A/N: So this is a little one-shot I cooked up in the name of boredom and old clichés. Aren't I just positively evil? At any rate, please excuse any ridiculous and obvious errors because I'm sorry to say I didn't have the time I needed to give this little drabble the attention it deserves, and it is unfortunately un-beta'd. I would also like to say that this piece is dedicated to a very special person (without whom this piece probably wouldn't exist), who just happens to share his glorious first name with the actor playing one Captain James T. Kirk in the nuTrek. ...I'll let you figure that one out. :) Cheers! ...Oh, and reviews make the world go 'round.
Disclaimer: I don't own.
"Would you pretend, just for a moment, that you're not the only person in the universe who wants to get the hell out of here?" That was her polite little way of saying 'sit down and shut up or so help me I will jam 30ccs of sedative into your bicep.' As any smart man would, Picard eased himself down to where she'd already made herself comfortable, knees pulled up to her chest, on the floor of the turbolift.
"Beverly, I don't believe we will be exiting this turbolift for quite some time."
Thank you, Captain Obvious. "I'm well aware of that, Jean-Luc."
It was times like these she wondered what kind of sick, sadistic being drove the universe, and what misguided game it was playing at to lock her in a 3' by 3' lift for an undetermined amount of time with the one man she'd been hell-bent on avoiding for the next two days, at least. Whoever it was must have been on the same level as Q in cheap amusement because, from the outside, she had to admit it might have been humorous. If it had happened to, say, Worf and Deanna, Dr. Crusher would have been all over those security tapes faster than they could have said "awkward situation."
Evidently, it was a ship-wide systems failure, judging by the lack of even secondary lighting and unresponsiveness of the usually quite accommodating computer. In the almost pitch-dark of the small cramped space, she could only be thankful that she was not claustrophobic.
As fate would have it, the man she'd been adamant on staying far away from had seen fit to contract a strain of Antevan coccidiodomycosis, and a virulent one at that. Being Chief Medical Officer, she was in no position to refuse him, and they had been on their merry little way to sickbay when the Enterprise had took it upon itself to choose the most opportune time to malfunction.
"Uhm…Doctor," rasped the Captain, and she took in the way his cheeks flushed and his eyes squinted in a moderate amount of concern. He looked, for all intents and purposes, like he was about to be sick.
"Jean-Luc," she cautioned, a sympathetic hand working circles into his shoulder. His head dropped between his knees: a clear sign he was feeling nauseous. "Just concentrate on breathing."
He nodded, and then groaned at the apparent further discomfort the movement caused him.
There was a moment of silence punctuated by his labored, asthmatic breaths and her own erratic breathing, deafening to her ears, as she blundered through her medkit in the hot pursuit of a viable remedy to his plight. Her task, broadly hindered by the stifling darkness, took a few precious extra seconds before she was able to fuse her prize through his shoulder.
As much as she considered Picard deserving of his little bout after having strained and paced and stomped himself silly for a good ten minutes, Beverly disliked the prospect of living with a fresh patch of bile for God-only-knew how long, and she disliked even more seeing her friend in pain when there was still something she could do about it.
Picard sat up rubbing his temple, but he flashed her a relieved smile all the same. Most of the tension that had wracked his shoulders was gone, but it was still flinchingly obvious that he was ill, and that his illness was no walk in the park.
"Any better?" she asked, and he released a very put-upon sigh.
"I'd be better if we could get out of this damn lift." His patience, it seemed, was finally coming to an end.
Beverly couldn't agree with him more.
There were times when she'd rather have spent twenty minutes on a lift with her captain than a week with anyone else, times she'd nearly had a nervous breakdown in front of all of sickbay at the near-fatality of his condition, and times when she would have gladly thrown herself into his welcoming arms and kissed the stuffing out of him. And then there were times like these, where she wanted nothing more than to get as far away from him as humanly possible and berate herself about it over a strong scotch.
"Well," acquiesced the doctor, "that doesn't seem very likely, as you said yourself, so perhaps you'd rather settle down for a long wait."
This darkness had a strange way of dragging out a latent paranoia from the back of her mind because, although she couldn't tell, she could have sworn he was looking at her, staring even, as marked by a faint glimmer like the liquid of his eyes. As to what he possibly thought he could see, considering she herself could barely make out his silhouette at her side, was beyond her.
"Perhaps so," he said, and his voice was remarkably calm.
A pause.
"You're sitting on my coat."
