Summary: Part of the unfinished "Small Screen" round robin on alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated. The premise: Picard and Q search the multiverse to determine the nature of true love and/or lust, and become unseen voyeurs. Each segment is more or less open-ended. In this episode: Another visit to Voyager.

Disclaimer: Star Trek. Don't touch that. Why? Paramount/Viacom's. Oh. (This message brought to you by the United States Department of Condescending Paternalism.)

Sex disclaimer: No sex. Damn.

My Klingon grammar is not what it should be.
 
 

"Jean-Luc?"

They were in warm darkness again, some kind of place between places where Q could stop and think. Distantly, Picard could make out a steady vibration like heartbeat. He could have been inside his own body.

"Mmm?"

"Have you been keeping track of our visits?"

"More or less," Picard shrugged.

"If we're keeping score between lust and love, who's winning?" A strange little question, oddly wistful.

"Definitely lust."

"Oh." Q was silent for a while. The distant heartbeat continued. "Do you think love exists?"

In this warm, dark place, Picard had to rely entirely on tone to make out the entity's mood. The question was cynical, but the voice was very small. He decided it was a genuine question rather than a challenge.

"Yes. I do."

"Well, then I suppose the sixty-four thousand dollar question is how you recognize it."

Picard thought about that. "I don't know."

Q's tone this time was slightly distasteful. "Neither do I."

Silence.

"Q," Picard began. The entity turned to look at him, and Picard realized that they must now be visible to one another. "Can we . . . ," He made a snapping gesture with his fingers. "I have a feeling."

"Lead on, mon capitain."
 

---

They flashed individually into a half-lighted room on what Picard by now recognized as Voyager. Q handed him a cup of cocoa with two fat marshmallows slowly dissolving into it. They settled cross-legged onto the threadbare carpet.

Most of the light in the room was coming from a single desk lamp that had been relocated to the coffee table. It illuminated the PADDs scattered randomly across the floor and the single three-dimensional holographic display that took up fully half the table. Beyond the transparent display images, Picard could make out a stylus that had definitely been chewed on. A mug of something sharp-smelling steamed at the edge of the light.

While he was settling into the scene, a door slipped open and they ceased to be alone.

"Who is that?" he whispered to Q.

"It's your show, Jean-Luc, you tell me."

"I haven't got the powers of the Q. You'll have to give me a hint."

Silence. Q wrinkled his nose. "I'd like someday to meet an engineer capable of cleaning up after herself. For people with such orderly minds, they seem to have terribly messy quarters."

"Was that my hint?"

"Yes."

"She's B'Elanna Torres. We've seen her before."

"Very good, mon capitain. Shut up."

"As you wish, Q."

Torres settled herself on the couch with a handful of PADDs and absently pulled her dark hair back into a ponytail. The holographic display illuminated the narrow ridges on her forehead, and the effect might have been startlingly lovely if she hadn't been so haggard. Too many late nights had pooled circles as dark as bruises under her eyes. Her face was childish under the fierce Klingon features, but it was marked with tiredness and worry. She extended a hand to adjust the display. The shimmering lines twisted around one another, nearly shaping into something, but before Picard could decide what it was, the entire image collapsed.

"Shit," Torres ground out.

Picard had spent enough years with Worf to recognize a Klingon rage building. The tiny mouth hardened and twisted and she cracked a PADD casing between her fingers. Picard thought he heard a faint chime, but it failed to catch his attention.

This was going to be bad.

"jIH muS Dochvam!"

The stylus that had been resting next to the holographic display cut through the air like a weapon at the same moment that the door opened. Picard had just time to start forward in horror, mirroring the engineer's reaction, before the sharp-tipped implement struck sciences-blue fabric in mid-sternum.

And passed through, embedding itself in the corridor's opposite wall.

Torres' shock congealed into a sort of trembling horror that kept her frozen at the edge of the couch with both hands still clamped over her mouth. Idly, Picard wondered when his suspension of disbelief had come into play in this voyeuristic game, and what it would do to him before it was over.

"Doctor!" Torres finally managed.

The hologram on the threshold smiled wryly and stepped inside, allowing the wavering door to close. "Hello, Lieutenant."

"Oh my god."

"Having a pleasant evening?"

"I could have *killed* you!" She paused. "I mean, if you weren't . . ." And waved a hand.

"Possibly. Corporeal beings lead dangerous existences. Fraught with hostility and flying projectiles and stimulants that are, perhaps," he picked her mug off the table and placed it out of reach, "a little too readily available. As your doctor, I feel it is my duty to tell you that you have had quite enough coffee for one evening." The Doctor smiled gently and sat down opposite her. "It's all right, Lieutenant. You didn't hurt me."

Torres relaxed, finally, and let her forehead tip to rest cupped in her hands. After a moment, she looked up. "Doctor, what the hell are you doing here?"

