NEW: Ruminations P/Q smbd (again!)
Jeanita
Okay everybody, this is the last installment of Jeanita's-
reaction-to-His-Beloved-Pet. Chatting back and forth with Ruth,
she made an off-the-cuff comment that I'd really gotten into sub-
space with Picard in Theme and Variations. That got me thinking
that I should give our boy Q equal time. Hence Ruminations. It
is, again, just a vignette, one of those long on emotion/short on
plot things I do to vent, so if you're expecting lots of action
and drama, look elsewhere. For those who haven't guessed by now,
this contains
SMBD
so if you like that sort of thing, stay put. If you don't,
quietly take thyself elsewhere. As always, praise and
constructive criticism are encouraged. Nay, 'tis demanded of
thee, so keep those cards and letters coming, folks.
Om Paramount Om
Characters and universe theirs. Story mine.
This is no ordinary love.
No ordinary love...
-Sade
I'm not your lover
I'm not your friend
I am something that you'll never comprehend.
No need 2 worry
No need 2 cry
I'm your messiah and you're the reason why...
You're just a sinner I am told
I'll be your fire when you're cold
I'll make u happy when you're sad
I'll make you good when u r bad
I'm not a human
I am a dove
I'm your conscious
I am love
All I really need
Is to know that you believe...
-I Would Die 4 U
by the artist formerly known as Prince
Ruminations
or
While Johnny Lies Sleeping
Q materialized himself and a chair by Johnny's bed and sat
watching his lover sleep. He did this almost every night of
late, and he wondered what Jean-Luc would say if he found out. Q
had no good reason to do this. He could rematerialize any time
he wanted, or remain present though invisible throughout Johnny's
day, but somehow it made a difference to him to sit at night near
the living, breathing body of his lover.
'And admit it,' he told himself. 'there's something
compelling about seeing him defenseless in sleep.' And standing
guard over him, and adoring him in all his unselfconscious
beauty, his mind added helpfully. 'As if there's something wrong
with protecting what's mine,' Q snarled at himself defensively.
'I'll stay for whatever reason I want.'
He settled deeper into the chair and put his feet up on
Johnny's bed. This was a result of spending too much time in
human form, this habit of using his nights for quiet
contemplation. Johnny's sleeping hours gave a reluctant immortal
just enough time to contemplate his maddening passion without
frightening himself overmuch.
'What is it about Johnny,' his thoughts started down the
same path night after night, 'that makes me need him so? Why do
I need to see him suffering and in pain? Why *this* mortal?' He
knew part of the answer: Johnny liked it. Unable to free
himself from self-imposed repression, he needed someone else to
rip away his rigidly constructed barriers and deliver him from
all semblance of control, and Q was too enamored of Johnny not to
give him what he needed. Too reserved to explore any other
avenues of release, Jean-Luc needed Q's forcefulness to free his
emotions, unchaining the passions he kept strictly in check. Q
had reason to be proud of the changes he could engender in his
self-contained lover. Under Q's discipline, Johnny's emotions
were always near the surface. He wept more easily, smiled less
self-consciously, moaned with more abandon, trembled when he was
afraid--Q never allowed him to keep his feelings to himself.
Indeed, the few times Johnny had tried to hold out on him, Q had
punished him severely. Required to offer his responses to his
lover, Johnny allowed himself to feel his passions more keenly.
If ever Q required self-justification, Johnny's joyous abandon
was all the excuse he needed. His slave delighted in the freedom
he was required to experience.
And that, perhaps, was the most seductive part of all, Q
decided. He had never, in all of his existence, owned anything
he truly cared about, but he *worked* with Johnny, planning and
thinking and testing and pushing, honing and refining until his
Johnny became an object worthy of his veneration. It amazed Q
that he held a mere human in such high esteem, but in his desire
to please Q, Jean-Luc was proving himself more than worthy of
admiration. Who would have thought that in Jean-Luc he would
find the most perfect play-thing that ever existed? And not
simply because he was beautiful. It was his willing devotion,
his eagerness to please, his willingness to be redefined
according to Q's will, his active pleasure in proving to Q time
and time again that he was happy under Q's control. Q's ego was
entirely too fragile and unwieldy for him to admit that Johnny
was as much idol as slave, but once, after subjecting Johnny to a
particularly violent scene in which Johnny performed superbly, Q
actually knelt and bowed before him, acknowledging his slave's
perfection. Being Q, he then subjected Johnny to the same thing
all over again. Johnny took it all, too proud of himself to even
scream out though tears flowed down his face in copious
abundance.
