Archive of Our Own

For all intents and purposes, it starts with the Noctuans. In reality, it probably starts well before that.

Jean-Luc dreads this end of diplomacy—the negotiations and debates all smoothed over with a Starfleet smile and a display of power from the flagship—but the Noctuans seem pleasant enough, and he secretly hopes their application to the Federation is approved. Perhaps that is why he slips, and mentions him.

“You know of the Q Continuum?” Luxan asks. As spokesperson for the Noctuans, they are the guest of honour at tonight’s gala in Ten Forward and have been Jean-Luc’s conversation partner for the majority of the night.

While their facial geometry makes identifying emotions difficult, the fear in their eyes and in their voice tell Jean-Luc all he needs to know. He tries not to clench his fist too visibly around the stem of his glass.

“Did they put your people on trial too?” Jean-Luc asks somewhat wryly.

“What?” Luxan replies.

“Never mind,” he says hastily, “what encounters have you had with the Q Continuum?”

They look briefly to the side, all five eyes showing signs of hesitance. The dark spots on their otherwise blue forehead also seem to grow, but Jean-Luc couldn’t begin to speculate what that means.

“He visited twenty rotations ago,” Luxan begins. “I never personally spoke with him, of course, I was still a child. But they say he appeared in the middle of the House of Leaders while they were holding court.”

They take a deep breath before beginning again.

“Noctuans are touch telepaths. When the Leaders hold court, they join hands to help facilitate debate. Touch is integral to our society; it is the basis of our communication and connection to each other.”

Jean-Luc feels his stomach twist.

“He said he didn’t understand,” Luxan continues, “the need for constant touch, for physical affection. What one gains from it, and what one loses when it is stripped away.”

“So that’s what he did,” Jean-Luc says, a little breathlessly.

“To my people, it is referred to as the Week of Longing,” they say coldly. “The House of Leaders was the first to suffer its effects, but it eventually spread to the entire planet.”

They fiddle with the stem of their glass, before returning their gaze to Jean-Luc. He feels the intensity of her gaze wash over him, and he steels himself against the current.

“I remember reaching out to touch my mother, like I would every morning,” they say, “nothing too serious: to let her know how I was feeling that morning, to ask what we were having for breakfast, something along those lines.”

Jean-Luc feels a cold hand, with more fingers than he is used to, close around his wrist. Suddenly, he can see Luxan standing in their kitchen (or, what he assumed to be the kitchen) as clearly as if it were his own memory. His stomach turns in on itself, his mind struggling to process living two moments at once.

“When I touched her arm, it felt as if I had touched the surface of the sun.” The grip tightens. “The skin on my fingertips began to blister, and I could hear the sizzling of my mother’s flesh. And everywhere else on our world, others were experiencing the exact same thing–we could no longer touch.”

The hand on Jean-Luc’s wrist begins to grow warm. He can feel Luxan’s fear, the memory of the pain, and he swallows down the bile threatening to creep up his throat.

“It was like we had been deafened,” Luxan explains desperately, “so used to experiencing the thoughts and feelings of our loved ones, we shouted and screamed in the streets, craving contact we could no longer have. Some went mad, burning their hands to bone for any lingering telepathic remnants of their lovers or friends. Most locked themselves away.”

“And then?” Jean-Luc asks through his nausea.

Luxan sighs, drawing their hand back to themselves. The connection is broken and Jean-Luc suppresses the urge to gasp with relief, mind no longer flooded with images of carnage in their streets and burns on their hands.

“He got bored,” Luxan shrugs, “he saw us all starved for touch, on the brink of collapse, and just… didn’t understand it. I suppose a being like that has no need for touch—does not yearn the way we do.”

“I suppose not…” He says.

Something about this nags at Jean-Luc, but he is currently too shaken to identify the problem and mentally shelves it for later.

“Thank you for listening, Captain. It is a dark moment in our history, but in a strange way, he did help us in the end,” they say with a sigh. “I certainly never loved my mother more than in the moment I was finally able to touch her again.”

Luxan gathers themselves, gives Jean-Luc a simple nod farewell, and leaves to rejoin the party.

“That sounds like our Q alright,” he whispers to himself.

“Your Q?” a voice says from behind him. “My, my, mon capitaine. How sentimental of you.”

Jean-Luc feels the faintest breath of laughter tickle the back of his neck before he whirls around and finds himself faced with a mischievous smirk and four gleaming pips. He lets out a strangled cry of surprise.

“Q!”

Q’s eyes seem to glint at the sound.

Jean-Luc grabs him by the arm and hauls him out of Ten Forward, hopefully before the Noctuans or anyone else can recognize him, and Q seems almost giddy to be dragged along. They stop outside the closed door, his hand still on Q’s bicep, and he takes a moment to catch his breath and really look at the other man.

In the silence of the hallway, Jean-Luc notices, possibly for the first time, the rich brown colour of Q’s eyes. He finds himself wondering if that colour was chosen on purpose, selected carefully from the entire spectrum like one would pick a wall colour from paint chips. He wonders if each of the small lines in their corners were painstakingly created.

All at once he is reminded of how little he understands Q, the cosmic scale of his existence. The feeling moves in Jean-Luc like the tides, and it is as if he has just now looked up and glimpsed the moon.

Jean-Luc removes his hand from Q’s arm and steps back quickly to create some distance between them. Perhaps it is a side-effect of the touch telepathy from earlier, but he is now hyperaware of his empty hand. He flexes it to try and shake the feeling away. Q’s face remains a mask Jean-Luc desperately wishes he could read.

“Why are you here?” Jean-Luc grits through clenched teeth.

“I thought I would pop in,” Q answers, nonchalant as ever, “just to let you know I’m thinking about you too.”

“You—what?”

“Can’t an old friend just drop by to say hello?”

“We are not friends,” Jean-Luc says, a bit more forcefully than maybe is needed, “whatever you’re up to Q, we will put a stop to it.”

“Temper, temper, mon capitaine,” Q almost purrs, stepping closer to Jean-Luc again.

“The Noctuans have certainly had enough of your meddling, and frankly, so have we.”

Q stops for a moment, and hesitation glints for a fraction of a second across his features. If Jean-Luc had not been looking so intently, he probably would have missed it.

“The Noctuans…” Q says, almost in awe. “Now that’s a race I haven’t thought of in a couple decades. It was before I met you, naturally…”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Jean-Luc asks huffily, and Q shakes his head with a breathy laugh.

“Don’t worry your tiny little human mind about it,” Q replies, all his earlier uneasiness replaced by his usual arrogant charm. “I’ll let you get back to your diplomacy and bureaucracy. Much too boring in there for me, anyway.”

His eyes glint again, sharp as daggers.

“Unless, of course,” he drawls, “you’d like me to spice things up?”

Jean-Luc attempts to list all the reasons why he would never allow that, but there are infinitely many and so he ends up angrily sputtering half-started sentences instead. Q laughs and shakes his head, and Jean-Luc finds his gaze traveling back to Q’s eyes again, but he does not know for the life of him why. They are as unreadable as ever.

Q’s smile fades slightly, and the mystery emotion in his eyes remains as he lifts his hand between them.

“Y’know,” he says, leaning forward so their noses are mere centimetres from each other, that almost wistful tone back in his voice again, “I really did just pop in to say hello.”

