in thought, an oddly feminine gesture, to Tom's eye. "Maybe the Ninestars, respected one. It's big and expensive, but that's just why it will be open. Cross the boulevard, turn left, and make a right at the next intersection--it's the largest building on the block."

"Thanks." Tom went back to the table where Harry was still sitting, brooding over his tea. "I've got directions to a hotel, if you want to stay."

Harry nodded. "Fine." He gulped the last of the tea as he stood up.

They left the cafe in a hurry, dodging determined pedestrians to get to the curb of the wide sidewalk. "They remind me of my father's cousins in Minnesota," Tom complained under his breath. "All sensible and wholesome and early to bed and early to rise--"

The sunset was in their eyes, blue and white, as they stepped into the street, and Harry was looking at Tom, and Tom was complaining, exaggerating for the sake of effect. So they didn't see the police groundcar rounding the corner any more than its driver saw them.

---

"They've lost too much blood, respected. Their lifesigns are dropping rapidly below the norms the ship's doctor indicated."

The surgeon thumped the crash cart and swore. "Why can't their ship transport them back?"

"The transporter systems have malfunctioned since they transported down, apparently because of local radiation in the Skybelt. Chances are they may die before one of their shuttlecraft could retrieve them."

The head nurse looked gravely at the monitor on which the two aliens' lifesigns were displayed. "Call it now, respected, or else call the sacred technicians."

The surgeon stood absolutely still, one hand raised. It was covered with the shockingly red blood of one of the aliens. "We'll have to risk giving them our plasma."

More than one person present stifled a gasp, but the head nurse moved instantly to carry out the order. The surgeon turned to stare unblinkingly at the lifesigns monitor as the two aliens received the donation of plasma.

"Heartrates are rising." There was almost triumph in the surgeon's voice.

"Respiration is stabilizing." The head nurse sounded as calm as ever.

The surgeon turned to the assistant. "Let's go ahead and close."

---

Harry could not remember ever having such a bad headache. Not even the time Great-Grandma Lillian had tripped and dropped the wok on him, when he was seven, or the first time he'd had real liquor, not just wine or synth, and gotten drunk and sworn he'd never do it again. This was like the hangover, only more so. And he couldn't open his eyes. He turned his head from side to side.

"Lie still." A gentle voice, a soft but measuring hand on his cheek, an authoritative presence. Harry tried to speak.

"Are you in pain?"

"Yes," he croaked.

A wonderful, refreshing wave of cool water. Almost enough to assuage the pain by itself. A few more swallows, then a tablet of medicine, followed by more water.

"Not too much. We don't want you to choke." Soothing touches on his cheek and shoulder.

"What...?"

"You were hit by a police car while you crossed the street and smashed up rather badly. We contacted your ship at once, but their transporters had developed a malfunction since you last used them. Your ship's doctor downloaded some basic guidelines so we could treat you ourselves, although I fear our medicine is not as sophisticated as yours."

"My--my friend?"

"He is no worse than you. You may be able to see one another tomorrow. Now, I have other patients, but I will be back in less than an hour. If you feel worse or have any difficulties before I come back, squeeze this." Something small and round pressed into his right hand. "Can you squeeze it?"

Harry tightened his fingers. "Good. My pager received that. Now I will put on some music for you before I go."

Footsteps, vaguely Baroque-sounding music from somewhere in the room, receding footsteps. Harry drifted.

---

"Tom!"

Harry tried to sit up, but both Tom's nurse and his own, Kigrit, glared at him with almost physical force. Grinning the trademark Paris grin, Tom limped into Harry's room, supported by his nurse on one side and a crutch on the other. Despite the grin, the relief was obvious on his face when the two nurses steered him into a chair beside the bed.

"You two have taken much longer to recover than you should have," Kigrit scolded. "I still cannot let Harry use the commode on his own, let alone allow him to roam the halls like his friend."

"And you should see how this one flirts," complained the other nurse, suppressing a smile. "He does not seem to care which is the object of his charm."

"Now, Bindi," Tom drawled, "it works on you, doesn't it?" Laughing, the two nurses withdrew. Tom reached over and took Harry's hand. "How do you feel, Har?"

"Like I was hit by a large six-wheeled vehicle," Harry joked weakly. The pressure of Tom's fingers against his own was comforting. "The surgeon came in, Dr. Itzam I think it is, said I've got some kind of infection from the glass shards or something."

"Yeah, I had that, too, but the antibiotics cleared it up." Tom poured two cups of water and helped Harry drink first. "You should be okay in no time."

"Hah." Harry coughed, then went on. "We've already been here, what, two days? If we'd been beamed back to the ship, we'd have gone back on duty the next day."

"Well, the transporters are still off-line, so just lie back and enjoy your shore leave." Tom grimaced. "It beats Akritiri, anyway."

Harry shuddered, then bit back a little groan because the motion had hurt. They didn't want to give him too much analgesic, for fear of dependency, and the therapeutic touch they used on him helped a lot but didn't last long. Tom reached over and stroked back the hair from his friend's forehead. The first time he'd come to see Harry, Harry'd still been bandaged like something out of an old 2-D horror movie. The head bandages were gone now, but the younger man's hair felt greasy under Tom's fingers, and there was a nasty scar running back into the hairline on Harry's temple.

Tom suddenly noticed that Harry was looking at him from under drooping lids. Tom pasted on a fresh grin, hoping his face hadn't shown the tenderness he felt. "Why don't we call Kigrit, see if she can give you a dose of pills or another rubdown?" he suggested. Harry nodded and let Tom squeeze the pager for him.

---

"Well, they did their best," the Doctor observed in his usual acerbic tone, "but their best is about 400 years behind ours."

Harry tried not to wince as the regenerator removed the scar on his forehead and rewove the skin into its original smoothness. Tom sat on a nearby biobed, kicking his legs because both were now good as new.

Finished with Harry's scar, the Doctor picked up his tricorder and scanned first Harry, then Tom for one last time. He frowned over the readings. "There are minor fluctuations in your hormone levels unaccounted for by your injuries. Both of you--" he glanced at the two men almost accusingly "--have elevated estrogen levels, among other anomalies."

"Estrogen? But that's a female hormone," Tom objected. The Doctor favored him with a sardonic look.

"Very good, Mr. Paris. For your information, the Human endocrine system produces both androgens and estrogens in both males and females. It is the predominance of one, rather than the absence of the other, which regulates sexual dimorphism." The Doctor snapped shut the tricorder and moved to a wall monitor to transfer the readings there. "And to think this man serves as a medical technician," he muttered.

"So can we leave, Doc?" Harry asked. "And can we return to duty?"

The Doctor turned around. "Yes, you may go. I'll tell the Captain you may return to duty tomorrow."

"Thanks, but we've still got leave coming. Come on, Harry, let's go get a drink at Sandrine's." Clapping Harry lightly on the shoulder, Tom led the way out of Sickbay. Behind them, the Doctor went back to scowling at the monitor.

---

Harry got off duty with a deep though internal sigh of relief. What was wrong with him? Everyone on the bridge had gotten on his nerves today. Tuvok's raised eyebrows, the Captain's crisp speech, Chakotay's calm monotone, even Tom's irrepressible cocky humor had all chafed at him like coughing during a concert until he was ready to strangle his crewmates, or else throw himself out an airlock. He just wasn't like that, normally; little things didn't make him sweat, but lately he'd been on edge all the time, prone to upset in all sorts of ways. 'You need some time to yourself, Kim,' he told himself as he got off the turbolift. 'Maybe a quiet dinner alone in your quarters.'

After splurging on fried dumplings, lo mein, and Mongolian pork, and putting in over an hour's practice on the clarinet, Harry felt calmed enough to go to Sandrine's and socialize a little. He hadn't seen Tom, or heard from him, since their duty shift. Which was unusual, he reflected, and frowned. Tom usually asked what Harry was doing for dinner; they usually ate together. Yet Harry had disappeared and Tom hadn't even bothered to check up on him. 'Some way to treat a friend,' he thought, then stopped. 'What am I doing getting all worked up over this? It's no big deal.' Shaking his head, he went into the holodeck.

The first thing that greeted his eyes was Tom--dancing with B'Elanna. A crowd of people were gathered round, watching and laughing as Tom skillfully steered the Chief Engineer around an improvised dance floor to the strains of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. B'Elanna was blushing and laughing at the same time as Tom twirled her around, one hand entwined with hers, the other arm holding her firmly against him. Harry didn't notice that his fingers curled up until his nails were digging uncomfortably into his palms. He didn't notice the way his breathing quickened, the way his cheeks heated up, the sudden lightness in his head. He noticed only that Tom was pressed against B'Elanna from belly to knee, moving gracefully with her to some of Harry's favorite music. 'So this is why he didn't bother to check with me.' A feeling of icy coldness came over Harry. His spine stiffened, and he strode between the tables, the chairs, the shoulders of his crewmates onto the dance floor. "Mind if I cut in?"

Tom and B'Elanna stopped, poised in a tableau for a second with wide eyes, wide mouths. Then Tom gracefully stepped aside, half-bowing as he gestured to B'Elanna.

Harry flashed her a quick, hard grin. "Nothing personal, B'Elanna, but it's him I want to dance with." He pointed with his chin to Tom and stepped forward.

Tom stepped back, confused, as Harry reached for him. "Harry--" The other man's hand closed on his wrist, and Tom jerked away, pulling hard because he had to in order to break the surprisingly tight grip. He looked up from the empty hand, met Harry's eyes, and was shocked by the emotions he read there: anger, jealousy, desire, wounded love. 'Love? No, that can't be right--' Again Tom stepped back, frightened by Harry's feelings and his own, by the way everything was suddenly right on the surface, right there for everyone to see.

'He doesn't want me. He'll never want me.' Harry's face crumpled, drew in; he felt the sting of tears filling his eyes, knew that Tom saw it, soon everyone would see it, everyone in the room. Unable to do anything else, he turned and fled.

Tom and B'Elanna and everyone else watched in astonishment as Harry made a choked noise and ran out of the holodeck at full speed. Nobody moved for a heartbeat; then, B'Elanna whacked Tom on the arm. "Go after him!" she ordered. Tom speedily obeyed.

Harry threw himself on his bed, sobbing. Gods, this couldn't be happening. He couldn't be crying his heart out because his best friend wasn't also in love with him. He couldn't have just made a scene in a holographic bar, in front of half of alpha shift. He couldn't be so in love with Tom Paris that it hurt like hell to see him dancing with a woman. So why was he crying? His chest felt so tight, his whole body heavy with the ache of it, his limbs were lead, his skin was prickling oddly all over. He was crying so loudly he didn't even hear Paris come in and follow the noise of sobbing into the bedroom.

Harry flinched and rolled over at a touch on his back. Tom was perched on the bed beside him, looking scared, confused, and concerned all at once. A puzzled frown came over Tom's face as he looked at the younger man. "Harry," he said, sounding half exasperated, half frightened, "Harry, please tell me what's wrong. What was that all about back there?"

"You really are dense, Tom," Harry spat. "Why should I explain anything to you?" He rolled over, turning away from Tom.

Tom ran his fingers through his hair. "Harry, you really threw me back there. I'm just having a good time with B'Elanna, and then you charge in and say you want to dance with me, and I look at you and think--think things that can't be right."

Harry looked over his shoulder. "Like what things?"

Tom couldn't quite meet his friend's accusing stare. "Like, well, like maybe you're interested in me--interested in being more than friends."

To Tom's surprise, Harry sat up and began clapping. "Brilliant, Mr. Paris. After how many years lost in the Delta Quadrant, you finally notice something that's been right under your nose the whole time. You fucking idiot. You've been so busy chasing B'Elanna, you never even looked at good old Harry. Good old Harry who's always there when you need him but never in the way when you don't want him around. Harry the sidekick, Harry the boring one, Harry the convenient source of replicator rations--"

As Harry went on and on, Tom watched him with fascinated horror. It wasn't just what Harry was saying, the shock of hearing that he had the same feelings for Tom that Tom had been trying to hide from him. It was because Harry's voice was getting higher with every syllable, Harry's figure was slowly but unmistakably altering beneath his loose civilian clothing, and Harry Kim appeared to be turning into a woman before Tom's eyes.

Tom scrambled off the bed and went backward, too fucking scared to think straight, and Harry leaped to his feet, her feet, hands on hips, screaming at Tom, "You coward! You can't even face me! You--"

He stopped, dead silent, mouth still hanging open. "Harry," Tom said, unable to say more. Harry's hands smoothed over the rounded hips, dipped to the base of the belly, rose trembling to the small high breasts, and settled at last on the stricken face.

"Tom," he whispered, his voice husky and deep, but not bass any more. Contralto. "Tom, what's happened to me?"

Tom forced himself to approach Harry. "Harry," he said again. "Harry, buddy--you're a woman."

Moving like a sleepwalker, Harry turned away and walked over to his dresser, to look in the mirror. What he saw was someone, a woman, his own height, with disheveled black hair in a mannish style, breasts straining against the white fabric of the shirt, hips pushing down the waistband of the black jeans. He turned to the left, looked at the gap in the back where the buttocks were too round for the cut of the pants, turned back, looked at the bulge of fabric at the crotch with nothing to fill it. Mesmerized, he stripped off the shirt, ignoring Tom's protests, shimmied out of the confining jeans.

"That's me," he murmured. "I am a woman."

Good muscle tone, but not as much bulk. Broad shoulders and narrow waist, still, but the shoulders now supported pert breasts, not too large, with the same blackberry nipples, and the waist gave way into hips a little wider than the chest. Instead of a very visible penis and testicles, there was only a neat triangle of black hair at the join of the thighs, nothing else to see. Probing fingers confirmed the presence of a vulva, cleft protected by more hair, clitoris just large enough to be felt.

The face that looked back at Harry Kim was the face of his mother, his mother's sister, his father's mother. It was his face, yet it was female. The slight softness that had always been there was enhanced somehow. The seriousness, the directness, the lurking humor were there, unchanged. He could imagine letting the hair grow, down to the shoulders, the back, the buttocks, running his hands through the silk of it and--

Feeling heat on his back, Harry shifted his gaze from the astonishingly familiar face in the mirror to the face over the left shoulder. Tom's face, wide eyes fixed on Harry. 'So that's what he looks like when he's aroused.' For an instant Harry felt anger that Tom could suddenly feel desire for him just because he was female, regret that he hadn't always been a woman, desire to answer Tom's--and that was unsettling, that sudden churning inside, as if a whirlpool had opened up somewhere in the core of him, and the most visible sign of arousal the swelling of the breasts, the erection of the nipples, rather than of the penis.

Then Tom moved, and the moment changed, irretrievably. "Harry, we've got to get you to Sickbay. Put on--something else, and we'll beam directly there."

---

"Well, well, well," said the Doctor. He looked perversely pleased to see a female Harry Kim stretched out on his biobed, dressed in loose black shirt and pants. "It appears I was right after all." He began scanning Harry slowly and thoroughly with the tricorder.

"Right about what, Doc?"

The Doctor ignored the question for a moment, absorbed in the information from the scan. He then went to a monitor before answering. "As I observed when you first returned to the ship, you and Ensign Kim had elevated estrogen levels, along with other anomalies in the readings which were not explained by having been hit by a ground vehicle. I continued to examine your readings and compare them with previous records. I believed there was a chemical in your bloodstream which was not explained by the medication you had received. Ensign Kim's current readings confirm that."

The Doctor came back to the biobed and addressed his further remarks to Harry. "In addition to estrogen levels comparable to a normal Human female's, you have in your bloodstream a sexual hormone which is not of Human origin. It appears to function as a regulator for the balance between estrogens and androgens, maintaining them at more nearly equal levels than in Human body chemistry. In short, not only are you not male at the moment, Ensign, but unless I can find a way to undo the change, you will not be 100% male, in Human terms, ever again."

Harry looked faintly shocked, but so did Tom when the Doctor began to scan him. "Mmm-hm," the EMH murmured decidedly.

"What, Doc?" Tom's voice was tight with apprehension.

"It's going to happen to you, too, Lieutenant."

"What?!" Tom stopped his hand, just in time, from trying to smack the tricorder out of the Doctor's grasp.

"You may not be aware of it, but your estrogen levels are much higher than normal, and steadily rising. If they continue to do so, you also will become female. I can give you a shot of androgens to palliate the situation--"

"Do it!"

"--But I cannot feed you testosterone indefinitely without killing you," the Doctor finished calmly. He prepared a hypospray and dosed Paris in the arm. "What I can do is contact the Harrogeti and learn exactly what treatment you received."

---

They both beamed back to Harry's quarters. Harry excused himself to use the bathroom and came back looking almost embarassed. Tom found himself looking all around the room, at the couch, the music corner, anywhere but at Harry.

"Do I look that awful?" Harry asked wryly.

"Gods, no!" Tom blurted, then bit his lip. He tried to put it more neutrally. "You're a great-looking guy, Harry, and you make a beautiful woman." 'Yeah, that was real neutral.'

Harry wandered over to the mirror, peered at himself, idly ran a brush through his hair. There, that was better. "Do you really think I'm beautiful?"

Tom considered all the answers he might make to that, all the things he might say if a woman who was not also his best friend and, until quite recently, a man asked him that question. He discarded those possibilities and went for simplicity. "Yes, I do. Because you are. I've always thought so."

Harry studied his--her?--face in the mirror. The face wasn't really different, despite the changes in body shape and center of gravity. He touched his breasts lightly. Was this all it took--a little extra fat here and there? A cavity where there had once been a protuberance? He turned back to Tom.

"Have you? Then why haven't you ever said so before?"

Tom visibly gulped. "What do you mean?"

Harry leaned back, palms on the dresser, somehow knowing before it happened that the posture threw breasts and hips forward. "You've been my best friend for years now. We've been through the best and the worst together, nearly died together more than once, gotten drunk on synth together when one of us broke up with somebody else. But I've never seen you look at me the way you did when I was standing naked in front of the mirror--"

"Harry, it was the shock," Tom broke in. "You turned into a woman before my eyes, and then you took your clothes off!"

Harry straightened up and crossed the room toward Tom. He felt every motion of hips that wanted to make figure-eights as he walked, every tremor of his unsupported breasts, every centimeter of his soft cotton clothing against his skin. He stopped not half a meter away from his friend, observing for the first time that he had not lost any height through the change. He could still look Tom in the eye, and those eyes were dark, with dilated pupils. Tom's breathing had quickened just enough to be noticeable, his lips had parted, and Harry knew, without having to look, that his friend was getting an erection.

"You're looking at me the same way right now," Harry said. His voice dropped to a purr. "The shock must have worn off by now, and I've got clothes on, just a black shirt and pants like you've seen me wear a hundred times. But I can tell by looking at you that you're aroused." He put out a hand and lightly touched Tom's cheek, feeling it flame beneath his fingertips even before the flush became visible. "Was this all it took? Could I have had you years ago if I'd only been a woman?"

Tom swallowed, fighting the impulse to take the hand that was still hovering near his face and pull it away, kiss it, pull Harry closer-- "Harry, what are you saying?"

Harry took a step forward. He was so close to Tom now that if he took one deep breath, Tom would feel Harry's deliciously tight nipples against his chest. Encouraged by the fact that Tom didn't back away, he locked his eyes on Tom's and hoped that his sexiest smile would look equally sexy on a female face. 'This could be your one chance, Kim. Don't blow it.'

"I'm saying you want me, Tom Paris. Just as much as I want you."

Harry saw Tom's eyes widen till they were nearly round. Those eyes were all he saw as he closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around Tom's neck.

Firm lips under his, and the smell of Tom filling his nostrils--was he more sensitive to odors now? Softness of the hair under his fingers, hardness of the erection pressed against his belly. Arms coming around his back, pulling him even closer, and Tom's mouth opening. Harry wasted no time in taking control of the kiss, holding Tom's face in his hands as their tongues tried to mate like serpents.

They swayed and sank to their knees, still kissing, drinking one another's mouths, and Tom's hand went to Harry's breast, cupping the shape of it, teasing the nipple. Harry moaned into Tom's mouth and tried to get to his feet, but somehow wound up with Tom's mouth on that nipple and Tom's hands on his ass, instead. There was that whirlpool feeling inside, terribly strong, as fierce in its own way as the pointing of an erect cock, yet somehow just a fraction easier to ignore. Harry bit his lip and gently pushed Tom's head away.

"I don't want to do it on the deck."

Tom's head dropped to Harry's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Harry. You came on so strong, and it felt so good.... I don't want to rush you, really." He rolled to his feet. "Lead the way."

Harry found he was trembling as he walked into the bedroom, Tom right behind him. Was he crazy to do this? Were they both going to regret it? He could stop, he knew he could stop, it wouldn't kill either of them. And he was a virgin; he'd been a woman for a few hours, and he thought he was ready for sex. 'I'm a slut.' But he had waited so long to see desire in Tom Paris's eyes, he had wanted it so much, and his own desire was so keen right now, it might not be as obvious from the outside anymore but he didn't think he'd ever been so eager for it as a man, and he might not have a better chance--

Harry turned around, and Tom was right there, gathering him in. Gently, tenderly, no hurry, just a hug, warm and close, soft kisses on Harry's hair. He wrapped his arms around Tom and relaxed, breathing deeply, aware of Tom's scent and his own. Tom's hands were running up and down his back, along the unfamiliar curves that were rapidly coming to feel normal. They'd always been touchy-feely friends, a pat on the back, an arm around the shoulders, he'd hugged Tom when Tom had left Voyager to trap a spy, but they'd never touched like this. It felt so good. It felt like what he really wanted.

A hand brushed over his hair, down his cheek, touched shoulders and breast lightly, and slipped up under Harry's shirt. Tom's hand on bare skin, moving up the spine, then down. Harry shivered, deliciously, and Tom stepped back, just far enough to take hold of the shirt and pull it gently over Harry's head. Tom tossed it aside and followed it with his own shirt. Harry's arms had gone across his breasts, as if by reflex, but when Tom's hands settled on his waist, he reached up and wound his arms around Tom's neck.

Both of them moaned as skin touched skin. Harry shifted from side to side, rubbing his aching nipples against Tom's chest, feeling soothed and stimulated at once by the touch of the soft fuzz there. His nipples had always been sensitive, but never like this--women definitely had it better in the nipple department. 'Wonder if I'll be able to come just from having them sucked, like Siobhan....'

Tom started nibbling on Harry's shoulders, as broad as ever if a little less bulky, and felt his lover shiver--with pleasure, apprehension, both? This was going to take all Tom's vaunted skill as a lover, and all the tenderness he usually hid, as well. This would not be the first time he'd initiated a virgin, or the first time he'd crossed the border between friend and lover, but this time it was both, and Harry besides. Not to mention that until a few hours ago, Harry had been a man, and was now a woman. This was weird, but wonderful. Man or woman, Harry was the person Tom had cared most about in his entire life. Tom hoped he'd have the courage to tell Harry that eventually.

For the moment Tom thought about it, thought about how much he loved Harry, as he ran his fingers through that glossy black hair, kissed his way from shoulder to throat and lingered there, listened to Harry whimpering as he used his teeth on a particular spot, and finally made his way back to that delicious mouth and ravished it, delighted to feel Harry ravishing him in return.

Harry was definitely aroused, very aroused. He could feel heat between his legs, heightened awareness of the whole area, and subtle changes in sensation that must mean he was getting wet, opening up. Was it harder for a woman to be sure she wanted a man than for a man to be sure he wanted a woman? He'd often wondered that, but at the moment, he didn't have any doubts about what he wanted. With a man's mind in a woman's body, he wanted Tom Paris, and his body, mind, and heart were all in agreement on the issue. With Tom kissing him senseless once again, Harry reached for the opening of Tom's pants.

Whoa. Harry was trying to get his pants off, or at least get into them. 'Way to go, Harry.' Again Tom stepped back to give them room, his own fingers going to the drawstring of Harry's trousers. Stripping off one another's pants simultaneously was not done gracefully, and Harry started giggling when his right foot got caught in the folds of his own pants just as he got Tom's pants around his ankles. Harry's giggle, throaty and really more of a chuckle, got Tom giggling, high-pitched and a giggle for sure, and eventually they wound up on the bed, naked and laughing.

The laughter died down as Tom took another good look at Harry. Naked and female, graceful and strong at the same time, gorgeous face and gorgeous breasts. Tom brushed reverent fingers over the dark nipples, and Harry made a small noise, mirth driven away by renewed arousal.

Tom piled the pillows up and Harry lay back, easing his legs apart. There wasn't much room for two people in the bed, but Tom got between Harry and the wall, propping himself on one elbow. He rested a hand between Harry's breasts.

"You are so beautiful," Tom whispered. Harry smiled.

"So are you," he replied, looping an arm around Tom's neck. Another deep, slow kiss, and Harry began to wonder if the moisture was running down his thighs, he felt so wet. Without letting go of the kiss, Tom began brushing his fingers over Harry's nipples again, first one breast, then the other, until Harry was arching up against him, unmistakably inviting more. Tom raised his head, to watch Harry's face as he kneaded the rounded flesh, gradually increasing the stimulation until he was pulling at the hard nipple between his fingers. Harry's eyes were shut, his mouth open, and he was, well, writhing, in a completely feminine way, his whole spine twisting in a sinuous motion that ended in an enticing lift of his hips.

