Time has passed in such a different way than it used to, fast and frantic and full of terribly slow moments of terror.

Will moved in, as he said he would, and the gentleman within him insists on sleeping on her couch, but she can feel that desire that is building slowly for more.

And it maybe would be easier if it was just sex,and he thinks about it so often that it could just be, if it weren't for the sound of him sighing at the sight of her curled on her bed reading, or tousling her damp hair in the evenings, humming some song he doesn't know. There is a desire that is not just physical, aching for longevity, for monotony, to be in awe, constantly, of superficial things.

It frightens her deeply, maybe even disturbs her, because he has felt this way before and he had still left, still walked away without any kind of proper explanation, leaving her alone and at a loss for what had made him leave.

Well, he had chosen his career, too enchanted by it to think he could have it all, which he could have, and now the look in his eyes tells her, before she even hears his thought, that he thinks he can have it now.

She tries her hardest to stop thinking about it, she really does, because it's all tying her up in knots, when all she has left of her evening is a session write up and a hot chocolate before bed, her empty dinner plate on the table in-front of her. He had cooked, said something about nutrition and the baby, and his care has been pulsing through her ever since; she can scarcely hear a thing.

"Deanna? Hey, are you listening?"

Her eyes shift away from a spot on the wall and back into his own, startled.

"Yes, of course. I'm sorry,"

She says with apology in her voice, very frantically trying to recall what he had been saying.

"I was just saying that it's good you weren't sick this morning, you think that means it's over now?"

"I had not noticed, it was difficult to make my body wake up properly,"

Will's eyes deepen, and he picks a napkin up to wipe the spaghetti sauce from his chin while he thinks for a moment.

"Did you mention it to Beverly?"

He asks, concerned.

"She said something about being in the 2nd quart, and how fatigue will probably just replace the morning sickness, but I'm not really sure, I did not ask."

He puts the napkin back down, watches as she takes a sip of her water and folds her hands in a knot on the tabletop.

"Well, I was reading about how, for human women, the second trimester is when morning sickness generally stops and you start getting more tired, as well as back pain as the baby grows, but I've heard a lot of women experience a kind of energy surge due to increased hormone production and -"

Deanna is laughing very quickly, but it is so quiet that it takes on that musical quality he admires so much, and his voice drops off into nothing in confusion.

He tries to alter his expression into one of disdain, but he hasn't the heart to take away from her moment of joy, and so instead he lets it play out across her face whilst he looks on in awe.

Eventually, she calms to a point where she can speak.

"You… have been reading?"

The simple incredulity is delightful in her voice, and Will's face splits into a smile, shy and sharing in her sentiment.

"Of course, the more we know the better,"

Deanna is still smiling, goofy almost and completely bemused, her eyes glistening with something that absolutely isn't humour. After a silence he cannot handle, he bursts out:

"What?!"

She takes a deep breath and brings herself slowly back into the room.

"It's just, you have been reading, when you did not have to,"

"Of course I have, how else am I gonna keep you healthy and safe through all this?"

It is her turn to be confused again.

"You really aren't going anywhere, are you?"

She tries to open herself out into a book, but she's never been much for legibility, or leaving herself so exposed to be hurt, given that there is enough in the world to feel of others without complicating that with her own.

She tries to make herself transparent, but she was not built to be seen through, and her living has been made in opacity.

"Deanna,"

Her name is enough to convey so much, but words have always failed him and so he hopes she can feel it strongly enough to know that he is shocked, and upset, and full of the sorrow of doves, trying so hard not to let it make his decisions for him.

"How could you think that? Can't you feel that I'm here, that I don't plan on going anywhere while you need me,"

Deanna shakes her head, because words have always failed her too.

"I know what you feel Will, and I also know that feelings change -"

She sighs, tears finding a way to hang from the corners of her eyes.

"Your feelings have changed - in the past - and I do not want to be blindsided again, I won't be able to take it,"

He stands, a waffle dressing gown whipping up behind him, and any semblance of normalcy, domesticity, is gone from between them.