"Mm?"
"My coat. You're sitting on it."
"Oh. My apologies."
He shifted, his elbow brushing her side in the process, and she found herself dwelling more than she ought to on that brief touch as they lapsed back into a loaded silence. Uncharacteristically, she found herself craving that closeness a little more fervently than was the ordinary twinge, remembering the feel of his lips and skin on hers, hers if she wanted them, as that contact resonated in her nerves. She felt her body tighten at the reflexive memory and crossed her arms to keep from acting on the impulse.
By now, she should have been used to it.
Around a minute later, Picard coughed, and the harsh sound ripped through the still quiet between them, startling her from her reverie.
"Picard to Engineering," choked the Captain for the umpteenth time, swatting at his comm. Badge like it was to blame. "Commander LaForge? …Geordi?"
"Just as it had the first time he'd started this routine, the communication remained silent. Exasperation clear in his next exuberant exhalation, he slumped back against the wall next to her and swept his feet out before him as much as the space would allow, passing a shaky hand over his eyes.
"Am I to understand," Picard breathed after significant delay, "that you have a problem with me?"
Directly following this line of questioning, she could only flounder at him in the dark. Then, a bit chagrined at his taking notice, she snapped, "Yes, I'd say you understand correctly."
"And what," he put to her, "have I done this time?"
Taken aback, Beverly let the retort perched at the tip of her tongue die in her throat as she stared at the outline of his profile, much darker than the rest of their surroundings. His head was tipped back to rest soundly against the wall at their backs, and she traced greedily with her eyes across his prone form, throat exposed through the collar to his uniform to reveal his adam's apple.
The innocence in his tone cast a sense of guilt over her like the waves of a sonic shower, allowing her to rethink her position. Here she was, chewing out a sick man, her captain no less, while he needlessly went along with it. No resistance, no rejoinder, no question of 'why.' Just 'what have I done this time.'
Her heart went out to him in that instant.
"Oh, Jean-Luc," she gushed, defeated. Reaching out a blind hand, her fingers brushed the cusp of his sleeve before she retracted the gesture, thinking better of it. "It's not you – not really. It's just…"
"Just…that I told you I loved you in the middle of a fever-induced frenzy, am I right? And now you're feeling embarrassed and put on the spot, and you're overcompensating, is that correct?" he finished for her.
"You wouldn't happen to be secretly plotting to swipe Deanna's job from under her feet, would you?"
It was obvious he recognized the humor for its true intent, as an attempt to evade the subject of his inquiry, but he chuckled just as well. "I don't need to be a Betazoid or ship's counselor to know what you're feeling, Beverly. But, if it's any consolation, you know I never would've been so forward if it weren't for my…affliction, at present."
"I know," was her tormented response. Still, she couldn't get those ragged words, his wild confession, to stop their incessant looping in the back of her mind. "I know," she repeated.
Even after taking a step back from the terrifying truth and dutifully ignoring it much as they did in the past and continued to do each time that precarious line was crossed, something felt off. Something was different this time. It was as if, after finally having that ambiguous tango, that advance, feint, lunge, parry, retreat that had been fought for so long put into tangible words, a direct declaration that hung between them like a sentence, the chemistry of the relationship had evolved, and that which was normally so simple to skirt around was suddenly a glaringly solid particular.
As it turned out, the naked truth may have been a little too naked. After all, it was impossibly difficult to ignore anything so long as it was standing right before her in all its naked glory.
"But…?" the Captain prodded.
"But," she parroted, "but…Jack…"
"I know."
"No, that's not what I meant. I mean, it's…it's not fair. It's—"
"I know."
Annoyed with his amenability, she turned full-body towards him in an attempt to more properly reason with him. "Look, would you please let me say this?"
"Certainly. Do go on." He was looking at her too, now, and it lent her a pang of self-consciousness, even in the nebulous black.
"Jean-Luc," she started, despondent. "It's already been said, we both know it, and even if you didn't mean to tell me, you still meant it. Frankly, I'm sick and tired of pretending it doesn't exist."
She could just imagine the narrowing of his eyes, and the boyish flash of hope before he caught himself, when he said, hesitantly, "What are you proposing?"
