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“You know, that much caffeine is hardly healthy,” Hugh’s voice was as warm as usual, but there was a twinge of exasperation in his tone, like he’d had this conversation five times this week already.
“Look,” Paul said as he took his coffee mug from the replicator. “I have alien DNA in my arm; if I was seriously concerned about what’s healthy, I would’ve been concerned a bit ago. Plus, I have to run three diagnostics today and write a report on that anomaly we found that I haven’t started yet. Hey - Tilly, back me up here.”
“Wh-” she turned from the replicator bay next to them, big hair moving in her face as she grabbed her own plate, laughing lightly. “Yea, don’t let him get on your case too much. Engineering really has a lot of work this week, I get it. Caffeine’s my best friend.”
On the other side of the room, Adira rubbed their eyes as they half-stumbled into the mess hall. It was way too early to be awake. (Most times before ten were way too early to be awake.) The mess hall was a light cacophony of loud chatter, fragments of conversation whispered across a pile of pancakes floating to Adira’s ear. The new uniforms allowed the movement always present in the morning to take on a colorful dance, with strips of primary colors and white twisting as people sat down with friends, a flow in and out of the long room taking on patterns of color.
It’d been a few weeks since Adira had first stepped on the Discovery , and they were starting to feel like the ship was home, it was starting to feel like they belonged in this bustling room. It had been so much, adjusting to the new voices in their head, the new experiences that had somehow been there for decades, barely knowing who Adira was anymore. Whether it be luck or fate or something in between, they had managed to find people that were slowly making them feel like they -- Adira, not just Tal -- belonged somewhere.
They looked over their shoulder for a second, seeing Gray materialize to their left, yawning. (Adira wasn’t sure if the past hosts trill slept, and had a sneaking suspicion that Gray pretended to be tired sometimes to either be annoying or try to get Adira to go to bed.) For so long, the two of them had been each other’s home, only having each other as family.
And now they were still each other’s home, their family, but just not alone in this role.
“Mornin’ sleepyhead,” Gray said, smiling lopsidedly.
“Morning,” Adria smiled back as they began to head over to the replimat, their hands interlaced with Gray’s.
They wondered not for the first time if this is what it was like for all joined trill: to have someone whispering in your ear, to have a little voice in the back of their head as a presence always there. Did other trills get this overwhelmed? Did other trills feel this sense of floating, alone in a void, as if their self was adrift in a sea among six others? They wished they had another trill to guide them through this -- someone who wasn’t sharing their headspace.
Adira was fairly certain from listening to Gray talk excitedly about the joining process years ago -- they really wished they had paid more attention to their ramblings then, if only they had known how truly relevant it would become -- that most trill hosts couldn’t see the past hosts unless they performed a special right of emergence. So how could they still interact with Gray?
They had no real evidence for it, but Adira had a working theory that they could still see and interact with the past host because of how close the two had been before Adira’s joining. If a symbiote had to be on board with a successful joining, it would reason that the past hosts had some input on the relationship between the new host and symbiote. A bond that transcends death was one that could transcend the tradition of symbiote joining, right?
Adira was brought out of their thoughts by a familiar voice calling their name behind them. It was Culber, giving them a small wave from a table he shared with Stamets a little behind them. Adira waved back, taking their small cereal bowl and warm mug of coffee from the replicator and walking towards the doctor.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked as Adira sat down, with Gray in the empty seat to their right, both his feet curled up.
Adira made a vaguely comprehensible mumble in response as they took a sip of their coffee.
“See, they get it,” Stamets said, gesturing vaguely to Adira. They raised an eyebrow, recognizing an old argument, but not feeling the need to instigate the two by asking. Adira really appreciated Stamets and Culber taking them under their wing, but man, they really acted like an old married couple sometimes. (Which, to be fair, they were, taking they had jumped into the future into consideration.)
“Wow, you look like a mess,” Stamets remarked, putting down his fork, “How much sleep did you get last night?”
Adira batted his hand away from fixing their hair with a smile, “Hey! I slept enough! Stop fussing over me.” Even if Adira wouldn’t admit it, he had a point: their hair did look a lot like the mess of tangled cords Adira had left in engineering for some poor ensign to fix.
After a pause as they were scarfing down their food, Adira heard a voice from their right, "What if instead of milk in your cereal you put in your coffee. Seems more efficient, huh."
They tried to keep a straight face for a moment, but Gray’s obnoxious smile won out and Adira almost spit their coffee onto the table. Hand on his chin, Gray looked almost satisfied.
