Red


Let's not beat around the bush. I came here to have someone beat around my bush. She must have known this, because she's here looking jealous. Dressed to the nines. She does everything by numbers.

'And what do you know about Risan Sunrises?' I press my toes to the floor and revolve on my barstool to face her. 'About as much as you know about coffee, I'll bet.' I beam at her like one of these brilliant drinks. And she smiles right back. She looks so much softer every time I see her now. Every time I look away from her and back at her, she looks even softer. Her dress is beautiful, colourless and subtle. It looks like a soft ion shower sewn together.

'I know enough to inform you that it will have the opposite effect to coffee.' She puts a hand on her hip. She's stolen my move.

'Coffee? That stuff? Never liked it.' My ingenious joke doesn't touch her. She's looking at the empty stool next to me. I lean over gracefully and drag it, screaming against the floor, six inches closer to me. Everyone looks around. I give them a wave and a wink. She's going to sit next to me.

'Can I get you one?' I nod to my glass.

She doesn't even hesitate. 'Yes.'

I don't flinch. We're pretending this is normal. She drinks them every day, of course. I'm sure. 'Two more Risan Sunrises.' The second one is for me. After this one. I'm feeling euphoric. And I'm not even down to green on my first.

I've never seen so many colours in one place as there are in this room. Some of them I don't recognise. The bar beneath my elbows traps spheres of light beneath its magic glass surface. I look up above me and they're overhead. They're reflected everywhere like fairies. In the red and the blue and the green, the walls, the windows and the floor. All along the bar, colourful people are sitting and talking colourfully. I've had enough of grey. This is the perfect place to be right now, with her. I love it.

'Seven of Nine. We're going to have a good time tonight. We're home. We're free. It's time to let our hair down.'

Of course, she takes this literally. I feel the look on my face transform as it falls about her shoulders in waves. It's white in the barlight.


Orange


My knees are pressed hard against the bar, but they've stopped hurting. I'm anchored, I'm in control. God, she's gorgeous.

'You do know about Risa, don't you? I assume you've heard about its reputation for... sensuality?' She nods. I take the cherry out of her sunrise and roll it around my mouth, pinching the stalk between my fingers. Spinning it, teasing it. I feel very seductive. I balance the cherry on my bottom teeth and bite into it.

She looks at me like I'm the only thing in her mind. I've elbowed out a million equations and answers and I'm standing in her mind, filling it up, looking out of her eyes. I take another long drink. 'What are the constituents of this beverage?'

So she still wants to be the student. 'The red is vodka and cochineal. That much I know. The yellow is vodka and something with egg. And saffron. From...'

'Crocuses.'

'Yes. Never pegged you as a Terran horticulturalist.'

She grins beautifully at this. 'I find earth flowers fascinating. The colours are amazingly… diverse.'

I suppose after so long surrounded by green, diversity of colour is delicious. She doesn't stop questioning. When is her curiosity going to run dry? 'And how do they separate the colours?'

'Do you know, I'm really not sure.' I realise with a wash of pride that this is the first time I've admitted I don't know something. To her. Do you know, maybe ever? It brings the conversation to an unusual halt, and we drink on.


Yellow


'You are truly, truly beautiful tonight.' I think I've said that already. But I don't care. The empty glasses in front of us, which look like ten but might be five in this room where everything's reflected and we're seeing double, catch every colour and look as if they're full again. I can't stop touching my face and wishing it was hers. I stroke my cheeks with my fingertips, steeple my fingers over my chin, scratch my forehead, play with my ears. She watches me very closely.

'Thank you, Captain. I know.' Somehow she manages to say this modestly. And I don't notice that she doesn't return the compliment. I lean in a little closer and notice that she's shaded her eyelids with a deep green eyeshadow. It makes them look even larger. They're wide, wet and sparkling with the sunrises. I feel like my blood's sparkling, too, and I lean forward, feeling the bubbles rise in my chest and dance along my arms. I slide one hand on top of hers on the bar. I play my fingers on the back of her softer, pinker hand. Gently and daringly I imagine I'm making it like her other one. I draw another invisible strong spider of metal along her human bones. The cocktail turns to hot metal in my blood, and it drips from my fingertips and sticks to her lovely skin.

'Do you mind me doing this?'

'No. You may continue.' With her permission I really start to play. I lay my hand on top of hers and flatten it to the bar. Then I draw around it in a thick line of sweet sweat, with the tip of my index finger. She lifts up her fingertips slightly and I slide my fingers between hers and curl them under to her palm, locking her in. Now she has a human implant to match the borg.


Green


'I think that everyone should see this bar. Everyone. Tuvok, B'Elanna, Tom… Whatshisname.'

'Harry.'

'Him too.' Poor Harry. I suppose he's forgettable. But then everyone's becoming forgettable. Apart from her. She's so close to me I can't forget about her for a second. Her shoulder is supporting mine and her hand is in my lap. Not moving, but feeling very hot. Her hair is sticking to my neck.

