Chapter Text
The new first years stood shoulder to shoulder in the Sato Atrium, looking up at the same gallery as the previous class had. Like last year, Kelrec stood with Vance and Ake, but unlike last year the joint convocation address opened with a joyous piece played by the Academy’s orchestra.
If Kelrec teared up at the music, it was not with the same hope that everyone else in the atrium seemed to be feeling, but with a sort of despair at how – even if he’d known the direction to head in – the War College could not have formed an orchestra from its returning students. It had no arts requirement, and nowhere near enough students who played instruments to consider even a small chamber orchestra.
Last year Admiral Vance had introduced Captain Ake. This year Ni’Vari President T’Rina escorted Captain Saru forward for him to give the opening remarks. Their romance had lit up every news feed for a while, but ultimately the press had decided that their temperaments were well suited and coverage faded out. There was little remarkable about two beings so committed to equanimity and peace choosing a life together.
Before Saru started speaking, Kelrec had never considered the sheer level of accommodation needed for a semi-aquatic species to co-exist with a desert one. But that was the theme of his speech: that more than just tolerance and coexistence, the United Federation of Planets was about supporting each other so that all could prosper. It was, Saru allowed, easier to embrace the personal cost of such accommodation when motivated by love. But wasn’t choosing to enroll in the Academies (the Academies, he said, as if Starfleet Academy and the War College were interchangeable) a type of love? A love for Starfleet, for her vision of peace and discovery, a love of scientific exploration? And to that end he extolled the cadets to take what had driven them to apply and turn it to supporting each other.
Kelrec gave his own speech: honor, duty, and service. He spoke on them both as the backbone of the Federation and as qualities exemplified by the choice the cadets before him had made to attend. He mentioned the charter class that had answered his call as Acting Chancellor, knowing that their very matriculation would change the nature of the Starfleet they’d one day serve.
Captain Ake spoke after him. Her remarks – Kelrec could hardly call it a speech – once again included references to making your bed. (As if any War College cadet would ever leave their bed unmade.)
Vance gave a few words about how proud he was of all of them, and how he hoped the War College and Starfleet Academy would continue in partnership (how could they continue when they had barely begun?) and that with the faces in front of him Starfleet had a bright future. And it was on the close of Vance’s words - not Chancellor Ake’s - that the year began with cheers and fireworks and flyovers.
Tilly had attended most of the convocation events as his plus-one but Kelrec wouldn’t have ended up at the after party in Captain Ake’s office (or at Admiral Vance’s bridge tables) if it hadn’t been for Tilly. Ake had casually extended the invitation as they stood together on the gallery watching the students disperse and, when it looked like he was going to excuse himself, she’d baited the trap with Tilly.
“I’m sure Lieutenant Tilly would be delighted to see you there,” had been her exact words. And, at this point, Kelrec only had two excuses to get out of things: work and Tilly. It was a neat bit of maneuvering on Ake’s part; either Kelrec could accept and have to attend, or he could decline and invite questions about his relationship-that-wasn’t.
There were a few more hands for the chancellors to shake and a few more meetings with Doctor Kovich and various admirals before the day was done. Ake must’ve invited Vance earlier, because he joined them into the turbo lift back up to the central saucer.
When they arrived at Ake’s office, it held more people than Kelrec could have imagined would fit. There was still almost enough space to walk or chat without bumping into someone. His situational awareness was screaming about “evacuation protocols” even as his rational side knew that personal transporters made physical evacuation completely unnecessary.
Tilly was already here.
“Zeeren!” she called out when all three of them entered. “Over here!”
Looking over the assembled heads he spotted her sitting by the fireplace. She’d carved out an improbable bubble of space, including an empty seat beside her, and was waving him over. Or rather, was waving them over, because Vance invited himself right along.
Kelrec sat down on the portion of the bench that wasn’t taken up by Tilly or her tray of refreshments and Vance sat opposite with a whole bench to himself. In their limited space, Tilly was pressed even more tightly against his side than she had been when they were at the bar. He was glad for that practice, without it he would surely have flinched away from her.
