The BLTS Archive- Riker Ups the Ante
Fifth in the Winning Hand series
by AdmiralTAG (althea@yahoo.com)
and 
Astra (astraplain@yahoo.com)

---

Another Astra/AdmiralTAG collaboration, but this one (surprise,
surprise) is not a resident in our House of Angst. Humor, parody, just
plain ol' silliness--you tell us! 

As always, feedback is craved. We're begging. (No, we're not on our
knees, but hey, ya never know...).

Standard disclaimer: Paramount owns the whole deck and we won't play
with it. Wanna bet? ;-)

---

Will Riker inspected the paper he found tucked into the book he'd just
purchased and smiled. Things were going much better than he could have
hoped. Fighting the urge to whistle, he ambled through the shopping
complex on Starbase 63 and contemplated his next purchase.

For the third morning in a row, Jean-Luc Picard woke to the sound of
Beverly Crusher being violently ill. The water was running and the
door closed.

He knew that if he tried to go to her, the door would refuse to open
to his command and she would be even harder to budge. No, he'd wait
patiently until she emerged then gather her into his embrace and
soothe her. *Then* he'd drag her to sickbay.

Beverly Crusher sat on the floor of the bathroom, her fevered forehead
resting against the cool wall. He was out there, waiting, and she knew
it. There was no way she was talking him out of taking her to sickbay.
In her hand was the tricorder she'd hidden the night before. It was
closed, and the way she was feeling at the moment, it would stay that
way. She had a definite suspicion about her sudden illness, but she
felt much to miserable to risk confirming it. Instead, she shifted,
pressing her back against the cool wall as she gathered her strength.

Deanna Troi was bored, sitting on the bridge and staring out at yet
more nothing. The night shift was seldom busy but tonight was
downright dull enough to seem motionless. She shifted uncomfortably
again, trying to be inconspicuous. It would not do to have the bridge
officers seeing her fidget like an impatient child.

But it didn't stop her from wishing the captains chair was a bit more
generic and not specifically designed for the captain's smaller
backside.

Desperate to distract herself, Deanna opened her empathic shields
slightly, searching for the reassurance of her friend's mental
signatures. Geordi and Worf's presence was normal, but Beverly and the
Captain were broadcasting distress while Will Riker was nearly crowing
with pleasure. Disgusted, Deanna tuned him out and concentrated again
on Beverly. Definitely something worth following up on there. After
she had a nice long nap.

Jean-Luc Picard arrived on the bridge as scheduled for the start of a
new day. If anyone dared look closely, they might have seen the
tightness around the captain's mouth and the tension in his shoulders.
Even the great starship captain couldn't hide all his emotions.

Beverly had made him promise to report for his duty shift on time.
They were less than four months away from Will Riker's tenth
anniversary and they had a very special surprise planned for the
commander. They didn't dare do anything that might give away their
secret now that they were so close.

Instead, he spent an intolerable hour on the bridge, then retreated to
his ready room to read tedious reports and pretend to understand what
they meant. Beverly had insisted that they not see each other again
until breakfast the next day. They'd gotten carried away the last few
nights and Beverly had ended up staying the whole night. They really
couldn't afford those kind of mistakes now.

After all, Picard tried to tell himself, it's only a few more months
and then they would make their relationship public. Within reason, he
appended.

Dr. Harry Timms was wearing the frown he reserved for particularly
vexing problems. He used it a lot whenever Beverly was on the wrong
side of a tricorder. Today was no exception.

The CMO of the Enterprise walked into sickbay looking far worse than
any of the patients being tended by her efficient staff. Within
seconds Harry was on her heels brandishing a tricorder. She surprised
him by passing her office and continuing through to the private
examination rooms. He nearly dropped his trusty tricorder when she
entered one of the rooms and climbed up on a biobed.

Finding his voice at last, Harry opened his mouth to speak only to be
stopped by Beverly's upraised hand.

"Cut the commentary, Harry, just do the scan. I am in no mood for one
of your bad jokes."

"So I guessed." he murmured, frowning at the readouts. "What the...?"
He tapped an new command into the tricorder and continued scanning.
"Oh. Interesting."

"Harry." Beverly chided. "Didn't that fancy doctor school you went to
ever tell you not to do that?"

"What?" He looked up at his boss for the first time since beginning
the exam. "What did I do?"

Beverly sighed, defeated, and lay down on the bed, her body suddenly
too tired to remain upright. "Don't talk to yourself while examining a
patient. Now why don't you just skip to the bottom line."

"Fine. Symptoms?"

"Nausea, vomiting, hot flashes. And don't you tell me it's the 'M'
word because it's not." She crossed her arms defiantly but didn't risk
sitting up.

Harry grinned. The light glinted off the spot of thinning hair at the
top of his head. He was nearly an inch shorter than his boss and
didn't get to look down at her too often. He savored the moment now
that he knew her illness wasn't serious. Besides, he'd been kidding
her about the "M" word for several weeks now, ever since he'd
discovered it was a weak spot. Bev didn't have many of those.

"No, no, it's not the dreaded 'M; word." He paused, then added, "Yet."

That riled her enough to make her sit up. "Doctor!"

"Yes Patient Crusher?"

Ooohhh. Beverly gave him a point for that one.

Before things got out of hand, Harry read off the scan results, then
showed his disbelieving colleague the tricorder readings to confirm
his diagnosis. There was a minute of silence, then Harry prepped a
hypo for nausea and administered it. After a minute, he helped Beverly
off the biobed.

