Chapter Text
Senna Tal was dying.
Senna Tal was dying and that meant his symbiote -- Tal themself -- needed a new host.
Adira sighed, pausing for a moment before entering their boyfriend’s quarters. They had been staring at the comms message on their Padd for a solid five minutes before rushing to Gray’s room a few doors down on the ship.
Factually, Adira knew that Gray was one of maybe at most ten unjoined trill on the generation ship. Factually, Adira knew that he had wanted to be joined for practically his whole life. Factually, Adira knew that he had been working remotely with the Trill Symbiosis Commission for a few years, taking virtual trainings and holo-interviews with the Commission. But they had always thought, however irrational the idea, that the possibility of Gray being joined was far off in the future, something when they were both functional adults -- maybe Adira would be working with the Federation, or the two of them would be planetside, but either way they would be off the generation ship, Gray having finished the Symbiosis Commission’s screening process and Adira there for him. The two of them had only been together for so long and, with the chaos of life hurtling through space, had only fallen into a close rhythm a year ago, considering each other family in place of those they had lost. Adira had often envisioned this possibility, but in the far future, a hazy dream of what might be not a reality crushing down on them so fast. Adira squeezed their eyes shut for a second, swallowing nerves about the status quo of their relationship changing in front of them.
“Hey,” Adira said softly as they opened the door, their voice almost trembling. They didn’t need to knock. “Hey, you,” Gray’s voice was colored sweet with a half-hearted smile as he motioned Adira over towards him. He was sitting on a his bed on the other side of the room, knees curled up at his chest and a Padd in his hand. “I assume you say the comms?”
Adira nodded. The news of Senna Tal’s near death wasn’t public to the whole ship yet; Gray had forwarded them a comm the available trills had all received with simply “talk now?” attached. Adira sat down next to Gray, the two of them nudging into a comfortable position, their legs folded under their body in a way that somehow conveyed both comfort and anxiety. Gray placed his Padd down on the blanket next to them, swallowing deeply.
“I’m the best canidate for joining,” Gray said, his voice practiced. He wasn’t looking at Adira, but at his hands in his lap, picking at his nails. “I’m the youngest trill on this ship and I’ve done enough trainings with the Symbiosis Commission to be prepared… the CMO already tested my compatibility with the symbiote and there shouldn’t be any bad health effects, there shouldn’t be… and I’ve-”
“My love,” Adira’s voice was soft as they cut off Gray’s rambling. They put their hands on top of their boyfriend’s, stopping his nervous movements. Gray looked up, their eyes locked as Adira began to speak again. “Look, I’m not going to lie to you, this is scary, and I honestly never thought it would happen. I don’t entirely know what to expect or what’s going to happen, but -- I know how much this means to you, and I know how much you have put into this. I read the comms and you’re right: you are the best choice for joining, but not the only one. It’s your choice, and if you want to go ahead and join with this squid, I’ll be there for you.”
“For us,” Gray smiled, holding Adira’s hands as he turned to fully face them. “Thank you, really. I don’t know why I was so nervous about this.”
They hugged, arms still trembling a little. Gray pulled away, though, his eyes narrowing, “Did you call the symbiote, y’know, an important cultural element of trill society, a squid? The earth creature that secretes black goo regularly?”
Adira laughed, “Hey! They do more than… secrete black goo regularly. Remember the nature documentary I made you watch a few months ago? They’re very adaptable and can change their colors to fit their environment… Plus squids live in the water like the symbiotes do on Trill? And they kind of float around inside you, right? It wasn’t the most thought out analogy, okay?”
“Nerd,” Gray said, giggling.
He pulled the Padd from the sheets behind him, beginning to respond to the comm about Tal. He wasn’t going to respond without talking to Adira first, but when he first got the comm, he had read the message over so many times he knew exactly what it said, knew exactly how he wanted to respond. Gray had wanted to be joined with a symbiote for as long as he could remember. Having lost his family early, on a strage generation ship with strange species around him and a strange body, Gray felt like becoming joined would be one thing he could control. It would be a way to connect with a culture and a people he was a part of, but hadn’t been able to really be immersed in since before his parents were gone. He smiled as he wrote, the programmable matter in his Padd creating a keyboard. He was going to get a... squid.