So yes, there was the fact of Jean-Luc's perfect devotion,
but was that all? Well obviously not, he noted, willing away the
erection that had come unbidden with the direction of his
thoughts. Watching Johnny always affected him this way. There
was so much that was perfect about Johnny, his dazzling physical
presence was almost the least of it, but certainly Q couldn't
deny that Jean-Luc was amazingly lovely. Q allowed himself to
see through the blanket and sheet, staring at Jean-Luc's legs.
Long, lean, pale, lightly muscled; when he was in human form, Q's
head felt light whenever he looked at them. They were the best
part of his body, except perhaps for his chest, and his face, and
his neck, and his hands and feet, and his perfect, perfect ass.
But if it was difficult to decide the most beautiful part of his
physical being, more difficult still was accounting for the
elusive qualities that made up Johnny's personality. 'And you
call yourself a Q,' he chided himself. 'What happened to your
omniscience?' He instantly forgave himself his subjectivity,
focusing instead on all the other things that made Jean-Luc
beautiful to him; the strength and grace of his submission, his
willingness to go wherever Q wanted to take him, his utter
refusal to back down in the face of a challenge (a vanity Q
played on to great advantage), his great pride (a quality Q
loved), the sheer eroticism of the man, his helpless surrender in
the face of Q's power... of themselves all of those things were
alluring, but there was something more, some quality that
alchemized all his parts into a flawless whole, and for all his
power, Q could not tell what it was.
'Is it me?' Q wondered. 'Am I merely seeing what I want to
see in him? Fooling myself that random happenstance created this
ideal template, and that I was fortunate enough to find it and
create my masterwork out of it?'
He could have resented Johnny for presenting him this
conundrum, but beneath the arrogance in his accomplishments Jean-
Luc was truly innocent of all knowledge of what made him special.
In fact, Q knew Jean-Luc wondered at Q's reaction to him, knowing
himself to be a nice middle-aged man who liked archeology and was
good at commanding starships. Perhaps that was it, Q thought;
the dutiful selflessness of the man, the way he parceled out his
pleasures in cautious dribs and drabs, not allowing himself even
the temptation of overindulgence.
'And I come along and drown him in it.' The thought made Q
smile.
Even for a Q, whose power was virtually unlimited, the heady
rush of wringing sensation out of his Johnny was very special.
It was so intimate, so personal, a secret grace which was granted
to him and him alone. And Johnny loved it so much. Q fed
himself the memory of their night in upstate New York. He'd
handed Johnny over to a room full of men and watched as they took
him one by one. To know that he controlled it, that he made his
Johnny wail and moan and lose himself in the pain... he thought
of how Jean-Luc lay so passively in his arms, his head resting
against Q's shoulder. He thought of how easily Jean-Luc quieted
down when Q put his fingers, then his penis, in his mouth.
Delirious and disoriented, he hadn't recognized the taste of his
own master, but he'd labored to do a good job nonetheless. He
trusted Q, and willingly gave himself over...
'What is it about him that makes him fit so perfectly inside
me?' Q wondered. 'And why do I feel so lost in him, even as I
force him to submit to me?' This omnipresent vulnerability,
manifest whenever he hurt Johnny, made the love he felt threaten
to overwhelm him. For him, every welt he left was a kiss, a
token of the esteem in which he held his lover. And how could he
not want to cover Johnny with kisses, give him all the kisses he
could stand and then kiss him some more. Q often beat Johnny
until his human strength gave out, until they were both sweating
and gasping and panting after their marathon labors. Jean-Luc
wept helplessly, sweat and tears mingling on his face; his
muscles strained from his vain attempts to twist away from the
blows. Q watched his body dance under the whip and felt so
*connected* to him, so much at one with him that sometimes he
found himself crying and screaming along with his lover.
Sometimes he heard himself almost singing as each blow came down,
'it feels so good, it feels so good, it feels so good...'
Sometimes he found himself moaning with the overflow of
sensation, and once he'd actually stopped and apologized to
Johnny because he'd gotten lost in the whipping he delivered and
had left all of the rest of himself behind, an unpardonable
breach of responsibility.
Q hadn't ever thought of himself as particularly
accountable; in fact, he'd always taken pride in his
capriciousness and unpredictability. With Johnny, however, he
was excruciatingly aware of his obligations. Like nested dolls,
he broke through layer after layer of Johnny's defenses, and each
time Jean-Luc gave more of himself over into Q's keeping, Q felt
the stakes raise higher. He *had* to do this right, had to take
the best possible care of this creation of his. He knew other Q
had done this before him--taken pets--but they never spoke of it,
and now he knew why. It was too precious, to special to be
offered as fodder for entertainment, and Johnny meant so much to
him that he had to take himself seriously in order to be able to
care for and protect his property.