“Wine?” she offered, gesturing at the bottle and glasses on the tray. Kelrec accepted, mostly for something to do with his hands that wasn’t touching Tilly, and she poured for all three of them.
From the seat opposite them, Vance sipped at his wine a little more greedily than was strictly proper. When he realized what he was doing, he switched to rubbing a finger nervously around the rim of his glass. It was objectively hilarious, the Fleet Admiral cowering before a lieutenant. However, there was one important point to consider: unlike Kelrec, Vance had not amended his speech.
“Speechwriters don’t work nights?” Tilly opened, after they’d all had some wine and the silence stretched on long enough that even Kelrec was growing uncomfortable.
“I, ah, didn’t ask them.”
Kelrec watched Tilly give Vance a look that clearly said that his excuse was not going to fly.
“Two sentences, sir.” It was perfectly clear that she was using the honorific when she meant asshole. “Two sentences was all it would have taken. Zeeren managed it quite nicely.”
Kelrec felt himself glowing with pride. He did not mention the hours it had taken to come up with those two sentences or the difficulty of keeping his speech succinct while still honoring the first Academy cadets. Instead he smirked at Vance, because when was he going to have this opportunity again?
“You must see—” Vance started to defend himself, but he never got the chance.
“Is this a private dressing down, or can anybody join?”
“Jett!” Tilly exclaimed, jumping up to hug her fellow instructor. Kelrec watched some awkward back thumping before Reno freed herself.
“Easy Red,” Reno drawled. “We’ve got the whole semester. Unless the Admiral here orders us back to the Discovery.”
“I’d hoped you would make less trouble once you were away from that ship, Commander Reno,” Vance said.
“And how’s that been working out for you, sir?” Reno needled him.
“Poorly enough I’m going to prevail on our host for a refill,” Vance said, toasting them with his now-empty glass and excusing himself. Tilly returned to Kelrec’s side as Reno slipped into the seat Vance had just vacated.
“Michael filled me in on the Commodore,” Jett said.
“Is everything gossip with you?” Kelrec snapped.
“Always has been,” both of them chorused back at him in some kind of in-joke. “Seriously though,” Reno continued, “scratch the surface and the 32nd century is running on as much favor trading, gossip, and innuendo as we ever did.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
“Me? Great. And I heard Commodore Kelrec is going to get another theater teacher certified for Tilly.”
“She’s certainly going to try,” Tilly said, bouncing a little in her seat and rumpling his jacket where it caught on her own. “Copied over the entirety of the Federation theater curricula from pre-Burn back to the Federation founding.”
“What did she forget?” Reno asked.
“Pre-Warp theater on Earth, Andoria, Qo’nos, everywhere.”
“Ouch,” Reno said with a performative flinch, “how badly are they going to fail their quals?”
“Badly.”
Reno’s next question was directed at him, “And how devastated will you be when Red here’s still teaching next year?”
Kelrec summoned up his courage and every last shred of affection he felt to pull Tilly in and press what he hoped was a credibly fond kiss to her temple. “Insurmountably,” he answered.
A Saurian in a science blue instructor’s jacket slid onto the bench next to Reno, and the two stared each other down - the Saurian blinked his inner eyelids first - before with a quick bump of the shoulders everyone was friends again.
“Zeeren,” Tilly said, “this is Linus. He’s taking leave from Discovery to teach botany.”
“Chancellor Kelrec, Tilly,” Linus greeted them, and the topic shifted naturally to the types of hydro- and aeroponics used in the Athena’s botany lab.
Once Vance beamed out, that was permission for the party to either ramp up or wind down. Fortunately, the latter prevailed. When it was down to just a handful of people, Tilly and Kelrec rose to make their own goodbyes.
He wasn’t expecting either the kiss goodnight or for her to leave without him, the ghost of her figure imprinted on his body and within his arms. In his momentary daze, everyone else left too, and then it was just him and Captain Ake.
