Title: Only Human Part IV
Author: Alara Rogers
Series: TNG
Rating: NC-17
Codes: Q/f, AU
Part: 2/12+1
Summary: Q and T'Laren are taken captive aboard their own ship by the Ferengi.

By the time the Ferengi arrived with food, Q was dressed in one of his more imposing outfits, a black suede shirt and pants with a royal purple silk overcloak, and full makeup.  T'Laren couldn't quite see the point-- the Ferengi had walked in on him in nothing but a violet velour bathrobe, and probably had monitors in the room anyway, so they had certainly seen him out of his full sartorial armor, and T'Laren herself had seen him in pajamas in a hospital bed-- but it seemed to make Q feel better.  

The food proved to be a pitcher of milk and an omelette with bacon and cheese.  This almost had to be deliberate.  T'Laren took a glass of milk and watched as Q busily tucked into the omelette.  At least he wasn't whining about the quality of the food.

He had eaten about a quarter of the available food before he looked up.  "Aren't you eating?"

"Eggs and bacon are meat products," T'Laren said.  "I can eat animal products that were originally derived with no death-- dairy, primarily-- but eggs and bacon are derived from the death of living things.  I cannot eat such things."

Q rolled his eyes.  "T'Laren, they're *replicated.*  Nothing died to make this omelette, I assure you."

"I am aware of this.  It doesn't matter.  I cannot eat any of this."

"Look, eggs and bacon are hardly *my* favorite food, either.  But we need to keep our strength up.  Where's that relentless Vulcan practicality?"

"Strongly desiring to not become nauseous.  I have not eaten meat in many years.  Most replicators designed for humanoids produce partially pre-digested milk that humanoids can drink without gastric distress, but they don't do the same with meat products.  I no longer have the ability to digest meat without becoming ill."  And she had failed, or was barely managing to struggle by, on so many other aspects of being a proper Vulcan, but following the dietary restrictions was something she could do.  

"Damn."  He put his fork down.  "They planned this, didn't they?  They knew Vulcans can't eat meat products, and they didn't want to risk *me*, so they deliberately gave us something I can eat and you can't.  I'm going to have to have words with them."  He started to stand.  She caught his arm.

"No.  It's all right, I can fast for days without losing my strength.  I don't want you pushing another confrontation with the Ferengi."

"T'Laren, this is a deliberate insult.  Do you really expect me not to respond?  I told you, I'd make sure nothing bad happened to you, and I'd say starving qualifies as 'bad.'"

"No.  I would really rather you didn't antagonize them any further than you have.  Sooner or later they must feed us vegetable matter, for the sake of *your* health if nothing else.  I can wait a day or so with no ill effect at all.  Vulcans are desert dwellers; we evolved to go without food for days if needed."

Q took a deep breath.  "I suppose you're right.  As long as it's not mushrooms.  I *hate* mushrooms.  Nasty little fungal lifeforms.  Anything that began its existence in a pile of fecal matter isn't passing my lips, even if it *is* a replicated copy."

"You do realize that if they're monitoring us, that's the first thing they'll do?"

"Oh, wonderful, T'Laren.  Thanks for giving them the great idea, if they haven't thought of it already."

"Perhaps you should have thought of that before mentioning how much you disliked them."

"Well, maybe they're not listening."  Q took a mouthful of omelette.  "I hope not, because I absolutely despise mushrooms."

Something about the absurd willfulness with which he kept repeating it, even more single-mindedly than Q usually lambasted the things he didn't like, triggered a realization in her.  Her eyes widened slightly.  Of course.  Q was checking to see if they really were listening.  If mushrooms turned up in his food, they would know they were definitely being monitored, and if they didn't, then they would know that either they were not being monitored or that the Ferengi had decided to stop playing the humiliation game with them.  "You dislike so many things, it's a wonder you find anything to eat," she said.  "Who would have thought a human would dislike chocolate?"

