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It’s raining when Tilly buzzes the door, waving at the small camera with an easy smile. In a way, it feels like coming home. She’s stayed here a few times on leave and when she was apartment hunting after stepping away from starship life and another time when Hugh was called away to assist an understaffed Enterprise until they were able to pick up their new CMO and staff from Starbase Yorktown. He was livid-- Paul had been in no state for space travel, though Pike assured Hugh that there was plenty of room for Paul on the quick jaunt to Yorktown, and it was understood that he was effectively retired from active Starfleet service-- and Tilly knows Hugh considered it. Enterprise isn’t spore-driven and Christopher Pike is one of those captains that anyone is happy to serve under, holding fast to his humanity and goodness regardless of what’s encountered in the beautiful, horrifying vastness of space. Paul would have been safe.
But Paul--
The door in front of Tilly slides open and Hugh greets her with a wide smile. There’s more gray in his beard since the last time she was here but he still has that youthful face that always tricked the new cadets into thinking he was half his age.
“You could have let yourself in, you know. You have a code.” Hugh steps aside, letting Tilly step into the bright warmth of the foyer. It’s the absolute antithesis of a starship, the house that they built after the war, all bamboo and other sustainable, natural materials. It’s homey, tucked into the woods, close enough to the city to make the commute to Starfleet’s flagship Earthside medical facility, but far enough removed to give the illusion of solitude, of peacefulness. Tilly knows there’s an invisible field running along the perimeter of the property-- Paul has started wandering more and more of late-- but he has run of the yard, and his greenhouse-- his pride and joy-- tucked into a corner of the backyard.
“I feel like that would be weird. Wouldn’t that be weird? What if you weren’t expecting me?”
“But we were expecting you!” Hugh takes Tilly’s coat and hangs it in the coat closet. He’s still smiling when he shuts the door and turns back to her, but now that she’s closer, Tilly can see the forcefulness behind it, made brittle with strain. He’s in dark blue sweats and a Starfleet medical sweatshirt. “ Doctor Tilly.”
Tilly blushes and ducks her head. A curl escapes from the messy bun atop her head and Hugh gently reaches over and tucks it behind her ear.
“He’s so proud of you,” Hugh says. “We wanted to be there. We had planned to but--”
“I know.” Tilly smiles tightly, “It’s okay.”
“We watched the holo of the ceremony. He was devastated that we couldn’t--”
Tilly shakes her head, “It's okay. My mother wasn't there either. Shit. Not that I'm lumping you and Paul into the same group as my mother. That's not what I meant. She didn't have an excuse. Not that you guys had an excuse. Or. I mean. You did. I understand. I just-- I meant-- He shouldn’t--”
Hugh stops the spiral with steadying hands on her shoulders, “I know. We know.”
“The mushroom bouquet was beautiful. Were they from his garden?”
“Of course,” Hugh smiles, “And he insisted on writing the card himself.”
“Of course,” Tilly smiles and blinks until the sudden burn in her eyes clears. She treasures the card, keeps it pressed between the pages of an antique book of fungi illustrations Paul had gifted her after the first time one of her papers was accepted for publication. There had been a card then as well and Tilly forces herself not to think about the story that the pair tells about the handful of years between them. If she didn’t already know better, she would doubt that they were both penned by the same person.
“Coffee? Tea?” Hugh leads Tilly through the house, up a small staircase to the hall, the kitchen, and then the high, vaulted ceiling of the living room, all cream and gray, accented with splashes of crimson and tangerine. “Coquito?”
“Your abuela’s recipe?”
Hugh gives her an affronted look. "We don't acknowledge any other recipes in this house, Dr. Tilly.” He pours a tall glass from the carafe in the refrigerator, garnishing with a sprinkle of cinnamon.
“I thought this was a Puerto Rican Christmas thing?” Tilly takes a sip and moans happily.
“It is.”
“It’s June.”
Hugh looks away and focuses on preparing two more glasses with the sort of intensity previously reserved for brain surgery. He settles the glasses on a tray already laden with tiny lemon cookies and lavender macarons.