"Dammit Deanna!"

He is yelling so suddenly, her mind trying desperately to adjust to this new fire, and not let herself be consumed by it too.

"If you feel like you say you can then why can't you feel this? Why can't you see in me that I love you, that all this has shown me there is never a right time, that you've been here all along? Why are you refusing to hear me!?"

He has large hands splayed out on the tabletop, and he is leaning down over the surface, trying his hardest to calm his voice, though it is loud enough that he can finally see tears in her eyes, a fine black lake.

Deanna stands sedately, and walks over to the viewport, no more nebula to light her up a thousand different colours, just stars and empty space, each with a name she doesn't know - and she is so very far from home.

"My father,"

Her voice catches,

"My father told me that I would be everything-"

She turns around to face him, and she is not glowing, she is barely even black and white; his eyes are so full of regret where he straightens himself up.

"Everything, to the right someone."

And she is a brutally soft woman.

Her words burn into him, like he just now is understanding quite what he's done to her, and all this time she has been holding back the urge to do it to him too.

She is so soft when she speaks.

"I wasn't everything to you,"

Deanna can no longer even whisper, because words again are failing her, and her voice is all choked up in tears as she tries not to double over with the pain of her own sorrow, because it is ripping her into too many parts of herself.

He watches her, like she's moments from collapse, her face screwing up so that her eyes are barely open, crying now in less beautiful ways; he tries so hard to be sincere, now that his voice is lower, calmer.

"But I love you, God help me I do,"

Will takes steps forward as he whispers into the dark shadow she has hidden herself amongst, approaching her like she's just a child.

"I made mistakes because I was young, and I was scared of how much I loved you, I would have done anything for you,"

*But you walked away*

Her voice in his mind is a terrible dream he hasn't had for so long, and even there she sounds broken, fragmented, and in the world her eyes are boring into his own. He steps closer to her, tries to reach to take her hand, but she flinches away from him, the anger of his explosion still dancing over the surface of his skin.

"I walked away, because it was easier than staying,"

He tries again to reach for her, and this time she pushes back into him, his arm looping around her slim shoulders where she is hugging herself, hunched and crying still, everything she feels just too overwhelming.

"I walked away because I couldn't believe I'd found you so soon - I didn't want to feel like the adventure was over,"

Her body shakes hard once with a greater sob, and he moves swiftly to engulf her completely, his arms warm and secure and shaking too with the force of her.

"This Imzadi, this is our adventure, and I'm so sorry I didn't see it before,"

One of the hands he had previously flung in anger against the tabletop, splays now with care over her stomach, the whole span of it covering where she is not the same, and his t-shirt that she's wearing hangs loosely.

Deanna is still crying in ugly ways, and she is beautiful, tucking herself up in his arms so that he can hold onto her tighter, so that she can be sure he will never let her go.

"I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere, I'm right here,"

He repeats himself over and over, rocking her slightly in his arms where she turns inwards to him, her face pressed into his chest, the two of them almost as one person, with his chin resting in her hair.

For moments in time it is not silent, she's still sobbing and he is still trying to soothe her, and the two of them are still standing by the viewport, the universe still moving on and on beyond them.

After a while she is completely silent, completely still, the ability of her legs to hold her up becoming no more, and he can feel that she can stand no longer. So he moves in one motion, his own murmuring quieted, and scoops her off the ground and into his arms again, like he has done too many times already, but now she is just marginally lighter, all this sickness having stolen her good health away.

Will carries her to where the sheets of her bed are already pulled back, and he lays her down gently in the dim light; her eyes, now that he can see them, are fluttering open and closed as she tries to fight against her sleep. Once he has tucked her in, he tries to leave, but, like before, her fingers are still clinging to his wrist, and she sends to him the word stay, softer than before, like a gentle whisper in his mind.