'You want me to teach you somethin?' Now I've had time to think, I'm pissed off at my gap in knowledge about cocktail colour separation. But I have a lot of knowledge, really. I've got a lot to teach her and she needs me badly. She nods lazily.

'Risa has three suns.' I know my Astrometrics expert knew that. But she has the grace to pretend she didn't. 'Aha. And they all rise at diff… Within ten minutes of the other. Each other. It's beautiful.' She nods lazily again. 'It makes… a lot of colours.' She giggles. 'But it means Risa doesn't have a sunrise.' She frowns. 'Nnn. It has sunrises.'

'Beautiful.' She closes her eyes and I guess she's seeing it behind them.


Blue


'I hate this place, let's go.'

I really can't stand up. For a moment I feel trapped. Maybe I'll just have to sleep here. But she drags me to the door, surprisingly strong. Probably the metal in her legs. She falls vertically against the doorframe and I fall on top of her. I brace one heel against the opposite side and push myself so hard against her, my buttons bite into my stomach and my tights twist. She begins to lift up the back of my dress and I want her to. But someone says,

'Take it home, ladies.' I nearly say, 'We are home, Fucker.'


Indigo


We hold each other up through the slow walk back to the hotel. She forces me warmly and limply against a wall and smothers me with her lips. My hands are on her ass and my legs are around her thighs. My mouth is full of her tongue and my head is full of nothing. She feels so strong, she could hold me up forever. I hang from her like a baby on its dad's back. I want her to take care of me forever. I can smell her dress and taste her spit and feel her wrenching scars beneath my fingers as my hands tear at her sides. I give her a hard bite beneath her chin and she gives me an excruciating nip on the backside. We're seeing who can wake the other up first.

Her knees bend and I ride her down to the floor. She stretches out her legs and I straddle her like I once straddled chairs at the Academy to seem boyish. It worked on a few women. I'm thinking of them now, remembering how much I like this. Sex. I'm an animal.

Her hair is caught on the rough surface of the bricks she slid down, spreading up and around her head, static and electric like her body. Everywhere I touch her I get a glorious shock.

I take her by the front of her dress and press her underneath me. I want her underneath me. We're not stopping. Part of me questions the sanity of doing it out here. Most of me knows I've lost it. I look down into her cleavage. I've got to press my tongue down there. Wiggle my weak tongue down into the hollow. My breath warms my cheeks and every wet noise echoes.

I have to lie back. She pants in my ear and throws an arm across my breasts. I may as well look at the stars. Something I haven't done properly since I came back down from them. They're very pretty. But so is who's lying beside me. She sucks hard on my ear and I think of all those suckers still up there. Poor lost, hard-working souls, one for every star. But there are as many people down here, on this planet, living just for pleasure. I think I'll stay here forever. With this magnificent buzz and this magnificent woman wrapped around me. I'm so happy.

I twist over and am sick in the gutter in a spectrum of colour. Everything here's beautiful. I watch it thread down the drain in a ribbon of light. Seven seems unconcerned. My mouth tastes of reconstituted rainbow. She kisses me anyway. She doesn't care.

I hitch up her dress and scrape my way down her body. My bra rides up and scratches my nipples and my knickers tear at the crack of my behind, but I don't care. I burrow my way into her panties. I smell her and the wet street beneath her. Her lovely skirt is soaking up the dirty rainwater. I circle my tongue inside her and chew around her carelessly with all of my teeth, washing my mouth out with her. I eat her hard. Even through the haze I can see and smell her clearly. Her sex is strange, ugly and overflowing, it smells sickly and looks sore, weeping white and I love it. Infected with everything messy she used to hide under that polished catsuit. I don't care. It's beautiful.




Violet


'Another, I need another! Curl them. Do it hard.' There's no space between my mind and my mouth. I say everything I want. It's an un-edited, undignified, unending, fucking unbelievable fuck. I'm so heavy and full I think I'm going to rain on her. She's grunting and God it turns me on.

'Tell me when... Tell me when you climax.'

'Don't f... don't you stop yet. I'm not there. I'm not there. I'm nearly there.'

She's intent and eager, desperate to please me. And she's doing so well. I'm groaning and choking. It's better than when I masturbate. And it's never been better. 'Bend your thumb over and touch my clitoris.'

'Yes Captain.' I laugh openly, she sounds like she's reporting for a meeting. I look up at the grey hotel ceiling and the sunrises are painting it as many beautiful colours as the bar. She's doing what I asked and it feels just perfect. I can see myself, washed inside from my feet upwards in a strong, hot flush of tinted light, rising quickly, looking for a window and bursting from my mouth in her name.

As morning approaches we start to sober. We help each other dress in the grey room and I lead her out of my basic suite into the wet street. I lock the door with difficulty. We walk to the edge of the hotel's view, where the violet Risan grass meets the indigo sea. We stand before it, in all its iridescent and multi-coloured liquid glory. A genuine Risan Sunrise. It's as damned ugly as the drink, but we don't care.