TITLE: Pleasures of the Flesh

AUTHOR: Sara

RATING: NC-17

FANDOM: Star Trek: The Next Generation

PAIRING: Picard/Q

DISCLAIMER: Paramount/Viacom own Picard, Q and the Star Trek universe. I'm just playing nicely with their toys. No profit is being made from this.

BETAS: jm did an amazing job of beta-ing (despite her claims to the contrary) and helped shape the story quite a bit. Also, I would never have written P/Q in the first place if it weren't for our challenge to swap fandoms for a story. Thanks, jm!! I am deeply grateful. My beyond-Faulknerian sentences were turned into readable English by the joint efforts of Singer (thanks, beautiful!) and Lyra.

Pleasures Of The Flesh
by Sara

"Q, please relax," Jean-Luc Picard said, stroking his love's back as they lay on the bed in his cabin on the Enterprise. "You'll enjoy this. Trust me."

"I find it hard to believe, mon Capitaine, that I will enjoy much in this little shell," Q said, feeling irritable and uncomfortable. Both of them were naked; Q stretched out on his stomach as Picard knelt over him trying to relieve tense muscles with massage.

Q tried to force his muscles to relax but found that it only made him more tense. He hated bodies, hated feeling the rumbling of his digestive system, the flow of blood through his veins. Hated feeling mortal, limited. He didn't understand how Jean-Luc could tolerate it.

Q extended his senses, his essential self, out from the human body he'd formed and reached toward Picard. He was surprised when Picard pushed away the reaching tendrils of Q's self with a thought, //No, my love. Not tonight. Tonight I'm sharing with you the pleasures of the flesh.\\

Picard's essence--his soul, to use a rather inadequate human word--was beautiful to Q. He found it to be strong, complex, entrancing, unique in all the universe. Q longed to free Picard from his mortal body, to let that amazing essence out to experience the universe without the limitation of senses, of mortality, of being in one place at a time. Q longed to let their essential selves mingle, join, become one so that their love could truly unite them.

Since confessing their love, Q delighted in giving Picard tastes of the Q way of experiencing the universe, experiencing their love. Q knew that Picard enjoyed the oneness, the intimacy of the experience that allowed no secrets between them. But inexplicably, frustratingly, Jean-Luc always insisted on returning to his own body, his mortal limitations. "Returning to my humanity" Picard called it, as if being human had some sort of attraction.

//Jean-Luc, I want to be one with you. Please.\\

Q heard the chuckle, felt the affection and amusement and love in Jean-Luc's thoughts. //That's what I want, too, Q. But tonight we'll do it the human way. You have to trust me.\\

Both Q's body and his mind groaned a little in resignation. //Very well, Jean-Luc. What must I do?\\

Q startled, mildly surprised at the sound of Jean-Luc's mellow voice. "First, no touching my mind tonight. We'll communicate as though both of us were mortal."

Q sighed and pulled his self awareness back into the body he'd created. "All right. And?"

"Second, let your body respond naturally. You have to give in to what you're feeling and not fight against it."

Q thought about grumbling but uncharacteristically resisted the impulse. For Picard he was willing to try and enjoy his body. He nodded, focusing his attention on the sensation of the hands on his shoulders, the feel of Picard's skin against his, lightly stroking. The delicate touch on his back disappeared for a minute, then returned to his back, slick with oil.

The light stroking evolved into a firm, kneading massage on the back of his neck and shoulders, smoothing out knots of tension. Q murmured in surprise at how pleasant the loss of those knots was, how comfortable touch could be. The warm hands moved from his shoulders to his back, at least one always in contact with his skin.

Jean-Luc murmured softly, making encouraging noises. "Yes, that's better, my love. Just let me make you feel good."

Q relaxed further into the touches as Jean-Luc moved down his body, massaging his lower back, his buttocks and down each long leg. Q let himself sink completely into his body so that he could more fully experience the relaxation and comfort.

When Picard finished massaging each foot, he helped Q roll over and began on the muscles on the front of his legs, slowly working his way up the long body, never stopping the soothing murmur. "You wear this body like it's uncomfortable Q, but it can provide so much pleasure. I want to show you that. I want to give this to you."

Avoiding Q's cock, which was as relaxed as the rest of him, Picard continued massaging up the long body, gently soothing the muscles of his abdomen, working his pectorals with firmer strokes, easing kinks out of his shoulders from the front. Finally, Jean-Luc lifted Q's head and slid his legs underneath. Q could feel his head resting in Picard's lap.