Tom moved away just enough so that his cock was not pressed against Harry's thigh. 'Control,' he reminded himself. What a paradoxical situation: someone with years of sexual experience suddenly reduced to a beginner again, completely ignorant of everything. Even things Harry had experienced before probably felt very different. Tom lowered his head and sucked a nipple into his mouth, making Harry cry out sharply. 'Yeah, I'll bet that feels different.'

Tom concentrated all of his attention on those nipples, flicking one with his fingers and using his mouth on the other in every way he could think of. He licked, flicked, swirled, suckled, even nipped, very carefully, hearing Harry's noises get louder, higher, more intense. Harry was gasping by the time Tom switched hand and mouth. 'I wonder--' Tom thought. Getting Harry's thigh beneath his own, he bore down and sucked hard, pulling the other nipple at the same time, more roughly, and didn't let up despite Harry's struggles until his lover's fingers dug into his neck, and Harry made a sound Tom had never heard from him before.

Tom backed off. "You okay?" Harry's eyes were glazed, and he was breathing heavily. "I think I came," he said after a moment.

Tom grinned, stroking Harry's stomach. "What would it take for you to be sure?"

Harry lifted his hips beneath that caressing touch and spread his thighs, drawing up one knee. Tom's breath caught at that open invitation. "Are you sure?" he asked, feeling uncertain as a virgin himself. Harry nodded and then surprised Tom even more. "Would you get the hand mirror from the dresser? I want to see myself."

Tom got up and did as he was asked. He stretched out next to Harry again, saying, "Let me." He flipped open the folded mirror and angled it. "Can you see?"

Harry reached down and adjusted Tom's hand. "Oh, yes...." Putting his head on Harry's shoulder, Tom also looked into the mirror. Both of them were silent for a moment, studying the reflection. Harry had very little body hair, but this region had always been an exception. The hair bordering the cleft was as thick, as glossy, and as black as the hair on Harry's head. It did not, however, hide anything, not now. The parted lips were swollen and glistening with moisture, showing the inner lips also swollen and the clitoris engorged, small but erect as any penis. The whole vulva was flushed a deep plum color, just as Harry's cock had been during erection.

Tom turned his head and kissed warm golden skin. "Harry, you're as beautiful there as everywhere else." Tom laid the mirror on the floor and cupped his hand over Harry's mound, just feeling the heat and wetness, kissing Harry's breasts again. So slowly and gradually that one couldn't pinpoint when it began, the passive feeling changed to active touching, petting the moist folds, stroking the length of the cleft. Watching Harry's face again, Tom pressed delicately on his clit. Gods, he was so gorgeous, eyes closed and mouth open, not holding anything back. Tom pressed again and escalated to rubbing. Yes, Harry's hips were moving in perfect synchrony with Tom's touch. Exquisite.

Tom backed off and explored Harry's cunt with careful fingers, parting the lips as he stroked them, dipping cautiously into the vaginal opening, spreading the moisture around. He kept coming back to the clit, circling around and over it, pressing and rubbing, driving Harry a little farther each time but not far enough, not over the edge. The smell of Harry's arousal was intoxicating, it made Tom want to roll on top of his lover and plunge in, but he kept control 'for Harry--for Harry' and kept going, until he did drive Harry over the edge--by grasping his clit between thumb and forefinger and pulling, as if on a cock.

As Harry arched and cried out, a harsh throaty growl that seemed to roll up from his cervix, Tom slipped one finger into the well of the moisture, into Harry's cunt, right up to the knuckle. And waited.

Harry relaxed, realizing with surprise that he had had a rather intense orgasm without frying his brain or needing to roll over and take a nap. He also realized that something else new had happened.

"Tom--what are you doing?"

"I have my finger inside you."

Harry wiggled. Yep, there was something there. And it felt pretty good. "Just like that?"

"Just like this." Tom withdrew and went in again. Harry moaned. "Feel good?"

"Oh yes." Tom curled up all but one finger into a fist and began very gently thrusting with that finger, making sure the rest of his hand bumped Harry's clit as he went in. Harry's face tensed, and his internal muscles tensed around Tom's finger, but not with resistance. He liked it. He liked being fucked. 'Well, you liked it as a man. What's the big surprise?'

That question brought other thoughts to mind that Harry wasn't yet ready to explore. Still moving with Tom's thrusts, he opened his eyes. "Tom?"

"Yes, love?"

'Love?' "Would you try two fingers?"

Tom had had a few male lovers and quite a few female ones, and it had been his experience that men liked to fuck a lot more than women liked to be fucked. In fact, it had been his experience that men often liked to be fucked more than women did, despite their relative disadvantage in anatomy. It looked like Harry was going to be an exception.

Tom pulled out, changed the angle of his hand, and replaced one finger with two, using his thumb on Harry's clit to ease the way. He needn't have worried; Harry was open, wet, he wanted it, thrusting back hard against Tom's thrusts, picking up the pace. It felt so good, nothing had ever felt this good, his whole body tensed up in one great spiral of pleasure and then let go--

Something exploded in Harry, not rushing out of him but into him, a knot of tension and pleasure turning into a vortex of ecstasy. It was as if that whirlpool feeling had suddenly widened to include his whole body, even to the ends of his hair, transforming from water into flame. Harry heard himself scream, going up into falsetto, and then it happened again, and Tom kept thrusting, and it happened again, waves of flame going all over him, and Tom didn't stop, he kept pounding Harry, and it kept happening, letting go and letting go and sinking into himself, one unmistakable big intense orgasm after another, until Harry fell limp, gasping harshly, and Tom removed his hand.

---

"Wow," Harry managed, finally. Tom grinned smugly, at the same time licking his wet fingers.

"Congratulations, Harry. You are certifiably multiorgasmic. You are also certifiably delicious."

"Wow," Harry repeated, stretching a little and reaching for his lover. Tom snuggled close and wrapped his arms around Harry's middle. "How do you feel?"

"Great." Harry turned over so he was front to front with Tom, throwing one leg over Tom's thigh and capturing his mouth for a kiss. Tom moaned desperately, his cock trying to get between Harry's thighs and into that wet cleft. He distracted himself, and Harry, with a question.

"What was it like?"

Harry considered. "I hate to tell you this--but women have it better. Every orgasm was better than the last, and they just kept--coming." Both of them smirked. "If a man's orgasm feels like an explosion, a woman's feels like an implosion--this incredible energy rushing in and filling your body. And you don't get tired of it, or tired from it." He wiggled enticingly against Tom. "In fact, in about two seconds, I'm going to be ready for more."

Tom groaned. "Harry, have you always been insatiable, or is it just because you're a woman now?"

He pushed Harry onto his back and kissed him roughly, feeling Harry's arms and legs twine about him. He worked his way down Harry's throat, over the shoulders, around and around the breasts in a spiral until he was sucking greedily on the dark nipples again, drunk on Harry's whimpering noises, and then down further still, kissing his way down the smooth flat stomach until his shoulders were holding apart Harry's thighs. Tom placed a kiss just above the pubic mound.

"Harry, I want to eat you. Will you let me? Are you okay about that?"

For answer, Harry grabbed a pillow from behind his head. Tom helped him position it under his hips so that Harry was even more open, every moist fold exposed. 'It really does look like a flower,' Tom reflected. 'I guess I've never looked this closely before.'

Tom wanted to go as slowly as possible. He liked doing this, liked licking a woman or sucking a man, liked the absolute certainty of being able to give pleasure. He had never had a lover of either sex he couldn't please with his mouth. He started by kissing where the hair grew, not so soft here but thick and springy, down one side and back up the other.

Harry shifted suggestively, trying to bring Tom's mouth onto the more sensitive areas. Tom ignored him, turning his head to place moist kisses on the smooth thighs. He waited until Harry had relaxed and wasn't expecting it before turning back and firmly licking the erect clit.

Harry shrieked. That one good lick had felt like the equivalent of a twenty-minute blowjob. Tom raised his head, grinning. "Was that another one?" he asked.

"Oh yeah!"

Tom bent to his task again, savoring the wet flesh with slow, gentle licks that drew unbelievable sounds from Harry--just the sort of response Tom liked to get. Lost in pleasure, Harry moaned, whimpered, wailed, all the while thrusting his pussy gently against Tom's face, gasping for breath when Tom fastened his mouth over the engorged clit and sucked on it. Part of Harry's mind was trying vainly to rack up how many orgasms he was having--more than a month's worth already, even compared to his most active periods as a male lover--while the rest of his mind was screaming, "Fuck it! Better yet, fuck me!"

Tom cupped his hands under Harry's ass and raised him about two centimeters, just enough so he could easily run his tongue between the lips and into the vagina. Harry screamed again as Tom tongue-fucked him, thrusting as far into the passage as possible. Changing his angle, Tom pressed two fingers in again and resumed torturing Harry's clit with lips and tongue.

Harry drew a desperate, shuddering breath. "Tom, please--"

"What, love?" Tom kissed the spread thighs with wet lips.

Harry gulped. "Please, fuck me. Now."

It was Tom's turn to gulp. "Are you sure you're ready?"

Harry wiggled. "What do you think?" he asked, smiling in a way that made Tom want to throw himself on and into his lover.

Tom's fingers were still inside Harry, and the channel around them was very wet and, if Tom was any judge (and he was), relaxed and open. He got up and knelt between Harry's legs, stroking his breasts encouragingly. "How do you want to do this?" he asked, his voice husky. "You can be on top, we could be on our sides--"

Harry's smile widened. "I think I'll just lie here and let you take me."

Tom closed his eyes, about two heartbeats from orgasm. "Harry, quit talking like that, or I'm going to have to fuck you senseless."

A knowing hand curled around Tom's cock. "What else did you think I had in mind?"

Very gently, Tom removed Harry's hand. He stayed still for a moment, thinking about Neelix's cooking, that awful bun the Captain used to wear, his father's lectures, all the most unerotic things he could call to mind. Then he lowered himself over Harry, braced on his elbows. He couldn't resist kissing those gorgeous breasts, then the lush mouth that smiled so enticingly. Harry made a muffled noise of pleasure at tasting his own secretions in Tom's mouth, smelling them on Tom's skin, tangy and aromatic. He'd always thought vaginal secretions were a little more pleasant than semen, though he'd never let it stop him from sucking a man. Harry reached between them with both hands, opening himself with one, positioning Tom with the other. Feeling his cock graze those moist folds, Tom took a deep breath and slowly moved forward.

It was so easy. Harry was completely ready, emotionally and physically, and Tom slid into his lover with no resistance whatsoever. Without even thinking about it, Harry tightened his vagina around Tom, feeling as much as hearing the resultant groan. It felt so good to be filled this way, and Tom fit so perfectly into him, all the way in.... Oh, this was going to be really good, better than he'd expected, and he'd expected it to be pretty damned good.

Eyes locked on Harry's, Tom began moving, not much at first, but soon more quickly and forcefully as Harry answered his motions. Harry arched beneath him, grasping Tom's shoulders with fingers almost as strong as a man's. He licked his lips and sucked in breath to form words.

"Harder," was all Harry managed. Tom gave one hard thrust, and Harry's legs came around him, Harry's insides clamped down on him, and then Tom lost it, hearing the harsh throaty screams he already knew were the sign of Harry's orgasm, and climaxing himself in soul-wrenching spurts as Harry's whole body clenched around him, drew him in, claimed him.

They lay joined together for long moments, both of them trembling with aftershocks of pleasure. Harry's mind was absolutely whited out. Had he done this for Libby, for Siobhan, for Seven? Had he made them feel this way when he fucked them? He felt completely sated and happy, and at the same time, he felt that the energy in his body could hurl Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant in about five minutes. Tom was sprawled over him with the exhaustion Harry had so often felt himself, after sex, and Harry was ready to get up and overhaul the warp drive.

Tom didn't move, and presently Harry felt a little confined. It seemed that Tom had slipped out of him, so he tried to roll the man off of him, succeeded, and then gasped, because Tom wasn't a man any more.

Tom was at least half asleep, obviously unaware of what had happened. The changes in him seemed more dramatic, to Harry, than the changes in Harry himself. Much of Tom's body hair seemed to have vanished--the beard stubble and the wonderful fuzz on his chest and belly were simply gone, and the rest of his body hair seemed softer, sparser, less noticeable. He was larger in the breasts and smaller in the hips than Harry, with delicate pink nipples that Harry instantly wanted to nibble. 'Gods,' he thought. 'It doesn't matter. I'm ready to roll over and take him, just like he took me. It doesn't matter which sex he is. Or which sex I am.' Harry had had lovers of both sexes, but he had never felt so acutely that it was the person, not the packaging, that mattered.

Transformed to a woman's, Tom's lean, long body looked more fragile than Harry's. He didn't train with weights as religiously as Harry did, and consequently the change hid his muscle tone, making him look slender, almost willowy. All the vulnerability Tom tried to hide seemed to be right out there on the surface now. This was not going to be easy.

Tom snored. Harry put a hand on his lover's shoulder and shook him. "Tom? Wake up."

"Hmf?" Tom opened his eyes and looked at Harry drowsily. "Funny, I always thought you'd be the cuddly type, Har."

"Tom...." Harry groped for the right words. "It's happened."

"What--?" Suddenly Tom's eyes flew wide open, glittering with shock, and his hands went unerringly to his newly-formed breasts. "Oh, dear gods," he murmured, heard his own soprano tones, and burst into tears.

Harry tried to take Tom in his arms, but the other man pulled away, turning over and sobbing at the wall. Harry drew back, didn't try even to stroke his friend's arm, and after a moment it was obvious from Tom's sounds that he was forcibly getting control of himself. "Tom."

There was no answer.

"Tom," Harry said more forcefully. The chirp of the comm system startled them both.

"EMH to Ensign Kim."

"Ensign Kim here, Doctor."

"If you'll come to Sickbay," the Doctor said cheerfully, "I have some information for you from the Harrogeti."

---

Not only the Doctor but the Captain awaited them in Sickbay. Captain Janeway's eyes widened at the sight of a female Harry, dressed in black, and an unexpectedly female Tom, wearing a newly-replicated uniform. Tom walked with head bowed and shoulders hunched, so painfully embarassed he might as well have been naked.

"That was quicker than I expected, Lieutenant." The Doctor sounded almost scolding.

The Captain approached her two officers. "How are you doing?" she asked, almost in a whisper.

"I'm fine, Captain." Harry's voice was strong, his shoulders back, and Janeway felt instinctively that she didn't have to worry about him; he would be okay. Tom, however, couldn't even bring himself to answer; the blue eyes that met hers, too briefly, were little short of terrified, and Harry appeared to be holding him up with one arm.

"Have a seat, er, gentlemen," said the Doctor. "This will be a long story."

Harry hopped onto a biobed and drew Tom to sit beside him. The Captain leaned against another bed nearby.

"I've spoken with Dr. Ethnar Itzam, the surgeon who operated on you on Harrogeth. It was quite an enlightening conversation." The Doctor fairly beamed, heedless of the distress in the atmosphere. "The Harrogeti are androgynes, neither male nor female but able to shift to either sex at will. In addition to androgens and estrogens, they possess a third sexual hormone which they call 'ornegiv', which means intermediary, arbitrator, or balancer. Ornegiv was introduced into your system by a transfusion of blood plasma during the operation. You were also given a course of antibiotics based on fetal tissue. The combination of the two caused the ornegiv to be accepted by your system, and it began to fulfill its function of balancing male and female sexual hormones."

The Doctor paused. Janeway looked fascinated, Ensign Kim looked interested, and Lt. Paris looked slightly nauseous. He continued.

"At this point, you are in the same position as an adolescent. You are experiencing high levels of sexual hormones, released into the bloodstream at unpredictable rates. You will be subject, for a while, to mood swings and increased emotional sensitivity. It's likely that emotional or physical stress will cause you to change sex spontaneously. However, this lability will not be a permanent condition. It will smooth out naturally, and in addition, the Harrogeti have a medicine which will help you make the transition."

The Doctor turned to the Captain. "I'm afraid we're going to have to return to Harrogeth to retrieve it."

Janeway nodded. "Whatever's necessary. Ensign, could I speak to you a moment?"

"Go ahead and use my office, Captain," the Doctor said, and turned to Tom. "Now, Lieutenant...."

Janeway led Harry into the CMO's office, leaned on the edge of the desk, and looked up at him. Despite the astonishing, dramatic change, it was still Harry--the same height, the same broad shoulders, the same steady eyes and full mouth.

"How are you doing, Harry?" Janeway asked again.

Harry shrugged, smiling. "I'm fine, really, Captain." 'I've just had more orgasms in a couple of hours than I've had in my entire life--I'm not going to complain.' "This is not as... hard on me as it is on Tom." He glanced over his shoulder at Tom and the Doctor. "I think he feels very vulnerable."

"That's understandable, Harry, but I'm talking about you. Do you feel up to performing your duties under these circumstances?"

After a moment, Harry nodded. "Yes, Captain, I do. After all, weird is part of the job." He smiled. "And I certainly am not any less capable just because I'm suddenly a woman." Janeway returned his smile with one of her own. "You and the Doctor will have to judge if my mood swings or sudden changes make me unfit for duty."

"Very well, Ensign." She clapped him lightly on the shoulder. "I'll see you on the bridge tomorrow morning. You and Tom will beam down to Harrogeth to pick up your medicine."

---

Harry frowned at his reflection in the mirror. The new female-issue uniform looked fine, but his usual gelled-back hairstyle somehow looked awful. He didn't think his face had changed that much, but being female made a difference. Since he had time, he rinsed his hair out in the sink, fixed it into place with a lighter styling spray, and dried it. 'Maybe I should let it grow.'

He headed toward the door and stopped. 'Scared, Kim? Yeah, a little.' He knew the crew had been informed of his condition, but it was going to be a shock for them, and a shock for him to see their reactions. Harry squared his shoulders. 'I'm scared, but I can do it. I just wish Tom were here.' Tom had gone back to his quarters yesterday after the Doctor examined him, without saying a word to Harry, and he wasn't going to be on duty today. Harry knew he wouldn't see his friend in the mess hall; Tom didn't seem to be up to facing Harry, let alone alpha shift. But he would see Tom when they beamed down to Harrogeth.

Harry took a deep breath and fairly charged out the door. There was no one passing his quarters at the moment, so it was a rather futile gesture. Harry grinned at himself and sashayed merrily down the corridor, swinging his hips. In spite of all the weirdness, he felt good, no, great.

It was a bad moment when he walked into the mess hall. He'd never had a roomfull of people fall silent at his entry before. Then Neelix smiled and asked him what he wanted, without too much stuttering, and gradually the buzz started up again.

Harry took his tray and sat down by B'Elanna, who was already talking engineering with Carey and others of her staff. Conversation stopped again as he joined them, and he couldn't help blushing a bit under their frank stares. B'Elanna, of course, broke the tension. "Starfleet, you're gorgeous."

"Didn't know you preferred women, Maquis," he said over the rim of his cup, and B'Elanna sprayed juice like a fountain, and everybody laughed, and the conversation went back to normal.


The duty shift went well. For long stretches of time Harry forgot what had happened to him, absorbed in sensor logs, reports, minor problems that needed solving. He was in the last quarter of his shift when they made orbit around Harrogeth, and he went to meet Tom in the transporter room.

Oddly enough, it was something of a shock to see Tom again. It wasn't so much the sight of him as female as the way he carried himself. He still looked thoroughly miserable, and he was wearing a hideously baggy brown shirt and pants, which made him look even worse. 'He hasn't even combed his hair, from the looks of it.' Harry folded his arms across his chest.

"Oh, no."

Tom looked up. "What?"

"I'm not beaming anywhere with you looking like that." Flashing an apologetic grin at the crewman behind the transporter controls, Harry grabbed Tom by the arm and hauled him out of the room and back to his quarters.

When they returned to the transporter room, Tom was wearing his woman's 'Fleet uniform again and walking with a little more dignity. Harry didn't have to become a woman to know how much clothes could affect one's feelings; dressing up was, in his opinion, a very reliable way of cheering up. The transporter crewman got the coordinates from Sickbay, and Tom and Harry mounted the platform and beamed down.

They were standing on the curb in front of the hospital where they'd been treated, of which they remembered very little. On their right, a semicircular driveway embraced an interesting sculpture/fountain with islands of greenery in it. On their left were the large revolving glass doors of the hospital.

A smiling person at a central information desk directed them to the office of Dr. Ethnar Itzam. As they went down the hall, rode up in the elevator, and then went through another maze of corridors, Harry looked at the people around him. Even knowing they were androgynes, probably neither sex at the moment, he tended to identify them as male or female, just as he still thought of himself with a male name and male pronouns despite the physical evidence to the contrary. He asked himself why one person looked male, another female: Was it dress, hairstyle, cast of features, walk? He didn't have time to answer the question before they finally found the doctor's office.

Harry remembered Dr. Itzam, a short, rather portly person with pale hair slicked back and the good-natured smile so many of the Harrogeti had. The doctor was dressed in a long-sleeved white tunic that came to the knees over snug white trousers, with an ankle-length white vest or sleeveless coat over all, and metal-framed spectacles. There were no breasts visible, but probably no bulge of genitalia at the crotch either, and Harry found he thought of the doctor as male. Harry interrupted that train of thought to shake Dr. Itzam's hand. "I see now, I see now," the doctor said, in the same fascinated tone the holographic Doctor had been using lately. "You are now female, and you were male when I operated on you."

"Yes, respected," Harry answered, using the same term of polite address he would have used for a Horta admiral. It seemed to be appropriate.

The doctor motioned for them to sit down. "I am very sorry for putting you through this upheaval. In my defense I can only say that I made a decision in a life-or-death situation."

"Don't apologize, respected," Harry said earnestly. "I'd much rather be alive and learn how to be female than be male and dead." He glanced over at Tom, who said nothing.

"I sent your Doctor--an artificial intelligence, how remarkable--a fair amount of information on our physiology and sexuality, but perhaps it would help to have it explained by someone who is on the inside, so to speak." Harry nodded. Dr. Itzam leaned back and steepled his hands together, obviously preparing for a lengthy lecture.

---

"We Harrogeti are androgynous," Dr. Itzam began. "At birth, and until adolescence, our genitalia are neither male nor female, but intermediate between the two. If you would like to see--?"

For a moment Tom was afraid that the doctor would undress, but she only handed them a two-dimensional image on heavy paper. It showed two naked humanoids, one a child and the other an adult. Both had shoulder-length straight fair hair, blue eyes, and the same ambiguous body: prominent nipples on a slightly pudgy chest; little difference in thickness between chest, waist, and hips; and genitals that looked like an exaggerated version of a woman's. The organ protruding between the dangling labia looked to Tom like an outsized clitoris rather than a miniature penis.

Tom handed the picture to Harry, who perused it while the doctor went on. "At puberty, the endocrine system begins to release male and female sexual hormones for the first time. The adolescent can now assume gender and learns to do so at will, but at first, the change comes unpredictably, unbidden, and accompanied by wildly fluctuating emotions. Have you not experienced this?"

"Yes, respected," Harry answered. Tom slouched in his chair and tried not to think about the wildly fluctuating emotions he'd been experiencing of late.

"Your people differ from us in that you are born gendered and are always potentially capable of sexual activity. We assume gender and have sexual pleasure only between the first change and the second change. Our first change is puberty; our second change is like what you call menopause, but it happens to all persons. Late in life, we gradually lose the ability to assume gender, and we die as we were born, genderless.

"It is my theory, in which your doctor concurs, that you two will always be either male or female, not genderless like us, and that you will not undergo a second change except in your femaleness. You will eventually lose the ability to conceive, as female, but not the ability to engage in sexual activity."

Harry leaned forward, interest kindled on his face. "Do you mean we can get pregnant, as women?"

"Indeed you can. If you remain in female form long enough, you will eventually ovulate, and then menstruate if you are not impregnated. You will continue to be able to sire children in your male form."

Harry was smiling, but Tom felt as if he wanted to throw up. Getting pregnant was the last thing he wanted to do, with menstruating a close second. He wanted to be a man again. He startled the other two by finally speaking up.

"Uh, Dr. Itzam," he straightened up in his seat, "our Doctor said you had some medicine for us."

"Yes, I do," she responded, getting up from behind the desk. She walked over to a cabinet and took out a small brown cardboard box. "This is an herb we call 'yusill'. It is primarily a relaxant, though it also helps relieve nausea and muscular cramps. We give it to our adolescents to smooth out their mood swings. In a state of relaxation, the mind can be focused on the desired gender characteristics. I'm hoping it will help you control the change, but it may be that the psychological factors are too different. We come to adolescence having watched the adults around us assume and put off gender, and you have not. In any case, it will help with the mood swings. Your Doctor informs me that you will be able to synthesize a supply of yusill once he has analyzed it."

Harry took the package, and Dr. Itzam looked at the two of them. "Do you have any other questions, respecteds?"

