Work Text:
1.
The strobe lights of the club flashed above them, painting them in swirls of red and green and blue. In a different scenario, the influx of signals from her augmented eye combined with the blasting of the music might have given caused a dull ache between her ears, but with the six empty shot glasses in front of her, her head just felt fuzzy and warm, her thoughts fluid and fluttery like minnows or the fading trails of a leaky warp engine.
The only thing louder than the music was the laughter of her friends—Tilly trying to convince a very reticent Michael to accompany her onto the dance floor, Rhys and Bryce throwing holographic darts at the board, Airiam making her way over with another round of drinks because the war was over and why the hell shouldn’t they be celebrating? And then there was Joann, bent over the pool table with a cue in both hands, lining up the shot with her bound, dark twists falling over one shoulder.
“You’re going to be impossible about it if you win, aren’t you?” Joann asked her, shunting the wooden stick forward into the cue ball and sending it streaking across the green-padded table to knock one of her balls neatly into the hole.
“What makes you think that?” Keyla asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, the fact that you swore off playing kadis-kot with Tilly and Airiam because you hated losing, the fact that I see you whenever you come off the flight simulator all cocky and macho…”
“We’re war heroes,” Keyla said, the words slurred slightly. She slapped her hand against the spot where Admiral Cornwell pinned the commendation badge to make her point, except it wasn’t there because their uniforms were still back in their accommodations at Starfleet headquarters. Couldn’t have this kind of night out in uniform, after all—and after all they’d been through, they did deserve the night out. “We get to be cocky and macho.”
“I knew that would go to your head,” Joann said, shaking hers despite her smile. She came around the table, cue in hand, and all of a sudden Keyla felt lightheaded in a way that had nothing to do with alcohol. Her golden eyeliner shimmered underneath the lights of the club, and somehow Keyla’s gaze had dropped to her lips, her brain spinning off into the shadows of wondering how soft the skin of Joann’s jaw would be if she cupped her hand there, how those lips would feel pressed against her own. “You going to move?” Joann asked, nudging her shoulder, and Keyla’s self-awareness returned with a jolt. “Or you’re playing dirty, I see how it is.”
“No,” Keyla said. She stepped hurriedly to the side, pulling herself out of Joann’s orbit. “No, I…” She forced on a grin. “As if I would need to cheat to beat you.” God, you’re beautiful.
What? some other, less intoxicated part of her spoke up a moment later, but it was too late—the thought already in her mind, implanted in her brain and leaving her only to fumble with the pool cue when it was her turn, hardly even remembering whether she was solids or stripes at this point.
It’s the alcohol, Keyla promised herself as she stumbled back to her room on what Joann might have laughed and called “sea legs.” Joann was her roommate, her friend, and her partner at the helm. They already shared a bond deeper than most people working in concert on the bridge as they did, much less sharing the piddling living space that was shared quarters on Discovery, where most of the available space was left for research labs and spore generation (and, weirdly, the turbolift system). Keyla didn’t need anything more than that.
So, sure, drunk-Keyla might have had a little bit of a crush—and that’s absolutely all it was!—but it would be gone and replaced with a hangover by morning.
Definitely the alcohol.
2.
Keyla was waiting for her when she arrived at their shared quarters, the dust from Terralysium still clinging to her boots and ground into the replicated undercover clothing that was standard-issue for infiltrating pre-warp societies until it had become one with the fabric. She was seated on her bed—the one under the window, though the stars were the only thing visible outside as they were on the opposite side of the ship from the planet—both hands clasped in her lap, fingers turning over and over themselves. They flew upwards when Joann walked in as she bolted to her feet, wrapping her arms around her in a hug.
Joann nearly stumbled from the unexpectedness of it but caught herself quickly, both feet planted solidly on the floor as she hugged Keyla back. For all her wiry frame, Keyla’s hugs had the potential to be bone-crushing, but all the same, Joann found herself wanting to be crushed, if only to remain in Keyla’s embrace a moment longer.
She did release her, though, perhaps a second later than Joann thought might be normal for just friends. Or maybe that was her own wishful thinking talking, reading too much into Keyla just being Keyla—throwing herself into things full force, a wicked smile on her face at the prospect of any challenge or setback. “How’d it go?
