The Razor's Edge -- ST: Voyager

No copyright infringement of Paramount's Star Trek: Voyager series is intended; this story is in appreciation of the universe that Star Trek has opened up to the world for the past 30 years.

This story is released under the OpenContent License version 1.0.

Introduction

The topic for this story came out of a discussion on JetC24. Thanks to all JetC24'ers for provoking me into writing it!

This story is rated PG-13, mainly because it doesn't have anything explicit in it.

Bristles

Joe Carey was through the doors of Engineering five minutes late, which in itself was enough to attract the attention of Chief Engineer Torres. The Engineering crew generally considered this to be an unhealthy thing, especially if it was before the Chief had wrapped herself around a mug of Klingon coffee. The first hour on an Engineering shift was traditionally spent down a Jeffries tube somewhere, well out of blast range. If this was not possible, the crew had been known to arrange an early visit by Seven of Nine. The blonde Borg acted as a very efficient sink for Torres' temper; since neither party had yet sustained permanent physical damage from such an encounter, Engineering felt not the smallest bit of guilt about doing this.

Torres' interest in her second's lateness was heightened by the blond bristles which now hid the formerly clean line of Carey's lantern jaw.

Carey grimaced at the jibe, but thanked his stars that his Chief was in a playful mood rather than her usual rip-out-a-heart-and-eat-it approach. "Sorry I'm late, B'Elanna. The beard repressor pills appear to have stopped working. I tried replicating a razor and soap, but it seems I'm a bit out of practice."

Torres peered closer at her 2i/c's jaw. Sure enough, the bristles were fairly patchy, and in several places his skin had the tell-tale glow from a dermal regenerator.

"Remind me never to let you cut my hair." She pushed a PADD at him. "You'd better take the team going down the Jeffries tubes to Deck 9 today. We don't want your face scaring the rest of the crew."

Mornings for Kathryn Janeway nowadays started with a stack of PADDs and a steaming jar of Neelix's least worst coffee. She had taken to leaving the bridge in the care of Harry Kim while she retreated to her ready room and dealt with the ship's administration. She enjoyed this about as much as having teeth pulled, but getting back onto her bridge was a good incentive to work her way through the PADDs in jig time. So far Harry had not flown into any asteroid fields or shot up a friendly vessel, but she did not intend to give him the chance to do so.

The door chimed, and its distraction was welcome. She dropped the PADD on the desk and smiled as her Commander walked in. Her smile broadened slightly as she noticed that his face was darker than usual.

"Chakotay, so eager to see me that you didn't even wash your face?" she teased. Not for the first time she was grateful for the ease with which she and he could talk. Pulling the leg of any other crew member was prone to produce awkward situations; Chakotay alone knew her well enough to take such teasing in the intended spirit. Now if only he'd stop making her feel as if her stomach were doing backflips...

Chakotay rubbed his hand along his jaw, feeling the burn of his wire-bristle stubble. "It's not just me, Kathryn. Most of the male crew are starting to look like they've spent a month in the brig. Tom Paris more so than most." Janeway ignored the dig at her pet Ensign. "As far as the Doctor can tell, the beard repressor pills have suddenly become ineffective. He's trying to find out why."

Janeway allowed herself a smile at the thought of about half of her crew turning fuzzy around the edges. "We'll terrify any species we come across today. Let me know when the Doctor has found out what's going on." She turned business-like. "Now, Chakotay, what should we do about the Delaney sisters?"

Janeway tuned out as her Commander started to tell her what he thought. She knew in advance that he'd finish with a pointed summary that would tell her all she needed to know in order to make her decision. Instead she gazed at his face, now edged with dark fur, and let her mind wander to decidedly non-Starfleet matters.

Sharpenings

The Doctor was not having a good morning. Sickbay was almost full to capacity with injured crewmen, and the carpeting near the entrance was stained with an impressive amount of blood.

Tom Paris was assisting with treatment, but the Doctor was not pleased with him, a fact which was made consistently clear.

