This story is my response to all the debate about the impossibility
of Q and Janeway ever ending up in bed together.  I happen to
believe that this scenario is quite, quite possible -- it just
requires a little work (and a really good idea borrowed from
Alara).

This story contains depictions of sex, and Q behaving romantically. 
If either of these offend you, or if you're too young for either of
these concepts, please do not read this story.

This story is available by FTP at ftp.europa.com, in the directory
/outgoing/mercutio/asfs, or via the WWW at
http://www.europa.com/~mercutio/Q.html.


Be Q-ful What You Ask For by Mercutio (mercutio@europa.com)


"What *is* that thing?" Janeway asked, staring at the viewscreen in
horrified fascination.  The amorphous white and purple blob was
slowly reeling in their ship, presumably for a midnight snack.

"I don't know, Captain," Kim said.  "The readings we're getting
don't match anything in our files."

"Janeway to Torres.  Can you get us out of here?"

"We're trying," Torres' voice said from Engineering.  "But it's
draining our power and pulling us in faster than we can do anything
about it."

"Estimates?"

"Three hours before we're inside that... entity."

Janeway stared helplessly at the viewscreen.  They couldn't break
away from it, and whatever it was didn't respond to communications.

It was seemingly unstoppable.  She and her crew were doomed.

In a flash of light, a tall, dark-haired man appeared on board,
standing posed in front of the viewscreen as though it were nothing
more than a colorful backdrop for his entrance, rather than the
instrument of Voyager's destruction.

"Q," Janeway said, the word hissing out of her.  "I should have
known you had something to do with this."

"Something to do with what?" Q asked, then looked up and behind
him.  "Oh, that.  I had nothing to do with that."  He waved at the
screen.  "Nice to see you again."

"You *know* that thing?"

"Oh, when you've been around long enough, you know most of the
universe's various oddities.  Sammy's been around a *very* long
time."

"*Sammy*??"

"Enough about him.  Let's talk about us."  Q reached out for
Janeway's hand, and bent over it, brushing a kiss over it.  "I
can't be parted from you any longer, ma cherie.  I've come to pay
court to you."

She jerked her hand out of his grasp.  "Don't play games with me."

"Games?  I'm wounded to the core."  Q didn't look particularly
hurt.  "I'm quite serious.  Would you like to hear a song?"  He
snapped his fingers, and a guitar appeared in his hands.

Janeway knew this was a mistake, knew that showing temper to the
one being who could get them out of there was hardly a bright idea,
but she was being embarrassed in front of her entire crew and she
couldn't help herself.  "Q, *stop* it."

He sniffed.  "What?  You prefer *him*," pointing to Chakotay, "over
me?  I'm insulted at your lack of taste.  But never fear, darling. 
I'll win you over yet."

And then, with no more warning than that, he was gone, leaving
behind a red rose in Janeway's hand.

She stared at it for a moment in shock, then dropped it as though
it were on fire.

****

Fifteen minutes later, they were in conference.  Janeway was seated
at the head of the table, Chakotay, Paris, Torres, Kim and Tuvok
attending, trying to work out a plan of action for dealing with the
menace that was threatening their ship.

"We cannot ignore Q's role in this," Tuvok stated in measured
tones.  "Despite his denial of responsibility, he could remove us
from this situation."

Janeway shook her head minutely.  "And the last time he was here,
he..." she took a deep breath.  She hadn't told anyone else this
yet.  "He offered me our return to Earth if I would reject the
other Q's request for asylum."

There was a brief moment of silence around the table, as each of
them tried to grasp that, and what their captain's fair ruling had
cost them.

"I believe," Janeway said heavily, "that we can't count on Q for
any help in this situation."

"Oh, you could," Q said.

All eyes turned to the end of the table where Q sat in a chair,
feet up on the table.  As soon as they saw him, he sprung up,
stalking around the table to Janeway.  "If you cared about me, I
might be persuaded to grant your little request."

Janeway tried very hard to hold onto her temper this time.  She
hated this sense of being toyed with.  "Q, you aren't in love with
me.  This is all some sort of act.  *Why*, I have no idea."

"Well, I did have a thing for Picard for a while," Q said
mockingly, "but that's all over now.  The hair thing, you know. 
And I suppose you could count Vash.  But you can hardly hold *her*
against me."

Janeway didn't want to know.  She really didn't want to know.

