Self-Indulgent Fics

He moves aside so she can enter, and as she sweeps past him she notices that, while his smile is wide enough to crinkle the corners of his eyes, it seems strained, and his clothes are uncharacteristically…rumpled.

There are two glasses of wine on the coffee table, so Beverly crosses to the couch and sits down. Jean-Luc sits next to her, body angled so that their knees touch. Beverly reaches over and lays her hand on the knee resting against her own.

“Is Louis okay?”

Jean-Luc lets out a deep breath. “It’s been a long day.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He hesitates, seemingly considering it, then shakes his head. “I don’t want to ruin your mood. Or the evening.”

Which suggests that he wants a distraction.

And yet, she pushes.

“Jean-Luc.” It’s sharp enough for him to quickly snap his gaze to hers. “I’m here to listen. That’s what friends are for.”

“Is that all we are? Friends?” He raises an eyebrow. It’s teasing—his tone is teasing—but the way he swallows, the way his eyes flick back and forth between hers, is fragile.

“Well, I’m hoping we’re becoming more than friends”—she raises her own eyebrow challengingly— “but that’s what we’re still working out, isn’t it?”

She expects him to continue this cautious yet playful little dance they’re doing, but instead he’s suddenly serious.

“Are we foolish for even attempting this?”

No, she thinks defiantly.

She’s willing to move forward as slowly as Jean-Luc needs, but she absolutely refuses to go backwards, to let him retreat.

Beverly knows this might not work out—and that would be painful, but she can’t imagine Jean-Luc doing something to purposely hurt her that would make her not want to remain his friend. It would be awkward, naturally, and it would take time to learn how to be friends again after being lovers—and Beverly very much intends for them to be lovers—but if Will and Deanna can do it, Beverly believes she and Jean-Luc could too.

“I don’t think what we’re doing is foolish,” she says. “I think we were foolish for letting our fears hold us back for so long.”

She lifts her hand to his face, cupping his cheek. He leans into her touch, his eyes closing and his features smoothing out, the strain she witnessed earlier draining away. Gently, she strokes his cheekbone with her thumb. “If it’s too difficult for you right now to balance us and Louis, we can—”

His eyes fly open. “No.” His gaze is steady. “That’s not what I want.”

“Then what do you want?”

His lips part, but before he can speak, there’s a sound from Louis’s room—a quiet, pained moan. Jean-Luc is up and moving immediately. Beverly almost follows but remembers herself at the last moment and remains on the couch.

Louis may like her, but she’s not his parent; Jean-Luc is. Jean-Luc is his father and his safe place and the only thing he needs to see when waking up scared and confused from a nightmare.

That knowledge doesn’t stop the longing. She misses being needed the way Louis needs Jean-Luc. She misses having someone to take care of like that. She misses Wesley. She misses being a mother.

(She’s obviously still a mother, but it’s different when your child’s an adult.)

To distract herself from the longing, she sips her wine. Half of her attention is on Jean-Luc’s voice in Louis’s room—low and soothing—and the rest of her attention wanders the room, snagging on two items that are very out of place: a set of thin rectangular blocks that must be for building, and a marble maze.

That explains why Jean-Luc’s clothes are rumpled.

Beverly grins and tries to imagine him sprawled on the floor with Louis, building some elaborate castle with the blocks, or racing marbles. Whenever Jack played with Wesley, it was like he became a boy again himself. It’s hard to picture Jean-Luc being boyish.

She’s still grinning when Jean-Luc emerges from Louis’s room. He returns to the couch and lifts his wine glass from the table.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs before taking a sip.

“You don’t have to apologize.” Beverly readjusts, moving until their knees are once again touching. “Bad dream?”

Jean-Luc nods tiredly, shoulders slumping.

“Tell me what happened today,” she prompts softly.

He hesitates again. Beverly waits. Maybe she shouldn’t push. Maybe she should just give him the distraction he seems to want…

But then Jean-Luc takes a deep breath, takes another sip of wine, and proceeds to tell her about the holodeck, about Louis’s request that they eat dinner alone in their quarters.

“I think I may have pushed him into some things too soon,” Jean-Luc admits. “I thought a sense of normalcy would help, but I don’t think he was ready.”

Beverly’s heart clenches and she finds herself squeezing Jean-Luc’s forearm reassuringly; she knows returning to duty as soon as he was allowed is what helped him move on from both his assimilation and his week of torture, but Louis is just a boy, and he has more than one singular traumatic event to overcome—he has several years’ worth of them.

“You should take more time off,” Beverly advises.

Jean-Luc nods. “I will.”

He sips his wine but remains turned away, withdrawn.

“There’s something else,” Beverly says. “Something else is weighing on you.”

Jean-Luc smiles lopsidedly at being caught out, but stares at his glass for a long moment before answering. “I watched the other Data’s logs today.”

Oh.

“Worse than you expected?” she asks.

He nods again. “He suffered, Beverly. And I—I feel as if…” He trails off, grimaces. “I feel as if I should be suffering too. For not being there for him. For…being the one that caused it.”

