Fic: Synthesis
Mar. 7th, 2009 07:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
so_jangTitle: Synthesis
Author: Oparu
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Beverly Crusher/Jean-Luc Picard
Warning(s): smut
Summary: missing scene from Fair Trade. Life on a starship. Plotless. Banter. Smut.
Thanks all mistakes are mine, but![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lanna_kitty helped me greatly.
Disclaimer: Star Trek does not belong to me.
A/N: Couldn't fit it in the story. Couldn't get it out of my head. If I had a DVD, I'd stick it on there. On the commentary I'd say this one of the better sex scenes I've written. In my biased and entirely nonobjective opinion.
“If I kill an ensign, you have to keep me from being sent to the stockade," Beverly began before the door to their, formerly his, quarters even had time to hiss shut. Her right hand pressed against her lower back and her left steadied her balance by clinging to the edge of his desk. "Ensign Regar’s not taking her migraine medication on the correct schedule and if she comes in complaining about it one more time--”
Setting down his book, an old, paperbound version of “The Merchant of Venice” dear to him because of the wonderful strength and intelligence of the cunning Portia, Jean-Luc started to get up from his chair. Watching her take a deep breath and straighten, he realized he couldn't yet place all of her body language. If she was in pain, her unfounded rage was keeping it from him. He worried frequently for her physical well-being. Watching her be so dizzy on the Mendel had been difficult and Jean-Luc still felt the need to keep his gaze on her when she was in the room. Perhaps it was just a period of adjustment for both of them, Beverly hadn't had the first three months to adapt to the changes in her body, and he hadn't had the time to integrate his new role into himself.
“Of course,” Beverly’s tirade continued, “she thinks something’s wrong with the medication. Alyssa tries to tell her that Leyporasine functions on a time delay and the timing of when she takes it is very important. Regar thinks she needs to talk to one of the doctors and monopolizes Selar when I need her to work on the microcellular regeneration programming of the medical equipment in lab two for the victims of the Umaarian central processing disaster.”
Sighing as she released the desk and started towards the center of the room, Beverly dropped her lab coat down off of one shoulder and started yanking viciously on the other sleeve. “Selar started forty-five minutes late,” she continued without taking time to even see if he was listening. “Then I had to pull her off again because Lieutenant Martin’s piton failed to engage properly on holodeck four and since he was teaching lead-climbing to Ensign sh’Negari and Sergeant Berriman, all three of them suffer multiple compound fractures and compression injuries because they’ve fallen from the Cliffs of Heaven on Cendry Two. One of them, none of the three will admit to doing it and I'm thinking of sending Worf their way, thought turning up the gravity might make it more challenging. Doctor Hill’s already into the thirteenth hour of her shift but I need her to stay because sh’Negari’s right tibia is in pieces and I can’t fix that and Berriman’s dislocated clavicle at the same time.”
Tearing the lab coat off over her right wrist, she dropped it on the back of the sofa near the window. The starlines zipped mutely by as Beverly shook her head in disgust. “We’re still dealing with half of stellar cartography being exposed to Cardassian diphtheria at that damn wormhole conference on Deep Space Nine three days ago. That disease is so old we don’t even have vaccines for it on board anymore, the treatment protocol calls for Eurythnomitic antibiotics that take hours to build molecularly and tie up the medical replicator. Of course it’s not the fault of the Bajorans their planet was invaded and their medical science is at least a century behind what it used to be, but those patients are taking up the entire quarantine wing.”
Pulling her hair back from her shoulders and starting to knot it up, she gave up and loosed it again as she paced in front of his desk. Making an angry line between the replicator and the doorway to the bedroom, her feet never stopped moving. “Did I tell you Deep Space Nine’s CMO keeps calling me on subspace to check in?” she asked infuriated. “His name is Bashir, he looks like he’s twenty-two, could have been one of my students while I was at Starfleet medical, and he wants to know how we’re handling the situation.”
Bending her back in a slow arc backwards, Beverly rolled her shoulders from side to side before her right hand landed firmly on her neck. Long fingers dug into the muscles there as she turned to him. “He’s always smiling,” she complained, glaring past him as if the art on the wall behind his head offended her. “He seems to have guessed over subspace that I’m pregnant and he keeps reminding me not to come into contact with any of the Eurythnomitic compounds, as if I don’t know that. It's possible my pregnancy made it into the gossip between the Enterprise and Deep Space Nine. I just don’t see any reason why he should care or why he doesn’t just come out and remind me to be careful because I'm pregnant. As if I'd forget! So on top of everything else, this wunderkind doctor, who looks barely older than Wesley, just continues to insinuate that he knows without actually saying anything of the kind. Like he’s trying to goad me into mentioning it first.”
Taking great care not to smile, stare at her or move too quickly, Jean-Luc removed his empty tea cup from the table and made his way slowly to the replicator as she paced to the other side of the room.
While she hovered between the desk and the sofa, she continued to run through her day. “Then Starbase Twelve calls on subspace,” she explained and glared at her lab coat as it fell from the sofa and landed in a heap at her feet. Squatting down to pick it up instead of bending her back, Beverly balanced and glared at the coat. Without missing a moment, she continues. “They want to know if we’re ready with the analysis of the lasting effects the water table contamination has had on the renal systems of the colonists from Libron Eight. Doctor Park Hymn-Woo asked us to have it done by Stardate 47238.2, which is still two days away, but now out of the blue, she wants it today by seventeen hundred.”
Laughing harshly, Beverly tossed her infuriating lab coat onto the sofa seat instead of the back. Following behind her, now that he’d let the replicator reclaim his cup, Jean-Luc took her lab coat and folded it neatly in his lap. Sitting on the sofa as he tried to remain out of her way, he continued mutely watching her.
“Of course, it’s completely impossible!” she snapped angrily and turned back to him. Her left hand flew to her hip and her right started pulling her hair back behind her head. In the last few minutes she'd decided to tie it back after all. Jean-Luc allowed himself a moment of enjoying the fact it was red-gold again instead of the brunette she'd been when she'd helped rescue him. “I try to explain that to her but she gets increasingly unreasonable as the conversation moves on.”
Now pacing the shortest route in the room, between the desk and the window while she spoke, Beverly still hadn't made eye contact with him. “Jean-Luc, it’s like hitting my head on the wall when I speak with that woman. No matter what I say, she thinks we work miracles over here and have absolutely nothing else to do. Maybe no one goes rock climbing or catches archaic viruses on Starbase Twelve. She still has three times the staff I do and five interns! She has more than enough hands to run her own analysis but she seems to believe the data will somehow be compromised because she’s getting the initial readings through subspace.”
Throwing up her hands, Beverly tried to stick them back in her pockets, but her lab coat was gone and she had to fidget with them in front of her stomach instead. “As if we weren’t going to send our results through subspace anyway! As if every order, every bit of data we get from Starfleet Command doesn’t travel through subspace. If it were so unreliable we’d be at war with the Klingons and the Romulans simultaneously and trading for spare parts on the Ferengi black market because Starfleet can’t manage a supply chain.” Taking a deep breath, she folded her arms over her chest and finally brought her gaze to his.
Watching her pace was easier from his position on the sofa. Covering the discarded lab coat, his hands rested in his lap. When she didn’t launch into a new tirade immediately, Jean-Luc set the lab coat aside on the coffee table and folded his hands into a pyramid on his legs. Keeping his tone even, Jean-Luc looked up at her with the most neutral expression he could manage.
“How would you feel about something Italian for a late dinner?” he suggested. “I was just reading about the streets of Venice and I think it’s put me in the mood.”
Her abrupt change in mood was so intense he could almost hear the wall of anger crashing to dust behind her eyes. “Damn,” Beverly swore before she sank heavily to her knees on the floor in front of him. Dropping her head to her hands, she made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat before lifting her head and apologetically making eye contact. “I was going to try not to do that.” Hitting her fist against her knee, Beverly stared directly up into his face. “We just talked about this at breakfast. We’d agreed I’d at least say hello before I launched into my reasons why everything is wrong with the universe at warp speed.”
Sliding off the sofa to sit nearer to her on the floor, Jean-Luc reached for her chin. “That was your rule, not mine,” he reminded her.