"Standard sentence?" he asked when Beverly was securely on her feet.

"Harry..." Beverly started to argue, then relented. "Okay. Straight to
my cabin, lots of bed rest and I'll see you in two days."

"I'll be timing it."

"I know you will. Don't mess up my desk while I'm gone."

"Never." he answered solemnly watching as she left the room, the
tricorder dangling from his hand.

---

"You're not contagious are you?"

"No, Jean-Luc. If I was I'd have notified you sooner."

Jean-Luc leaned back in his chair and sipped his tea, thinking. "All
right. I'll come see you when my shift ends. Want me to tell Deanna?"

"Yes. I could use some company. Thoravvian Croup isn't too serious,
but it does require a lot of bed rest." She paused then added,
"Something neither of us has been getting a lot of recently." Jean-Luc
was sure he could hear her smile.

"I'll send Deanna down to visit. That should cheer you up. Wouldn't
want a crabby CMO."

Beverly laughed. "No, my dear captain, you would not." And with that
she closed the connection.

It was 3:12am and Beverly was bored. She wasn't used to this much
sleep. Especially lately. So here she was in her cabin, not hungry,
not sleepy and too impatient to concentrate on a book. Wandering
across the room to her desk, she flipped open her tricorder and toyed
with the scanner. Absently she ran the scanned over herself and tapped
in a routine set of commands. She was about to turn the thing off when
a slight anomaly caught her attention.

Frowning, she magnified the display and examined it. Interesting. A
few more scans and Beverly was no longer bored.

Jean-Luc Picard leaned back in his chair and tried not to look as
stunned as he felt. He started to ask if she was sure but stopped
himself. Of course she was or she never would have told him. The
question now was what to do about this "condition."

Beverly was pacing again, moving fast enough that her lab coat
billowed out behind her. Nervously she flipped the tricorder open and
closed.

"This doesn't have to change anything." Deanna gently reminded the
pair. "It won't interfere with the performance of your duties in any
way."

Beverly snorted. "No, I'll be performing just fine."

Jean-Luc nearly choked.

Beverly glared at the room at large, then held up her hand to stop
Deanna's retort. "I know, I know. That's not what you meant."

Rather than confront the frustrated woman, Deanna changed tactics.
"It's not such a bad thing. I speak from experience."

"And you're not in any physical distress?" Jean-Luc asked, finding his
voice at last.

"Not if I get the prescribed treatment on a regular basis." Before her
lover could speak Beverly gave him a wolfish grin and added, "You."

Jean-Luc quickly looked away, afraid Beverly would actually start
licking her lips.

Turning to Deanna, he demanded, "You said you'd discovered the cause
of Beverly's, um, malady."

"That's right. It took some judicious arm twisting and visits to the
seediest Starbase bars, but Data, Beverly and I finally managed to
track down the courier. Seems he'd been paid a lot of money to place a
slip of paper into a certain book at the antique book store on deck
17. From there, we traced Will's route through 8 different shops all
over the Starbase. We also traced 6 more purchases made on his behalf
by locals who'd been paid well for the favor."

Beverly interrupted impatiently feeling the warning signs of her
condition. "We ran an analysis of the items purchased along with the
replicator logs for Will's cabin, the mess hall on deck 23 and Ensign
Kathy Gorver. Together, they make a serum used by the Bajorans to
promote fertility."

Picard levered himself off the sofa. "What?"

Deanna nodded her confirmation. "Seems our Mr. Riker suspects that you
suspect his role in keeping the two of you apart."

Beverly started to speak, but Deanna cut her off. "That's not all."
Deanna added. "Beverly, after you left, I asked Data to analyze the
effect of prolonged exposure to this serum. If used daily for more
than 5 weeks, it diminishes the user's sex drive. The dosage he had
programmed into your replicator was more than triple the average
dose."

"So either our relationship would be forced out into the open by
unplanned pregnancy, or, more likely because of the high dosage, I
would lose all interest in sex."

Picard tried to imagine that and failed. After a moment of silence, he
asked, "But the tricorder readings..."

Beverly nodded, "Don't match."

Deanna interrupted. "Will forgot about Ronin. There are still trace
levels of anaphasic energy in Beverly's system."

Beverly added, "One of the ingredients Will used to make the serum
becomes unstable when exposed to anaphasic energy. Instead of
inhibiting my sex drive, it seems to have quadrupled it. That's why I
was so sick the last few days, a combination of the serum, anaphasic
energy and the Thoravvian Croup."

Jean-Luc swallowed hard and sat down.

Deanna nodded. "It's true. Test results put Beverly's baseline
readings near the midpoint for a Betazoid in phase. We can only assume
that that level will increase dramatically before leveling off."

"Leveling off...as in decreasing?"

Beverly sat beside her captain and smiled hungrily, "Oh, no, Jean-Luc,
Deanna means the levels will increase."

Overwhelmed, Picard turned to Deanna. "Counselor, what do you suggest
we do?"

Unable to help herself, Deanna smiled a smile just like Beverly's. "My
suggestion, Captain, is to get some rest."

Beverly leaned over and breathed in Jean-Luc's ear adding, "Yes, my
dear captain. You're going to need it."

And for the first time in a long time, Jean-Luc Picard didn't mind his
First Officer's interference one bit.

---

The End