Q permitted himself a sigh of frustration. Protecting
Johnny was no simple task. Of all possible occupations, Johnny
was an explorer, a human who, by his very nature, would reject
any safety Q could offer him; had, in fact, been alternately
offended then amused by Q's intimations that humans were entirely
too fragile to go running around the galaxy in little metal
containers. Douwd liked humans, as did Organians and El-Aurians
and several other races the Q considered advanced enough to be
their equals, and all of them, in their various ways, kept an eye
on the cute little species, but rarely did they personalize their
interest like Q had done. He had no guide, no pattern, no
example to see him through this, and he was scared of doing this
wrong and accidentally hurting the one who meant the most to him.
What then, was he supposed to do? Johnny might have the
answers. In fact, Johnny usually had answers when Q dared ask
the questions, but it took such courage that Q couldn't do it
very often. Such an irony. Johnny, who was human and mortal and
too breakable for anyone's peace of mind, was amazingly, almost
instinctively brave. Q, who would live forever, had no bravery
in him. In fact, it was his utter lack of this quality that made
the need to possess Johnny so strong in him. Having experienced
the beauty of the man, he could not face existence without
keeping it close to him, afraid the enchanting eyes might touch
someone else with favor. Q couldn't allow that, so he took
everything and kept taking, frantically dancing to keep Johnny's
attention. Ridiculous, he knew. He could see into Johnny's
mind, and Johnny loved no one but him, but now that he knew what
it was not to be alone, loneliness terrified him, and the very
notion of Johnny loving someone else was enough to make even a Q
sick unto death.
'And that's the crux of the problem here,' he admitted.
Owning Johnny fed his megalomania but paradoxically trapped him
in Johnny's orbit. 'And one day he's going to die. What will I
do then?' Q asked himself again. He could never think about that
question without despair, and so buttressed himself as best he
could against having to face it.
Q had decided that he wouldn't let Johnny die on this ship,
no matter what. He hadn't mentioned this to Jean-Luc because
he would bristle and spout nonsense about timeline sanctity and a
captain's duty to his ship and crew. Nonetheless, Johnny, his
ship and his crew were safe because Q tiptoed ahead of him in
time and space, keeping constant watch against foes both real and
imagined. And talk about running madly just to keep in place!
There were the Continuum's interests to keep in mind, Johnny's
own need to meet challenge, humanity's need to grow and expand,
and all of it had to be balanced against his personal need to
safeguard one human being. Once he would have spurned such
constant vigilance, but now his self-appointed guardianship was
not only his preoccupation, it was his joy.
'And I call myself training Johnny,' he thought with wry
amusement.
Beset by dreams, Jean-Luc shifted and muttered in his sleep,
drawing Q's attention back to the present. Q sighed again. This
was a perfect example of the restraint he forced on himself for
Johnny's sake. Left to his own devices, he would have given
Johnny nothing but pleasant dreams. He knew it was impossible to
do that and let Johnny keep his sanity, so he made himself ignore
the products of Johnny's subconscious mind unless they seriously
distressed him. Or unless Johnny dreamed about him. Q had too
much vanity to ignore a dream in which he had a starring role,
and much to his gratification, Johnny's dreams about Q were
redolent with eroticism. In fact, Q used them to shape the
nature of their scenes.
Johnny was nothing if not imaginative, and Q, caught up in
the immediacy of Jean-Luc's dreams, could get wildly and
instantaneously stimulated by them. He had awakened Johnny from
sound sleep on more than one occasion.
Q smiled to himself. This was a slippery slope. Captain
Picard wanted his rest, but hot, sweet Johnny was for sex, and he
was only inches away... Q put the thoughts away. These wee
hours were for thinking and for frank adoration of his
possession. Picard was lovely in sleep. He was lovely period,
and--Q's thoughts stayed close to his favorite topic--during sex
he was transcendently beautiful. It was strange--he'd collected
so many images of his human lover, but of all the beautiful
things he loved about him, the sight of Picard's face as he was
being fucked was the most entrancing of all. Ah, yes, Q
realized, staring through the bedcovers again, that's where he'd
learned to love Johnny's legs. Q always held them wide apart
when he took Johnny on his back. The images flooded him,
Jean-Luc's opened mouth, his soft cries, his knees drawn back to
his chest so that Q had a view of his lean, muscular legs and the
insides of his thighs.