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hold me to it,” Beverly retorted as she grabbed his hand away and held it tightly in her lap. "I made it for your own safety."
Reaching for her shoulder with his other hand, he felt warmth run through his chest. “I could go back to the desk and you could come in again,” Jean-Luc teased. “I believe I was just about to read the beginning of act five.”
“Italian for dinner sounds wonderful,” she replied to his almost forgotten question. “You know, Lwaxana and I had lunch together today via subspace. Andorian spring salad, the one with the purple radish-like things."
Grinning as he leaned back against the foot of the sofa, Jean-Luc watched the tension in her posture start to ease. “I don’t believe she was mentioned in the tirade,” he said.
Shaking her head, Beverly changed position and crossed her legs beneath her instead with a sigh. “No, she wasn’t,” she agreed. “Talking to her was one of the bright spots of my day.”
Chuckling in the back of his throat, he straightened a lock of hair that had fallen into the collar of her blue uniform. “Perhaps while we work on saying hello to each other, we can work on adding the positive parts of your day to these recaps.”
Closing her eyes and smiling, Beverly tried to relax as she sighed again. “She returned from the eighty-fourth annual Federation Art exhibit on Andoria three days ago,” she reported. “Apparently just in time to deal with the rainy season. Did you know it rains almost three meters worth in a few months during their winter?”
Smiling as he replied drolly, Jean-Luc felt her take his hand from her shoulder and squeeze it. “Betazed’s meteorology has never been an interest of mine.”
Clinging to his hand, Beverly leaned closer. “Nor mine,” she said. “However, listening to her explain how to eliminate the hideous grey slugs that are after her vegetable garden was by far the best part of my day, at least, since I left you with the breakfast dishes again.”
Nodding dryly, he remembered her continuous, hasty apologies as she got dressed and hurried to sickbay. “We may need to start getting up earlier,” he observed.
Groaning and getting to her feet, Beverly rescued her lab coat from the coffee table and hung it where it belonged by the door. “Can’t we just eat faster?” she hoped, reaching down to offer her hand to him.
“Should you really-” he wondered as he refused her hand and stood on his own.
Rolling her eyes at herself, Beverly sighed and shook her head. “No,” she answered the unfinished question. “No, I definitely shouldn’t try to be gallant and help you up, move furniture, spar with Worf or lift crates in sickbay.”
His surprised glance made her laugh. “I didn’t touch anything,” she promised, though her smile was impish instead of serious. “So far my biggest physical complaints are stress related and I’d really like to keep them that way.”
Pausing on his way to the replicator, Jean-Luc caught her chin and kissed her lightly. “Welcome home,” he said. “I hope you had a good day.”
“It had its moments,” she answered, resting her forehead against his. Her skin was cool and the smell of her hair reminded him of lying next to her in bed. “Breakfast, my visit to the Bridge, Lwaxana’s grand tale of how she conquered the mighty slug invasion, dinner, a shower and bed.”
Keeping his hands on her hips, Jean-Luc kissed her again. “I hope you’re not setting the bar too high,” he wondered dryly. “I haven’t even replicated dinner yet.”
“Cannelloni, caprese salad, the computer’s best approximation of a Chateau Picard Merlot and rosemary herb bread,” she recited his usual choices when they had Italian as she slipped from his grasp and sank onto the sofa. Yanking off her boots as she ran through her predictions, Beverly finally stopped projecting frustration around her like a firestorm. “We'll eat. You’ll laugh when I tell you about the slugs. You’ll tell me what the ship was really doing today, how Starfleet found new ways to create more paperwork and what quirk Data or Worf discovered about humanity. We might deviate and have tiramisu or talk about how Will and Deanna keep taking long looks at each other when they think no one sees them.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared her down from the replicator. “Six days together and it’s already become that dull and predictable?”
Dropping unceremoniously to the floor of their quarters, her boots lay forlorn at the edge of the sofa where she abandoned them. Beverly pulled her legs up to her chest and massaged her toes in slow circles through her socks. When she didn’t hear the sound of the replicator, she looked over at him innocently. “Maybe I like it that way?” she asked, only half-teasing.
At his instructions, the replicator created exactly what she had predicted. Moving the dishes from replicator to table, he set it under her affectionate gaze. Lining up the plates around blue candles in the elegant Andorian candlesticks that had arrived in the wave of things from her quarters, Jean-Luc caught her eye as he lit them. “You’re entitled to your opinions,” he replied. “I reserve the right to be surprised by them.”
“I thought you’d like those,” she said, lazily pointing at intricately carved stone candlesticks. “I half intended to give them to you when I bought them last year, but I never got around to parting with them.”
Setting the wine and the glasses around their plates, Jean-Luc poured it first, letting the main dish remain on hold in the replicator. Synthehol had no real effect on pregnant women, for which he was doubly grateful. Dinner without wine was an anathema to him, and it calmed Beverly’s nerves.
“It appears they have made it to me regardless,” he joked as he fingered the cool black stone of the one of the candlesticks. “Ingenious of you to find a way not to give them up.” Fetching the salad, Jean-Luc set it on the table before he moved to stand over her at the sofa. “Madame,” he jested, reaching for her hand. “Your uninspired dinner is served.”
Smirking as he helped her to her feet, Beverly wrapped her arm around his as they crossed to the table. “Jean-Luc, there’s a vast difference between predictable and unconscionably dull.”
“Good,” he answered quickly. "Perhaps you'll do me the service of warning me if we ever get too close to the later." Shaking out his napkin and dropping it to his lap, he reached for her plate and stopped in surprise when her hand caught his.
“Thank you,” she murmured. Appreciation radiated from her face and suffused the warmth of her touch.
Confused, he returned the pressure of her hand and replied, “It’s the work of moments to replicate dinner, Beverly.”
Laughing at the joke only she understood, she released his hand and allowed him to serve her. Taking the plate, she met his eyes. “I’m sure it is no small effort to return tranquility to your quarters have each time I invade them with my barrage of postshift complaints.”
Tilting his head as if he’d never considered the idea, Jean-Luc nodded slowly and pretended it was just dawning on him. “I do remember a certain difference in the ambience of my quarters,” he mocked. “However, I haven’t yet put it to proper scientific study.”
Laughing over her salad, Beverly reached for a second slice of bread and set it on the side of her plate. “Have I ever mentioned how much I like coming home to destroy the silence of your quarters?” she wondered impishly.
“I hardly consider them mine anymore,” he replied with a slight raise of his eyebrow. Lifting the bread knife and cutting a few more pieces, Jean-Luc watched as her salad disappeared quickly from her plate. “Besides,” he added. “The noise level hasn’t come up for discussion yet.”
Setting her fork down and reaching for her wine glass, she tapped it with her finger before she asked over the rim. “Should I be grateful?”
“Beverly,” he retorted more seriously. “We may discuss it whenever you wish.” Pushing his salad around on his plate, he found himself distracted by the roundness of her breasts. Her pregnancy wasn’t obvious, except it seemed to other medical professionals like Doctor Bashir, but he was certain her breasts were different. They were the reason she’d had her uniform tailored again, he was fairly certain of it, although he hadn’t yet found it necessary to ask. She had mentioned that her hair was starting to change and that was something she liked.
That was part of what he’d been meditating upon while he ran over the familiar Shakespearean prose, thus far, she had mentioned very little that wasn’t positive. Her sense of smell was becoming more acute and Beverly had only mentioned that as an excuse to spend last night in the arboretum before dinner. Even finding the time to have her uniform refitted had been a joke.
Watching her reach across the table and steal a piece of mozzarella from his plate, he offered her another pass at his salad plate, in case there was anything else she was interested in before he cleared both of them. Her fork stabbed into one of the tomatoes and another piece of mozzarella before she nodded and let him take them away. The replicator hummed and traded the empty salad plates for two plates of stuffed cannelloni covered in a hearty red sauce. Carrying the main course back to the table, Jean-Luc decided to take advantage of the calm after the storm.
“While we on the subject of things we haven’t discussed,” he began as he set her dinner in front of her. Waiting for him to sit before she took a bite, Beverly blew lightly over the pasta on her fork and waited for him. Jean-Luc lifted his own cutlery but then set it down again. “How are you feeling?”