“Yeah, well, Paul likes it and I don’t know much longer…ah…”
“That bad?”
“I wouldn’t have called you if it wasn’t.”
The rich taste of the coconut and rum turns sour on Tilly’s tongue but she makes herself swallow. She turns to the staircase, walls lined with medals and commendations, holos of Paul and Hugh looking younger than she had ever known them and much younger than the large holo hung on the far wall. She’s in that portrait, grinning in her civvies between Michael and Airiam as Hugh and Paul kiss on a sun-drenched beach, the cliffs of Cabo Rojo rising like a cathedral.
It was after the botched jumps, when Stamets had just become Paul to Tilly. Nearly a week lost in sickbay as Discovery limped to the closest starbase with trauma-level medical facilities and spacedocks large enough to perform maintenance on a Crossfield class ship-- Lorca had refused to allow Paul to leave the ship, had intercepted Hugh and Dr. Pollard’s transmissions to medical command, the scans of Paul’s brain, the grim prognosis and request for a medical evac to ferry them from the crippled Discovery to more capable facilities. Intercepted and blocked, all while Paul faded in front of them.
At least Lorca was stripped of his command over it. Tilly can’t say she’s kept up with the disgraced captain’s post-command career. He could be in another dimension for all she cared.
And at least it gave Tilly time to consider the possibilities, to pull that Hail Mary with the spores out of the recesses of her mind. The dual memories of Hugh slamming his fists against the glass of the spore cube as Paul seized on jump 92 and the one of Hugh curled around a lifeless Paul in that terrible limbo before the spores revived him, compete for the title of “most horrific” in Tilly’s mind.
Paul and Hugh were gone for months, first on Starbase 12, then evacuated to Vulcan as the Klingon war intensified and their campaign of terror endangered dozens of space stations and satellites. They stayed on Vulcan through L’Rell’s ceasefire and returned just after the incident with the Hiawatha. Stamets never jumped again, but regular spore infusions kept the effects of his damaged brain at bay.
“Where is he?” Tilly asks, “Upstairs?”
Hugh shakes his head, “We’ve been using the guest room down here.”
Tilly opens her mouth, but Hugh is faster.
“He’s been having trouble with stairs.”
Tilly nods.
“Anyway, he’s out back.” Hugh nods toward the wall of windows and the door sliding open to the large deck. The yard is shrouded in mist and drizzle, but the peaked roof keeps a good portion of the patio dry. Now that she’s paying attention, Tilly can make out a shock of strawberry blonde hair poking over the back of a lounge chair. She turns back to Hugh and he shoos her away, “Go on. I’ll catch up. It’s been a good day. He knows you’re coming.”
Paul doesn’t stir until Tilly is directly in front of him, staring through her with the sort of dazed, empty look he had when he left the spore cube for the final time, though without the smears of blood on his cheeks and that awful white film over his eyes that made him look like a corpse. There’s a small, thoughtful furrow between his brows as he focuses, pulling himself back from wherever it is he goes-- harder and harder now, Hugh said, when he commed Tilly a few days earlier.
“What about the spores?” She’d asked more out of hope and habit than actual curiosity. It was no secret that the effectiveness of the spores had been dwindling for some time now. It was this fact that led Hugh and Paul back to Earth and it was what directed the focus of Tilly’s research-- though she would never tell Paul that. He’d blame himself and his illness for derailing her life even though, to Tilly, it was really quite the opposite.
Discovery’s accident. Paul’s injuries and subsequent dependency on the spores. The destruction of the Glenn. Lorca’s fanaticism-- Starfleet was forced to take a hard look at itself and what it was becoming. In the end, the spore drive concept was abandoned and with it, the military applications that Paul so despised corrupting and co-opting his life’s work.
The future of his mushrooms was in medicine, which Paul was happy to point out had long been one of the earliest applications of the spores and fungi he so treasured. Full circle.
“I’ve been trying to prolong their usefulness,” Hugh had answered, “I only use them in the extreme situations.”