“You didn’t cause it, Jean-Luc. And neither did the other you.”

Jean-Luc lets a breath out through his nose that sounds distinctly like disagreement—he still blames himself for what the Borg did through him, he’s still ashamed that he wasn’t able to resist them.

Stubborn, prideful man.

Abruptly, he shakes his head and turns towards her. “I’m sorry, this isn’t how I imagined the evening going. I’m not being very good company right now.”

She offers him a soft smile. “It’s alright. This is what being together is supposed to be like—sharing the good and the bad.”

She’s treated to another raised eyebrow and a teasing, “So we’re…together?”

Beverly flushes at her choice of words. They’re not anything yet. They opened a door, but they’ve yet to walk through it. This is only the threshold, and it’s going to take more than some kissing—delightful as it is—to determine what they are, to push this past the physical, past giving into their lust for each other.

But that will take time, and right now Beverly very much wants to give in to that lust. So she curves her lips into a coy smile.

“Aren’t we?” she asks. “Unless I’m mistaken, we both told each other last night that we” –she can’t make herself utter the word love— “have feelings for each other. And then we—”

“I remember.”

His voice is low and gravelly, his gaze sharp. There’s suddenly a tautness in the air between them, exactly like last night, exactly like that afternoon in sick bay. Beverly’s pulse quickens, and her skin warms in anticipation.

“Jean-Luc, I need you to be honest with me.”

“Always.”

“I need to know if what you want right now is to talk, or to be distracted.”

“You are not a distraction.”

“You know what I mean.”

He breathes in slowly, eyes locked on hers. “Right now, I would very much like to be with you, and to save the discussion concerning what happened to my son and what I’m going to do about it for a time when I do not feel so overwhelmed by it.”

Beverly nods. “Okay.”

He takes it for the permission it is and leans in to kiss her.

-/-

Picard’s worries melt away the instant his lips meet Beverly’s, but no sooner has he slid his hand along her jaw—coaxing her to tilt her chin back, change the angle of their kiss, deepen it—than he hears Louis cry out.

The sound pierces his soul.

He draws back, swipes his thumb against Beverly’s cheek apologetically. “Perhaps now isn’t the best time after all.”

He tries to remove his hand, but she covers it with her own, holding it in place.

“It might be a long night,” she says. “Why don’t I stay and keep you company?”

There were bright spots amidst the darkness, moments where Louis appeared on screen with a smile to announce that it was his birthday (“I’m 7!”) or that he grew a full inch taller or that he lost a tooth (using two fingers to hook the corners of his mouth and pull it wide to reveal the gap where his two front teeth were missing).

Often, Louis wasn’t visible but his presence was evident in other ways: humming a tune in the background, interrupting Data to ask a question about his school work or the book he was reading, a sound that could only be him practicing the piano.

The worst is over, Picard tells himself. He can’t change the past, he can’t change what Louis went through; he can only control the here and now, help Louis recover, move forward.

Before he leaves, he checks for any messages from Deanna. As promised, she provided a list of toys for Louis but clarified that Louis should be the one to choose and that anything he chooses to play with that’s safe is technically fine. She concluded with a treatise on why Louis should have toys that takes Picard nearly ten minutes to read and leaves him feeling like a complete ass for not thinking to provide them sooner.

There’s a message from Will as well, and when Picard notices the timestamp his heart skips a beat and he moves immediately to the edge of his chair, poised to leap to his feet and run.

But the message merely informs him that Louis was briefly upset by an occurrence on the holodeck, and that he insisted he was okay, wanted to stay, and that Will is monitoring him closely.

As there’s no follow-up message, and as Picard was never paged, he assumes everything is fine.

Nevertheless, he walks more swiftly than is strictly necessary to Will’s quarters.

When Will calls for him to enter, Picard finds him and Louis sitting at Will’s dining table playing cards. Louis smiles at him, a bright, happy grin that warms Picard more thoroughly than a cup of tea or a glass of wine, a liquid warmth that seeps into his very soul.

And to think, there was a time when I believed I didn’t need this.

Gul Madred tried to diminish Picard, the Borg attempted to extinguish him entirely, and both times Picard resisted—he fought tooth and nail to remain himself, to hold onto his identity.

On Kataan, it was his choice to let go and become Kamin, become a husband and a father, become more. He embraced his return to the Enterprise, but he’s not the same person he was before Kataan.

Not deep down.

Deep down he knows that Louis’s smile is worth more than any accolade.

“What are we playing, gentlemen?” he asks.

Will and Louis have cards in their hands, the deck stacked face-down between them, and, at their elbows, cards lying face-up that seem to be paired by color and number.

“Go Fish, sir,” Will replies.

“But with poker faces,” Louis says.

As if to illustrate, both of their expressions go blank.

“I wasn’t aware a poker face is such a crucial part of Go Fish strategy,” Picard remarks.