And with a wink and a snap, he is gone, and Jean-Luc is left alone in the empty corridor outside the party.

Jean-Luc remembers feeling almost calm the day he accepted that the price of his dreams, his destiny, was to always be lonely.

Despite his inability to show it at times, he’s a romantic at his core. In his youth, he seemed to fall in love with everything: archaeology, music, tea—but more than anything, the stars. He can remember feeling his heart lurch with every interesting stranger he passed on the street, back when his heart was made of flesh and blood.

But he’s older now. He’s tired, and it hurts too much.

Besides, he is not truly alone. He has more of a family on this ship than he ever did on Earth. He knows that Will would be there to offer a hand on the shoulder and an optimistic outlook, Deanna a listening ear and a kind smile, Guinan a distracting and challenging fencing match, and Data…

Well, Data would offer his best, Jean-Luc supposes with a soft smile, and he cannot ask for anything more than that.

But being surrounded by people you love does not always exclude you from feeling lonely. The feeling weighs on him in the small, in-between moments, and he tries his best not to let his friends see.

It is only when briefing the senior staff of the incident the day after the gala that he fully realizes the contradiction in Q’s behaviour.

“Q?!” Riker bellows. “Q was there, and you’re only just telling us now?!”

“He left before he could do anything worth reporting.” Jean-Luc answers with a shrug that hopefully makes him seem more relaxed about all this than he actually is.

“The poor Noctuans...” Deanna says, almost to herself.

Jean-Luc figures that she knows better than anyone how they must have felt to have their telepathic powers stripped away.

“It does seem consistent with Q’s behaviour for him to ‘test’ his touch-aversion on some helpless species,” she continues, “and for him to ‘teach’ them a lesson at the end of it, despite all the pain he causes.”

Jean-Luc pauses at her words. The strange uncertainty he felt talking to Luxan the night before nudges its way to the forefront of his mind.

“Sorry, what? Touch-aversion?” He looks up to meet Deanna’s eye, when Data answers for her.

“Q’s dislike for physical touch does make sense, Captain, as his human body is merely a vessel,” he explains. “It is a costume he wears in order to easily converse with us. I noticed on multiple occasions when he lost his powers and was living on the Enterprise that he kept a physical distance of roughly 30 centimetres between himself and other crewmembers, with the exception of—”

“Thanks, Data.” Geordi says hastily, cutting Data off, but Jean-Luc knows what he was going to say.

With the exception of you, Captain.

His senior officers look around the room, nervously meeting each other’s eyes and trying to look anywhere but at their captain. He may have his denser moments, but even he can take a hint this large.

“Alright, all of you, dismissed,” he tries for an authoritative tone, but he suspects it comes out sounding tired. “I’ll write up a report to Starfleet Command with this new information, but given that it happened over twenty years ago, I don’t know what more there is to be done about it.”

Deanna gives him one of her kindest smiles on her way out, but he also thinks he spots a hint of mischief somewhere in its corners. The rest of them just give him encouraging nods.

He sits alone in the observation lounge and puts his head in his hands as he tries desperately to reconcile the few truths he knows about Q.

Sometimes it feels impossible to compare the Q described in Starfleet records to the one that pops on and off the ship at his own leisure. It really shouldn’t be, especially given that Jean-Luc has provided almost all the information, but reading Q’s description on paper is vastly different to enduring his presence.

For example, Q’s file now states that he is averse to touch with physical beings. Words that Jean-Luc himself wrote stare back at him from the screen, but he cannot bring himself to believe them.

Jean-Luc can recall a hundred casual touches: a mouth next to his temple, an arm around his shoulder, a finger tracing his ear, a hand reaching for his across his desk. These were not the behaviours of a touch-averse creature.

And he knows the rest of his officers know it too. Q has been pulling his proverbial pigtails.

In his report to Starfleet, he strategically omits the altercation in the hallway. It feels too… intimate, somehow, to send to Command. It feels like a moment that was made for just the two of them. And inconsequential, really, as Q didn’t actually do anything.

Starfleet Command wants you to report all appearances of the entity Q, and so far, you have, a voice in his head whispers, why is this one so different?

He tries to ignore that the voice seems to speak in Q’s cadence.

But that’s what Q does: he questions Jean-Luc’s motivations, interrogates his intentions, puts a reflective lens up to humanity so it can see itself for what it is. When Jean-Luc second guesses himself, it is always Q’s voice in his mind, and it always makes his convictions that much stronger.

He sends the report.

Because Q always seems to know the worst times to pop in, Jean-Luc is on call with Admiral Nechayev the next time they meet.

“Stopping at Starbase 135 for some additional maintenance would be beneficial for the entire crew.”

Her voice is slightly grainy coming from the desk speakers in his ready room, and Jean-Luc is comforted by the knowledge that it would be much more irritating to have her here in person. He bristles nonetheless at the implication that she would know what a ship would need better than its own captain. He is at least sure that La Forge would have told him if they needed a tune-up

“Of course,” he replies instead.

“Additionally, the delegate from Hekaras II would—”

Her face freezes mid-sentence on the screen. He stares at her unmoving image, alarmed and confused, but secretly relieved by the silence.

He smacks the side of his screen. The image does not budge.

“God she’s a nag,” a voice says behind him, and Jean-Luc feels the ghost of breath against the shell of his ear, “your Starfleet Admirals really know how to suck the fun out of space.”

“Q!”

Jean-Luc swivels in his chair and comes nose-to-nose with Q, who leans over his chair with one hand braced on his desk. The proximity makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and he desperately pretends it’s due to apprehension.

“I could hear your boredom from the Delta Quadrant,” Q says, unmoving, “so naturally, I came as soon as I could.”

This close, Jean-Luc almost thinks he can feel the warmth emanating from Q’s form—the heat of a thousand supernovas in the unfeeling cold of space—but that would be illogical. The only place they are touching is Q’s inner elbow against his bicep from leaning on the desk, and he feels the brush of fabric like electricity race through his arm.

“I am trying to work,” Jean-Luc says, but he sounds relieved even to himself for the distraction. He pushes his chair away slightly to create some space between their faces, but he still presses into Q’s arm, which doesn’t move.

“Honestly, mon capitaine,” Q huffs, “I don’t know why you tolerate such things.”

“Funny,” he replies, “I ask myself the same thing when I think about you.”

“Oh, very droll.”

Jean-Luc tries to ignore how comfortable their banter feels.

“What do you want, Q?”

He crosses his arms, the movement causing his bicep to shift against Q’s arm. He tries to suppress the shiver that wants to crawl down his spine.

“Who, me?” Q says with a playful shrug.

Jean-Luc tries to level him with a glare, hoping Q cannot see the way the side of his mouth imperceptibly curls up.

“I’ve just been stewing in the monotony of the Continuum,” he sighs, standing and walking to stare at Jean-Luc’s fish tank. He tries to ignore the cold feeling that floods him at the loss of contact and closeness.

“Thought I would pop in and visit some of my favourite mortals.” Q runs a finger along the glass and taps on it gently, spooking his fish. “Big bosses are still keeping an eye on me though, so don’t expect any big hijinks from me today.”

Jean-Luc stands and joins him, and before he can think about it, he grabs Q’s hand to still his fingers, pulling it away from the tank. It’s for the sake of his poor fish, of course.