'I think next time I'll make him hold his legs open and wait
for me,' Q decided. The thought made him twitch, and the
temptation to wake Johnny and fuck him then and there boiled back
through him, stronger this time.
'Leave him alone, Q,' he ordered himself. 'Think of
something else.'
Unfortunately, with Johnny right there in front of him,
thinking about anything else was close to impossible. His mind
wandered to the way Jean-Luc sometimes shuddered in his sleep
after a particularly good beating. He made little gasping noises
like a child, which endeared him to Q no end. 'Even in your
deepest dreams I can affect you,' Q thought with satisfaction.
He cherished every contact he made with Johnny; dreams, or
fucking, or beating him--especially beating him. When he let the
whip fly, a part of him went sailing out to connect with his
lover. And every time the whip touched Jean-Luc's skin, Q felt
as if he'd just bestowed another adoring caress. And Johnny
bowed to it, labored under it, and fought to accept it as his
due. That was the struggle Q loved more than anything, to see his
lover pushing to take all that Q offered, screaming out his
acceptance. Sometimes it felt as if the beatings were a
consummation unto themselves, except whipping his boy always made
Q hard as a rock. The sight of his Johnny crying and sweating
and shaking made Q want to devour him. All that lust, all that
pain and vulnerability--it tasted so good. And when he let him
go and the bruised and bleeding Johnny lay weeping in his arms, Q
was overwhelmed by the tenderness he felt. He would kiss his
face and kiss his hands and stroke him gently all over, cocooning
Johnny in his arms until his lover was at peace.
Or alternately, fuck him until they were both crazed by lust
and, unable to stand it anymore, went tumbling over the edge into
oblivion. That was the most wondrous thing of all, Q thought:
there were so many ways to take Johnny. There was a place where
Johnny rode the pain as Q delivered it hard and steady so that
eventually Johnny shook and cried underneath him in emotional
release. There was another place, where the pain, sharp and
piercing, was everything in the universe, a fact to be endured
because there was nothing else. Johnny screamed and tried vainly
to get away and cried out 'No more, no more!' even though he
never did say stop. He could come on the pain alone if Q did it
right. There was a spot on Jean-Luc's back where he kept a lot
of tension, and if Q dug in and twisted at just the right moment,
Jean-Luc would scream, his eyes would widen, his arms and legs
would stiffen and throw themselves convulsively in all
directions, then his back would arch as he came hard, clawing at
the air and screaming again as the orgasm was dragged out of him.
Q loved to see him helpless like that, loved to take him in the
aftermath of the storm as Johnny shivered and wept beneath him.
He thrust into Johnny's welcoming body, but what he was really
doing was riding the rush of his own power, reveling in Johnny's
helpless submission to his dominion.
Johnny and Johnny alone could do this for him. *His*
Johnny. Powers, but it felt good to look at him, say the word
'mine' and know it for the truth. When Q permitted it, Jean-Luc
stared into his eyes adoringly, which Q accepted as his due. The
truth was, Q was created in Johnny's loving gaze. He needed
Johnny's love and adulation because that was where he found self-
definition; I am because you are. He sometimes wondered if he'd
been tricked or manipulated, even with his vast intelligence and
vaster powers, into becoming what Jean-Luc wanted him to be.
He'd tried others, but no one felt as good to him--no one
*defined* him for himself like Jean-Luc did. To his utter self-
disgust, Q felt ashamed of himself for straying, then felt angry
at himself for feeling shame. He'd wanted to take his feelings
out on Johnny while paradoxically wanting to beg forgiveness.
He'd done neither, but his awe for Johnny's special place in his
life increased exponentially.
And Johnny was so willing, confessing once that he was
afraid sometimes that Q wouldn't think he was enough. 'Silly
boy,' Q thought fondly, 'I can *make* you enough, don't you know
that?' How could Johnny be anything other than perfect? Q did
not know he wore the same expression of adoration that he'd so
often seen on Johnny's features. Had someone held a mirror up to
his face he would have been shocked, and hard-pressed to admit
the truth: for all the things he knew, for all the things he'd
learned and done over millennia, the entirety of his universe now
consisted of Johnny and all the things they did together.
'Oh why bother resisting,' Q thought. He dematerialized his
clothes and climbed into bed with him. Jean-Luc opened his eyes,
recognized Q, smiled and went back to sleep.
