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Jean-Luc Picard, erstwhile starship captain, present day director of a sham itinerant theater troupe, expected to return to an empty flat. It had been far more weeks in close quarters with most of his senior staff than any of them had anticipated, and the side of him that was accustomed to retiring to his own quarters each night was beginning to feel claustrophobic. He tried to check his disappointment as he heard someone moving around in one of the bedrooms. The disappointment evaporated entirely when his eyes caught on a starched nurse’s cap tossed on the narrow table next to the door.
Jacket abandoned immediately upon closing the front door, Jean-Luc began absently rolling up his sleeves as he looked around for any sign of his other officers. Everything was quiet until he heard a distinct yelp, muffled by the bedroom door.
“Beverly?” he called out as he hurried down the hallway.
“I’m fine.” She raised her voice to be heard through the closed door, but that just made the weariness in her response all the more apparent. “Just give me minute.”
His hand already resting on the doorknob, he hesitated. “You’re sure y—”
A string of indistinct whimpers and a choice word or two made it through to his straining ear, but before he could turn the knob: “I’m okay.” A pause. “You don’t need to hover.” And then a bone-deep sigh.
There was more shuffling, and possibly something moderately heavy being thrown, and then Jean-Luc followed the sound of Beverly getting to her feet and walking to the door. He stepped back just in time for her to open it, but she still pulled up short, clearly not expecting to find him one-and-a-half steps outside her bedroom. She looked flushed – or, rather, flustered – he thought. She’d discarded her stiff collar somewhere along the way, and the top two buttons of her blouse undone revealed far more of her skin than he’d seen since she and Deanna first came back from the seamstress.
Her fist was perched on her side as though she needed the extra support to stay upright.
“Beverly, what’s going on?”
She didn’t bother to force a reassuring smile—genuine or otherwise. “I needed to get out of my shoes,” she said as though it warranted no further explanation. He hadn’t given her enough space to pass and so she shifted her weight in place, rising up on the ball of her foot and stretching her toes.
“But it sounded like you were in pain.” There was already too much concern in his voice for either of them to navigate this well.
Beverly continued stretching her sore feet, alternating from side to side twice more with a grimace on her face. “It’s these insufferable Victorian boots, and all their stupid little eyelets. It takes so much time to undo the laces and get them off.” She rose higher on one foot and shifted forward; as she sank slightly over the tops of her toes, every one of them cracked in relief. “With my skin like this—” she lifted her hand from the doorknob and flashed the bright pink evidence at him, “—it feels like little razor blades when the laces rub against my fingers.”
Jean-Luc’s eyes followed her hand as it dropped back to her side, not daring to reach for it and inadvertently cause her more pain. Assuming the conversation was done, Beverly leaned forward, and Jean-Luc took another step back, letting her pass. He followed her down the hallway and so was able to spot the tin clutched in the hand at her hip.
“Why don’t you let me put that salve on for you?” he offered as they rounded the corner into the parlor. He reached for it and was surprised when Beverly pulled away in the same movement.
She glanced at the tin and then looked back at him uncertainly. “Maybe you could just get the lid off, and then I can take it from there.”
He smiled at her indulgently. “But you always have Deanna do it. There must be a reason you prefer not to do it yourself?” He reached for the container again.
Beverly looked at him warily, and then at his outstretched hand. He’d earned some callouses since their arrival in the past. Jean-Luc had even preened a little over them, noting that his brother liked to tease him about how soft his hands were with a life in space. Not rough like her always were now with harsh soaps and aggressive disinfecting, just a little more topography to them. Still a strong grip, thick fingers. Beverly yanked back hard on her line of thinking as she realized she still hadn’t answered his question—this is exactly why she should do this herself.
In her contemplation, he took the tin from her grasp and started to maneuver her to the settee. “Here. Sit, Beverly.”
She obeyed his playful command without registering it.
“It’s nice to have a chance to spend time with you.” He pulled a well-worn cane back chair over to face her. “I’ve missed our breakfasts.”
“Breakfast?” The unexpected topic finally pulled her attention back to his words, and she blinked as she cleared the more vivid images from her mind. “We’ve eaten breakfast together nearly every morning we’ve been here.”
Jean-Luc sat down gracefully, clearly not worn out in the way that she was. “With a roomful of boarders. I miss being with you like this. I miss this part of our friendship.”
Beverly forced a smile for him. Friendship. Of course. Simple friends wouldn’t be worried about the effect of this kind of touch. She watched him struggle to twist the lid off. He grunted softly and she saw the small creases in his forearm ripple with the effort. Had he always had that kind of definition, she wondered, or had she never had the chance to observe it like this?
The container opened with a muted pop, and Jean-Luc smiled at his small success. He looked up to find her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
“Beverly, are you worried?” he asked with a slight edge. “Do you not think me capable of helping you with this straightforward medical treatment?”