With tremendous delicacy, Picard's strong thumbs stroked Q's face, moving from the center of his forehead, along the hair line, to end the stroke with a small, gentle circle on the temple. Then they moved back and repeated the touch, further down toward the eyebrows. Jean-Luc gently massaged Q's entire face that way, each stroke ending with that small circle on the temples. Too relaxed to smile, Q made a small murmur of contentment instead.

"Good, good," Jean-Luc whispered, "that's a good start." Jean-Luc gently eased out from under Q's head, resting it carefully on the pillow, and lay down next to Q on the bed.

Q considered opening his eyes or moving. Before his brain was engaged enough to decide to do so he felt a delicate, barely-there kiss on each eyelid in turn, then all over his face, seemingly at random, on his forehead, his cheek bones, his jaw, his temples. When one of the kisses landed on his lips, the pleasure of it surprised Q; the warmth of the kiss sent a little jolt of electricity through his body. He gasped slightly. When his lips parted he felt Jean-Luc's tongue slip between them to touch his own.

The feel of the slightly rough tongue and the taste of Jean-Luc's mouth were better than Q imagined. He opened his mouth wider, allowing Jean-Luc's tongue free access to explore his mouth. Every touch of the searching tongue against his palate, the inside of his cheek, the area under his tongue sent another jolt through him, all that electric tingling racing from his head to his toes and back again, eventually settling in his groin.

Picard moved slightly, kissing along Q's jawline and down the tendons of his long neck, alternating firm kisses, gentle tongue tip touches and small nips. Each kiss, each lick, each bite sent a small shudder through Q's body. The pressure in his groin continued to increase, his cock growing harder.

Picard backed away with a last long lick along the outer rim of Q's ear and looked down with a gentle smile. "Ah, Q, when you created this body, you created a work of art, my love." His fingers stroked across the generous lips, now slightly parted as Q breathed heavily.

Picard's strong, graceful hands moved over Q's chest again, distracting him from anything he might have thought to say. This time Jean-Luc's hands moved with gentle, feather touches that just brushed the tops of Q's chest hairs rather than the deliberate, relaxing strokes of the earlier massage. The sensation was more subtle, but still pleasurable. Q focused his attention on those delicate touches and gasped with building desire when his nipple was firmly pinched and pulled. Q felt it like lightning; it burned his nerves and left nothing behind but ash, until he felt Jean-Luc's mouth on his other nipple, licking and then sucking hard. He arched his back up, trying to get closer to the mouth and hand that were setting him on fire.

Q's cock felt impossibly hard now, swollen almost to the point of discomfort. He thought that his body couldn't feel any more than this when Jean-Luc backed away again, leaving his nipples hard and needy.

"Oh, Jean-Luc, that was...oh...." He was distracted from what he was going to say when warm hands stroked up the insides of his thighs and a hot tongue trailed down his stomach toward his groin. "Oh..." The nerves he thought were burned to ash flared, sending their pleasure straight into his cock.

"Q, seeing you like this...so beautiful," Jean-Luc whispered against Q's navel, before outlining it with his tongue. Q moaned and reached up to hold Picard's head in place, to get more of that exquisite feeling, but Picard moved on and was now kissing his way down the hollow of Q's hip. Q felt himself burned away by the pleasure, and still each touch, lick, kiss, bite, caress was better than the one before. Q thrashed and groaned, totally beyond anything but sensation.

Then those hot lips, that rough-smooth tongue caressed his cock and Q came, screaming with ecstasy and shock.

Q floated back to himself and his body some time later, called by Jean-Luc's rich voice whispering words of love. He found himself still lying on the bed, his head resting on his lover's chest. Picard asked, "You hadn't investigated human sexuality at all, had you Q?"

Q snorted. "Of course not. It seemed disgustingly...physical. Untidy, undignified, demeaning, and probably unpleasant, for all that you humans seem to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about it." He snuggled up against his lover. "Thank you, Jean-Luc, for showing me I was wrong."

Smiling as he kissed Q lightly on the forehead, Jean-Luc said, "That was just the beginning, there's so much more for me to show you. And you haven't even touched on the joys of giving pleasure yet." Jean-Luc leaned over for a more intense kiss, then continued, "And after we explore more of the ways we can enjoy each other's bodies, we can try combining the Q and human ways of being one with each other."

Q's cock stirred and began to fill again as his lover spoke. Q sat up and, leaning over, claimed Jean-Luc's mouth with his own, pressing his long body against his lover's more compact one. When he pulled away from the kiss, he smiled and said, "Ah, Jean-Luc. Let's continue our exploration then."

END