So he stays, because he is a gentleman, and the lady asked, and they've spoken too much of love, and loyalty for him to leave now when she has told him not to. Deanna rolls immediately into his side when he lies down beside her, and she breathes him in, tucks her body up to cling to him completely.

He plants a series of kisses in her hair, against her forehead, the apples of her cheeks, as her face looks up to him, and she squints through whatever she is feeling to try and make a logical, well reasoned decision. Somehow, logic has escaped her, and she tells herself that it is okay to be lead by her emotions, that being in control is not always enough.

And in the absence of reason, she take a hand and reaches up to hold fingers against his cheek, rough and coarse in his attempt to grow out a beard, desperately trying to be new for her. She pulls him down to her own face, and they are so close that she cannot focus her eyes, their noses graze against each other, he smells like spaghetti sauce, and orange juice, and his breath is hot and steady against her skin. All the air hangs still between them, their heartbeats rising into one, something which is nothing and also everything at the same time.

She moves, her lips parted and soft, to capture his own, everything quiet and slow and so heavily overdue that the need, the necessity is like a fire - they both are catching alight.

If he were a better man, he maybe would pull away, but she is so sweet, and so brutally soft that he could never say no, and it has been such a terribly long time that even if he wanted to, truly wanted to, he couldn't pull away from her.

Will groans trying to hold back, trying not to let two years catch up with him too quickly, not to let himself be completely caught up in the moment and to take advantage.

*Imzadi, relax*

Suddenly, he remembers why she was the only woman to truly make him feel in love, her mind so close to his own that maybe they could be one, if he wasn't so grounded by his own humanity.

Their kiss deepens, and his jaw finally untenses, relaxes, so that he can continue to explore her as she has relished enjoying him, passionate yet lazy, familiar and easy: it is like lighting a candle where the wick has already been burnt.

She grabs a fistfull of his shirt, her hand no longer on his jaw now that his two have found her own, and she rolls onto her back, pulling him with her to lay atop her body, his elbows on either side of her shoulders propping himself up.

They seperate for only a moment, long enough for her to take a breath, to finally meet his eyes with a look of joy that he can only do so well to mimic.

*I love you*

Deanna sends to him, her voice too far gone to say anything other than the gentle wheezing that follows her as she inhales, exhales, the exhilaration of being back with him when she was sure she never would be is so fresh within her.

"And I have missed you, Imzadi,"

He murmurs, then dips back down to capture her lips, steal her breath away from her again, then pull away just as quickly, pressing kisses instead against her jaw, littered against her neck, her collarbone where the baggy shirt has fallen away. He comes back up to her lips again, kisses her with more passion but just as briefly, then moves back down her body, repeating this until he is pulling the t-shirt over her head, and tracing kisses around her belly button, doing his best to worship her, to make up for everything he has done wrong, to heal every part of her that he has broken.

Her hands play in his hair, kissing the top of his head when he is closer, breathing more deeply the further down he goes, sending her reassurance to him in waves.

She tells him to go far, to not worry, that he won't hurt her.

She tells him, please, to go all the way.


Two bodies wake in the early afternoon, on a starship sunday, in a mess of tangled limbs and discarded clothes, the sheets wound around them tethering them together.

She is laying on her front, and he on his back, the both of them naked and perspiring lightly, fabric strategically spread over his waist and then beneath her and around her chest, then back around over her hips where it ends.

In every way, they are entwined.

One of her hands is resting on his chest, small and tracing patterns onto his bare skin, playing lazily with the hair there. The arm that he is surrounding her neck with is bent at the elbow, snaking back around to twist a curl between his fingers, so much of her hair splayed out around her head.

They have been awake for hours, but it is a starship sunday, and she so rarely has a chance to just lay still and peaceful, to feel loved and safe and contented all in one space. It's a terribly fleeting feeling, and so on this one day she is going to sit in it, relish it.

She feels her age again, feels like she's a year away from 25, and she doesn't have to think about getting married or having children or even just finding love, because it seems all these things have found her in some way or another, and whether they are permanent or normal, she cannot know, but she lies, and she relishes.