“Hate you,” Adira grumbled at him, grabbing a napkin from the middle of the sleek table to wipe their face. They were grinning.
“Love you, too.”
“Okay, now you really seem like you didn’t get enough sleep,” Stamet’s hands were splayed in front of him as he talked, smiling. He knew it was Gray.
---
“I know Adira’s name,” Michael said. Her voice had mostly reverted to the monotone color of her vulcan raising, their relationship still a little strained since the nebula. “You don’t need to keep calling them your kid.”
“I know,” Paul smiled as the two rounded the corner towards engineering. Michael was a big fan of the “walking and talking” briefing style. “But I’m proud of them. Anyway, they were looking into using the antimatter residue from Osyrra hacking the ship as a way to help stimulate spore growth and then we found a weird signal coming from this trinary system close to federation headquarters.”
The two walked into engineering as Paul was still talking, his hands still moving. The room was quiet, save for the hum of electronics at work and the soft humming of one of the ensigns in the corner. The crew walked around silently, working together like the structured instruments in a Kasselian Opera. The spore cell had a small patch of chewed gum stuck to the corner that Stamets hadn’t gotten to clean off yet. (Reno’s offering. The two of them were in a begrudging argument over something , but nobody had dared to ask it about yet.)
Michael and Paul made their way to Adira’s station, their light blue screen emitting a soft glow on their face as their hands dragged across the display deftly. Right before the two reached Adira, the young cadet started laughing loudly about seemingly nothing, still looking between the screen in front of them and a padd with scribbled notes in their other hand.
When nobody else in the room reacted, Michael raised an eyebrow, “Cadet?”
“Oh, Gray said something stupid,” Adira looked up at the voice, recognizing Michael. “Captain, sorry, Gray said something stupid, Captain.”
“It’s just Michael,” she laughed lightly, breaking a smile for the first time since she started talking to Stamets in the hallway. “What did you find?”
Adira launched in an explanation of how they had been receiving an unexpected signal from a seemingly uninhabited system a barely a lightyear away from federation headquarters. Their words were fast, using words Gray didn’t really understand and switching screens to show Michael some charts he couldn’t fully see. Gray had always been much more of a humanities person, a bit of a history nerd, but always struggled to grasp the abstract concepts Adira would rant about.
They never saw it, never saw how much of a genius they were. All the tired nights ranting about positronic fields and the way the federation used to use dilithium to Gray -- listening intently with his hand on his chin and eyes full of love, but only partially comprehending -- and they still had never saw it.
Adira had finished their briefing and the three were now discussing intently their plan going forward. (What could they have found? Was it dangerous? Should they go out there? Should they tell Vance?)
Gray smiled, watching them talk animatedly from his spot leaning against the wall. He barely had Tal before he died -- died, he died: Gray had taken some time to himself to process that fact right after he first found he could appear to Adira, but it still somehow didn’t feel real to say. Sometimes Gray felt like he was a waste of a host, like he didn’t contribute anything to the symbiote’s experience of the world. Sometimes he thought about Adira’s knowledge of the ship’s engines, their ability to pick up how the spore drive interface works, about how when he was first joined, he suddenly knew how to speak all these new languages and play the cello. He thought about how new hosts of Tal would gain Adira’s skills, how they would be able to suddenly fix a recoiler without thinking about it.
But what would they gain from him?
Gray never voiced these concerns -- the only person who could hear him was Adira, and they would tell him he was being stupid, that he didn’t see how unique his experience was, how important his worldview was to them, and therefore how important it had to be to any future hosts. They would cup his face and list all the things they had learned from Gray until he laughed and told them to stop embarrassing him. They would hold his hands and tell him it wasn’t his fault he had died before he got to go change the world, that he had already changed their world.
But that didn’t change a little thought at the back of Gray’s head nagging him about how little he would be able to pass on. Gray loved Adira, and they’d never trade whatever visibility their bond had granted him for anything. Gray loved talking with Adira, loved making weird faces at them during meetings and watching them struggle to keep a straight face, loved holding their hand under the table as reassurance of a familiar presence while they were giving their first important briefing to the whole engineering crew.
When he was given as much of a body as everyone else in the nebula, he was able to really realize what he had been missing: as much as he loved Adira being able to see him, Gray also wanted to, needed to, interact with someone else.
Gray sighed deeply and, for a moment, flickered out of visibility. He needed to close his eyes for a moment.
