Title: Last Stop on the Barcelona Metro
Author: Paula Stiles (thesnowleopard@hotmail.com)
Webpage: http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Andes/3071
Series: DS9
Part: NEW 1/1
Rating: [R]
Codes: B/Ez [Hot Summer Night Challenge]


Summary: Answer to the Hot Summer Night challenge. Bashir and Ezri beat
the heat in Barcelona. What plot?

Disclaimer: Paramount owns the characters and the Trek universe, but not
Barcelona. And I refuse to get involved in any arrests for indecency
that may be inspired by this story.

Note: Let's see...hot night--check. Trickle of sweat (well,
water)--check. Ice cube (more or less)--check. A fan (a little
one)--check. A warm breeze--check. Yep. Think I've covered all the
bases.


Many thanks to Valerie Shearer and Victoria Meredith for their helpful
comments.




                          LAST STOP ON THE BARCELONA METRO

     "It's too damned hot," Julian complained. "I can't believe the
line. Where do all these people think they're going at 10 o'clock at
night?"

     "Dinner?" Ezri suggested.

     "Where? In Nairobi?"

     Ezri shrugged. "Let's take the Metro, then. Forget the transporter
pads. We're only going across town."

     She and Julian had already eaten--at a hole-in-the-wall in the
Carrer des Templarios. Such a good restaurant it had been, too--even in
a city historically famous for good, cheap food. Ezri's meal had been so
fresh that the spicy Gagh tapas she'd ordered were still crawling off
the table at the end of dinner.

     Ezri didn't normally share her former hosts' taste for Klingon
food, but she'd underestimated the Catalonian ability to turn the
inedible into the irresistable. She'd also been surprised to find a
Klingon restaurant on holy ground in the warren of streets behind the
Cathedral in the Old City. In fact, she'd been surprised to find the
street at all. Locating Wonderland or the Mirror Universe would have
been easier.

     Julian had pointed out that the Templars were warriors as well as
monks. That explained the owner's choice of location, then--and the
beefy, armored, knight hologram that stood in a wall niche above the
bar, sword tip planted between its feet, wearing a white surcoat with a
red cross on the breast.

     "Q'apla" was the kind of place that Starfleet officers took their
civilian partners to when they went on vacation. Ezri admired the spiky
decor and lingered over her food. Julian didn't take the hint and
started absorbing his Rokeg Blood Pie like a tribble starving on
quadrotriticale--his usual eating style. Ezri was forced to take drastic
measures. She played footsie with him under the table until he slowed
down.

     Now, an hour later, they were walking along the beach, heading out
of Old Harbor back into New Harbor. Not that New Harbor was all that
new, anymore. It was merely centuries old, whereas the Old Harbor of
Barcelona had seen millennia. Spain was like that.

     Irregular New Harbor was all glass, grass and metal--wide open.
Rectangular Old Harbor was narrow streets crosshatched by tall tenement
buildings. Even though they no longer needed to, the inhabitants still
hung out their wash on their balconies. It was tradition. It also
contributed to the hot, sticky atmosphere of the Barcelona evening.The
clear view of the beach at the end of each street looked like midnight
in Heaven.

     "Look." Ezri pointed to her right, back into the city away from the
sea. "We can catch the Metro up at Barceloneta station over there,
switch over at Urqinaona, and head out to Feixa Llarga. The hotel's only
a block or two walk from there."

     "Fair enough," Julian said, stretching exaggeratedly. "But let's
get something to drink, first. It's hot."

     "Not as hot as it was before the sun went down," Ezri pointed out.

     "Hot enough," Julian retorted. "Hey. There's a street vendor." He
bounded up to the stand that stood across from the city aquarium. The
little shack was crammed with bags of snacks and small novelty items.
Julian bought two cans of beverage and a palm-sized fan.

     "See what I got?" he said cheerfully to Ezri afterwards. "Amazing.
I didn't think they made these anymore." Ezri couldn't help but smile at
his enthusiasm, even if the fan did little more than blow hot air on
their faces. The two very cold cans of beverage proved more useful.

     "It's soda," Julian explained, going into lecture mode and
gesturing animatedly. "Carbonated sugar water, essentially. It used to
be very popular a few centuries ago. Coffee, tea, and soda were drunk
worldwide. They had different flav--."

     Ezri grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pulled him close, and
shut him up with a kiss. After a long, breathless moment, she pulled
back. Julian looked stunned.

     "What did you do that for?" he said.

     Ezri sighed in frustration. Here she stood in a coastal Terran city
on a hot July night with the densest male Human in Sector 001. Why
hadn't Dax ever prompted one of her male hosts to create a star map to
men's minds for the sake of future female hosts?

     "Come on," she said. "The Metro will close soon." She pulled him
past the couples dining on restaurant boats in the harbor. She and
Julian jogged across the outdoor museum-street, now preserved as a
duracrete walkway, to the Metro station's opening. Going down the steps
to the platform felt like descending into Hades.

     The Metro was the showpiece of the Catalonian Living History
Museum. In its late 20th century heyday, it had whirled city residents
around an underground network of fast, cheap transport that stretched
from the Harbor to Vall d'Hebron, and from Fondo to Feixa Llarga. It had
survived four centuries of Barcelona's continuous renewal. Tourists and
locals alike still used it to get around the city.

     Tonight, however, it was too hot to travel underground for most
people. As she stuck her ticket into one of a line of turnstiles,
pushing through after it spit the flimsy back at her, Ezri noticed that
the station was completely deserted. She hurried after Julian, who
strode down the bright, concrete tunnel ahead of her. The back of his
shirt was dark with sweat. Ezri bet that he'd be much cooler without it.
She thought about helping him take it off right there and then, but he'd
be embarrassed in such a public place. She decided to wait for a more
private moment.

