AN: It's summer break for me and, apparently, that means the summer of Picard/Crusher over here. I'm doing the whole self-indulgent thing and writing whatever I feel like putting out there. This is the first part in a probably three/four-chapter short fic. I'm probably going to write the whole thing straight through, so expect the rest shortly (since I have no patience when it comes to posting).

(Also, please note that, though I'm using an OC character name from "A Minor Indiscretion," the two stories are not related, I'm just recycling characters.)

It's very, very loosely based on the boat scene from Generations, but I'm mostly just playing with ideas. I don't really pay all that much attention to canon, so please just accept that it's all in good fun and meant for nothing more than a little enjoyment.

I own nothing from the Star Trek franchise, if that needs to be said for legal reasons, and this is just for entertainment.

I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!

111

"Jean-Luc," Beverly called from the bathroom, "I think—maybe I should just sit this one out."

"Are you feeling unwell?" Jean-Luc asked, working the last of the buttons on his jacket. "Beverly?" He prompted, when there wasn't an answer after a moment.

"I'm fine," Beverly said, emerging from the bathroom with a sigh. "It's just—the replicator is having a hard time with the specifications of this outfit. It's made for a more…sleek body, Jean-Luc, and I'm built more like a beached whale. In fact—maybe I could just replicate a costume as a beached whale and still be close by, in case I'm needed."

Jean-Luc smiled at her and closed the distance between them. His hands automatically went to their now-accustomed spot, one on each side of the swell of her belly. His smile renewed as he felt the movements of their son.

"He is very active today," Jean-Luc said. Beverly let out a sound that fell between a hum and a groan. "Are you giving your mother a hard time today, Jean-Pierre?"

Jean-Luc raised his eyebrows at Beverly, and she made a face of consideration, but certainly not one of enthusiasm over the name. Jean-Luc laughed to himself, but he stayed where he was, and he gently rubbed her belly in the way that had become his practice, especially lately, as she'd insisted that it made her feel better. Anything that made his very pregnant wife feel better was something he could do—especially if it was something as simple as touching her and reminding her that he loved her and the child she carried.

"The modified outfit fits fine, Beverly," Jean-Luc offered. "You look beautiful."

"It looks terrible," Beverly said, her hands going to her back to dig her fingers into the muscles there. "I look terrible."

"Turn around," Jean-Luc said, directing her with a movement of his finger. She already knew what he was offering and, not only did she turn around, but she took her preferred position holding onto the nearest piece of furniture that allowed her to stand so that he could easily dig his fingers into the muscles of her lower back. He would have chosen to treat her much more delicately, but she insisted that the harder he pressed, the more relief she felt, and he was willing to indulge her, especially since she was the one carrying their son. "You look beautiful, Beverly. Radiant. And Worf is going to want you there for his promotion. Besides—having you there means that we'll fulfill our requirements of having a medical provider on-site in the case of any emergency." Beverly blew out her breath, but Jean-Luc didn't stop his rubbing. "Are you in pain, Beverly?"

"Just what's to be expected," Beverly assured him, a hint of strain to her voice.

"He's on that nerve again?" Jean-Luc asked. Beverly laughed quietly and groaned in appreciation when Jean-Luc apparently hit something of a sweet spot. He took his lead from her and continued to work the spot to give her any relief that he could.

"It's beginning to feel like he's on every nerve," Beverly admitted.

"One more week, Thomas-Luc Picard, and your papa will hold you so that your mother can have some rest," Jean-Luc said. Beverly laughed quietly. They had a collection of possible names for the growing baby boy, but they hadn't settled on anything. It was difficult to settle on a name when Beverly had entered into a state of almost constant agitation over the past few days, like a persistent, low-key hum of anxious energy.

"Don't say one week, Jean-Luc," Beverly scolded. "Two, at least. Maybe three."

"Dr. Moran says a week will be fine, Beverly," Jean-Luc said, recognizing the need to tread somewhat carefully. Beverly straightened up to face him, rubbing at her belly.

"And then he has to undergo treatment for Shalaft's Syndrome," Beverly said. "That's surgery, Jean-Luc, and I don't want him to be too small or too weak."

Jean-Luc bit the inside of his mouth so that no amusement at all would show through. He trusted Dr. Moran's assessment that, if their baby boy were to come at thirty-eight weeks, he would perfectly able to undergo the treatment without much concern for his health. He also understood that, now, at thirty-seven weeks, their baby was not unhealthy. However, he respected that a very pregnant Beverly Picard, already dealing with the fact that their baby had tested positive for Shalaft's Syndrome and that there was a need for her newborn to undergo surgery to relieve it, did not want to hear anyone's reasoning about anything at all.

And Jean-Luc wasn't going to try to make her see reason just for his own satisfaction. He gave her a reassuring smile, reached out a hand, and squeezed her shoulder, before dropping his other hand back to her belly and giving it a few gentle passes to help relieve any of her discomfort that she might insist it could.

"You're right," Jean-Luc said. "Two weeks. Maybe as long as four, right?"