He didn’t want to be seen for a moment, not by anyone.
---
In their time on the Discovery, a lot of the crew had offered Adira a tour of the ship at least once (many more than once) but they always turned them down. Adira and Gray had dedicated as many of Adira’s off-days as possible to exploring the ship. They didn’t need anyone to tell them where things were on the new ship; it would take the fun out of being in a new place.
Walking around the generation ship and talking about nothing in particular and everything important had been how they first got to know each other, so why stop the habit now? There hadn’t been many people on their old ship with the care and free time to take the two teens around the ship and tell them where all the alcoves and passageways were, leading to many nights the two were found in a Jefferies tube chatting or hanging from a hidden ceiling panel, too afraid to jump down even though they had jumped up there with no trouble.
The Discovery was a bit like a museum, but in a charming way. After they had docked at the federation headquarters, the retrofit of Discovery created a level of hodge-podge that reflected the crew well.
Gray was the first to find what the two eventually dubbed the Turbolift Chasm. He could only interact with Adira, but could wander in the real world a bit on his own. If he went too far, it would all seem to fade out of existence, the world becoming a little less tangible, but it was the best he could do.
Adira hadn’t yet gotten to asking someone why exactly the Discovery has a void in the middle of the ship for the turbolifts to maneuver in. It seemed hardly space efficient -- the old generationship the two of them spent their childhood on had a more sophisticated design, with technology similar to the transporters working on a smaller scale to change the size of turbolifts as they moved through the ship’s walls. It was likely that the federation simply couldn’t retrofit the Discovery ’s turbolift system in the short time they had for the process, but Adira was sure if they dedicated time to the project that they could come up with a more efficient system.
They wouldn’t be attempting any such project for any time, though: Adira and Gray had found the Turbolift Chasm was a great hangout spot. There were little grooves on the sides of the walls, which made an excellent climbing area, and the two had created a sport of jumping from the roof of one turbolift to another rising below them.
And so, one day -- a late morning, one when Adira got to sleep in and wear sweatpants around the ship -- the two teens found themselves talking about the latest holonovel on the top of a stationary turbolift (really, had anyone seen that plot twist coming?) when Gray spotted another turbolift moving abnormally slow past them. The elevator was moving barely a few inches off where their legs were swinging.
“Wanna bet we can jump onto that one?” Gray asked, pointing to the turbolift with one hand as his other half-punched Adira’s shoulder.
Adira snorted, nudging Gray back, “C’mon, you go first.”
He smiled, and both of them stood. Gray deftly took a step off the turbolift roof onto the moving one, his movement fluid like he was moving in water. He stood again, having crouched in his landing, and extended an arm up, as if in invitation. Adira paused for a moment, taking a deep breath as they readied themselves and jumped… and--
Without warning, the turbolift Gray stood on jerked, moving backwards much faster than it had been moving earlier. Gray’s body was pushed forwards by inertia, then he almost fell, trying to keep his footing on the speeding box. Adira, on the other hand, had already stepped off the turbolift roof the two had been talking on peacefully, expecting an easy landing.
Now there was nothing beneath their feet, nothing for their arms to grab onto.
The ground spun. The sky was a blur of metal corners. A flash of bright blue flew into Adira’s vision as Gray moved to look down. All Adira could hear was a vague shout from Gray and the muffled brrr of the turbolifts amplified into a strange lullaby.
They landed on an ascending turbolift, a blunt movement causing a dull pain on their back. Adira had fallen enough in their years wandering the generation ship alone that they knew they’d be fine but damn, did it still hurt.
Gray materialized next to Adira, kneeling over them. He tapped Adira’s Starfleet badge, his voice breaking, “O-one to sickbay.”
Nothing happened.
Adira smiled, “You’re a ghost, silly. They can’t hear you,” they tapped their badge again, smile breaking as they saw Gray’s face fall. They could follow his line of thought -- what if Adira hadn’t been caught by the other turbolift, what if they weren’t conscious to call for help, what if he was left trying to find someone, anyone, unable to be heard or seen? -- and wasn’t going to entertain it, “One to sickbay.”
Adira’s eyes fluttered open to bright lights above and two warm, but clearly worried faces looking over them. They felt a little worse for wear, and could feel a bruise forming on their thigh -- that won’t be fun to sit on -- but honestly could have expected worse.
“You should be fine by tomorrow afternoon,” it was Culber, “I got a hypo in your system and am giving you tomorrow morning shift off to sleep it off. Doctor’s orders.”