Beverly had already taken a bite and she nearly choked on it as she started to laugh. “Jean-Luc?” she wondered and looked genuinely puzzled as she stared at him over his untouched dinner. “I monopolize all of our conversations. Weren’t you here when I got home and talked your ear off about how I felt?”
“I meant physically,” he clarified. Resting one hand on the table, he reached for his wine glass with the other.
Across from him, Beverly’s fork twirled in the white, melted cheese on the edge of her pasta. When she set the fork down, her fingers danced in the edge of her napkin. “Fine,” she answered simply. “I’m fine.” She pretended she needed her napkin before she returned to eating. When he looked more carefully, he saw she was simply moving pieces of pasta, cut from the whole, in the sauce on her plate.
“Jean-Luc” she nimbly changed the subject. “Did I tell you Data came down to assist us with the biobed upgrade? He’s completely fascinated, keeps asking the most bizarre questions. Do I feel closer to you? Do I sense another presence around me? I think he even started to ask if it was strange to make love before I found a reason to disappear. It’s like having a five year old with a dictionary in his head, who can also reprogram your biobeds, hovering around you.”
“Beverly,” he reprimanded her gently. Resting his hands on the glass table, Jean-Luc tried a different tactic. “Imagine I’d come home, shut myself in the bedroom with my flute and only come out when you threatened me with Vulcan srismenaroth for dinner.”
“You wouldn’t,” she teased him, eyes brightening as she contemplated the hypothetical situation.
“I might,” he answered meekly. “The point is, you’d wear away at me until I told you what was bothering me.”
Beverly’s smile in response was genuine and she relaxed enough to start eating again. “You make me sound like a caustic agent,” she said.
Raising an eyebrow in response won a chuckle from her and Jean-Luc passed her another hunk of bread.
“I suppose that’s a fair assessment,” she admitted once she’d swallowed. “Are you suggesting that my outbursts are analogous to your hermit-like qualities?”
Jean-Luc set down his fork and set his words in order in his mind. They’d already begun to have this discussion in various forms over the past six days. Drumming his fingers softly on the table helped him decide of how it should conclude. “Both of us need to be able to take off the uniform,” he began. Idly spreading butter across bread for her, he handed it over as he continued. “We have been, and are still, very good friends however, we’re both starting to realize we’re going to need more than that. We’ve both been careful, almost unnecessarily polite with each other--”
He dry chuckle surprised him out of his thoughts. “Jean-Luc, I’m entirely too harsh with you,” she retorted.
“You are harsh in my general direction,” he corrected as he refilled her wine glass before thoughtfully leaning back with his own. “You are hardly harsh with me. Besides, Beverly, I believe all my time in Starfleet has prepared me to take it.”
“I hope so,” she murmured. She was smiling again but there was a hint of regret in her eyes.
“To be candid, this has never happened to me before,” he began, watching as she toyed with the last of her dinner. “I have experienced parenthood secondhand. When I lived another man’s life, at the time, it did feel like they were my children. Meribor and Batai were ghosts. An experience I shared across eons.”
Beverly had to lean across the table to reach him and he set down his wine glass to meet her hand halfway. “I appreciate your strength,” he finished. “I know you have never been one to complain. However, I have to admit I’m fascinated. What’s happening inside of you is completely foreign to me and I want to know what it’s like. At least, as much as I can within my limited, male, perspective.”
Bringing her other hand to his, she squeezed it before she left her chair to clear the empty plates. “You make it sound like you’re jealous Jean-Luc.”
“I don’t envy you what must be a host of physical complaints,” he offered, retreating to the sofa with their wine glasses in hand. The replicator hummed and the remnants of dinner began to disappear back into the molecular void. Her red hair fell lazily down her shoulders and his eyes traced the elegant curve of her spine. “Are you aware you hold your stomach in your sleep?” he asked as she made her way to him on the sofa, plate of tiramisu in hand.
Beverly used the single fork to pass him the first bite. Her thumb traced his bottom lip and her eyes were fixed on his,
“At night, you curl up into me--” he stopped when she buried a giggle.
“I do get us rather tangled, don’t I?”
Taking the fork from her hand, he nodded and held her gaze before her smile faded. “Your ability to make the most of available space is one of your more endearing qualities,” he replied. Cutting through the chocolate dust on the top of the cake with the fork, Jean-Luc lifted a bite to her lips. “When I wake up I inevitably find you holding your stomach. That unconscious bond is something I wish I could understand. To be frank, I envy it very much.”
Taking his hand way from dessert, she set the tiramisu aside on the coffee table and wrapped herself around his chest. “My head hurts,” she admitted shyly as he watched her fingers fidget with his hand in his lap. “The back of my eyes hurt before I’m done with my paperwork. My breasts itched so badly this afternoon that I hid in medical storage just to scratch.”
His gentle chuckle calmed the restless movement of her hands.
“That can’t be important--” she trailed off.
“On the contrary,” he disagreed and released her shoulders so she could retrieve the tempting dessert from the coffee table. It ended up balanced on his lap. “Thank you for sharing that with me,” he finished.
Beverly took another bite before she dropped the fork on the small glass plate. “Jean-Luc--”
Keeping the fork from falling off onto his legs, he held it lightly. “You think I’m not being serious.”
“I know you are,” she corrected. “I’m just wondering how much time you spend watching me sleep.”
“You have a rare gift for falling asleep,” he reminded her. Running his hand along the line of her arm, considered the question before he answered. “I used to lie in bed and think, even recite poetry before I fell asleep. I find watching you much more pleasant.”
“I love you,” she said, surprising him as her head dropped to rest against his chest.
His heartbeat seemed to have become both too fast and too loud. Jean-Luc knew that was impossible. Though his artificial heart was an incredible piece of technology, it wasn’t programmed to increase in volume.
Beverly’s head rose from his chest and her eyes softened and became sympathetic. “Does that make you nervous?”
Covering his heart where her head had been, her hand lay calmly on his chest. Staring down at it, her long fingers reaching up towards his collar, Jean-Luc realized his heart really was giving him away.
“Your heart rate increased,” she explained, suddenly shy. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You admitted you loved me in public, I thought it was about time I--”
“I know,” he interrupted as soon as he sensed the fear seeping into her tone. “I mean, I’ve known. Beverly, forgive me, even when it’s just you and I, I still find myself searching for what I want to say.”
“You’re quite charming when you’re tongue-tied,” she quipped. As if she sensed dividing her attention would make things easier, she retrieved the nearly forgotten dessert and started to poke at it with her fork.
Leaning forward, he put his head in his hands for a moment and looked back up to see her watching him with her fork in her mouth. “I do love you,” he began. “I’m not sure I can say for how long. I don’t even think it’s important anymore.”
Her cool fingers ran along his chin before she turned his face to hers. Jean-Luc could taste tiramisu as she kissed him. Her lips were tentative, her tongue patient and her fingers slipped to his neck. Turning into her deepened the kiss and Jean-Luc felt her leg slide down towards the floor. Her fingers crept back towards the nape of his neck and he felt her smile before they parted.
Reaching inside the back of her collar for the tiny zipper, Jean-Luc felt her tongue press once against his bottom lip. The glint in her eyes suggested she knew exactly what her teasing was doing to him. Sliding her uniform jacket free, he felt her deft hands work on his as well. Their uniform jackets tumbled forgotten to the floor in a heap of red and blue. She’d skipped the thin grey turtleneck, and only wore the two-tone grey and black tank top.
Tracing the smooth skin of her shoulder, he trailed his hand down her upper arm while she dragged him roughly out of his grey turtleneck. Dropping that to the floor as well, she started towards the bed, stripping off the tank top as she walked.
“I had to go up a bra size,” she complained mischievously. Beverly’s fingers rested on the waist of her black uniform trousers as she sat on the edge of their bed. “My red dress,” she continued. “The one I was planning to wear at the Admiral’s banquet so you’d have something to distract you from the dreadful speeches, doesn’t fit across the chest. I was complaining to Deanna but she just gave me one of those Betazoid death glares.”
His quizzical look as he stood over her made her laugh impishly.