Neither of them had any belief at all that their little one would hold out to be overdue. Beverly had been prepared, somewhere in her mind, to carry Wesley well beyond his due date. In reality, he'd come two weeks early and, though he'd been healthy and there hadn't been complications, Beverly's history led Dr. Moran to believe that her patient wouldn't likely carry their little one too much longer.

Beverly smiled at him.

"Forty weeks is not impossible, Jean-Luc," she said. "Even forty-two can happen."

Jean-Luc caught her face and tipped it to kiss her forehead before bringing their lips together. She returned their kiss and his son, pressed between them, let him know exactly what he thought of him kissing his mother—which was exactly what he thought of her cuddling with him at night—either with her belly pressed into his back or his hand resting over the growing baby. Jean-Luc laughed to himself.

"The youngest Picard has a strong distaste for sharing his mother," Jean-Luc teased. "You look beautiful, Beverly. Are you ready? Worf will want you there, and we'll need you to monitor him when he falls in the water."

"He may not fall," Beverly offered.

"Everyone falls," Jean-Luc said. "One way or another. It's tradition."

"Maybe, if you raised the temperature of the water, there wouldn't be need for medical personnel to be present, Jean-Luc."

"It's tradition," Jean-Luc insisted, straightening Beverly's costume a little, and giving himself more opportunity to touch his wife.

He could see on her face the moment that she acquiesced to joining him at the promotion ritual.

The promotion ritual was tradition. The Enterprise was docked for R and R on Morian VII – a planet known more for the shopping opportunities it offered people than it was for any other tourist attraction. Most of the ship's personnel and their families were given time off. They were operating, really, on a skeleton crew. It was the perfect time for the senior officers to indulge in a little play time of their own.

When there was a promotion to be given aboard the Enterprise, Jean-Luc always ordered up a special holodeck program, and he preferred to do so when the ship was docked. The program was complete with a holo-matter produced pool—which gave a far greater effect than a simple hologram, because it was actually constructed and filled with water for the ceremony, thanks to their advanced holodeck technology—and the pool was filled, always, with water that was set just above the shock-inducing temperature for each individual's species.

During the ritual, the person to be promoted played the role of a captive on an old-time sailing ship. They were "accused" of everything that earned them their advanced rank, and they were made to walk the plank retrieve the mark of their new rank. The retrieval was practically impossible, and they always ended up in the water where they received a shock that was enough to set their teeth to chattering for a while but, thanks to the nearby medical personnel, they could carefully be monitored against any other real complication.

Deanna Troi had once called the tradition "barbaric," but that was only after spending a few minutes with a warming blanket following her own trip into the icy water. Each and every time, besides that one, she'd closed her mind off to the usually mostly-harmless suffering of her cold comrade, and she'd avoided the pool. Today, she would surely avoid it, since the tolerable level of cold for a Klingon with Worf's physiology would likely stop the heart of a half-Betazoid with Deanna's physiology.

The practice was, perhaps, at least a little barbaric, but nearly every ship had something of a "hazing ritual" for things like promotions.

"Good morning, Captain," Will Riker said, as Jean-Luc and Beverly stepped onto the holo-ship. Because the program ran in the special holo-matter pool, the boat rocked like a real boat, swaying with the actual movement of water in the deep holo-matter pool. Jean-Luc steadied himself immediately, as his feet recognized the new movement that they would have to consider normal, but he instinctively reached a hand out and caught Beverly's elbow, aware that her balance was not what it had been before their son had, as she often teased, taken over her body entirely. "Doctor Picard," Will said, smiling at Beverly. The new title was one that people were still becoming accustomed to using, and Beverly answered to Doctor Picard and Doctor Crusher interchangeably and without complaint. "I see we have no new Picards this morning."

"Two weeks," Beverly said with enthusiasm.

Will raised his eyebrows at Jean-Luc and, over Beverly's shoulder, Jean-Luc held up one finger. Will's slight head nod was almost imperceptible, and Beverly missed his smirk as Jean-Luc passed her off into Deanna Troi's arms for a hug, as though they hadn't seen each other for days instead of, really, hours.

Jean-Luc passed the time in conversation with Will while they waited for everything to be in place. As he often did, he kept an eye on Beverly, checking on her every now and again. Even once things started, and they brought Worf out to begin the ceremony, Jean-Luc let his eyes drift over to his wife to check on things with a quick visual check that offered him the reassurance that all was well.

Jean-Luc Picard had never imagined that he would be a man who was married with a baby on the way—possibly the first of two or three, though they had only discussed that possibility in passing until, at least, they saw how things went with the birth of their son—but he was entirely on his way to becoming a family man.

Jean-Luc had loved Beverly for what felt like most of his life, though it had certainly taken him long enough to admit it to her. He felt, at times, guilty for loving and marrying the wife of his fallen best friend—a friend who had fallen under his command—but Beverly had convinced him, when he was feeling insecure, that loving her as well as he did was something that Jack would have appreciated. He would have also appreciated that Jean-Luc had taken over, where he could, with the raising of Jack and Beverly's son, Wesley—though the boy was practically a man and required little in the way of raising.