“But I feel fi-”
Culber broke off Adira’s protests with a hand on their shoulder, his presence kind, but words stern, “You may feel fine, but first of all, the injured muscles on your back aren’t going to heal themselves, and secondly -- more importantly -- I don’t want you to scare me like that again. What were you even doing ?”
From the other side of the bed, Gray spoke, “Some pretty stupid stuff, but it was my fault anywa-”
It was Adira’s turn to cut someone off, taking Gray’s hand at the side of the biobed in theirs, “No one could’ve seen that coming. It wasn’t your fault at all, honey.”
Culber knit his brow, putting the pieces together of the one-sided conversation, “So… Gray’s getting you in trouble now?” Looking pointedly on the other side of the bed where Culber guessed Gray might be standing (he wasn’t), he continued, “Normally I’d say if you ever hurt Adira again you better watch out, but honestly you’re already dead… so take this as another promise to find a way for you to be seen by everyone so I can properly threaten you.”
Culber turned away briefly to type something on his padd, then turned back to the two quickly, having second thoughts. He focused his eyes on Adira this time, feeling more comfortable knowing he wasn’t talking to empty space. “You know that was a joke, right? Gray: don’t hurt Adira or we’ll have words, but you’re part of the family too. I know I can’t see you right now, but I know you’re there and I know how much you mean to Adira. How much you mean to me -- and Paul -- too because of that. And Adira: seriously, what did you do?”
Adira laughed lightly, “It was some pretty stupid stuff I guess.”
---
“I hate taking orders from a child,” Jett mumbled to herself as she fiddled with a self-sealing stem bolt that definitely wasn’t self-sealing.
Stamets was on an away mission and, with Tilly on the bridge, had put Adira in charge of any spore drive problems. It was mostly a formality -- he really just didn’t want Book to mess up anything vital in case of an emergency. Adira really doubted anything would happen, but Stamets was a little overprotective of his projects.
“ Technically, we’re older than her,” Gray said, his chin leaning up on Adira’s shoulder.
Adira was biting their thumbnail, their other hand gripping their elbow anxiously. They had asked Reno for some help fitting back together a broken console, and, if the streak of messy grease on her face was any indication, the pieces weren’t shoving themselves back together any better for Jett than they had for Adira.
Turning their head to look at their boyfriend awkwardly, Adira quietly responded, “Y’know, I’m the human here, but I don’t think that’s exactly how it works.”
“Look, kid,” Jett stood up after a couple more moments, sighing. She either didn’t hear Adira’s words or was too engrossed in her work to say anything about it. “I did my best, and it isn’t perfect. Should work, though. I won’t tell anyone it isn’t as good as new if you don’t.”
Jett chuckled, wringing her hands out in a rag she carried with her before turning away.
“Adira, weren’t you gonna-” Gray slid his head off Adira’s shoulder to look at them with one quirked eyebrow. (Maybe being a vulcan hologram in the nebula had rubbed off on him a bit.)
Adira scrunched up their face before breaking off Gray, pressing their lips tight, debating whether to speak. Voice rising fast, they said, “Hey, uh - Commander. Yea, uh…. since you’re here I wanted to ask for your help. Do… do you know Stamet’s favorite color? I know it sounds silly but….”
“It’s okay, kid. I’m pretty sure it’s purple, but he’s a fairly private guy, so I’m not really sure,” Jett said as Adira’s voice trailed off, her words confident despite saying she wasn’t. She had walked back over to Adira, leaning heavily on the console she had just fixed. “Why? An’ why do you think I know?”
Adira wrung out their hands, “It’s kinda dumb but-”
“No it’s not,” Gray’s voice was steady from next to Adira, his hand on their shoulder. Jett raised an eyebrow, glancing briefly next to Adira, but said nothing. It looked like someone had told her about Gray. Maybe she was closer with the doctor than it seemed.
“I’ve been on Discovery for almost a year now and I wanted to make Stamets and Culber a quilt as a thank you gift for helping me get used to… everything. It’s a sort of memory blanket from old Earth; I used to make them for people who were really important to me: my dad, before he died, and Gray, before he,” Adira glanced to Gray, who smiled sadly, nodding. “... Before he died. Anyway, I’m almost done and just needed to finish the binding edge. I wasn’t thinking too hard about it, but then Gray asked what color I was going to make the binding and I guess I just thought maybe I could ask? I wanted it to be a surprise for them, so you were my best bet, sorry.”