“Now,” Jean-Luc huffs a soft laugh, “why don’t I believe you?”

Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised to find that Q’s hand is soft and warm. Q’s fingers curl around his seemingly by instinct, and Jean-Luc is shocked by the sudden urge to run a soothing thumb over the back of his hand.

He meets Q’s eyes once again, and Jean-Luc feels the same pull in his stomach that he feels looking out from the Observation Deck into the void of the cosmos: fear, smallness, and the unrestrained excitement to push forward. He worries at how easily he could get lost in their depths.

His mechanical heart lurches, and he lets go of Q’s hand with a start, wondering what could have come over him. He clears his throat and looks away, but can’t bring himself to move out of Q’s space.

A rare moment of silence passes between them.

He has a snarky comment about finally being able to shut Q up on the tip of his tongue, but swallows it when he looks back up and sees the other man’s hand still hovering between them. Q’s fingers twitch slightly, reaching toward Jean-Luc, but don’t quite manage to touch him.

“Never said anything about small hijinks, however.” Q says finally, leaning forward slightly. His eyes look plenty gleeful, but there is something else there that seems almost uncertain. Jean-Luc can do nothing but raise an eyebrow in reply.

The hand between them twists, and its fingers snap.

Jean-Luc is sitting at his desk once again, alone in his ready room, staring at his viewscreen.

“—like to meet you while you are docked at the Starbase,” Admiral Nechayev continues, “as she would like to confer with some of the scientists in your Astrometrics lab who specialize in unique spacetime geometries.”

Jean-Luc blinks in shock and desperately tries to swallow the laughter that threatens to bubble up.

He can only assume that, along with being seemingly unaware of being frozen in time, Admiral Nerchayev is also unaware she is currently dressed in a nightgown from what appears to be the Victorian era of Earth. Complete with a nightcap on her head and a Teddy Bear on the shelf behind her, she looks a mere candlestick away from being the protagonist in a Dickens novel.

“Captain Picard?” she says impatiently after a moment, her cap’s tassel bobbing at her shoulder.

It takes every ounce of professionalism in Jean-Luc not to burst into a fit of giggles. He digs his fingernails into the palm of his hand to fight the smile from his face.

“My apologies,” he grits, “please, continue.”

After a few moments of discussing the importance of the furthered stability of the Hekaras Corridor, the Admiral hangs up the call, and Jean-Luc finally lets himself chuckle softly at the absurdity of it all. He looks up to his fish tank, expecting Q to have rematerialized to share the joke with him, but the laugh dies in his chest when he is met with silence.

Later, when he is on the bridge, he is almost able to convince himself he wasn’t disappointed at the sight of his empty ready room.

Q stops in more frequently after the day with Admiral Nechayev: never to do anything more than chat, or play a small prank that ends up (mostly) harmless, but always while Jean-Luc is alone. He is relieved Q is no longer endangering his crew. He is relieved to not be thrown into mortal peril every time he shows his face. But Jean-Luc doesn’t understand his angle, and cannot believe he doesn’t have one.

He wonders if it has anything to do with the sadness he sees in Q when he first arrives, a lifelessness that seems to dissipate gradually the more he riles Jean-Luc up. He masks it well, but Jean-Luc is perceptive.

And on top of everything, Jean-Luc has started noticing the rate at which Q touches him, and now he finds himself unable to stop noticing. Q pops into existence within inches of Jean-Luc: beside him on the couch, sitting on his desk in his ready room, and even once standing beside him as he mounted his horse in the holodeck. He tries not to think about the feeling of Q’s hand on his calf from under his riding boot and the way Q smiled up at him while petting his horse.

He has always known that the captain’s chair comes with a distance to others that can never truly be crossed. And it’s not like his fellow officers go out of their way not to touch him, but he didn’t realize quite how long it had been since he’s been casually touched with any regularity. Now, the floodgates have opened, and he is painfully aware of every time Q purposefully crosses that distance.

Despite all logic and rationality, Jean-Luc finds himself leaning into it. He pretends he still finds no comfort from Q’s visits, but his body betrays him at every turn.

He resolutely stops himself from pondering what that could mean for him.

Normally security breaches happen by the time he’s on the bridge, but this morning Jean-Luc seems to have missed it by approximately two minutes. The bridge has been sectioned off to try and isolate the threat, and more pressing to him specifically, the turbolifts are down. Luckily this time there are no children with him, and the situation is not quite as dire, but he is stuck all the same.

Riker has already comm’ed to assure him that everything is under control, but frankly that could mean anything, so in the meantime he will be trapped in a non-functional turbolift for an indeterminate amount of time. Nothing to do but wait.

He sits against the wall for a moment and hugs his knees to his chest, desperately trying not to let the enclosed space suffocate him too much. He hates feeling helpless like this, and braces himself for what might well be the longest and most claustrophobic turbolift ride of his life.

He feels the familiar brush of fabric against his shoulder before he catches the flash out of the corner of his eye.

“Quite the pickle you’ve gotten yourself into, Jean-Luc.” Q says.

He is sitting to Jean-Luc’s left, shoulder to shoulder, left arm perched on a bent knee while the other leg extends in front of him, almost touching the other side of the turbolift. Jean-Luc valiantly restrains the impulse to flatten his own bent legs on the floor for the chance that their thighs align.

“Hello, Q.”

Jean-Luc’s eyes stay on the closed turbolift doors, but he finds he is too tired to keep the fondness out of his voice.

“Letting your minions handle this one for you?” Q asks, looking around. “Not the most ideal spot for a break, but to each their own, I suppose.”

Jean-Luc rolls his eyes, and he is surprised to find that Q’s proud smile at getting a rise out of him seems to lighten the pressure on his chest slightly.

“Ideal is not exactly the word I would use for it, no.” Jean-Luc says through gritted teeth.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Q turn to look at him. He fears what his own face would betray if he were to meet Q’s gaze, so he continues his one-sided staring contest with the unmoving exit.

“A little claustrophobic, are we?” Q asks, but the judgment that would usually accompany such a question is replaced with something Jean-Luc cannot name. If it were anyone else, he would say it comes startlingly close to sympathy.

“A little,” he concedes, though it is something of an understatement, “one of many reasons I took up a career in space travel.”

“Oh?”

“Hard to feel too claustrophobic with infinity stretching out before you.”

Q lets out a breathy, almost self-deprecating laugh.

“Is it now…” Q says, turning away from Jean-Luc and looking up at the roof of the turbolift.

That shakes Jean-Luc slightly, and he finally turns to look at Q. With his head tilted up, Jean-Luc can’t help but let his eyes trace along the sharp line of Q’s jaw. His hair is longer than the last time he was here, curling up slightly at the base of his neck, and Jean-Luc can see the masterful stroke of grey that has started to occupy his temples more and more these days. Jean-Luc’s breath hitches slightly, and he tells himself it’s the claustrophobia.

“You disagree?”

Q sighs, and tilts his head slightly so Jean-Luc can meet his eyes. He only allows himself to get lost in them for a moment.

“Infinity is a cage,” Q says, “just because you’ll never glimpse its walls, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

“How do you mean?” Jean-Luc asks. Q shrugs slightly, and Jean-Luc is hyper-aware of the brush of their shoulders.