“Well,” Joann replied. “We didn’t find the signal or the Red Angel, but—”
“Not that,” Keyla waved her hand. “I read the logs. How’d it go?” At Joann’s confused look, she added, “You were on an away team.”
“Yes.”
“Our Joann Owosekun, Lieutenant JG, on an away team with the captain. The new captain.”
Finally understanding what Keyla was getting at, Joann shook her head. “Shush, you’ve been on an away team before. You fly shuttles off Discovery all the time.”
“Shuttles are different; they’re just mini extensions of the ship! You were on land. On a whole unknown planet that no one’s ever seen before!”
“It wasn’t that exciting,” Joann said, but she couldn’t help but smiling at her friend’s enthusiasm.
Keyla sat back down on the edge of the bed, then patted the open space next to her. “I’d still like to hear about it?”
Joann’s smile widened. “Okay, just let me change first—”
“Right, right…” Keyla flopped backwards on the bed, averting her gaze toward the ceiling even though Joann was only going down to her underclothes, and after a year as roommates they’d seen each other in much worse. Joann stripped quickly, pulling on her off-duty DISCO shirt and a pair of soft pants that reminded her of the home-spun cloth of the collective, even if this one had been made from a replicator that went against just about everything Luddites valued. Then she laid down next to Keyla, trying not to focus on how much she could feel the warmth of the other woman’s body radiating off of her just a few inches away. But no, Joann was content with their friendship, partnership, all of the above as it was, despite being a little bit in love with her best friend. She cared about Keyla too much to put that sort of pressure on her, or to take away the one solid thing she’d found since arriving on Discovery in the midst of the Klingon War—since she’d gotten injured, really—by making things…complicated.
“Well, the first thing we found was this church—a church that looked like it could have been pulled straight from Earth, straight out of the next town over from mine even—and this whole amalgamation of eight different old Earth religions—”
“Of course Michael knew all of them, didn’t she?” Keyla cut in with a grin, normal eye as bright as her blue-green augmented one.
“She did.”
“She’s such an overachiever…”
3.
Keyla stabbed the last of her sauerbraten with her fork, lifting it to her mouth. It didn’t taste quite the same as her grandmother used to make—did anything that came out of a replicator?—but it was similar enough to taste like home, if she didn’t think about it too much. Her eyes scanned the PADD next to her plate, her finger swiping upward on the rest of the report on the latest in nacelle design and the potential for increased responsivity when performing evasive maneuvers.
A tray dropped onto the empty space on the table directly across from her with a slight clatter. “Thanks, Tilly, but you know, I am perfectly fine eating one lunch alone—” Keyla said, cutting herself off mid-sentence as she glanced up, eyes widening. Philippa Georgiou swung one long, leather-clad leg over the back of the chair before settling into the seat with all the grace, smugness, and lethality of a large cat who had just feasted on a herd of antelope. Or whatever large cats ate.
Georgiou reclined in her seat, legs spread, staring intently at Keyla as she picked up her fork.
“Can I—can I help you?” Keyla asked.
“You can.” Coming out of the Terran’s mouth, the words sounded more like she was giving her permission. Georgiou lifted a forkful of…something to her lips, and Keyla tried not to think too much about what Terrans ate. The replicators wouldn’t synthesize human flesh, right? Or…Kelpien?
Georgiou continued to stare at her as she chewed, radiating ice as readily as her Captain Georgiou had radiated warmth, and Keyla closed her PADD, dropping her own fork onto her empty plate and moving to stand. “Well, I’m pretty much done, so—”
“Owosekun,” the ex(?)-emperor said, freezing her in place. Joann? “You and her are close, are you not?”
“I—we’re friends,” Keyla said.
Georgiou’s gaze drifted lazily over to where Joann and Rhys had just arrived, fresh from a sparring session and the sonic showers, if Joann’s hair and the sheen of her skin was anything to go by. Not that Keyla noticed, or anything. “Good. Then tell me: what does Owosekun like?”
“What does she…like?” Keyla asked. Bad 21st century holo-films. Banana muffins. The scent of the ocean.