“No, no, don’t worry about it. That’s actually really sweet, kid. They’re lucky to have you,” Jett smiled and opened her mouth for a second, her eyebrows crinkled. She looked like she was trying to decide if she wanted to say something else, and eventually landed on doing so, “Would… would you want any help? With finishing the quilt, I mean?”
“What?” Adira said, truly not expecting that response. Smiling, Gray nudged them, and Adira shook themselves, “I mean yea, of course you can help. Come by my quarters tonight. I’ll bring some snacks.”
Later that night, Adira found themselves looking at the unfinished quilt, laid out in the middle of their quarters with the binding edges pinned, each a different color. One side had purple for Stamets, one green for Culber, one yellow for Adria, and dark blue for Gray. The quilt was pretty big to start with, but their cramped cadet’s quarters made it seem even bigger, laid out across Adira’s small twin bed and falling onto the floor.
One block had a set of piano keys, set next to another block with a blocky cello rendering, for the nights Adira and Stamets (and Gray, who managed to backseat drive cello playing) had practiced music together. One block had a sketchy replica of the Xahean markings on Adira’s face in the nebula. There were some marshmallows for the time Adira came to sickbay complaining about a “headache” just to get a hug and hot cocoa on a rough day. One block was a brightly colored fish, representing the away mission where Adria overestimated their ability to hold their breath and had to be pulled out of the freezing water, hacking (apparently having a squid in your belly didn’t mean your body could really act like one).
“You have nothing to worry about,” Gray’s voice was warm, watching as Adira rearranged the replicated sewing supplies the fourth time in the last ten minutes. “You’ve worked with her countless times. What do you think is going to happen?”
Adira sighed, “I don’t know… she’s just kinda intimidating. I don’t know why she asked to help. What would she want to do with my dumb quilt project? I mean-”
The door chimed, cutting off Adira mid-sentence. Jett came in, looking out of place in her gray uniform, contrasting against the room’s brighter decorations. Adira wasn’t going to pry, but something about Jett’s demeanor had lost it’s ordinary spunk. She took one of her hands out of her pocket to wave in greeting, but stuck them both back firmly in her pockets, “Hey, kid.”
“Commander! Sorry, uh… come over here, I’ll show you what we’re doing,” Adira gestured towards where they stood, Gray already plopped down with his legs crossed next to them.
“Only Jett, please,” she waved away the comment, coming over to Adira. As much as people told them to call them by their first name on the ship, Adira was still a little surprised each time the adults on the ship treated them like an equal, despite any teasing to the contrary. It was a nice feeling.
Adira quietly showed Jett what they were doing. They had used a replicated a sewing machine for most of the basting and sewing the blocks together, but always preferred to hand sew the binding edge. It was the last part of the quilt, and Adira had a weird feeling that doing it by hand made them feel more connected with the project, made it more genuine. They could see any mistakes they made in the final project, every back stitch working its way around the quilt’s edge in an uneven line. The first steps they did in a quilt -- sewing together the block decorations -- were hand done, and finishing it the same way gave Adira a pride in something they had created, finding poetry in the process.
It also took forever to hand sew, so Adira was glad Jett was there. (Even if they still weren’t sure why.)
The two got to work, barely talking as they sewed. Both hummed along with their work, two different songs from different eras that somehow worked well together. Adira had stuck to their word, and a small bowl of snacks lay between them, but neither really touched it much. After a while, they had reached an easy rhythm: Gray would pass Adira an extra spool of green thread, and they pulled it out to their arm span, with Jett cutting it off (why did she keep a knife in her pocket?) before Adria doubled over the thread and rethreaded their needle.
“My wife used to sew,” Jett said. It was the first time either -- well really, any, even though not all of them could hear Gray if he had spoken -- of them had talked for a while. Adira, startled by the sudden noise, almost stabbed themselves with their needle. Jett chuckled, looking up at the ceiling for a moment, as if remembering an old inside joke. “Always a bit of a control freak, she was. Good at this small detail work. She said it calmed her mind, let her think about anything but work. That’s why I asked if I could help out. I needed a reminder of her. She taught me the basics but I never really liked it. I had my machines, and I liked how they fit in some logical pattern, but she saw the beauty in shapes and colors, could use her creativity to make something new, not just fit the pieces of an engine back together or scrape a phaser into a new form by messing around with its parts. It was something I just never really had the mind for.