"I'm curious, Mr. Paris," said the Doctor through gritted hologrammatic teeth. "Precisely why did you think that it would be a good idea for the crew of Voyager to experiment with lethally sharp blades to scrape off this stubble?"

"C'mon, Doc," protested Paris. "20th Century men did it every day. They managed OK, so there wasn't any reason to think that 24th Century men would have a problem."

The Doctor sighed as he ran the almost-melting dermal regenerator over yet another crewman's bleeding face. "Practice, Mr. Paris, practice. If your studies had included history rather than all that practical comparative biology at Chez Sandrine, you would know that learning to shave was a rite of passage for most Earth men in their teens. They had months to perfect the art under the guidance of their fathers. Your idea had half of the crew trying to learn it five minutes before going on shift." He grimaced at the multiple wounds of Ensign Ayala. "What did you use, Ensign, a hatchet?"

"Unfortunately," said the Doctor wryly, "I've had my hands full dealing with the immediate effects of it. Give me an hour or so to finish up, then I'll start my investigations."

The Doctor turned back to Tom Paris. "Thank your lucky stars that your advice didn't affect the Captain. I don't know if such an offence would merit a court martial, but if I were you then I wouldn't like to find out."

Fortunately for Tom Paris, his Captain had more pressing matters to handle. Two of these matters, remarkably similar, were standing in her ready room at that moment. Jenny and Megan Delaney had their eyes focused intently on the bulkhead behind a slouching Janeway. Experience had taught them that a relaxed Captain need not be a safe Captain.

Janeway had been reading a PADD, but now put it down and stared at the sisters. They twitched slightly as her gaze moved from one twin to the other and back again.

"Ensign Delaney." Megan almost jumped as her Captain's eyes locked onto her. "Can you explain how and why Astrometrics came to be linked into the replicator control system for five minutes yesterday?"

Megan weighed up the likelihood of success of her pre-planned explanations. Being grilled in front of the Captain had suddenly made getting away with the hack far less likely. She knew that Jenny was thinking much the same thing.

"It must have been accidental; I guess Seven connected by accident when she was trying to fix that glitch in the sensor array. It was about that time that she..."

Janeway cut across the half-stammered explanation. "Yes, that glitch in the sensor array. What a coincidence that you" - her glare switched to Jenny and pushed up a notch of intensity - "had pushed six gigawatts down a two gigawatt sensor channel the hour beforehand, then you" - back to Megan - "were assisting Seven with the repair at the station which made the connection to the replicator."

The twins swallowed nervously, in unison. "Oh, stop that!" Janeway had clearly had enough of the twins' weird mental link. If anyone was going to get inside another's head on her ship, she wanted to be the one doing it.

The Captain of Voyager stood and leaned over her desk towards the Delaney twins. The twins leaned back accordingly.

"What now?" Janeway gently placed her hands on the desk. "I can ask Commander Chakotay to deal with this, refer it back to Seven of Nine, or..." - a pause to allow the twins to think over these choices - "you can tell me why half of my crew is turning into furballs."

"It started on the Holodeck, ma'am," admitted Megan. "Tom Paris" - Janeway rolled her eyes briefly - "was on one of his 20th Century kicks..."

Smoothing Over

The Doctor had cleared Sickbay within an hour, and was in the middle of a biochemical analysis of the beard repressor pills when the Captain called by.

"Captain, what an unexpected surprise!" The Doctor knew well that even imminent death wouldn't get Kathryn Janeway into Sickbay, so was mildly astonished that she entered of her own free will, even - if his eyes did not deceive him - wearing something close to a smirk on her face. "I was in the middle of analysing those pills; perhaps you could come back in an hour for the results?"

"No need, Doctor," Janeway assured him, "the mystery is solved. You can get back to mopping up the bloodstains."