“The universe has been the Q’s playground for as long as we have existed,” Q continues, “we don’t even live here, just pop in from the Continuum when the mood strikes. But no matter how big your playground is, if you play there long enough, you eventually run out of games.”

“I don’t believe that for a second, Q,” Jean-Luc scoffs, “you seem plenty playful every time you cause havoc on my ship.”

Q exhales a soft laugh and looks back up at the ceiling.

“Yes, well…” Q says, “I have a slightly different view than the rest of the Q. It is sometimes difficult for them to see the trees for the forest, if you will. When you have the entire expanse of reality at your fingertips, you forget that each living being holds an entire universe within their own head.”

Q shrugs again, and the friction between their uniforms feels to Jean-Luc like it has the power to create worlds. Knowing Q, it just might.

“The Continuum spent millennia toying with the laws of physics like shovels and buckets in the sandbox of the cosmos, but they’ve all gotten bored,” Q admits, “they have decided that playtime is over, and I’m the only one that refuses to come inside.”

“What?” Jean-Luc asks, surprised.

“They stay in the continuum and atrophy,” Q says simply, “and they berate me for my obsession with mortals. They don’t understand that existence itself is the final frontier.”

Jean-Luc feels his stomach jolt, and can’t quite determine why.

“So yes,” Q says finally, meeting his eyes once more, “infinity is certainly enough to make me feel claustrophobic.”

In the low light of the unmoving turbolift, Jean-Luc thinks he might be able to see stars in the unfathomable dark of Q’s eyes.

Jean-Luc pauses, and before he can think too hard about it, he puts his hand on Q’s thigh. He hopes it is a comforting gesture for Q, as it does nothing but stir up every unnamed emotion in himself.

“Well I, for one,” he continues, “am glad that out of all of you, I met the only Q with any imagination. If there’s going to be an all-powerful thorn in my side, I would expect it to at least be an exciting one.”

Q looks down to the hand on his thigh, and back up to Jean-Luc. If it were anyone else, Jean-Luc would almost say he looked touched.

“But of course, mon capitaine,” Q says with a smile, “can’t have your little lives become too dull now, can we?”

“Nor yours.” Jean-Luc replies.

Slowly and tentatively, as if moving his arm for the first time, Q rests his hand atop Jean-Luc’s on his thigh. He opens his mouth to speak, and Jean-Luc holds his breath, unsure of what Q will say but positive it will upend his life.

That’s when the turbolift lurches, and his combadge trills.

“Riker to Captain Picard.”

He moves his hand from Q’s leg to tap his combadge with a sigh.

“Picard here. Have you apprehended the intruder?”

“Indeed we have, sir.” Through the tinny quality of the combadge, Jean-Luc can hear the pride and relief in Will’s voice. “He is taking some time in the brig to sit and think about what he’s done, until you’re ready to question him.”

“Well done Number One, I’ll meet you there.” Jean-Luc says before tapping his combadge once more. “Computer, reroute turbolift to Deck 5.”

He is surprised to find Q still next to him.

“Duty calls…” Q says almost regretfully before standing up.

He extends his hand out, a silent offer of help, and Jean-Luc accepts it and is drawn to his feet. Neither of them lets go of the other’s hand.

He thinks for a moment about how far they’ve come. There was a time he would have scoffed at the idea of casually accepting anything from Q, and a time where Q would not have understood how to offer. Jean-Luc is surprised to find that at this moment, he trusts Q.

“Thank you,” Jean-Luc says, “for the company.”

He doesn’t know how to say how much it means to have Q confide in him, what a relief it was to have his mind taken off the enclosed space he was trapped in, but Jean-Luc suspects Q knows him well enough that it doesn’t need to be put into words.

“Anytime.” Q replies.

With the hand not currently in Jean-Luc’s, he snaps and is gone.

When the turbolift doors open on Deck 5, Jean-Luc can only imagine what Riker must think as he sees him standing, hand outstretched but holding nothing.

Being the captain of the Federation’s flagship is not a job where one can afford to be distracted; however, Jean-Luc is only human, and he does love a good mystery.

He has been trying to untangle this one for a while: a being with almost infinite power seems content to spend his time keeping a human company and causing no trouble aside from, occasionally, a slight nuisance.

Certainly an upgrade from being flung into the Delta Quadrant at a Borg cube, but that at least had a semi-understandable motive. Jean-Luc cannot for the life of him figure out why Q has been popping in for no apparent reason, only to leave without doing anything but chat for the most part, and still only touching him.

It’s not for lack of trying: Jean-Luc has been thinking about it almost nonstop.

And he can tell his crew has noticed. One doesn’t need to be an empath to pick up on the fact that he has been more than a little distracted lately, although Jean-Luc is sure it helps. He isn’t blind, and he catches the playful looks Deanna sends his way multiple times a shift. It makes his stomach sink every time, because he also knows that the ship is always smaller than he thinks, and the crew is close—especially his senior officers.

Troi will no doubt tell his first officer over some romantic dinner, who will then tell Mr. La Forge over some after-shift drinks, who will tell Data in the holosuite, who will probably ask Beverly’s advice on the situation, who will eventually accost Jean-Luc demanding why she was not the first to hear the gossip. All he can hope for is that Will forgets to pass it along to Worf.

But he can hardly fault them for talking. He knows he shouldn’t be thinking about Q this much.

Especially when his thoughts trail off, and he begins to remember the softness of Q’s hands, or the electric brush of their shoulders, or the warmth of Q’s thigh beneath his fingers, or the cosmos in Q’s eyes. And he berates himself for wasting his time with such imaginings, for ever hoping that a being like Q would find him interesting.

He’s only human, after all.

There are some nights when, no matter how exhausting the day has been, Jean-Luc cannot make himself fall asleep.

They don’t happen often, certainly not often enough to warrant talking to Beverly about, and they have no real consequences on his command besides a little weariness the next day. Unfortunately, it does mean that he must spend almost an entire night doing nothing but thinking.

Jean-Luc generally keeps himself busy for a reason, and it is not very often he is left alone with nothing but his own mind for entertainment. He tries to run through in his head the last book he read, tries to remember his favourite lines—anything to distract him from thinking about his own life. What had Dixon Hill been up to recently? Are there any mysteries there that have yet to be solved that he could puzzle through right now?

He groans to himself and takes a moment to silently beg for sleep that he knows won’t come.

You don’t end up climbing the Starfleet ladder all the way to a captaincy if you enjoy being idle. Jean-Luc imagines what his life would have been like had he stayed on Earth. Would he have learned to love the downtime? The quiet? The solitude?

He thinks of Q’s offer to take him to see the ruins on Tagus III, to gallivant across the quadrant together. Could he have learned to handle the lack of structure? The uncertainty? The lawlessness?

Jean-Luc dreams of all the lives he could have led: a cozy cabin and life of domesticity, or a brash and thrilling life on the run. In the end, he knows he cannot choose to be anything but what he is. Both lives call to him, and the latter has always sung its siren song in Q’s voice. It’s only recently that the former has as well.

As if the dream couldn’t get any more foolish.

He rolls over on his other side and tries to banish the thoughts. Instead, he thinks about quasars, and how many he has seen via long-range sensor sweeps: the swirling of their accretion disks, the power of their energy jets, the blinding brightness they radiate. He ponders the danger of their beauty, and for whatever reason, he thinks of Q’s smile.