“I’m not worried,” she blurted out. This was a lie, but not for any reason that he could possibly guess at. “I’m just not used to our roles being reversed like this.” It was a good cover, she thought to herself.
“I took care of you when you pulled me down that hole on that defunct artillery planet.”
“Did you?” she asked in confusion.
His eyebrows drew together, indignant. “I got you back up to the ship alive, didn’t I?”
“Oh,” her posture relaxed in understanding, “honestly, most of what happened that day was lost to the concussion.” She managed a genuine smile. “I’m sorry that I don’t remember.”
“Well, it’s a relief to see an actual smile from you again.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I can tell that you’ve been starting to struggle with this mission.”
She tried to put him off with a crooked smile. “Does my captain think I need a pep talk?”
“No,” he said warmly, but seriously, “your friend sees that you could use some moral support.”
Beverly chewed her lip again, now concerned with exposing an altogether different sort of vulnerability. “It’s just that we’ve been here a lot longer than I expected.”
He nodded ruefully. “Longer that I think any of us expected.”
“It’s starting to wear on me.”
Jean-Luc looked down as he dipped two fingers into the salve and scooped out a generous amount. He began to work the salve between his palms.
“Wait, what are you doing?” she asked, her doubt creeping back in.
“Beverly,” he sighed dramatically, “I have used balms on chapped hands before. I grew up on a farm, if you recall?” He held her eyes until she nodded grudgingly. “Warming it penetrates the skin better, and it makes it glide more easily so that it doesn’t pull on the tender spots.”
Her lips tipped down in a contemplative frown; it did make sense.
“You were saying? About what’s been wearing on you.”
“I wasn’t actually, but you seem determined.”
“Oh, I am.” He held his hands out between them, waiting for her to offer one of hers.
His eyes were light and open in a way that they never were when other people were around, and Beverly realized that it would take at least as much effort to resist the earnestness in his invitation as it would to keep her senses in check. She placed her left hand in his, and it was immediately wrapped in two warm, large hands that moved slick across her skin. In the next moment, Jean-Luc reached above her hand and ran one thumb down the inside of her wrist; a line of heat raced up her arm in response. Beverly tried to bite it back, but a whimper slipped past her lips. Maybe she needed to recheck her assumption on what would be harder to resist.
Jean-Luc’s hold on her lightened at the sound. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “I’ll be gentler.”
Beverly smiled weakly, not correcting him.
“You’ve had a hard time,” he prompted her.
She sighed as he began carefully working balm into her little finger. “The little things are tedious, I suppose, but I can manage them.”
He looked up at her, an eyebrow raised. “Like us always being on top of each other, and the constant filth from all the horses in the streets, or all the time it takes to set these stupid curls.” She blew an annoyed breath up her forehead to get the limp ones off her skin.
He grimaced without thinking.
“You have some thoughts on the curls, Jean-Luc?”
“They do seem to take a lot of effort,” he dodged wisely. “But that’s not really it?”
Beverly was momentary lost to the way that his fingertips were working their way meticulously up her ring finger. His thumb caught the bit of tissue connecting to her middle finger and dragged down over the small triangle of skin. For the life of her, all Beverly could register was the similarity that these two digits might have to her own two legs, his thumb drawing precisely over—. Desire pulsed unmistakably between her thighs, and she gasped at the force of her imagination.
“Too hard?”
Her mind flashed through several wildly inappropriate ways to interpret his question before finally clearing her throat with a quick shake of her head. “No, it’s okay.”
Jean-Luc twisted the base of her middle finger between his thumb and forefinger before encircling the first joint, and Beverly only just managed not to squeak at the parallel playing out in her mind.
“You were saying though?”
Beverly took a deep breath and pulled her thoughts back to far less pleasant images. Her chest tightened as she prepared to put her words to what she was experiencing. “I could save so many people here,” she said softly.
“Beverly,” he began, his voice sympathetic but still a warning.
“I know, Jean-Luc, I know: the Temporal Prime Directive. I understand the imperative. But it’s not about what I know how to heal in a theoretical sense. Without all the tools and diagnostics in our century, plenty of things are still a mystery. It doesn’t matter if it’s here, this morning, or back on the Enterprise, someone comes to me saying that they have stomach pain and it could be anything from indigestion to cancer to some genetic rarity that’s only been recorded three times in all of human history. There can be so much ambiguity, and the technology that I have at my disposal in the 24th century makes many more things possible. I can’t diagnose or treat in the same way here, and I can live with that. I can make peace with what’s slipping between my fingers.”
She fell silent as Jean-Luc began tracing opposing circles across the back of her hand. The heat worked. Not just that her skin tolerated the salve better when it was more pliant, but the warmth from his hands as well.