"I…I don't know. I'm saying it's unfair to you, to keep doing this…this…whatever this is. I love Jack, but…Jack's dead. He'd be appalled to know that his corpse was keeping his wife and his best friend from being…well, happy. And—"
"That isn't all that's st—"
"No, let me finish. You're my captain and my best friend, yes, I know, that's what's been holding us back from my end; I didn't want to endanger that. But…look at Will and Deanna. Even after all their history, even when she started dating Worf, none of that came onto the bridge with them. And now they're getting married. I'm just…tired. Tired of taking it for granted, this…us. Whatever we are. I got so…comfortable with it that I was afraid, no, terrified of doing anything different, of messing up, of giving myself body and soul to another man liable to die by the hand of Starfleet. Just by setting foot on this ship, our life expectancy is shortened by nearly fifteen years. But…life's a big game of poker, so to speak. It's all about taking chances, right?"
She didn't need to look to know he was smiling. "You always were a mean hand at poker."
"Yes," was her wistful reply, remembering a time when she'd won a game over him during their weekly poker sessions and, as per their bet, had made for him to grow out his hair. "But I had this vision, after you…confessed, of myself as this lonely old spinster holed up in this stuffy office heading Starfleet Medical, doing nothing all day but signing documents and being paraded around like a mascot for the press, surrounded by all these stuck-up bureaucratic milquetoasts, and…"
"I see. That must have been horrifying."
"Oh, you have no idea," she laughed in agreement. "And I thought…what am I doing? Pining over ridiculous professors, and inhuman parasites, and candlesticks, and—"
"And William Riker," he supplied helpfully.
"And—what? Oh. Like I said: inhuman parasites."
They both snickered at Will's expense, sharing in the relief of the moment, and she felt a tentative hand seek hers out in the darkness, testing the waters.
"You'd have Wesley," he told her simply.
"Wes? You mean, a grown man hanging out with his old-fashioned spinster of a mother just to humor her? Pardon me if I don't want to subject him to that. He's my son, not my nursemaid."
His fingers tightened around hers, as if gaining solace in the fact that she had not pulled away. "Well, what am I?" he boasted in mock offense.
"You're…" She paused in search of the correct term. "Well, you're…you're the exception."
"The exception?" Picard repeated, amused.
"Yes, and the divergence point," she explained quickly.
"The divergence point, Beverly? Our relationship is hardly the time-space continuum. If it was that important, I daresay we wouldn't be stuck in a turbolift at the moment."
"It's part of it," shrugged the Doctor, nonplussed. "To my life, is what I meant. You're the choice I have to make, between two different realities. You're the difference between my turning into a stuffy old bat with twelve cats and…being alive."
In their short proximity, she heard his breath catch, and a pool of pride welled up into her throat.
Taking advantage of the momentary falter, Beverly shuffled herself closer to his nigh-invisible cadence, and, clumsily, rose to her knees in order to settle herself directly at his front. She could feel his hot gaze peering into her across the black, raising gooseflesh on her arms, and so as to ascertain just how real his unseen expression was in that obscure, sightless expanse, raised a hand to cup his angled jaw and shy over the lines of his face.
Lighting upon each and every discovery in her exploration with the exhilaration of the blind learning to see, she noted that Picard seemed to be enjoying the experience just as much, if that little sigh was anything to judge by.
He took her lead, dragging up his much larger, warmer hand to splay across her cheek, and every nerve ending he touched tingled inexplicably at the graze of his skin. How long had she dreamed of, but been too afraid to instigate, even this little bit of exposure to—
His fingers danced a gently pattern across her lips and she canted forward, compelled by the light pressure and loath to let them get away. Before such an escape could occur, the Doctor caught the tip of his index finger between her lips, smirking outright at his little jerk of surprise, and drew it past her teeth.
Beverly could just make out the parting of his own lips in anticipation, and, oh, it was rich, and gratifying, and exciting to incite such a prominent loss of control in a man so calm, collected, and rational.
In all the poise and grace of a complete glisé with her opponent, she mirrored this maneuver with the saber that was her tongue, toying along the length of his index from foible to forte, forte to foible. She could tell that he made the connection between this movement and their more extensive encounters on the holodeck with similar interlacing of blades because, if the tightening of his grip and the bite of his nails still on her hand was not proof enough, then the tiny, even pants emitted from his slack mouth were the icing on the cake.
Releasing him from her clashing of weapons, she addressed him with the heady whisper of "En garde."
And, apparently, that was all it took.
He was on her like white on rice with a small, almost hungry noise in the back of his throat, crashing into her with a certain lack of propriety and clambering to tug her back to him against the wall, into his lap, and it was a wonder to her that his lips ever found hers in that chaos of breath and limbs.