“You wanted to know what was different,” she reminded him with wicked amusement. Snapping the clasp on the back of her bra open, she cupped her breasts and her eyes dared him to slip the straps from her shoulders. Sliding her bra straps down around her elbows, he crouched in front of her. Taking the bra by the center, he pulled it gently free of her hands and brought his hands to cover hers. “They’re sore, unreasonably sensitive, and--”
“They itch,” he interrupted as he remembered the earlier complaint. Kissing her collarbone before he coaxed her hands away from them. Beginning at her sternum, he pushed his hand out following the bottom curve of her left breast. Rising to push her back on the bed, he found the last zipper of her uniform with her.
Her hands darted away and landed on the small of his back, running up his spine before pulling him down to kiss her again. Need made that kiss sweeter and more desperate. There were rare moments in his life where he allowed himself yearning. Kissing down her neck, he made his way down the top of her breast. Beverly wrapped one of her legs around his back and pulled him closer to the bed.
Chuckling as he flicked his thumb across her nipple, Jean-Luc felt her lips tighten on his neck. Running his hand down her ribs, he lifted her breast and pressed it in against her chest. Her sigh was a high-pitched sound in her throat and he brought his hands to the trousers still covering her hips. Easing her leg free, he followed her inner thigh down low enough to earn another moan before stealing his fingers away.
Coming open at his touch, the clasp of her trousers put up little resistance. Guiding the fabric free, Jean-Luc’s hands started to take on the warmth of her skin. His thumbs skimmed the newly bare skin of her inner thighs in tandem as he worked his way down. Beverly’s uniform trousers dropped to the floor with her top.
Using her foot to draw him back, she tore his off with far less reverence. The tight, black briefs he wore beneath his uniform grew more constricting as her long fingers teased their way around to dig into the smooth muscles of his back. Easing him closer in towards the bed, Beverly dug her fingers deeper beneath his briefs.
He shook his head slowly as he pulled her fingers free and kissed them. “I want this first,” he told her simply. Beverly’s fingers stayed on his lips for a moment and a corner of her mouth smiled.
Bringing her hands up to her chest with his left hand, Jean-Luc slid his open palm down her stomach with his right. Tapping a slow rhythm on her clit through the fabric of her panties only made her laugh. It was that low, needy giggle that made him smile and slip a finger beneath the hem. She was wet and it was almost too easy to tease his way in. His thumb made rough circles through the fabric and Beverly groaned once before she pulled his head down and captured his lower lip between her teeth. As his thumb sped up, her teeth relaxed. When his index finger slipped across her clit beneath her panties, she gasped into his mouth and released her grip on the back of his neck.
Freed, Jean-Luc ran his forehead down her stomach. Pausing to suck the inside of one breast, he started guiding her panties off her hips. As Beverly brought her knees up to help him, he slid a finger inside her and curled it up gently. Flexing it within her made her hand return desperately to the back of his neck.
Dropping her panties somewhere near the foot of the bed, he twisted her legs up and planted her feet on the bed. Jean-Luc flattened her clit with the pad of his thumb, teasing before he pulled it away. Listening to her breathing quicken, he took his time. His tongue ran a meandering course down the skin from her knee to her clit. Licking across the labia instead only forced a disappointed moan before he brought his tongue to her swollen clit.
Barely skimming it with his tongue, he rolled his fingers up and pushed inward. The wetness of her warmed his knuckles and he added another finger. Her breath lost rhythm and she gasped. Her nails dragged up the back of his neck and then the palm of her hand ran smoothly across the crown his head. Turning the tip of his tongue into a point, he sent it around her clit before softening his tongue.
Licking with the flat of his tongue, Jean-Luc found a rhythm with his fingers. Curling the two of them in gently as if reaching for his tongue through her, he closed his eyes and listened to her breath grow ragged in her throat. When it became a moan that rose with his fingers, he covered his teeth with his lips and brought them in for contrast. Working her clit softly between his tongue and the hidden harshness of his teeth made her start lifting her hips into his mouth.
Holding her hips down with one hand, he drew her clit further into the heat of his mouth. His fingers tired and began to complain, and he added the third. Stopping suddenly, as if he intended to leave her half-finished, Jean-Luc chuckled when she slapped his cheek. Rubbing her clit between his upper lip and tongue, he stiffened his fingers and increased their speed.
Catching in her throat, Beverly’s last moan ended in a whimper. Her eyes shut and the involuntary shudder ran through her body. Her breathing still came in pants, but it began to slow. Pulling his hand slowly free, he flexed his fingers and dropped his wet hand to his briefs.
Dragging them free and stepping out, he let the cool air shock the now intense heat of his dick. Her eyes contentedly met his and a warm, dry hand circled his dick playfully. Her fingers moved slowly down before she released him with a teasing murmur.
The sheets rustled as she sat up and wrapped her legs around him from behind. Kissing his neck, Beverly moved to sit on his lap. She kept kissing him, distracting him with her mouth and the way her breasts rubbed against his chest. Sinking her knees into the bed, she straddled him. He could feel the sweat on her face as she nuzzled his shoulder. Beverly’s dry hand guided his dick into the wetness of her and her eyes closed before she started to move.
At first, she was slow, teasing him with her body the way she had with her hand. Even if she’d been still, the heat of her surrounding his dick would have driven him mad. Beverly knew that and the determined fire in her eyes suggested she wanted the privilege of wearing him down.
She liked to joke that even in bed, he was a disciplined mind. Her pride came from his undoing. Beverly was wet and controlled. Her edge was dulled and she was on a mission. Tilting her hips into him, she changed the angle just enough to make him groan into her chest.
This time it was her rhythm, her pace, that they followed. Beverly’s muscles tightened around his dick as she kissed his neck and taunted him mercilessly as she let them relaxed. Her arms crossed behind his neck and she drew his chest closer. Her skin was hot and slick against his chest and Jean-Luc sank his fingers greedily into the flesh of her back.
Her moaning grew deeper, and the tightly controlled flow of her hips began to slide towards chaos. Together they fell into it, her hips moving in a series of desperate thrusts as he rose to meet her. Jean-Luc caught her chin, feeling the slickness of sweat mixing with the wetness of her still on his fingers. He wanted her eyes as he came.
Beverly gave him her lips, kissing him desperately before she allowed him to hold her head still. The darkness in her pupils swallowed him, consuming him as her vagina drew tight. Dropping his hand to her clit, he pressed it crudely as his dick released. Beverly’s gasp sharped into a cry and her head dropped to his shoulder. Orgasm rippled through him with the strength of a plasma shock.
She seemed to melt and Beverly tumbled them back in a heap of sweaty limbs. One of her legs draped over his stomach and the other pressed to his side as they caught their breath. His hand went to her hair and listlessly stroked the damp curls sticking to her neck. His breath came back slowly and Jean-Luc didn’t rush it. Breathless satiation filled him like an electrical field and he thought he could almost hear the hum.
Beverly sighed as she lifted her head with one arm. Smiling contentedly down at him, she traced his lips with a tender finger. Lowering her head, she kissed his forehead. “Jean-Luc,” she murmured slowly. “There are almost as many ways to avoid saying that I love you as there are moments when it screams in my head that I do, more than life, and it’s not even only when I’m full of endorphins.”
Raising his eyebrows sardonically, he echoed her sigh. “Are you saying you’re chemically bonded to me?”
“From a physician,” she quipped, reaching for the sheets they’d crumpled and pushed away. “That’s a hell of a compliment.”
“Noted,” he replied as he moved his legs to let her fix the sheets. “I love you,” Jean-Luc replied simply. “Though I can’t present evidence that’s based in scientific fact.”
“From you I almost expect it to be literary,” she taunted, settling into the sheets before sighing in disappointment. Beverly sat up and kissed his forehead again before she abandoned him for the bathroom.
Jean-Luc closed his eyes and let his mind drift on a quiet sea. The warmth of her body and the weight of her head on his chest was back in a moment.
“I love you,” she echoed as he took her hand and let her settle arms around him as he lay on his back. “Remember that in the morning,” she begged with a heavier sigh. “In case I behave as if I don’t.”
“I’m going to remember how docile you are now,” Jean-Luc teased back. They lay in silence as she moved his hand to her stomach. Allowing it to rest there, she covered it with one of her own.
“If only I’d known,” she muttered to his chest.
He knew he had the option of pretending he was already asleep, but his curiosity won out. “Known?”
Beverly sighed regretfully. “Had I known you were like this in bed, I would have gotten pregnant the old fashioned way.”
