She lays the cards down, a satisfied smile on her lips as Will Riker exhales and shows his own hand, revealing his bluff. Poker is just about the only time he can successfully hide his feelings from her, and that always keeps the game interesting for them both. She pulls the pile of chips towards her as Geordi and Worf exchange a look and Data regards her with a curious half-smile. As usual, they're wondering how she can manage to beat Will at poker when he's the best player, but doesn't appear to have an advantage when playing against the rest of them. Deanna knows better. Her empathic abilities have nothing to do with it; rather the fact that she knows his tells and can see past his carefully practised poker face.
"Well played, Counselor." He impulsively leans in to kiss her on the cheek and she watches everyone look at the table, the ceiling – anywhere but at them.
It's more about what they don't see than what they do. Their closest friends and colleagues stopped trying to figure them out a long time ago, and have learned to selectively ignore what's staring them in the face. They hold hands in full view of the bridge crew and exchange chaste kisses in Ten Forward, even when they're aware that the subject of gossip is firmly turned towards them. Sometimes she thinks that Will enjoys keeping everybody guessing; she certainly does.
Some of them do see more than she intends them to. She catches the sharp look in the Captain's eye sometimes when he sees her and Will smiling at each other from across the bridge as if they're sharing a private joke at everyone's expense. It must seem strange to those who don't understand.
Will is her superior officer and a respected colleague. He's also her closest confidante and best friend, and it's easier to see him that way than have to look too closely at what's between the lines they draw across their relationship. In a universe with an infinite number of languages and dialects, there's no word that encapsulates what they are. Imzadi comes close, but they are more than even that Betazoid endearment can express.
Data's keen study of human relationships once leads to an awkward moment during a poker game. The android casually comments that he has noticed she and Commander Riker engage in behaviours indicative of human courtship, even though they do not appear to have that kind of relationship. Geordi coughs into a fist to cover up his laugh, Beverly stares intently at her cards and Will goes redder than she's ever seen him (Worf isn't there, and she can just imagine how awkward he would be). Deanna's grin is enigmatic, and Data takes the cue to hastily change the subject.
They're usually careful to not let their easy familiarity get in the way of their professional relationship. On duty, Will addresses her as Counselor in his best, clipped command tones; in bed, he calls her by her name in a broken whisper, usually punctuated by "oh God" and "yes". He pecks her on the cheek when the others are watching, presses tender kisses into her naked skin when they're alone. Their closeness and intimacy feels almost incidental, and though they downplay it in public, it bleeds through in looks, touches, glances, or a stray thought that travels between their minds. Nobody knows her better than Will does, and nobody else can – even her deepest secrets she never intended to tell anybody have somehow become his. She knows he'll never tell.
People don't realise that Deanna dates about as much as Will does – she's just far more discreet about it than he is, preferring an intimate dinner in her quarters or a late-night excursion on a privately reserved holodeck. Just like they don't realise that Will doesn't really sleep with as many of his attractive dates as people think he does. They don't know that despite all those times he's seen drinking with pretty young ensigns, he's more likely to end the night with Deanna in his bed (regardless of that, his count is still above one hundred – his reputation isn't entirely undeserved).
Will's penchant for casual encounters belies that fact that he values the emotional aspect of sex as much as the physical; something that only Deanna knows. It's probably the main reason that they're still falling in and out of each other's beds despite all the years that have passed, and whoever else happens to share their beds in the meantime. The unique connection they share; the feeling of her being inside and all around him at the same time he's inside her is an intimacy he can't easily give up.
It seems to him that Deanna finds it much easier than he does to put the telepathic aspect of their encounters in perspective; it's obviously something she takes for granted, to be able to share in her lover's mind during sex. Or perhaps, Will sometimes wonders, maybe she's just that good at shielding what she doesn't want him to see. He never likes to give that too much thought.
Deanna has slept with a number of Betazoid males, but even with their superior telepathic abilities, it's never been as amazing as it is with Will. Whether it's his human openness and passion, that single-minded confidence that comes with his job, or simply the fact that he knows her so well; she doesn't know or care which it is when it's this good. It's always been incredible, from that first time in his cramped Starfleet bunk on Betazed, to the most recent time against the wall in his quarters that ended up making them both late for the Captain's reception (because she wore that tight purple dress that always drives him wild, Will can be very persuasive when he wants to be, and they didn't make it to the bed in time).