Georgiou’s lip curled. “My Owosekun liked duty and honor and executions and the feeling of an agonizer button beneath her fingertips, but this one seems a little too soft for that. Besides, this Michael is much too busy being earnest and doing the right thing to be gallivanting around the galaxy taking off heads, so I am in need of another solution.”
“No, Michael does not do that,” Keyla agreed, her mind stalled briefly on the idea of kind, somewhat pacifist Joann liking executions, or agonizers. And on her roommate-and-ops-officer-and-friend-and-absolutely-nothing-more in the gold and black Terran officer’s uniform, all shine and glamour and darkness. Then it clicked. “Wait. Wait. You want to set up Michael and Joann?”
“Pilots are usually a little more quick-witted in my universe; First Officers even more so—”
Keyla’s mouth opened, then closed again. “But…Michael’s with Ash Tyler.”
“That little half-Klingon ragamuffin?” Georgiou drawled. Her elbows hit the table as she leaned forward slowly, each word coming out with a hiss. “He aims above his station.” Keyla swallowed, wondering how exactly she’d ended up here, and how safe it was to just—leave.
“Look at them,” Emperor Agent Georgiou said, nodding toward the table where Joann and Rhys had sat down. Keyla turned in her seat and craned her neck despite herself, the edges of the implant aching a little as her skin stretched. Michael and Tilly were joining them now, and Keyla cursed her decision to choose a table in a nook half-hidden by the walls or else her friends would have just joined her for lunch, and perhaps rescue her from whatever this conversation was. Joann laughed at something Michael had said—and Michael claimed she wasn’t funny—white teeth flashing as she shook her head. Joann laughed easily; that was one of the things Keyla loved—liked—no, loved, one could love a friend—about her.
“Why Joann?” Keyla asked around a peculiar lump in her throat, dragging her eyes away from the table to face Georgiou again. It wasn’t like it was a high probability, she reminded herself—in the year she’d known the both of them now, they’d never showed the slightest inclination or interest in each other in that way, plus, again, Ash Tyler—but then why was her stomach doing vague somersaults in her abdomen, like a newbie pilot their first time pulling six G’s?
“She prizes loyalty. I like loyalty,” Georgiou purred. “And Michael could use some stabili—”
“Keyla!” Tilly’s excitable, if anxious, voice said suddenly from behind her. She thanked her lucky stars for Sylvia Tilly and her sixth sense for when a fellow crew member was in need of social rescue. “Keyla, I didn’t realize you were still here; you should join us!”
Keyla stood almost immediately, the chair giving her away in its harsh scraping sound against the floor, but Georgiou only raised two fingers from the silver handle of her fork in a clear dismissal.
“What was that about?” Tilly whispered to her as she led her away, back to safer grounds.
“Nothing,” Keyla said, concentrating on the way Joann smiled as she saw them approaching, pulling out the free chair on her other side. “She was just being all ominous and death-threat-y, you know how Georgiou is.” Joann’s knee knocked against hers as she sat down, and Keyla tried not to think about the way her breath caught in her throat as it did.
“You okay?” Joann asked, dark eyes intent and concerned and all for her. How easy, how simple it would be to nod and thread her fingers through Joann’s where her hand rested on the table—
“Yeah,” Keyla said, eyes snapping back to hers. “Yeah, I’m fine. What were you talking about?”
4.
“Joann?” Keyla’s whisper came out of the darkness, halting and achingly unsure. The laughter of two hours ago, of camaraderie and popcorn and comedy films in black and white, still rang in their ears, but Joann now knew she wasn’t the only one lying awake in the aftermath of it. Her thoughts were no longer quite as unsettled as before, no longer circling her brain and tripping over one another with all the rhythm of one of Keyla’s haikus, but still she stared at the ceiling. For a brief few hours, the weight of just how alone they were and how different everything was had been lifted, but away from the laughter and the rustle of movement of some sixty other bodies just like hers the cold chill of grief touched her again…what have we done?
But she had Keyla, and she had Tilly and Rhys and Bryce and Nilsson and the rest of the bridge crew, and she had Discovery. More than the chance to laugh and be merry, that was what tonight had shown her, shown them all. That they had each other. “Yeah?”