And Will, well, he is just trying not to let his heart beat out of his chest with terror, with joy. Because at long last he has what he wants, and he doesn't have to feel guilty about it, but there is always that feeling that it might be too late, and so for the moment he too will lie, and relish.

Their day doesn't really start until 13:00 hours, when her stomach rumbles with such force he can feel it in his own, and he is hungry too. Gentleman as always, he makes her breakfast in bed, omelettes and orange juice, and they kiss some more, and she is naked and wrapped up in the blankets left behind, leaving Will to put on his discarded pajama pants then crawl in beside her.

She feeds him slices of omelette from the end of her fork, and very few words are exchanged at all, the two of them simply using the day for reparations, for a little bit of light in the midst of something dark. And when the food is gone the two just smile at eachother like teenagers, so he reaches for the book on her nightstand, and picks up where she left off, reading to her in a silly voice until she is giggling with delight at how he transforms a simple research paper into a tale of scandal, and deceit.

There is more kissing as he tries to inhale her laughter, and they soon are laughing lightly together, Deanna having snatched the pad from his hands and then rolling over to straddle him, the sheets bunching around her waist.

And she has never been embarrassed to be naked, especially not with him.

She shows him how she needs him, in a way she hasn't in a long while, and soon they both are sweating again, smiling still, finally at some point in their lives where they can just be young and silly and desperately in need of the other.

There is some more light napping, surrounded in twisted sheets and hot limbs, and then more lazy dozing with hands in hair and wound around further discarded clothes. Will's chest is heaving with some kind of strain, and she is sending him her thoughts, stray ones that make little sense to anybody, until he hears something of drawing, of how beautiful he is she wants to draw him.

Somehow the afternoon becomes a sitting, and after he hears her he replicates a pencil and a sketchpad, then sits across her in the bed, his legs crossed over one another stretched out before him, and she is sitting up eagerly on her knees, wearing his nightshirt like a dress, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

It has been so long since she drew anything that wasn't the waterfalls of Betazed, anything that wasn't the memory of something she desired, and now looking at the glee in Will's eyes as he makes lewd jokes about nude modeling, she feels that there is enough inspiration in her to draw the entire host of the Enterprise in one stroke.

His smile is disarming, and when she hands him the finished picture he mirrors it, and holds it next to his head, then down to his lap with raised eyebrows, pointing out where she has simply shaded in a concealing shadow. She laughs, and he laughs, before plucking the pencil from between her lips and flipping over the page, ordering her to sit still too.

Deanna crosses her own legs, in the baggy shirt, and tries her best to pull her messy hair into some semblance of normalcy, letting it fall in bedroom ringlets around her shoulders. She remembers how she was the one to teach him the simplicity of sketching, and how his lines were always a little too angular, and so she mocks him, pouts a little when he talks about the impossibility of capturing her true beauty when she is wearing clothes.

Will hands her back the sketchpad, the pencil tucked behind his ear, smiling coyly as she looks over his work with joy, because he has been practicing, and her edges are soft and natural and the way half her face lies in shade is so startlingly beautiful that even she could cry.

Instead, she kisses him, and they spend some more time kissing deeply before his stomach rumbles, and they two raise from the bed to go to the replicator, to argue over what to eat for dinner as if they have been doing it their whole lives.

She kisses him, and wins, then hands him his pants off the floor and laughs, ordering two meals out of the computer and even more orange juice, before he can again tell her all he has read on it's benefits in pregnancy.

Deanna smiles to the sound of smooth jazz, because he is wearing pants and hijacking her sound system, playing his own personal sound file of pieces she has heard him play, and has held in her mind ever since.

It is 19:30 hours, and they are making eyes over forkfuls of food, something betazoid and homely, exotic, flirting over slices of purple fruit and mouths of starchy roots, baked and buttery and delicious.