"Hey, *you're* the Vulcan who hates fruit!"  His tone was quite put-upon, but there was a sparkle to his eyes, pleasure that she'd caught onto his game.  The trickster was in his element, it seemed.  *Please don't throw me in the briar patch!*  

She got up and busied herself picking up the clothes Q had left casually tossed on the floor-- she didn't want to make a habit of picking up after him, but he was eating, and she didn't want to pay too much attention to what he was eating.  Despite the fact that she knew intellectually meat products would make her sick after so long not eating them, and despite the fact that she was wholly committed to maintaining Vulcan discipline about her diet, the truth was that, raised on Earth by humans, she had been trained at an early age to like things like eggs and bacon.  The smell would have nauseated a proper Vulcan; it was just making her hungry, and with no prospect for food anytime soon, she had to shut it out and maintain discipline to control the hunger.  Something to do was helpful.  And it was an outrageous mess.  Q would pick it up himself sooner or later, but she'd really prefer sooner.

After he was done, he said, "So."

"So?"

"So.  What do we do to keep from staggering boredom?"

"You have books here, don't you?"

"I've read 'em."

"Read them again."

"I can't read books again."  Q shook his head.  "I remember how it's going to turn out.  Completely ruins it for me."

"I haven't another suggestion then.  Unless you have some sort of gameset in amidst your things?"

"Hmm."  Q considered.  "I have cards, but I don't know any games.  I do also have a traditional chess set."

"Not three dimensional chess?"

"Chess was a game with hundreds of years of human history.  Three dimensional chess has only been around for about 150 years.  Hardly an antique."

"Excellent.  Let's find it."

"You sound enthusiastic."

"I have lost every game of three dimensional chess I've ever tried to play.  But I'm quite good at traditional chess.  Prepare to be trounced."

Q grinned ferally at her.  "No one trounces me at a game of intellect, my dear.  Let's see how good you really are."

&&&

As it happened, she did trounce him, the first three times they played.  Although Q would have declared "trounce" to be entirely too strong a term.  She *defeated* him, but he certainly wouldn't have called it a trounce.  The fourth time-- he insisted on there being a fourth time-- he beat her, having figured out her trick.  She was simply more patient than he was.  She sat lingering over her board for far, far longer than he could stand to do, assessing every possible move, before she made it.  All that Vulcan discipline had to be good for something, he supposed, and discipline of any sort was hardly what he was best at.  

But he could learn to do anything he put his mind to.

There was no fifth game.  Q complained of this, loudly proclaiming that T'Laren was a sore loser.  T'Laren pointed out that they had been playing chess for close to six hours, and if she was a sore loser, the sore referred to the state of unused muscles and overused eyes, not an emotional state.  By this time, it was very, very late-- they'd been taken captive in the early evening, and it was long past either of their bedtimes, but neither of them quite wanted to face sleep.  At least, Q didn't.  He didn't know what T'Laren's opinion on the matter was, but she'd given in to his demands for more games three times, so he had to assume she really didn't want to sleep either.

"It is late," she said, unnecessarily.  "Q, we should retire."

"If you insist," he said grumpily.  "I personally am simply jumping with glee at the notion of attempting to sleep under *these* conditions."

"I do not enjoy our captivity any more than you do.  But we have no choice.  We need to maintain our alertness and be ready for any change in our situation."

In other words, *be ready in case we have an opportunity to stage a jailbreak.*  Q hadn't had any idea what she was doing when she had actually offered one of the disgusting creatures sexual favors, but as soon as the Ferengi had accused her of plotting a jailbreak, he knew.  The fact that T'Laren had defended herself against the accusation by claiming that Vulcans didn't lie-- itself an outrageous lie, particularly when applied to T'Laren-- had clinched it.  And that had reminded him that she was a Starfleet officer with spy training.  A counselor, yes, but probably a hell of a lot more accustomed to jailbreaks and derring-do than Troi or Medellin.  Knowing that made him feel a lot better.  Though he wouldn't have admitted it to T'Laren, he was worried about his plan-- tormenting the Ferengi *could* lead them to decide to get rid of him as fast as possible, but it could just as well backfire, and the only weapon he had was the bluff that he could kill himself.  

Of course, if he could get his hands on something he could use as a weapon, he didn't have to bluff.  And it might come to that.  He would *not* be sold into slavery.  As bad as things had been on Starbase 56, he had been a Federation citizen and had nominally had rights.  He wouldn't allow himself to end up somewhere where he had fewer protections than that.  And then there was T'Laren.  He'd gotten her into this... he had an obligation to get her out.  An overwhelming responsibility, for a man who'd only begun to grasp the finer points of self-defense, who'd never in his life needed to know how to protect others, except through argument.  It was very reassuring that T'Laren actually knew what she was doing, should it come to a jailbreak.  It would also be helpful that he'd crawled all over the inner conduits of *Ketaya*, trying to learn everything he could about the ship, since they had no engineer and would have to rely on him if anything broke.  

