AN: Here we are, another piece to this one. I'm trying to find my swing with it, again.
I do hope you enjoy! If you do, please do let me know.
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Sex was off the table.
Beverly removed it, entirely. It wasn't up for discussion. It wasn't a possibility. It was something that, for the time being, simply didn't even exist on the planet on which they resided—at least, not beyond the discussions of actual animal husbandry that came up while they tossed around ideas about creating something sustainable for the possible long-term existence that they might know on the planet.
But sex with Jean-Luc? That wasn't even an option. Beverly had given a hard and definitive "no." She held firm to that, too, repeating it calmly and clearly whenever it was necessary—much like she'd done with Wesley, when he was still learning that such a word existed, and that he would not get everything he wanted in just the way and time in which he desired it.
There was a very distinct power in removing the option from the table entirely. Beverly realized that, and she wielded it with benevolence, but with a firm hand, nonetheless.
The fishing nets worked wonderfully. They needed more for backup, so she dedicated some time to making those, but they were able to set the nets and come back to enough for a good meal, any time they wanted. They released what they didn't plan to eat, always, never wanting to take more than they needed from their new home.
With the need to focus his mind on other thoughts, perhaps, Jean-Luc put a great deal of energy into exploring the ship—at least the parts they deemed safe enough for entrance—and coming up with ways to cook more effectively. Before Beverly even realized how his design was adapting, he'd created something that she could only think of as a quite impressive portable contraption that functioned in many ways like the stoves and ovens of the past. It would allow for several different kinds of cooking. The only problem, of course, was that the temperature was difficult to control. Still, Jean-Luc had a fair amount of time and energy, and he was also dedicated to really learning any tricks that may exist behind moving the range—as he called the contraption—to different positions above the fire to control how the food was cooked. In addition, he was also experimenting with the idea of heating rocks in the fire to change how he controlled different aspects of cooking their food.
Jean-Luc and Beverly sat quietly, some days, and observed the fauna of their surrounding area. They purposefully watched as animals came and went. They paid attention to the insects—noting which seemed to perform functions, and which seemed to be little more than pests that stung or bit.
They tasted, every now and again, a new creature to see if they would become ill from eating it, or if they would draw nutrition from it—including the insects. They cooked everything, neither of them feeling brave or feral enough to rip into once-living creatures with their teeth, without at least having that feeling of safety and civility that passing them over a fire offered.
They had their share of occasionally finding things that didn't agree with them—always careful to barely taste things, at first, to lessen the volatility of their resulting illnesses and the chance that anything might prove to actually be fatal—but they'd also slowly increased the number of things that they knew were safe to eat in their environment.
Sitting quietly and watching the animals, they observed what was prey and what was predator. They learned where things lived, which animals preferred which times of day, and they studied what seemed to be the food source of each animal, which also led them a little more quickly toward certain plants and roots that might be safe for them to consume.
At first, sitting quietly and simply observing for long periods of time was difficult. It was as foreign to Beverly—and to Jean-Luc, as well—as trying to speak Filantanese or any other language deemed nearly impossible for human tongues and made possible to understand only by universal translators.
Sitting still and calm—and idle—for so long made their muscles twitch. It made them nervous and anxious, at first. It stirred up some desire within them to practically flee.
It was, Beverly knew, nothing more than the twitching of two nervous systems that were very well trained to be alert and almost always productive and at work. They had both spent most of their lives in a state of near-panic. There were always deadlines to meet. There were things to be done. There were tasks that must be accomplished in impossibly small pockets of time. There were things put off that simply must be done the moment a single pocket of "free time" presented itself.
And, very often, the dedication to always moving and always working had been something of a case of life or death for both of them.
If they delayed too long, with certain tasks, they might lose a life—their own or someone else's.
The two of them had learned well how to carry that urgency over into all things—even things where a quiet, calm approach would have been better.
Slowly, though, their bodies began to adjust. Their nervous systems started to adjust. The racing thoughts and the near-panic feelings that each moment that slipped by was a wasted moment during which the most important thing ever should have happened, started to slow. Those thoughts and feelings didn't fade entirely, of course, but they began to get quieter. They began to calm.
And, sometimes, Beverly would find Jean-Luc's hand and, in those quietest moments, she would simply hold it. There would be nothing else—no discussion of what the hand-holding meant, no seeking for further touch, nothing. All there was, in those moments, was the quiet holding of a hand—the silence broken, only, by the occasional deep breath or sigh of comfort and contentment.
Sometimes, Beverly would feel the gentle brush of Jean-Luc's thumb as he rubbed it over her fingers, while they held hands. Whether intentional or unintentional, she didn't know. She didn't ask. She simply enjoyed it.
And when they left those hours of observation, they didn't talk about the handholding. They didn't talk about the touch. They didn't talk about what it might mean, or what it might lead to. After all, Beverly had taken everything off the table.
At first, truly, Jean-Luc had been like a child with a puzzle toy. Knowing that she'd taken the choice away from him, he wanted nothing more than to get it back on the table. He was like a man with a fever, always trying to bring it back up. He tried to question, several times a day, when it might be back on the table. He'd sought reassurance that, one day, it would return.