Harry looked at Tom. Tom managed to look at Harry. "No, Doctor," Harry said. They shook hands with her and left the hospital.

---

The holographic Doctor peered thoughtfully at the readings on his monitor. "Well, I don't know whether this will help you change sex, but it certainly will smooth out your mood swings. It is closely similar to cannabis in composition."

"Wasn't cannabis used for recreation, centuries ago?" Tom asked.

"Yes," the Doctor replied, "although it was, at the time, illegal and not used for medicinal purposes, as it still is in remoter parts of the Federation." He studied the readings again. "It is not as intoxicating as cannabis and does not remain in the bloodstream for more than about six hours." He turned to Paris and Kim. "It will not interfere with the performance of your duties, so I'd say go ahead and give it a try. I'll send instructions for use to your files."

"Thanks, Doc," Harry said. He grabbed the box of yusill with one hand and Tom's arm with the other and headed out of Sickbay. Tom seemed to be having trouble getting around on his power since the change.

"I'm off duty now," Harry said as they walked down the corridor. "Want to have dinner?"

"Okay." Tom said nothing else until he realized they were not heading for their quarters, but for the mess hall. He stopped in his tracks. "Harry, you're not going to eat in the mess hall, are you?"

"Why not? I did this morning." Harry studied Tom. "What's wrong?"

"I can't do it, Harry. I just can't do it. I can't eat in front of everybody I know--looking like this."

Tom sounded desperate, but Harry couldn't understand why. "You look fine," he said. "The uniform looks good on you."

Tom clutched at his hair. "Harry, you don't understand. I just--I just feel so vulnerable. What if people make fun of me, what if, what if somebody hits on me, what if--"

Harry put a hand lightly on Tom's arm. "Tom, you're not going to walk into a tough bar on Rigel. You're going to walk into the mess hall on Voyager. You're going to be with people who know what's going on and who care about you, Tom Paris, regardless of which sex you happen to be." He tugged gently at the tense arm under his fingers. "Now come on, or we'll miss the most edible entrees."

Tom yanked his arm away. "I just can't do it, Harry--I just can't!"

They both heard Tom's voice break, and just as Harry had in Sandrine's, Tom felt the tears brim and knew that Harry saw them. So he did what Harry had done. He turned and ran.

Harry stood there a moment, concerned, baffled, wondering what to do. Some gut instinct told him that, unlike himself, Tom needed to be alone and shouldn't be followed. Forlornly, he continued on his way to the mess hall.

---

He was brooding so much over dinner that B'Elanna punched him. "Hey, Starfleet."

He stirred listlessly. "Hey, Maquis."

B'Elanna stared at him measuringly. "Where's Tom? And what's the matter with you?"

"That's the answer," Harry told her. He pushed something squidlike around on his plate. "Tom's not here, and I'm all alone."

"So what am I? Boiled gagh? Talk to me, Harry." B'Elanna dug into her tentacles with gusto.

They happened to be sitting alone at a small table against the wall. Harry looked around, not wanting anyone to overhear what he was going to say, and decided it was okay. He sighed. "Tom is just not taking this well."

"I'm not surprised." B'Elanna gulped her drink and grimaced. "But you seem to be okay. It really doesn't seem to bother you at all."

Harry thought about that. "No, it doesn't bother me. I'm still Harry Kim, no matter what's happened to my body. I have the same history, the same interests, the same feelings for people." He took a drink himself, to hide his face. "It's not even like I have a job I suddenly can't do. I mean, the only thing that's changed is--" He dropped his voice to a whisper. "I've had sex with Tom."

"What?!"

When B'Elanna bellowed, heads turned--a useful characteristic for a chief engineer, but not one that Harry relished at the moment. He waited until the curious faces turned away and went on, even more quietly, "You know how I feel about him--

"Yes, and you've never told him, you idiot--"

"And when I saw how he looked at me--when I had changed--I just took the chance. I thought it might be my only one."

B'Elanna gave Harry another appraising stare. "And how was it?"

He couldn't help but grin. "Being a woman has its advantages." B'Elanna grinned back. "He was wonderful, very sweet to me, and it was passionate, it was great. And when it was over, he'd changed, and he just burst into tears when he realized it. I can't help but wonder how he really feels about women, if he can't stand to be one, and what it will do for our friendship, let alone anything else, if we have to be women for any significant amount of time."

B'Elanna looked thoughtful. "You know, it's been hard for me, sometimes, because I don't fit expectations either way. Klingon men expect their women to be stronger, and I'm not, but Human men expect their women to be weaker, and I'm not. I guess Tom feels weaker now because he's a woman--and we both know he's not as tough as he tries to look."

"I guess you're right," Harry said, scooping up some of his dessert pudding, "but I don't understand it. I just don't feel that different, not even physically. It's not like I've shrunk, or lost my muscle tone. Gods, it's not like a woman in Starfleet--or the Maquis--is weak compared to a man. Everybody gets the same basic training." He slurped up the pudding and made a face. "What is this stuff?"

"It's supposed to be Vulcan, I hear." B'Elanna glanced across the room. "I don't see Tuvok eating it, though."

"I wonder if I should go to him." Harry pushed away the sour pudding.

"If I were you, Harry, I'd wait for him to come to me."

---

Harry was practicing the clarinet when his doorchime sounded. He lowered the instrument. "Come in."

The door opened and Tom trudged in. Harry was surprised that he'd bothered to ask for entry; they'd been casually walking in on one another for years.

"Hi."

Tom flopped down on the couch. "Harry, I'm sorry."

"For what?" He began breaking down the instrument.

Tom heaved a sigh. "For losing it earlier. For not coming with you to dinner."

Harry put away his sheet music. "You don't have to apologize. Both the doctors warned us we'd be emotionally volatile. I was just concerned that you were okay." He came over to the couch and settled down beside Tom.

"I'm not okay, Har." It seemed to Harry that Tom inched away from him. "I just don't know how to deal with this, with being a woman."

Harry tried to joke. "It can't be as bad as turning into a lizard."

Tom didn't laugh. "No, it's worse." He got up and started pacing the room. "This morning, when I woke up, everything seemed wrong. I mean, I've been waking up hard for more than half my life now, and today there was nothing there. I didn't even know how to empty my bladder." He ran his hands through his hair, paced back and forth. Harry waited. "It was like my body was a uniform that didn't fit, only I couldn't just shuck it off and get a new one." Tom held out his hands and looked at them. To Harry's eyes, they were the same quick, clever, long-fingered hands as ever, but to Tom's, they were brittle, fragile bunches of twigs, a stranger's hands, not his own. Nothing about his body was his own.

Without warning, Tom slammed his fist knuckles-first into the table, dangerously close to Harry's clarinet case. "Dammit!" Harry flinched and jumped to his feet at once, torn between concern for his friend and concern for his instrument.

"Look at this!" Tom thrust out his fist, showing Harry scraped and bleeding knuckles. "I'm a man, I'm not supposed to hurt myself if I land a punch on a table. I should be able to punch through a bulkhead if I want to!" He pounded the table again with his open hand. "But I'm not a man anymore, they took it all away--"

"That's ridiculous." Harry so rarely raised his voice that it came as a shock when he did. Even as an alto, his voice was heavier and deeper than Tom's soprano and cut right through it. He walked over to Tom and took him by the shoulders. Tom flinched as Harry's breasts brushed his own.

"Is that what being a man means to you?" Harry sounded almost contemptuous. "Being able to put your first through a bulkhead? Being able to act like a jerk and get away with it, nine times out of ten? Being able to screw any woman dumb enough to open her legs for you--like I did?"

Tom's face fell. "Harry, no--it wasn't like that, I swear--"

"When we get back to being men again, are you going to talk about me the way I've heard you talk about the Delaneys? About Sue Nicoletti? About Missy at the Academy?" Tom cringed, knowing every word was justified. "Suppose you become a man again and I don't? Does that leave me one of your conquests, not, quote, 'the best friend I ever had,'unquote?"

Tom wrenched away from Harry's grasp, but Harry's words followed him. "I don't think you have any idea what it means to be a man, Tom."

Tom spun around, feeling himself flush, feeling acutely aware of the movements of his breasts, of the change in his balance. He clenched his fists. "So now you're mad at me. Do you really believe I could treat you that way? If you do, you have no idea how I feel about you." His voice quavered dangerously.

Harry folded his arms. "Have you ever told me how you feel about me?"

'I'm not ready to answer that one, yet, Har.' Tom swallowed. "You're angry at me for being angry about the change, but why aren't you angry about that? Doesn't it bother you to have lost control of your body? To be at the mercy of your hormones?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't think I'm any more at the mercy of my hormones than I used to be. They're just different hormones, and I'm not used to controlling them yet. I know how to control myself when I want to punch somebody in the face for being a jerk, because I've learned how. I don't know how to control myself when I want to cry over some little frustration, but I'll learn."

Tom was beginning to feel less guilty than exasperated. "Harry, don't you miss your dick?"

Harry actually laughed out loud. "I don't know! I hadn't thought about it that way. I guess I've looked more at the future possibilities than at the loss of the past." He sat down again. "The way I see it, you and I have a unique opportunity to see things from two different perspectives. How many people can say they know what it is to be male and female both?"

Tom leaned against the table, wrapping his arms awkwardly around himself. "I just don't get how you can take this so calmly, Harry. I don't know who I am anymore. They've taken away everything I knew about myself, everything I relied on, even though--I know--they saved my life. I'm not Harrogeti. I'm Earth Human, and I was born a man, and I'm supposed to stay that way."

Harry shook his head, unsure what to do. Tom remained leaning against the table, hands wrapped around his upper arms. The same hands as ever, to Harry, but not to Tom. Finally Harry said, to break the tension, "Listen, why don't we try some of the yusill? It'll probably make you feel better."

Tom shrugged. "Okay."

Harry went to his terminal for a moment and reviewed the file the Doctor had sent him, on how to prepare an herb for smoking. Tom sat down on the couch and waited. Then Harry opened up the box which stood on his desk and took out a small plastic bag full of slender greenish-blue leaves and a roll of what seemed to be heavy paper, almost very thin cloth.

Sitting down on the sofa beside Tom, Harry spread the materials out on the low table before them. Tom watched as he tore off two squares from the roll, placing them side by side, and filled each one with some of the dried leaves. The yusill had a pleasantly pungent smell reminiscent of rosemary. When he had put a few grams of the herb into each wrapper, Harry rolled one wrapper up, carefully, moistened the edge with his tongue (Tom licked his own lips as Harry did so), and sealed the wrapper into a fairly neat roll as long as a man's finger but not as thick.

Harry handed the completed roll to Tom and prepared the other one for himself. Then he looked around, frowning, got up again, and checked the box. "Aha." He took out something Tom recognized from old videos: a small lighter meant for cigarettes and the like. For the first time, Tom grinned, feeling like they were doing something a little bit naughty.

It took them a few tries to get the herb lighted properly, and then their first puffs were rather unpleasant. Harry coughed, already worrying about what this would do to his wind as a clarinetist. "Can you believe people used to do things like this for fun?"

Tom dragged expertly on his roll and then spoiled it by hacking loudly. "The thrill of the forbidden, Har."

Harry waved his roll around, making the smoke of it swirl. The odor reminded him of the sage and sweetgrass Chakotay burned for sacred ceremonies. "Think of it that way, Tom," he suggested.

"What do you mean?" Tom shifted the roll from between thumb and forefinger to between forefinger and middle finger, braced by the thumb.

"Crossing the gender boundary has some of the thrill of the forbidden." Harry puffed. The weed wasn't so bad, after a while. "Or fucking your best friend after he's just changed from male to female." Harry grinned, but Tom looked rather sheepish.

"I didn't hurt you, did I, Har?"

"Oh, no. Really, no." Harry tried a long drag and managed not to cough.

"Weren't you, well, sore afterward?"

Harry considered, musing through a haze of fumes. "No, I wasn't. I could feel my vagina, which I usually can't, but it was more like an afterglow, like what you feel in your muscles after a thorough massage, than like pain. No, I wouldn't even call it discomfort."

Tom stared into the smoke. "I remember the first time I got fucked. Man, was I sore afterward."

Harry looked at Tom almost archly. "You're talking about anal penetration, right?" Tom nodded. "Well, it's fun, but it isn't exactly the primary purpose of the orifice." Tom snorted with laughter at this academic description. Harry looked slightly affronted. "After all, the vagina is designed to receive the penis, among other functions."

"Harry, you should have been a doctor."

Harry laughed. "My dad's brother would have loved that. Uncle Lee was a doctor, a cardiologist. He thought I would have made a great surgeon." He puffed thoughtfully and then went with the question he'd been thinking. "So what was it like? Your first time with a man?" Tom was too mellow by now to be startled by Harry's curiosity. "When I was at the Academy. I'd been watching boys as well as girls for years, but--I always seemed to get more than my share of man-eaters. You know, the kind of woman who puts a notch on her lipstick case for every lay."

Now Harry snorted. "You mean the kind of woman who doesn't even look at the Harry Kims of this world." He disappeared into the bathroom to toss his diminished roll of yusill and began rolling another when he came back.

"Be grateful. Anyway, I roomed with a guy named Yelanov, Boris Yelanov. I think he went on to Utopia Planitia after graduation. Fairly early on in our first year, Boris suggested we throw a party. That's where I met his best friend, an African guy named Arthur Mojekwu. Gods, he was gorgeous." Lost in reminiscence, Tom came very close to burning his fingers on the herb. "Taller than I am, with muscles they haven't named yet. Dark skin and sculpted features. Wore his hair in shoulder-length braids with beads on them. Wore traditional Yoruba dress at the party. Reds, golds, browns." He accepted a second roll. "Well, we really hit it off at the party. Smart guy, a musician, too, like you. Played a bunch of ancient, traditional instruments. We talked for a long while, and later, when things got a little crazier, he started drumming. I was watching him while he was drumming, the sweat gathering on his forehead, the combination of intensity and precision in his playing, and he was watching me watch him, and I knew, I just knew it was going to happen."

---

Tom took a long, slow drag on his second roll of yusill. Part of his mind was aware that he was beyond mellow and well into stoned; another part was aware of the way Harry was watching him, the arch of Harry's back, the slight curve of Harry's lips, the glitter in Harry's eyes. Male or female, those eyes were the same, intense and beautiful. Yet another part of his mind was aware of his own arousal: the tightening of his nipples, the heat between his thighs, the urge to ease his thighs apart and expose what was happening down there. However, the different parts of his mind were not communicating terribly well with one another, at the moment, and he was caught up in memories of the first man he'd ever had sex with.

"It was really late when the party broke up. I'd kind of hinted to Boris that I was interested in Arthur--I didn't want to come between them if it was more than just friendship--when Arthur asked me back to his room, Boris waved me on, like he didn't need my help to clean up." Tom chuckled. "No, he just needed Starfleet Special Forces. I went over to Arthur's on the other side of the campus, him carrying one drum and me carrying the other. He looked magnificent under the moonlight, striding along with his robes blowing around him. When we got to his place, his roommate wasn't there, and by then, neither of us wanted to waste any time." Tom paused and glanced at Harry out of the corner of his eye. Despite a very slight blurring of his vision, he could tell Harry was listening intently. "So then what happened?" Harry asked, after a moment.

"You want all the sordid details?"

Harry blew out a long thin stream of smoke between rounded lips. "Every last one."

Tom got two cups and a jug of cold water from the replicator before resuming his tale. "Arthur put his arms around me and kissed me. His lips were so soft.... He didn't rush me. Maybe he knew I had no experience with men. I was so turned on, and I was also scared to death, scared I'd do something wrong, or wouldn't be good enough for him. He just kissed me and kissed me as if he couldn't get enough, nice and slow, like we had all the time there is. Then finally he stepped back, smiling, and reached for the fastenings on my uniform." He drank thirstily.

"Clothes went flying everywhere. The second I was naked, he sank down in front of me and sucked me off. Damn, he was good. Better than any woman I'd been with. I was so limp all over, afterwards, Art just picked me up and carried me to the bed. When I recovered, I started touching him, and he was touching me, and we came over and over again. I learned the whole course in pleasing men from Art, in that one night. How good it can be to be with somebody just like you. How satisfying it is to feel a man coming in your mouth, tasting his come and knowing you made him lose it. What a thrill it is to fuck a man, so tight, and a little dangerous, and he wants it from you as much as any woman would. It was well past dawn when he asked me to let him fuck me. I was scared--he was bigger than any guy I'd ever seen--but he'd enjoyed being fucked, and I'd enjoyed everything else we'd done together, so I said yes. And he fucked me."

Tom sipped more water and sucked smoke. "He was careful, more careful than I'd been with him, actually. He knew what he was doing, knew how to really make me want it. Gods, did I want it. Coming into his hand, with him inside me, was the best thing I'd ever felt."

Tom fell silent. "How did you feel, afterward?" Harry asked. Tom half-shrugged.

"Like I said, I was sore." Harry blew more smoke. "But how did you feel? How did it feel to be the one penetrated, not the one penetrating? How did it feel to be the one who was smaller, weaker, more vulnerable?"

Tom turned to look at Harry. His eyes were dark sapphires through the haze. "It scared the hell out of me. It scared me how much I liked it."

They were silent for a few minutes, drinking and smoking. Tom felt curiously detached, even from Arthur's memory. He didn't tell Harry that he and Arthur had been lovers for a while, that he'd lost Arthur over Caldik Prime. They hadn't been in love, or maybe they had, but Art wouldn't have him as a friend or a lover until he told the truth about what had happened. And then he'd lost everything. And Arthur had died on his first mission after graduation. He hadn't talked to anyone about Arthur in years.

Tom was wondering whether to get up and go, and wondering whether he could, when Harry spoke again. "Who do you think's the most attractive woman on this ship?"

"You want the truth?"

Harry waved his roll. "Truth in weed?"

"Janeway."

Harry made a funny face. "Sorry, but that's too Oedipal for me. She's been too much of a mother figure for me to think of her that way. But why do you think so?"

Tom swigged water and got up to get another jug. "Because she's strong. Really strong, not just pretending to be. And she's beautiful. You gotta admit that."

"No argument here." Harry poured himself a cup of water and stretched out his legs on the couch. His toes brushed Tom's thigh. "So why're you always chasin' B'Elanna?"

"To have something to do." Harry started laughing, hooting really. "No, listen. You ever tell her this, I'll kick your butt, but I really like B'Elanna. I really respect her. She's a damn' good engineer, and what she's been through makes me look like-- Anyway, I respect her too much just to fuck her and that's that. I can't give her what she needs, so I won't take what she can't give."

Harry nodded. "I'd fuck B'Elanna in a heartbeat, but only if she came to me. You did the right thing when she had that pon farr shit, not taking advantage of her. B'Elanna's... special. But you know who I think is a beauty? Wildman."

"Really? I don't see it. I mean, she's pretty, but--"

"She's loving. One of the most loving people I've ever met. Like Libby in that respect. And that makes her beautiful. Besides, I don't like skinny women."

"Got no use for me, then, I guess." Tom laughed, but Harry just smiled.

"Oh, I don't know--you've got some meat on your bones." Harry puffed.

Tom was flushed, and Harry was, too, but he hardly felt it. "What about Kes?"

"What about her?" Tom got his legs up on the couch beside Harry's, feet tucked against Harry's hip.

"You thought you were in love with her, once."

"The operative word is 'thought'." Tom looked at his roll, which was almost burnt down, and debated having another. Why the hell not? He started to roll it himself, watching his fingers move smoothly as if from a great distance. "Kes was a beautiful woman, and a really caring person, but I was just distracting myself."

"From what?" Harry gazed at Tom with narrowed eyes. Tom fumbled with lighting up the roll.

"From being out here, alone...." Tom's voice trailed off; he knew Harry wasn't buying it. He wasn't buying it himself, any more. Truth in weed. Harry's next question only made it worse.

"Do you think any of the men on Voyager are attractive?"

Tom tried to drag casually. "Sure."

"Like who?"

Tom thought. "Geron's cute, but he's just a kid, and too religious. Ayala, from Security, he's a hunk."

Harry chuckled. "He's a nice-looking guy, but he doesn't say much, does he?"

"Sometimes that's a virtue. How about you?"

Harry giggled, a marvelously high-pitched sound that got Tom to giggling, too. "Well, I gotta admit, I've always wondered what's behind Tuvok's cool Vulcan exterior...."

"You gotta be kidding!"

"No, really. I mean, imagine--every seven years they completely lose control. I'd like to watch that happen. Hell, I'd help him get through it." Harry continued giggling.

"Kim, you are high. Stoned. Flying. Wasted. Whatever. Or you would not be talking about fucking a middle-aged Vulcan who has no sense of humor."

Harry's giggles escalated into hysterical hoots, and for a few minutes, neither of them could do anything but laugh. Harry finally got up and pitched his roll, declining Tom's offer of a third. He collapsed on the couch again and waved his hands feebly in an attempt to dispel some of the smoke.

"We've smoked most of our stash," he observed, and poured another cup of water. "So what about Chakotay?"

"What about him?"

"Don't you think he's attractive?"

Tom tried Harry's stream-of-smoke trick, with some success. "Not really."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Harry inexplicably giggled some more. "You mean behind all that hostility between you two, there's nothing else? Just hostility?"

Tom favored his friend with a bleary look. "He was Maquis. I was Starfleet. He thought I was a traitor when I was just a lost idiot looking for a lost cause. He used to be a pretty angry guy, most of the time, and not without reason. That's all there is to it. I rub him the wrong way, and he doesn't rub me at all."

"Well," Harry was drawling now, "even if I thought Chakotay was attractive, it wouldn't do me any good."

"He's got eyes for nobody but Kathryn," Tom chimed in. He saluted no one in particular with his water. "But you know who the best-looking guy on this ship is?"

"Neelix," said Harry promptly, and started laughing like a fool. Tom whacked the foot that had snuck into his lap.

"No, you."

Harry sobered up rather quickly at that. Finishing his water, he eyed Tom over the rim of the cup. "You know, it's funny, because I would have said the same thing about you."

Tom didn't answer, just looked at Harry. Harry's feet were in Tom's lap, and Tom's hand was resting on Harry's shin. Slowly, that hand stroked up to Harry's knee and stayed there, making tiny circles.

"So you wanna do it?" Harry said, his voice slurred.

"Like this? Two women?"

"Yeah. Don't you want it?" Harry leaned forward, elbows on thighs. "Aren't your nipples stiff? I can see them through your shirt. Don't you feel heat between your legs, wet heat? Don't you feel something opening up inside you, like a whirlpool, wanting to draw what's outside inward?"

The breath of those last words touched Tom's mouth just before Harry's lips did. Harry turned his head from side to side, brushing his lips over Tom's, both their mouths slightly open, mingling their breaths. Tom's breathing quickened, as did Harry's, and Harry cocked his head and flicked his tongue over Tom's lips. Tom moved, convulsively, sealing their mouths together, and Harry let his weight come down on Tom, stretching out on top of him while their tongues ecstatically got reacquainted.

Harry's hands found their way into Tom's hair, and Tom wrapped his arms around Harry. It was Harry--the smell of him, the feel of him, the silky heat and the taste of his mouth, and the memory of what they had done, of Tom's cock sliding into a perfectly aroused female body and that body was Harry's. Tom didn't care now. Maybe it was the weed, and maybe it wasn't, but he wanted it. He wanted Harry, even if they were both women.

Tom tried to sit up, and Harry got off of him, kneeling over Tom's legs. Tom started to unfasten the uniform he was still wearing, and Harry took over for him. Tom let it happen, let Harry peel the heavy fabric back from swollen breasts unaccustomed to confinement within a bra and push it down slim arms. There, that was so much better, so much cooler. He felt so hot. Harry reached underneath Tom and pulled the uniform down his legs, helped by the lifting of Tom's hips. Harry backed off the sofa, taking the uniform with him. He pulled off Tom's boots, then the uniform, and tossed them aside, then stripped off his own shirt and slacks and sent them after the uniform. Now they were both wearing the same thing, bra and underpants in standard-issue beige.

Tom stood up, swaying more than a little. Harry caught hold of him and their arms went around one another, breast snuggling between breast, and Harry's mouth roaming over the thin shoulders, the long, slender neck. Tom fumbled for the closure of Harry's bra, and they peeled off those last few garments without parting, Harry's mouth gliding over flushed skin toward the bared breasts with their delicate pink nipples.

Tom moaned as one nipple was sucked in and warm fingers curved over the other. "Not on the deck," he managed, and, laughing, Harry tugged on his hand and led him to the bedroom.

They stretched out side by side on the bed, eye to eye. "You really are beautiful," Harry said, fingertips running lightly down the side of Tom's face, brushing his dry, parted lips.

"So are you." Hesitantly, Tom put a hand on Harry's breast, but Harry covered it with his own and drew it away.

"You just relax. You made it good for me--let me make it good for you, Tom." Harry smiled in a way that made heat rush through Tom. "Let me prove to you that being a woman is not a bad thing."