"Ah, you heard." Involuntarily the Doctor looked around for any spillages he might have missed in the clearup, before he parsed Janeway's comment as figurative humour. "I have enlightened Mr. Paris on the practical difficulty of shaving, and taken the liberty of requiring Commander or Captain's authorisation for replication of shaving materials."

"Excellent," beamed Janeway. "But allow me to make one change." She punched in a command on the Sickbay console. "Thank you, Doctor." Turning on her heel, she started to march out.

"Leave them," Janeway called over her shoulder as she disappeared into the corridor.

"Aren't you due for a checkup...?" began the Doctor hopelessly, but the Sickbay doors cut him off.

Chakotay was starting to get very uncomfortable. For three days his beard had been growing unchecked. The Doctor had been quite offhand in response to his decreasingly polite enquiries about the repressor pills. This morning he was due to make an early report to the Captain, and wasn't entirely sure how she would react.

Sure enough, when he came through the ready room doors he could see Janeway's eyes lock onto his jaw. She wasn't slow in letting him know what she thought, either. Instinctively he stiffened into attention stance, anticipating a dressing down.

"Commander, we may be in the Delta Quadrant, but you've got an example to set. No wonder the male crew look like a gang of desperadoes." She walked around her desk and ran her hand over his chin. He flinched at the contact, which she held for just a moment too long.

"I'm sorry, Captain. I tried to replicate shaving materials, but they seem to be denied."

"Really?" Janeway walked over to the replicator. "Computer, replicate a 20th Century safety razor, shaving brush and shaving soap." The replicator hummed, and produced the requested items in moments.

Chakotay's eyes followed his Captain uneasily as she walked back over to him, shaving tackle in hands. "Thank you, Captain, I..."

"Can it, Commander." The Captain ran the shaving brush over the soap, working up a reasonably impressive lather. Razor in one hand, brush in another, she squared up to Chakotay with her purpose clear as diamond.

Chakotay opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it and shut it again. His eyes spoke for him, focusing on the razor while a ripple of concern ran across his jaw under the stubble.

Janeway pasted her lather over Chakotay's jaw and throat, dropped the brush and gripped the razor. "Now let's see, how did this go...?"

Chakotay felt the razor press on his skin, and closed his eyes. Reassured that at least medical help was moments away, he surrendered to the ministrations of his Captain while starting to plot an elaborate and extravagant revenge.

He was brought back to reality by the stroke of Kathryn's fingers across his now baby-smooth chin. Opening his eyes brought her face into focus, apparently inspecting the results of her work.

"Not bad," she nodded. "Not bad at all." Her fingers wandered back across his face, wound around his jaw, and suddenly Chakotay found his chin in a firm grip while Kathryn's lips pressed down on his. Taken aback, but recovering quickly, he took her shoulders for support and kissed back with equal enthusiasm.

Eventually the demand for air became too much and the couple came apart. Kathryn and Chakotay stared at each other as if they had only just met.

"Well. it'd be a shame to waste such a masterpiece." Chakotay went for his Captain like a drowning man after air, oblivious to the muffled sound of cheers from the bridge crew. The Captain's plans had not, after all, been as secret as she'd thought, and the red "LOCKED" light above the Captain's door had been the definitive evidence of their fruition.

On the Holodeck, a bewhiskered Tom Paris was trying to defend Captain Proton's honour from the attentions of the Twin Mistresses of Evil.

"Look Tom," Malicia (Megan to her friends) pressed him, "you want this to be realistic 20th Century, right? We have high heels, amazingly impractical dresses, now you expect us to smear our faces with coloured grease, and you get to lounge around in pieces of dead cow. We're getting a raw deal here, right Demonica?"

"Absolutely," confirmed Demonica. "So now you get a bit more 20th Century authenticity, and you want to cancel the episode because your helmet doesn't fit around your chin any more? Think again, buster."

"No problem, Proton. Queen Arachnia was kind enough to provide assistance." Malicia produced a silver tray bearing soap, brush and razor. "Get on with it, we've got a galaxy to terrorize."