'I love him,' Q thought. Barriered from his fellow Q and
all alone with his thoughts, he could give way to the tenderness
he felt. Unwilling to disturb his rest, he stopped himself from
stroking Jean-Luc's face, contenting himself with merely watching
his lover breathe. For a while he counted the atoms that made up
Jean-Luc's left cheek, indulging himself in the more-than-human
ability to taste Johnny's dna. One day he would tell Johnny that
he, Q, *really* knew what Jean-Luc tasted like, but not yet. For
now it was his happy secret.
Holding Johnny safe, Q was content to let the hours pass.
Around 5:53 Q could feel Jean-Luc's mind edging towards
consciousness. He wiggled slightly, knowing it would nudge
Johnny a little closer to wakefulness. Jean-Luc took a deep
breath and his free arm came up to draw Q closer. Squirming
deeper into the covers, he laid his head upon Q's chest and then
relaxed into boneless sleep again. Q moved them out of time to a
pocket dimension where it would stay 5:53 until he willed it
otherwise. If his usual pattern held, Johnny would doze against
his chest for about twenty-five minutes until his body started to
get restless, it's habits disturbed. Johnny would open his eyes
to Q's embrace. Until then, Q would satisfy himself with the
blissful experience of holding his sleeping beauty until he woke.
--
JJ ARROW
Does Q really actually love Picard?? It doesn't sound very much like he
does. But then again, this is inside Q's head, so he could be hiding it.
It would be cool if he actually did.
-JJ
----------------
"A man without his pants leaves little room for explanation." Ramos,
LEGEND
"We're Starfleet officers, Mr. Kim. Weird is part of the job." Janeway,
ST: VOYAGER
JJ ARROW
As to my last post-- sorry if that sounded to blunt. The writing is
excellent. You all are so good, it's not fair!! <g>
Ruth Gifford
Quoth Jeanita:
> Okay everybody, this is the last installment of Jeanita's-
> reaction-to-His-Beloved-Pet.
Hey! I thought you said they'd go back to New York?! Just a joke,
I know you have a long work-in-progress, and that I'm to blame for
interupting it. Sorry.
>Chatting back and forth with Ruth, she made an off-the-cuff comment
I'm going to keep making those comments if this kind of thing is the
result.
>For those who haven't guessed by now, this contains
>
> SMBD
And does it ever. I was lucky, I only got *half* of this at work.
>As always, praise and constructive criticism are encouraged. Nay,
>'tis demanded of thee, so keep those cards and letters coming, folks.
OK. Here's my praise (I know, I praised it to the skies when I first
read it, but I need to say something about it out here). It's a lot
harder to write from the top's point of view. It's hard to describe
the mindset, the emotions and the physical responses that come from
giving someone pain. I'm a top and *I* have a hard time describing it.
So if you ever wanted to know why someone would do this sort of thing
to their lover, read this story again, carefully. And then come tell
me who has the control in an S/M relationship.
Ruth
Atara Stein
In article <4otpc3$s...@gate.cyberg8t.com>, Ruth Gifford
<eres...@cyberg8t.com> wrote:
[snip]
>
> OK. Here's my praise (I know, I praised it to the skies when I first
> read it, but I need to say something about it out here). It's a lot
> harder to write from the top's point of view. It's hard to describe
> the mindset, the emotions and the physical responses that come from
> giving someone pain. I'm a top and *I* have a hard time describing it.
> So if you ever wanted to know why someone would do this sort of thing
> to their lover, read this story again, carefully. And then come tell
> me who has the control in an S/M relationship.
>
> Ruth
Well, Jeanita already knows that I think "Ruminations" is awesome, but I
thought it was worth repeating here. I'm not a top, but Q's reflections
seem really right on to me, and the emotion involved (from someone on the
receiving end) seems very true-to-life as well. Bravo, Jeanita!
Now, Ruth, I don't know if the sub really has the control. :-) The sub
gets what he/she wants in the long run, true, but the process is
definitely in the dom/me's control. There's a desire to please on *both*
sides, and I know I've taken more than perhaps I honestly thought I
wanted, because I *was* trying to surrender control as completely as
possible. Yes, the sub has power, but the actual control is in the
dom/me's hands. I think it's more that there's a kind of reciprocity and
equality, despite the apparent lack of equality in the roles, and Jeanita
gets at that very well. Q is actively shaping/recreating Picard
("working" with him, as Jeanita put it), but he's being shaped and
recreated himself in the process. Does this make sense, Mistress?
Atara
--
Atara Stein ____
\ /
\/
"Everything is true. . . . Everything anybody has ever thought."
--Philip K. Dick, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
Bill: "Socrates: 'The only true wisdom consists in knowing
that you know nothing.'"
Ted: "That's us, Dude!"
Bill: "Oh yeah."--"Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"