Meaning either when Paul’s gone catatonic long enough to neglect his bodily functions or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, when he’s been manic for days and is about to collapse from lack of rest.
Paul is swathed in blankets, except for the hand that peeks out, fingers twitching in the speckled fur of their rather large and grumpy cat, Truffle-- a gift from Reno of all people-- and the burnished metal of his wedding band catches the light weakly.
“I think I’m going to ask Hugh to marry me,” Paul had said, seemingly out of nowhere, seated outside the spore cube with his knees drawn up following an infusion. This was still almost a year before they left Discovery, and months before anyone-- even Hugh-- realized something was going wrong-- and Tilly thinks, though has no way to confirm it, that this was when Paul knew what was happening. It was taking longer for the spores to do their thing. Longer for Stamets to get back on his feet. But he did get back on them.
She had smiled at the time, at Paul’s seemingly random proclamation.
“Aren’t you two already married?” Reno said, passing through engineering, twirling a spanner with one hand and pushing her work cart with the other.
“We are,” Paul nodded, “We never had a ceremony though.”
“Really?” Tilly asked as Reno rolled her eyes and walked off, muttering something about locking herself in a jeffries tube until the feelings passed.
Paul shrugged and offered a small, mournful smile, “There was never enough time .”
“You could have made time,” Tilly said gently, punctuated with a careful elbow to Paul’s ribs.
“I could have,” he nodded, “I should have. Hugh always wanted a big wedding.”
So a big wedding was held a few months later, on a beach in Puerto Rico, surrounded by family and friends and Paul’s uncle Everett’s Beatles cover band. There had been dancing and drinking and the new-again husbands looked dashing in their dress uniforms.
When Paul’s gaze finally lands confidently on Tilly, she smiles, “Hello, Commander Stamets.”
“Dr. Sylvia Tilly, PhD.” He squints up at her and she knows he wears glasses now, from time to time, but she doesn’t know if the vision problems are related to the spore drive damage or simply the natural progression of being 54-years old and spending a not insignificant amount of that time staring at illuminated screens. He's not wearing them now though, and Tilly can easily see the heavy bags beneath his eyes and how bloodshot the whites are.
“Two PhDs now, sir.”
Paul nods, a little uncoordinated. His eyes drift to something over Tilly’s shoulder-- likely something only he can see, or thinks he sees-- before snapping back. “You’re catching up to me.”
“I think I’m done,” she laughs, “My brain is fried.” She chokes then, paling as she realizes what she said, “I’m so sorry. That was such a dumb and shitty thing to say. I just meant…you know…god, I’m such an idiot…”
Paul doesn’t acknowledge the slip or the stammered apology. He looks down at the bundle of fur on his lap, “Have you met Truffle?”
Tilly has met Truffle several times. Truffle is four years old. Tilly doesn’t love cats, but she loves Truffle because Truffle clearly loves Paul. She reaches out and scratches behind the cat’s ears, accidentally brushing her fingertip against Paul’s.
“Of course I’ve met Truffle.”
Tilly keeps her voice light and airy but notes that Paul’s face still goes a little hard and his throat bobs before he nods and without looking up, says, “Yes. Of course you have.”
The door behind them slides open and Hugh emerges with a tray of coquito and cookies. He places the tray on the table to Paul’s right, pushing aside a discarded PADD and half-emptied cup of water, long gone warm from neglect. Hugh picks the glass up with delicate surgeon’s fingers.
“More water, sweetheart?”
Paul shakes his head and Hugh puts the glass back on the table. He settles on the lounger and nudges Paul’s hip until they’re both smooshed into the chair that is clearly meant to only hold one. Truffle jumps off of Paul’s lap and stalks into the tall grasses and vines along the edge of the yard, tail twitching with agitation. Paul’s fingers still stroke an invisible skull for a few more moments before slowing to a stop. He looks back up at Tilly with a long stare, brow furrowed before smoothing out with a wide grin.
“Dr. Sylvia Tilly. PhD.”