It she'd taken the time to think about it, it was more than flattering.
After a long contest between tongues and teeth, with as many hasty fumbles as to put her teenage son to shame, and quite a few hair pulls and nose bumps, Picard finally backed down with the single, breathless exclamation of "Oh…"
"What is it?" Her voice, in her own ears, sounded shrill. "What's wrong?"
She could hear the wet sound of him swallowing, between breaths. "This…malady, is it—"
"No."
"Then you won't—"
"No."
His head dropped between them with a soft moan, and he took another moment to struggle with the air before he said, "Merde."
"Jean-Luc?" She felt herself frown, felt his troubled gulps of oxygen, and felt his fever-hot skin when she lifted his face with a delicate hand under his chin.
"Dizzy," was his winded annotation.
"Are you sure that's not just—"
"Yes."
"Are you—"
"Yes."
Grappling with her medkit, the Doctor kept a steady hand on his shoulder as he sagged against her, clearing his throat and trying to cough. "Merde," she agreed.
Even through the chore of his grinding gasps, he found the breath to chuckle at her. "You have an accent."
"Really? Never saw that one coming," quipped Beverly through her teeth. By holding each one an inch in front of her eyes, she found the hypo she needed, measured and prepared it, and not a moment too soon.
Almost immediately after she thrust the remedy of vertazine into his arm, he visibly relaxed. Sitting up with a hand entwined in hers, he huffed in something akin to astonishment.
"You're the only doctor I've ever known who can practice medicine in the pitch-dark," he commended her.
The praise sent a prickle of warmth up her spine, but she only scoffed. "It's a sure sign I've been practicing medicine for too long."
A little uneasily, he wavered back to a comfortable sitting position and reserved for her a grim smile, fitting placidly among the dim lines of his weary expression. She reached for his face, drawing herself up to her full height and fastening her lips to his in the gentlest of kisses.
"You know what's wrong with me, Jean-Luc?"
At length, he concentrated down on her with mock-surprise. "You mean there is something wrong with you?"
Beverly only shook her head, lips curved half into a small smirk, as she tried to form together the words she needed, suddenly quite desperately, for him to hear. Too long, it had been. It was ironic, too, that he was the last one to know: the only one who didn't know, in fact. Even Data had sensed a certain magnetism between the CMO and her captain and had tried to confront her about it—in hopes of learning more about human relationships and romance, of course—and Lord knows that if a socially inept android had picked up on her little secret, then it must have been egregiously obvious.
Sucking in one great breath, Beverly pushed herself to the very outer-limits of her courage to inform him of something that, in every practical sense, he had every right to know and should have already known.
"I'm in love, that's what. And it's taken me this long to tell you."
Those were the words that breached that thirty-year barrier, that pervaded the stillness and startling silence of that small turbolift, and simultaneously rendered Picard speechless: a sight she was unlikely to forget. The lighting system evidently agreed with her, for it chose that moment to snap back on with a significant hum and blind them both with the disorienting change.
The lift jolted, momentarily thrusting the Doctor into Picard's stiff side, and she clung to him in the few seconds it took for them to—finally—reach deck twelve.
In unison, the comm badges of both senior officers chirped with an influx of incomprehensible and interwoven messages from several informants proclaiming relief and spouting figures.
"Sickbay to Dr. Crusher, this is Nurse Ogawa, do—"
"Engineering to the Captain, can—"
"Bridge to—"
"…at the heart of the ion storm, but—"
"Only mild injuries, focused mainly on—"
"…support systems runni—"
"…can't tell if—"
"…all to Wesley, and—"
With much concern over retaining her sanity, Beverly switched off her badge for the time being, with the consolation that the rest of the crew would find out exactly what had become of her soon enough. Overwhelmed and frazzled, and pair helped each other to their feet and strode out into the hallway, thankful for a solid floor beneath the soles of their shoes.
As she slipped a furtive hand into his, methodically weaving her way into sickbay, she didn't need to ask to know he very much intended to continue their discussion at a later time, and that it would be a very pleasant time indeed.
There were times, after all, where Beverly couldn't stand the sight of him for spite, where she felt trapped and defenseless, and where she wanted more than ever to slap him into the next millennium. It was times like these, however, seeing the shocked and amused expressions directed towards their clasped hands, where she enjoyed every second of being utterly in love with Jean-Luc Picard.