Author: Oparu
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Beverly Crusher/Jean-Luc Picard
Warning(s): smut
Summary: missing scene from Fair Trade. Life on a starship. Plotless. Banter. Smut.
Thanks all mistakes are mine, but
lanna_kitty helped me greatly.Disclaimer: Star Trek does not belong to me.
A/N: Couldn't fit it in the story. Couldn't get it out of my head. If I had a DVD, I'd stick it on there. On the commentary I'd say this one of the better sex scenes I've written. In my biased and entirely nonobjective opinion.
“If I kill an ensign, you have to keep me from being sent to the stockade," Beverly began before the door to their, formerly his, quarters even had time to hiss shut. Her right hand pressed against her lower back and her left steadied her balance by clinging to the edge of his desk. "Ensign Regar’s not taking her migraine medication on the correct schedule and if she comes in complaining about it one more time--”
Setting down his book, an old, paperbound version of “The Merchant of Venice” dear to him because of the wonderful strength and intelligence of the cunning Portia, Jean-Luc started to get up from his chair. Watching her take a deep breath and straighten, he realized he couldn't yet place all of her body language. If she was in pain, her unfounded rage was keeping it from him. He worried frequently for her physical well-being. Watching her be so dizzy on the Mendel had been difficult and Jean-Luc still felt the need to keep his gaze on her when she was in the room. Perhaps it was just a period of adjustment for both of them, Beverly hadn't had the first three months to adapt to the changes in her body, and he hadn't had the time to integrate his new role into himself.
“Of course,” Beverly’s tirade continued, “she thinks something’s wrong with the medication. Alyssa tries to tell her that Leyporasine functions on a time delay and the timing of when she takes it is very important. Regar thinks she needs to talk to one of the doctors and monopolizes Selar when I need her to work on the microcellular regeneration programming of the medical equipment in lab two for the victims of the Umaarian central processing disaster.”
Sighing as she released the desk and started towards the center of the room, Beverly dropped her lab coat down off of one shoulder and started yanking viciously on the other sleeve. “Selar started forty-five minutes late,” she continued without taking time to even see if he was listening. “Then I had to pull her off again because Lieutenant Martin’s piton failed to engage properly on holodeck four and since he was teaching lead-climbing to Ensign sh’Negari and Sergeant Berriman, all three of them suffer multiple compound fractures and compression injuries because they’ve fallen from the Cliffs of Heaven on Cendry Two. One of them, none of the three will admit to doing it and I'm thinking of sending Worf their way, thought turning up the gravity might make it more challenging. Doctor Hill’s already into the thirteenth hour of her shift but I need her to stay because sh’Negari’s right tibia is in pieces and I can’t fix that and Berriman’s dislocated clavicle at the same time.”
Tearing the lab coat off over her right wrist, she dropped it on the back of the sofa near the window. The starlines zipped mutely by as Beverly shook her head in disgust. “We’re still dealing with half of stellar cartography being exposed to Cardassian diphtheria at that damn wormhole conference on Deep Space Nine three days ago. That disease is so old we don’t even have vaccines for it on board anymore, the treatment protocol calls for Eurythnomitic antibiotics that take hours to build molecularly and tie up the medical replicator. Of course it’s not the fault of the Bajorans their planet was invaded and their medical science is at least a century behind what it used to be, but those patients are taking up the entire quarantine wing.”
Pulling her hair back from her shoulders and starting to knot it up, she gave up and loosed it again as she paced in front of his desk. Making an angry line between the replicator and the doorway to the bedroom, her feet never stopped moving. “Did I tell you Deep Space Nine’s CMO keeps calling me on subspace to check in?” she asked infuriated. “His name is Bashir, he looks like he’s twenty-two, could have been one of my students while I was at Starfleet medical, and he wants to know how we’re handling the situation.”
Bending her back in a slow arc backwards, Beverly rolled her shoulders from side to side before her right hand landed firmly on her neck. Long fingers dug into the muscles there as she turned to him. “He’s always smiling,” she complained, glaring past him as if the art on the wall behind his head offended her. “He seems to have guessed over subspace that I’m pregnant and he keeps reminding me not to come into contact with any of the Eurythnomitic compounds, as if I don’t know that. It's possible my pregnancy made it into the gossip between the Enterprise and Deep Space Nine. I just don’t see any reason why he should care or why he doesn’t just come out and remind me to be careful because I'm pregnant. As if I'd forget! So on top of everything else, this wunderkind doctor, who looks barely older than Wesley, just continues to insinuate that he knows without actually saying anything of the kind. Like he’s trying to goad me into mentioning it first.”
Taking great care not to smile, stare at her or move too quickly, Jean-Luc removed his empty tea cup from the table and made his way slowly to the replicator as she paced to the other side of the room.
While she hovered between the desk and the sofa, she continued to run through her day. “Then Starbase Twelve calls on subspace,” she explained and glared at her lab coat as it fell from the sofa and landed in a heap at her feet. Squatting down to pick it up instead of bending her back, Beverly balanced and glared at the coat. Without missing a moment, she continues. “They want to know if we’re ready with the analysis of the lasting effects the water table contamination has had on the renal systems of the colonists from Libron Eight. Doctor Park Hymn-Woo asked us to have it done by Stardate 47238.2, which is still two days away, but now out of the blue, she wants it today by seventeen hundred.”
Laughing harshly, Beverly tossed her infuriating lab coat onto the sofa seat instead of the back. Following behind her, now that he’d let the replicator reclaim his cup, Jean-Luc took her lab coat and folded it neatly in his lap. Sitting on the sofa as he tried to remain out of her way, he continued mutely watching her.
“Of course, it’s completely impossible!” she snapped angrily and turned back to him. Her left hand flew to her hip and her right started pulling her hair back behind her head. In the last few minutes she'd decided to tie it back after all. Jean-Luc allowed himself a moment of enjoying the fact it was red-gold again instead of the brunette she'd been when she'd helped rescue him. “I try to explain that to her but she gets increasingly unreasonable as the conversation moves on.”
Now pacing the shortest route in the room, between the desk and the window while she spoke, Beverly still hadn't made eye contact with him. “Jean-Luc, it’s like hitting my head on the wall when I speak with that woman. No matter what I say, she thinks we work miracles over here and have absolutely nothing else to do. Maybe no one goes rock climbing or catches archaic viruses on Starbase Twelve. She still has three times the staff I do and five interns! She has more than enough hands to run her own analysis but she seems to believe the data will somehow be compromised because she’s getting the initial readings through subspace.”
Throwing up her hands, Beverly tried to stick them back in her pockets, but her lab coat was gone and she had to fidget with them in front of her stomach instead. “As if we weren’t going to send our results through subspace anyway! As if every order, every bit of data we get from Starfleet Command doesn’t travel through subspace. If it were so unreliable we’d be at war with the Klingons and the Romulans simultaneously and trading for spare parts on the Ferengi black market because Starfleet can’t manage a supply chain.” Taking a deep breath, she folded her arms over her chest and finally brought her gaze to his.
Watching her pace was easier from his position on the sofa. Covering the discarded lab coat, his hands rested in his lap. When she didn’t launch into a new tirade immediately, Jean-Luc set the lab coat aside on the coffee table and folded his hands into a pyramid on his legs. Keeping his tone even, Jean-Luc looked up at her with the most neutral expression he could manage.
“How would you feel about something Italian for a late dinner?” he suggested. “I was just reading about the streets of Venice and I think it’s put me in the mood.”
Her abrupt change in mood was so intense he could almost hear the wall of anger crashing to dust behind her eyes. “Damn,” Beverly swore before she sank heavily to her knees on the floor in front of him. Dropping her head to her hands, she made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat before lifting her head and apologetically making eye contact. “I was going to try not to do that.” Hitting her fist against her knee, Beverly stared directly up into his face. “We just talked about this at breakfast. We’d agreed I’d at least say hello before I launched into my reasons why everything is wrong with the universe at warp speed.”
Sliding off the sofa to sit nearer to her on the floor, Jean-Luc reached for her chin. “That was your rule, not mine,” he reminded her.
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hold me to it,” Beverly retorted as she grabbed his hand away and held it tightly in her lap. "I made it for your own safety."