“It probably seems like ancient history to you, but she died in the Klingon War. The first one I guess. That sounds weird. Anyway, I was stuck on a shipwreck by myself for a while, then we had all the business with the Red Angel, then jumping to the future… it’s been a wild time since I lost her, and I don’t think I really got to truly think about that until you came aboard.
“You really reminded me of her at first -- overworking yourself, wanting to please everyone and make your work perfect. But you also lost someone, and didn’t let that stop you from doing any of this. I didn’t really get a chance to get closure on her death, at least not the way you get to still talk with your boyfriend. Not sure anyone really got that. ’Cept for maybe Paul.
“And that’s why I asked to come help. I think I owed it to her to try one more time the thing I saw her doing when I got back from work a little late, or watched her stress-making pillows before our wedding -- seriously, we had way too many pillows for anyone to ever use -- or working on a stuffed bear for our nieces. It just feels like a way for me to tell her I really loved her, even if I have no idea what I’m doing. Really, I don’t know what I’m doing. I guess I just never had the eye for this sewing thing. Not enough gears and too many opportunities to stab my finger.”
Jett gestured vaguely to her work, laughing. Compared to Adira’s on the other side of the quilt, it was a real mess, the stitches going in every direction and rarely coming up near each other. You would think an engineer used to working with small tech would be a bit more precise with her stitches, but Adira was quickly learning that things were rarely as simple as you would think on this ship.
Adira and Gray both laughed. Gray had put his hand over Adira’s as Jett was speaking, leaning on them, “I think it’s pretty damn good. That’s probably what my section would end up looking like.”
“Gray likes your stitching,” Adira said with a smile in their voice, “And I’m sure your wife would too. I wish I could’ve met her.”
---
Adira had gifted Stamets and Culber thir quilt over a quiet dinner in the mess hall to warm hugs and the two cooing over their skill to Adira’s protests (and Gray quietly backing up the two men from next to Adira, holding their hand). It was the night before a Saturday that, by coincidence, all three of them had off work.
The shared dinner easily led to them in one of the open living areas on the Discovery . Replicated snacks were set on a small tray, the quilt draped over the three, and a movie playing on the holoscreen. Hugh had suggested one of the shitty romcoms Tilly had found in the new data banks from the last thousand or years. (In her words “it was terrible, but Michael and I had a great time making fun of it. It was a great stress reliever and tells you something about how society has progressed since the twenty second century.”) Shockingly, that review didn’t make anyone want to take her recommendation. Adira won out with their suggestion of one of the nature documentaries they would watch with Gray, the two curled up together under a warm blanket on the generation ship in much the same way as they were now.
Half an hour into the movie, Adira took a hand from under the giant quilt, pointing towards the tray on the other side of the couch, “Hey Dad, can I have some more cookies?”
After a second, Adira caught themselves, “Oh -- I didn’t mean to-”
Paul laughed, smiling wide, already passing Adira the cookies, “No, it’s fine. Right, Hugh?”
“Of course it is. We were just waiting for you to say it,” Culber smiled, his arm around his husband’s shoulder.
In response to Hugh’s raised eyebrow at Adira, Paul continued, his voice lower, “They’re a growing child; they need the calories”
“I have a medical degree, and that is not what that means,” Hugh sighed, giving Paul a kiss on his cheek as he passed the cookie tray back to the small table on his side of the couch, “You’re lucky I love you two.”
“I’m right here, guys,” Adira mumbled, chewing.
“They’re just looking out for you,” Gray appeared again, perched on the arm of the sofa next to Adira. Mirroring the other couple, he put his arm around them, and Adira leaned against him in return. Stamets and Culber had helped Adira feel at home on the Discovery, but Gray was a reminder of their home before (Gray was their home before), and his presence helped to comfort them, reminding Adira of exactly how well they could fit into the world. “You need them, and I think they need you too.”
Adira knew what Gray was thinking about as he spoke: of Senna, who waas a loving father; of Cara, who was also raised an orphan and always wanted kids but never had the time; of Madela, who wasn’t close with her parents, but considered her crewmates a sort of family; of Jovar, who had a strained relationship with their biological family, and vowed to treat their own children better than their parents did; of Kasha, a child who returned home to take care of a dying family after leaving decades before.
“And I need you too,” Adira said quietly, looking up at Gray. “We’re working on it, but…”
“Hey,” Gray touched Adira’s face lightly, getting them to look at him. “No buts. I know you’ll figure it out. Stop underestimating yourself. And for now… for now we have this.”