“Would you…” The words stopped, and Joann waited, knowing how much Keyla hated asking for anything. “Would you, um…” She turned her head, could see Keyla’s eyes in the darkness, one a bit brighter than the other. Light glinted off the metal in her forehead, illuminating the bright fire of her hair falling toward the pillow. “Please,” Keyla said, and then, like a promise, “just for tonight.” She didn’t know if that was a promise to herself or to Joann, as if Keyla asking Joann for anything could ever be a burden on her.
She shifted the covers and then slipped her legs out of the bed, the slight chill of the air causing gooseflesh to erupt over her skin. But then she was sliding in with Keyla who immediately moved over to make room for her. Keyla smashed herself nearly up against the wall, eyes desperately grateful but uncertain, and Joann settled in and pulled her close instead. Her arm found its way around Keyla’s bony shoulders as Keyla’s head hesitantly pillowed against her chest, her own arm wrapping around Joann’s waist and clinging tightly to her.
“I just—” Keyla choked out, “—don’t want to go back there—”
The moments on the bridge as they crash-landed on the Colony 930 years into the future flashed through Joann’s head again—Keyla’s body spinning through the air, her head smacking against the deck plating, Joann reaching for her—reaching—and she knew difficult as those memories were for her to bear, they did not hold half as much terror for her as they did for Keyla, mixing and mingling with whatever had happened before she arrived on Discovery to earn her her implant.
“I see it whenever I close my eyes,” she whispered into Joann’s t-shirt.
“I know,” Joann whispered back, her voice equally soft. Her hand came up to rest between Keyla’s shoulder blades. When she didn’t flinch away, she began sweeping her fingertips up and down her back in slow, languid strokes, and felt Keyla shudder beneath her touch. She paused, only for Keyla burrow closer, and Joann resumed the motion, resisting the sudden urge to press her lips to the top of her hair and giving the barest of smiles to the ceiling instead.
They lay there together in the darkness for countless minutes, Joann’s eyes fixed on the stars out the window above them, Keyla’s body warm and weighted against hers. She kept up the gentle sweeps of her hand, calm and contented. Something about being close to Keyla quieted her mind too, washing away the lingering cold deep inside as if Keyla was as much a steadying presence for Joann as Joann was trying to be for her.
Eventually, when Keyla’s breathing had evened out, Joann brought her movements to a slow halt, not wanting to wake her. She rested her hand against Keyla’s spine and closed her own eyes.
“I love you,” Keyla murmured, fingers fisted in the edge of her t-shirt.
Joann’s eyes flew open, heart thudding in her chest.
Platonically, she told herself a moment later. It could not be anything but platonic, incompatible as they were—Joann was not exciting enough for Keyla, not daring in the way she espoused. Keyla’s presence could fill up a table, a room, a life—had filled up Joann’s life without her even realizing it at first, until she couldn’t imagine it without her in it, hollering at Tilly for cheating counting cards at poker or exhilarated and fist-pumping the air coming off a particularly gnarly flight. Keyla was a fire cracker she did not want to extinguish, would never even consider smothering with her own calmer, slower pace.
But it was times like this that fed that hope deep inside her, that activated the yearning she tried so hard to forget with their eyes met across their consoles on the bridge. When she thought maybe this could be enough, that maybe this was what Keyla wanted and needed instead.
She squeezed her eyes shut again, the yearning within her rising to a crescendo like a physical ache in her bones, in her soul.
Platonically. She couldn’t allow herself to think of it as anything else.
She couldn’t do that to Keyla.
5.
“What if we fired on her from a non-Federation starship?” Tilly spoke up.
“Another ship?” Saru asked from the captain's chair.
“Flown by a Starfleet pilot who will be disciplined severely for disobeying orders and for going rogue,” Tilly finished, but Joann’s blood had already gone cold and icy in her chest at the word Starfleet, Keyla’s head already turned toward hers, eyes seeking. Joann watched the muscle jump in her jaw as her teeth clenched.
For a moment, they remained there, starlit or perhaps star-crossed, looking at one another.
“I’ll do it,” Keyla said, voice steely, as Joann knew she would.