Reaching for her shoulder with his other hand, he felt warmth run through his chest. “I could go back to the desk and you could come in again,” Jean-Luc teased. “I believe I was just about to read the beginning of act five.”
“Italian for dinner sounds wonderful,” she replied to his almost forgotten question. “You know, Lwaxana and I had lunch together today via subspace. Andorian spring salad, the one with the purple radish-like things."
Grinning as he leaned back against the foot of the sofa, Jean-Luc watched the tension in her posture start to ease. “I don’t believe she was mentioned in the tirade,” he said.
Shaking her head, Beverly changed position and crossed her legs beneath her instead with a sigh. “No, she wasn’t,” she agreed. “Talking to her was one of the bright spots of my day.”
Chuckling in the back of his throat, he straightened a lock of hair that had fallen into the collar of her blue uniform. “Perhaps while we work on saying hello to each other, we can work on adding the positive parts of your day to these recaps.”
Closing her eyes and smiling, Beverly tried to relax as she sighed again. “She returned from the eighty-fourth annual Federation Art exhibit on Andoria three days ago,” she reported. “Apparently just in time to deal with the rainy season. Did you know it rains almost three meters worth in a few months during their winter?”
Smiling as he replied drolly, Jean-Luc felt her take his hand from her shoulder and squeeze it. “Betazed’s meteorology has never been an interest of mine.”
Clinging to his hand, Beverly leaned closer. “Nor mine,” she said. “However, listening to her explain how to eliminate the hideous grey slugs that are after her vegetable garden was by far the best part of my day, at least, since I left you with the breakfast dishes again.”
Nodding dryly, he remembered her continuous, hasty apologies as she got dressed and hurried to sickbay. “We may need to start getting up earlier,” he observed.
Groaning and getting to her feet, Beverly rescued her lab coat from the coffee table and hung it where it belonged by the door. “Can’t we just eat faster?” she hoped, reaching down to offer her hand to him.
“Should you really-” he wondered as he refused her hand and stood on his own.
Rolling her eyes at herself, Beverly sighed and shook her head. “No,” she answered the unfinished question. “No, I definitely shouldn’t try to be gallant and help you up, move furniture, spar with Worf or lift crates in sickbay.”
His surprised glance made her laugh. “I didn’t touch anything,” she promised, though her smile was impish instead of serious. “So far my biggest physical complaints are stress related and I’d really like to keep them that way.”
Pausing on his way to the replicator, Jean-Luc caught her chin and kissed her lightly. “Welcome home,” he said. “I hope you had a good day.”
“It had its moments,” she answered, resting her forehead against his. Her skin was cool and the smell of her hair reminded him of lying next to her in bed. “Breakfast, my visit to the Bridge, Lwaxana’s grand tale of how she conquered the mighty slug invasion, dinner, a shower and bed.”
Keeping his hands on her hips, Jean-Luc kissed her again. “I hope you’re not setting the bar too high,” he wondered dryly. “I haven’t even replicated dinner yet.”
“Cannelloni, caprese salad, the computer’s best approximation of a Chateau Picard Merlot and rosemary herb bread,” she recited his usual choices when they had Italian as she slipped from his grasp and sank onto the sofa. Yanking off her boots as she ran through her predictions, Beverly finally stopped projecting frustration around her like a firestorm. “We'll eat. You’ll laugh when I tell you about the slugs. You’ll tell me what the ship was really doing today, how Starfleet found new ways to create more paperwork and what quirk Data or Worf discovered about humanity. We might deviate and have tiramisu or talk about how Will and Deanna keep taking long looks at each other when they think no one sees them.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared her down from the replicator. “Six days together and it’s already become that dull and predictable?”
Dropping unceremoniously to the floor of their quarters, her boots lay forlorn at the edge of the sofa where she abandoned them. Beverly pulled her legs up to her chest and massaged her toes in slow circles through her socks. When she didn’t hear the sound of the replicator, she looked over at him innocently. “Maybe I like it that way?” she asked, only half-teasing.
At his instructions, the replicator created exactly what she had predicted. Moving the dishes from replicator to table, he set it under her affectionate gaze. Lining up the plates around blue candles in the elegant Andorian candlesticks that had arrived in the wave of things from her quarters, Jean-Luc caught her eye as he lit them. “You’re entitled to your opinions,” he replied. “I reserve the right to be surprised by them.”
“I thought you’d like those,” she said, lazily pointing at intricately carved stone candlesticks. “I half intended to give them to you when I bought them last year, but I never got around to parting with them.”
Setting the wine and the glasses around their plates, Jean-Luc poured it first, letting the main dish remain on hold in the replicator. Synthehol had no real effect on pregnant women, for which he was doubly grateful. Dinner without wine was an anathema to him, and it calmed Beverly’s nerves.
“It appears they have made it to me regardless,” he joked as he fingered the cool black stone of the one of the candlesticks. “Ingenious of you to find a way not to give them up.” Fetching the salad, Jean-Luc set it on the table before he moved to stand over her at the sofa. “Madame,” he jested, reaching for her hand. “Your uninspired dinner is served.”
Smirking as he helped her to her feet, Beverly wrapped her arm around his as they crossed to the table. “Jean-Luc, there’s a vast difference between predictable and unconscionably dull.”
“Good,” he answered quickly. "Perhaps you'll do me the service of warning me if we ever get too close to the later." Shaking out his napkin and dropping it to his lap, he reached for her plate and stopped in surprise when her hand caught his.
“Thank you,” she murmured. Appreciation radiated from her face and suffused the warmth of her touch.
Confused, he returned the pressure of her hand and replied, “It’s the work of moments to replicate dinner, Beverly.”
Laughing at the joke only she understood, she released his hand and allowed him to serve her. Taking the plate, she met his eyes. “I’m sure it is no small effort to return tranquility to your quarters have each time I invade them with my barrage of postshift complaints.”
Tilting his head as if he’d never considered the idea, Jean-Luc nodded slowly and pretended it was just dawning on him. “I do remember a certain difference in the ambience of my quarters,” he mocked. “However, I haven’t yet put it to proper scientific study.”
Laughing over her salad, Beverly reached for a second slice of bread and set it on the side of her plate. “Have I ever mentioned how much I like coming home to destroy the silence of your quarters?” she wondered impishly.
“I hardly consider them mine anymore,” he replied with a slight raise of his eyebrow. Lifting the bread knife and cutting a few more pieces, Jean-Luc watched as her salad disappeared quickly from her plate. “Besides,” he added. “The noise level hasn’t come up for discussion yet.”
Setting her fork down and reaching for her wine glass, she tapped it with her finger before she asked over the rim. “Should I be grateful?”
“Beverly,” he retorted more seriously. “We may discuss it whenever you wish.” Pushing his salad around on his plate, he found himself distracted by the roundness of her breasts. Her pregnancy wasn’t obvious, except it seemed to other medical professionals like Doctor Bashir, but he was certain her breasts were different. They were the reason she’d had her uniform tailored again, he was fairly certain of it, although he hadn’t yet found it necessary to ask. She had mentioned that her hair was starting to change and that was something she liked.
That was part of what he’d been meditating upon while he ran over the familiar Shakespearean prose, thus far, she had mentioned very little that wasn’t positive. Her sense of smell was becoming more acute and Beverly had only mentioned that as an excuse to spend last night in the arboretum before dinner. Even finding the time to have her uniform refitted had been a joke.
Watching her reach across the table and steal a piece of mozzarella from his plate, he offered her another pass at his salad plate, in case there was anything else she was interested in before he cleared both of them. Her fork stabbed into one of the tomatoes and another piece of mozzarella before she nodded and let him take them away. The replicator hummed and traded the empty salad plates for two plates of stuffed cannelloni covered in a hearty red sauce. Carrying the main course back to the table, Jean-Luc decided to take advantage of the calm after the storm.
“While we on the subject of things we haven’t discussed,” he began as he set her dinner in front of her. Waiting for him to sit before she took a bite, Beverly blew lightly over the pasta on her fork and waited for him. Jean-Luc lifted his own cutlery but then set it down again. “How are you feeling?”