T'Laren laid herself on the couch, straight.  No blankets, her head on the headrest with no pillow cushioning it.  "Don't you want bedsheets or something?"

"I will be meditating, not sleeping.  Vulcans do not require sleep; we require only a peaceful meditation period.  And I do not believe there are any bedsheets in any case."

"Sure there are.  You think I'd trust my skin to replicated junk?  I have several spares."

"No wonder your luggage was so heavy."

"Do you want one?"

"No, that won't be necessary.  Go to bed, Q."

He grabbed some pajamas, and headed back toward the inner room.  Something about the arrangement was bothering him.  Certainly he preferred not having T'Laren in his bedroom, and he had to admit that, although the Ferengi could easily walk through any of the doors, since he couldn't lock them, he liked the idea that if he had to be vulnerable in sleep, it could at least be in the inner room where they'd have to get through two sets of doors if they wanted to harass him.  And yet there was something nagging, something unpleasant.  A vulnerability, a feeling that there was more exposure than there should be.  But how could there be?  He was sleeping in pajamas-- nice ones, royal blue silk, with black satin cuffs and high collar and matching black satin slippers-- and the doors would all be shut.  What vulnerability could there possibly be, that he could actually overcome?

T'Laren, he realized.  In the outer room, drawn into her meditations, lying on the couch right near the door.  Only his bluff to kill himself would keep them off of her, and if they could pull her out in the middle of the night without waking him, they could do as they wished with her, and she wouldn't have even the protection of his bluff.

He marched back out to the room.  "T'Laren, wake up.  You're sleeping in my room."

She opened her eyes.  "I am not asleep.  And of course I am sleeping in your room.  This entire suite is your room."

"That's not what I meant.  I mean, I want you sleeping in the inner room."

"There is only one bed in there."

"So you can sleep on the floor.  I can put some blankets down and it'll be just as comfortable as that couch you were using."

"Q."  She blinked at him.  "Exactly why do you think this is necessary?  You and I have always slept in separate rooms."

"We haven't been prisoners before," he said tightly.  "Just do what I say, okay?"

"I see," she said, and her manner softened.  She stood up.  "You need not be afraid of an attack in the night, if that's what you fear.  I will guard you."

He goggled for a moment at her.  She thought he wanted her to protect *him?*  From what?  He'd probably have nightmares, but it wasn't as if she could protect him from that.  It was on the tip of his tongue to deny it-- he couldn't have the Ferengi thinking him such a complete coward, if they were listening.

And then he realized that if they *were* listening, and they hadn't yet realized they could separate him from T'Laren while he slept and molest her then, he had better not give them any ideas.

"I'll be perfectly fine," he said acerbically.  "I just think it'd be better if... you were close by."  He let his body language lie to her, let a faint tremor run through his body while he kept his face a sarcastic mask.  She'd jump to the conclusion that she was right, that she was needed to protect *him.*  It wasn't the first time in his existence he'd adopted a humiliating pose to get what he wanted, but it bothered him.  She thought he was a coward, to jump at shadows.  *He* was in no danger in this place, until they sold him.  *She* was.  But she was so used to being the strong one, the protector, it probably hurt her badly to realize that here, she was vulnerable.  Just as it had hurt him to become vulnerable, the first time.  But she at least had the advantage of being able to lie to herself about it.

He hated being thought a coward when, for once, he was doing something heroic.  After all, he didn't *want* T'Laren in his bedroom.  It was his private place, and the thought of being vulnerable there with anyone bothered him.  But if he pointed out to her that he was being the hero this time, it would hurt and endanger her, which missed the whole point.  So he said nothing else.

They took one of the blankets-- the air was chilly; the Ferengi seemed to have reset it for a lower temperature, with greater humidity-- and folded it on the floor for T'Laren to lie on, and in, like sandwich meat.  Q dumped another one of the blankets on his bed and climbed into it, pulling the covers around himself to make a pseudo-cocoon, with only his head sticking out.

"Good night, Q," T'Laren said softly.  "Sleep well."

"Good night, T'Laren," he replied, staring at the wall, knowing he would not be able to sleep at all.   