Harry's mouth met Tom's again in a searing kiss, so hot that Tom kept wondering why he wasn't getting an erection. 'At least my nipples are--they're so stiff they hurt.' Gentle fingers tugged at one of those nipples, twirled it carefully, curled around the full flesh and squeezed. Tom moaned into Harry's mouth, moaned more loudly when it left his and began exploring his neck and throat, which seemed more sensitive than ever. Tom shivered all over as Harry's lips brushed one spot under his jaw, and he kept shivering when Harry stayed there, nibbling and licking and sucking and all the while gently but persistently tugging on the nipple--

Tom surprised himself more than Harry with an internal rippling accompanied by a sharp soprano cry. Harry raised his head, smiling. "I'll bet that was number one," he said huskily, and bent to nip Tom's shoulder.

Tom's mind was racing. Had that been an orgasm? A man never had any doubt, but how could a woman be sure? Now Harry's fingers were on the other breast, and he was biting a little more forcefully on the shoulders that rose to his touch. Tom realized, almost with shock, that he was aroused not only by Harry's touches, but by the feel of Harry's breasts moving slowly down his body, by the gathering fragrance of Harry's arousal.

He cried out again when that lush mouth closed over his nipple. Dimly he remembered that he had made Harry come just by sucking his nipples, but he'd never been that sensitive. Of course, they'd never been female before.... Harry's nipples were pressing into his stomach, and Harry's fingers and tongue were pushing and pushing, Tom struggled against his lover's weight--

It was like being punched in the gut, only it happened a good deal lower. Something contracted inside Tom, squeezed tight as a fist, and then it flew open, a bird flinging its wings to the wind for the first time. The pleasure wiped out all thought, so intense Tom was sure he was going to pass out--and then he came to himself a few seconds later, Harry resting on his hip and smiling, Tom as awake and alert as before.

"That was definitely an orgasm," Harry remarked, eyes twinkling "I recognize the symptoms. Fun, huh?"

Tom stretched languorously, really relaxing for the first time since the change. Harry took advantage of his lover's change in position to explore more thoroughly with hands and mouth, stroking the long, slim arms and legs, cupping the neatly rounded buttocks, kissing breasts and ribcage and stomach and thighs. Tom was hardly aware of how he got there, but he found himself spread out in the middle of the bed, arms above his head, legs apart, one knee up, and Harry sitting between his feet, caressing his inner thighs with teasing fingers.

"You have a beautiful pussy," Harry observed. His fingers strayed close to the lightly-furred mound. "Do you want to see it?"

Tom slowly shook his head. "I don't have the nerve," he admitted. "Just--just touch me there."

Those gentle fingers brushed down the length of the triangle, from the broad furry base to the tiny well at the point. Then back up the soft moist cleft, just parting the lips. Harry stretched out beside Tom again, propped on his elbow so he could watch Tom's face, and went by feel. He knew what was down there--more intimately than ever.

Tom gasped as Harry took hold of his clit and pulled. "You see?" Harry whispered. "It's erect." Harry rubbed the tiny organ expertly. "I read in the medical database that the clitoris has as many nerves as the head of the penis-- concentrated in a much smaller space...."

Tom was more than able to believe that as Harry caressed him, circling round and round his clit. 'My clit. Ye gods....' Tom felt his hips moving in sensuous response, tight circles that counterpointed what Harry was doing to him. The air in the bedroom seemed to smell of female arousal as much as the air in the living room had smelled of smoke, and it wasn't all Harry. 'That's you, Paris, your odor, it's not so different from what you're used to.' Expert touches were spreading the already parted lips, dipping closer and closer to the vagina. Tom arched against the stimulation, wanting more and not wanting it, craving the implosion of orgasm and fearing it at the same time. Harry was kissing his breasts again, licking the hot hard nipples, and pressing harder, until Tom bucked hard enough to throw off his lover's hand, coming again and feeling it tear through his throat.

Harry touched Tom's lips with wet fingers. "That's you," he said, and licked the wetness. Tom was panting, not knowing what he wanted next, wanting more, wanting to touch Harry, just wanting.

Harry cupped his hand over Tom's mound again. "I want to put my finger inside you, okay?" Tom nodded. He felt the cautious intrusion, the tightness of his own muscles, the slipperiness inside. In spite of the weed and Harry's attention, he still wasn't completely relaxed. 'You're a coward, Paris,' said that voice in his head that sounded so much like his father. 'Harry wasn't afraid of you, and you were a man then. You could have done anything to him.' 'But I wouldn't have,' he answered. 'I wouldn't have done anything to hurt him. And he wouldn't do anything to hurt me.' With that thought, Tom breathed out, and opened up a little around the finger that was slowly gliding in and out, not thrusting, just gliding.

Feeling the change, Harry settled his thumb on Tom's clit and his mouth on Tom's nipple, and kept moving his finger in and out, long slow strokes that caressed the spongy tissue in the vagina, and he found that spot about four centimeters in--it was a small but noticeable bump--and pulled out and then pressed two fingers there there and let Tom keep moving, and Tom did, gasping, higher and higher, until the waves went over him again.

Tom was shaking, and Harry gathered him close, lips brushing his neck. "You okay?" "I can't believe I keep coming, and I can still think afterwards," Tom replied breathlessly. Harry chuckled.

"Yeah, it's pretty amazing. So is being eaten." Harry moved away, and Tom started to say that he wasn't sure he was ready for that, and then there was no question, he was more than ready.

He managed to look down at the dark glossy head between his legs. For a moment it was possible to forget that Harry, too, was female, to think that the Harry Tom had wanted for years was licking him into a puddle. What a delicious idea. Tom began to think Harry was right--being female had its advantages. The feel of Harry's tongue exploring every wet fold, Harry's lips teasing the swollen clit, was beyond any kind of comparison. Tom had always really liked being sucked off, probably more than he liked fucking, although he'd never said so to any partner. This was better--as if everything a man felt, having his cock in a willing mouth, was somehow concentrated, condensed, intensified. Harry's tongue delved into the wet hole, and Tom rose up until his back was a bow, Harry's hands coming underneath to support him, and Tom thought his throat would be torn out once again by the intensity of the screaming 'Is that me?' as the whirlpool in his guts speeded up and dragged everything in with it. "Oh, Harry, please, please--" he sucked a lung-searing breath "--let me, please, please--"

He couldn't be any more coherent than that, but Harry understood. Harry straddled Tom's face and at the same time slipped a finger inside again, and Tom returned the attention with both hand and mouth, no longer thinking in any sense of the word.

---

It took Tom a while to get his mind online again. He had been lying tangled up with Harry for a happy interval that might have been fifteen minutes or fifteen hours; he wasn't sure which and didn't care. Sixty-nine was certainly a highlight of being female--no worries about gagging one another-- but he'd hoped having sex would make him change gender again, as it apparently had before. Well, it hadn't. He sighed.

"Tired?" came the sleepy question from the other end of the bed.

Tom sat up, feeling extremely thirsty. "Yeah. And thirsty. Must be the weed. And, well, I'm still a woman."

"Being a woman is fun." Harry smiled and stretched, yawning. "Or haven't I convinced you yet?"

"It was fun," Tom admitted, grinning despite himself, "but I'm still not used to it."

Harry rolled off the bed and wandered into the living room, returning with the cups and the jug of water. Tom was checking himself over with his hands, shaking his head. "It made me change before," he muttered.

Harry sat on the bed. "I hope you didn't have sex with me just in the hope that it would change you back to male." He didn't quite look at Tom as he handed him a cup of water.

"Hell, no, Har." He ran a hand down Harry's smooth back. "I wanted it. And I enjoyed it." Tom grinned, and Harry saw the grin and returned it. "Multiple orgasms are pretty mind-boggling."

"Cunt-boggling, too," Harry smirked, and started giggling again. Tom choked on his mouthful of water and then joined his lover in mild hysteria.

---

They were going down to the mess hall for lunch together when Harry said something so quietly that Tom had to ask him to repeat it. Harry stopped, so did Tom also.

"I said," Harry replied, not very loudly, "I started menstruating this morning. And your turn is next."

Tom froze and got visibly paler. "Oh, shit."

"Well, it's been four weeks. I guess we should have been expecting it." Involuntarily, Harry's hand went to his lower abdomen, cupping it, and he made a face.

"How do you feel?" "Bloated. Like I have to urinate even when I don't. And the analgesic I took doesn't seem to be helping the cramps very much, although it's always been good for me before."

Harry straightened up and started walking again, so Tom followed, licking his lips nervously. "Are the cramps bad?"

"Not really. Just... different. I was talking to Nicoletti over breakfast, and she said that her first year or two of menstruation was so painful, she couldn't go to school when she had her period. The only thing that helped was alcohol--she felt better if she had two or three glasses of wine. Which of course she couldn't do, being a minor, not to mention that she couldn't have gone to school half-drunk, either. But her parents finally took her to a specialist, and they corrected the hormone imbalance that was causing the pain. She's been fine ever since."

By the time they got to the mess hall, Tom wasn't sure he was still interested in lunch. Just the concept of chatting about menstrual experiences over breakfast was pretty upsetting, let alone the details of Sue Nicoletti's agonies. Harry, however, loaded his plate with the greasiest, saltiest things he could find, ate with evident relish, and washed it down with soka, an easily synthesized, highly caffeinated beverage they'd picked up somewhere along the way as a substitute for tea and coffee.

Tom had more appetite at dinner, having been able to stomach only a few dry rolls at lunch, and just went back to his quarters afterward, apologizing to Harry. "I think I've overeaten, for once." Harry went off to rehearse with the orchestra, saying, "Call me if you need me, or if you just want to talk."

Back in his quarters, Tom lay around, unable to concentrate on anything, even a vid. His stomach was killing him, roiling in a way that suggested gas pains, although he wasn't flatulent. Taking an antacid didn't help, so he smoked some more weed, which made him thirsty again, and finally took a soporific, dropping into a heavy sleep.

Tom awoke somewhere in the depths of gamma shift, feeling that something was terribly wrong. His body felt heavy as duranium, and he seemed to have wet the bed. He hoped he hadn't, but he wasn't sure how well he was reading this body's signals yet, and he certainly hadn't had a wet dream, not unless he'd shifted sex in his sleep, which would be very nice. 'Better check.'

He got up, stumbled into the bathroom, and turned on the light. And screamed. His thighs and pubic hair were covered with blood, bright red as if freshly spurted from an artery. For one insane moment, Tom thought, 'Ohgodsno, I've been castrated!!' Then he grabbed onto the sink, and reality reasserted itself. 'I've already been castrated, so to speak. Now I'm just--menstruating.'

His father's voice in his head started hectoring him again, calling him weak and cowardly and sissy, but he had to do it. He had to call Harry. Hadn't Harry made the invitation, right after dinner? Tom drank some water from the faucet and then raised his voice. "Tom Paris to Harry Kim."

After a moment a sleepy alto voice answered him. "Yeah, Tom?"

Tom hesitated, what to say? "Harry, it's started. Can you come over?"

There was nothing but reassurance in Harry's tone. "You take a shower. I'll be right there."

Tom got out of the shower a few minutes later to find Harry sitting on his couch, drinking green tea and wearing his usual red silk robe over what appeared to be a black silk nightshirt. It came down to his knees and had a low neck that exposed a lot of breast.

Tom wrapped himself up in his terrycloth robe and rummaged in his new collection of women's undergarments. "Don't bother with those," Harry said. "I found something better on the replicator menu." He got up, went to the computer, and punched up a request that produced a neat little pile of panties. He unfolded one and handed it to Tom. "These have a padded crotch to absorb the flow, and they're cut looser to accomodate it. When you feel the pair you're wearing is soiled, just toss it in the recycler and put on a fresh pair." He raised his robe and nightshirt over one hip. "I'm wearing them now."

"You're having too much fun with this, Har," Tom muttered, stepping into the panties. Bending over produced a sharp twinge in his gut that made him wince.

"Cramp?"

"I guess so."

Harry turned back to the replicator. "I went into the medical database today, in a lull, and looked up self-help for menstrual cramps. It recommended alcohol, synthehol, and several specific analgesics, but this was at the head of the list." He addressed the computer. "Kim Menses 3, charged to Ensign Harry Kim's account."

Tom watched as something red and glistening shimmered into view. He blushed when it was all there. "Harry--a dildo?"

"Not just a dildo--a vibrator." He picked up the penis-shaped wand and twisted the base before dropping it into Tom's hand. It hummed softly against Tom's palm, and he closed his fingers around it before he could get embarassed enough to drop it.

"Self-pleasuring with a vibrator is recommended for relief of menstrual cramps and as therapy for women who are inorgasmic." Harry grinned. "You and I don't have that problem. But believe me, it works much better than chemicals for the cramps."

Harry went back to the couch, picked up his tea, and finished it off, while Tom stood looking bemusedly at the still-humming object in his hand. "You have fun," Harry said, still grinning wickedly. "I'm going back to bed."

Realizing somewhat belatedly that Harry had left, Tom switched off the vibrator and went back to bed with it. He turned on his bedside light and lay down on his side, the vibrator beside him. He looked at it for a long time. Then he picked it up, looked at it carefully, felt the shape of it. It was bright red, and translucent till about halfway down, like a big lollipop. It was also shaped like an erect penis of middling size, neither very large nor very small. He turned the base and switched it on again. The further one turned the base, the more powerfully the vibrator hummed. Holding it made his hand ache a little.

Finally Tom sighed. 'What the hell.' He wriggled out of his robe and stretched out on his back, legs spread, still wearing the absorbent panties. Turning the vibrator down first, he ran it gingerly down over his pubic mound.

The first touch of the vibrator over his clitoris brought an involuntary shiver. Without thinking, Tom pressed the toy closer, raising his hips at the same time. He knew women who practically swore by their vibrators--the Delaney sisters among them--but he'd always, well, looked down on the use of sex toys a little. Maybe he'd felt that masturbating with a vibrator was a little excessive. Maybe he'd felt threatened by the presence of an extra penis, so to speak. He turned up the vibrator a trifle. 'Tommy boy, you've got a lot to learn about being a girl.'

After a moment Tom put the vibrator aside and shucked off the panties, too. Judging by the crotch, he wasn't bleeding very heavily at the moment. Another cramp rippled through his belly, and he grabbed the vibrator and pressed it to his clit. Oh, yes.... This was relief, all right.

With the vibrator turned about halfway to maximum, Tom ran it almost methodically over his entire vulva. It was wonderfully stimulating on the clit, of course, but it also felt good to hold the length of the vibrator to his cleft, or to run it slowly up and down between the lips and over the inner lips. He reached down with his other hand and felt himself: wet, even slippery, the inner lips swelling out past the outer ones. He looked at his hand, sniffed it. There was a faint coppery tang, but the wetness he felt wasn't blood; it was arousal.

Drawing his knees up, he played with the humming instrument, increasing the power every now and then, coming closer and closer to climax without ever quite getting there. He knew how to do that to a lover, how to coax a woman up the hill yet delay her arrival at the top until just the right moment, do it with his cock or his hands or his mouth. Could he do it for himself? Shivers of pleasure went through his thighs, sensations like hundreds of tiny knots being loosened in the muscles of his legs and buttocks. Cautiously, Tom reduced the power of the vibrator and dipped the head of it into his vagina.

Oh, my.... Tom could not believe he was doing this, but it felt so good, so right. He kept pressing the vibrator into his vagina, feeling the vibrations spread out, down his legs and up his spine, going deeper and deeper, until it stopped. He looked down at his hand, surprised. He couldn't really see anything, but he could tell by sensation that he had the whole length of the artificial cock buried in his cunt.

Reckless with pleasure, now, he twisted the vibrator up to maximum. His back arched like a bow as his vaginal muscles clamped down on the thing in the fiercest orgasm he'd felt yet, pleasure that lanced through him like a spear and broke him apart. His guiding hand moved spasmodically, pulling and pushing the vibrator, fucking himself, and he heard as if from a great distance one piercing cry after another, "Oh! OH! OHH!" as the agony built i

nto ecstasy, and he came again and again and again. 'Whew.' Tom realized, vaguely, that he had finally stopped coming, and the feel of the vibrator was shading over from pleasure into irritation. He switched it off and gently withdrew it, feeling a little gush of something, nectar or blood. 'Congratulations, Mr. Paris,' he thought, holding up the sex toy stained with menstrual blood. 'You've just fucked yourself into orgasm.' He grinned as wickedly as Harry had. 'And it was great.'

---

"Hey, Doc, can we talk for a minute?" Paris was serving one of his usual duty shifts in Sickbay as a medical assistant. There were no patients at the moment, and the holographic Doctor was sitting at his desk, reviewing his recent log entries. He looked up at the lieutenant, who was lounging in the doorway of the CMO's office in his usual fashion, and thought briefly that Mr. Paris made an attractive female by his culture's standards. "Of course, Mr. Paris. Come in."

Tom seated himself in front of the desk, looking awkward and faintly embarassed, as he did so often lately. "Listen, Doc, how close are you to a cure?"

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "A cure for what? There are no intractable diseases rampant aboard Voyager, I am happy to say."

Lt. Paris blushed, rather charmingly. "I mean for me and Harry. How close are you to fixing what's happened to us?"

The Doctor pinned Paris with one of his famous slightly disgusted looks. "Femininity is not a disease, Mr. Paris, as I'm sure the Captain and the Chief of Engineering, among others, would confirm for you." He swiveled around in his chair and got up. "The ornegiv hormone is now a normal part of your system. Your own glands are manufacturing it. To attempt to extract it would cause you damage, and therefore I will not do so. In short, Mr. Paris, the change is genetic. My responsibility as a physician is to help you to live with it and to learn to control gender-shifting voluntarily, like the Harrogeti."

It was obvious from Paris's face that he was not happy with this answer, but he nodded. "Well, then," the lieutenant went on, blushing more brightly than ever, "what about contraception?"

---

Harry looked at himself critically in the mirror. Since the change, he'd stopped trimming his hair, and it had amazed him by growing out enthusiastically in the past two months. He'd had to resort to tying it back while on duty, sometimes using a barette, sometimes a broad leather cuff which laced together. But it was down to the tips of his shoulders now, and it was good hair--healthy, glossy, thick, soft. The same women who used to admire it on him were now sighing with envy and telling him how lucky he was to have such good hair, with so little effort.

Harry felt it was time to make a little effort. He was going to Sandrine's to play pool with Tom, and he was going to do something he hadn't done before: He was going to wear a dress. He'd come up with something traditionally Chinese--a short-sleeved gown in dark blue silk with a mandarin collar, neatly fitted, coming down below the knee, with slits up the sides. The front overlapped and fastened just above the left breast with a toggle of carved white jade. Underneath he went for matching indigo tights and flat slippers in black silk.

He needed one more thing: something better than the barette or the cuff for his hair. Suddenly the image came to him, and he smiled as he ordered it from the replicator: a pair of black lacquered sticks tipped with dark red tassels. His fingers moved with surprising ease to wind the thick hair into a coil and secure it with the sticks, although it took a couple of tries to make them hold. Once they were in place, Harry turned his head from side to side before the mirror, watching the tassels swing as he did so. 'Perfect.' He went to meet Tom at his quarters.

"Gods, Harry, you look great." Tom's cheeks heated up just a little.

"So do you," Harry replied. Tom's feminine civvies ran pretty close to what he had worn as a man, as had Harry's up to this occasion, and he was dressed in faded jeans that showed off just how long his legs were and a white long-sleeved shirt that, with its turned-up collar, showed off both full breasts and long neck. He had also been letting his hair grow, but instead of growing downward, like Harry's, it was growing around itself into loose little curls which Harry found very endearing. At the moment, Tom reminded Harry agreeably of a certain actress from those twentieth-century videos Tom was hooked on, what was her name, Kathryn something, actually. It was a good look for him.

Walking together to the holodeck where Sandrine's customarily ran, Harry reflected that he was getting used to being a woman. He'd just completed his second menstrual period, and after showering and shampooing, he'd felt so renewed that he'd acted on the impulse to dress up. Why not enjoy the experience? Clothes and hair ornaments were new toys to play with, and besides that, he'd seen another side of women friends he'd known for years and gotten to know women that he'd barely spoken to. The experience of menstruating had admitted him to the club; he'd talked to Sue Nicoletti, the first time it happened, and Sue, whom he'd never thought of as a gossip, had apparently talked to every other woman on board, including the Captain. He'd gotten megabytes of advice and friendly commiseration on all sorts of topics, from coping with cramps (the vibrator was a favorite recommendation) to coping with males. It was as if Voyager's female crew had forgotten Harry Kim had been born a man. Tom seemed to have relaxed a good deal, too. He glided down the corridor with most of his old grace, his long sloping strides almost feline. This was not the first time they'd hung out in Sandrine's since the change, but it was the first time Tom had explicitly suggested that they play some pool. Harry had kept up his game and wickedly hoped he might beat Tom, who was out of practice. 'Unless he's been playing against Gaunt Gary when no one else is around....'

Their entrance into Sandrine's caused a stir, but this time, Harry enjoyed having every eye fix on him. That was what he'd wanted, he realized, or why else would he have fussed over his appearance so much? As always, it was the women who rushed up to admire, feeling the texture of the gown, circling round to take in the hair sticks, and lavishing extravagant words of praise with which he had no intention of disagreeing. The men for whom a woman might ostensibly dress hung on the sidelines, watching but not approaching.

Tom looked almost mortified, but fortunately, the Captain came over, took him casually by the arm, and with an offhand word of praise for his outfit--nearly identical to her own--drew him into a game of pool. Harry sighed and went to the bar to get some drinks, beer for Tom and wine for himself, both merely synth, of course.

He leaned on the bar, wine in hand, Tom's beer waiting behind him, and let his gaze wander around the room. There usually weren't this many people in Sandrine's, but they'd recently run through a pretty hairy region of space, tiny asteroids and debris for lightyears around, with pockets of gas and whatnot; everyone had been tense, navigating such a tricky course, and now that Voyager was past it, people were venting the tension. It cheered Harry up to think how calmly, well, cocky Tom had been, brazenly confident about his ability to handle the piloting 'just like he used to be', and Tom had been right: Harry had watched those hands on the conn for days, long, strong, and slender, dancing or flying over the controls with the same skill as always. 'He hasn't lost it, and I think he knows that now.'

Henley came over and asked Harry a question about the sensor logs, and from there they went on to what Wildman, dimpling, had called "girl talk," the hair sticks, the shoes--Henley had sore feet that resisted all Starfleet Medical's efforts to fix them up--and not-too-subtle questions about Harry's relationship with Tom. Tom had beaten the Captain, unbelievably, and Harry was on his second glass of wine before he realized that Henley was coming on to him. 'Well, you knew women were her first choice. And now you're a woman.' Flattered though he was, Harry wasn't really interested, so he tried the same sort of distancing he would have used as a man, and it seemed to work, putting Henley off without hurting her too much.

When Henley went to talk to Golwat, who'd just come in, Harry ordered Tom a fresh beer and headed for the pool table, where Tom was chatting with Bateheart.

---

Tom was leaning on his pool cue, listening to Batehart with an odd expression on his face, as Harry approached bearing drinks. By the time Harry came up next to Tom, Tom had moved away from Batehart and was racking up the balls for another game. He took the beer with a smile and drank half of it at one pull.

"What was that?" Harry asked, cocking his head at Batehart. Tom saw the tassels on the hair sticks sway back and forth, distracting and charming at once

"Nothing," Tom answered, ignoring the irritating flush in his cheeks. "He was just coming on to me."

Harry choked on his wine a little, but managed to say, fairly calmly, "Funny, Henley was just coming on to me. I let her know I wasn't interested, and she seemed okay with that."

Harry grabbed a pool cue, and Tom signaled for him to break. "Well, I don't know if that'll be enough for Pablo." Both of them glanced at the ensign, who was at the far end of the table now. He was obviously watching them with a look Harry'd never seen on a man's face, at least not directed toward him. It was admiring and contemptuous at the same time and made Harry wish his dress weren't quite so form-fitting. Batehart said something to the two or three other Maquis guys who were sitting nearby, Garibaldi, Gesualdo, what's-his-name, and their answering laughter, an auditory equivalent of that sneering smile, made Harry blush a little as well.

Harry took his first shot and scratched it, troubled by the feeling of being watched. Eyes gliding from the table to Batehart and back again, Tom took position close to Harry and bent to line up the shot. He snapped back upright at the same moment Harry felt something so outrageous he couldn't interpret it for a second: an uninvited hand on his ass.

Both of them turned around to catch Batehart red-handed, as it were, fondling both of them at the same time. The stink of real alcohol on his breath was quite evident. "Do you two do threesomes?"

Harry's eyes flicked to Tom--Yes--and simultaneously they shifted their pool cues to the other hands and aimed their fists at Batehart's face.

He dropped like a stone, too fast for anyone to catch him. Feeling suddenly dizzy, Harry gulped for air, realized people were staring, and looked at Tom. His jaw dropped.

"Tom! It's--you've changed back!"

Tom looked down at himself and stopped his hand from settling on his groin just in time. He looked back to Harry. "So have you!"

At the thought of his male body in a silk dress and lacquered hair sticks, Harry Kim collapsed on the nearest chair and laughed himself silly. "Lucky you," he gasped to Tom, "you still look good in your outfit."