Beverly had already taken a bite and she nearly choked on it as she started to laugh. “Jean-Luc?” she wondered and looked genuinely puzzled as she stared at him over his untouched dinner. “I monopolize all of our conversations. Weren’t you here when I got home and talked your ear off about how I felt?”
“I meant physically,” he clarified. Resting one hand on the table, he reached for his wine glass with the other.
Across from him, Beverly’s fork twirled in the white, melted cheese on the edge of her pasta. When she set the fork down, her fingers danced in the edge of her napkin. “Fine,” she answered simply. “I’m fine.” She pretended she needed her napkin before she returned to eating. When he looked more carefully, he saw she was simply moving pieces of pasta, cut from the whole, in the sauce on her plate.
“Jean-Luc” she nimbly changed the subject. “Did I tell you Data came down to assist us with the biobed upgrade? He’s completely fascinated, keeps asking the most bizarre questions. Do I feel closer to you? Do I sense another presence around me? I think he even started to ask if it was strange to make love before I found a reason to disappear. It’s like having a five year old with a dictionary in his head, who can also reprogram your biobeds, hovering around you.”
“Beverly,” he reprimanded her gently. Resting his hands on the glass table, Jean-Luc tried a different tactic. “Imagine I’d come home, shut myself in the bedroom with my flute and only come out when you threatened me with Vulcan srismenaroth for dinner.”
“You wouldn’t,” she teased him, eyes brightening as she contemplated the hypothetical situation.
“I might,” he answered meekly. “The point is, you’d wear away at me until I told you what was bothering me.”
Beverly’s smile in response was genuine and she relaxed enough to start eating again. “You make me sound like a caustic agent,” she said.
Raising an eyebrow in response won a chuckle from her and Jean-Luc passed her another hunk of bread.
“I suppose that’s a fair assessment,” she admitted once she’d swallowed. “Are you suggesting that my outbursts are analogous to your hermit-like qualities?”
Jean-Luc set down his fork and set his words in order in his mind. They’d already begun to have this discussion in various forms over the past six days. Drumming his fingers softly on the table helped him decide of how it should conclude. “Both of us need to be able to take off the uniform,” he began. Idly spreading butter across bread for her, he handed it over as he continued. “We have been, and are still, very good friends however, we’re both starting to realize we’re going to need more than that. We’ve both been careful, almost unnecessarily polite with each other--”
He dry chuckle surprised him out of his thoughts. “Jean-Luc, I’m entirely too harsh with you,” she retorted.
“You are harsh in my general direction,” he corrected as he refilled her wine glass before thoughtfully leaning back with his own. “You are hardly harsh with me. Besides, Beverly, I believe all my time in Starfleet has prepared me to take it.”
“I hope so,” she murmured. She was smiling again but there was a hint of regret in her eyes.
“To be candid, this has never happened to me before,” he began, watching as she toyed with the last of her dinner. “I have experienced parenthood secondhand. When I lived another man’s life, at the time, it did feel like they were my children. Meribor and Batai were ghosts. An experience I shared across eons.”
Beverly had to lean across the table to reach him and he set down his wine glass to meet her hand halfway. “I appreciate your strength,” he finished. “I know you have never been one to complain. However, I have to admit I’m fascinated. What’s happening inside of you is completely foreign to me and I want to know what it’s like. At least, as much as I can within my limited, male, perspective.”
Bringing her other hand to his, she squeezed it before she left her chair to clear the empty plates. “You make it sound like you’re jealous Jean-Luc.”
“I don’t envy you what must be a host of physical complaints,” he offered, retreating to the sofa with their wine glasses in hand. The replicator hummed and the remnants of dinner began to disappear back into the molecular void. Her red hair fell lazily down her shoulders and his eyes traced the elegant curve of her spine. “Are you aware you hold your stomach in your sleep?” he asked as she made her way to him on the sofa, plate of tiramisu in hand.
Beverly used the single fork to pass him the first bite. Her thumb traced his bottom lip and her eyes were fixed on his,
“At night, you curl up into me--” he stopped when she buried a giggle.
“I do get us rather tangled, don’t I?”
Taking the fork from her hand, he nodded and held her gaze before her smile faded. “Your ability to make the most of available space is one of your more endearing qualities,” he replied. Cutting through the chocolate dust on the top of the cake with the fork, Jean-Luc lifted a bite to her lips. “When I wake up I inevitably find you holding your stomach. That unconscious bond is something I wish I could understand. To be frank, I envy it very much.”
Taking his hand way from dessert, she set the tiramisu aside on the coffee table and wrapped herself around his chest. “My head hurts,” she admitted shyly as he watched her fingers fidget with his hand in his lap. “The back of my eyes hurt before I’m done with my paperwork. My breasts itched so badly this afternoon that I hid in medical storage just to scratch.”
His gentle chuckle calmed the restless movement of her hands.
“That can’t be important--” she trailed off.
“On the contrary,” he disagreed and released her shoulders so she could retrieve the tempting dessert from the coffee table. It ended up balanced on his lap. “Thank you for sharing that with me,” he finished.
Beverly took another bite before she dropped the fork on the small glass plate. “Jean-Luc--”
Keeping the fork from falling off onto his legs, he held it lightly. “You think I’m not being serious.”
“I know you are,” she corrected. “I’m just wondering how much time you spend watching me sleep.”
“You have a rare gift for falling asleep,” he reminded her. Running his hand along the line of her arm, considered the question before he answered. “I used to lie in bed and think, even recite poetry before I fell asleep. I find watching you much more pleasant.”
“I love you,” she said, surprising him as her head dropped to rest against his chest.
His heartbeat seemed to have become both too fast and too loud. Jean-Luc knew that was impossible. Though his artificial heart was an incredible piece of technology, it wasn’t programmed to increase in volume.
Beverly’s head rose from his chest and her eyes softened and became sympathetic. “Does that make you nervous?”
Covering his heart where her head had been, her hand lay calmly on his chest. Staring down at it, her long fingers reaching up towards his collar, Jean-Luc realized his heart really was giving him away.
“Your heart rate increased,” she explained, suddenly shy. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You admitted you loved me in public, I thought it was about time I--”
“I know,” he interrupted as soon as he sensed the fear seeping into her tone. “I mean, I’ve known. Beverly, forgive me, even when it’s just you and I, I still find myself searching for what I want to say.”
“You’re quite charming when you’re tongue-tied,” she quipped. As if she sensed dividing her attention would make things easier, she retrieved the nearly forgotten dessert and started to poke at it with her fork.
Leaning forward, he put his head in his hands for a moment and looked back up to see her watching him with her fork in her mouth. “I do love you,” he began. “I’m not sure I can say for how long. I don’t even think it’s important anymore.”
Her cool fingers ran along his chin before she turned his face to hers. Jean-Luc could taste tiramisu as she kissed him. Her lips were tentative, her tongue patient and her fingers slipped to his neck. Turning into her deepened the kiss and Jean-Luc felt her leg slide down towards the floor. Her fingers crept back towards the nape of his neck and he felt her smile before they parted.
Reaching inside the back of her collar for the tiny zipper, Jean-Luc felt her tongue press once against his bottom lip. The glint in her eyes suggested she knew exactly what her teasing was doing to him. Sliding her uniform jacket free, he felt her deft hands work on his as well. Their uniform jackets tumbled forgotten to the floor in a heap of red and blue. She’d skipped the thin grey turtleneck, and only wore the two-tone grey and black tank top.
Tracing the smooth skin of her shoulder, he trailed his hand down her upper arm while she dragged him roughly out of his grey turtleneck. Dropping that to the floor as well, she started towards the bed, stripping off the tank top as she walked.
“I had to go up a bra size,” she complained mischievously. Beverly’s fingers rested on the waist of her black uniform trousers as she sat on the edge of their bed. “My red dress,” she continued. “The one I was planning to wear at the Admiral’s banquet so you’d have something to distract you from the dreadful speeches, doesn’t fit across the chest. I was complaining to Deanna but she just gave me one of those Betazoid death glares.”
His quizzical look as he stood over her made her laugh impishly.