     Ezri followed Julian down the escalator onto the train platform.
She looked across the two train tracks to the other platform.
Well-protected poster frames containing classic 2D movie posters in
Catalan lined the tiled walls of both platforms. She and Julian had the
place to themselves. Better and better.

     "Ugh," Julian sighed as they sat down on a bench set in the
platform wall. "I feel as though we're on Cardassia. Garak would love
this weather. It would suit his reptillian blood just right."

     "I'd think you'd like this heat," Ezri panted. "Wasn't your mother
born in Egypt?"

     "Yes," Julian admitted. "But, I was born in London. That's not one
of the meteorological hotspots on this planet, you know. And then my
father bounced us around half the known galaxy. I spent most of my
childhood in spaceships, space ports, and space stations, all of them
climate-controlled."

     "No wonder you wanted to come to DS9," Ezri said. "It must have
felt like coming home."

     Julian shrugged. "I suppose." He tilted his head back and rubbed
the can of soda against his neck. Ice on the can melted, dripping down
his throat under his shirt.

     He groaned in relief. "God, that feels good," he said.

     Ezri watched him, feeling suddenly wicked, and decided to follow
through on her previous impulse. Leaning over, she licked the trickle of
water off Julian's neck. Julian yelped and dropped the other can.

     "Bloody hell," he complained, leaning down to pick it up. "Now,
it'll fizz all over the place when we open it."

     Ezri placed a hand on his back as he started to straighten up. "I
think I like you better down there," she said.

     "Oh, really," he replied, smiling evilly. "Well, why don't you come
down here and show me how much you like it?" He slid off the seat and
pulled her down to the cool, cement floor.

     She was surprised by how creative one could get with two cold cans
of soda. As they lay together, Julian slowly, lazily unbuttoned her
blouse, then pulled it off her shoulders. Ezri yanked Julian's shirt out
of his trousers and ran both cans of soda up his sides. Done with the
blouse, Julian took the cans from her and began to rub them over her
belly and down her cleavage. She sighed for both herself and Dax--the
symbiont had been squirming from the heat all day. Then, she took her
revenge. She reached up under Julian's shirt and began to knead his
back, moving inexorably downward.

     Julian shivered. "Have I ever told you how titillating those cold,
Trill hands of yours can be under the right circumstances?" he told her.

     Ezri smiled. "That might have something to do with where they are
right now."

     The platform shook at a train's approach, but from the wrong
direction. A hot wind blew through the station as the train rushed by.
Ezri glanced up at the digital clock hanging from the ceiling. It read
2:37, counting down.

     "Julian," she said. "We've only got two minutes left before the
next train comes."

     "Mmm hmm." His mouth was busy, as he followed a route he'd taken
with the cans, down her spots. Trill skin was especially sensitive
there. For a moment, she forgot what she was going to say. Then, she
heard a train coming down the tunnel.

     "Julian," she complained, pushing him off. "I mean it. This is the
last train for the night."

     "Hmf," he grumbled. "You could have told me that before you got me
down here."

     The platform began to shake again. Ezri snatched up their shirts
and scrambled to her feet. "Never mind that," she said, holding out her
hand. "Come on.". Reluctantly, Julian took it, and got to his feet as
the train roared into the station and braked hard. As soon as the train
screeched to a stop, Ezri yanked up on the handle (no telepathic doors
on this train). The doors slid open. She and Julian jumped in. The train
took off down the tunnel.

     Out of a long line of labeled bulbs above the door, half of them
lit, the Urquinaona bulb flashed.

     "Next stop," a woman's voice chirped. "Estacion--"

     "Urquinaona," a man's voice interjected.

     "Where one can access Linia 1," the woman finished.

     "Damn. We'll never get anywhere at this rate," Julian groaned as
they ran through the access tunnel to the Line 1. They rushed onto the
platform just as the train arrived, got on, and flopped down together
onto a double seat.

      "Ahhh, finally--" Ezri sighed.

     "--I have you all to myself," Julian finished for her as he reached
over to unhook her bra. "Come here, you."

     They got back down to business. The sodas were warming up now, so
they decided to open them. The unexpectedness of the train's switches in
direction added to the fun of trying to drink the soda. It helped that
they were now wearing less clothing. That made it easier to pour soda on
each others' skin and lick it off.

     "I think we're out of soda," Ezri said, after a few moments,
tugging on Julian's sticky hair as he stroked her spots.

     He kissed her ear. "That's all right," he breathed. "I'm feeling
much cooler now, aren't you?"

     Ezri giggled. "Have I ever told you how much I like you in your
boxer shorts?"

     A moment later, she decided that she liked him even better with the
boxers off. Thankfully, the train was still passenger-free, or she and
Julian would definitely have embarrassed themselves at that point. The
brightly lit cars were open to each other. One could see both forward
and back, like looking up and down the spine of a snake.

          "These seats are too bloody small," Julian complained, as the
train swung through a curve.

     Ezri laughed. "Then turn over, you idiot."

     The problem was solved when they both fell off the seat onto the
clothing-strewn floor. This gave them more room to maneuver.

     More and more bulbs lit up on the line of stations over the door.
Finally, the train rolled into Bellvitge, the penultimate station.

     Ezri looked up. "Is this the end of the line?" she said.

     "Not quite yet," Julian replied breathlessly, and pulled her back
down on top of him.

END