Kelrec was still tripping over the correct politeness to excuse himself when Ake spoke.
“Take a chair,” she ordered.
He did. Through her picture window he watched as the traffic swirled around San Francisco. She replicated two glasses of something acid green and bubbly and set his on the table at his elbow. Her own went on the floor next to where she’d plopped herself in front of the other chair.
“Tilly, huh?” she asked.
“Tilly,” he answered, and looked at the drink. “Is it alcoholic?”
“As virgin as I’m pretending my cadets are,” Ake answered. “Bolian tonic water, cucumber and lime with a twist. Almost as good as the Doctor at preventing hangovers.”
“Synthehol also works for that purpose.”
“But where’s the fun in that?”
“Where indeed?” he mused, sipping at the concoction. It wasn’t bad. But with the oh seven hundred tactical seminar he had to teach tomorrow and the entire bottle of wine he and Tilly had finished off, Kelrec wasn’t going to rely on whatever-this-was. He had a hangover hypo waiting for him back in his quarters.
“What does she see in you?”
“I couldn’t say.” A safe answer.
“Well then,” Ake tilted her head backwards on the seat cushion to stare oddly up at him, “what do you see in her?”
He really, really didn’t want Ake attempting to matchmake for him again. He had to get this right. Kelrec cocked his eyebrow in the Vulcan style - he’d spent weeks learning to do that as a child - and said, “Half my age with a figure straight out of a baroque painting?”
Ake was not amused. “Try again,” she said in a voice as dry as dust. “Reno’s worried about her, and where Reno’s worried I’m worried. So we went to Lura. She said you tend towards tall, severe, and with a cutting wit.”
“Curvy, red, and with a cutting wit might also be my type,” he protested. Stars. He was caught between sheer terror and horrified fascination at who Ake might produce if she went looking for tall, severe, and with a cutting wit.
“Third time’s the charm.”
“Tilly’s… happy,” he said, because it was the truth. Stick with the truth. “Hopeful, and a little impulsive. She argued with me, in my own office, about the curriculum the very day I signed off on her transfer into the Academy. I could tell she hadn’t meant to but it just slipped out. She just kept pushing back. When I thought Starfleet Academy should look like the War College but with extra science classes, Tilly disagreed. But never in public, never to the detriment of her orders or her commission.”
“Being colleagues is not like being in a relationship.”
“But it could be the basis to grow into one.” Not that it was going to be, but it could have been.
“She was your direct report!”
“I never kissed her when she was under my command!” Thank the stars Tilly had handed him that line. The very idea was offensive, and without it Kelrec might have said something … unfortunate. He allowed himself a few deep breaths before continuing, “Although once the Academy was formally transferred to you…”
“Got it, Romeo,” Ake said, “Good Job. Great talk. If you hurt her, they’ll never find the body.”
“Commander Reno and Linus already implied as much.”
Kelrec skipped his morning run to send his mother off. At 05:20 he beamed up to the USS Apnex, it’s familiar smells soothing in a way that the sparkling new Athena’s weren’t, and waited in the aft observatory until she had a moment.
“Zeeren,” she said, all seriousness. “If I must welcome Sylvia Tilly as a daughter, I will. But a sunny disposition and friends in high places aren’t everything; your temperaments are so different. Izadora—”
“Are you headed back to Medical Outpost 489?” he gently interrupted, changing the subject.
“We are.”
“Give father my love. And the stasis crate of mangoes I had beamed into cargo bay eight while you were test-cycling the shields.”
There was a crinkle at the corner of his mother’s mouth that would have been a full blown smile on someone else. “When you get your own ship, you must come visit,” she said. “It’s been so many years, and we could see the gespar orchard.”
“I’d like that,” he said, although he only meant the visit. A ship was not for him. He stepped forward to give his mother a goodbye hug. Her grip across his back was fierce, as if she would never let him go. But she did.