“You wanted to know what was different,” she reminded him with wicked amusement. Snapping the clasp on the back of her bra open, she cupped her breasts and her eyes dared him to slip the straps from her shoulders. Sliding her bra straps down around her elbows, he crouched in front of her. Taking the bra by the center, he pulled it gently free of her hands and brought his hands to cover hers. “They’re sore, unreasonably sensitive, and--”
“They itch,” he interrupted as he remembered the earlier complaint. Kissing her collarbone before he coaxed her hands away from them. Beginning at her sternum, he pushed his hand out following the bottom curve of her left breast. Rising to push her back on the bed, he found the last zipper of her uniform with her.
Her hands darted away and landed on the small of his back, running up his spine before pulling him down to kiss her again. Need made that kiss sweeter and more desperate. There were rare moments in his life where he allowed himself yearning. Kissing down her neck, he made his way down the top of her breast. Beverly wrapped one of her legs around his back and pulled him closer to the bed.
Chuckling as he flicked his thumb across her nipple, Jean-Luc felt her lips tighten on his neck. Running his hand down her ribs, he lifted her breast and pressed it in against her chest. Her sigh was a high-pitched sound in her throat and he brought his hands to the trousers still covering her hips. Easing her leg free, he followed her inner thigh down low enough to earn another moan before stealing his fingers away.
Coming open at his touch, the clasp of her trousers put up little resistance. Guiding the fabric free, Jean-Luc’s hands started to take on the warmth of her skin. His thumbs skimmed the newly bare skin of her inner thighs in tandem as he worked his way down. Beverly’s uniform trousers dropped to the floor with her top.
Using her foot to draw him back, she tore his off with far less reverence. The tight, black briefs he wore beneath his uniform grew more constricting as her long fingers teased their way around to dig into the smooth muscles of his back. Easing him closer in towards the bed, Beverly dug her fingers deeper beneath his briefs.
He shook his head slowly as he pulled her fingers free and kissed them. “I want this first,” he told her simply. Beverly’s fingers stayed on his lips for a moment and a corner of her mouth smiled.
Bringing her hands up to her chest with his left hand, Jean-Luc slid his open palm down her stomach with his right. Tapping a slow rhythm on her clit through the fabric of her panties only made her laugh. It was that low, needy giggle that made him smile and slip a finger beneath the hem. She was wet and it was almost too easy to tease his way in. His thumb made rough circles through the fabric and Beverly groaned once before she pulled his head down and captured his lower lip between her teeth. As his thumb sped up, her teeth relaxed. When his index finger slipped across her clit beneath her panties, she gasped into his mouth and released her grip on the back of his neck.
Freed, Jean-Luc ran his forehead down her stomach. Pausing to suck the inside of one breast, he started guiding her panties off her hips. As Beverly brought her knees up to help him, he slid a finger inside her and curled it up gently. Flexing it within her made her hand return desperately to the back of his neck.
Dropping her panties somewhere near the foot of the bed, he twisted her legs up and planted her feet on the bed. Jean-Luc flattened her clit with the pad of his thumb, teasing before he pulled it away. Listening to her breathing quicken, he took his time. His tongue ran a meandering course down the skin from her knee to her clit. Licking across the labia instead only forced a disappointed moan before he brought his tongue to her swollen clit.
Barely skimming it with his tongue, he rolled his fingers up and pushed inward. The wetness of her warmed his knuckles and he added another finger. Her breath lost rhythm and she gasped. Her nails dragged up the back of his neck and then the palm of her hand ran smoothly across the crown his head. Turning the tip of his tongue into a point, he sent it around her clit before softening his tongue.
Licking with the flat of his tongue, Jean-Luc found a rhythm with his fingers. Curling the two of them in gently as if reaching for his tongue through her, he closed his eyes and listened to her breath grow ragged in her throat. When it became a moan that rose with his fingers, he covered his teeth with his lips and brought them in for contrast. Working her clit softly between his tongue and the hidden harshness of his teeth made her start lifting her hips into his mouth.
Holding her hips down with one hand, he drew her clit further into the heat of his mouth. His fingers tired and began to complain, and he added the third. Stopping suddenly, as if he intended to leave her half-finished, Jean-Luc chuckled when she slapped his cheek. Rubbing her clit between his upper lip and tongue, he stiffened his fingers and increased their speed.
Catching in her throat, Beverly’s last moan ended in a whimper. Her eyes shut and the involuntary shudder ran through her body. Her breathing still came in pants, but it began to slow. Pulling his hand slowly free, he flexed his fingers and dropped his wet hand to his briefs.
Dragging them free and stepping out, he let the cool air shock the now intense heat of his dick. Her eyes contentedly met his and a warm, dry hand circled his dick playfully. Her fingers moved slowly down before she released him with a teasing murmur.
The sheets rustled as she sat up and wrapped her legs around him from behind. Kissing his neck, Beverly moved to sit on his lap. She kept kissing him, distracting him with her mouth and the way her breasts rubbed against his chest. Sinking her knees into the bed, she straddled him. He could feel the sweat on her face as she nuzzled his shoulder. Beverly’s dry hand guided his dick into the wetness of her and her eyes closed before she started to move.
At first, she was slow, teasing him with her body the way she had with her hand. Even if she’d been still, the heat of her surrounding his dick would have driven him mad. Beverly knew that and the determined fire in her eyes suggested she wanted the privilege of wearing him down.
She liked to joke that even in bed, he was a disciplined mind. Her pride came from his undoing. Beverly was wet and controlled. Her edge was dulled and she was on a mission. Tilting her hips into him, she changed the angle just enough to make him groan into her chest.
This time it was her rhythm, her pace, that they followed. Beverly’s muscles tightened around his dick as she kissed his neck and taunted him mercilessly as she let them relaxed. Her arms crossed behind his neck and she drew his chest closer. Her skin was hot and slick against his chest and Jean-Luc sank his fingers greedily into the flesh of her back.
Her moaning grew deeper, and the tightly controlled flow of her hips began to slide towards chaos. Together they fell into it, her hips moving in a series of desperate thrusts as he rose to meet her. Jean-Luc caught her chin, feeling the slickness of sweat mixing with the wetness of her still on his fingers. He wanted her eyes as he came.
Beverly gave him her lips, kissing him desperately before she allowed him to hold her head still. The darkness in her pupils swallowed him, consuming him as her vagina drew tight. Dropping his hand to her clit, he pressed it crudely as his dick released. Beverly’s gasp sharped into a cry and her head dropped to his shoulder. Orgasm rippled through him with the strength of a plasma shock.
She seemed to melt and Beverly tumbled them back in a heap of sweaty limbs. One of her legs draped over his stomach and the other pressed to his side as they caught their breath. His hand went to her hair and listlessly stroked the damp curls sticking to her neck. His breath came back slowly and Jean-Luc didn’t rush it. Breathless satiation filled him like an electrical field and he thought he could almost hear the hum.
Beverly sighed as she lifted her head with one arm. Smiling contentedly down at him, she traced his lips with a tender finger. Lowering her head, she kissed his forehead. “Jean-Luc,” she murmured slowly. “There are almost as many ways to avoid saying that I love you as there are moments when it screams in my head that I do, more than life, and it’s not even only when I’m full of endorphins.”
Raising his eyebrows sardonically, he echoed her sigh. “Are you saying you’re chemically bonded to me?”
“From a physician,” she quipped, reaching for the sheets they’d crumpled and pushed away. “That’s a hell of a compliment.”
“Noted,” he replied as he moved his legs to let her fix the sheets. “I love you,” Jean-Luc replied simply. “Though I can’t present evidence that’s based in scientific fact.”
“From you I almost expect it to be literary,” she taunted, settling into the sheets before sighing in disappointment. Beverly sat up and kissed his forehead again before she abandoned him for the bathroom.
Jean-Luc closed his eyes and let his mind drift on a quiet sea. The warmth of her body and the weight of her head on his chest was back in a moment.
“I love you,” she echoed as he took her hand and let her settle arms around him as he lay on his back. “Remember that in the morning,” she begged with a heavier sigh. “In case I behave as if I don’t.”
“I’m going to remember how docile you are now,” Jean-Luc teased back. They lay in silence as she moved his hand to her stomach. Allowing it to rest there, she covered it with one of her own.
“If only I’d known,” she muttered to his chest.
He knew he had the option of pretending he was already asleep, but his curiosity won out. “Known?”
Beverly sighed regretfully. “Had I known you were like this in bed, I would have gotten pregnant the old fashioned way.”