"But I've changed now!" Q exclaimed dramatically.  "This time I'm
really in love."  He snapped his fingers and a rolled up scroll
appeared in them.  "Listen to this.  I wrote it myself.  With a
little help, of course."

Before anyone could say anything, he was reading.  "She walks in
starlight, like the moon, inconstant harbinger of the night.  The
stars themselves are gone less soon than my love, and yet my heart
takes flight, following the wanderer lost in a place beyond her
ken.  And despite what heartache it may cost in ephemerality, I'll
count that then."

Janeway glanced down the table and saw Paris covering his hand with
his mouth, trying not to snicker, and felt like putting her head
down on the table and crying.  Or perhaps hiding in her quarters
until they all *did* get eaten by that creature out there.  Either
one.

Q looked up at the barely concealed mirth.  "What?  Should it have
been 'gladdens at the sight' instead?  I *knew* that sounded
better."

"Q," Janeway began, trying to hold onto what was left of her
composure.  "We're in a very dangerous this situation.  Even if I
believed for a moment that you could possibly be serious, this is
*not* the time or the place for these antics."

"Or for really bad poetry," Paris said under his breath.

Q stared poisonously at Paris.  "*Bad*?"  He snapped his fingers,
and a toad was sitting in Paris' seat.  "Perhaps you could croak
out something better?"

"Q, put him back," Janeway said.

He looked sulkily at her.  "Oh, very well.  But only as a token of
my affection for you, my sweet."

Q snapped his fingers again.  The toad disappeared, and Q as well. 
Paris stared at his hands, looking visibly shaken.  "Why is it
always amphibians?  Why can't I ever turn into something that
*doesn't* like eating insects?"

But no one was paying attention to him.  On the table in front of
Janeway was a huge arrangement of two dozen long stemmed red roses,
and a card.

With a fatalistic sense that she should probably not even bother
reading the card, she pulled it out of its envelope and looked at
the wording on it.  "All my love, Q."

Janeway shut her eyes for a moment.  Without reopening them, she
said, between her teeth, "Get these flowers out of here."

****

The meeting was a shambles after that, and it was only token to the
professionalism of all her people, including the former Maquis,
that any progress was made at all.  Janeway was sure she still saw
laughter behind some of their eyes, and pretended that she wasn't
still blushing.  If you didn't notice anything wrong, they wouldn't
notice anything was wrong.  Or so they had told her at the Academy.

Janeway nodded.  "All right.  We'll try the reverse phase beam
first, then move on from there.  The antimatter charge is our last
resort.  Let's hope we don't have to use it."

She stood up and everyone followed her lead.

On her chair on the bridge lay a heart shaped box of chocolates and
a single rose across it.  Janeway stared at it, then firmed her
chin.  "Someone get rid of this."

As soon as her chair was clear, she sat.  Kim looked up from his
board.  "We're ready, Captain."

"All right," Janeway said, her attention fully on the viewscreen,
having already put the annoyance Q was causing out of her mind. 
"Let's see what happens.  Mr. Paris?"

Paris nodded.  A beam shot out from the Voyager, and crisscrossed
to the being.

Janeway felt something tickling her ear.  Impatiently, she batted
at the loose strand of hair, and encountered instead something that
felt softer and solider all at once.

"That tickles, doesn't it?" Q asked in a lazy voice, brushing the
rose down across her cheek now.  "About as much as your little toy
is tickling poor Sammy out there.  He's desperately confused by
you, you know.  You aren't behaving at all like he expected you
to."

She half-turned in her seat.  "Q, what do you mean...?"

But he was gone, only the rose, falling to her lap, remaining
behind.

Janeway resisted the urge to crush the flower, and addressed Paris. 
"Turn it off, Mr. Paris.  Janeway to Torres."

"Torres here."

"Prepare the antimatter charge."

"Yes, captain."

Janeway stood up and stalked out.  She needed some time to compose
herself.  She couldn't take this relentless pursuit by Q anymore. 
The last time he'd shown up, he'd made her a ridiculous offer when
had suggested that he wanted her in some absurd romantic fantasy,
but she had told him "Leave" then.

The good thing was that he had actually done that then.

Now he appeared to want to stay.  She didn't believe for a moment
that he actually wanted her.  There was nothing something like him
could want from her, and she suspected that he was actually
deriving great enjoyment out of publicly humiliating her.

If this was what Q had meant by becoming a dissident, she wanted no
part of it.