She huffs, when she is full, and moves to tuck her bare legs up to her chest, her knobbly knees providing the perfect spot to rest her chin whilst she watches him curiously, taking in every movement of his like it's the last time. Will smiles over a mouthful of food, and she giggles her glee of feeling so uninhibited, not even having thought of the emotions of others all day, not having thought of the fear of dying alone, or having something she is unaware of within her. For the moment she is full, and loved, and healthy enough to enjoy the feeling, filled with the satisfaction of knowing she doesn't have to wait years to be with him.

Further time passes, and she refuses desert, maybe the only sign that this isn't normal, but he tries his best to ignore it, and instead stands, offers a hand to her when his favorite song plays, asks for this dance, and she nods delightedly, stands with him, still wearing his shirt that hangs down to her knees, and he in only pajama pants, the two of them full of the romance of youth.

He directs her to stand on his feet, both of them barefooted and soon shuffling to the music, swaying together as one, Deanna so much shorter than him, even with the extra height, that his head rests atop her own, and her cheek is hot against his chest.

They dance slowly, until something just slightly faster plays, and she extends her arms straight down at her sides, their hands joined so that he can lift her upwards to twirl around together, and instead of landing back on the floor, she wraps her short legs around his waist, and kisses him, deeply, passionately, gleefully.

At last, they each have what they want, and so Will kisses her back, his hands moving to hold her up, on her bare backside, beneath where the shirt hangs down over her, and again he is carrying her to the bed, not for one moment taking his lips away from her own, knowing by now the path to her bedroom.

Every motion of the night is familiar, and easy, and so deeply pleasurable that it is fortunate her quarters are so isolated from others, so fortunate that they remained undisturbed for the whole day that they can relish the silence, the company of the other.

She had forgotten how vocal he could be, how human men needed to be released from the physical means of it all; and he had forgotten how she could squeal when he hit the right spot, how her toes would curl, how she sometimes needed reminding that feelings weren't always emotions.

They continue to teach each other, to remind one another long into the night, and their starship sunday has succeeded in reacquainting them, in setting them both alight, on fire once again.


She is not fooled though, into thinking it would be easy, because the morning time comes too quickly, and Will is already gone from her side, leaving a note on the sketch paper telling her that there was an emergency in engineering, and he had to go so early that it wasn't worth waking her. She sighs, because his handwriting is squared and uniform, exactly what you would expect of one who has not spent his life working on some sense of individuality, who only can write because it was taught at the primary school he attended in Alaska.

Her fingers trace his words, and she can see the template he would have copied from, yet it is still sweet of him, and she cannot help but smile thinking things may not be perfect, but they could also be so much worse.

The computer tells her that Beverly will be around soon, and she is not due on the bridge until the afternoon, her morning largely full up with appointments for people whose problems seem relatively small in comparison. This is the first day that somebody hasn't insisted on lightening her load, and though it isn't the busiest day she's ever had scheduled, it is definitely something she would consider normal.

She is naked still, but Will must have covered her up with the sheets he left behind him, because she is warm and swaddled in the soft fabric, something Betazoid and woven through with fibres of silver - something her mother had sent.

Will's pajamas are flung over the back of a rocking chair in the corner of the bedroom, another something built from the deep crimson wood of a Betazoid tree, a chair that has been in her quarters since she moved in, that she brought aboard from her own home on Betazed.

She would like to wear his shirt again, but it smells like the two of them together, sweat and sex, and she thinks maybe Beverly will notice that too easily. Deanna does not go out of her way to conceal her own personal life, but she is the daughter of a diplomat, and she is discreet.

With the blanket wrapped around herself loosely, she stands and tries to tidy the space, gathering her own bed clothes from the floor and the arm of the chair, as well as his, and dropping them into the recycler. She then wanders to the bathroom, the sheets falling away in a pile on the floor as the door shuts behind her, and she for once does not immediately move to crouch beside the toilet bowl, her stomach holding steady again for a third morning in a row.