“But?”
“But it’s what I can diagnose and would be able to treat with things that are available in the here and now, but it’s not standard practice yet. It’s not understood in the same way.”
“How do you mean?”
“All these cholera cases. Nineteenth-century medicine understands some of what’s going on, and they’re figuring out how to treat it, but it’s still too imprecise and not widely practiced. And that’s only for the few who can pay for a hospital. Most of the deaths are happening, largely uncounted, in absolute squalor in slums and tenements that can’t even access the basic necessities to stave off disease, let alone treat it. I mean, do you understand the logistics of a death from cholera?”
She looked to him, face pinched with frustration, and he shook his head no.
“There’s no way for them to get ahead of the hygiene, and without that the cycle just keeps feeding on itself. We barely manage it at the hospital, and it’s very advanced for this time.” Beverly paused, rubbing the worried lines on her forehead with her free hand. It felt so rough against her face. “What ends up working is simple and already available right now – clean water, a pinch of salt, a spoonful of sugar – basic oral rehydration therapy would go a long way to treating many of the people who end up in my ward, but there would be no possible way for a nurse here to know any of that.”
“But you still couldn’t save them, Beverly. You can’t change their outcomes.”
“I’m not supposed to let people die. It goes against my oath, let alone everything that I believe in.”
Jean-Luc sighed in resignation. “You also have an oath to—”
“I know. And I’m not even saying that this poses an ethical dilemma. I am saying that it is crushing my soul just…” she sputtered, trying to articulate the futility of her position, “supervising this suffering.”
Jean-Luc sighed again, appreciating the devastating toll that Beverly’s assignment was inadvertently taking on her. “And to think that something as incidental as accepting a glass of water—”
“You didn’t drink the water, did you?” she asked in horror.
“No, of course not.”
“Jean-Luc, I could not have been more clear: only use the water—”
“—that we boil here,” he finished in unison with her.
“You never listen when I tell you—”
“No, no, Beverly.” He reached for her shoulders to reassure her, curling his fingers in when he realized that he’d smear her uniform with beeswax and whatever sort of emollient the apothecary cut it with. He awkwardly tapped her with his closed fists. “I promise that I listen during your water lectures. I know how hard you are trying to take care of us in very trying conditions. I have listened carefully to everything you’ve said about the precautions.”
“You can’t risk it, Jean-Luc. You have to bring it with you from here, even though it’s a hassle.”
The worry in her voice was alarming, going beyond their usual arguments about whether or not he took adequate care of himself. He held her by the shoulders, searching her face until he understood that there was more than just waterborne illness beneath it.
Beverly’s expression dissolved into a deeper sorrow. “I miss Wes so much,” she whispered.
Jean-Luc’s chest tightened at the pain in her voice, at a loss for words.
“I know that we’ll get back to our own time – I know we will – and when we do, he won’t even have experienced a separation. But I haven’t spoken to him in so long. I can’t check up on him.”
Impulsively, Jean-Luc wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into an uncomfortable sort of hug as the two of them leaned towards each other across their knees. Her face dropped against his neck as he ran his hand up and down her back.
“We’ve never been separated like this before,” she spoke into his shoulder with total resignation.
“I’m sorry, Beverly. Truly. This mission is taking a particular toll on you, and I wish that I could tell you when it would be over.”
She pulled back, suddenly self-conscious of the way that he was witnessing the extent of her weakness. He didn’t resist, letting his arms fall away from her. “Well, seeing you try and charm the landlady does have its moments of entertainment.”
He watched her transparent deflection critically. “We don’t have to make light of how hard this is,” he reassured her.
“No. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s easier to compartmentalize and move on with our work.”
“All right,” he acquiesced and began warming more of the salve between his palms. “Then maybe just close your eyes and try to image something other than contaminated water sources and whatever you call those curl things.” He reached for her other hand. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed closing her eyes and trying to soothe her heart while she let Jean-Luc take care of the rest of it.
Within a minute, Beverly’s awareness had collapsed down to the feel of his fingers stroking gently across her hands. There was warmth, and softness, and though her skin still stung where it had cracked, he was mindful of each nick and tear. He worked his thumbs into her palm, and her body began to thrum with feeling. She should resist the sensation, she scolded herself, but she could hardly even hear his breathing in front of her and it was far easier and more tempting to simply let her body respond to his touch without considering all the complications of the man attached to it.
Jean-Luc, for his part, was drawing the whole thing out for as long as he could. It seemed to be helping – her breathing had slowed and her shoulders had rounded forward – and it was far from unpleasant for him to do this one small act to try and comfort her. His thumbs circled over the heel of her hand, edging closer to her wrist.
