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Seven doesn’t know it the moment it happens, but she figures out what’s happening pretty quickly. She recognizes the vision first from her three days being human, blinks and then instinctively reaches for her eyebrow implant. But her eyebrows don’t feel like her own.
Her human own.
Seven still struggles to make the distinction in her mind sometimes.
She knows this face though. She’s touched Raffi’s so many times: in the dark, in the light, in the sun, lit only by ship console beams.
The probability of a transplanted consciousness during this exercise was slim but not zero.
Horror settles in her stomach as she calls out in a voice not her own.
“Raffi!”
Raffi blinks when she wakes. She sees grids. Lines and lines and lines. She has to close her eyes, because it gives her a bit of a headache.
She opens one eye, and the grids are gone.
She opens the other, and they’re back.
Grids for only one of her eyes. She probably needs to get to Sick Bay.
When she sits up, everything feels off. Her center of gravity. The ease with which she sits.
A flash catches the corner of her eye. It’s her hand.
It’s implant.
Slowly, she stretches one leg out in front of her, then the other. Boots that are not her own. Pants that are (but Seven’s always made such a habit of pilfering Raffi’s garments).
“Oh shit,” whispers Raffi.
That’s when she hears her own voice calling for her.
Raffi sits staring at herself.
Well, that’s not exactly right.
Raffi sits in front of Seven-in-Raffi’s-body. Is it still Raffi’s body if Raffi isn’t in it?
The whole thing is fucking fascinating.
Seven-in-Raffi doesn’t look convinced.
“You okay, babe?” she asks.
“I’m thinking,” Seven replies. Is Raffi’s voice really that low?
“About what?”
Absentmindedly, Seven raises a hand into Raffi’s hair, then drops it. “Do you hunger?” she asks, finally.
“For food? Not right now, but we’d just eaten.”
“Not for food.” Seven considers. “For connection.”
Raffi shakes her head. “It’s all the usual.” Seven still looks troubled. “You’re asking if I want the collective.”
Face otherwise stone-like, Seven nods.
“I don’t think so? Would I know it if I’ve never felt it before?”
“I’m…uncertain.”
“There’s a lot of sensory stuff going on,” says Raffi. “I don’t know if I can process much else.”
Seven nods.
“Honey, it’s okay.” She looks around, and there’s something beautiful to it, seeing two worlds at once. “This is how you see the world all the time, huh?”
“Your mind will adapt,” says Seven quietly.
“Oh! Okay. I just mean, it’s kind of nice, to see what you see.”
“I’m sorry,” whispers Seven.
Hugging herself (her body?) feels kind of weird. The good kind of weird. “For what?” asks Raffi. “It’s an accident. Tell me what you’re feeling?”
But Seven doesn’t reply, just clings to Raffi with a lot of strength.
At the time, sleep had seemed like the best part of being human, because Seven had craved it so badly. It had felt nice, to let her mind rest for a while, to curl into Raffi and have it feel like home. That was what being human with Raffi would have felt like.
Now, Seven just finds it a vulnerability she’d rather shake.
“How do I know when I need to regenerate?” asks Raffi. All of her questions come from a place of pure curiosity. She’s always seen Seven in the right ways, the ways it counted. This whole thing to her is another way to know someone she loves.
And Seven is terrified. “Ideally you won’t,” she says. “Ideally we change back before we have to.”
“Okay. But how will I know ?”
Seven swallows. The thing is, she doesn’t remember becoming fully accustomed to her xB body. A lot of that is shut out. Her memory is amazing, but she has these blocks. She works on them sometimes with Counselor Troi. “You won’t,” she says. “At first, I’ll help you. At some point, you’ll know.”
She snuggles into Raffi, who makes a happy noise. “We’ll figure it out in the morning,” says Raffi. “Sleep here. You feel safe, right?”
Seven doesn’t feel safe in this situation at all, actually. She wants Raffi back in her body. She wants to be back in her body. She wants the team of researchers to figure out how to set them right again. She wants to help them.
But she needs to sleep. And Raffi isn’t asking if Seven feels safe in this situation. She’s just asking if Seven feels safe with her.
“Of course,” says Seven. Raffi’s chest makes a nice pillow. She giggles when Seven curls up there.
“My favorite place.”
Seven presses a kiss to Raffi’s lips — the only part that doesn’t feel weird to kiss somehow — and then lets herself drift off.
They listen to the solution to their issue, how it works, how they can do this on their own time and how the research team’s involvement ends here. Then the senior researcher leaves them to discuss.
Raffi watches Seven shift for a while, then grasps her hands. “Tell me what you’re thinking right now,” she says. “Yes or no. Let’s start there and then move together.”
Seven takes a deep breath. “I’m tired of people telling me what to do with my body.”
“You don’t have to do it,” says Raffi. “Whatever we do, it’s your choice.”
Seven looks down at their intertwined hands. Her eyes burn differently in this body. “I want you to have your body back.”
“Do you want yours back?”
“Of course,” says Seven, but she chokes on the words.
Raffi nods, then considers. “How is…being human again?”
“This isn’t about that.”
“Okay.”
“It just feels…so…” And Seven suddenly realizes why Raffi speaks with her hands so much. It’s helpful. She moves them now, because there’s something comforting about watching Raffi’s hands move, even if she’s the one who moves them.
Raffi squeezes Seven to her chest. “We don’t have to do it now. We don’t have to do anything now.”