Adira nodded, swallowing. There was a twinge of sadness in Gray’s voice, but Adira knew they really did believe in their ability. Gray touched his forehead to Adira’s, the two of them together in thought even if they couldn’t be in the real world.
From the other side of the couch, Hugh smiled, looking back at the holoscreen. He only heard half of the conversation, but he had heard enough to be sure the two teens were at home together.
When their documentary was over on the holoscreen, Paul was quick to move to get up, but was stopped by a hand on top of his own. Hugh’s finger went to his lips as he gestured over to Adira. Adira’s head rested on the arm of the couch, their breathing regular and soft, hair tousled. Paul nodding, they both got up quietly, turned off the holo, and moved the quilt Adira (and Jett) had made over Adira’s sleeping body. A reminder to the three of their relationship, it was if Paul and Hugh were still there, protecting Adira, even as they were heading to their quarters and letting Adira stay the night on the couch. Arms around each other’s waists, the two looked with pride at Adira stirring lightly and resettling, their legs stretching out on the couch, before leaving the common area.
Neither Stamets or Culber were sure of Gray was still there, but they knew when Adira needed him to be, he would be.
---
They had found out early into their efforts to give Gray a corporeal body that he was visible in the new retrofitted holodecks on the Discovery , able to interact with the others as well as any of the other holos. He was just as visible, just as human, as on the nebula, able to hug and move with the other corporeal people on the holodeck. When Adira had first suggested to try using the holodeck matrix to conceptualize Gray, he hadn’t expected much, hadn’t expected to be able to move, to live, in the way he was able to in the holodecks.
Gray showed confidence in the crew’s skill to give him a body outwardly, but in reality, he was honestly really afraid of the process. Gray had already faced enough change and discomfort in his body within his life that he really just wanted to be seen, to be himself in the world, and not have to jump through any more hoops. So even though they hadn’t found a permanent solution yet, Gray had been ecstatic about the opportunity to be heard for a bit.
Adira and Gray had been on holodeck a few times, and invited Stamets and Culber with them, introducing the two to Gray again, even if they all felt like they knew each other well already.
For Gray’s birthday, Adira had been planning a surprise event since they had realized he could be seen in the holodeck. They invited the crew members they had gotten close with over the past year or so, packed some food, and scrolled through the holoprograms Vance had loaded into the retrofitted system before landing on a forest program from Trill.
It would be like they were camping at home.
Since joining, Adira had started to think of Trill as a home for them too, even if they were still a little removed from it. Gray had told them stories of the few years he lived on his homeworld before coming onto the generation ship, and Adira had always wanted to visit, wanted Gray to give them a tour of his favorite shops or take a hike with them in the bright jungles. With access to Gray’s memories and that of all Tal’s past hosts, Adira could see themselves on Trill in a more real way than their hazy, wishful conversations with Gray before bed. In a way, they had already spent a few lifetimes there.
When Adira and Gray walked into the holodeck -- under the pretense of a date for the two -- their friends were already there.
They were in a small clearing, with swooping trees providing shade. The artificial sun was setting, casting a golden glow over the whole holodeck. Small blue birds (were they birds? they looked more like flying salamanders) flirted throughout the scene like bees. There were giant red flowers on a bush next to the arch door, their long, looping probiscuses brushing against Adira’s leg. The whole scene was a burst of color, with Stamets, Culber, Reno, Tilly, and Burnham chatting in civics by a flickering holo fire.
Holding Adira’s hand as the large doors slid open, Gray was, after a momentarily pause from everyone inside, bombarded with a Tilly hug, her curls bouncing around his face. His eyebrows shot up, and mouth slowly forming a smile as he hugged her back with one hand, still holding Adira’s with the other. Tilly pulled back, her arms on Gray’s shoulders, “You’re the one Adira’s always talking about! I always thought you’d be taller. Love your hair though -- I always wanted to dye mine, but I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off… Anyway, I’m rambling a bit, aren’t I? Happy birthday, Gray!”
He laughed lightly, “T-thank you. All of you.”
Noticing the warm look on Gray’s face, Tilly took her cue to give the two a little space. Gray turned to Adira, “You did this… for me?”
“Of course I did, silly,” Adira planted a soft kiss on Gray’s cheek as they walked up the small hill to join the rest of their friends. They continued, quiet, their words meant just for Gray, “You really deserved to be seen by not just me and dads and… even now, I figured this would be right. You’re amazing, and I Happy birthday, nerd.”