He sighs, and right on schedule, a flash lights up his room and the bed dips beside him.

“Late night?” Q says, his voice quiet in the silence of Jean-Luc’s quarters.

He hums an affirmative in response, his eyes betraying the ‘obviously’ he cannot muster the energy to say aloud. Q huffs a soft laugh in response.

Jean-Luc has laid in a bed with Q before, multiple times in fact, but there has always been a degree of separation to it. Jean-Luc in his pyjamas, under the covers, and Q in his faux-Starfleet uniform, perched on top of the duvet. But things have been different lately, and he watches in awe as Q toes off his Starfleet shoes, shined to perfection, and slides under the grey blankets to join Jean-Luc. They lay on their sides facing each other, letting the moment wash over them.

Q does not touch him.

“What are you thinking about?” Q asks after a while. If Jean-Luc didn’t know any better, he would have called his tone almost wistful.

“Quasars.” Jean-Luc answers simply, voice gravelly with disuse.

“Oh?” Q says, urging Jean-Luc to continue.

“Did you know that hundreds of years ago,” Jean-Luc starts with a sigh, “quasars were a pivotal tool in helping humans learn more about our universe? They were incredibly bright, but so distant that the light they emitted took hundreds of millions of years to reach the telescopes of Earth.”

“I’m well aware of how quasars work, Jean-Luc,” Q says rolling his eyes, “I probably cooked up the very ones they were looking at.”

“No doubt of it,” Jean-Luc says wryly, “regardless, because they were so far away, the light from the quasars would get ‘gravitationally lensed’ by a galaxy between it and Earth. The light would get bent around the galaxy, different photons from the same quasar getting bent in different ways, but all eventually making their way to the telescopes of Earth, where astronomers would see the same image of the quasar arrive at different times from the different photons.”

“If you are trying to bore yourself to sleep, it’s a wonder you’re not passed out already.”

“I won’t start about the debacle with the Hubble constant then,” Jean-Luc says with a laugh, “but quasars were the furthest we could see for a really long time. They were the very outer reaches of the observable universe, and the time delays between these quasar images helped solidify many of the questions we had at the time about the nature of space, and our place in it.”

Jean-Luc shrugs slightly.

“I find it comforting to think about, sometimes,” he continues, “even though the light originates from the same source, it travels completely different paths and still ends up at the same place. The boring, straight-line photons get there, and the photons that get reflected and lensed and warped and bounce between a million different cosmic objects get there too, just at a slightly different time.”

“And may I ask what the point of this long-winded astronomical metaphor is?” Q asks, tone impatient but eyes fond.

“Even something as fundamental as light can’t decide what path it wants to take.”

Q exhales with amusement.

“I suppose you’re right.”

Jean-Luc is taken aback for a moment by how right it feels to have Q here, how much calmer he feels in his presence. Jean-Luc rakes his eyes over Q’s face in the dark, trying to commit everything to memory: the curl of his hair, flattened against Jean-Luc’s other pillow, the elegant slope of his nose, the droop of his eyelids, the fullness of his cupid’s bow…

Jean-Luc tears his eyes away from Q’s lips with a start, and focuses them on his own hands, stretched out in front of him, inches away from Q’s own.

Q still does not touch him.

“I don’t suppose the Q suffer from insomnia…” he says with a hint of self-deprecation.

“One would need to sleep to experience a lack of it,” Q replies.

“Touché,” he smiles. “Do you ever sleep just because you want to?”

Q scoffs.

“Why would I do that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jean-Luc says with a sigh, “to experience the joy of waking up in your own time, knowing you have nothing to do the next day? To rest? Perchance to dream?”

“Why would I want to dream when I can create anything I want with the snap of my fingers?”

“Dreams do more than just let you live out fantasies,” Jean-Luc says, “they are a way to understand subconscious feelings of all kinds. Dreams show you what you fear, what you hate…”

He takes a deep breath and meets Q’s eyes.

“…what you desire.”

Jean-Luc watches the movement of Q’s throat as he swallows, following the graceful curve of his neck with his eyes.

“There are only two types of things I desire,” Q says, “those I have already obtained, and those I know I can never have.”

Jean-Luc hums in understanding, thinking of all the things he too cannot have: all the lives he cannot lead, all the paths he cannot take.

“We cannot choose to be anything but what we are.”

Q smiles, but it has a melancholy quality to it. Jean-Luc feels a sudden urge to wash it from his face somehow.

Q still does not touch him.

The distance between them feels like a physical barrier, new and familiar all at once. Jean-Luc realises then how comfortable they have become; how familiar Q’s touches now are to him. He feels Q coiled tight like a spring next to him, and thinks, not for the first time this week, or today even, of all the times he and Q have touched. He thinks of all the times he has initiated that touch—impulsively, recklessly, and purely off gut instinct.

When he reaches toward Q now, it is different. The hand he puts forward is slow and calculated, but it trembles slightly. He draws his fingers across Q’s brow, from the bridge of his nose to his temple, and touches the grey hairs that reside about his ear. Jean-Luc does not realise how much he has been thinking about Q’s hair—the grey in particular—until he is able to finally touch the soft strands with his fingers.

Q gasps slightly at the contact; a fast, short intake of the air that hovers between them. He seems to instinctually lean his head into Jean-Luc’s hand, which means he ends up cradling Q’s jaw. Q’s eyes search his own almost frantically, before sneaking a glance at his lips, which causes the tangle of butterflies living below Jean-Luc’s ribs to turn in on themselves. He feels the warmth of Q’s cheek, brushing a thumb purposefully across his cheekbone to watch the way his lashes flutter. Jean-Luc struggles under the weight of this moment, and tells himself he will not think about what this will mean for them.

He feels as if his body is too small to contain the magnitude of what he feels. His bones vibrate with it, and his skin feels as if it’s straining to hold everything in. He wonders if this is how Q feels all the time.

And in an instant, Q is no longer in Jean-Luc’s bed, but across the room from him, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily. The same hesitance Jean-Luc has been seeing in his eyes recently is back in full swing, but it’s amplified almost to the point of fear.

Jean-Luc has seen Q afraid before, and it feels no better now than it did when he was human.

Q collects himself quickly and walks back to the bed to perch upon the covers, returning to the safe distance of times past. Or, as much distance as there can be between two people in the same bed. He smooths out the covers around him and fluffs the pillow his head was just resting on, hands performing tasks that could be easier accomplished with the snap of his fingers, and all without meeting Jean-Luc’s eye. Jean-Luc goes to sit up, to ask what just happened, but Q places a gentle hand on his shoulder and silently urges him to lie back down.

“Q, what—” Jean-Luc starts, before Q interrupts him.

“I’m sorry.”

Jean-Luc is surprised to find that he believes him.

“Here,” Q continues, “let me leave you with a parting present.”

He places soft fingers to Jean-Luc’s temple, a warped mirror of their earlier position. Jean-Luc cannot help but notice how final this all seems, and how strangely hollow that makes him feel.

“Sweet dreams, mon capitaine.”

The last thing he can think before he falls asleep is how beautiful kindness looks, sitting in the corner of those eyes.

When he wakes, it is fully rested and feeling better physically than he has in months. But he also wakes to cold sheets and an empty room, and a pit in his stomach that threatens to consume him from the inside out.