&&&

It was a horrible night.  He could not lose consciousness of the fact that T'Laren was in his room.  Despite the fact that it had been his choice, despite the fact that she was virtually silent, simply the tiny sound of her breathing grated on him, reminding him that he was, for the first time in his human life, sharing his bedroom, and why.  He had been held under house arrest before, he'd been thrown in a brig when he'd been human for all of ten minutes, but he'd never actually been held captive by people who'd taken him against his will.  At least they didn't want him dead, unlike the rest of the people who'd come after him in his life, but the prospect of being sold to the highest bidder didn't appeal-- despite his knowledge of his own value, there was that terrifying, nagging idea that the Federation might *not* be the highest bidder, might not be willing to be.  He might end up in the hands of the Cardassians or the Romulans or the Zellurians.  He might be sold to one of the enemies who wanted to slowly torture him to death.  In light of these possibilities, he didn't see how he could possibly be expected to sleep.  He couldn't get comfortable, either, but if he tossed and turned, the Ferengi monitoring him-- if they were monitoring, but he had to assume they were-- would know he was suffering.  And he couldn't allow that.  

When the chronometer displayed 0700 hours and the room's automatic lights started to brighten, Q's mood went from bad to worse.  It wasn't the first time he'd "awakened" after a night of not sleeping at all, but it was the first time in his life as a human he'd had to do it without coffee.  He stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling, as T'Laren rose and disappeared into the bathroom for her morning ablutions.  But there wasn't much point to staying in bed indefinitely-- he wouldn't be able to sleep any better now than he had all night, and if he was active, maybe he'd be fractionally less bored.  

While T'Laren was in the bathroom, Q staggered out of bed.  He felt much as he had in the days right after the Ceulan assassin had tried to kill him, when he'd become so frightened of sleep that he'd simply stopped doing it to the best of his biological ability.  His eyes burned, his body was leaden, his head hurt, and his mood was savage. Taking a shower wouldn't help at all-- he didn't need a shower now when he'd taken his last one so late last night, and would simply be a reminder of everything he didn't have right now. Like cleaning solvents.  And caffeine.  The lack of caffeine was torture.  So he didn't bother waiting for T'Laren, although being able to get into the bathroom to pee would be nice.

Of course, since the replicator didn't work, he couldn't immediately change into clean clothes, either.  Muttering curses under his breath, he put his bathrobe on and stomped out into the living room, to rummage through his closet for something to wear.

The door opened before he had found anything acceptable.  A smirking Ferengi entered the room with a tray, on which were two covered bowls.  "Breakfast!"  He set the tray down on the coffee table and stood there, still smirking.

There were two others standing in the hallway, phasers holstered but easily reachable, watching.  T'Laren came out of the bathroom, wearing one of his shirts as a tunic-- a green one, despite the fact that people with green skin really shouldn't wear solid green, ever, but then T'Laren's lack of fashion sense was legendary-- and a pair of his black pants.  She looked like what she was, a woman wearing a much larger man's clothes-- all the tailoring he'd done had only managed to keep them from falling off her, not to keep them from making her look like she was drowning in them.  His shirt didn't look like a tunic on her, it looked like a muumuu.

Warily Q turned back to the waiting Ferengi and took one of the covered dishes off the tray. He lifted the cover.  If they had taken the bait from last night, he expected there'd be a mushroom omelette or something.

Instead it was bugs.  Not even grubs, this time.  Nasty, squirming, swarming, crunchy, carapaced creatures with far too many legs.  In sudden overwhelming disgust and fear, Q dropped the bowl.  It hit the floor, and the bugs all fell out and started crawling around on his carpet.  The three Ferengi-- the one standing by the tray and the two watchers outside the door-- howled with laughter.

Nausea and fear turned to white-hot rage.  They wanted to use his biology against him?  That was a two-edged sword.  Q may have led a very fastidious life as a human, for the most part, due to his sincere desire not to *have* a physicality and all the gross and disgusting things that came with it-- but he had studied trickster legends.  In thousands of cultures, beings with the same archetype he'd modeled for billions of years engaged in all sorts of disgusting activities to make their points.  Too overwhelmed with fury to think about anything but humiliating the Ferengi as badly as they'd done him, he let his robe fall open, yanked his pajama pants down, grabbed his penis and began emptying his morning-full bladder directly into the face of the Ferengi in front of him.