---

Harry turned over in bed and muttered, "Oh, fuck it." He'd been trying without success to get to sleep for over an hour; it was time to give up and get out of bed.

Not bothering with his robe, he went out to the living room and over to the replicator. He called up a menu of insomnia remedies and read down the list, then ordered some chamomile tea. It wasn't really chamomile, of course, only a replicated tea with soothers added in, but it would do. Nobody except Kes could get herbs to thrive in airponics, and Kes was gone. At times like this, he really missed her, and not just because of her skill in botany. He used to be able to talk to Kes, and he wasn't sure who to talk to now.

Almost three weeks had gone by since he and Tom had slugged Pablo Batehart and spontaneously changed back to masculinity. Since that time, Tom had been assiduously avoiding him. They worked the same duty shift, as always, but instead of hovering near at breaktime and dinnertime, waiting to invite or be invited, Tom somehow slipped away. He didn't sit with Harry at dinner; he eluded offers to play pool; when Harry called, Tom was always busy. It was killing Harry. It would have hurt him to be avoided before he had fluctuating male and female hormones in his system; it hurt worse now.

'What you need, Kim,' he gulped down the last of the futile tea, 'is a good fuck.' In some ways it was just that simple. Harry missed Tom, not only his company, but his body, his touch, his cock.... After yearning for Tom for longer than he cared to reckon up, Harry had had two spectacular sessions of sex with the man. Never mind that the first time with Tom, Harry had been female, and the second time, Tom had been female, too. Even in male form, Harry was quite able to be horny from the memory of those incidents, and to long for more, in whatever combination seemed good. He'd wanted to have Tom as a lover when they were both exclusively male, and that hadn't changed. Their genders had, however, and it seemed that Tom only wanted sex, only wanted Harry, when one or both of them was female. Harry knew he was close to tears and felt like smashing the teacup against the bulkhead. "Damned hormones," he muttered. What to do now? Smash something up, and raise his testosterone? Switch to female, and have a good cry? Or just give himself an orgasm and be done with it, regardless of which genitalia were involved?

After the incident with Batehart, the Doctor had proposed biofeedback as a method of controlling the changes. Harry didn't know whether Tom had taken the suggestion, but he had. By monitoring his levels of androgens and estrogens while experimenting with different kinds of imagery, Harry had learned to induce the gender switch voluntarily. He still wasn't a hundred percent successful at doing so, and he was still subject to unexpected changes, but he was getting better. He'd come over female two days ago, while in a turbolift with Tom and Crewman Geron and Ensign Henley, and he'd managed to shift back by picturing himself, as a man, beating up a faceless opponent. A faceless opponent who happened to be tall and lean and probably fair-haired, but at least he'd succeeded. Sooner or later he'd be able to raise his testosterone without having to think about bashing somebody.

Harry recycled his teacup and went back to the bedroom to stand before the mirror. He was partially erect just from thinking about Tom. Looking into the eyes of his reflection, he saw himself as female, clad in the dark blue dress he'd worn to Sandrine's, the lacquered sticks tucked in the coil of his hair, their red tassels swaying. Saw Tom coming up behind him, male, and pulling the sticks out with gentle fingers, lifting the heavy length of hair and rubbing it over his face, stepping closer to reach around to the single white jade toggle that closed the dress--

The image rippled, and Harry was female. His nipples stood out, and he didn't have to touch himself to feel the hardness of his clit, the wetness of his folds. The tears slipped noiselessly down his cheeks.

---

Tom strode back to his quarters as if the Furies were at his heels. He had to get away from those dark eyes that followed him; they were like an addiction he was trying to break. Gods, it wasn't easy turning away from them, especially with his blood still drunk with not one but three kinds of sexual hormones. He just didn't want to take advantage of Harry again. He didn't want to admit how much he wanted to.

Once in his quarters, Tom stripped to his skin and didn't bother putting leisure clothes on. As had become his habit, he checked himself quickly in the bedroom mirror; yes, he was still a man. He couldn't quite get over the feeling that he was going to look one day and be both and neither, half man, half woman, not Tom Paris any more. He'd taken the Doc's biofeedback course and worked hard at staying masculine, keeping the testosterone flowing. It made him feel good, but it also made him horny.

Dinner was comfort food: coffee, a grilled cheese sandwich, and plain hot tomato soup. It went soothingly over the palate while thoughts went bumpily through his mind. 'Only two times,' he kept trying to tell himself. 'It was only two times that you had sex with Harry. You were with the Delaneys way more often than that. What's the big deal?'

Bad question. His mind obligingly answered it by reviewing memories of Harry, a beautifully feminine Harry, crying out with pleasure under Tom's hands and mouth, and by suggesting images of an equally gorgeous masculine Harry groaning and bucking as he came under the same stimulus. 'You want him. You've always wanted him. Since the moment you first saw him. How could you not?'

The pleasure of food did not compete well with the pressure of a stiff dick, in Tom's experience. Vague thoughts of ice cream for dessert were banished by persistent fantasies of Harry's come for dessert instead. Tom groaned. Gods, he was tired of jerking off. He was bloody well starting to get chafed, he'd fucked his own hand so often lately. 'You want him,' that traitorous part of his mind insisted. 'You want him to jerk you off, to fuck you, and what's worse, to hold you afterward until you fall asleep. And to be there when you wake up.'

All too true. There were times even on duty when he couldn't get it out of his mind, the memories and the fantasies together forming impossible scenarios in which both he and Harry flowed from male to female to male. And they all ended with a peaceful sleep in one another's arms--not something Tom Paris was famous for doing.

Tom recycled his dishes and went and stood before the mirror again. There were hints of sleeplessness in the shadows under those eyes, the lines that curved down from the corner of that mouth. But he was all male, one hundred percent. He snorted, then sighed. 'Not one hundred percent, Tommy boy. Not ever again.' For the first time, he wondered if he could switch to female at will. He'd devoted everything he'd learned from biofeedback to staying the sex he was born. Could he change? Would it make a difference?

Tom looked into the eyes of his reflection and pictured it female. Pictured Harry coming up behind him, male, and putting strong arms around him, drawing him close. Imagined Harry's gentle fingers stimulating feminine nipples, drawing them out, Harry's lips wandering over his neck, triggering nerves located much further south. Heard his own voice, soprano, crying out with need and delight as Harry entered him.

The image rippled, and it had worked. He was female now, and still every bit as horny. He turned his back on the mirror and went to his night table drawer for the vibrator.

---

"Has he talked to you?" B'Elanna asked in a low voice.

Sam Wildman shook her head. They were eating lunch together in Engineering while working on a project and talking about Harry Kim. Since Harry and Tom had reverted to masculinity over four weeks ago, Tom had been avoiding Harry like the proverbial plague, and Harry and Tom alike were obviously suffering. Harry had gotten closer to both B'Elanna and Sam as a woman, and they were worried about him, and about Tom, too.

"That isn't like him." B'Elanna slurped her soup and scowled at it. "He used to cry on my shoulder about everything, but now all he talks is sensor logs and Engineering problems."

Sam nodded sadly. "We were seeing a lot of him for a while, and now Naomi misses him." She smiled despite herself. "She keeps asking me when we'll see 'Aunt Harry' again."

The two women laughed and then shushed themselves. They were expecting to see Harry for the second half of his shift, and he might come in any minute.

"It seems plain to me," Sam went on, stirring her coffee meditatively, "that they really want to be together, so what's the problem? Male or female, they love each other."

"They do," said B'Elanna positively. "You know, they had sex twice, once while Tom was still a man, and once while they were both women."

"Really! Harry didn't tell me that."

B'Elanna smiled, not exactly fondly. 'You don't know how to pry it out of him, Sammie.' "Yes, really, and it was great."

Sam blushed, just a little. "I wish he had told me. I could use the entertainment."

---

"I'm concerned about Mr. Paris, Captain."

Janeway leaned against her CMO's desk. "Why is that, Doctor?"

"Frankly, I don't think it's good for him to remain in masculine gender all the time. He's been using the control gained through biofeedback training to suppress his feminine hormones, and hormones won't be denied forever. I'm afraid he might lose control of himself in some sort of hormonal overload."

Janeway nodded slowly. "I'll try talking to him, Doctor." She grinned wryly. "Woman to woman, as it were."

---

"You wanted to see me, Captain?"

Paris was dressed in civvies, since it was about 1900 hours; a simple brown shirt and slacks, not a very flattering color, but it wasn't just the outfit that made Janeway think he looked bad. Out of uniform, it was much more evident that he looked tired, overstressed, close to breaking, despite the fact that the last few weeks had been mercifully uneventful for the ship as a whole, just travelling and scanning.

"Sit down, Tom." Janeway hoped her use of his name and her own appearance in civilian clothing--the same thing she'd worn to Sandrine's on the night of the "Batehart incident"--would put him at ease. He dropped onto the couch and didn't meet her eyes. His shoulders sagged.

Janeway decided to be blunt. "I'm worried about you, Tom." He raised his eyebrows and tried for a cocky grin. "What for, Captain?"

"Have you looked at yourself lately?" she asked, trying to keep her tone gentle. Tom flinched at that. "You're too close to the edge, Tom. I'm no doctor, but I can tell you're undernourished, under-rested, and overstressed. And the Doctor tells me you could be risking a hormonal overload by remaining in masculine gender all the time."

He shook his head slightly. "I do change sometimes, Captain, just not where people can see me." 'Not where Harry can see me.'

"Have you talked to Harry lately?" Janeway's voice was as soft as she could make it.

Tom's eyes filled with tears, but there was nothing he could do except to blink them away. "No, Captain." "Why not, Tom? He's your best friend. Why are you hiding from his friendship?"

Janeway laid her hand on his shoulder, as she so often did while they were on duty. She was utterly chagrined, shocked even, when Tom began to cry. He didn't burst into loud sobs and fall to pieces; he simply stopped fighting, sagging even more into the soft couch. After biting her lip for a moment, Janeway leaned forward and lightly put her arms around him. "It's all right," she said automatically, thinking how meaningless those words were. She repeated them anyway. "It's going to be all right."

---

"I don't make a habit of interfering in my officers' personal lives," the Captain said, "but when their personal lives interfere with their duties, they become my business."

"Of course, Captain," Ensign Kim replied, and wondered what the hell was going on. 'Is it because I've been female fairly often lately?' He was female at the moment. 'That can't be it.'

Janeway paused for a moment, looking over the ensign's shoulder. His hair was almost as long as hers now, decorously pulled back for duty. 'The direct approach,' Janeway said to herself, and met the other woman's gaze. "Harry, do you know Tom is in love with you?"

Harry was absolutely speechless. A lump swelled up in his throat and tears welled up in his eyes. "To be honest, Captain," he said at last, "I thought he must hate me now. He won't spend time with me, won't even talk to me."

"Two days ago, Tom sat on my couch and cried when I asked him why he hadn't talked to you about the stress he's feeling. He told me he's in love with you, he's been in love with you for years, and he feels he took advantage of you by having sex when you were both--'hormonally swamped', I believe he called it."

"That idiot," Harry said feelingly. He wiped his face. "I guess he doesn't know I'm in love with him."

"He won't know if you don't tell him." The Captain spoke lightly, but she patted Harry's hand with warmth. "Go talk to him, Harry. Sabotage the turbolift if you have to, but talk to him."

---

Nobody seemed to notice when Harry walked into Sandrine's. It was late evening for alpha shift, and many people had already come and gone. But as the computer had told him, Tom was still here--sitting back in a corner, wreathed in smoke, alone except for an empty glass. Harry made a quiet musical request to the computer and then wended his way slowly through the bar toward Tom.

Tom looked up in vague surprise as Harry stopped by his table. 'He looks awful,' Harry thought, but that didn't matter. A Tom Paris with bags under his eyes and grooves beside his mouth and a burnt-out stub of weed in an ashtray by his hand was still a Tom Paris Harry loved. He held out his hand.

"Wanna dance?"

Tom sat for a long moment, eyes on that inviting hand, not knowing whether he was capable of doing what he wanted to do. Finally, he dragged himself to his feet, put his hand in Harry's, and let himself be led to the dance floor. Harry was female today, dressed in a green blouse and a long black skirt, with a string of green gems at his throat. Tom's arms went around Harry's waist as Harry's went around his neck, and the long black hair under his hands smelled of jasmine. Harry's forehead rested against Tom's neck. All they did was sway in rhythm to the long phrases of "Moonlight Serenade," but Tom felt the tension going out of him, draining away, the terrible dryness of his soul being watered by Harry, Harry's scent, his touch, his love. Was the Captain right? "I think Harry loves you just as much as you love him, Tom," she had said. "Why don't you ask him?"

Tom tightened his grip on Harry, drawing a shaky breath, and Harry raised his head so that his lips brushed Tom's ear. "I love you, too," Harry whispered. The tears ran down Tom's face onto Harry's blouse.

---

Tom was moaning, his hips moving in tight circles, and Harry was hard, throbbingly hard, as his fingers probed deeper into Tom's asshole, opening him up and slicking him down for what they both wanted. Finally, finally, after waiting so long, they were making love as men, meeting as lovers on the same ground where they had met as friends. Tom was so responsive, relaxing quickly under Harry's intimate touch, and Harry had never been so hard, painfully hard, eager to bury himself in his lover's flesh. He pulled his fingers out and went in again with three, and Tom threw back his head and groaned, "Gods! Harry, do it, do it, fuck me--"

And then Harry woke up.

He was in Tom's bed, cuddling Tom with the other man's back against his chest, and he had the most throbbing erection of his life. Tom's head was on Harry's arm, Harry's other arm stretched out along Tom's leg, and Harry's cock was pressed into the small of Tom's back. Tom was snoring softly.

He remembered coming back here after going to Tom last night, in Sandrine's. He'd asked Tom to dance and had some of the worst fifteen seconds of his life waiting for Tom's response. And then Tom had gotten up, taken his hand, and they had danced, maybe for hours. When both of them were too tired to keep standing up, Tom had murmured, "Come sleep with me, Har. Just sleep." Harry had slept like a log and changed gender while he was sleeping.

Harry opened his eyes and saw the back of Tom's neck, long and slim and bordered by reddish-blond curls. He'd always wanted to kiss Tom there, nibble on him and and lick him and maybe leave a few marks, and this was the perfect opportunity. 'I'd love to make that dream I just had come true.' Harry bent and placed his lips precisely on the small bump at the base of the neck, brushing it gently. A shiver went through the long, lean form in his arms, and he heard a tiny sound. Encouraged, he worked his way up to the hairline with lips and tongue, making Tom's shoulders shift and rub delightfully against Harry's nipples.

He headed back down the side of Tom's neck to his shoulder, pausing to bite gently right where neck and shoulder joined. That caused a whole-body wiggle that caressed his cock with such dangerous friction that he moved back a few centimeters. Nuzzling the prominent point of Tom's shoulder, he ran his hand up Tom's thigh, over his stomach, up to his chest--and stopped, startled, when he encountered a curve where he'd expected a flat contour.

Tom made an unmistakably disappointed noise, took the interrupted hand, and placed it firmly over his breast. Harry's surprise didn't keep him from acting on the invitation; the nipple beneath his palm was erect and so was his cock, so he proceeded. He toyed with one nipple and then the other, nibbling Tom's neck and shoulders, until Tom groaned and rolled over, invitingly, arms above his head and mouth open. Just as Harry got close enough for the kiss they both wanted, the blue eyes fluttered open, right before Harry would have gotten too close to see them, and he stopped, because the look in those eyes said Tom had just noticed he was female.

"I changed in my sleep." Husky soprano.

Harry nodded. "So did I." Smooth bass.

Tom hesitated for only a moment before winding his fingers into Harry's hair and bringing him down for the kiss he'd intended. Tom's mouth opened beneath Harry's, eagerly, and the kiss was so good, so breathtakingly hot, that Harry had to pull his mouth away or else come against his lover's thigh. "I'm sorry," he gasped, "I was having a dream about us and I'm really, really--"

Slim strong fingers closed around his cock and in two or three strokes brought on the climax he'd been building to since before he woke. Tom grinned wickedly as Harry bucked into his touch, groaning and gasping, and then collapsed onto his back. Tom moved over to drape himself across Harry's chest and idly rub the spilled semen into Harry's skin and his own.

"Man, that was good," Harry whispered a few minutes later. "I really needed it."

"I'm not a man right now, but I've still got it." Tom was actually grinning. Grinning himself, Harry pulled his lover down for another kiss, feeling far from sated. In fact, he was glad he'd come already; now he could take his time pleasuring Tom with no urgency.

Tom felt more relaxed this morning than he had in weeks. He was pretty certain that his newfound relaxation had caused the change while he slept. He knew he'd slept better last night than he had in weeks, probably because Harry was there and there was no hiding from him any more. 'Or from yourself.' When the kiss broke, he snuggled up against Harry's side, head tucked between chest and shoulder, and stroked Harry's chest, lightly brushing his nipples, until Harry rolled over and pulled him close for another hungry kiss.

It was better, this time, than when they had made love as women. Tom wasn't sure why, but from the moment Harry found that spot on his throat, it was better. Harry still smelled of jasmine and of sweat and of semen, and he kept sucking and biting that spot under Tom's jaw until he screamed his climax. Harry went slowly, carefully, lavishing attention on Tom's breasts, coaxing out more orgasms, placing kisses on the inside of the wrist and in the crook of the elbow, nuzzling Tom's navel, kneading his ass with firm hands. For the first time since his long ago relationship with Arthur, Tom felt smaller, weaker, more vulnerable, and it was okay. Harry wasn't going to hurt him. Not now, not ever.

He spread his legs and raised his cunt to Harry's adoring mouth. The orgasms were not as piercing as his first ones as a woman; they were more like waves, or like birds confidently breaking the egg and bursting into flight the next moment, and his voice rose and fell in waves, saying Harry's name over and over and over. Harry sucked on his clit, and Tom screamed incoherently, and Harry raised his head to grab a breath and, smiling, kissed Tom's thigh.

Tom gestured for Harry to come up. Arms and legs and lips wove together, and Tom drowned in his own taste and smell. Harry's thigh was between his own, and he noticed he was rubbing deliberately against it in spite of his last spate of climaxes. Harry's mouth was wandering over his neck again, and Tom grabbed at his courage and forced out the words. "Harry, please fuck me."

Harry gave him a startled look. "I will, love," punctuating the promise with a kiss, "but I don't think you're ready yet."

Tom turned his head away. "Har, I'm afraid if we don't do it soon, I'll lose my nerve."

Harry kissed his lover's cheek. "No, you won't. Just relax."

Another meandering trip down Tom's body. More climaxes, every bit as shattering as before. Tom wondered if women were ever really satisfied, if he had satisfied women as well as he thought he had. Harry turned his back to Tom's gaze and bent so that he was almost in sixty-nine position, to caress Tom's clit with slow licks. When Tom was whimpering again, Harry carefully pressed his finger into the vagina. Tom was more relaxed than now than he'd been when they made love as women, and Harry switched from one finger to two, still licking and sucking while massaging Tom inside as carefully as if he were preparing him for anal penetration. Thinking of that association gave Harry an idea. He withdrew briefly from Tom's vagina and slipped one finger between Tom's buttocks. The moan he got sounded good, so he gently worked his fingertip into Tom's anus, then sank the other wet finger back into the vagina, and sucked hard on the clit. Tom arched up like a bow, hitting an impossibly high note that made Harry expect the port to shatter, and then went limp. Harry sat up.

"Now you're ready," he said.

He stretched out beside Tom, stroking his arm and waiting for him to recover. When Tom turned to him, Harry pulled him close, kissing him thoroughly and gradually shifting so that he was on his back, Tom stretched out on top of him. Tom writhed sensuously in his grasp, and Harry began to feel that his second erection really deserved to be taken seriously now. Tom pulled away suddenly with a little cry.

"I think I just came from kissing you," he said breathlessly.

Harry brushed back sweaty curls from Tom's forehead. "Why don't you take me inside you?" he said comfortably. Tom drew himself up, kissed Harry again, and slithered backward until Harry's cock was between his thighs. Kneeling up, Tom reached for Harry with one hand, himself with the other. The whole length of Harry's cock was slippery in his hand, and the blunt head went easily into the opening between the parted lips. Tom let his weight come down, one centimeter at a time, and Harry filled him, stretching him, rubbing with perfect friction over the moist membranes. The medical database said there weren't many nerve endings in the vagina, but every millimeter of Tom's vagina felt every millimeter of Harry's cock. Harry moaned softly as Tom took him in, his eyes closed, until Tom's bottom brushed Harry's balls. Then Harry opened his eyes and looked at Tom's face, frightened, ecstatic, exalted all at once.

With Harry's hands massaging his breasts, Tom moved on his lover, hesitantly at first, back and forth. As he grew more comfortable and felt more pleasure, the rocking motions changed to circling, with just a little up and down. Harry's hands drifted down to Tom's hips, and Tom bent forward, whimpering sharply as his nipples were caught between hungry lips. He shifted back harder, oh, yes, and now Harry wedged his fingers between their joined flesh, seeking Tom's clit. The pressure there combined with the friction inside had Tom pushing down hard onto Harry's cock, oh, oh, oh, oh YES! and Tom came with that piercing intensity that frightened him, his whole body contracting on Harry's, and then sagged over Harry's chest.

He didn't resist when Harry wrapped his arms around him and rolled him over, staying inside. Now Harry was on top, braced on his elbows, going deeper in tiny thrusts that seemed to open Tom more than he'd thought possible. Tom looked into those dark eyes, smoldering with passion held in check, and answered the question he saw there by lifting his legs and locking them around Harry's waist. "Yes," he hissed, and Harry thrust in earnest, no more than four or five quick hard strokes, and exploded within Tom, his face transcendent, and Tom caught fire from Harry and arched up and came, silently, one last time.

---

It was good to eat breakfast with Harry again. Tom had not missed the looks and the murmured comments when they came into the mess hall together, himself female and Harry male, but at the moment, he didn't care. He felt foolishly in love and even Neelix's disgusting slander on the name of omelette (the real Sandrine would have spat at it) couldn't spoil his mood.

Harry, too, seemed to be having trouble keeping a smile off his face. 'At least if I'm a woman I don't have to worry about my dick showing through the uniform,' Tom thought. He had to resist the urge to run his foot up Harry's muscular thigh underneath the table, just to see him fidget in that way that means a man has to adjust his accoutrements.

B'Elanna plunked her tray on the table next to Harry's. "So, how many times did you do it since last night?" she asked cheerfully. Her voice was about as loud as it was when she was calling out orders in Engineering.

Harry choked on his juice and Tom turned beet red. B'Elanna grinned salaciously. "Have I ever mentioned that people smell different to me after they've had sex?" she inquired.

---

'Just my luck,' Tom thought irritably. 'I finally get together with the one I love, and then an away mission keeps him from me for three days.'

He checked the conn readouts and adjusted Voyager's orbit ever so slightly. They'd been circling this hunk of rock for three days, and Harry was down there, one of a dozen teams mining the unclaimed asteroid for vital minerals. Tom was so bored he could barely keep his mind on his work and had been pulling extra shifts in Sickbay to fill up the hours he would have spent with Harry. Even being female for a few days, getting used to it again, didn't make up for missing his lover.

Tom flushed red with pleasure when Harry's voice came over the comm system. "Kim to Voyager."

"Go ahead, Harry," the Captain said cheerfully.

"We're just about finished here, Captain. You can start beaming up the minerals."

"Thank you, Ensign. Janeway to transporter room five."

"Geron here, Captain."

"You may begin beaming up the minerals from Ensign Kim's party."

Tom suppressed a grin. He'd buy them both dinner tonight, and then--

"Geron to Captain Janeway!"

"Yes, Crewman?"

"There's been a transport problem--I think one of the minerals has damaged the transporter."

To his chagrin, Tom groaned out loud, where everybody could hear it.

In the end, it was seven days before the away teams came back. Trace elements in one of the minerals ripped up the pattern buffers and put all the transporters offline, not just the freight transporters in room five. Tom spent his evenings drinking alone and playing with his vibrator while B'Elanna swore fluently round the clock in five different languages. He managed, however, to be in the transporter room when Harry beamed back, tired, grimy, and hungry.

"I stayed male the whole time, and I'm just dying to change," Harry said.

"No problem. How'd you do down there?"

Harry shrugged. "We had enough water and rations, and we weren't in any danger from hostile lifeforms. But we were so damned bored. We played parlor games for hours. Charades, trivia games, I love my love with an A." He shuddered. "I hope I never have to play that again."

Tom squeezed his shoulder. "You take a shower, and I'll buy dinner."

Harry came out of the shower looking fresh and female. He grabbed the robe he had begun to leave in Tom's quarters and sniffed hungrily at the scent of Szechwan food. "You're too generous."

"Not at all." Tom had changed from female to male and from uniform to civvies. They sat down at the table and Tom served dumplings and wonton soup.

"You didn't have to change sex," Harry said. He jumped as the dumpling he was cutting into squirted grease at him.

"Yeah, I did," Tom said between slurps of soup. "I've been female the whole time you've been gone. Trying to get used to it again. I felt like I needed a change, too."