Only Deanna knows that Will never really had any intention of accepting the Aries or the Melbourne. She understands his reasons for wanting to continue to learn from Jean-Luc Picard, even as she counsels him to think of his career. The other reasons why he stays are never spoken aloud, but make themselves known, whether it's in the reverent way he kisses every inch of her skin, or in her quiet sigh of relief at him being there inside her when it could have been their last time together.
Each time he blows out the birthday candles that tell him he's another year older, she knows exactly what he wishes for – and usually gives it to him. She can make him beg and plead, tease him in torturously perfect ways he'd never even known until he met her, push into his mind and keep him on the edge for hours if she wants to (occasionally, she does).
Will is thoughtful and kind and teasing in a way that a best friend should be, and that part of their relationship is as easy as it's always been. He brings her Ktarian chocolate from Risa, Brazilian cacao nibs from Earth, and she eats these with relish even as she teases him affectionately about exactly how he spent those vacations.
They've never interfered with each other's liaisons, but he knows Soren was difficult for her, if only because it threatened the emotional closeness that they've always taken for granted. It takes time for him to find his way back into her bed after that, and she understands that better than he knows.
A lifetime of experiencing the emotions of others has made Deanna exceedingly self-reliant, to the point where she can't show real vulnerability to anyone but Will. He's the first person she goes to when she needs to talk, and her mind instinctively finds his when a crisis has befallen the crew and she's exhausted and overwhelmed by the onslaught of empathic emotions. His mind has always been an open book to her, so much so that it's impossible for her not to know him better than anyone does, to sink into the familiar comfort of his thoughts and let them soothe her.
Similarly, she'll always be there when he needs her, even when he can't ask for it. Deanna is there to stop the nightmares after his asylum hell on Tilonus IV, when he's too ashamed to admit that he's terrified to sleep alone. And at the end of her forced stint as a Tal Shiar operative, he's the one that holds her all night long when she can't stop shaking, after holding herself together for so long.
He watches her fingers tap out a crew evaluation on her PADD while she innocently asks him if he's really going to be able to sleep after that third cup of raktajino. They both know that means he isn't going to be sleeping tonight. After all these years, they've developed a language of sorts; a grin on his face, a half-smile on hers, a brush of fingers or a raised eyebrow that only hints at the deeper level of communication that's going on inside their minds.
The Captain and Beverly have both tentatively tried to broach the subject of the bond she shares with Will, wondering how she can sense her imzadi even when he's out of her limited empathic range. Deanna never lets on about the true extent of it – that she knows every dream he's ever had, or that she and Will often have their own silent conversations during the drudgery of a meeting, the only clue their secret smiles and reactions to one another's expressions. Even after she explains, they remain curious and she can tell they don't entirely buy it, especially not Beverly. Deanna smiles graciously and tries not to care.
On her occasional visits to the Enterprise, Lwaxana is a formidable enough telepath to pick up what's going on, usually from Will rather than Deanna ("Darling, his simplistic human mind is terribly easy to unravel – it's like trying to read a pot plant. William can't hide how he feels about you."). Deanna grits her teeth and Will grins, trying not to think about how the women of the Fifth House are unusually stubborn, because he knows from experience that he'll pay for it later if he compares Deanna to her mother.
At Will's annual medical check-up, Beverly raises an eyebrow when she sees bruises on his wrists that look suspiciously like they were made by a rope, and decides it's better if she doesn't know. She can't know that he and Deanna celebrated her promotion to commander so enthusiastically the night before, that when she took her first watch on the bridge, she was aching and sore and could still feel him inside her in every way possible. There are things the two of them can do to each other that make her feel more powerful than even the experience of command does, as much as she loves that.
Thomas is the only time she ever senses real jealousy from Will, and she can't blame him for that, even as she allows herself to be swept up in the fantasy of a relationship that exists without the limits they place on it. She's more surprised by the guilt Will feels after Tom leaves. Not for the first time, he wonders if he's holding her back from finding real happiness with someone else. What he can't bring himself to say out loud is that he doesn't care what they call it, but the happiness he feels when they're together is about as real as it ever gets for him. Deanna hears it in her mind anyway, and twines her fingers around his as she leans in and kisses him softly.
"It's complicated," is what she tells anyone who still feels the need to ask, but it feels anything but when Will's blue eyes twinkle at her from across the bridge, when they hug goodnight at her door and go to their separate quarters, sharing a mind as they drift into sleep in a way that's somehow more intimate than the times they share a bed.
His fingers thread between hers with practised familiarity as they walk through the corridor, and she smiles up at him. They're indefinable, existing somewhere between the lines of friends and lovers, but for them, it isn't a lesser choice. It's everything.
No beta, so excuse the odd typo or weird thing.