Just Because It Feels Good (Doesn't Make It Right)
It doesn't matter that they're fucking as if there's no tomorrow, because this is the Enterprise, and there might well not be. Half the crew have no idea who she is. The handful that do, know her only as the CMO from the previous ship. It's been a long time since she's walked the corridors with Jean-Luc and felt every pair of eyes burning into her fair skin, anticipated the grinding of the rumour mill gears. Maybe that's why she makes no protest when he pushes her up against the door of his quarters the second it swishes closed, and runs his hand up her thigh. This is not the Enterprise she remembers. She doesn't even know the First Officers name, a mealy-mouthed, skinny young man who trembles as he speaks to her. Deanna would have eaten him for breakfast, but Deanna is light years away. Will is light years away. Data...Jean-Luc pulls away when her tears touch his skin. His voice is quiet, tender as he wipes the tear away. "Hey," he says, questioningly. "Beverly?" Meaning "Talk to me", meaning "What is it?" She hasn't got the heart to tell him, to break the spell before they've even finished casting it. Her heart is hollow, her heart is not in an emotional blow-by-blow, not tonight, not x number of months, barely over a year, since their family were ripped apart at the seams. She says nothing about this. She never says anything much. After all these years, after decades of silence, she still can't find the right words. So she gasps out hash staccato breaths, "Harder" "More" "Don't stop", "Oh god, Jean- Luc, make me - " until she realises that she's still pushed up against the door, and that finishing that sentence could be fatal. She pauses, and that's all the time they need to start laughing at the image they nearly created. The stern Captain of the U.S.S Enterprise, flagship of the Federation, his face lined with recent tragedy and his hand buried between the thighs of his one-time CMO. Not to mention a hard-on that could cut through steel, that turns her laugh to a gentle sigh as she presses against him in the empty room.
She wishes she could say she doesn't remember how all this started.
The evening of Data's memorial service, the night before Will and Deanna left for the Titan, she found herself walking towards his quarters, shaking violently. He brought her inside, hugged her tightly and gave her a cup of tea. She looked up at him with bone-dry eyes that couldn't cry anymore and rasped out "You've done this before." He broke her gaze and moved to sit down, settling himself in for a long night.
"Jack's funeral."
"You remember." Stupid thing to say. Of course he remembered, remembered the flowers, the sympathy, the service, remembered Wesley crying until he was sick. Remembered holding Beverly until dawn as she writhed under his touch, angry and burned out with grief. But it all went away for a while. They lost themselves in each other for the few hours until his transport left for some far away world. It's an oblivion she craved three decades later, when all the wine left her with was a headache and there was no more paperwork because she too was scheduled to leave within the week. Until she got off the ship, she couldn't forget.
"We can't do this." His spoke mechanically, no emotion whatsoever. The irony of this twisted her gut and she wanted to slap him, for denying himself what Data never had and never will now. For denying her what she needed.
"We can't or you can't?" Cheap shot. Very, very low, Beverly.
"If that was some contrived effort to make me prove it - " He didn't finish the sentence. It's hard to talk when full lips are pressed against yours and a tongue is sliding sensuously into your mouth. He melted into her arms, and she stroked the back of his neck.
It's just sex. They tell themselves this, travelling in the turbolift to his quarters or her office, killing a few hours before they can be fashionably, nonchalantly late, buying flowers or a bottle of whisky (because that's the polite thing to do, after all). In fact, it's rather spectacular sex, thirty years of waiting exploding in one night whenever they can grab it. Beverly secretly suspects that Jean-Luc ran the Enterprise a little too close to that Romulan warbird on purpose, any excuse for a week in dry dock and Beverly's bed. He suspects that the conference they ferry her to is a flimsy excuse, the same way he decorously offers to carry her luggage to her guest quarters in public, then ends up sprawled on top of her in a turbolift. He makes her a late dinner by candlelight, she has his favourite dessert programmed into her replicator. It's all terribly civilised, except when it isn't. Shifting around uncomfortably in her office chair, the Head of Starfleet Medical crosses her legs in board meetings to discuss the latest epidemic of some plague in a far-flung corner of the galaxy, suggesting they send the nearby Enterprise to help and all the while remembering the scratches she will make down it's Captain's back, the way her legs will wrap around him, drawing him further inside.
Ten Forward gets starker with every ship, the further they move from Guinan's comfortable decor and lazy, relaxed atmosphere. Other than that, this could be any public dinner they've ever shared, First Officer cracking jokes (Will's were funny, Commander Whatever's aren't) and a replicated bottle of Chateuau Picard '56. Beverly smiles, ostensibly at some interminable punchline, but really at the memory of Jean-Luc licking up the real thing from her navel two months ago.
Late into the night she whispers against his skin, "We should have done this years ago", and he is finished before even beginning, a loud groan, shuddering against her. Irrationally, anger flares and she refuses to stop. Sitting back and riding him roughly, she snarls, punctuating each word with a hard thrust and pinch of his nipple. "You should. Have fucked me. Years ago." Somehow he's hard again and meeting her grinding movements with his own, murmuring in an incoherent babble of French and Standard. "Pardon, chere. S'il te plait...God, Beverly!"
"Make it up to me", she snaps harshly, and throws her head back, porcelain skin luminescent and ghostly in the starlight. His mouth latches wetly onto a hardened nipple, sucking it fiercely, grazing teeth. She gasps and he takes the incentive, moving her onto her back with him still inside her. His fingers twist and pull, bruisingly.
"When? When should we have done this, Beverly?" He stops abruptly and looks down at her, delicately tracing an aureole, teasing her sensitive skin. She's panting, the sheen of sweat shining on her skin. Turned on and not thinking clearly, she answers him.
"Kes-Prytt. After Kes-Prytt. God, Jean-Luc!"
He slides back into her with a hissing sigh.
"I should never have let you leave."
"No...On the couch..." Her words turn to a scream as he abandons all pretension of self-control and they both tumble headfirst into a dizzying orgasm minutes later. When her mind finally clears, she realises her voice is harsh from screaming. She licks parched lips and stays very, very still. Goosebumps prickles out over her skin and she draws the thin sheet over bruised, bitten breasts. He shifts to look at her and she doesn't need to be empathic to feel his self-loathing. A line has been crossed in this bed, but neither of them have the courage to mention it.
"I have an early start tomorrow."
"Then get some sleep. Would you like me to get you some warm milk?"
She smiles at the incongruity of this man who has left her sore and shattered, offering to bring her a nightcap.
"Will you read me a bedtime story as well?" He is silent, hurt feelings to loud to be spoken. "I'm sorry.", she whispers.
"Are you?"
She pauses. "I really have to get some sleep. Goodnight, Jean-Luc."
He reflects, when she turns over to face the wall and fake a few snores, that she sounds exactly the way she did when she left his quarters after Kes-Prytt.