“Your speech was fantastic. Reminding them that you were acting chancellor for years was brilliant. Just two sentences, no one could accuse you of sour grapes, but they couldn’t ignore what you accomplished.”
“I’m not the right person for the Academy,” he replied softly but with absolute conviction. “I know that. Who you’re going to find as a theater professor is hot gossip on the Discovery right now. With all of the Academy graduates, really. And I don’t care about it at all.”
“It is?” his mother asked, visibly startled. Then, “You don’t?” It only took a moment for her to shake it off in favor of her usual equanimity and return to the topic of his “stolen” chancellorship of Starfleet Academy. “Still, I had hoped—” she said.
“As did I.”
“—Kaiidith. Your cadets are brilliant.”
Although she was a strict one-hug-when-socially-required person, Kelrec hugged his mother again, just because he wanted to.
“Fly safe, Mom.”
“And you, Zeeren.”
Things ended much as they had begun. On the fourth day of class Kelrec came back to his office to find Tilly and her piles of PADDs already taking up one of his sofas.
“Espresso?” he offered.
“Yes, thank you.”
He poured out a cup of tea for himself, and then replicated the coffee for her.
“Thank you for all of your assistance,” he said. It was important to express gratitude when acknowledging a debt. He handed her the coffee, and she took it saucer and all.
“That’s what friends are for,” she deflected. “The food was good, the dancing was great, and the company couldn’t be beat.”
She must have been referring to Culber, Reno, or the Vances; he’d never been someone whose company “couldn’t be beat.” He retreated to the pristine couch, far enough away that he was safe from Tilly’s creeping PADD entropy.
“No, really,” he said, “I’m in your debt. Within reason.”
“There’s no debt between friends,” she insisted.
“Prior to convocation, we were colleagues. And while we appeared… friendly, this ruse was intended to be mutually beneficial. However, I have clearly benefitted far more than you.”
Tilly downed her espresso in one go, and looked him dead in the eye as she blindly set the cup and saucer down on the PADD next to her. “I am not having this conversation,” she said. “You’re like, what, one-sixteenth Vulcan?”
“Three-sixteenths, by parentage,” he allowed, “somewhat less by strict genetics.”
“Can you meld?”
“Poorly,” he said, “I don’t see—”
“Yeah, yeah, you can’t see a friend when she’s right in front of your face,” she cut him off. “So here’s what’s going to happen. I am open-er than an open book, and I’ve been told, repeatedly, that my shielding is shit. You are going to come plant your ass on the coffee table, put your fingers on my psi-points, and find out what a friend feels like.”
This was a woman willing to upbraid Admiral Vance. Kelrec didn’t stand a chance. He came and sat, and at Tilly’s expectant look raised his hand to her face. It was far more intimate than any of their kisses. It took him a moment to find both the correct positioning on her face and the place inside of him that could connect, but it seemed that it would be possible.
“My mind to your mind, your thoughts to my thoughts,” Kelrec recited, and he fell in.
Tilly had a lot of thoughts. Like, standing under a waterfall amount of thoughts. And just as many emotions, hot and cold, complimentary and contradictory. It was so foreign he found himself thrown back into his own body before he could even begin to parse the whirlwind that was Sylvia Tilly.
But one thing was abundantly clear: she was his friend.
“We’re… friends,” he said, awed.
“We’re friends,” Tilly confirmed. “Or we will be, once we break up.”
It was a ridiculous statement and yet entirely true. 100% on-brand for Sylvia Tilly. Kelrec found himself giving her, giving his friend, a rare grin. “How are we going to do that?” he asked.
“I’ll let you know once you answer two questions: Lieutenant Commander Kembhati. Is he single? And does he play parrises squares? Because he’s got the forearms for parrises squares.”
“He is single, but he prefers Bajoran springball.”
Tilly pulled up the basics of spring ball on a PADD and thought about it for a moment. “I can work with that.”
“He’s here on alternate Thursdays for curricula review. I’ll make the introductions.”