She reached her quarters and went inside.  As soon as she was in
the door, she was assaulted by a wave of fragrance.  Every surface
in the room was covered by flowers, all perfect red roses, veined
with gold.

"They're Janeway roses, you know," a familiar voice said from the
bed.

Janeway waded over to the bed.  Q lay there, half-covered by
flowers.  When she caught his eye, he smiled, a slow, mocking grin. 
"A kind of rose cultivated just for you.  Long stemmed, red on
top... but with a twist."

"Q..."

"Oh, my sweet.  If you keep that up, you'll make me think you don't
like me."

"I don't," Janeway said, standing there, staring at him.  "You
haven't given me any reason to."

Q swept an arm over the forest of flowers.  "Isn't this good
enough?  I'm courting you.  Rather extravagantly, I might add. 
Hand grown flowers, personally written poetry...  What else could
I do to proclaim my affection?"

She held up a hand.  "I don't want to find out."

He played with a rose, twirling the stem between his fingers. 
"It's not considered wise to turn down the affections of a god. 
Look at what happened to Leda."

Tuvok had told her that the other Q had informed him that the Q
were not actually omnipotent.  However, that didn't seem to stop Q
from describing himself as such.  "I'll remember to avoid large
waterfowl, then.  Now get out of my quarters."

"Oh, very well."

He disappeared in a flash of light.  Unfortunately, the flowers
didn't disappear with him.  Janeway sighed.  "Janeway to Kes."

"This is Kes."

"Do you have any need for a large quantity of roses?"

****

The scent lingered in the air even after the roses had been removed
from her quarters.  Janeway ignored that, poring through the data
that had been sent to her.  There had to be a way out of the fix
they were in, some way to solve this.

Q's presence was actually a sign that there *should* be a way,
given what she had read about his previous encounters with
Starfleet.  He seemed to enjoy showing up and goading captains into
finding solutions to impossible problems.  So there was most likely
a solution to this problem, if only she could find it.

Of course, that ignored the incident with the Borg, where Q had
deliberately caused the Enterprise to be thrown into their path,
and where Captain Picard had been helpless to do anything to save
his ship.

Janeway tried not to think about that.  If there were any way
possible to get Voyager out of this mess, she was going to find it.

****

Two hours later, she was sitting in her seat on the bridge, trying
to find a way to overlook that confidence.  Voyager was on the
brink of being swallowed by the amorphous creature they had
encounter.  Nothing had worked to save them.  Not the reverse phase
beam, not the antimatter charge, not the hastily jury rigged
cloaking device which had been intended to fool the creature into
believing that they had left, and had malfunctioned, fortunately
without destroying anything.

They were out of options.

Q was lounging across the foot of the viewscreen where he'd been
for the past half hour, quite at his ease, seemingly basking in all
eyes being directed at him.

Of course, they were mostly directed at the disaster occurring on
the viewscreen, but Q didn't seem to care.  He had already been
annoying enough for any one lifetime.  Janeway had seen people's
glances directed at her as she had made her way back to the bridge. 
Apparently, everyone who wanted some had roses now, courtesy of
Kes.  Which also meant that everyone knew about his pursuit of her.

"I *could* help you with this," Q said idly, the first thing he'd
said in several minutes, drawling his tone.  "*If* you gave me a
reason to *care* about you."

Janeway stared at him.  They were going to die if something wasn't
done.  She didn't have any choice.  As much as it hurt her, she had
to say it.  "Fine.  I accept."

Q didn't move, and Janeway looked at him.  "Well?"

"What did you say?"

"I said -- I accept," Janeway said firmly, keeping her voice under
control.  She felt a flush moving over her.  This was deeply
embarrassing.  "That's what you've wanted all along, isn't it?"

"Of course it is," Q said.

"Good."

"Captain, you can't..." Chakotay said.

Janeway's eyes didn't leave Q's.  "I can and I will.  If it saves
us from that thing, it's worth it.  Whatever Q has in mind."

Q seemed nonplussed.  "I didn't actually expect you to say 'yes'. 
*Picard* would never have been beaten this easily.  Aren't you even
going to *try* to solve this on your own?"

Janeway didn't like the implication that there was something she
could have done to solve the predicament that they were in, but she
certainly didn't believe she had any other choice.  Maybe there
*was* a solution, but she didn't see it.  "Are you going to keep
your bargain or not."

"Oh, very well."  Q snapped his fingers, and the white and purple
creature on the viewscreen vanished."