The Ferengi screamed in horror, threw his hands up to protect his face and backed away. The two Ferengi in the hallway rushed in, grabbing Q.  At one point he would have cowered into a ball rather than resisting, but T'Laren had been training him in self-defense, and he was furious.  He fought back, attempting to pull his arms free through sheer physical force, ignoring the pain as they were wrenched in favor of cursing at the two men holding him.  

T'Laren joined in, nerve-pinching one of the two Ferengi, which made the man lose his grip on Q.  She pulled him off Q and threw him into a wall, as Q managed to pull himself free of the other one now that he had an arm free.  The other one stumbled backward, drew his phaser and fired at T'Laren, dropping her.  Q had to assume she was only stunned.  He shoved the Ferengi with the phaser, hard, knocking the man to the floor.  The phaser went flying.  Q dove for it, but it was still closer to the Ferengi, who managed to grab it before Q could reach it.

At this point three more Ferengi, responding to the screams of the one Q had urinated on (who was still huddled in a ball on the floor, and still screaming hysterically), ran into the room, phasers drawn.  "Freeze!" one of them screamed at Q, who instead backed up, getting to his feet.  

"He-- he *pissed* on me!" the one on the floor wailed.  "He pulled out his *oogan* and he *pissed* on me!"

The one Q had fought with held his newly retrieved phaser steady on Q as he got to his feet.  "Don't move, human, or you'll get what your Vulcan friend got," he warned.

Q smirked.  "Then shoot me.  I'm sure gunning down unarmed prisoners makes you feel like big manly men."

"Grab him," the Ferengi ordered his three backups.  This time Q couldn't fight back.  He tried, despite the phasers-- what were they going to do, stun him?  He'd have preferred that to the beating he expected was coming-- but Ferengi, though shorter than the average human and a good bit shorter than him, were proportionately stronger than humans.  He wouldn't have been able to fight off two without T'Laren's help; he had no chance with three.  

They forced him to his knees as he struggled and cursed them inventively, and then shoved his face into the second bowl of bugs, the one he hadn't dropped.  Q screamed, visceral disgust combining with flashbacks of being stung nearly to death.  And then he shut his mouth and eyes tightly as his face was forced into the bowl.  The bugs in there were alive, if sluggish.  They crawled on his closed eyes and lips, itchy tiny legs and hard carapaces brushing over his skin.  A thin whine escaped from between his closed lips.  

"Eat them!  Come on, eat!" one of them shouted.

With teeth still closed tightly, Q opened his lips enough to snarl, "In your dreams, rodent boy."

That got his head pushed even harder.  The bowl was smaller than his head; the unrelenting pressure of hands was painfully driving his forehead and his chin into the edge of the bowl.  "You break it, you buy it!" Q shouted, still with teeth clenched.  "Can't sell my head if you break it!"

He screamed-- through clenched teeth-- as one of them pulled his hair, very, very hard, and held it tightly.  "Open your mouth and eat, animal.  Or we could rip all of this out without damaging your value any."

"Even if I was as bald as you I still wouldn't be as ugly," Q retorted.

"Turn him over and hold him down," the one who seemed to be in charge of this, the one who had shot T'Laren, said.

The three Ferengi holding him flipped him over onto his back.  One sat on his legs, the other two knelt on his hands.  It hurt.  Q tried to kick his legs, tried to dislodge the one sitting there-- his legs were stronger than his arms and they hadn't separated them and he had the leverage of his torso-- but this came to a quick end when the fourth Ferengi came and sat on his chest.  The man grabbed his earlobe and twisted it painfully.  "Ow!  Watch it!"

"Open your mouth or I'll rip this off."

"That's not going to deter my sex life in the slightest, I'll have you kn-- OOOOOOWWW!  Let *go*, damn you!"

"I *could* do this to your balls instead, if you insist, but frankly I don't feel like feeling you up.  Humans aren't my type.  Not male ones, anyway.  Now, are you going to open your mouth or am I going to rip your lobes off with my fingers?"

"How kinky," Q gasped through the pain.  "You must be a big hit at your mother's BDSM parties."

The Ferengi pulled harder on Q's ear, hard enough to bring tears to his eyes.  "You like those kind of parties?" he asked, as Q howled.