“I’ll go with you,” Joann said, almost at the same time, because even if this was as much a suicide mission as it sounded like, she would follow Keyla Detmer anywhere just to see that slight smile Keyla gave at the thought that she wouldn’t be alone. That she and Joann would face things as a team, as they always had. She couldn’t resist adding more quietly, and just for Keyla, “I’ll be right beside you.”
“No, I’ll go,” the Andorian, Ryn, said, and just like that, the spell was broken. The faint stress lines around Keyla’s eyes and mouth turned to resignation. “I know where the weaknesses in her shields are.”
“Mr. Ryn, you’ll go with Lieutenant Detmer,” Saru announced with authority. “Owosekun, you’re needed on the bridge.”
“Yes, Captain,” Joann found her mouth saying, but her eyes hadn’t left Keyla’s. She stood stiffly, Joann still rooted to her chair as if she had been strapped in. The strong, forward jut of her jaw belied the anxiety in the rest of her frame—excitement, maybe, to the rest of the crew who were well-familiar with Keyla’s unshakeable tenacity for all things flying-related, or perhaps a touch of nerves and adrenaline, because who wouldn’t be nervous heading out to give a bee sting to a cave bear?
But Joann saw her. Joann had always been able to see her, the tremble at the hollow of her throat, the uncertainty etched onto her face as clear as the sharp, metallic lines of her implant against her skin. And she hated it, the monster inside Keyla’s mind and chest that made her hands shake and told her she wasn’t good enough, that made her doubt, even for a second, that she was Lieutenant Keyla Detmer, badass pilot and all around motherfucker.
“You got this,” Joann said, trying to put all of her support and assurance and faith into those three little words, and watched as Keyla took in a deep breath before facing the captain.
“Good luck, Detmer,” Saru told her, and then Keyla was gone in a swirl of blue, one hand pressed to her badge-turned-personal-transporter.
Then all Joann could do was turn back to the helm and stare out at the Viridian, black and bulky and glittering a menacing green in the starlight. Cleveland Booker’s scout ship came shooting out at it from their shuttle bay a few seconds later, shields already up in a fiery blue halo, and as the entire bridge went silent all Joann could think was how tiny it looked against the hulking mass of Osyraa’s ship. The Viridian had countless photon torpedo launchers, a shield array more powerful than any Joann had seen in her lifetime prior to the upgrades done to Discovery, and an outer hull thicker than the entirety of the ship they just sent out to face it, alone.
Their scout ship had Keyla.
The programmable matter was smooth and cool against her fingers as Joann called out the stats and readings as Saru requested them even as Keyla began her first volley, shields at eighty-nine percent, captain, minimal damage detected, shields at seventy-six—
Shields at fifty-eight.
Forty-two.
Thirty-six.
Someone else sat down in Keyla’s seat, taking the helm in case they themselves should need to start evasive maneuvers, but Joann only had eyes for reading the numbers off and watching the dodging and darting of her ship, weaving in and out of Osyraa’s hailfire knowing at this point any direct hit would be its last. Unbidden, her mind went back to the night she hadn’t been able to get out of her head for more than a week. To a Keyla Detmer who loved her. (Platonically, her brain supplied.) She—she hadn’t said it back.
Twenty-one.
Why hadn’t she said it back?
Fifteen.
Why—
Ten.
“Ten percent, Capt…” Joann said, but the words trailed off as Book’s ship caught her eye again, going in for another round.
“Should we order her to come back?” Tilly asked in a hushed voice, but the rest of the bridge had already fallen away to background noise as Joann watched the familiar twists and turns of the scout ship, the ducks and volleys that seemed a few milliseconds faster than they had been before. Brave and bold and all in and fearless. Before she knew it, Joann was smiling, right there at the conn, as something deep within her chest soared.
Soared with Keyla.
To see her fly like that, knowing how scared, how broken she thought she was…to see her lighting up the Viridian… Keyla’s whoop of triumph echoed in her ear as if she was sitting right next to her on the bridge after all.
The aft section of Osyraa’s ship disintegrated into a ball of fire, billowing outward. The flames were quickly extinguished by the lack of oxygen, but not before the tiny scout ship streaked out of it, still surrounded by the faintest halo of blue.