“Yes,” Tilly’s voice wavers, “Hi, Paul.”
Hugh glances between them and adjusts so he can hold Paul properly, legs tangled beneath the blanket and an arm snaked behind and around his shoulders. He kisses Paul’s temple and plays with the white blonde hairs at the nape of his neck. Paul’s eyes droop.
Tilly and Hugh make eye contact over Paul, speaking through the silence with their steady stares. Tilly bites her bottom lip and Hugh nods, short and quick so as not to disturb Paul.
She can feel herself crumbling. Structural integrity: compromised. She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand and gets to her feet.
“I um. I need to use your bathroom.”
“You know where it is,” Hugh says softly, tugging Paul closer and offering him a sip of water that he accepts without complaint. Paul takes the cup and brings it to his lips. Hugh’s hand hovers as though waiting for him to drop it.
Tilly makes it to the small powder room off the kitchen, closing the door and locking it behind her before sliding to the floor and keening into her knees. She shudders with the effort to keep her sobs quiet, though she’s confident that the noise wouldn’t carry to the patio where Hugh and Paul are curled around one another, a singular entity cursed to inhabit two bodies.
She knew, but she didn’t know. She knows more than most. She knows Hugh keeps the concerned parties up to date with comms and messages and the occasional video-- though fewer and fewer featuring Paul on the screen.
“Stamets can barely hold a fucking conversation,” Reno had reported, dropping by to get lunch with Tilly the last time Discovery was earthside to pick up a new batch of bright-eyed cadets on their science rotation, “I know the man was always a little spacey but Jesus--”
“He wasn’t,” Tilly said, surprised by the steel in her voice. She had gotten on with Reno just fine when they were both on the ship and she knows that the antagonism that blossomed between Reno and Stamets was more a weird display of affection than actual animosity-- Jett visited when she could, after all, and she was on the list of people Hugh kept up to date regarding their lives in San Francisco. And there was Truffle. But a sort of protectiveness buried itself in Tilly’s chest-- protectiveness and a little sadness-- Reno never really got to know Stamets. He was still recovering on Vulcan when Discovery happened upon the wreck of the Hiawatha. He had to relearn how to speak, how to walk, and they all had to figure out the infusion protocols-- how much to give and when and for how long. The Stamets who returned to duty was 100% Stamets…just…quieter, somehow.
Faded.
“What?” Reno asked, genuine curiosity burning in her wide, wise eyes, “What is it, Red?”
“Stamets. Paul. He wasn’t always…you didn’t know him before, okay? He wasn’t always--”
Words floated through her own unaltered brain. Words the new recruits or recent transfers used to talk about Stamets among themselves.
Freaky. Flaky. Fucked up.
… total wackjob…
… heard him talking to himself in the mess hall, full on conversing with an empty chair…
…he’s just here because they wanted Culber back and Culber wouldn’t come back without Stamets…
…belongs in a psych ward, not on a starship…
“Spacey,” Tilly said. “You have no idea who he was before he got hurt, no idea what he sacrificed.”
Reno finished chewing the bite of her moussaka and swallowed. She cocked her head to the side, regarding Tilly with an uncharacteristically gentle look. She said, “I think I do. But why don’t you tell me about him anyway.”
Tilly sniffs and pulls herself up, wetting a towel with cold water and dabbing at her eyes. The mascara is a lost cause, but she does her best. She takes three deep breaths and watches herself in the mirror as she stands up straight, raises her chin, and presses her lips together to quell their mutinous trembling.
When she feels ready, Tilly slides the bathroom door open and comes face to face with Hugh, Paul hefted into his arms, bridal style, somnolent face pressed to the spot beneath Hugh’s chin where his pulse beat out a reliable rhythm. She jumps and Hugh raises a finger to his lips.
He whispers, “I’m just gonna get him settled.”
“I can go.”
“No, I’ll just be a few minutes. You just got here. Stay? Please?”