"I paged you. You didn't answer. And you didn't answer your door. And you've been charting horrific stress levels. The sort for which under normal circumstances I'd recommend extended leave. Why weren't you answering your communicator, Lieutenant?"

Torres patted herself down. "I must have left it in my office."

"Mmm." He opened a hand and passed her the gold-coloured pin. "You dropped it in engineering. I found it when I went looking for you." Torres flushed a dull bronze and didn't answer.

Picard studied the hologram seated in the low-backed chair. Not a handsome man by any stretch of the imagination. His hair had thinned gracelessly, and there were deep lines cut around his mouth and across his forehead. But under the slightly bitter humour that twisted his mouth, there was a marked gentleness and a depth of compassion that didn't belong in a computer program. The shadowed brown eyes were definitely saying something, but it wasn't a thing he could read.

Opposite him, Torres had wrapped her arms around her knees and buried her face in the black fabric of her trousers. A set of very ordinary, middle-aged, oddly human hands reached out and rested on the back of her neck and gently probed the muscles there. When she whimpered slightly, the Doctor drew back and studied her.

"How long have you been working on this project, Lieutenant?"

"Three or four days, on and off."

"And more on than off, I'm sure. Why?" the Doctor asked.

"If I can just even out these energy curves . . ."

"But you don't need to. Lieutenant Carey says we can operate for six months with our current supplies and he's expecting new energy sources within three."

"I can make it better!"

"B'Elanna," the Doctor said gently, "It can always be better." Torres' head came up at the Doctor's use of her first name, but he kept his hands in place on her neck and gradually she relaxed into his touch. Picard could hear himself breathing in the silence of the room. Soundlessly, the hologram rose and repositioned himself behind the Klingon woman, keeping his fingertips pressed lightly against her neck. Settled, he rubbed her shoulders with the heels of his hands.

Though it was clearly warm enough for Klingon comfort, to Picard the room felt cold. When Q slipped up behind him and wordlessly wrapped a quilt around his shoulders, it was easier to accept the gesture than to argue. The entity's fingers were warm; Picard had to resist the urge to catch one of those hands and hold it until the chill went out of him. At the edge of his vision, he could see Q watching him impassively. When one arm came around him, he moved reflexively into the touch, but Q only tapped his cocoa mug, reheating its contents, and moved away. Picard wrapped his fingers around the cup and dropped back into the scene.

Moving around the slumped woman, never completely losing contact with her, the Doctor moved the PADDs and tools off the couch. B'Elanna whimpered a little as his fingers found rigid knots in her back. "See if you can lie down, Lieutenant."

She laid down on her stomach without opening her eyes. The Doctor traced her back with his fingers, listening to the soft sounds she made of approval or protest. After a moment, he crossed the room and returned with a sheet folded over one arm. When he passed close to them, Picard could feel the radiant energy that the hologram produced like body heat.

Gently, the Doctor coaxed her to raise her torso off the couch enough for him to unfasten and remove her uniform, covering her with the sheet as he went. His expression was oddly tight, and he kept his eyes focused on her shoulders.

"I don't remember the EMH Mark 1 being quite so discreet," Picard murmured.

"It wasn't," Q told him. "This one changed. He achieved sentience almost three years ago. No one really noticed until the transformation nearly destroyed the system. The engineer girl had to put him back together from almost nothing. Even now they don't fully understand what happened."

"The hologram is alive?"

"More or less."

"Can it be?"

"Is Data?" Q threw back at him.

"Absolutely."

"Well, then . . ." Silence. "Have a marshmallow, Captain."

The lamplight marked out the delicate ridges along B'Elanna's spine, exposed by the sheet. She had lain down again, this time with her face buried in her arms. As the Doctor stroked his way along her naked back, she growled softly, arching into his touch. "Mmm, Doc, wish I'd known sooner you made house calls."

"I don't."

She clearly didn't know how to take that. Something twinged in the hologram's face. Before she could turn to face him, he poured something that smelled of bitter almonds onto his hands and resumed work on her shoulders. Torres let it go. "Not fair, Doc, you're putting me to sleep."

"That was what I had in mind," he said.

"No way. I'm enjoying this way too much to zone out yet. Talk to me."

A twitch of eyebrows and lips. "What do you want me to say, Lieutenant?" She didn't answer. Even from his distance, Picard could see her snuggling into the touches falling along her body. "I remember you walking into sickbay when they brought you back from the Ocampa homeworld." Silence. "It's one of the few things I can remember from before the cascade failure. When you reactivated me, I spent most of that night trying to figure out why such an odd detail had been included in my program.

"Sometimes I remember the cascade failure. I fought with you almost constantly, from what I recall." Soft laughter from the woman on the couch. "I'm not sure I ever told you how much your patience meant."

"Mmmph. I remember you fighting with Sandrine that time over whether or not you were going to mop the floors in her bar."

The Doctor chuckled and adjusted his stance to run the heels of his hands down her sides. "You came and sat with me in sickbay after Kes left."

