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"Jean Luc?" I enter the small apartment and I know he's home; I can smell dinner.
"Beverly?" I love seeing Jean Luc wearing casual clothing. He's wearing a pair of loose jeans and a green T-shirt. He looks relaxed and happy and I'm hoping that it's a result of his meeting at UW.
Today was the longest we've been away from one another in a couple of days and I have to admit that I missed him like a lovesick teenager. "Jean Luc," I smile as he moves towards me. He wastes no time as he folds me into his arms and kisses me soundly. His tongue runs over my lower lips and opens me to him. I've missed his taste. It's so distinctively Jean Luc and I don't think that I'll ever have enough of it. I pull away as I feel his growing arousal pressed against me. Even though I want to indulge my own need to be close to him and make love to him, I need to hear about his day.
I purposefully didn't let myself get too attached to Yakima. Believe me, it took a lot of restraint. Hope and I moved easily back into a collegial friendship. She's someone that I can see myself working with. I loved working with Alyssa, Selar, and Eric Hill on the Enterprise, but there always seemed to be a sort of disjointedness to our camaraderie. We all had conflicting duty schedules and hardly any of us spoke outside of work. Alyssa and I had an inkling of a friendship, but I always felt that she looked to me more as a mother figure than as a friend. With Hope, however, we have common ground outside of the fact that we're both doctors. We both have sons, a common interest in regenerative medicine, and we graduated from the same class and share common memories as such. I think that working alongside her would be a team effort and something rather fun, enjoyable, and professionally fulfilling.
"Jean Luc, as much as I need to make love to you, I absolutely have to hear about how your meeting went today."
He smiles, opening himself to me, and chuckles, "Beverly, I turned down all the other offers before you came home."
Elation fills me and I feel the urge to shout my joy from the rooftops, "You did!"
"Yes. It's a perfect opportunity and I accepted the position. I hope that I wasn't too presumptuous and that your meeting went well too," he looks almost nervous. "I know that I should have talked to you, but the situation felt right and I acted a little impulsively."
For a moment I can't speak and I'm overwhelmed. Tears of happiness start to build behind my eyes and I start to shake my head. "Oh Beverly! I'm sorry. I can call them bac-"
"No! Jean Luc, I'm crying because I'm happy!"
He breathes a sign of relief and releases the tension that had built in his body. "So, uh," it's terribly adorable that he's almost afraid to say the words, "are we moving to Yakima, Washington?"
I can't stop my tears and I start to nod my head. Jean Luc let's out the loudest whoop I've ever heard as he swings me into his arms and twirls me around. I can't stop laughing and crying. I never thought that I could experience so much happiness and I hold on to the man I love even tighter, almost afraid that I'll wake up and it'll just be a dream.
I feel his grip on me loosen and I slide down his body. I'm much to excited to eat and there is really only one thing that I want.
"Jean Luc," I whisper, still cradled in his arms.
"Beverly?"
"Is this real?"
"God, I hope so," he breathes. "I still can't believe that you're here and that you're mine."
"Jean Luc?"
"Yes, Beverly?"
"Will you marry me?"
"Oh Beverly," I hear him utter softly. I love the way that he looks at me. It's like he's beholding something wonderful and sacred. He looks at me like he's seeing me for the first time, "a thousand times yes."
Our eyes lock and he brings me closer to him. Our lips meet and our tongues lazily battle for dominance as he leads me towards the bedroom. We've learned from the first time that we made love not to try and shed our clothing while moving to the bedroom. No, this time will be slow. This time it will be passionate. This time orgasm will not be our first goal. Now, in this moment, we want to show one another our love. Now we'll touch and explore, give and receive.
/
"What do you think?" He's wearing only his boxers as we sit in the candlelight. The dim light of the small flame bounces off his muscular form and highlights the soft lines of his face.
"What do I think about what?" I ask, still basking in the afterglow of our lovemaking.
He swallows a bite of our now cold dinner, "food tastes better after making love."
"Oh about that? Yes. Definitely. However, we're going to have to start eating more if we're going to keep this up," I laugh as I kiss a bit of spaghetti sauce off the corner of his lip.