Conversation was put on hold as food took priority in the mouth. Soup and dumplings were followed by scallops and tree mushrooms in garlic sauce, one of Harry's favorites, and kung pao chicken. Both of them stuffed food until the plates were empty and drank two tall pots of tea. Harry burped loudly and covered his mouth afterward, grinning.

"You must have spent a bundle in rations on this dinner," he observed. "How can I make it up to you?" "Well... you could clear the table," Tom said. He watched Harry take the stained plates and bowls to the recycler and sponge off the table top. 'What an absolutely perfect ass he's got.'

Harry came back, stood hands on hips. "Anything else?"

Tom got up to his feet. "I guess I could think of something...."

The kiss was hot with peppers and garlic as well as with desire. Tom got his hands on that perfect ass, and Harry returned the favor. They somehow transited to the couch without letting go of one another, and Harry's robe was left on the floor, and his hands were in Tom's waistband and then gliding down Tom's legs.

"Yeow--" Tom sank back into a corner of the couch. Harry's lips around his cock were still hot with oils from the peppers; it wasn't painful, exactly, but it was surprising. Tom clutched the cushions and observed that Harry gave a wicked blowjob, even leaving the spices out of consideration. 'He has a pretty perfect mouth, too. Hell, he's perfect all over.'

Harry was determined that this time, he wasn't going to lie back and let Tom do all the work; he was going to get his hands--and his mouth--on his lover. Tom tasted delicious, even through the Szechwan spices, and very shortly groaned as if he were giving up his soul and flooded Harry's mouth with a new and interesting taste.

Licking his lips, Harry slithered up to sit beside Tom, who appeared to have passed out. Chuckling, he got up, got his arms around Tom, and carefully heaved. Yes, he could still lift as strongly as ever. Tom made small confused noises as Harry carried him into the bedroom and laid him on the bed.

Tom opened his eyes to see Harry, propped on one elbow, smiling down at him. Harry was quite naked, his breasts brushing Tom's arm, but Tom still had his shirt on. "Wha' happened?"

Harry chuckled. "You came in my mouth and passed out, and then I carried you in here."

"Mmmm." Tom twined a hand into the long black hair that fell over his chest and drew Harry down for a kiss. "Amazing. A woman who gives a great blowjob and then carries her prostrate lover from room to room."

"I didn't even touch your prostate--yet," Harry quipped. Tom retaliated by tickling Harry into submission, finding sensitive spots at the waist and under the arms.

"No massages for you," Harry threatened, still trying to get his breath back. Tom simply pounced on his lover, nuzzling neck and shoulder and breast through the wonderful curtain of clean silky hair. Harry ooh'ed and ah'ed and sighed and moaned happily until he noticed Tom was getting hard again, at which point he rolled over and pushed the man back. "My turn," he said huskily, draping himself over Tom's body for a thorough kiss. By the time he let go, Tom was completely erect, the moist head dabbing Harry's inner thigh.

Harry went back over all the spots he remembered from making love to a female Tom, kissing chin and throat, neck and shoulders, chest, nipples, navel, and all the while caressing Tom's cock, up and down and around and over the testicles, not firmly or quickly enough to bring him off, just enough to get him progressively hotter, until Tom's hands found their way between Harry's legs and Harry threw back his head, groaning.

He let Tom flip him gently over, spreading his thighs invitingly. Knowing fingers went round and round his clit, sparking one climax and another and another. "Gods, I love the way you move," Tom murmured, "the way you move like this under my hands."

Harry arched up into the pleasure, cupping his own breasts with lingering hands. "Fuck me with your fingers," he whispered. Tom obliged, his eyes fixed on Harry's face, Harry's pleasure, as he parted the wet folds and sank two fingers in, so easily, letting Harry's motions accelerate the tempo of his thrusts.

"You like being fucked, don't you, sweetheart?"

"Oh, yes, love, oh, yes, harder--"

"I can't wait to fuck you when we're both men, to have you fuck me again, it doesn't matter which sex we are, I'm so hungry for you, Harry--"

Harry's hoarse cries of pleasure cut off Tom's words. Tom savored every one, pushing harder, three fingers in now and the heel of his hand thumping Harry's clit with each stroke. He kept going until a long glissando sigh told him Harry was finished, for the moment. Very shortly Harry said, "I'd like to try something."

"Anything, dear heart."

Harry chuckled. "You might want to wait until I tell you what it is before agreeing." He petted Tom's chest. "I'd like to have you eat me while I kneel over your face."

Tom squeezed Harry eagerly. "I'd love to do that, Har, not a problem." He rolled away and pushed the pillows aside, positioning himself in the middle of the bed with one pillow under his head.

Harry knelt over Tom's face, careful not to squash him. At once Tom's tongue ran down the wet cleft and circled Harry's clit. Oh, this was a great idea. Harry moved in response, and Tom's hands came up to cover Harry's breasts, kneading and teasing them. Oh, yes. When the orgasms came like this, these endless waves, Harry considered staying female forever. But only briefly; there were other pleasures to give and receive that were not possible if he stayed female and Tom stayed male. He, too, was really looking forward to making love when they were both men. They'd have done it tonight if he hadn't really needed the change.

"Oh, yes, Tom. Oh that's so good. Put your tongue in me--ah--like that. Oh gods!"

Tom's fingers slipped into the wetness around Harry's cunt, then between the perfectly rounded buttocks he'd been admiring earlier, where they found the tiny hole. 'Turnabout's fair play,' Harry thought, between climaxes, as Tom gently pressed his fingertip into Harry's asshole, at the same time flicking his clit mercilessly. Harry came so good he more or less fell off of Tom, who rolled after him and dragged him close.

"Like this," Tom whispered, pulling Harry's leg over his own. Harry groaned, limp as a rag doll, as Tom's cock slid home.

---

"What brings you to Sickbay, Ensign?" The Doctor actually looked pleased to see this new patient.

Harry frowned. "Well, I haven't been able to change from female to male for the past week. I've tried everything, even a Klingon gymnastics program. I feel fine, I just seem to be--stuck."

The Doctor pondered the tricorder readings. "There's a reason for that, Mr. Kim."

"Which is?"

The Doctor smiled. "You're pregnant!"

---

"I just don't know how I'm going to tell Tom."

Sam Wildman poured more Ktarian wine for both of them. In her bedroom, Naomi was watching a Winnie the Pooh video.

"What are you worried about?" Sam asked, putting her feet up on the couch.

Harry mused. "I've never heard him say anything about wanting to have kids. I get the impression he's afraid he'd be like his father and screw the kid up."

Wildman was too ladylike to snort, but she conveyed the impression of doing so. "That's the silliest thing I've ever heard. Tom would be a great dad. He'd spoil his offspring to death. Drink your wine, it's good for pregnant ladies."

Harry grinned. "That's what I think." He sipped his wine, looking more sober. "But also, we haven't been lovers for very long. It'll change everything to become parents as well."

"It does change things. But you've been friends for a long while, it's not like you're really just starting a relationship." Sam gave Harry a searching look. "Under ideal conditions, what would you have wanted to happen? Given that you can both change sex?"

He sipped. "I would have wanted to marry Tom and have a child eventually."

Sam nodded. "So you're just getting to the child a lot sooner than you'd hoped. And what's the least you'll make do with, your worst-case scenario?"

"I have the baby and Tom helps me raise it, but we're not lovers."

Sam took a drink of wine, sighed, and then patted Harry's leg. "Harry, honey, I don't think you have anything to lose. Tell Tom soon. As much as he loves you, he'll love a child that's his and yours."

---

All during his duty shift, all Harry could think about was the baby. He didn't feel any different yet, but the Doctor had shown him the scan: a minute being, no more than a handful of cells, really, cradled in his womb. Already he thought of it as "the baby", their baby. He stopped himself from cupping his abdomen with one hand and scanned his readouts quickly. Gods, it was hard to keep his mind on his work. He could hardly wait to see if it was a boy or a girl.

---

"You're what?!?"

Harry winced a little. Tom slumped onto a chair. "Sorry, Har. I didn't mean it to come out quite that way. Okay, you're pregnant. And I'm the father."

Harry nodded, once. Tom took a deep breath. "I guess asking how it happened would be a stupid question."

Harry laughed, shakily. "I'm the one who feels stupid. As a man I never, never forget about contraception, but as a woman--I just didn't think of it. I just didn't." He shook his head. "It's all so new. I couldn't even have told you where I was in my cycle. How do we know when we change sex from day to day?"

Tom nodded. He looked down at his clasped hands, ruffled his hair, looked over at Harry, whose hands were folded protectively over his abdomen. "When did it happen?"

"Apparently when we made love after I got back from that mining mission."

Tom nodded, thought, 'I've got to stop bobbing my head'. Harry didn't say anything more, and Tom got up and wandered around Harry's living room. The silence lengthened and grew uncomfortable.

Harry shifted, and Tom stopped, turned around. Harry spoke. "Tom, are you willing to help me raise this child?"

"Yes. Of course. I'm the father. We share the responsibility."

Harry spoke again. "Do you want to continue being lovers?"

"Oh, Harry." Deep sadness came over Tom's face, his mouth tightening harshly. "You don't think I'd dump you over this, do you? You don't think I'd be your child's father but not your lover?"

Harry said nothing for a moment. Then he sighed. "I don't know, Tom. I needed to ask. Gods know I've wanted a relationship with you for a long time, but I never imagined anything like this. I mean, how could I? And I couldn't know how you'd feel, how you'd react. So I had to ask."

Tom knelt in front of Harry, elbows on the other's knees. "Harry, do you really want this baby?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

"Why?" Tom looked almost baffled.

Harry looked down at his folded hands, protecting the incipient life within. For the first time, he smiled, and his whole body visibly relaxed. "Because it's yours, and I love you. Because it's mine, part of me." He turned that smile on Tom, and it was like the smile of a Renaissance Madonna. "Because it's ours."

Tom put his hands over Harry's and pressed his lips to his lover's cheek. "It's ours," he echoed. "And I love you."

---

Harry took to pregnancy with an ease that surprised even himself. He slept well and woke up sprightly. A week of intense morning sickness early in the first trimester gave way to an intense and healthy hunger that stayed with him, not cravings for unusual foods but simply appetite for more of what he normally ate, and the morning sickness did not recur. With advice from Sammie and the Doctor, he modified his normal, highly athletic exercise routines, going easier generally but working to increase muscular strength in the lower back and the pelvic region. He agreed with the Captain that he would not go out on away missions while pregnant, but would work active duty for as long as possible. Tom, meanwhile, watched over him like a hawk, ready to do anything required: fetch a pillow, fetch a snack, replicate a new size of uniform, rub Harry's feet.

"Aw, Sam, you didn't have to do this." Harry was flushed and almost dizzy with delight.

Sam Wildman beamed. "Yes, I did. Wait till you're in your last trimester, and thank me then. That's when you'll really appreciate it."

The new bed in Harry's quarters was enormous: big enough to hold a pregnant woman and a partner, or two adults and a small child, with room to spare. Tom gave Sammie an enthusiastic hug. "How did you afford this?"

"I didn't." She handed him a padd. "I went around and collected replicator rations. Here's a list of everybody who donated. Even the Doctor assigned some of Sickbay's rations."

Tom and Harry read down the list. The Captain's signature was at the top, followed by Chakotay, B'Elanna, Tuvok... pretty much everybody. Harry couldn't help tearing up, and Sam wrapped her arms around him. "I can't thank you enough," he whispered.

"Just don't let hotshot here get away from you," she whispered back.

Nobody raised an eyebrow to see Lt. Paris going to Ensign Kim's quarters every night and coming out of them every morning. Wrapped in Tom's arms, Harry slept in a warm glow, dreaming of a little girl who sometimes had his own raven hair, sometimes Tom's strawberry blond, but always with intense blue eyes and the most wonderful, radiant smile. Often he saw her running through a dense forest of immensely tall trees, their trunks bare of branches for many meters above the ground, running and laughing with Naomi Wildman. He never doubted that he would bear a daughter or that he would see this mysterious forest someday.

The backaches started in the second trimester. After a day of standing at Ops, Harry's feet were so swollen he couldn't pull the boots off by himself, and his back ached with a slow unremitting pain that didn't seem to yield to analgesics. The Captain gave him permission to wear non-regulation footwear, and the Doctor's recommendation of massage had a list of would-be back-rubbers lining up behind Tom. Tom rubbed him down after every shift, but others augmented Tom's efforts with more time, more training, or simply fresher arms. Sammie knew exactly where it ached, and B'Elanna turned out to be surprisingly good. Batehart got him a bottle of fir-scented massage oil out of his own rations, with an apology. Tuvok startled Harry by offering to teach him some basic Vulcan pain-control techniques, and shy Geron startled him even more by sending him, in a message, an ancient Bajoran prayer-chant for expectant mothers. Harry found great peace in reciting the prayer during massages and whenever he felt stressed.

"Oh, that feels wonderful."

Harry groaned deliciously as Tom's strong, clever fingers rubbed the warm, balsam-smelling oil into his lower back. Tom tried to suppress thoughts of making Harry groan that way with other kinds of touches. They hadn't made love for almost a month, and Tom was so horny he was irritable. Self-release didn't seem to help, no matter which sex he chose to be; he wanted Harry, that was all, but he didn't want to impose his needs on his lover, perhaps make the pregnancy more difficult.

Tom ran his knuckles up Harry's back, on either side of his spine, feeling the vibrations of another groan and the dissolution of the knots in the muscles. "Oh, yes," Harry murmured, his voice low and throaty and that black hair spread out over the pillow.... Tom tried to ignore the throbbing in his groin, tried to run flight simulations in his head and simultaneously divine what Harry needed next. It didn't work, and he suddenly realized that Harry had rolled over under his hands and was regarding him with an amused expression.

"I'm willing if you are," Harry purred.

Now it was Tom's turn to groan. "Harry, I... Gods, I want you, want to make love to you, but I'm afraid of hurting you."

Harry stroked Tom's arm. "I was beginning to think I wasn't... attractive any more."

Tom kissed Harry, drawing back just before the kiss passed the point of no return. "You're incredibly beautiful, Har. You glow, you radiate joy, in spite of the inconveniences. I just don't want to hurt you or the baby."

"The Doc is certain you wouldn't. Yes, I asked." He kept stroking Tom's arm. "If you don't feel right about fucking me, that's fine. You can fuck me with your fingers, I can suck you off, whatever. Just please don't think we have to give up sex right away. I'll let you know when it feels wrong."

With a harsh groan, Tom buried his face between Harry's legs. Harry cried out as Tom's mouth closed over his clit and the first orgasm clamped down on him, almost painfully good. Tom moaned into Harry's cunt, frighteningly close to orgasm himself just from the taste, the smell, the intimacy. Harry's scent had changed with pregnancy, and Tom found it more arousing than ever, wilder, deeper. His long fingers slid into Harry, probing and stroking, and Harry bucked against him, coming in uncontrollable waves and gasping with every breath. His fingers closed mercilessly in Tom's hair, and that sent Tom over the edge, shuddering and pressing even closer to Harry as he exploded without having been touched.

The only problem, if one could call it that, was that it was so easy being a woman. Harry had not, unlike Tom, felt alienated by the transformation to a female body. The experience of pregnancy was so blissfully all-consuming that he was beginning to forget he'd ever been a man, ever had a different set of genitalia, ever anticipated fathering a child but not mothering one. With all the help he was getting, some of it from the most unexpected sources, it was hard to contemplate going back.

"I don't know, Sammie." Harry scooped a big spoonful of his chocolate raspberry sundae and slurped it down. "I know this sounds weird, but when I first turned into a woman, I still thought of myself as masculine, Harry, he and him. After almost five months of pregnancy, that's beginning to wear off. I really am female now; I mean, I'm Harry, but Harry's a she. Does that make sense?"

"Not really, but that's okay. Finished with your sundae, sweetie?" Naomi nodded and held up her empty bowl. "Put it in the recycler, then, don't let it sit around." Naomi skittered away and came back to squeeze between her mother and Harry on the couch. "What are you worried about, Harry? You said the Doctor is sure you'll still be able to be male once the pregnancy's over."

Harry put his feet up on the coffee table, groaning. "I'm just afraid I'll forget how. And, to tell you the truth, I'm afraid when I do come over male again, Tom's not going to be interested in me."

"Tommy loves you," Naomi interjected softly. Both the adults looked at her, a little startled. Sam stroked her daughter's thin hair and nodded at Harry.

"She's right, you know. You love him, regardless, and he feels the same way about you."

"Well, I wish he would say so." Harry groaned again, rubbing his back with his fists. Sammie got up.

"I have just the thing for you...."

---

When it got too bad on Tom, he went to the Captain. Most of the time, he went to see her as a man; he felt most comfortable around her that way. Sometimes they played pool, a meditative game in which neither tried too hard to beat the other; sometimes he lounged in Leonardo's studio while she worked with the clay. Today he found himself staring, fascinated, at an unfinished variation on the Mona Lisa, seeing Harry's smile on her face.

"I'm just scared, Captain." He swallowed. "I know how you feel about my father, but you know how I feel about him. I'd hate to do to a kid what he's done to me."

Janeway leaned into her mound of clay. She wasn't really working on a project, just thinking with the clay and listening to Tom. Owen Paris was a fine admiral, but too many career Starfleet officers wound up treating their families the way they treated their crews, and a crew and a family aren't the same thing.

"Are you a clone of your father, Tom?" she asked presently.

"Hell, no."

"But you feel like that was his desire? For you to turn out just like him?"

"Yes." His mouth quirked. "I've been a real disappointment."

"Which would be worse--to be the kind of man you are, or to be exactly like your father?"

Tom frowned. "Being like dear old dad."

"Well," Janeway slapped the clay energetically, "then what makes you think you'd try to make a child turn out just like you? And what makes you think you'd succeed if you tried?"

She grinned at him. He looked sheepish. "I guess you have a point there, Captain."

Tom got up and wandered around Leonardo's studio. Janeway continued pounding the clay with vigor, wondering whether her skills would be up to sculpting Harry and the baby, or perhaps just the baby. Her fingers began shaping a pregnant female figure, as if of their own accord.

Tom came back to the Mona Lisa variation. He had seen that smile on Harry's face so often lately. So feminine.... He wasn't about to say so, not even to Janeway, but he missed the masculine Harry. They hadn't yet had the opportunity to make love as man and man. 'Yeah, except for those four years you wasted....' But he was going to be a father, and Harry was going to be the mother, and later on they could enjoy making love in all the possible combinations. If he just had the courage.

He looked at the Captain, red with clay to the elbows and rapt in the work. "Captain?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you ever regret not getting married? Having a family?"

Janeway's face softened, became distant. She thought of Mark, their relationship, the way they had lived, and of Chakotay, of her wistful hopes for a relationship that never seemed to materialize. Then she thought of the 150 people who were depending on her, and shook her head. "No, I don't. Mark and I had a good relationship, but we weren't meant to be parents, and we knew it. But I do have a family, Tom: the people of Voyager. You all are my friends, my family, even my children, in a way." One corner of her mouth lifted. "Mark always told me I was born a big sister, and never got over it--used to bossing people around, but having Mom's authority to fall back on. I guess that's why I'm the kind of captain I am."

"You're a great captain." Tom permitted himself to put a hand on her arm. "I wouldn't be stranded 70,000 lightyears from home with anyone else."

Janeway leaned into the tentative touch, smiled her big-sister smile. "So what about you, Tom? Had you ever really thought about settling down, before this?"

"Nope. That's why it's such a shock--being a father, being in love. I'm so much in love with him it scares me." 'It always has scared you, Tommy.' "I've always thought of myself as, well, a flyboy, the kind of guy who flits around, sticks to women who don't mind being the flower to the roving bee." She could hear the self-disgust shading his voice. Then he spoke more quietly. "But I don't want that any more, haven't, for a while. To tell you the truth, I'd love to ask Harry to marry me. I'd get down on bended knee tomorrow and offer him a ring, but--" He winced. "I'm the idiot who got him pregnant--"

"You're the idiot he loves more than life itself," Janeway interrupted. "But I'd wait until after the baby is born. Let him see you stand by him through the pregnancy, the delivery, and with the child. If I know Harry, he wants permanence as much as you do."

---

"Computer, locate Ensign Harry Kim."

"Ensign Harry Kim is in Ensign Samantha Wildman's quarters."

"Figures," Tom muttered, and strode down the hall to the turbolift.

The sight that greeted his eyes when he entered Sammie's quarters was enough to drive all his doubts away. Harry was reclining on the couch, leaning back against a humming black cushion with his feet on Sam's lap. Sam was rubbing Harry's feet, and Naomi was standing behind Harry, combing out his hair. The Wildmans smiled at Tom, and Harry opened his eyes, held out a hand, and beamed on Tom with such a Mona Lisa smile that Tom wanted to cry. He crossed the room to Harry, took his hand, and kissed it; he wasn't usually very demonstrative in public, but he felt comfortable being affectionate in front of the Wildmans.

Naomi squeezed his other hand urgently. "You can hear the baby, Tommy! If you put your head on Aunt Harry's stomach, you can hear the baby!"

She knelt down beside Harry and laid her head gently on Harry's stomach. Seeing her rapt expression, Tom knelt beside her and did the same. Oh, gods, yes. He could hear, or feel, the tiny movements of the new life in his lover's womb, and there was no holding back the tears now, or the flood of hormones which changed him spontaneously from male to female. He looked up when Harry squeezed his hand.

"It's a girl," Harry said.

---

The third trimester was more difficult. Early in his seventh month, Harry went off active duty. He was too easily fatigued to work a full shift on the brige, though he still did as much deskwork as ever. When he had to sit up, he sat against the black cushion Sam had given him, which vibrated at different speeds and even kneaded his muscles gently. He went through the childbirth training and continued to exercise by walking and doing yoga, but he and Tom spent much of their off-duty time lying in bed, snuggling and talking. It was no longer Tom who held Harry, but Harry who held Tom; Tom was dwarfed by the solemn mound of Harry's belly as they lay in bed, Tom's arm beneath his lover's head, his hand often protectively on the curved flesh.

Harry was drifting when the first contraction hit. He woke out of a doze as it clamped on him, sharply, tightly, and hot water gushed between his thighs, cooling immediately. He reached for Tom, and a profound panic took over when his hand touched empty air. Harry screamed, not in pain so much as in fear, and Tom shot out of the bathroom, his women's underpants around his ankles. His eyes were wide with fear already.

"It's started," Harry whispered.

---

"There's nothing to worry about," the Doctor said in his most soothing tones. "You are undergoing a textbook labor, Harry, and you have your partner and a friend to help you."

Tom and Samantha had both undergone childbirth training with Harry. As he sat in the birthing chair now, knees bent, legs spread, breathing with rhythmical focus, Sam stood behind him, massaging his shoulders, and Tom was on his left, male now, letting Harry grip his hand. The Doctor stood to the right, watching the monitor behind the birthing mother and smiling at how well everything was going.

To Harry, it didn't feel like everything was going well. He had never felt so completely out of control in his life. The sensation of his body overriding anything his conscious mind could do was more intense than orgasm, more intense than vomiting, and reminiscent of both. Whether he breathed properly or not, whether he sat in a sophisticated birthing chair that could massage his back while it monitored his vitals or on a splintery wooden stool, his body was going to bring forth this baby. It was no longer a part of him: Their little girl wanted out!

"It's okay, Harry," Sam said. "Just ride with it. We're here. We won't leave you."

"And think of who's outside that door." Tom glanced at the door to the birthing chamber. "Half the crew has abandoned their bed, their dinner, or their post to wait on your labor. We love you, Har."

Harry breathed and tried not to curse Tom for impregnating him.

---

"It's been five hours," B'Elanna said doubtfully. "That would be a long time for a Klingon woman's labor."

"It's not unusual," Janeway replied as absently as possible. She wasn't going to mention the horror stories every woman seemed to hear, even now--labors that went on for days, complications that couldn't be remediated, stillbirths no scans had caught. She hoped no one had mentioned them to Harry; her sister had been terrified, during her pregnancy, after a session with dear old Aunt Bettina.

They were all sitting in the waiting area of Sickbay, waiting for news of Harry: the Captain, B'Elanna, Tuvok, and a good many off-cuty crew who would otherwise be eating or recreating. Neelix had remained in the mess hall, saying people needed to eat and he needed to cook or else go crazy with worry, and Chakotay had offered to take the bridge so Janeway could be there, but it seemed like everyone else was there: Batehart and Henley, Ayala and Chell, Starfleet and Maquis alike. Waiting for Harry.

"I have attended my wife during three births," Tuvok remarked, "and while Vulcans have greater conscious control of the birthing process than humans, it is still a difficult undertaking. It is also an awe-inspiring experience."

Janeway gave her old friend a teasing glance. "I thought awe was an emotion?"

Tuvok gave her that distant look that indicated he knew he was being teased. "Awe is the response of the rational mind to the fact that the universe exceeds its comprehension."

From across the room, Geron spoke up. "Harry thanked me just yesterday for the Bajoran prayer I sent him. Maybe we could all sing a song to help him?"

