Coy Sessions - The Night Coy Changed Gravity

Posted on Wed Feb 11th, 2026 @ 3:06pm by Commander Rosa Coy & Remal Kajun

1,583 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Character Development
Location: USS Sunfire

The day had the hush of a storm waiting for permission to break.

Rosa sat as if she had been carved into the chair rather than placed in it. Her posture wasn’t stiff so much as... calibrated. Shoulders relaxed but not loose. Hands open but not soft. Breath steady but only because she had ordered it so. She looked like someone who had spent a full week rehearsing composure and had finally convinced at least her body to believe it.

Remal watched her with the kind of attention that didn’t intrude. He simply existed in the same space, calm as a candle flame that refused to flicker. The room had become accustomed to their weekly ritual, sitting, breathing, finding the courage to dig.

Rosa opened her mouth, closed it, then let the breath out through her nose. She rubbed her palms on her thighs in small, thoughtful circles. “This is the one you’ve been waiting for,” she said, voice low.

“It’s the one you’ve been waiting for,” Remal answered gently. “And you don’t need to rush.”

Her smile flickered the way emergency lights do when the power core coughs. “I don’t rush,” she murmured. “I evade.” Her own honesty disarmed her, and her shoulders dipped half an inch. Another inhale. Another brace.

“When I was a girl,” she began softly, “I used to imagine what being joined would feel like. My mother told me stories, the noble kind, the heroic kind. Voices in harmony, wisdom whispering through you, the memories of lives spent doing extraordinary things. It all sounded so...” She searched for the word. “Structured.”

Her eyes lifted to Remal’s. “It wasn’t like that.” The silence invited her forward, not deeper, just onward. Rosa tucked one leg beneath the other and leaned back, gaze drifting toward a point in the middle distance where memory was waiting.

“It was late gamma shift when the distress call came through. Passenger cruiser under attack, life support failing. The Intruder was closest. We dropped out of warp expecting to find a half-dead crew and maybe some pirates too stupid to run.”

Her jaw flexed. “Instead, we found Handzon Coy.” She didn’t need to explain the name. It carried its own debris field.

“He was slumped against the bulkhead of his ship, bleeding out. I remember thinking how strange it was that his hair looked perfect. Smugglers don’t usually die pretty.” Her voice hardened. “I learned later he’d been shot by one of his own men, double-crossed during a raid he planned himself. They tried to sell him out for clemency.”

From somewhere under her sternum, like a memory rising up from deep water, came a faint pressure, Coy stirring. I wasn’t even facing them, Coy murmured, voice low and threaded with old humiliation. They didn’t have the spine to kill me looking me in the eye.

Rosa’s breath caught, not resisting him, just... pausing. “That’s the part he remembers,” she said quietly. “Not the pain. Not the bleeding. Just the insult.”

Remal nodded once, a small, steady signal. He was listening.

Rosa wet her lips. “They beamed him to sickbay. The doctors cut away the jacket, the shirt, he’d been caught mid-coupling, pants down... gods.” She pushed a hand back through her hair. “He had lipstick on his collar. Still smelled like perfume. And there he was, dying with a smile on his face like he thought he’d won something.”

A sound escaped her, not quite a laugh, not quite disgust. “What I didn’t know was that a Trill symbiont inside him was dying too. The poor worm didn’t choose any of that. It just... endured it.”

Coy’s response came sharp and tired both. I endured more than you can imagine.

I tried to steer him. I tried to offer restraint. But Handzon only wanted what fed him. And I went along because I was too afraid to lose him. Too afraid to break the one rule they drilled into me for lifetimes, don’t die with your host.

Rosa shut her eyes for a moment. She didn’t argue with him. “When they pulled the symbiont out,” she said, “I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was just... standing in sickbay, frozen. I’d never seen a joining outside of a clinic. It wasn’t peaceful. It wasn’t ceremonial. It was triage. The symbiont was fading. They didn’t have hours. They had minutes.”