They’ve been showering together, mostly because it feels a little less invasive somehow. Raffi is the one who asks for it, so Seven figures that even though she seems to be taking this whole thing better, Raffi feels a little displaced as well.
She’s getting the hang of balancing, is working on depth perception. It angers Seven because Raffi shouldn’t have to do any of these things at all.
“Endorphins,” Raffi murmurs.
“Hm?”
Raffi turns around as the sonic shower clicks off. “Endorphins. That’s what you said, in 2024. That’s what the collective feels like, missing endorphins.”
Seven frowns. “Yes.”
“Substance withdrawal is kind of like that.”
Seven searches Raffi’s face. “And you feel that all the time.” Raffi nods. “I’m sorry.”
Raffi shrugs. “That’s why it didn’t feel any different.”
Without thinking, Seven hugs Raffi — holds her naked body to herself. It doesn’t feel weird at all.
They sit in bed and don’t bother getting dressed.
“You keep touching my hair,” Raffi tells Seven, smirking.
“Oh!” Seven drops her hand. “Sorry.”
“I don’t mind it. I just didn’t know if you knew.”
“I like your hair.”
Raffi grins. “You know what I like?”
Seven’s mouth twists into a smile. “Hopefully more than one thing.”
“A lot of things. I’m just spotlighting one.”
“Which is?”
Raffi holds up Seven’s implant hand. “I can feel the strength in it. Think I might take up rock climbing.”
“I’d appreciate watching that.”
“My body is not terrible at rock climbing.”
“I think I’d want to watch you in mine.”
Raffi crawls over and kisses Seven, who pulls her onto her lap. When Raffi begins to pull away, Seven holds her firm. “You sure?”
“I want you.”
In Seven’s voice, moans sound so much hotter. “And you want to switch back?”
“On our terms.”
Her mouth is so close to Raffi’s mouth. It’s upping the ante exponentially. Raffi can feel this body growing hot between the legs. “And what terms are those?”
Seven pushes Raffi down into the bed. “You have to experience your own tongue.”
Raffi has a certain cadence to eating someone out. It’s not always the same for every person, but the point is that Seven pays attention to that kind of thing, replicates it for Raffi — hot velvet lapping slowly, lips sucking deliciously on Raffi’s clit.
This body is heavier on top than what Raffi’s used to. She takes the breasts in her hands to keep them from bouncing too much, then realizes that sensation makes her hand feel really, really good.
She works her fingers under Seven’s jaw until she looks up at her — a strange sight, seeing your own face between your legs that are not really your legs — and holds her fingers to Seven’s lips. Seven takes them into her mouth, and Raffi gasps.
“I have the—“
Seven nods. “The implant sensitivity, yes.”
Raffi blinks. “Fuck.”
Seven strokes all of them, maddeningly lightly and not enough. They both have the same idea — to make this one experience count, one that they’re fully engaged in, one that honors the other.
“How do you not die?” groans Raffi, as Seven sucks on her arm implant, tracing the implant on her hip. “The way this feels…”
Seven chuckles. “There was a first time for me too, you know.”
“My first time was a long time ago.”
Seven draws Raffi’s mouth to hers. “Every once in a while, you say you want to relive your youth— oh. ”
Raffi grins, her tongue tracing the underside of Seven’s breast. “You know, I like your tongue too.”
They come up to their knees and reach for each other, rubbing and stroking and moaning. Raffi’s nose is somewhere along the hard curve of Seven’s cheekbone, her mouth open as sensation threatens to overwhelm her. “I didn’t know,” gasps Seven, as Raffi slides a finger over her clit and inside of her.
“Hm?”
“That this could feel like this.”
That can mean a lot of things, supposes Raffi. That even in each other’s bodies, they know each other — know themselves — well enough to make this good. That Seven’s enjoying experiencing the world as Raffi. That Seven’s enjoying touching herself in this way.
Raffi firms Seven’s torso against hers, whispers into her ear until her legs fall open exactly the way she wants.
“Feel me,” says Raffi, the implant sensitivity on her body screaming with alertness, stroking Seven slow and deep. “Feel us.”
It’s not super necessary that they come at the same time, but Raffi’s spent plenty of time touching her body, and Seven’s implants can be very quickly responsive in the right way. So why not?
The whole of bodily sensation tips over into hazy euphoria for the two of them, continues on and on.
Neither really remember the exact moment she makes it back to her own body, just at some point, she’s staring at the other’s face.
“Home,” murmurs Raffi, a question and a statement, as she strokes Seven’s chin.
“Home,” replies Seven.
She means to wrap herself up in the woman — and the body of the woman — Raffi is only too proud to call her lover. But the memories from before linger, and before long, they’re intertwined again, fingers and mouths lavishing, relief and afterglow combining into something else.
“We have to go to therapy for this,” Seven mentions, after, as she traces the curve of Raffi’s jaw. Raffi responds by blindly taking Seven’s fingers into her mouth. “I’m serious.”
Sometimes they ravish each other until they’re barely responsive, doze off, start all over again. Just riding wave after wave after wave of pleasure. “I’m not contesting you. We can go.”
“Um, and I love your body. And I hate that this happened, but I wouldn’t want it to happen with anyone but you.”
Raffi grins and kisses the back of Seven’s hand. “I love more than that.”
Seven pulls on her hand, and Raffi follows, closer and closer, until they’re kissing again.