Jean-Luc has never claimed to have good taste, but this is getting ridiculous.

He has tried his best to live his life by the book, in everything from Starfleet regulations to moral principles. He finds comfort in this, but often finds himself yearning for the chaos he cannot indulge in. He has always been attracted to rule breakers: always exciting, always breathtaking, always impossible to keep.

But only one has ever been able to break the very rules of the universe. Q represents everything Jean-Luc will not let himself have.

That would have been fine, had that been all it was. Jean-Luc could have spared a wistful thought for Q occasionally, lamenting his childish and inconsiderate ways, and he would have lived a comfortable life not knowing what lay beyond the words in Q’s Starfleet file. He could have resisted the temptation that Q has always posed to him.

But instead, Jean-Luc learned. He learned about Q’s strange sense of humour, his hidden kindnesses, and the true nature of his ostracization from the Continuum. He learned that Q constantly wants to be touched, but only by him.

He remembers all the brushes of their hands, their shoulders, their legs, and wonders what the Noctuans would think if they could see Q now. He wonders if Q finally understands their need for touch, the constant craving for it as a means of communicating the things one can’t say out loud. Jean-Luc certainly understands.

He has always loved the dramatic: Shakespeare, poetry, detective noir stories, and omnipotent entities it would seem.

He tries to go about his life like the very foundation of it hasn’t been irreparably altered. He orders sensor sweeps, sends probes, moves cargo, but he feels like a different man to the one that performed these tasks in the past. He always forgets how all-encompassing love is, how it changes a person.

As always, he feels very lucky to have a crew that knows him so well. They sense the difference in him but don’t overstep, simply remaining in his orbit to call upon should he need an encouraging word or a friendly face. Jean-Luc knows he has earned the respect of his officers, but he is always overwhelmed by the gratitude he feels for the love of his friends.

Deanna has tried to start the conversation, but it all still seems a bit fresh to him, so she respects his need for privacy. It is all made harder by the fact that Q hasn’t shown his face at all since the night in his quarters.

So instead, he continues working and tries not to let the new feelings that stew within him, the new man he has been transformed into, get in the way of all that needs to be done. Jean-Luc keeps his love for Q folded into a tiny corner of his heart and reminds himself of the things he knows to be true:

Q is omnipotent. Jean-Luc has fallen in love with him. Q has stopped visiting him.

He tries to convince himself it’s for the best, that it’s less painful this way, but even after all these years Jean-Luc has never been able to master the art of giving up hope.

They don’t know the rogue Romulan warbird is even there until it decloaks practically on top of them.

It takes out the shields first, then the subspace communications, then the phaser arrays. Before Jean-Luc could order the photon torpedoes to be armed, La Forge calls to tell him the warp drive is offline.

No weapons. No engine. No back-up. This is not how Jean-Luc saw himself going down.

He should announce ship-wide to abandon the Enterprise, because that’s what Starfleet regulations say to do, but he knows there will not be enough time. They are dead in the water, sitting ducks for the Romulans that have methodically dismantled their systems one by one.

Jean-Luc sees the warbird’s disruptor array begin to power up almost in slow motion. He looks to his right and is met with the resigned, but still fiercely brave face of his number one. Jean-Luc takes comfort in the fact that he is not alone, and though he mourns for the tragic and pointless loss of life, he is grateful to die among friends.

The disruptor fires, and Jean-Luc’s vision is bathed in white. He thinks he hears the familiar sound of snapping fingers, but in all likeliness, it is wishful thinking. The manifestation of his regret at never sharing his feelings rearing its ugly head in his final moments.

And then all at once, he is back on the bridge.

He and Will bolt out of their chairs at the same time and look around the bridge, adrenaline still pumping through their veins. Will and Deanna share a look of wariness, and Worf still seems on high alert, but the warbird is gone.

“Mr. Data, scan for a warp signature.”

In times like this, where his whole crew has undergone a traumatic ordeal, Jean-Luc is glad to have an emotionless android to provide some rationality.

“No warp signature detected, Captain,” Data responds in his usual monotone, “incoming or outgoing: it is as if the ship was never there.”

Jean-Luc taps his communicator.

“Mr. La Forge, what is your status?”

“Warp drive is back online, but phasers and communication are still out,” Geordi replies, “I can’t make heads or tails of it, Captain—one minute the warp core’s about to breach, and the next it's up and running perfectly fine. I’d love to take credit, but we didn’t do it.”

“Keep me informed, Commander,” Jean-Luc says, “and see if we can’t get those phasers and subspace comm’s back online. I don’t want to be caught by surprise a second time.”

“Aye, sir.” Geordi says and closes the comm channel.

Just then, Jean-Luc sees something out of the corner of his eye. If he were a superstitious man, he would have called it a specter: shimmery and wispy, vaguely human shaped, and gone when he whips his head around to truly look at it.

But he saw its eyes, and he would know them anywhere.

“Continue long-range scans for warp signatures,” Jean-Luc says to Data, before turning to the helmsman, “and maintain previous heading once communications are back online.”

He straightens his uniform. Now, the real battle begins.

“I need a moment, if you all don’t mind,” he tries to keep his voice as level as he can. “Number One, you have the bridge. If you need me, I’ll be in my ready room.”

Jean-Luc waits until the door is fully closed before he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding in. He gazes up at the ceiling and hopes he’s read the situation correctly.

“Q,” he says, sounding tired even to himself, “I think it’s time you get down here and explain yourself.”

The silence weighs heavily in the air.

“Look,” he huffs, “I don’t know if you’re here anymore, or if you’re even listening, but I know you saved us from the Romulans. I want to know where they are.”

“It’s not the ‘where’ that matters,” a voice says from the couch, “if I were them, I’d be a little bit more concerned with the ‘when’.”

Q appears before him, leaning on the wall between the viewport and his fish tank, and Jean-Luc feels all the breath leave his lungs at once. He imagines this is what it must be like to skirt the event horizon of a black hole: mysterious, dangerous, and everything Jean-Luc left earth to explore. He can almost feel Q’s gravitational pull at his chest, his mechanical heart pushing against his ribs to get closer—to circle the drain and delve into the singularity until finally, he is no more.

Instead, he only allows himself a small smile and a weary sigh.

“Bring them back,” Jean-Luc says.

“Ha! That is just so typical,” Q says sardonically.

“Q…” Jean-Luc warns.

“I believe the correct response is actually ‘Why Q, thank you for saving my life and the lives of everyone on this ship, what would I do without you?’.”

“I don’t need your help!” Jean-Luc grits through his teeth. Q walks towards him, all pomp and arrogance, but aborts the movement abruptly before he can get too close.

“Of course not!” Q smiles, but it looks cruel and reminds Jean-Luc of when they first met. “I suppose you’d like me to bring them back so they can continue to blow your ship to bits?”

“Just—”

Jean-Luc feels another wave of fatigue wash over him, but it doesn’t dilute the relief he feels at seeing Q again. He is tired of fighting, tired of missing him, tired of pretending he doesn’t care.

“Just restore the timeline, please.” he says after a moment.

Q regards him for a moment with cold eyes, but finally snaps his fingers.

“As requested, they’re back in what you perceive as the present, somewhere in the Neutral Zone,” Q says, “no doubt desperately wondering how they got there.”