Her fingers curled lightly against the armrest. “And I was the only viable match.”

She looked at Remal again, but this time the gaze wasn’t asking for permission. It was offering confession. "I said yes. I told myself it was duty, and part of it was. But another part... another part was fear. Not fear of the symbiont dying, fear of being the one who let it happen.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper wrapped in iron. “Trill don’t let symbionts die.”

Coy echoed her, softly, almost mournfully. We don’t let hosts die either.

Rosa continued. “So they placed Coy inside me, and Remal...” Her throat tightened. “The instant he connected with my nervous system, all of them came rushing in. Voices like breaking glass, memories like lightning. And Handzon...”

She shivered. “Handzon was the loudest. He didn’t slip quietly into the background like the books say. He crashed into me. He was... everywhere. His desires. His appetites. His confusion. His anger.” Her cheeks flushed, not with shame, but with the memory of that disorientation.

“I could feel what he felt. Hunger, but not for food. Want without aim. Compulsion so strong it felt like drowning in someone else’s pulse.” She exhaled, slow, controlled. “I panicked. I ran to my quarters. And I...” She couldn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t need to. The air around her thickened with meaning.

Coy stirred again, this time his tone bruised. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to separate myself from him. Fifty years inside a man whose every decision was a chase, I forgot where he ended and I began. And when I woke inside you... his voice twisted, pained ... I didn’t know how to stop wanting. I didn’t know how to stop him. I didn’t even understand my own shape.

Rosa didn’t try to shield him from the truth. “You woke up a woman,” she said gently but firmly. “And you weren’t ready to be one.”

Coy didn’t deny it. I was terrified.

I had never been connected to anything but male. I knew how men moved. How men thought. How men took. I didn’t know how to be inside you without overwhelming you. Without touching things I had no right to touch.

Her hand pressed to her abdomen, a small, instinctive gesture. “That first night,” she whispered, “I thought: this is my fault. I shouldn’t have said yes. I shouldn’t have been there. I shouldn’t have been the one. I was regretful to the point of depressed, and then eventually dehydrated.”

Remal leaned forward slightly, voice a warm, grounded thread. “What happened wasn’t your fault, Rosa.”

She shut her eyes, letting the words rest on her skin like balm. “I blamed everyone,” she said quietly. “My mother for making joining sound beautiful. My captain for putting me on that away team. Myself for choosing duty over safety. And Coy...”

Her voice softened “I blamed Coy for not being able to separate himself from a man who lived like the universe owed him pleasure.”

Coy’s answer had no defensiveness left. I blamed myself too. Not for Handzon, I did everything I could to survive him. But for you. I hurt you without meaning to. I brought chaos. I brought instincts that were not yours. I didn’t know how to stop them.

For a moment the room felt suspended, as if none of them dared shift the balance. Rosa breathed in. Then out.

“The days after were... slower,” she said. “The other voices softened. The shock faded. I started hearing Coy distinctly, not Handzon’s ghost in his mouth. He was frightened, and trying, and the more present he became, the quieter that mania got.”

The quiet between her words held something like forgiveness beginning to uncoil. “But I still carry it,” she admitted. “His life. His touch. His hunger. And Coy’s disorientation on top of it. My joining wasn’t a ceremony. It was a crash site.”

Remal’s voice arrived like a steadying hand. “And yet you survived it.”

Rosa gave a single nod, slow but certain. “Barely,” she said. Then, with a faint, rueful smile: “But barely counts.”

Coy answered her with a gentleness he rarely allowed himself. You saved me. Even at my worst, you saved me.

Rosa inhaled that truth without turning away. “Next time,” she told Remal softly, “we can talk about the fracture. The long war between us after the joining.”

“Next week,” he agreed, “or when the air in you is ready.”

Rosa stood, shoulders lifted not in tension but in reclamation. “Next week,” she repeated, and the room seemed to believe her.

The river was still moving. And she, at last, was moving with it.

TBC

 

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