The Captain smiled at her youngest crewman, and Geron stood up and began singing in a surprisingly firm baritone. The other Bajoran crewmembers at once joined in the traditional birthing song, and the rest of the crew was soon able to join in the refrain.

"Hear that, Ensign?" The Doctor cocked his head at the slow, widely-spaced harmonies audible through the closed door. "The crew are singing an ancient Bajoran birthing song asking the prophets and the ancestors to assist the laboring mother." "Must have been Geron's idea," Sam remarked. Harry was beyond speech, breathing hard, and Tom was completely focused on his lover.

"No doubt," the Doctor replied. "Ah! You have entered the last stage of labor, Harry. You are doing excellently. Keep up the good work."

'I don't have much choice,' Harry thought, as his body went on inexorably with its process.

Out in the waiting area, the chant went on, slow and peaceful, reminding Janeway of the music of the Russian church which Mark liked so much. It was easy to lose track of time in its slowly shifting harmonies; did another hour go by for the laboring mother, or two, or three, while they sang so sweetly, so calmly? Janeway had begun to feel charmed, or drugged, when suddenly they heard something that rent the spell of the birthing song as a knife rends silk--a loud sustained cry, powerfully fierce, yet not with pain, she thought--with triumph.

A few minutes of heart-pounding silence followed. Then the Doctor emerged, fairly beaming, from the birthing room.

"I am happy to announce that Ensign Harry Kim has successfully delivered a baby girl. Captain, Lt. Torres, Harry has asked to see you."

Followed by cheers and applause, Janeway and B'Elanna went into the birthing room. With Sam hugging his shoulders and Tom sitting on the floor in front of him, both of them crying, Harry looked up at his visitors with a triumph that matched the cry they had heard. He was flushed, sweaty, and still naked from the waist down, and the child was cradled against his breasts.

Janeway and B'Elanna came closer, both of them feeling rather shy. Harry's triumphant solemnity softened a little, to a proud grin. "Come and see her," he said, sounding tired but satisfied. The two women came up beside him and looked curiously at the baby.

She was not a large infant, but delicate-looking, and still flushed from the stress of birth. Her head was covered with a fine down as black as Harry's hair, and she unmistakably had his eyes, though her nose and mouth were more like Tom's, as far as Janeway could judge. Then, unbelievably, she opened her eyes for just a moment, and they were as laser-blue as her father's. Janeway stifled a gasp, and B'Elanna grinned.

"What are you calling her?" B'Elanna asked practically.

Tom looked up from the floor, his head on Harry's knee. "Miranda Eugenia Paris Kim." He smiled up at Harry, tears still streaming. "'Miranda' means 'wonderful'."

---

Harry was beamed back to his quarters a few hours later and installed in the big bed. Both he and Tom were now officially on childcare leave for three months, though the Captain had said privately to Chakotay that she hoped to have them back sooner, and hoped not to have to call Tom to duty as her best pilot. Well-wishers streamed by for the rest of the day, and while Sammie waited on Harry, Tom had B'Elanna's assistance in keeping people from barging in on mother and child.

B'Elanna came into Harry's living room brandishing her batleth. "This oughta keep 'em away," she said with relish.

"You sound like you're enjoying this," said Tom from his prone position on the couch.

She grinned ferally. "You bet I am."

Tom tried to groan, but a yawn spoiled it. "Gods, I'm tired. I'm exhausted, and he did the hardest work." He swallowed. "There were some scary moments in there, B'Elanna. Even though the Doc said he was doing just fine, it was still pretty scary."

She sat down by his feet. "I know, Tom. I know. We were worried, too."

He looked at her for a long moment, and an affectionate smile lightened his face. "I'm really glad you're here, helping me out," he said quietly. "It means a lot to me."

"It's not for your benefit, flyboy, it's for Harry," B'Elanna replied, but it was plain that she was only teasing. She put a hand on Tom's knee. "I'm glad things worked out for the two of you. If anybody can reform a flying pig like you, it's Harry."

Tom laid his hand over hers. "You're a good friend, B'Elanna."

The door chimed, and B'Elanna sprang to her feet before Tom could move a muscle, picking up her batleth in the process.

---

No one could remember, afterward, who first contracted the baby's name to "Mirajean," but it stuck, and everyone used it. Even the Doctor began his regular examinations of the child by asking, "And how is our little Mirajean today?"

Mirajean was a good baby. She nursed often, slept soundly, and exhibited good cheer and curiosity from the first. She had a few little food allergies which the Doctor easily cleared up, but other than that she was, as the Captain pronounced, "as good as gold. No, better than gold. As good as latinum."

"Yes, she is," Tom affirmed. He wrapped his arms around the baby, who lay against his chest in a comfy padded sling, and smiled at her with so much fondness that the Captain felt embarrassed. "My little girl is a good girl, and she's going to be smart and pretty and a pilot and a musician and--"

"Hungry, in a few minutes," Harry said. He held out his arms. "Let me have her, Tom."

"Not yet. Not till she starts looking for the nipple." He brushed his lips across the baby's downy hair. "And she smells so good, too."

Harry exchanged a glance with the Captain. The same Tom Paris who had agonized a few months ago over becoming a father was now a doting daddy who hated to let his child out of his grasp. He was now dancing around da Vinci's studio, holding one of Mirajean's tiny hands, and singing some foolish song about three little fishies who swam over the dam.

Presently a wail from the dizzied baby convinced Tom to hand her over to Mommy. Harry unselfconsciously opened his blouse and cradled Mirajean to his breast. Noisy sucking sounds could soon be heard. Tom dropped onto the couch beside Harry, and Janeway smiled at them as she resumed working on her figure of mother and child. She didn't have the skill to reproduce Harry's features, but she did think she could capture the aura of love and wonder that hung around him when he held his daughter. What pleased her even more than Harry's evident joy was Tom's adoration for both of them. The tenderness in his face only deepened when he looked at Mirajean in her mother's arms. Harry smiled blissfully, lost in the serenity of nursing, and Tom put his head on Harry's shoulder and his hand into Harry's hand, looking down at the tiny face and the slope of breast that half hid it. 'I hope they get married soon,' Janeway thought.

---

"Keep your eyes closed, Har. Now walk forward."

Tom's hands on his shoulders guided Harry forward about ten paces. He heard Mirajean burble excitedly. Tom let go and walked away.

"Okay, now open them."

Harry opened his eyes, and his mouth fell open, too.

He was standing in a living room about twice the size of his own, but all his own things were in it. There was the music corner, with the music stand set up, the music cabinet filled with sheaves of scores, his clarinet and flute cases on their shelf. The standard-issue couch had his favorite throw draped over one corner, his squashy cushions in the other. His prints hung on the walls, with the antique one Great-Aunt Lingling had given him in a place of honor. And there was something new in one corner: a large wooden rocking chair with a dark brown fur rug at its feet, a table handy, and an old-fashioned lamp with a fringed shade standing guard over all.

"Where are we?" he asked, squeaking a little.

"These are your new quarters," the Captain said from behind him. She came in, smiling, followed by Chakotay, B'Elanna, and the Wildmans. "As a parent, you're entitled to more space for yourself and your child." 'And your partner,' her eyes said to Tom.

"It's taken us a while to get everything set up," Tom explained. "That's why we had you sit for the Captain so long today, and then sent a string of other people to distract you while we transported stuff in and arranged it." His eyes were twinkling with glee at Harry's astonished expression.

Naomi squeezed her way forward between the adults. "We've all brought presents!" she announced, and held out a large package she had evidently gift-wrapped herself.

Harry took it, wonderingly, and began to try to peel away the festive paper. "No, Aunt Harry," Naomi said imperiously, "you have to tear it!" Everybody laughed, and Harry obeyed, ripping with fervor through giftwrap and protective tissue until he unveiled a plush rabbit with long, sensitive ears and thick soft fur almost the color of Tom's hair.

"Thank you, Naomi," he said, voice quavering a little. Tom took the wrapping paper and dumped it in the recycler, then gave Naomi a hug.

"Let's show Aunt Harry the rest of the new quarters, and then give him the presents," he suggested.

The big bed Sammie had given them was the centerpiece of a spacious bedroom. Harry did not quite notice that his clothing did not by any means fill the closets and chests of drawers. There was also a bedroom for Mirajean, with a crib, a cot for one adult, a changing table, a little bath, and everything else a baby might need. The new quarters even had two bathrooms, one of them just a commode and sink.

Harry sat on the couch, overcome by astonishment, holding and then nursing Mirajean while an endless procession came, like the Magi, to bring gifts and admire the child. Sammie had contributed the splendid rocker; the Captain gave a soft woolly blanket to go with the chair. Chakotay brought a sand painting of Changing Woman, one of the great goddesses of his people and a protectress of mothers and children. B'Elanna gave a collection of toys--blocks, cloth dollies, and a gay mobile to hang over the crib. Tuvok offered a recording of soothing Vulcan music traditionally played for nursing mothers. A good many people simply gave replicator rations with an attached note that was some variation of, "Use these for diapers!"

When everyone finally left, Harry was close to tears with gratitude and tiredness combined. Mira was asleep, already fed, his quarters were filled with useful, wonderful gifts, and he was hungry and a little shaky. Tom took the baby and settled her against himself in her sling, then replicated grilled cheese sandwiches for both of them, with tomato soup for himself and chicken noodle for Harry, and a pot of tea. He came close to having to feed Harry, but habit took over and Harry devoured his dinner without saying a word.

When bowls and plates, pot and cups were empty, Tom put everything in the recycler and then drew Harry gently to his feet. Harry was crying silently as Tom steered him into the bedroom, took off his clothes, and tucked him into bed. Tom laid Mirajean in Harry's arms, took off his own clothes, and with a moment's concentration, shifted into female form. He got into bed with mother and baby, pretty tired himself, and ordered out the lights.

Harry hiccupped, sniffled, reached for Tom. "I love you," he whispered.

"I love you, too, Har. I love you both."

The baby cuddled between them, they fell asleep.

---

Three months' childbirth leave was standard for couples living on Starfleet ships. Tom and Harry played with Mirajean, recorded her every advance in their personal logs, and spent long hours walking in various holodeck programs, getting Harry accustomed to exercise again and talking more deeply than ever before. Having a child together got them talking about their childhoods, about religion, about whether they'd ever get home from the Delta Quadrant, and about a lot of other things they'd more or less tried to avoid heretofore.

One thing they didn't talk about was marriage. Harry was afraid to bring it up, afraid Tom would laugh him off, in spite of everything. He wasn't sure how long he'd remain female, but it wouldn't be forever; sooner or later, he'd be a man again, and he still wasn't sure if Tom was romantically interested in the original, male Harry Kim, baby or no baby. He didn't want to spoil the idyll by bringing up a topic Tom didn't want to hear. Tom, on the other hand, was waiting until Harry was male again; he wanted very much to propose when they were both men, to make it clear to Harry that the connection between them hadn't started with the accident on Harrogeth. So neither of them said anything, despite the helpful nagging from their friends, and both of them worried, silently, if the other wanted the same thing that he did.

---

"Your hormone levels are evening out, Harry, and your uterus has contracted to its original size." The Doctor snapped shut his tricorder. "You might start trying to shift gender voluntarily, or you may wait until it happens spontaneously. It's possible that you'll still be able to lactate even in male gender."

Harry looked startled. "That would be weird--but no weirder than the rest of this experience, I guess." He smiled. "If I can get used to being a mother, I can get used to nursing while I'm a man."

"It is likely that humans will eventually evolve to the point where males can nurse, or to where the Harrogeti are now, able to change gender at will. A fascinating prospect." The Doctor returned Harry's smile. "And how is our little Mirajean today?"

---

After the usual evening feeding, Harry turned Mira over to Tom and went to take a shower. Childbirth leave was almost over, and so far he'd been unable to change sex voluntarily. Had he forgotten how to be male? Had his body stopped producing androgens? Scrubbing himself under the spray, Harry looked at his breasts, full and somewhat tender from nursing, and imagined them shrinking, flattening out against the muscles. He ran a hand between his legs--the tenderness there was long healed--and tried to remember the shape and weight of a penis and testicles instead of the contours of a vulva. He hadn't had any sex in--how long? since well before Miranda's birth--and his body was aching for it, his mind and heart specifically aching to be male and to come to his lover man to man. Tilting his head back under the spray, rinsing the soap from his hair, which was nearly to his elbows now, he imagined sucking Tom's cock while Tom sucked his, as they'd done as women....

Harry felt a curious prickling sensation he hadn't felt in ages. Straightening up, he looked down and--

Harry's shriek brought Tom racing into the bathroom, the baby clutched in his arms. "Harry! What's wrong?!"

Harry threw open the shower door with such vehemence that it bounced back and nearly hit him. "I'm a man again!" he crowed, then looked at the baby and burst into tears.

---

'Just my goddam luck, again.' Tom ground his teeth. 'Harry finally changes back to male, and what happens? They need me and only me at the conn for who knows how long.'

The Captain had been extremely apologetic, but the need was inescapable. Voyager's most direct course home lay through the broadest, densest asteroid field anyone had ever seen, bigger than any listed in the Federation database. Voyager needed the only pilot who could steer her manually around the chunks of rock, without relying on the computer's useful but ultimately limited pre-programmed routines.

Tom was on duty until they got through the field, eating on the run and sleeping only as long as necessary, because when he was off-duty, Voyager went nowhere, hanging still in space relative to one of the larger asteroids.

Not knowing whether to swear or cry, he'd reluctantly told Harry he wanted to sleep in his own quarters for the time being, so as not to disturb mother and child's more settled routine. The first couple of sleep cycles had been rough; he hadn't slept alone in so long that he felt cold and abandoned in his own small bed. He missed Harry and the baby terribly, missed their warmth and scent; he saw them only briefly, at meals, not long enough to give a back rub or bathe Miranda or make love. And all he thought about, all he dreamt about was making love, even though his hands and mind steered Voyager with incomparable precision while he was awake and male; even though he slept as female, he dreamed of sex with Harry, man with man.

While Tom flew, dreamt, and pined, Harry was pining, too. After being able to rely on Tom's caring for Mirajean, it was a bit of a shock to have the baby all to himself, to be the parent who did everything. They'd started to accustom her to taking Mommy's milk in a bottle from Daddy's hand; now Daddy didn't have the time, and it was Harry or Sam or even B'Elanna who held the bottle. Harry had discovered that while he could change sex voluntarily, certain signals from Mirajean would make him shift spontaneously, and when he did, his femaleness "remembered" to lactate. He shifted back and forth several times a day, getting used to being a man again, becoming a woman to feed his daughter. B'Elanna and Sammie helped a good deal, but they were on duty, too, and while Naomi had the will, she simply couldn't do all that an adult did.

On top of feeling for the first time like childcare was a chore, Harry was constantly horny. He missed Tom in bed, missed sleeping with the baby between them, and missed sex. Just when he'd been ready to have male/male sex with Tom for the first time, they'd run into this damned asteroid field. Now they were separated until further notice. Harry thought about sex pretty much all the time, and after a week of suffering, he came to a decision: As soon as Voyager was through the asteroid field and Tom had had time to recover, Harry was going to romance him right into bed and fuck him senseless, man to man.

---

Tom came staggering into Harry's quarters after eleven days on duty. It was 2200 hours, and Harry was in the rocking chair, humming softly as he gave Mira her last feeding before going to bed. Tom came over and dropped like a stone in front of Harry, his head flopping onto Harry's lap. His face was drawn and white with tiredness, his eyes bleary, his shoulders slumped, but a faint smile crept over his mouth: He was home with his family.

Harry reached down and stroked the tousled curls with his free hand. Tom sighed, and Mirajean hiccuped. It didn't seem necessary to say anything.

"Gods, I'm tired," Tom mumbled. He rolled his head back and forth on Harry's lap, trying vainly to clear his vision.

"I'll be finished with the baby in a minute," Harry said. "You just stay right where you are, and then we'll all go to bed together."

Tom nodded, once. He was snoring softly by the time Mirajean let go of the nipple, but when Harry shook him gently, he managed to get to his feet and stumble into the bedroom. Swaying with weariness, he waited while Harry laid Mirajean carefully in the middle of the bed. Harry then stripped off the rest of his own clothes, undressed Tom, and steered him into bed beside the baby. Tom didn't even feel Harry pull up the covers and kiss his forehead, then get into bed as well, but he slept deeply, soothed in the recesses of his brain by the familiar, beloved scent of mother and child.

Tom slept for almost twenty-four hours, dead to the universe. If the Borg had come and assimilated the entire ship while he slept, including himself, he wouldn't have noticed. Or cared--after eleven days at the conn, eating in half-hours and sleeping no more than six hours at the longest, being a Borg might have seemed a nice change.

When he woke, Harry and the baby were gone. Tom looked for Miranda in her crib but found only a note from Harry saying not to worry, she was with the Wildmans. Too groggy to think any further, he headed for the bathroom, where he emptied his bladder, scrubbed himself thoroughly under a real water shower, lathered and rinsed his hair three times, depilated his beard thoroughly, and finally dried slowly under the heat lamp, letting its rays draw the tension out of chronically tight muscles. 'Maybe Harry can rub my back, later.' Then he dressed in a favorite blue shirt and loose light brown pants, enormously relieved to be out of uniform and off-duty for a few more days.

When he came back to the living room, the lights were dimmed, and Harry was lighting candles at the table, which was set for dinner for two.

"Hellooo, Sleeping Beauty!"

Harry was male now, dressed in snug black pants and a deep red velvet shirt, open to the waist. He smelled of sandalwood and his own unique self, and Tom was acutely aware of that scent, of the bulge of groin against groin, the closeness of their embrace without pregnant belly or swollen breasts between them, the heat and hardness of Harry. Harry's lips were exquisitely soft against his own.

Harry was sorely tempted to thrust his tongue down Tom's throat and then proceed to tear his clothes off and prepare for another kind of thrusting. Tom felt so right in his arms, muscle against muscle, slim and hot as a living flame. But that wasn't the plan he'd conceived. 'Seduction,' he reminded himself. 'He needs seduction.'

He let go with a light brushing of lips against lips and smiled sweetly. "Let me treat you to dinner. I know you've been eating out of the mess hall."

Tom sat down at the table, which was laid with two dishes glazed in an exquisite dragon pattern, simple but elegant silverware, two wineglasses, and soft pale green napkins. 'I don't think these are replicated stuff.' Tom tapped his plate with a fingernail. 'This is real china. I didn't know he owned anything like this.' Harry gave his orders to the replicator by punching up a menu; he didn't want to spoil his surprise by speaking aloud. Presently he returned to the table with a bottle of wine under one arm and a tureen of steaming beef stew in his hands.

Tom picked up the wine bottle. "Chateau Picard," he observed. "You've got good taste, sweetheart. Any year's a good year for them."

Harry uncovered the tureen with a flourish, letting out a delicious meaty fragrance. "This is beef stew from Sandrine's recipe, the one you gave the computer." He smiled smugly at Tom's delighted grin and served the stew while Tom took charge of the wine.

"So Mira's with the Wildmans?" Tom asked, once he'd shoveled in half his plate of stew in three mouthfuls.

"Yeah, for the whole night. I felt like we needed it. Oh, she'll be fine," Harry said, to Tom's look of surprise. "I've been getting her used to being with other people besides us, and who better than Sam and Naomi?"

Tom nodded. "Tell me everything," he pleaded, "everything she's done that I've missed."

Harry launched into a detailed chronicle of what he and Mirajean had done for the last eleven days. Tom slurped up wine and stew at a rapid rate, relishing every mouthful, and said little beyond, "Really?" and "Oh, how cute. I'm sorry I missed that."

"She misses you," Harry said, smiling. "I'm her mom, but you're her dad, and I know she's looked for you. A couple times she's cried when you visited with us and then left to go back to the bridge. I nearly did the same thing."

Tom's eyes filled, and he dabbed them with the napkin. "I've missed you, too, Har, both of you. I hated being separated from you like this. At least we have another couple of weeks before our leave is over."

Harry got up and began clearing the table, taking time to wash and dry the plates and the silverware and put them away. Tom stayed at the table, sipping slowly at the rich red wine. When he was done, Harry came back and put a hand on Tom's shoulder, kneading gently. Tom's muscles were noticeably stiff beneath his fingers.

"Say, Har, would you mind rubbing my back?"

"I'd love to." He dropped a kiss on the top of Tom's head, partly to hide his wicked grin. "Why don't you get undressed and I'll set up the massage table? We still have it."

Tom stripped, feeling oddly self-conscious. 'It's been too long. But I'd really like to wait....' He got a towel from the bathroom to spread out on the tabletop and then stretched out face-down, sighing as his muscles accustomed themselves to the hard, flat surface. Harry lit more candles around the room, dimmed the lights even further, and asked the computer for music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The sound of "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" and the scent of juniper and balsam filled the room as Harry drizzled massage oil onto Tom's back.

Harry began by gently pressing Tom's shoulders with skilled fingers, coaxing them to drop down, while his thumbs stroked down the neck on either side of the spine and back up again. The muscles were almost wooden under his hands, and he wanted them softly supple again for what he had in mind. Harry worked his way down Tom's back in slow spirals, smoothing the oil into the fair, lightly freckled skin, and traveled back up with a firmer touch, knuckling into the knots on either side of the backbone. He lifted one arm, then the other, stretching it out and rotating the shoulderblade over the spine, then stroked outward from the ribs toward the hip and the shoulder, suggesting a new alignment for the torso.

Tom felt more warm oil being poured on his heated skin and silently thanked Batehart for giving Harry their first bottle of this blend. Tiny circles with the thumbs eased out the almost-painful tension in his lower back; firm strokes along his sides convinced the space between the ribs to expand. More kneading of his neck and shoulders, up under the hair to the base of the skull and then down to the shoulderblades. 'He is so good at this....' Tom groaned as Harry rubbed in excess oil with flat palms and spread fingers, moving steadily down his back until those strong hands were cupping his buttocks. 'Well, they're pretty tight, too....'

It took Tom a few minutes to notice that the touches he was receiving weren't simply massage any more. He might have noticed the difference when Harry's hands moved to his thighs and then to the insides of his thighs, but it felt so good and Tom was so relaxed that he didn't stir. It was harder to ignore when seeking fingers moved from the insides of his thighs to the curve of his balls, dragging lightly over the downy hairs as they tried to move underneath him and--

"Har, no."

Tom rolled off the table and onto his feet, backing away from Harry. Harry's fists clenched, and his face worked with emotion: anger, frustration, hurt. He looked at Tom, naked and beautifully erect, yet keeping away from him as if out of revulsion, and could barely find words to express his feelings and ask what he had to know.

"Tom, why? Why not? Your body says that you want it-- want me--why don't you want to make love now that we're both men?" Harry slammed his fist onto the table in frustration, then turned away and sank down on the couch, sobbing his heart out. His worst fears were true; Tom didn't love him, it was just friendship, just the hormones, just the connection forged by the child, it wasn't enough, it would never be enough.... Harry sobbed on and on, drowning in hurt and anger, unable to stop the bitter phrases in his mind from ringing a funeral knell to his hopes.

His own heart wrenched by Harry's crying, Tom knelt before Harry, putting a towel into the other man's still-slippery hands. "Harry, I'm so sorry that I've made you cry." Tom's voice quivered dangerously. "Please forgive me. I love you. You're my best friend, my lover, the mother of my child. I need you in my life, and I want to make love to you right now desperately, I really do." He stroked the glossy black hair; Harry was still sobbing, shaking his head and whispering no, no. Tom spoke a little louder. "It's just that I want even more to wait for us to make love as men--until our wedding night."

It took a moment for those words to sink in. When they did, Harry raised his face from the towel, wiped his nose, and sniffed. "Wedding night? Did you say wedding night?"

Tom nodded, beginning to smile hopefully. "I wanted to propose tonight, Har, but you jumped the gun on me. No--I wanted to propose almost two weeks ago, right before we hit that damnable asteroid field. Harry, I want to marry you. I want you to marry me. I want us to raise Mirajean and maybe even have another child and live happily ever after." He kissed the trembling hands that had recently been massaging his back so efficiently. "And I wanted to wait to ask you until we were both men again, because I want to prove to you that I didn't fall in love with you when I saw you as a woman. I probably fell in love with you in that sleazy bar on Deep Space Nine. I don't care what sex you are, or what sex I am, on what day of the week. I just want you, Harry. I love you. Please say yes."

"Yes."

The kiss came so suddenly it knocked Tom backward. After a moment he realized he was lying on the floor with Harry on top of him, that delicious mouth drinking from his and their cocks pressed so close together they felt like one organ. 'Ah, what the hell,' he thought, and wrapped both arms and legs around the man he loved, kissing him back and moving just a little against the pressure of his weight--

Harry's outcry came only seconds after Tom's, and then the two of them were giggling helplessly despite, or perhaps because of having come while fully dressed.

---

The moment she saw those two beaming faces on the other side of her desk, Captain Janeway knew. She wasn't a particularly intuitive person, but for once she was absolutely certain her hunch was correct. She tried very, very hard to keep a straight face, a captain's demeanor.