"You're so predictable," Q panted.  "Pathetic insults and even more pathetic threats.  Didn't I *tell* you you can't frighten me?"

"Doesn't sound like you're not frightened," the Ferengi said, grabbing the second ear and pulling that, just as hard.  Q felt as if his earlobes really were on the verge of being ripped off his head.  

"That's... *pain*, you idiot... not fear.  Not... the same thing."  Although if he hadn't had so much adrenaline racing through his system they probably *would* have worked out to be about the same.  And then there was the fact that technically, he was lying; the truth was that he was terrified.  But he wasn't going to beg, and he wasn't going to give in, not for a little pain anyway.  He was done with both.

"Why don't you break all his stupid flat teeth?" the one sitting on his left arm said.  "Then you can just pour the bugs down his throat."

"Good idea."  The Ferengi drew his phaser again and reversed it, butt end hovering over Q's mouth.  "You going to open up, human, or do I break all your teeth in?"

"Considering your standards of dental care, I suppose you leave me no choice," Q snapped.  He took a deep breath-- this was going to be horrible, but having all his teeth broken in this far from Federation medical care had even less appeal-- and opened his mouth.

His captor proceeded to pour the contents of the bowl of bugs in.  Q choked and gagged, head thrashing, his eyes closed so the ones that fell out and crawled on his face couldn't get into his eyes.  When they let him up, he spat out as many bugs as he could, and still could feel their bodies crawling around in his throat, still could taste their bitter, nasty shells.  His stomach heaved, and he threw up on the nearest Ferengi, who screamed.  "Those were my *best shoes!*  They were worth two bars of latinum!"

"Not... any more," Q said hoarsely.

Infuriated, the Ferengi ripped off his vomit-soaked shirt and wrapped Q's head in it.  Q attempted to slam his head into the Ferengi, but the others were holding him tightly enough that he couldn't get the leverage.  He started ostentatiously hyperventilating, pretending he couldn't breathe-- the truth was he didn't *want* to; the smell of his own vomit was threatening to make him throw up again.  Apparently frightened at their cash cow's seeming fragility, they immediately let him go.  He pulled the shirt off and threw it to the floor.

"That's what you get," the one who'd shot T'Laren said.  "You act like an animal, we treat you like an animal."

"Other way around," Q said coldly.  "You treat me like an animal, and I'll act like one.  Give me food I can eat and basic toiletries, or next time I start channeling this body's ape ancestry, and I'll throw feces."

The one he'd peed on-- who was *still* curled up in a ball-- started whimpering at that.  The one who'd shot T'Laren looked at him in absolute disgust.  "You make me sick."

Q lifted the soiled, vomited-on shirt and waved it as a banner.  "No, you make *me* sick.  See?"

"Let's get out of here," one of the three relative newcomers said.

"Yeah.  Get Fril."  The leader-type shook the one curled in a ball.  "Come on, Tak.  Come on and get showered and changed."

"It's *disgusting!*  How will I ever get a female to touch me again?"

"You *wash*, Tak.  Then they don't know a human pissed on you.  Come *on.*"  He delivered another glare at Q before leading his younger friend out.  Two of the other three carried the stunned one out; the third walked slowly, backing up, holding a phaser trained on Q until they had all left the room and the door shut.

Q looked around himself.  He smelled like vomit and bugs, there was still a horrible taste in his mouth, T'Laren was stunned-- he could see her stirring very slightly, now-- there were horrible disgusting bugs all over his bedroom, and a smell of urine from where the Ferengi he'd peed on had dropped to the floor and started wailing rather than trying to clean himself up.  By most lights it had been a disaster and he'd gotten much worse than he'd given.  But then, he hadn't curled up on the floor and cried for ten minutes like the one he'd peed on had.

Q got up and staggered to the bathroom, where he stripped off his horribly soiled bathrobe and stepped into the shower.  He sat on the floor, leaned his head back against the wall, and laughed, and laughed, until his side hurt.  He was a helpless prisoner and yet *he* had managed to get the upper hand and totally upset his captors.  Oh, had he ever gotten to them.  By his count, he'd won, and won spectacularly.  He laughed until tears came out of his eyes, and when he left the shower and walked out naked to get his clothes, he was still laughing.

He waggled his penis at the ceiling.  "You know what else?" he yelled at the unseen monitors.  "It's still bigger than yours, too!"