Tilly nods and Hugh makes the last few steps down the little hall, slipping into the dark, cool guest room with ease. He slides the door shut with his hip but it doesn’t close all the way. Tilly reaches for it but Hugh stops her with a raised hand. The other one cards through Paul’s hair-- still blonde except for the twin shocks of white at his temples. Paul’s eyes crack open, an eerie white sheen glistening in the low light of the room.
“Just relax, baby. You’re okay. We lost you for a minute there, but you’re okay. Just sleep now.”
Paul makes a low, pained sound. His eyes squeeze shut and his head presses into Hugh’s knee. Hugh fishes in a drawer of the nightstand and brings out a hypospray.
“Head hurt?”
Tilly can’t hear the response. Hugh asks if he’s going to throw up and Tilly watches Paul tap Hugh’s knee twice. One for yes, two for no -- handy to have in the arsenal for when Paul is too pained or too scrambled to use his words.
Hugh presses the hypo against Paul’s arm and says, “This will help.” After, he rubs the spot soothingly and swaps the hypospray for a tricorder. He hums at the readout and places the unit back in the drawer. He maneuvers out from beneath Paul and kneels, pressing a kiss to Paul’s temple and running the back of his fingers over a pale cheek.
“Just rest. I’ve got you. Everything is alright.”
When Paul appears to be well and truly asleep, Hugh rises and pulls the plush duvet over his husband’s shoulders. He gently secures a medicuff monitor around Paul’s wrist, taps the corresponding band on his own arm to ensure they’re linked up. He doesn’t seem perturbed by Tilly’s hovering when he slips back into the hallway and slowly eases the door into a half-shut position.
“It really was a good morning,” he says like an apology, “We should have had you over earlier. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine!”
“Mornings are usually rough.” Hugh pauses, “He hasn’t been sleeping well--”
“Which means you haven’t been sleeping well either,” Tilly supplies and Hugh counters with a flippant wave of his hand.
“You should relax,” Tilly continues, following Hugh back out to the patio where he retrieves the untouched drinks and cookies. “Let me do that.”
She claims the tray and leads Hugh back inside, dumping the food into the reclamation unit. She turns with the coquito in her hands and offers one to Hugh, who shakes his head, already pouring some amber-colored liquid out of a decanter and into a sleek tumbler. He offers her a glass and she shakes her head, looking into her creamy white coquito like it holds all the answers and that answer is to change the subject.
“How are things at the med center?”
Hugh shrugs, “I don’t know. Probably fine. I resigned last month.”
“You resigned?”
“Paul can’t be left alone anymore.”
“I’m sure an aide could--”
“I don’t want a stranger taking care of him. I promised him I wouldn’t leave him. I promised him it would always be me.”
“But someone could help --”
“There is no one else, Sylvia. It wouldn’t be fair to them or to him to bring someone in here who doesn’t…doesn’t understand. Who doesn’t have the whole story. Sometimes he rambles during an episode and things slip and that's too dangerous.”
Discovery’s original purpose, its experimental drive, the spores, the tardigrade, and the greatest accomplishment of Commander Paul Stamets’ life…are classified. Highly classified. The president of the Federation doesn’t even have clearance. Officially, the Glenn was destroyed in a Klingon ambush and officially, Stamets suffered a catastrophic injury during one of the final battles in the war with the Klingons. The details are intentionally cloudy-- a rogue phaser to the head, perhaps, or too many minutes trapped on a deck with failing life support. Embellishment invites scrutiny. The nature of his role in the Klingon war, his role on the Discovery, all glossed over, sanitized, stripped of anything that could unintentionally hint at the truth about what Discovery was once capable of-- is still capable of if the spore drive were to be rebuilt and another navigator spliced together with tardigrade DNA.
Or hell, maybe they’d just go catch themselves another tardigrade this time around. Tilly doesn't know. All she knows is that the Starfleet she joined was not the Starfleet she served, and yes, changes were made after the war, but infection can be insidious. It can run deep. It can be rather resilient.