The sun in the holo set slowly. They talked about everything and nothing together, and Adira was happy to be quiet as they watched Gray tell everyone stories -- even if they were about the time Adira pushed Gray down an icy hill and ended up breaking his arm. They hadn’t seen his face light up so bright in a while. He got a hug from the group for winning two truths and a lie (nobody else could guess that Jett was deeply into astrology and had been trying to figure out everyone in engineering’s birth charts with increasingly more obvious questions) and Adira could swear they saw a tiny tear trace down his face.
By the time they ate s’mores -- Michael’s suggestion, saying they were one of Earth’s best inventions, right up next to the transporter -- the false sun had fully set, and the stars twinkled above them.
The fire glowing, Gray and Adira leaned against each other, Gray’s head on Adira’s lap and his legs folded up next to them. Giving the two a moment to themselves, Stamets had dragged the rest of the group on a hunt for wild mushrooms from Trill. One of Adira’s hands was behind the two, holding their weight, and the other slowly tracing Gray’s trill spots. Adira’s eyes were on the sky, tracing lines between stars just as their hands traced lines between Gray’s spots.
A smile was quick to form on his lips, not complaining that their light movements tickled this time, “What do you see?”
“Over here,” Adira’s said softly, their finger following a rhymic pattern on his forehead, “is a mark that old human legends say appear on dead squids who are incredibly stupid and handsome.”
Gray giggled, his cheeks bright and eyes scrunched up as he swatted at Adira playfully, “Hey!”
“Okay, okay,” Adira smiled, this time glancing up to the sky above them before tracing a more intentional pattern on their boyfriend’s face. “This one is Orion. A strong hunter, always chasing the scorpion up there in the sky. But they never appeared on the same side of the equator at once, they could never see each other, never interract. These spots” -- Adira tapped on his cheek -- “are Orion’s belt, and were used to guide people for centuries on Earth because of how bright they were.”
“We both guide each other, love.”
They stayed like that for a while, in silence save for the chirping of an insect Adira realized they knew not only the name of, but had distinct memories of catching in their hands as a kid -- no, when Jovar was a kid. Adira was still absentmindedly playing with Gray’s bright hair and tracing the dark splotches of brown color flowing down his face and neck when their friends returned, Gray still humming lightly a tune Adira still hadn’t mastered on the cello.
After everyone settled down again, planning on staying in the holosuite just a little longer, Adira leaned back on their elbows, glancing around the fire, at the people around it. When their eyes landed on their boyfriend, his words confident and so… full of life, Adira’s face was slowly filled with a warm smile.
Gray had always been a comforting presence in their life, a thread of honey connecting their experience alone on the generation ship and their new family on the Discovery, weaving together their existence truly alone in their thoughts to one connected to six other aliens with a squid in their belly. Gray was the first one Adira came out to, the first one they would come crying to, and the first to share their joy.
But despite this, he had always been just Adira’s . The two ran around the generation ship together, alone in their connection. They played imaginary chess together because it was just the two of them. And here, they laughed about inside jokes together, shared whispered kisses and conversations in the Jeffries tubes together, and sorted bolts on the engineering floor together… but just the two of them. Adira had Culber and Stamets, Adira had Tilly and Jett, Adira had Michael, even after she had become the captain and had a temporary falling out with Stamets. But Gray? Gray just had Adira.
They swallowed a tear as they looked on the scene around them: Gray was laughing as Stamets showing off the fungi they found on their walk, pointing out how no, just because they looked like a common chantarelle on Earth didn’t mean that they weren’t a poisonous variety on Trill. Hugh and Michael were listening intently, asking Gray questions about the Trill -- they hadn’t been a federation member when Discovery came from -- and showing him the mushrooms they had found. (Gray had to inform the group he really only knew the one fungi that was drilled into school students as dangerous to eat when he lived on the planet and was not, in fact, an expert xenomycologist.) Tilly and Jett were engrossed in some quite conversation about something Adira couldn’t quite hear, but leaned in every so often to listen to Gray.
The thread of honey swirling its way around Adira’s life had finally been stirred in.
Gray was finally being able to share in the colorful life they had helped Adira reach through countless sleepless nights talking and nudges in the right direction.
This was how they would eventually exist normally, no holodecks or recordings, just the two of them, living their lives as they had fought so hard to. Death couldn’t stop a bond this strong, and they would find a way to make it work.