The shower is warm, and she tries not to spend too long just standing in amongst all the steam, focusing instead on washing the dirt from her hair, the sweat from off her skin; it is cathartic, but she can't shake the feeling that she is only washing him away from her.

There is the feeling of Beverly's thoughts being directed towards her, and she imagines that the Doctor is close by, the sound of her becoming loud in her own mind, and so she steps out of the shower, her hair damp and tightly curled, wrapping a towel neatly around herself.

Usually, the molecular dryer is too harsh for her, and she enjoys spending a little while just wrapped in a bathrobe and reading, but Beverly is getting close by, so she lets the computer evaporate all the water from her skin, then tries to decide which uniform she wants to wear for the day.

There is one blue science uniform, high collared and professional, tucked at the back of her drawers, and she thinks maybe she has been aboard long enough to experiment with something new - plus, it can be replicated in maternity sizes.

Beverly is very close now, she can almost hear her clearly, and as she affixes her pips and comm badge whilst trying to push on those regulation black boots, there is a chime at her door; without looking up, she orders them open.

"Morning Beverly,"

She calls out over her shoulder, reaching back up to sweep her hair into a ponytail and away from in front of her eyes, then turns brightly to face where the woman has come in.

The doctor blinks once, and she can feel the appreciation, the jealousy?

"Wow, you look great Dee, the uniform really suits you!"

Deanna waves her further inside, and smiles her gratitude as the doors close over, then sits obediently on the edge of her sofa as has been routine for the past week. The Doctor pulls out her tricorder and begins scanning, and there is a terribly self conscious silence.

"It is - tight,"

She tries to sound less unsure than she feels, given that it looks so good on her, and she has been avoiding wearing it for such a long time, but Beverly just pulls away with her eyebrows raised.

"And when has tight ever been a problem before?"

For a second this feels like gossip, and they could have known eachother for much longer than a year, but that is all it has been, and so Deanna follows the movements of the doctors hands as they make up a series of hypo sprays, and thinks of the right thing to say.

"Well,"

She begins, sedately moving her neck to the side to accommodate Beverly's ministrations.

"I believe tight may fast be becoming a problem, now,"

Her mouth curls up in a humourless smile, fingers against her neck end their motions and move to sort the equipment away, and Beverly's eyes turn concerned.

"Actually, I'm not so sure,"

She says with professionalism, looking back to the readings on her tricorder.

"You've lost a significant amount of weight in the past week, we need to look at maybe implementing a diet plan,"

Deanna sighs, heavy and exasperated, though she knows people are just trying to do right by her decision.

"Is it not enough that Will is cooking for me? He is already taking up space bringing a microwave oven in here, I would hate for him to think we need a hotplate too,"

Beverly ignores her childishness, used to the difficulties of treating a therapist, and instead smiles coyly.

"Ah, the good Commander Riker? I always knew there was something between you two,"

"You knew nothing, Beverly"

They trade in suspicious looks, and Deanna's eyes say absolutely nothing at all.

"As long as he's looking after you, I suppose I have no complaints, though it would be nice to know why he cares so much?"

Deanna swats the back of the woman's hand and laughs a little, rattling out that same answer she has been giving to anybody who asks.

"Will and I are just old -"

"Old friends, I know,"

Beverly finishes with mirth.

"The only thing wrong with that is that you aren't old."

She continues, pointing a finger directly at the younger woman, wagging it light-heartedly.

"The captain and I are old friends, you are very young, and Will Riker doesn't strike me as a man who forms more than passing acquaintances,"

Deanna rolls her eyes, and stands along with Beverly who has packed away her med-kit, saying nothing to justify her response, but she follows the other woman's eyes to a spot behind the couch, where she has seen something to make her smile.

"Old friends?"

Crusher raises her eyebrows in the direction of a pair of boxer shorts, peering out from the underside of the sofa, and a deep shade of red creeps up Deanna's face, pushing her forwards and out of her quarters before the curiosity can kill them both.