“In this version it is,” Will explains. “In this version, when someone asks you for a card, you’re allowed to lie and say you don’t have it even if you do—but if your poker face isn’t good enough and they catch you, you have to reveal 3 of the cards in your hand.”

“That’s quite the motivation to tell the truth.”

“Or to have a very good poker face.” Will tilts his head towards Louis. “His isn’t too bad. He just needs some practice.”

“C'est ce que tu penses,” Louis murmurs, smirking at the cards in his hand.

That’s what you think.

Picard chooses not to translate that and instead asks, “Are you ready to go?”

Louis nods. To Will, he says, “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Of course.”

Louis lays his cards down and trots deeper into Will’s quarters. Will starts to stand, catches sight of Louis’s hand, and frowns. “For how long have you had that king?” he calls.

“Since the beginning!” Louis calls back.

Will chuckles and shakes his head. “I guess his poker face is better than I thought. I asked him for that king twice.”

“I suspect you have only yourself to blame for that,” Picard says dryly. “Or rather, your other self.”

Will grins. “That reminds me, sir. Have you considered my invitation?”

The poker game on Friday evening, the day before they’re scheduled to arrive at Earth.

Picard sighs. “I have, Number One. If it still stands—and if you’re certain it’s appropriate—we’ll be there.”

His first instinct was to refuse, until he reasoned that it would be a good distraction, a nice way to relax before reporting to Starfleet Command.

(A brief foray out of his comfort zone, for Louis’s sake.)

“I’ll make sure everyone’s on their best behavior,” Will promises. He glances to his left, then steps closer, and in a low voice, asks, “Did you get my message?”

“I did, and I must apologize—I didn’t see it until only a few minutes ago.”

“It’s alright, sir. If it had been an emergency, I would have paged you directly. I just wanted you to know what happened.”

“What did happen, exactly?”

“Well, he caught a fish” –Will stated he was taking Louis fishing when Picard dropped him off; he’s still in the flannel shirt and khaki trousers he donned for the occasion—“and when we got the fish out of the water…I don’t know, I think seeing it that way, knowing it’s dying…sometimes that’s hard for a little kid.”

There’s a crease between Will’s brows, tension in his posture. He’s worried about Louis, Picard guesses, but also worried how Picard might judge him.

“Commander,” Picard says, sternly but quietly. “I want to make it clear that I trust you.”

“Sir?”

“With Louis, I mean. What happened today in no way diminishes that trust.”

Will couldn’t have predicted that the sight of a dying fish would upset Louis. Picard would not have anticipated it either.

“Thank you, sir,” Will says. “I’m still happy to watch him whenever you need me to.”

“I appreciate your help, Number One.”

Appreciate is not nearly a strong enough word. That Louis felt safe enough with Will to stay with him speaks volumes. Picard must allow that relationship to grow—even if it means that he must also cultivate a more personal relationship with Will, daunting as it is to cross a line he hasn’t crossed as a commanding officer since Jack Crusher.

When Louis returns from the bathroom, they say their goodbyes and then Picard ushers him into the corridor—where they run directly in Deanna.

She’s clearly surprised to see them, but she masks it quickly with a smile. “Hello again.”

“Hello,” Louis replies cheerfully.

Will pokes his head into the hallway. “You’re here early.”

“I thought you might want some help preparing dinner,” Deanna says, tone stunningly neutral.

Will grins. “You don’t trust me to pick what we’re eating, do you?”

“No.” It’s succinct, matter-of-fact, and somehow not impolite.

Louis looks back and forth between them. “You’re friends?” he asks.

“Yes, friends,” Deanna and Will answer simultaneously, their voices in perfect sync.

Louis’s gaze flick back and forth one more time, taking in Will’s carefully blank expression, Deanna’s casual attire and her hair, which seems different than usual though Picard can’t pinpoint how. The boy’s eyes narrow, and Picard knows precisely what’s coming and clears his throat loudly before they’re all plunged into a very awkward situation.

“Well, have a good evening you two,” he declares, giving Louis a pointed nudge in the direction of the Turbolift.

In their quarters, they both change for dinner, Picard out of his unfirm and Louis into something not grass-stained, but when Picard moves for the door, Louis lingers near their dining table.

“Can we eat in our quarters tonight?” he asks.

His voice is small, hesitant, as if nervous about making such a request. Perhaps they rushed him into some things. Perhaps Picard should have followed Beverly and Deanna’s advice and taken more time off, eased him into the crew’s company more carefully, more slowly.

Internally, he decides that tomorrow he’ll take another personal day. Outwardly, he smiles gently, and says, “Today was a very long day. I would also prefer some peace and quiet this evening.”

Louis leans into him, head bowed and tucked against Picard’s side. It’s not quite a hug, more of a…request. Picard puts an arm around his shoulder, runs his other hand through Louis’s hair.

“You know what else I would enjoy tonight?”

“Non,” Louis murmurs, waits, his eyes half-closed.

“Your great-grandmother’s cassoulet.”