"Captain," Kim said, "we're approximately two light years from our
previous position.  I don't have the creature anywhere within the
area our sensors can pick up."

"Thank you, Mr. Kim."

"I still can't believe you took me up on it," Q said archly,
interrupting the flow of ship's business.  "Can it be that you
really do have some suppressed desire for me?"

Janeway felt her ears burning.  "Could we discuss this somewhere
else?"

Without any transition, they were in her quarters.  Q was lying on
the bed, and Janeway was seated on the couch.  She turned to look
at him, and noted that, for once, there were no roses anywhere in
evidence.

"Now what?" Janeway asked calmly.

Q sat up, moving as though he were annoyed by something.  "Now you
fall in love with me and we live happily ever after, blah blah,
blah, blah."

"No running through meadows?" Janeway asked straight-faced.

"Hah hah.  How funny," Q said mockingly.  "I'm dying over here."

"I noticed," Janeway said.  They sat there in silence for a moment
before she said, "How long do you want to pretend that you actually
wanted me to take you up on your offer?"

"Pretend all you like.  I don't care."

"I don't believe that you ever meant anything you said.  In fact,"
Janeway said, a devilish impulse prompting her, "I'd say you're a
little frightened now that I actually said 'yes'."

"I'm hardly a trembling virgin," Q snapped.

"You certainly seem to be acting like one," Janeway muttered under
her breath.

Q's eyes narrowed.

Then the world disappeared again, as it has when he had brought her
here from the bridge, only this time it didn't come back.  She
could see nothing, hear nothing.  All she could do was *feel* what
was happening to her.

She was naked; she could feel air moving over her body.  Whatever
she was lying on was firm, but not abrasive.

Hard hands gripped her wrists, pinning her to the surface she was
lying on.  A warm feeling of pleasure drifted over her body, like
a ray of sun being trained on her, and then just as she started to
enjoy it, the sensation turned to a tickle.

She started squirming, then writhing to try to escape the horrible,
unbearable, sensuous touch, but something held her pinned at her
arms and her legs now, and she was forced to endure it, biting her
lip, and giving in.

As soon as she gave up struggling, and gave into the torturing
sensations, they changed, until a warm tongue was lapping her all
over, and she was trying to move again, only this time to get more
of that maddening touch.

But she couldn't get more, anymore than she had been able to escape
being tickled.

Hands thrust into her hair, undoing her bun, and she felt the silky
tendrils drifting around her face.

And then her thighs were being spread, and she felt weight coming
down over her, and she wanted to cry.  It had been a very long time
since she had felt anything like this.  Despite the temptations
offered to her by the holodeck, she had never done anything, had
never wanted to dream up an imaginary companion to replace Mark. 
And there was always something dreadfully solitary about other
pleasures.

Not like this heat suffusing her, this desire for another person,
another...

Her mind shied away from thinking about *who* this was, and what
was happening to her.  Far better to just feel than to spoil this
stolen moment with guilt.

She felt a sharp stab of longing as she was penetrated, raising her
hips as much as she could to meet him, feeling the desire building
in her.  She wanted this, didn't want to have to think about it,
just be consumed by the way she felt, and the way *he* felt, moving
with her.

Teeth nibbled at her neck and moved down to her breasts, taking
little bites of her.  It might have been painful if she wasn't
aroused, but as it was, it only made her unbearably frustrated that
she was restrained, made her want to dig her fingers into her
partner's back, to urge him to do more, harder.

He seemed to sense her wishes, and as the feeling intensified, she
threw her head back, thrashing uncontrollably, trying to hold onto
the edge of orgasm as long as she could, to draw the sweet agony
out a little long.

But it was no use.  He was merciless, and she felt it, felt the
both of them orgasming together in a rush of pleasure that left her
nearly insensate.

****

When she came back to herself, she was lying in her bed,
unrestrained, dressed in her nightgown, and entirely alone.

She looked around for Q, but he was nowhere in evidence.  Perhaps
that was all for the best.  She didn't know what to say to him or
whether thanks or an apology or something else would be most
appropriate.

Then she saw them.

There was a bouquet of a dozen fresh-cut roses that hadn't been
there before, standing in a vase on the table.  Janeway got out of
bed and walked over to them, looking at them, her fingertips
brushing a red and gold petal.

She stood there for a long moment, then moved away.  She didn't say
anything, but left the flowers standing there and went to get
dressed.


-the end-