The irritated pink color extended past the cuff of her sleeve, but this part of her dress was cut narrow and he didn’t see a way to easily draw the fabric back. He hesitated. It felt oddly intimate, to slip his thumb beneath the edge of her sleeve, even though it was only a wrist. It was only another few centimeters of skin, and they were just friends. The skin was raw and it was his responsibility to soothe it. He would tread lightly, he reasoned, and she may not even notice.
Jean-Luc slid one thumb up her pulse point, and Beverly made a gasp so soft that he would not have caught it without the silence in the room. Certain that he had not used too much pressure this time, he glanced up at her for a reaction. Her face was soft and slack, her lips just parted. If Jean-Luc didn’t know any better, or perhaps if he knew her far better, he might suspect. But it was impossible—her feelings for him did not run to the same depth that his did for her. This simple touch couldn’t undo her.
He moved his other thumb, disappearing under her sleeve until he could no longer see the nail. Watching her face carefully, he lowered it to her skin and grazed both of them together down her wrist. Beverly inhaled and her breath fractured. The sound of it struck a deep and primal note in Jean-Luc, and it twisted tighter as he watched her brow furrow in concentration.
His touch lingering, Beverly opened her eyes slowly and found herself looking straight into the eyes of her best friend. He watched her openly, unselfconsciously, just as he continued to cradle her hand in both of his. There was a brief moment when Beverly thought that he might not realize, but she watched his pupils dilate, and then his look was only heat and want.
Beverly let out the breath that she’d been holding, and it betrayed her with its unsteadiness. Her cheeks flushed warm despite the cold seeping up her stockinged feet from the floorboards. She’d been too vulnerable, she realized—they were always careful not to let this thing come too close to the surface. She opened her mouth to say something to break the spell, but before any words came together, Jean-Luc’s hold on her wrist tightened just enough to give himself away too.
And then, hardly at all, just enough to register the pressure of it, Jean-Luc pulled her towards him.
All rational thought abandoned her, and Beverly found herself scrambling to work out the logistics. There were layers and layers of clothing between them – hers especially – and she wasn’t foolish enough to think that a little light necking on the settee would satisfy either of them. There was literal whalebone between Jean-Luc’s touch and her skin, for gods’ sake.
But perhaps they could bypass that, she thought. Preposterous circumstances called for bold measures. He could work up from the bottom, everything was basically open to the elements after all, despite the illusion of modesty from all those petticoats. He could trace the way up her calf, his path unseen beneath her skirts until he crested her knee, found the little tie on her garter, and pulled it free. His fingertips would inevitably find the spot just above her knee, even as he methodically rolled the scratchy wool stocking—
“Jean-Luc.” His name came out in a rush and far too breathy for two friends sharing a quiet moment. “What are we doing?” She meant the question as a caution, as a plea, not to let them descend into something foolish; to save her from her own weakness.
Jean-Luc took a deep breath, and Beverly watched him fold every degree of heat back into himself. His regard was suddenly only soft, only earnest, nothing more. He set her hand down – gently – and turned to replace the lid on the tin. “I apologize, Beverly. I don’t know what came over me.”
He looked so chastened in the next moment that she actually believed him. “There’s nothing to apologize for. We both know there’s a mutual attraction, for a long time. We just lost track of it for a minute or two.”
“Even so.” He went so far as to scoot his chair back so that their knees no longer brushed against each other. “You were vulnerable, and I should have been more careful.”
Beverly felt her cheeks go hot. If only he knew just how vulnerable her mind had gone. He was being too honorable, she thought to herself. He should just be a little embarrassed at the two of them, maybe even tease her for getting so carried away. But he didn’t seem to see that. He didn’t seem to realize just how much of an effect he had on her.
She wanted to pry more, to understand what lay beneath his attraction for her, but a look of utter relief washed over his face when footsteps and indistinct, overlapping voices in the hallway announced the return of the rest of their party. Without thinking, Beverly scooted to the side of the settee so that they were no long positioned directly in front on each other. Jean-Luc was just replacing his chair against the wall when all three of the new arrivals crowded into the parlor.
There was news, they hoped, possibly a lead on where to find Data. Jean-Luc’s attention was divided between not looking at Beverly and trying to catch up with the confusing details of a thirdhand story from the other side of the city about an albino with uncommon strength.
Deanna took a step back, leaning against the wall, as she made a careful survey on the room. Her eyes lingered on the Captain, a quizzical look on her face. When she moved on, she finally met Beverly’s eyes. She did her best to keep her mind neutral – tired perhaps, but nothing more. Deanna’s eyes fell to Beverly’s hands, then to the tin of salve, forgotten on the cushion next to her. She looked back to Beverly and watched the faint pink bloom over her cheeks.
Her face carefully turned away from their fellow officers, Deanna nodded once at Beverly and smirked.