Then he practically collapsed in the closet from laughing too hard.  It wasn't until one of the freed bugs crawled across his naked thigh that his hilarity stopped, and he realized he had a huge cleaning job ahead of him.  He sighed.  "Fun is never free," he muttered, got to his feet, and got dressed.

&&&

T'Laren rose up to consciousness slowly.  She blinked, looking around her.  The last thing she remembered was being hit with stun; it must have been stun on full strength, or she'd taken more of the beam than she had last time, because this time she'd entirely lost consciousness.

She was lying on Q's bed, and aside from some bruises where she'd hit the floor, she felt fine.  She got to her feet.  There was a thumping noise out in the suite, and then Q's voice, "Gotcha!"

T'Laren raised an eyebrow.  What was going on?

As she stepped out of the bedroom, she heard "Puny insect, feel the wrath of the mighty Q!" and saw Q leaping, landing with both feet together on a small area of the floor.

T'Laren's eyebrow went up even further.  "Q?"

"Oh, good, you're awake.  You can help me."  

The room smelled horrible.  She remembered what Q had done, and winced inwardly.  "Help you do what?"

"There's bugs everywhere.  Since our kindly hosts apparently couldn't be bothered giving us the means to get the vermin out of our room, I've been trying to squash them all, but I think a lot of them are hiding under the couch and I am certainly not going to try to lift it by myself."

She walked over to the couch and lifted it, tilting it onto its side.  Dozens of insects scurried out.  Q began frantically stomping on them.

"Did you have a suggestion for cleaning up the remnants of the insects?" T'Laren asked.  "While I sympathize with your desire to remove vermin, having dozens of squashed insect bodies all over our room is hardly cleaner."

"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  First I have to kill them all."

"And you think you can accomplish this by running around stepping on them?"

"Is there a good reason why not?  They squash very nicely."

"They will likely find places to hide.  For instance, the blankets I left in the bedroom."

"So don't go back in the bedroom until we're done here.  As long as the door stays shut, they can't get in there."

He had a point.  On Earth, in Texas, cockroaches were sufficiently ubiquitous that shutting a door to keep them out was a laughable idea.  But on Earth, the buildings were old and not designed hermetically, as spaceships of any kind had to be.  

"How many do you believe there to be?"

He shuddered.  "Far too many.  I wasn't in much of a position to count them.  But I think I've probably killed a hundred or so."

"I imagine not.  What happened after I was stunned?"

"Gotcha!"  Q pounced on a scurrying insect, crushing it.  He turned to T'Laren and grinned broadly.  "I won."

"I can see how your triumph over an insect would impress you under the current circumstances--"

"No, I mean that's what happened.  I won."

"And yet there are insects all over our floor."

"Sure, and the place still smells disgusting, and my pajamas are permanently ruined.  But you should see the other guy."

"*What* possessed you to do that?  I understand that you strongly dislike insects, but I cannot imagine how you could have helped the situation by *urinating* on one of our captors."

"If they give me bugs next time, I'll be very surprised."

"Your forehead is bruised."

He reached a hand up to his forehead, touching the circular mark there.  "Is it?  Ow.  Yeah, you're right.  I've been too busy killing bugs to notice."

"Q, in what sense is you having your forehead bruised and me being stunned possibly construable as you winning?"

"I told you.  They'll give us real food next time.  You just watch."

"But you're *hurt.*"

"Barely.  I've had far worse than this.  Besides.  I fought *back*, T'Laren.  Did you see me?"

"Yes.  But then they stunned me."

"Yeah, yeah, and they eventually made me eat some of the bugs, but that's not the *point.*  The point is, I fought them, and it took five of them and a phaser to make me do what they wanted.  And I didn't beg even once."  He was grinning broadly, obviously extremely pleased with himself.  "Meanwhile the one I peed on cried and whimpered the whole time the others were fighting me.  So, I won."

Well.  She *had* wanted him to learn self defense and gain a measure of confidence in his own ability to stand up for himself.  On the other hand, antagonizing people who held their lives in their hands by urinating on them was not what she had been hoping he would learn to do.  "I suppose that's one way to look at it.  I think it would be preferable to define 'winning' as a situation in which you were *not* attacked and forced to eat insects, though."

"I'll take the wins I can get."