"Didn't want you to be alone. Ooh, gods. If you were Klingon, I think I'd be demanding poetry about now."

Silence. The Doctor pulled the sheet up to cover her back and settled himself again within easy reach of her calves. He traced the individual muscle groups with an index finger.

Picard shivered and wondered again how he could be excluded from the warmth of the room. Just behind him, Q frowned and settled in closer. "Cold, Jean-Luc?"

"A little."

"I'm sorry. I don't always notice." Q drew Picard back to rest against his hip and shoulder and wrapped the quilt around them both. The air between them warmed. Beyond that circle, though, Picard could sense the same chill. He turned far enough to give Q an inquisitive look. "The universe is a cold place, mon capitain."

The Doctor murmured something softly. Picard couldn't make out what it was, other than that the long strokes along the woman's legs seemed to match the rhythm of the words. Torres raised her head sleepily from the pillow of her arms and shot her masseur an oddly sweet smile.

"Say what, Doc?"

"Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence." The Hologram leaned gently forward and laid a hand on her shoulder, easing her back to her prone position on the couch. "In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which I cannot touch because they are too near."

His hands had worked up to the back of her knee. Indigo veins showed just under the thin skin. She twitched a little when he let his fingers rest there, obviously ticklish; he increased the pressure until she relaxed. The smell of almonds was stronger.

"Your slightest look will easily unclose me, though I have closed myself as fingers." The Doctor cast a shadow, Picard noticed. An impressive feat for a being made out of light. The shadows of his hands made long streaks on B'Elanna's thighs. The Doctor had raised the sheet nearly to her hips to accommodate his movements. Only the strange, intense protectiveness of the hologram's expression protected the innoncence of the scene. "You always open petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose."

She arched into the touch. Even from across the room, Picard could see the tension in her muscles liquifying and dripping away. Q's warmth had extended fully around him, pulling him close. He could feel the entity's soft breath against his neck.

"Or if your wish be to close me, I and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending." Bending low and close to her to reach the full length of her legs. For half a moment, the fingers slipped out of sight between her thighs and she moaned, but the Doctor whipped his hand away as if burned. He shifted into her line of sight, settling again on the floor near her shoulder.

"Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility."

He let the line hang in the air while he took up her hand. Slowly separated the individual tendons and bones with a deliberate, precise touch. When he made to release her, she closed her hand around his and held it tightly. The holographic face tensed and closed a moment, but she didn't raise her head.

Silence.

"Nothing," the Doctor repeated, "which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing." He stroked his way up her arm. The tiny hairs ruffled, then smoothed under his touch. Gold skin and sharp, sweet almond smell. B'Elanna bleeding her exhaustion. He reached her shoulder and massaged it gently for a moment, then whispered for her to shift onto her back. She rolled without opening her eyes, allowing him to position her and settle the rumpled sheet carefully across her breasts. He began this time at the shoulder, working down towards the wrist.

Whispering, "I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands . . ." Tracing tenderly along the soft inner curve of her elbow. "The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses." He reached her right hand and held it, tracing the small scars generated by years of contact with dangerous and jury-rigged technology. His fingers lightly traced the life- and love-lines. "Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands."

Three beings' heartbeats and the soft hum of the Doctor's personal energy in the room. B'Elanna seemed to all intents and purposes to be asleep. The hologram sat holding her hand for a long time, studying its details with a puzzled intensity.

"Why?" Picard whispered.

Q ran fingers down the length of Picard's neck, drawing out a shiver. "There's never been anyone you needed to make contact with, Jean-Luc? Someone you would make excuses just to touch?"

Warm. Almonds. His and Q's and Torres' hearts beating. The Doctor holding her hand.

"Good night, B'Elanna," the hologram whispered. He gathered himself to go, slowly, as if taking stock of himself. Halfway to his feet, he paused, bent, and pressed a kiss against the exposed shoulder. "jIH muSHa SoH."

The doors whispered shut behind him.

Q shifted against Picard's back. After a moment, the entity separated himself and stood, offering a hand down to the sitting Captain.

"Not yet," Picard whispered. "Just give it a moment before we leave." Q nodded, helped him up, and opened his arms to wrap the blanket back around them both. Picard closed his eyes and leaned back, letting the arms around his waist support him. Q's heart beating. Lungs expanding against his ribcage.

"Jean-Luc," the entity whispered. He looked.

Torres, resting again on her stomach, stared at the closed door. Her left hand crept across her body to cover the kissed skin of the opposite shoulder. Picard saw the point flare red for an instant, the shade of his Q, and wondered whose eyes he had seen that with. She traced a pattern of touches across the bone. Her expression was speculative and very much awake.

He couldn't possibly be feeling Q smiling against the back of his neck.

"And just like that," the entity said, snapped his fingers, and vanished them both.  

 
 
 
 

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