Jean-Luc sighs in relief. Q’s gaze remains steady but contains a strange, almost stoic pain.

“Well, if that’s all,” he says haughtily, “I have pressing matters in the Continuum to attend to.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

Before Jean-Luc’s brain catches up with his feet, he has crossed the distance between them and grabbed Q’s wrist in a futile attempt to keep him from snapping his fingers.

Q pulls his arm away violently, as if Jean-Luc’s hand were burning his flesh. Jean-Luc thinks for a moment back to the Noctuan’s Week of Longing, and Luxan’s story about their mother. He thinks about how many months it has been since Q’s hands touched his skin.

“How dare you…” Q begins venomously.

“You do not get to leave until you tell me exactly what is going on here,” Jean-Luc hisses through gritted teeth.

“The arrogance!” Q barks. “You do not get to tell me what to do, Picard. There are some things that are just beyond your comprehension.”

“Oh, and I’m sure the reason for meddling with my ship is one of those things?”

“Only you would classify saving your skin as ‘meddling’.”

“Q!” Jean-Luc shouts, borderline desperately. “You have to tell me what is going on here!”

“I don’t have to tell you a damn thing.” Q says, voice dripping with anger.

“You disappear for months on end, pop in out of nowhere to zap some Romulans back in time, and you’re just going to leave again like nothing happened?”

“Those Romulans would have killed you, Jean-Luc!”

“What do you care?” Jean-Luc asks incredulously.

Q huffs and rolls his eyes in disbelief.

“What do I care?”

“Yes!” Jean-Luc counters. “You’ll certainly live billions of years after I die regardless, what does it matter when it happens?”

“That’s enough!” Q bellows, voice seeming to echo off of supposedly soundproof walls.

“Oh, I’m sure it is,” Jean-Luc says, “I suppose it’s time for you to pop over to some other corner of the galaxy, just like you always do when things get tough.”

“Nothing has ever been tough for me.” Q replies coldly.

“Then why is it that you’re always leaving?” Jean-Luc cries in frustration.

“Because no one has ever wanted me to stay!” Q shouts.

The room is silent for what feels like an eternity.

“No one has ever wanted me to stay,” he says again, softer, and more resigned this time, “least of all you.”

For a moment, Jean-Luc can only stare at him in shock. Q shrugs his shoulders, the fight having left him, and Jean-Luc starts to think he’s not the only one who’s tired of these games.

“Q,” he says, “what are you saying, exactly?”

“I thought you would’ve been glad to see me go, once and for all,” Q says, crossing his arms defensively, “haven’t you said time and time again that I am a pest to your ship? A villain to be thwarted?”

“There was a time when that may have been true,” Jean-Luc grants, “but surely you must know that things have changed?”

“Have they, Jean-Luc?” Q counters. “You are still off, gallivanting across the galaxy, and will continue to do so until your pitiful excuse for a life comes to an end, and I will remain. Content simply to pop in and out of the Continuum forever and continue fighting helplessly with the other Q over the point of it all.”

“But…” Jean-Luc thinks of all the countless ways things have been different, all the purposeful touches and the meaningful glances, and cannot reconcile these with Q’s words.

“So spare me the theatrics, and let me leave,” Q says finally, “so I can go back to the life I had before I was burdened with the knowledge of humanity. Where I had to play with species like the Noctuans to try and understand what it meant to be touched, and I never wanted anything I couldn’t have.”

The realization that had been creeping up on Jean-Luc finally hits him all at once.

“You don’t know…” Jean-Luc says, voice filled to the brim with wonder and amazement.

“What?” Q sputters. “What don’t I know?”

Jean-Luc can’t help but chuckle softly.

“You have resigned yourself to this lonely existence, but even with all your omnipotence you still can’t see what’s right in front of your nose.”

“Picard,” Q says warily, “what are you talking about?”

Jean-Luc didn’t plan for this. He has no confession prepared, no grand speech on hand that can properly convey how he feels about Q. He never thought he would need one—he is dealing with an entity that is supposed to be all-knowing. Jean-Luc assumed there was nothing he could tell Q that he didn’t already know, and so he is at a bit of a loss of how to proceed.

He stutters out a few incoherent syllables, starting and stopping sentences between huffed laughter, but eventually gives up and resorts to the only language that has ever truly worked for them.

Jean-Luc reaches for the hand that is crossed over Q’s bicep, unwinding the arms that have been shielding his chest. Q’s hand feels the same as it always has, soft and warm. After taking a deep breath and summoning his courage, Jean-Luc brings the hand up to his lips and brushes a gentle kiss across its knuckles.

Q gasps at the contact, mouth hanging open slightly. Jean-Luc can feel fingers flex beneath his own, but neither let go. He searches Q’s face for some sign that he has not misinterpreted things, that he hasn’t ruined everything by crossing this threshold. He finds uncertainty and conflict written into the corner of Q’s eyes and the set of his mouth, the resigned pain an ever-present friend on his features.

But the way that Q’s eyes dart between his, the sharpness of his breath, the purse of his lips—they all give Jean-Luc reason to hope that he had not misinterpreted after all.

“Oh, mon capitaine,” Q says after a few shaky breaths, “you have no idea how much harder you’ve made this.”

“What?” Jean-Luc leans back slightly, but Q still doesn’t let go of his hand, so he doesn’t either.

“You cannot want this.” Q protests.

“Is that so?” Jean-Luc says slowly, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips.

“Jean-Luc, I am trying to be responsible.” Q pleads, but he leans in slightly.

“That would be a first.” Jean-Luc smirks.

“The Continuum will not understand. Affairs with mortals have historically caused nothing but problems.” Q leans in another centimeter.

“Right, because you’ve always been so devoted to following the Continuum’s wishes.” Jean-Luc can almost feel the gears turning in his chest where his mechanical heart sits between his lungs.

“They could hunt you down, Jean-Luc,” Q’s eyes are serious, but he brings his other hand up to cup Jean-Luc’s cheek, “you would be no match for them, nor any of the other enemies I have made.”

“Luckily, I wouldn’t be alone, would I?” Jean-Luc leans into Q’s hand. “I would have you there, and the rest of my crew. Who knows, we might surprise you.”

“You always do,” Q almost whispers, allowing himself a small smile finally.

“Then why did you leave?”

They are only a few inches between them now. Jean-Luc observes Q’s nervous breaths, the pink of his skin, the sweat of his hands, and is floored all at once by how real he seems in this moment. Not the unruly entity seen on the pages of Starfleet reports, but a man who is trying to keep the person closest to him safe.

“Surely you must know better than anyone,” Q says, “that stories about love between gods and man always end in tragedy?”

“Perhaps,” Jean-Luc says, “but they are some of the most beautiful.”

After a single breath, he closes the short distance between their lips.

Q tastes of stardust and worlds born anew. He responds immediately, shifting his mouth against Jean-Luc’s and untwining their fingers to cradle his face with both hands. Jean-Luc can feel where Q’s fingers press against his cheekbones, his neck, his temples, and revels in the feeling of being held with such fierce protectiveness. He snakes his hands up Q’s arms to his shoulders, and eventually down his back to his waist, pulling him closer until their bodies are flush against each other.