Jean-Luc felt blessed simply to be married to Beverly and to have permission to love her as openly and as freely as he did. He had never expected, then, the absolute blessing of finding out that they had, practically on their honeymoon, conceived the baby that would be born to them any day now—or in two weeks, if his mother was controlling things.

Of course, with great happiness always came great fear. The one tragic side to having something wonderful and beautiful was the fear of losing it.

Jean-Luc wasn't overbearing, but he was protective—perhaps more than an office like his really allowed him to be—and Beverly indulged him, as did the rest of his crew, none of which doubted his genuine affection for his newly-made family.

Beverly's seat on the edge of the boat gave her a good view of Worf. With the water set at the temperature it was, with Worf's Klingon physiology in mind, he should receive a shock upon hitting the water and sinking down into the depths of the pool as much as momentum required, but he should be able to maintain control enough to surface, take hold of the side of the boat, and climb up. If he should prove to have difficulties, as Deanna had when the shock had taken her breath away a little too completely during her last ceremony, a flotation device would be thrown down to him and they would rescue him from the water—the holo-matter pool making it impossible to simply end the program as they might in a less-advanced holo-program. Beverly would be the one to monitor, from her perch, Worf's reactions to the water and to make sure that this all ended in laughter and not in any semblance of tragedy.

Jean-Luc saw Beverly's genuine laughter when Worf went into the water. The laughter continued, and he knew that Worf was fine without having to even pay close attention to the officer's protests from the water as he splashed about in the effort to gain a hold on the ladder that would allow him to climb the side of the boat.

Jean-Luc overheard the conversation between Beverly and Data—one of many conversations where Data tried to understand the nature of being human.

Why was it, exactly, that they found this tradition humorous? Data had asked something along the lines of that, and Beverly had searched for an explanation. She worried about the practice, at least until she was certain that nobody would suffer any lasting damage. The worst reaction they'd had to the tradition was Deanna's, and Beverly had felt better once her friend and fellow crewmember was safely wrapped in a warming blanket and her vitals were registering as they should be. At that point, it had become fair game to laugh sincerely at the reactions that Deanna had made until they'd successfully fished her from the nearly frozen water.

Jean-Luc missed each word of Beverly's final explanation to Data, but he caught the gist of it. She'd told him something about it all being in good fun, the reactions being funny to everyone who was watching, especially since most of them had suffered it before, at least once, and how there was something spontaneous about the pursuit of fun in humans.

And, then, Jean-Luc's heart had nearly stopped in his chest as the well-meaning android had clearly decided to practice a little spontaneity by suddenly shoving Jean-Luc's very pregnant wife backward into water that was at least ten degrees lower than what their regulations deemed the acceptable temperature for human tolerance.

Jean-Luc heard Beverly's scream on the way down, and his knees nearly buckled as he scrambled toward the side of the boat. The splash was far greater than she could cause on her own, and he reached the side in time to realize that she'd taken Worf with her, the Klingon had likely reached out for her from his hold on the side of the boat, probably intending to try to stop her fall before she plunged into the freezing water.

Immediately, Jean-Luc's mind started a countdown. Every second in the water, as cold as it was, put Beverly at danger—each passing minute only intensified that danger. Jean-Luc wasn't sure if his heart, upon realizing that, wasn't in as much danger as hers was at the moment.

Beverly didn't surface immediately. In fact, it seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for her to surface, and Worf went down after her. When Worf pulled her up, Jean-Luc heard the expected gasp reflex that came with surfacing and cold shock. Hyperventilation and choking followed as she involuntarily swallowed the freezing water, and Worf did his best to pull her head well above the water level.

"We need emergency medical personnel," Will said into his combadge, reacting before Jean-Luc could make the call. Jean-Luc's first reaction had been to signal for flotation devices to drop, and Worf was already arranging Beverly over one to try to keep her from choking on the water, her own muscles clearly already betraying her.

With the flotation devices to help him get control of the situation in the water, Worf was able to find the side of the boat and, with a combination of his natural Klingon strength and the adrenaline that would come from his need to protect Beverly, Worf was able to carry her with him as he came up the ladder. Jean-Luc and Will pulled her over the side of the boat before Jean-Luc left Will to help Worf.

In his arms, Beverly was freezing to the touch and shivering violently. She was conscious, though her eyelids sagged a little, and all her attempts to protest or say anything either came out in coughs as she tried to expel the water she'd swallowed or in sudden bursts of violent teeth-chattering.

As others hovered around them, Jean-Luc heard Deanna and Geordi attempt to explain to Data why his attempt at humor and fun hadn't been funny or entertaining at all.

Jean-Luc held Beverly close to him and tapped his combadge.

"Belay the order to send medical personnel," he said, aware that they were working on a skeleton crew and had little personnel to offer until they brought some back from their R and R. "Lock onto myself, Worf, and Doctor Picard. Beam us all directly to sickbay."