She put the couch back down on the floor.  "I don't see any more of the insects.  I think now would be the appropriate time for you to cross that bridge."

"There might still be more," Q objected.

"Perhaps there are, but I don't see any.  I do, however, see a large quantity of crushed insect bodies.  Now would be a good time to clean them up."

"I don't have a broom or anything like that."

"It might have been a good idea to think of that before jumping on quite so many."

"What, should I have left them alive?  I'm thrilled at the notion of one of them crawling into bed with me, believe you me."

"I think you could have handled this entire situation somewhat better."

"Yes, yes, you told me so, I was a bad boy, la la la.  Sing a new song, T'Laren, that one's boring me.  What can we use to clean up these dead bugs?"

"I'm failing to see why there's a 'we' in that sentence."

"Oh, come *on.*  It's not my fault there's bugs in here!  The Ferengi brought them!"

"You *did* drop the bowl."

"And you would have too under the same provocation!  Oh, wait, no, I forgot, you're such a *stalwart* Vulcan.  So very, very good at controlling unpleasant emotions like shock and startlement.  There's certainly nothing anyone could have done to startle *you* into behaving badly, is there?"

This was an obvious dig at how she'd behaved toward Sovaz.  "The bugs are your responsibility.  It'll do you some good to face the consequences of your actions once in a while."

"*My* actions?  Hello?  I didn't bring the bugs in here!"

"But you did urinate on one of our captors.  And since I'm sure you know nothing about neutralizing scents, removing that particular smell is going to have to be *my* duty.  So you can deal with the bugs."

"We could just rub shoe polish on the spot.  Then it'd smell like shoe polish instead of pee."

"That would not be a great improvement."

"Says you.  I think anything's an improvement over the smell of human urine."

"Perhaps you should have thought of that before you decided to urinate on the Ferengi."

"You have any familiarity with Earth trickster legends, T'Laren?"

"Some, yes.  I've read children's versions of the stories of Coyote and Anansi to Sovaz."

"Oh, well, you might just as well have been reading about Bugs Bunny.  The original trickster legends are full of all sorts of repulsive bodily fluids, gender-changing, sordid sexual practices and general havoc with whatever society's established boundaries of good taste were.  I have no desire to model myself after them entirely, of course... but that *is* where the only power I have now lies.  I'm willing to put up with a bad smell if I can torment my enemies to the point where they want to be rid of me quickly."

"My sense of smell is rather more acute than yours."

"Waaah.  My sense of boredom is *far* more acute than yours, so I'd say that if we're having a suffering contest, I'm in the lead."

"Q.  Get a rag and clean up the bugs."

"I don't *have* any rags.  All I have are my clothes."

"Some of them may as well be rags."

"I'm wounded.  The Vulcan who likes to dress in a solid grey ensemble has a poor opinion of my clothing!  Whatever shall I do?"

"I would suggest, finding something you *can* spare to clean bugs with, while I attempt to find some sort of solvent chemical."

"Actually I've got a portable stain remover in the closet.  I don't see why it wouldn't work on a stained carpet."

Well.  That actually was helpful.  "See if you can find it for me, and I'll attempt to locate something you can use for a rag."

"Why do I have a sudden sinking feeling that this is a bad, bad idea?"

"Because you're enamored of your own lack of taste in clothing?"

"*My* lack of taste?"

"You have a leopard-print loincloth.  I will no longer listen to any protestations that you have taste."

He burst out laughing.  "Oh, you saw that?"

"Yes.  I believe I was permanently scarred by the sight."

"If it makes you feel better I've actually only worn it once.  Eleanor had me under house arrest again, and I knew that sooner or later she'd show up to try to harangue me into doing my job, so I put that on to see her reaction when she finally showed up."

"In that case perhaps it would make an excellent rag."

"Oh, you're probably right.  Listen, why don't you get the bugs and I'll clean up the stain?  I know how to use the device, and since you pointed out I'm less bothered by the smell than you are..."

"Q?"

"Yes?"

"You're cleaning up the bugs.  Don't try to get out of it."

"But it would be easier--"

"No, the person with the better sense of smell will be better able to tell when it's actually clean, and besides, you stomped on them, you clean them up."

"What, do you have a phobia of dead insects?"

"I have a phobia of letting you weasel out of your obligations.  Clean the bugs, Q."

He sighed.  "Yes, Mommy."