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She sat calmly at the table as she sipped her tea over a light breakfast of croissants. She watched as Picard squirmed, clearly uncomfortable. Good. It was about time he was uncomfortable.
“So… have you found the accommodations suitable?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Vash replied with a smile. “I wasn’t in my room last night.”
He choked, turning a fascinating shade of red as he desperately tried to clear his throat. “You, uh, what?”
“I was at Ten Forward and…” She trailed off pointedly and Picard felt a blush rise in his cheeks. He was jealous but he truly had no right to her affections any more than the next man. Which, of course, simply added fuel to the fire, so to speak.
Still, there was something incredibly awkward about sharing a meal with a woman you had an almost-relationship with. Especially when said woman was smirking at you over her teacup as if she had every answer in the known universe. “Well, I hope my crew was hospitable.” He barely repressed a cringe at his own choice of words--could he not think of anything better to say?
Her blue eyes sparkled with mischief. “Are you jealous, Jean-Luc?”
He set his teacup gently onto its saucer, allowing it to clink softly before he replied. “You are a grown woman. What you do with your life is your choice.” Damnit, he was jealous! But he wasn’t about to allow her the satisfaction of knowing she had won. He resisted the urge to straighten his uniform and took a bite of croissant to stop himself from saying anything else.
Vash’s lips curled in a small, pleased smile. “Aren’t you curious?” she asked as she leaned forward to rest her chin on her hand.
“It’s none of my business,” he replied honestly and automatically. He had no right to ask her and she had no obligation to tell him.
“She said you wouldn’t,” she said, looking very much like the cat who had snatched the canary out of the cage amid a throng of people and devoured it long before anyone noticed. He could nearly swear that he saw a few yellow feathers stuck on her clothing.
“She did, did she?” he asked, aiming for nonchalance and falling somewhere closer to barely restrained curiosity.
“Mm.” The vague hum echoed through the quiet room, a teasing note in the symphony of conversation that he tried desperately to ignore. But he would not, to extend the metaphor, interrupt the fermata of silence that stretched between them.
She sipped her tea again in smug silence. He followed suit, firmly ignoring the curiosity that burned within him like an untamed, roaring flame that greedily consumed an entire forest. He inhaled deeply, resolute and determined not to give in to the--
What was that?
He froze, tea halfway to his lips. He knew that scent. He knew that scent almost… intimately. He looked up at Vash, eyes wide with utter disbelief. She settled back in her chair, pleased and victorious. She knew she had won this game as Picard broke the silence, beginning the next movement in their symphonic discussion.
“Ah,” he said and it resonated the same way Vash’s hum had, a new key setting the tone for their conversation.
“She’s very lovely,” Vash observed. Clever, smug Vash.
“Beverly is a good friend of mine,” he said, not quite agreeing but refusing to add dissonance by contradicting her.
“And she is, isn’t she? Just a friend?”
He was being baited. He knew that, she knew that, and he could resist no more than he could resist resolving a chord. “Yes.” His voice was strained and terse and it sounded jarring next to her effortless, musical tones.
“You have excellent taste in friends.” Another taunt, another trap. But, damnit, he was only Human!
There was an instinctive urge to defend Beverly, to guard her from the possible pain Vash would bring her. But, did he have the right? They were adults with their own lives, their own feelings… “I do,” he agreed. “Beverly is a fascinating woman.”
Vash’s smile softened slightly, the teasing edges dulling to genuine affection. “She is.” She took another oh-so-casual sip of tea, batting her eyelashes at him as she set her cup back down. “Now, tell me why, exactly, you let her go.”
He blinked, the instruction resonating in his mind like a plucked string. Why did he let her go? “You see,” Vash continued with a catlike smile, “I think you’re afraid, Jean-Luc. I don’t blame you--your doctor is a force of nature when she sets her mind to something. I must admit, I’m rather fond of her.” Another smile, dealt like cards in a deck to a desperate player with a losing hand.
“She is an impressive woman.”
Vash studied his face for a long moment, searching for something he couldn’t articulate. “You know she loves you.” It wasn’t a question and he felt his breath leave his body with the force of a bellows. “And you love her.” Another statement, punctuated by a tilt of her head, an artist studying a subject before laying the first brush to canvas. “Clearly we should remedy this.”
“Now Vash,” he began, a firm, parental tone paired with a matching furrowed brow.
“I don’t mind sharing.”
“Sharing--!” He choked on the word, startled, and felt the figurative tap of an epee against his chest. Point to Vash.
“Mmm,” another pleased hum from the victor, pride tilting her chin upward a fraction of an inch.