Their joined hands were visible as they stood side by side. Tom cleared his throat and said, "Captain, we'd like to get married, and we'd like you to do the honors."

To hell with a captain's demeanor. Janeway got up and threw her arms around both of them. "I'd love to."

---

They waited no longer than it took to plan a fairly simple ceremony followed by a lavish party: four days, to be exact. Sammie and B'Elanna were asked to stand up with them and to help to plan the festivities. Chakotay juggled schedules so that everyone who RSVP'd the shipwide invitation could be present. Neelix was in rapture at the thought of preparing for a big reception. The Captain replicated herself a formal dress uniform and consulted with the two grooms on the texts they wished to use. Naomi was deputized to take care of Mirajean during the ceremony. The computer logged an ever-increasing number of requests for menus of clothing and replication of same.

---

The guests gathered in the holodeck, in Sandrine's, of course. They formed a ring several rows deep, centered on the captain. Emeralds sparkled at her ears, and the hem of her dress uniform touched the deck. Of the holographic characters, only Sandrine herself was present, leaning on the bar in the background and smiling fondly. After a few minutes of silence, the doors to the holodeck opened once again, and the wedding party entered to the strains of the Venus movement from "The Planets," by Gustav Holst. Tom went to the left of the circle of guests and Harry to the right, each accompanied by his attendant. When they reached a point halfway around the circle, the guests parted, and the two women led the two men toward the center of the circle and one another.

B'Elanna was dressed in a traditional Klingon formal gown, in deep maroon crushed velvet, with a massive gold necklace showing the sigils of her mother's house. Sam Wildman's gown was a simple sleeveless affair in shimmering silvery blue, with a strand of pearls. Naomi, dressed in sapphire blue with matching ribbons in her fine hair, stepped out of the circle of guests, pushing Miranda Eugenia clad in frothy white lace and ensconced in an old-fashioned carriage the Captain had called a perambulator.

Both Tom and Harry had come to their wedding as men, by mutual agreement. Harry had chosen to wear traditional Chinese dress: a tunic and trousers of quilted forest-green silk embroidered with red and gold, with flat slippers. His elbow-length hair was done in a braid finished off with a silk tie.

Tom came dressed in something an eighteenth-century English gentleman might have worn: a fawn-colored coat with long tails over a white shirt with a ruffled front and snug knee-length breeches. White stockings and buckled black leather shoes completed the ensemble.

The two of them came up facing one another and the Captain, B'Elanna to Tom's left and Sammie to Harry's right. Smiling, the Captain allowed the musical selection to fade out and then began the traditional words of the Starfleet ceremony:

"Since the days of the first wooden vessels, all ship masters have had one happy privilege, that of uniting two people in the bonds of matrimony. So it is that we are gathered here today to witness as Thomas Eugene Paris and Harry Liu Kim swear their vows to one another."

She turned to Tom. "Do you, Thomas, take Harry to be your lawfully wedded spouse?"

Tom's gaze was only for Harry. "I do."

Janeway turned to Harry. "Do you, Harry, take Tom to be your lawfully wedded spouse?"

Harry's gaze never wavered. "I do."

Janeway felt herself tearing up. She softly cleared her throat. "Then join hands and make your vows in the presence of these witnesses."

Tom took Harry's right hand in his own right hand, and Harry's left hand in his own left hand, so that their wrists were crossed. "You are my best friend, my lover, and the mother of my child. I want and I will have no other partner but you. As our hands are joined now, so may our hearts and our lives be joined also, as long as we both shall live. To you and to this vow I pledge my honor."

They loosed their hands; then, Harry took Tom's hands in the same fashion. "You are my best friend, my lover, and the father of my child. I want and I will have no other partner but you. As our hands are joined now, so may our hearts and our lives be joined also, as long as we both shall live. To you and to this vow I pledge my honor."

Tears were running down quite a few faces, including the Captain's and all the members of the wedding party. Janeway sniffed and went on, "If you have any tokens of this vow, you may exchange them now."

Tom received from B'Elanna, and Harry from Sam, the plain gold wedding bands they had agreed on. Silently and with great tenderness, Tom took Harry's left hand and slipped the ring onto the third finger. Harry gave Tom his ring in the same way. His solemn face broke into a dazzling smile.

Janeway put her hands on both their shoulders. "Then by my authority as Captain of the USS Voyager of the Federation Starfleet, I now pronounce you married. The grooms may kiss!"

The two of them hardly heard the roar that went up as their lips met. It was a short kiss and not very passionate, but it lasted forever in intention, and it was remembered forever by both of them.

---

Tom let go of Harry and seized the Captain. "Computer, play selection Glenn Miller wedding music!" The brassy opening notes of "In the Mood" filled the room, and Tom whirled the Captain around the open circle, which had now become a dance floor. Abandoned, Harry laughingly grabbed Sammie, and B'Elanna dragged Chakotay, resplendent in cream with dark brown leather applique, onto the dance floor. The rest of the guests paired off, for the most part, with Tuvok and Seven standing side by side, contemplating the patterns made by the dancers.

"Curious," Seven observed, "the partners do not dance with one another."

"I believe it is a symbolic way of sharing their joy with others," Tuvok replied.

"You look really beautiful, Captain," Tom said. "And thank you."

"Thank you, Tom, for giving me the privilege of marrying you two." She permitted herself to give him a little squeeze. "I think you'll be very happy together. I'm sure of it."

Tom surprised her with a quick kiss on the cheek. "I wouldn't have had the nerve, without your encouragement."

"He's mine now, permanently," Harry exulted to Sammie. She sniffled.

"I miss...."

"I know," he whispered, stroking her hair.

"So when are you gonna make your move?" B'Elanna inquired.

"Hmm?"

"Don't play coy with me. I see you looking at the Captain while you're dancing with me, and if you haven't seen her checking you out in these trousers, well, I have, believe me." B'Elanna didn't see it, but she felt Chakotay's hot blush.

"Look at that," Tom said, holding Harry firmly against him.

"What?" Harry nuzzled his husband's neck.

"The Captain, dancing with Chakotay."

The two couples passed one another, smiling. The Commander's eyes were sparkling like the Captain's earrings.

"It won't be too much longer," Tom said positively.

"You think?"

Tom grinned smugly. "They've got us for an example, now."

The party went on and on, fueled by love and mirth and a table full of real alcoholic beverages contributed by about half the crew. Later on Tom and Harry each remembered little vignettes, like holopictures: The Doctor holding Mirajean in his arms and smiling tenderly over her... Chakotay watching the Captain from a distance, and smiling ruefully when Tom caught his eyes... Sammie singing a Gershwin song, "Our Love Is Here To Stay," in a sweet, torchy soprano... The long table piled high with gifts wrapped in gold or silver, trailing red and green and blue ribbons... Sandrine smiling as fondly on Tom as if she were the woman he had known in Marseilles, not just a holographic simulation... Everyone smiling, for once, and hands that clasped and arms that embraced and good wishes murmured in the formulas of a dozen cultures.


It was only when they were back in their quarters, to which Tom's things had been moved earlier that day, and to which the wedding presents were helpfully beamed, that the two of them realized they hadn't eaten all day. Light-headed with joy and hunger, they collapsed on the couch.

"We really should replicate something," Harry murmured against Tom's lips.

"Yeah, I'm famished," Tom replied, licking his way down Harry's throat.

They jumped simultaneously when the door chimed. "We're still clothed," Harry observed mischievously. "Come in!"

Neelix entered, followed by B'Elanna. "We, ah, noticed that you didn't eat much at the reception--" Neelix began.

"--And you probably wouldn't think to replicate something," B'Elanna finished. "So we brought you some leftovers." She put the tray on the coffee table. Neelix did the same.

"Well, we'll be out of your way now." Despite his words, Neelix seemed inclined to linger, but B'Elanna grabbed his arm and dragged him out.

Laughing, Tom and Harry picked over the cold meats, the pastries, the oddly-colored vegetables, until the dizziness of an empty stomach went away, and only the dizziness of being newlyweds remained. Quite a while passed before they noticed they were just sitting side by side, smiling foolishly at one another.

---

"Well," Tom said.

"Well," Harry echoed.

"Deep subject." Harry laughed much too hard at the feeble joke. 'He must really love me.'

Tom reached out and took Harry's hand. "Oh, look, we have matching rings."

"What a coincidence. How about that." Harry grinned. 'He married me. Finally!'

Tom stroked Harry's cheek with the back of his hand. "I really love you, you know. I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you."

Harry turned into the caress, lightly kissed Tom's fingers. "I know."

They sat there, together, touching, silent. 'Why is this so hard?' Tom wondered. 'Why don't we just rip each other's clothes off? Is it always this scary to get what you really want?'

'I'm afraid to move,' Harry thought. 'I want it to be perfect. I'm afraid I'll spoil it.'

Very slowly and gradually, almost imperceptibly, as a sunbeam will move unnoticed across a room, as the stars move unnoticed at great speed across the galaxies, their heads turned, inclined together, lips sought other lips, fitted close. The kiss started shyly, lips brushing, noses bumping, hands still entwined between them. So soft. Hesitant, really. Afraid to move too quickly, too soon.

Then a murmur, whose didn't matter, and Harry felt Tom's breath along his cheek and put out the tip of his tongue at the same moment that Tom put out the tip of his tongue. A jolt went through both of them equivalent to sticking one's hand in a warp core. Mouths opened, tongues swirled together greedily, tasting, re-learning, hungry and thirsty for one another, but still they sat knee to knee on the couch, hand in hand, that was all.

They broke apart only when both of them were desperate for air. For a moment they just stared at one another, brown eyes into blue, blue eyes into brown, feeling the energy swirl between them: lust, love, maybe something more. Then Harry grinned, the same wicked grin he had hidden from Tom the night he tried to seduce him, and Tom proposed marriage. "This is going to be really good," he said, his voice almost a growl, and Tom pounced on him.

The elaborate wedding garments flew everywhere. The coffee table was kicked aside, with a few choice oaths, knocking over a candelabrum and a couple of padds. Harry fell back on the couch, Tom on top of him and trying to undo Harry's braid without letting go of his mouth. Harry wrapped his arms around Tom's back, hooked his leg over Tom's, and ground against him unabashedly, their erections rubbing together like sticks and kindling an inner fire instantly.

Tom ran his hands through the waves of black hair, buried his face in it against Harry's neck. "I've waited for this for so long," he ground out, dangerously close to coming already. "I've waited to have you naked in my arms, wanting me as much as I want you, just like this, and now I want to do everything, everything, all at once."

Harry moaned passionately, as turned on by Tom's words as by the hot kisses on his lips and face and throat. "Yes, everything, all of it," he affirmed, "touching and tasting and sucking and fucking and anything else we can think of, oh god that feels good don't stop!"

Harry threw back his head as Tom's mouth closed over a nipple. Even in male gender, his nipples felt extra-sensitive these days from nursing Mira, and oh, gods, yes, Tom was doing exactly what he liked, wanted, needed--sweet flicking and nibbling and sucking and the friction of cock against cock against belly--

Thrashing wildly, Harry cried out as the pleasure burst out of him, spurting hotly between their writhing bodies. Tom's arms were tight around his back, fingers tangled in his hair, until he relaxed, limp, unable to open his eyes or stop smiling.

He did open his eyes when he realized that Tom had lifted him off the couch. "What are you doing?"

"Taking you to bed, Har. It's a nice big bed, remember? No reason we have to stay on the--couch--oof!"

Harry hit the mattress and bounced a little. "Idiot," he said, pulling Tom down against him. "If you throw your back out, we won't be able to fuck."

Tom's hands were in that long black hair again. "Can't have that, guess I'll just have to rest a minute...."

Harry wrapped his arms around Tom and pulled and wiggled to get their two bodies as close as possible. Tom seemed absorbed in playing with Harry's hair, combing through the silky strands, draping it over himself, tickling Harry's cheek with the ends. Harry twitched and chuckled and began kissing Tom's jaw and neck, since they were handy, sliding his leg a little further between Tom's so he could push Tom gently onto his back.

Tom sighed beneath the curtain of Harry's hair. He ran his hands down the smooth, muscular back and up the strong arms that framed him as Harry worked his way kissing and licking and biting around and down that long slender throat he'd so long admired, until he reached Tom's chest. Tom twisted with pleasure as Harry's lips wandered through the fuzz on his chest, seeking out the pink nipples as if he didn't already know where they were. It seemed to Harry that they recovered faster from orgasm, as men, since gaining the ability to become women, which was fine with him. Harry was already getting hard again, and he could feel Tom gradually beginning to poke into his stomach. Tom was thrashing a little under his touch as Harry teased his nipples with fingers and lips, and that only made Harry more aroused, more hungry. Tom's hands gripped Harry's shoulders, fingers wound into his hair again, and then Tom dragged him up and kissed him, filling Harry's mouth with his tongue and then yielding the same, moaning.

Harry drew away, gently. "We're in no hurry," he whispered. He rolled over onto his back, and Tom came after him, resuming the kiss briefly and following it up with clever, curious hands that roamed everywhere, spreading Harry's hair on the pillow, kneading his shoulders, gently teasing his nipples some more, exploring the contours of muscle, dipping into the flat navel. Tom loved the sleek solidity of his husband, the spiciness of his kiss, the firm weight between his legs, the beautiful hard curve of his ass. Harry sighed as lips followed hands, moist kisses everywhere, nowhere long enough to drive him mad, but it was driving him mad and he reached for Tom, another relentless kiss and a deep moan that became a groan when Harry got his hand on Tom's cock. That hand went up and down on the length of his cock, stroking steadily, fingers varying the pressure as nimbly as if he were playing the clarinet. Tom looked up into intense heat in Harry's eyes, desire and tenderness contemplating him, and felt himself dissolving as Harry stoked faster, "You're so beautiful, Tom," he murmured, and Tom poured himself out almost with a scream, spilling his essence over Harry as Harry had over him.

They lay twined together for a few minutes, not moving except for playing with one another's wedding bands. Harry smoothed the cooling semen into Tom's skin, loving the grassy odor of it. "You know, I already feel like we've been married forever."

Tom nodded. "Me too." He kissed the top of his husband's head. "So what do you want to do next?"

"What do you want to do?"

They looked at one another and laughed. Then Harry smiled winningly. "I have an idea."

He maneuvered around on the big bed so that he was lying on his side, his head to Tom's feet. Tom got the idea, and they shifted position minutely until each could take hold of the other's cock and get his mouth on it.

Harry thought back to the day he'd fantasized about this in the shower, which had shifted him to masculinity for the first time since his pregnancy. He loved this man's cock, as long and elegant as the rest of him, rose-colored in arousal, with a delicately pointed tip. He flicked his tongue over the tip, holding the shaft in his hand, and reveled in being able to feel it thicken, stiffen, quiver, in feeling Tom's response vibrate thorugh Harry's own flesh. A few gentle strokes, a few more exploratory licks, and Tom was fully hard, the slit in the head beginning to drip. With a soft moan, Harry sucked the full length into his mouth.

Tom curled his fingers around Harry's thick, plum-colored cock. He'd been thinking about doing this ever since they'd done a sixty-nine as women. He'd always had a weakness for men who were thicker than he was, and Harry was thick and so beautifully shaped, almost straight. He took just the head into his mouth and swirled his tongue around it, passing lightly over the sensitive slit while his thumb rubbed the ridge behind the head. Harry shuddered, pressed forward a little, and enclosed all of Tom in his mouth, giving a slow, thorough suction. Groaning in his belly, Tom went down on Harry, until his nose brushed silky black hairs, and ran his tongue over the fullness of it.

Harry's hand sought Tom's ass, stroking, kneading, and Tom shifted just enough to invite a questing finger into the cleft, where it stroked the tight hole but did not press in. Tom returned the gesture, cupping Harry's ass with both hands, squeezing the firm mounds, and spreading them gently for his touch. Harry thrust deeper into Tom's mouth, his noises not heard but felt by his lover, and received Tom's cock deeper as well, so perfect, they were always in synch this way, always had been--

Just the tip of Tom's finger slipped carefully into Harry's asshole, and Harry lost it, trying desperately not to gag his husband as he shuddered with release. Tom said, or tried to say something, incoherent, and Harry pressed one finger into Tom's body and swallowed greedily as the other man shook with fierce spasms, letting go of Harry's limp flesh and crying out hoarsely.

Neither of them moved for quite a while. Harry's forehead rested against Tom's thigh, Tom's cheek was pillowed on Harry's leg. Eventually Harry dragged himself back to the head of the bed, and they rocked into one another's embrace and kissed again, on and on, insatiable, lips, tongue, teeth, the taste of come and the heat of desire, until both of them were trembling, feeling yet another erection come on. Hands started wandering again, skin rubbed against skin, and Tom nipped Harry's throat and licked the salt of it, humming with pleasure, until Harry groaned and pulled away. "I want you to fuck me," he whispered.

Tom closed his eyes in near-pain as his cock sprang up yet again at those words. "Oh, Harry. Oh, yes."

Harry reached over, opened the drawer of his night table, and pulled out a tube of lubricant, which he placed in Tom's shaking hands. He turned over and got on his knees, pillowing his head on his arms and moving his knees wide apart, wanting it as deeply as possible.

Tom swallowed hard at the sight of Harry, black hair falling over the pillow and his arms, gorgeous ass raised and knees parted, the delicate opening exposed between the muscular curves. Tom's hands were shaking so badly he wasn't sure he could make Harry ready. He wanted to ram it in now and he wanted to keep this moment forever, Harry so beautiful, ready to be taken. Kneeling over him, between his calves, he kissed his way from the nape of Harry's neck down the smooth arch of his spine until he was breathing warmly into the cleft of Harry's buttocks. "Please," Harry murmured, muffled but understandable. Tom ran his tongue from the space behind Harry's balls up to the base of his spine, passing smoothly over the sensitive opening.

Harry quivered. "Yessss," he moaned, and Tom licked him again, touching the tight pucker more firmly now. His skin prickled all over with wanting. Harry moved his hips, asking more, and Tom shifted in closer, opening the tube and squeezing lubricant onto his fingers as he probed Harry with his tongue. "Ohhh, Tom," Harry breathed, pleading. Tom thrust his tongue into the ring of muscle, twice, three, four times, then drew back and replaced it with a dripping finger.

Groaning hoarsely, Harry pressed back against his husband, taking in the penetrating finger, wordlessly begging for more. Tom watched his husband as he fucked him in the ass with one careful finger, watched the opening loosen around his touch, watched Harry move sinuously in response, heard the quickening breathing and rising moans, felt his own head spin, and then replaced one finger with two. Harry threw back his head, rising up on his elbows now, losing any control. "More," he rasped, and Tom went for three fingers, thrusting in deep and hard, his cock hurting and his mind overloaded, seeing how Harry wanted to be fucked, wanting to fuck him.

He bent and kissed the hard curve of Harry's ass. "Do you want my cock, love?"

"Oh, yes, yes please--"

Harry whimpered, helpless to prevent it, as the fingers that filled him were withdrawn. One hand came to rest on his hip, and then he felt it--the slow pressure that expanded him still more, that filled him completely, that went to his core. He thrust back against Tom, needing and wanting, and both his hips were clasped firmly as Tom pulled him back, pushing forward, until he was all the way in.

They were still for a moment. Harry looked over his shoulder, face tight with need. "I've wanted this--for so long," he gasped. It was a struggle to speak, but he wanted, needed to. "To feel you inside me--like this--to have you fuck me." He moved convulsively, clenching around his lover. "Tom, please. Please."

If Tom hadn't come twice already, it would have been over right then. Harry was so tight, so hot, so eager, clasping the whole length of Tom's cock with hungry muscles. Tom moved back and thrust in again, hearing Harry moan, hearing him gasp again, "Please," and Tom bent forward, running his hands from his lover's hips up to his shoulders, and then he grabbed on and started moving in earnest, thrusting hard, fucking Harry good just as he'd asked him to, taking him and being taken.

"Oh gods," Tom groaned. "Oh GODS--" No holding back any more, plunging home again and again with all his strength, somehow wanting to break Harry apart, to fuck his soul, to give his soul to Harry as the orgasm rushed out of him, hot, incandescent, Harry urging him, "Yes, come in me, come, come," and Tom came, drowning in the flames, weeping and crying out and seeing everything so bright it was blinding, screaming, until he saw no more.

It took Tom a good deal longer to recover, this time. He came to himself wrapped in Harry's arms, his face against Harry's chest; Harry must have moved him while he was out. "I think I found God with that one," he mumbled. Harry chuckled. "Or Goddess. Or all of the above."

A kiss on his forehead, and a hand running through the strawberry curls. "All of the above sounds good."

Tom drew away, with drowsy lack of speed, brushing a hand over Harry's erection. "Well, look at this." He took hold of it consideringly, and Harry groaned in his throat. "Feel this." He stroked up and down, almost casually, a grin spreadin over his face as Harry shuddered. "I know what you can do with this," he murmured into Harry's mouth.

"And what would that be?" Harry lifted his chin to give Tom better access to his throat.

"You can fuck me in the ass and come inside me, lover."

Harry bent swiftly and nipped Tom's shoulder, making him yelp. "I'd love to, beautiful. No, stay right where you are."

Harry groped around for the tube of lubricant and, finding it, moved between Tom's legs. "I want you to lie on your back, and put your legs over my shoulders, and look into my eyes while I fuck you." Tom shivered. "I'm gonna fuck you at least as hard as you fucked me."

"Fuck me as hard as you can, lover," Tom whispered, and whimpered as a wet finger found his asshole.

So tight, and so responsive. Whimpering as Harry felt for the tender gland. Eyes like sapphires, whirling like galaxies. Lips soft, moist, open. The tendons stood out in the slender neck as Harry went from one to two fingers, every muscle in Tom's chest and belly in relief. Which was better, to find ecstasy in Tom's touch, or to know that he could give ecstasy in return? Tom wailed helplessly as Harry went for the gland again. "Do you like this?" "Oh, yes." "Want more?"

"Please, please...."

Harry drizzled more lube over his fingers and carefully opened Tom with three of them, feeling Tom thrust against him, biting his lip. He twisted those fingers in as deep as they would go, savoring the open-mouthed moans that were just the same as when Tom was a woman, only deeper in pitch. "I'm gonna fuck you good, Tom," Harry whispered, "go so deep inside you, you'll feel it for days...."

"Do it now, Harry," Tom panted, "do it now."

Harry obeyed. He lifted the long, lean legs and draped them over his shoulders, creeping closer until the drenched head of his cock nudged the moist opening. Tom reached out and took hold of Harry's arms, and Harry thrust forward and went in, so easily, it was only a heartbeat before he could go no deeper.

Tom gulped, gasped, writhed, trying to bring his husband in further, as if Harry's whole body could fit inside him. That seemed to be, in essence, what he wanted, what the whole point of sex was meant to be: To be absolutely one flesh, and heart and mind and soul as well. Those fathomless brown eyes were pouring into his, everything Harry felt right there, and Tom struggled to keep his eyes open, to show what he felt, to give and receive as freely as his beloved.

Harry began to move, gliding slickly in and out of Tom's body, feeling the shift of muscles around him, the heat of desire, of lust. He wanted this to last forever; he wanted it to overwhelm him now. He wanted to keep coming forever, and Tom with him, never to separate their bodies. Tom was arching beneath him, back bent in two, answering every thrust, and saying, "Harry," over and over, one word to express everything he felt. "I love you," Harry moaned. Tom bucked against him, clenched around him. "Harry," he groaned, "Harry, do it, don't make me wait, please, please--"

Harry bent forward to lock his mouth on Tom's, swallowing those agonized sounds, feeling them, as he drove harder and harder into his husband's willing body, feeling it sweep inexorably over him like the tide going in, a sun going nova, everything turning blue and gold as he broke the kiss and looked into Tom's eyes and Tom hissed, "Now," and it was, it was now forever, one superlative moment in which Harry took everything, gave everything, came violently within his lover's body, "I love you!" and collapsed, drifting in a sea of white light.

They must both have drifted off to sleep after that. Tom woke, feeling vaguely crushed, to discover Harry snoring on top of him. Harry woke as Tom pushed him away; he had long since slipped out of his lover. They settled comfortably in one another's arms, side by side. Harry sighed deeply.

"Worth the wait?" Tom asked, caressing his husband's back.

"Yeah, definitely."

"I love you, Harry. I love you so much it scares me. I love you so much nothing else feels as good." Tom smiled. "Except loving Mira."

"Yeah." Harry pressed a lazy kiss on a nearby shoulder, changed position. "I love you, too, Tom. Always."

They were both silent for a couple of minutes. Then Tom squeezed Harry. "You ready to go to sleep?"

After a moment, Harry shook his head. "No, I'm not really sleepy. Gods know I can't come any more right now, but I want to talk with you, be with you, maybe eat something. Why don't we open the wedding presents?"

Tom rolled off of the bed, groaning, and searched for his robe. Harry disappeared into the bathroom briefly, came back in his own robe with Tom's in his hand. Tom slipped it on, grinning, and the two of them went hand in hand into the living room. The evening, and their marriage, had just begun.


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End