"So," I begin, "in all of our excitement you didn't tell me any of the details of your meeting."
"Ditto. But, uh," he sits up in his chair and puts his plate down on the table, "the current professor is retiring and they've already prepared his old office for me. It's a lovely office: very bright and airy, and plenty of shelf space on which I can display my nick knacks-"
"You've got plenty of those" I playfully interject.
"Hey!" He interjects – I'm not the only one, Miss Packrat 2375."
"Hey! I am not a packrat. I'll have you know that everything that I save has a purpose!"
He smiles at the ridiculousness of my statement, "and what purpose, pray tell, does a box full of empty hypospray phials serve?"
"I'll have you know that those have a very unique design!" He's right. I'm sort of a packrat.
"I'm sure," he cocks his eyebrow is typical Jean Luc fashion.
"Getting back to your meeting…"
"Oh, yes, well – you know Beverly it's hard to focus on anything when all you're wearing is my shirt…"
I leer coyly, reveling in the effect that I have on this unshakable man, "Jean Luc, whatever happened to your famous self control?"
"It went out the window when I got engaged to you."
"Do you want me to put on something more modest?"
"Don't you dare! As I was saying: they have an office all ready for me and they're going to start me out teaching 3 classes in the fall: one for freshman on basic archaeological principles, and then two for upper level archaeology majors. For those two they are letting me design my own curriculum. They're even giving me tenure – which is a quite a leap of faith on their part. "
"Jean Luc, that is wonderful news – and tenure!"
"Yes, I thought so," he looks very satisfied with himself! "Now, your turn."
"Jean Luc you are going to love Yakima. It's a lot like I imagine LaBarre to be like in that it's almost free of the technological constraints of the 24th century. It looks more like one of your Dixon Hill programs than it does downtown San Francisco."
"I can't wait to see it. How was your meeting with Hope? I assume you're happy with what you saw."
"It was perfect. We just picked up where we left off from the old Academy days. It's going to be quite a change for me, though. I'll no longer be treating many patients that aren't human, nor will I be doing much surgery unless I choose to put myself on rotation at the nearby hospital – something I am seriously considering doing. Other than that, though, my schedule will be a little more set. We'll have weekends together, which is a bonus. And I loved the practice. It's absolutely beautiful. I can't wait for you to see it," I'm getting giddy just talking about it!
"I can't wait either, Beverly. For the first time, things in our lives are going to be somewhat normal. I still can't believe that we're not on the Enterprise dealing with hostile species-"
"Or species that take over our bodies!"
"Or holograms who take over the ship!"
"Or time rifts!"
"Or Q!"
"Oh thank Heavens we don't have to deal with Q!" I think for Jean Luc that is the greatest relief!
"Shh!" I express theatrically as I lower my voice, "we don't want him to hear us!"
He nods his head knowingly and smiles at me. "We did have a good run of it though, didn't we?"
"Yes, we did. Do you have any regrets?" I'm almost nervous to hear his answer.
"I regret that we didn't get closer sooner. I regret all the lives that I lost under my command. I regret sometimes being too proud and too stubborn. But, no, overall I don't have many regrets. Do you?"
"No, Jean Luc. I don't. Because if we had done anything differently we wouldn't be here now and that is truly something that I would regret."
We sit in silence for a time, basking in the wonder of just being together until I break the silence, "let's get to bed. I think that tomorrow we should go house hunting. Hope told me about some properties and I saw a real estate office in downtown Yakima today that we should stop in to."
"Agreed. We have enough money to be able to afford a home and new furniture, and due to location I don't think we'll have trouble finding something reasonable."
I look at the table littered with dirty plates and empty wine glasses, "would you think me a terribly messy future wife if I left the dishes for morning?"
He steps into me and his arms encircle my waist. He leans in close and I can smell the faintly sweet smell of wine on his tongue mingled with the basil of the spaghetti sauce, "no," whispers as he moves in to feather kisses on my neck, "I'm beginning to like messy."