No sound could travel in a vacuum, but Joann could almost hear the accompanying boom of the explosion, a thrum that continued to reverberate through her entire body as her screen flashed with the information that Osyraa’s entire weapons system was down.
The only failsafe we ever needed was her.
“I love you all.”
…
“You’re alive.”
“So are you. All of you.”
+1
Did you mean it? Keyla wanted to ask in the aftermath, still lightheaded as the group of them stumbled to the bridge on deadened limbs, Joann’s declaration of love ringing in her ears.
To all of them, yes, but she’d been looking at Keyla when she—in those final moments—
Did you mean it? Keyla wanted to ask once Saru, Dr. Culber, and Adira were back on board, a little irradiated but otherwise unharmed.
Did you mean it? Keyla wanted to ask as the Discovery drifted once again into Federation space and its halls filled with crew happy to be back on familiar ground, to be home.
Did you mean it? Keyla wanted to ask as they walked back to their quarters together, dismissed for the day to rest and recover. Her hand touched Joann’s as she stepped to the side to let a stream of DOT-23s on repair duty pass by in the corridor, a faint brush of their pinkies that sent electricity sweeping through her veins.
Did you mean it? Keyla wanted to ask once the door was closed and it was just the two of them, stripping out of sweat-soaked uniforms and collapsing onto their respective beds, too worn out and keyed up to actually sleep.
Did you mean it? Keyla wanted to scream, the words pummeling her insides with every frenetic beating of her heart.
How could she though? the little voice inside Keyla asked, as it had every time—the voice inside that she hated but could never, ever get rid of. It was the voice that knocked her out of the sky when she thought she was flying, the voice that kept her grounded the few times she was able to soar. How could Joann ever have meant it? How could Joann ever want her, Keyla, out of anyone else on this ship or in this galaxy? Joann Owosekun was rock solid, unfazed, the steadiest person she had ever known, a gentle soul oh-so-capable of ferocity in her protectiveness. What would she ever see in the absolute mess that was Keyla, oscillating between the top of the world and curled into a corner trying to press the implant far enough into her head that it would disappear into her skin? True, she was no longer drowning in it, no longer feeling like one faltering step or trembling hand at the controls would put her right back to the Shenzhou and being thrown like a rag doll until her head erupted in blood and fire and pain, but still. Joann deserved someone whole, or more than whole, like she was—kind and steady and brimming with life.
That wasn’t Keyla.
(But—)
(But did she—)
“Did you mean it?” Keyla burst out selfishly, unable to stop herself. She froze the moment afterward, blood rushing through her ears and blotting out the rest of the world.
Joann turned to her slowly, and when she spoke, the words were soft and pensive. “Did you?”
What? Keyla wanted to ask, the question so utterly unexpected, except she was looking into Joann’s eyes now, framed with gold and dark with liquid brilliance, and found herself drowning in their depths. Did you? Then, she started laughing. “Oh my god, we’ve been so stupid.” She paused. “We…we have been stupid, right?”
A slow smile was spreading over Joann’s face, and her hands slowly rose between them. She froze as they moved toward her jaw, cradling it with the lightest of touches as if she, Keyla, were something to be revered. Then Joann kissed her, soft lips pressed against her own, and she was drowning in an entire different way. It was Keyla who deepened the kiss, pulling her closer and adding some of her own fire to it, because Keyla would give Joann anything, now that she knew it was wanted.
That she was wanted.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,” Keyla admitted when they finally pulled apart, the faintest hint of dark red painted across Joann’s cheeks to match the flush that she could feel on hers.
“Me too,” Joann said.
“Since the medal ceremony.”
“Since the time loop, with you at the party with that guy—”
“With—?!” She laughed, shaking her head. “I don’t even remember his name. I think he works in Engineering? No, Spec Ops.”
“Keyla!” But Joann was laughing too, their sides shaking as they clutched at one another, high on relief and happiness and the heady feeling of coming home.
(She was twenty again and a fully commissioned officer of Starfleet, reporting for duty with her head high and her hopes higher.)
(She was twelve, on the top of the world with a pilot’s license clutched in her hand, positive she could conquer anything.)
Her fingers twined with Joann’s, holding fast.
(Because they could, whatever this new future might hold.)
(Together.)