The Lingering Scent of Roses
by Rae <artemis@wn.com.au>
"Take care of Beverly while I'm gone, Jean-Luc," Jack told him good-naturedly, as they paused before his transport. "At least until you ship out. I'll see you in a couple of weeks, right?"
"Right." The two men shook hands affectionately, then Jack turned to his wife.
They were silent for a moment. Picard took a step away uncomfortably, feeling like an intruder. Finally, Beverly smiled. "See you soon," she said simply. She smiled despite the tears shimmering in her eyes. A few more words of love and a long kiss later, Jack reluctantly turned away and called for his beam-out.
"I'll walk you home," Jean-Luc said. Beverly nodded and walked at his side towards the university in the comfortable silence of friends.
"How have you been feeling, Jean-Luc?" Beverly asked, after a while. She was in her final post-graduate year at Starfleet Medical, and had been an observer at recent surgery he'd required performed on his artificial heart. "Doctor Conon thought you might have a little discomfort for a few days. Did you?"
Jean-Luc looked at her, a smile playing at his lips. "No, Doctor, I didn't." His heartache's causes were entirely different, and entirely related to the impossibly beautiful woman who was now pausing to brush trailing fingers across the roses that lined the path.
Returning the smile, Beverly plucked a flower from a bush and ran her fingernails along it, neatly stripping away the thorns. She tapped the rose against her cheek as she gazed at him, eyes twinkling, and then tucked it into his hair. He caught her wrist, and held it. "Yes, Jean-Luc?" she asked archly, tugging on the fringe that fell in his eyes. "You need a haircut."
"Leave my hair alone," he growled, before releasing her and resuming their walk. Beverly chuckled and matched his pace.
They reached the door of her small campus apartment, but she stopped him before he walked away. "Stay a while?" Seeing the vulnerability of the young wife missing her husband in her eyes, Jean-Luc acquiesced and entered.
She turned on music. They played chess and discussed the novel he'd recently lent her, or argued entertainingly about everything and nothing and whatever it was, it didn't matter, because he was with her. He could warm himself in her regard, and for tonight believe that Jack hadn't loved her first. And after that they passed the evening in silence, content with the companionship of one another's presence.
Later, he would remember the soft sigh of her breathing as she slipped into sleep behind him while he sat at her bookcase, looking aimlessly through a book of poetry. It called his attention, and he glanced around to see her reclined on the couch.
Unfolding from his position on the floor, he went to her bedroom and took a blanket from her bed. He spread it over her with infinite tenderness, and tucked it gently around her slender body. He couldn't quite bring himself to leave yet, and took his time over finishing his poem, tucking the book away and turning back to her.
Unbidden, the words returned to his lips. "That man seems an equal to the gods, who sits across from you and listens as you speak." Kneeling again, he gazed at her composed and achingly beautiful features. "Sweet. Near. Desires as you laugh..." His fingertips curled in the burnished copper strands that fell from the cushion that was her pillow.
His voice was less than a whisper. He exhaled the words on the breath that caught at her sweetness when she was wakeful. "The heart in my chest trembles at it." He leaned closer, just close enough to brush his lips in a ghosting motion across the smooth, soft skin of her cheek, aware of the lingering scent of roses on her skin and the silence around them, then quietly slipped into the gathered night.
Crystal-blue eyes slid open to watch the door close, somnolently aware of the warmth that suffused the room. She drifted between sleep and waking, uncertainly poised between a dream, and a memory.