“Promise me one thing,” Adira said, watching Gray type his reply. “I know it’s selfish, but I fell in love with you, not Tal. Promise me you’ll still be you.”
Gray looked up to see Adira’s eyes big. “I can’t promise that I won’t change -- that’s part of the process -- but I’m not going to lay down on that operating table one person and I wake up a completely different person -- or six different people. I’ll still be me”
Adira nodded, but their eyes were closed. “Hey,” Gray’s voice was gentle, gently taking Adira’s hands in his as he spoke, their eyes opening again. “Even if I do change, I’ll still love you. That won’t change. You’ve watched me change before. You’ve watched the others on the ship not really know if I was the same person before, watched my appearance change. I promise, no matter what happens, I’ll be there, I’ll love you. No matter what.”
---
Sitting next to his bed in sickbay, Adira was holding Gray’s hand. They didn’t need to talk anymore; it had been a few days since they had first discussed Gray joining, and the two had reached a sweet understanding around it. Medical staff were moving around the room, tending to other patients and prepping the area for the two trill. Adira and Gray tried not to focus on the movement around them, lost in their own minds and individual anxieties. Senna Tal, already unconscious, was lying on a bed behind Gray, as if a looming reminder of why they were there. Adira was confident about the joining process, confident in Gray, in their relationship, but there was a little fear in the back of their head, something nagging about the what ifs and worst case scenarios about if something went wrong. They had worried so much about joining changing Gray’s personality that they hadn’t taken much time to fret over the medical risks of the procedure.
Adira’s left hand slowly traced the spot’s on Gray’s forehead as the two sat together. Adira had always liked the spots: dark brown swirls and dots created patterns that reminded them of constellations. The spots were the only visual marker of Gray being different from Adira, an alien. However many times Gray told them the spots were incredibly mundane, as normal as Adira’s round ears or dark ears, Adira always found them as mythical as the constellations they learned as a kid.
“Stop! That tickles,” Gray laughed lightly, his eyes bright and sparkling. Adira did, blushing as they put down their hand.
Last night the two had re-dyed Gray’s hair for the occassion, and the hair on the top of his head was a bright blue, falling on the stark white pillow like the cascading fields of dark bluebells on Risa. It was a sort of ritual between the two to re-dye Gray’s hair together before important events now. The blue was one of the first changes Gray made when he started to transition, and it was now something that he felt as part of his identity, giving him confidence. Asking Adira to help him re-dye it was always a moment of trust, as if he was trusting them with bandaging a wound rather than coloring his hair.
After a moment, Gray looked into Adira’s eyes, speaking softly softly, “Stay with me… please.”
And so Adira stayed with him as long as the doctors would let them.
When the doctors finally kicked Adira out of the operating room, they stayed in a small waiting area connected to sickbay, pacing across the room. Others came and went, swinging open the sickbay doors, heading out groggily with a hypo in hand, or leaving in the medical uniform at the end of a long day. But Adira waited, first pacing, then read all the signs up in the waiting room, trying their hand at a few push-ups, then pulling out a piece of cardstock and some colored pencils from a drawer supplied to keep toddlers busy.
Adira got to work, trying to keep their mind from wandering as their hands were busy. They folded the paper in half, and began to write a small note inside. Nothing deep -- there was a lot they didn’t have to say, a lot that they had already said. They grabbed as many colors as they could from the bag on the table and got to work on the cover of their card. Adira’s hand was light and pencil strokes fast; they were intuitive, adding touches of blue to the salmon-colored swath on the paper without much thought. Adira had always thought this method a little cheap, flying from the seat of their pants rather than having a real plan. Gray loved it, though. He said it complemented their work in engineering, that it was “unfair they got to be an art genius and a scientific genius.” (Adria thought it was unfair Gray got to be the kindest boyfriend and have an immortal squid living in him.)
Adira put down their pencil, looking back at their work with the first smile on their face since they left sickbay. On the front of the card was a multicolored squid spotted on the sides. It’s tentacles flowed around a big red round heart, with “get well soon” printed in block letters in the cartoon heart.
It was messy, lines going everywhere and colors inconsistent. But it was made with love, messy and genuine just like the two of them.