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-eighth annual Federation Art exhibit on Andoria three days ago," she reported. "Apparently just in time to deal with the rainy season on Betazed. 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.


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. I do love you 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, too," 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 while he waited for her. 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."