Jean-Luc opens his mouth and feels the slide of Q’s tongue against his own, rough and wonderful, and Q makes a sound low in his throat at the contact. It seems to echo through the room and reverberate through Jean-Luc’s body, and he thinks that there may be little he wouldn’t do to hear that sound again.

Q turns them around and walks them into the space between the viewport and the fish tank. Jean-Luc’s back hits the wall and Q is pressing in, trying to connect every inch of their bodies together. Q’s kisses are eager and desperate, as if he is unsure he will ever be able to have this again, so Jean-Luc tries to pour his reassurance and devotion into every touch.

When Jean-Luc pulls back eventually, lungs burning, Q whines in protest and tries to follow his lips. Jean-Luc huffs a laugh, and presses a kiss to the base of the thumb still brushing against his cheekbone, trying to catch his breath.

In that moment, Jean-Luc thinks of the Noctuans. He thinks of Farpoint Station and Sherwood Forest. He thinks of taking his captain’s oath and taking a blade through the heart. He thinks that of all the paths he could have taken, he is glad to be on the one that led him here.

“I never imagined you could want this.” Q says, voice thick with emotion.

“Why not?” Jean-Luc replies, touching his forehead to Q’s. “Surely you could have just… looked.”

“I didn’t want to know,” Q shrugs, “I was… hesitant to see what I would find, to know what you really thought of me. Plus, conversations are much more interesting when you don’t know what’s coming, and I’ve never found a conversation partner more interesting than you, mon capitaine.”

Jean-Luc runs his hands across Q’s shoulder blades in response, eliciting a shiver from him.

“Of course,” Jean-Luc says with a wry smile, “who else could piece things together before an all-powerful entity could.”

“Hey, I resent that,” Q says, but it's soft and without bite, “you had an eight-year head start.”

Jean-Luc pulls back an inch.

“I… what?”

Q merely stares at him for a moment before a laugh seems to bubble its way out of his mouth. It is warm and rich and new, and Jean-Luc is certain he would like to hear it until the end of time itself. For now, he rolls his eyes, and can’t help but be pleased at the feel of the laughter rumbling through Q’s body, transferring through everywhere they are touching.

“You have got to be joking,” Q says around his laughter, “‘I can’t believe you don’t know,’ he says. ‘It’s right in front of your nose,’ he says. You are not allowed to poke fun at me for not figuring it out sooner when this whole time, I couldn’t have been making it more obvious.”

“Obvious?” Jean-Luc says in mock offense.

“Jean-Luc, I have the entirety of the universe at my fingertips, and yet time and again I return to your ship,” Q says, teasing and affectionate, “what would you suppose that means?”

Jean-Luc shrugs.

“Everyone needs a hobby.”

Q lets out a dramatic and exasperated sigh, but when Jean-Luc leans back in, he can feel the shape of Q’s smile on his lips.

He moves his lips along Q’s jaw and down his neck, only a light graze of teeth soothed by gentle kisses, but it nonetheless elicits the desired response. Q shivers, and a breathy sound escapes his lips as Jean-Luc’s lips reach the hollow of his collar bone. The love he feels for Q seems to hit Jean-Luc all at once, and he rests his head against Q’s shoulder for a moment to catch his breath. Q, with one hand cradling the back of Jean-Luc’s neck and the other gripping his shoulder, presses his lips to the top of Jean-Luc’s head.

“I have to return to the bridge.” Jean-Luc says with a sigh, slightly muffled by the fabric of Q’s faux Starfleet uniform.

“Of course,” Q presses the words into Jean-Luc’s temple, “where would the Enterprise be without her captain?”

Jean-Luc pulls back and meets Q’s eyes again. He wonders if there will ever be a time where he will no longer be mystified by them.

“I am off duty at 1800 hours,” he says, “you are more than welcome to join me in my quarters.”

Jean-Luc feels the sly smile melt off his face as he remembers Q’s earlier words.

“This time, please… I’d like you to stay.”

Q takes one of Jean-Luc’s hands between his own, and mirroring Jean-Luc’s instigating gesture, presses his lips to his knuckles.

“There is nowhere else in the universe I’d rather be,” Q says softly, “until then, mon capitaine.”

This time, when Q snaps his fingers and disappears before his eyes, the emptiness Jean-Luc normally feels is replaced with a keen anticipation.

When he opens the door of his ready room, he is surprised to see Deanna and Will standing inches from his face. As they take frantic steps backward and away from the door, he can see Data has also been standing behind them, peering over their shoulders with furrowed brows. Even Worf seems to have joined them, and though he stands with his arms crossed disapprovingly, his eyes look as curious as any of the others.

“Oh, uh… hello Captain!” Will says with wide eyes, smiling but at least having the decency to look somewhat embarrassed about it.

“Number One,” he says firmly, but in too good a mood to inject any actual bite into it, “would you care to explain what is going on here?”

“You’ll be happy to know we got the communications back up and running,” his first officer starts, “and there was a new communique from Command that I thought might require your attention, so I went to deliver it to you.”

Will and Deanna share a look. Jean-Luc raises an eyebrow.

“We heard you talking with someone,” Deanna continues, “and were… worried about you.”

“Is that so?” Jean-Luc deadpans.

“Yes Captain,” Data interjects, “Commander Riker was concerned for your safety and asked that I use my advanced hearing to identify the other voice.”

Jean-Luc looks over at Will, who has put a hand over his eyes and is rubbing at his temples.

“I determined this voice to be Q’s which, in light of recent events with the Romulans, may explain why the warp drive was miraculously fixed; however, while Q’s visits have been more friendly as of late, he is notoriously unpredictable. Therefore, Commander Riker and Counselor Troi remained at the door—”

“—to make sure you were alright, of course,” Deanna says, cutting Data off with somewhat panicked eyes.

“Way to throw us under the bus, Data.” Will says under his breath.

Jean-Luc tries to swallow down his smile.

“Mr. Worf?” He says, “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“I wanted to know if you and Q were finally going to enter a romantic relationship.” Worf replies.

Will and Deanna’s heads whip around to look at him, while Data looks as if he is rapidly computing a program with a complex set of variables.

“What?” Worf says gruffly, “I do not like him, but I am not blind.”

There is a moment of silence where Jean-Luc can feel everyone’s eyes on him, trepidation written across each of their features.

The laugh he has been suppressing finally bubbles up, and he lets out a soft chuckle at their nervousness. Deanna is the first to join him, but eventually Will joins in too, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Jean-Luc can see Worf roll his eyes, probably in distain at Jean-Luc’s poor taste in romantic partners, but he cannot quite hide the upward curl of his lip.

Data is as expressionless as ever, but there is a softness to his features that Jean-Luc suspects means he is secretly pleased to see his friends in good spirits.

“Well, Number One,” Jean-Luc says through his laughter, “if you could send that communique my way as soon as possible, I’d be very grateful. It’ll be best to get it out of the way as soon as possible…”

He walks toward his chair and sits down. It remains as comforting, exciting, and all-encompassing as the day he first sat in it, and his mind is drawn back to the memory of kissing Q. His stomach flips at the thought, and he sees Deanna smirk at him out of the corner of his eye.

“…I have plans this evening I’d very much like not to miss.”

Jean-Luc gazes out the viewscreen at the stars, and now, he thinks he might be able to imagine what it is like to touch them.