Yet, after enough of Beverly's kind but firm refusals to hear him or discuss it, he had started to calm, much like the learning to be still and quiet had started to calm their nervous systems.
Beverly thought that, as he calmed, he became easier to be with. Their time together became more relaxed. It was nice. They were what they had always been—two people who loved each other very much—but there was no pressure for anything more. With everything else clearly removed from the table, there was no pressure to seek a definition and to advance things or, in failing to advance them, to admit some kind of failure or defeat.
They were free to simply be together, in a relaxed state, with both of them working toward the same goals in harmony.
And, quietly and privately, so as to not disrupt what she felt was happening, Beverly thought that the calm might be the best environment for the "something more" to secretly grow, unobserved and unbothered—unscrutinized.
She enjoyed it for what it was, and she knew that Jean-Luc did, too—especially since he hardly noticed it and didn't seem intent on troubling it or trying to force it into any mold.
In the evenings, sometimes, when the evening meal was done, but the sun was still out enough to keep the chill of the dusk from wrapping around them, and any wind that blew was cool and crisp, and not the biting cold that would come as the sun sank down lower, they would sit outside their little house and enjoy the fading traces of the day. Beverly would bring a blanket, and she'd drape it over their shoulders. Jean-Luc would make room for her, as they sat side-by-side, and she would curl under his arm and close to his body under the guise of sharing the warmth of the blanket and the warmth of their bodies against the cold.
And they would practice being still and quiet, together.
Every now and again, Beverly would find that she drifted off to sleep, only to be gently awakened, later, when Jean-Luc was ushering her back inside to finish their nighttime chores and get ready for bed.
They discussed building fences, and they discussed building greenhouses. Jean-Luc sketched ideas in a notebook, and he and Beverly discussed ways to improve upon those ideas. Every now and again, they searched for materials they might use to make those sketches into reality—though they hadn't, yet, begun to bring any of them off the page.
Together, they collected seed packets and other equipment that they knew was on the ship. They gathered "relief" supplies that was carried, often, in case they were the closest ship to a Federation planet that might be experiencing some kind of crisis. They cursed, together, the lack of rudimentary tools that Starfleet clearly assumed they could either replicate or that these planets would simply have on hand, and then they put their heads together to make their own tools for every need they encountered.
Without any real knowledge of the planet's weather cycles, Beverly spent some of her time documenting what she did know about the weather. She recorded it religiously in a notebook that she kept, tracking the temperatures, to the best of her ability to guess, and the rain and sun.
They could put off planting the seeds they had as long as was necessary. She would rather wait than go into the whole thing blind and plant their precious seeds, just to lose any chance of a harvest because she hadn't spent at least a little time trying to figure out how the planet's environment truly worked.
At the very least, keeping careful track of the weather also helped her to keep track of the passing of days.
It was easy to lose track of days, after all. They passed, many like the one before. The sun came up, and the sun went down. In between, there were tasks to accomplish, there were future plans to discuss, and there were moments of life that simply happened. Some days, there were big accomplishments, but most days passed simply like a low hum that blended into everything else, unless they tried to pay extra attention to those passing moments.
They didn't talk about Starfleet as much as they had when they had first arrived.
Starfleet might be coming, but they couldn't live their lives counting on that—that much was simply truth.
They talked of relatively little, honestly, except the lives they were living, the future that they might know together on the planet, and what was happening around them. Survival was quiet and plodding—boring, even, for the two of them who had known many periods of nearly unending adventure. For the time being, though, survival was also all-consuming.
There would only be time for frivolous things when they were confident of their own continued existence.
And Beverly's careful study of the weather told her that things were cooling down. The world around them was cooling down. The cold nights remained cold, but the days were cooler, too.
And they needed to think about that. They needed to plan for that. They needed to imagine what they might do to keep animals for food—and to keep those animals warm—through however long the cold may last. They needed to think about what they could grow, and how they could grow it, to keep plants and roots available to them. They needed to think about how to keep their little home warm enough that they could survive whatever temperatures the planet might offer them.
They needed to prepare for what might happen if the world around them started to go into hibernation—especially as a species that didn't hibernate.
They needed to consider, best, how to continue to thrive, and how to continue to grow their little home around them, even if everything else around them was slowly headed for a cycle of stagnation and possibly death.
Because, as the days trudged on, and the days turned to weeks, which were slowly giving way to months on the planet—a place they must truly start to see and treat as "home,"—Beverly starting to become aware of more than the flora and the fauna of the planet, of the changing of the temperatures, and of the potential for a coming winter and period of hibernation.
Beverly was slowly starting to become aware of a particular type of growth that she knew wouldn't stop for hibernation or for cold. She was aware of a type of growth that, for the time being, she could keep quite to herself. Sooner or later, though, she knew that she would have to share it with Jean-Luc.
And, when she did, she knew that the nature of their conversations would shift, once again—this time moving into territory that Jean-Luc had never trod before.
It was early still, but whether or not they found others already living on the planet—which they hadn't found yet, not that they'd ventured too far in search of them—Beverly and Jean-Luc wouldn't be alone for long.