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order_of_chaos.
Title: Illusory Embrace
Rating: PG
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Characters/Pairings: Jean-Luc Picard, Q. Q/Picard
Summary: Q and Picard, on the subject of embraces
Wordcount: 496
Warnings/Notes: Touch of Q melancholy in there
Disclaimer: Not mine
order_of_chaos.Title: Illusory Embrace
Rating: PG
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Characters/Pairings: Jean-Luc Picard, Q. Q/Picard
Summary: Q and Picard, on the subject of embraces
Wordcount: 496
Warnings/Notes: Touch of Q melancholy in there
Disclaimer: Not mine
Illusory Embrace
It was strange, Jean-Luc thought, leaning carefully into the warm silence at his back. Despite everything they'd been through over the years, there was something .... oddly restful, about Q. He was ... familiar. A known unknown. For all that he was mercurial, and ridiculously powerful, and prone to the maddest and most willful of whimsies ... he was, in many ways, entirely predictable. Oh, not the form. Never the form. But the motives, underneath it all. They were ... a known unknown, glimpsed on the edges, and entirely explicable.
"Do Q embrace?" he asked, with idle curiosity. Twitching his head with lazy irritability as Q played gently with his ear, refusing to raise his head from Q's shoulder. He was tired. It would take more than a ticklish touch to make him lift his head right now.
"Hmm," Q murmured, over the just-audible edge of a laugh. "Well now. That depends."
Of course it did. "On what?" Jean-Luc asked, with what he considered admirable patience. But then, he considered having any patience at all an admirable effort, when it came to Q. He got the impression that quite a few other beings felt similarly.
"On what you mean by 'embrace'," Q explained, with dry amusement, and a pointed patience of his own. "The Q do not usually have bodies, remember? Just because I take the time and effort to make you comfortable with my appearance, Johnny ..."
Jean-Luc snorted. But gently, because yes, Q could have done a lot worse than he had, he did know that. Having seen the hard edges of Q's power, he knew full well there had been ... so much worse the entity could have done. Even the little things were evidence of more thought for them than maybe, years ago, he would have expected of the entity.
"But you do have a form of embrace," he concluded, rolling his head into Q's neck to look sideways up at him. "Otherwise there would be no 'depends', correct?"
Q grinned at him, eyes twinkling proudly. Jean-Luc sometimes wondered if they did that naturally, or if it was a deliberate effect on the part of Q. And, other times again, what the difference would be. "Correct, Jean-Luc. You're learning, aren't you?"
Jean-Luc lifted a corner of his lip. "Even barbaric child races can learn eventually," he murmured, and it was a sign of how many years it had been that it really was more teasing than bitter. "So. Tell me. How do Qs embrace?"
Expressions flickered across Q's mobile features too fast to track, a multitude, a legion, but there was hunger when they were done, a strange, near-fearsome intensity, as a thing powerful enough to hold time in the palm of his hand leaned close behind Jean-Luc, arms warm and solid around him, and whispered softly, lips only millimeters from his ear.
"Deeply, Jean-Luc." A quick, mercurial grin, and a bleakness in those illusory eyes. "Deeper than any human embrace. And, in the end ... almost always hollow."
It was strange, Jean-Luc thought, leaning carefully into the warm silence at his back. Despite everything they'd been through over the years, there was something .... oddly restful, about Q. He was ... familiar. A known unknown. For all that he was mercurial, and ridiculously powerful, and prone to the maddest and most willful of whimsies ... he was, in many ways, entirely predictable. Oh, not the form. Never the form. But the motives, underneath it all. They were ... a known unknown, glimpsed on the edges, and entirely explicable.
"Do Q embrace?" he asked, with idle curiosity. Twitching his head with lazy irritability as Q played gently with his ear, refusing to raise his head from Q's shoulder. He was tired. It would take more than a ticklish touch to make him lift his head right now.
"Hmm," Q murmured, over the just-audible edge of a laugh. "Well now. That depends."
Of course it did. "On what?" Jean-Luc asked, with what he considered admirable patience. But then, he considered having any patience at all an admirable effort, when it came to Q. He got the impression that quite a few other beings felt similarly.
"On what you mean by 'embrace'," Q explained, with dry amusement, and a pointed patience of his own. "The Q do not usually have bodies, remember? Just because I take the time and effort to make you comfortable with my appearance, Johnny ..."
Jean-Luc snorted. But gently, because yes, Q could have done a lot worse than he had, he did know that. Having seen the hard edges of Q's power, he knew full well there had been ... so much worse the entity could have done. Even the little things were evidence of more thought for them than maybe, years ago, he would have expected of the entity.
"But you do have a form of embrace," he concluded, rolling his head into Q's neck to look sideways up at him. "Otherwise there would be no 'depends', correct?"
Q grinned at him, eyes twinkling proudly. Jean-Luc sometimes wondered if they did that naturally, or if it was a deliberate effect on the part of Q. And, other times again, what the difference would be. "Correct, Jean-Luc. You're learning, aren't you?"
Jean-Luc lifted a corner of his lip. "Even barbaric child races can learn eventually," he murmured, and it was a sign of how many years it had been that it really was more teasing than bitter. "So. Tell me. How do Qs embrace?"
Expressions flickered across Q's mobile features too fast to track, a multitude, a legion, but there was hunger when they were done, a strange, near-fearsome intensity, as a thing powerful enough to hold time in the palm of his hand leaned close behind Jean-Luc, arms warm and solid around him, and whispered softly, lips only millimeters from his ear.
"Deeply, Jean-Luc." A quick, mercurial grin, and a bleakness in those illusory eyes. "Deeper than any human embrace. And, in the end ... almost always hollow."
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