Regardless of the new and improved friendly neighborhood Starfleet, if it was determined that Paul was a security risk, he would be whisked away to some remote facility, isolated and alone.
“It’s worse when I’m alone.” Paul’s quiet admission on the eve of his and Hugh’s final departure from Discovery, lingers like the whispers of a ghost. They had been huddled together on the sofa in his and Hugh’s quarters, the small farewell gathering rotating around their shared axis, a few weeks after that shitshow of an away mission that laid Paul’s reality bare.
Paul always traveled with one or two infusion treatments in the event Discovery was delayed in returning the away team shipside. The age-old “weird-shit-in-the-soil” trope paired with “well-intentioned-but-generally-useless-locals” conspired to keep the away team planetside for five Earth-days longer than intended.
And it should have been fine. Paul confirmed that he carried two treatments. That, plus what he had received prior to deployment should have kept him going for over a week, even longer if he stretched the dosages. By the time the shuttles were deployed and by the time the inhabitants stopped shooting at the rescue team long enough for them to actually, you know, rescue , both infusions had been used and Paul was carried back to the ship on a stretcher, unresponsive and sporting the telltale white film over his eyes. Pulling him back when he was this far gone was always dicey, which is why they developed the infusion schedule in the first place. His heart stopped twice and he didn’t recognize Hugh or Tilly or anyone else on the crew for hours when he woke up. Hugh, Pollard, and Tilly pored over the data--
Perhaps something was wrong with that crop of spores?
No.
Perhaps something on the planet affected their efficacy?
No.
Perhaps perhaps perhaps .
Perhaps the spores were losing their effectiveness because Paul was developing a resistance to them? Perhaps they had been losing that effectiveness for a while now?
“But if spore-resistance is a thing then what about the tardigrade?” Tilly paced the lab in medical that she and Hugh had commandeered. “Michael doesn’t believe the tardigrade even requires regular exposure to the spores when it’s not in captivity. We have to be missing something.”
Hugh hovered, looking grim with his light set in a straight line within his uncharacteristically ungroomed scruff. He read Tilly’s conclusions over her shoulder, then gave her shoulder a firm squeeze.
“We’re not missing anything,” he said. “We missed it years ago, or more likely, ignored it.”
The tardigrade didn’t need the spores the way Paul did because the tardigrade was a tardigrade and had always been meant to traverse the mycellial network. It’s treatment in captivity, the brutality of the early interface, that aching yearning for freedom inherent in all living things-- once these aggravating factors were removed, once the tardigrade was returned to the existence it was always intended for, had specifically evolved for-- it flourished and went on existing as it and it’s fellow creatures always had.
“Paul isn’t a tardigrade,” Hugh stated. “He’s not even half-tardigrade. He’s a plain old human with a little tardigrade thrown in for flavor.”
“Okay, so we remove the DNA--”
“That won’t undo the damage that the jumps already did to his brain, to his whole neurological system. If anything, the DNA is what kept the damage from outright killing him the very first time he jumped. It gave him some level of protection but…”
Tilly nodded and ran through scenarios and options in her head. She drummed her fingers on the console beside her and bobbed her head-- Stamets used to criticize her inability to think without “wiggling like a kid who needs to pee” (though he was just as bad).
“So we…I don’t know…bulk up the tardigrade DNA? We’d have to be very specific, focus on the right strands and sequences…we don’t want to accidentally turn your husband into an actual tardigrade,” she giggled nervously and frowned when Hugh didn’t share the humor.
Instead, he sighed, “You’re talking about eugenics, Ensign Tilly. That level of gene manipulation has been banned for a long time. It’s illegal.”
“So? The Federation made an exception for Stamets. Starfleet signed off--”
“A desperate exception made in a time of war. They needed the drive and they needed him to operate it.”
“Then they owe him another exception! To…to fix himself! They made him do this to himself--”
“No one made Stamets inject himself with an experimental DNA compound. He made the decision on his own.”
“He was pressured," Tilly argued. "He was pressured to find a way to make the drive work.”
“He found a way to make the drive work, Tilly.” Hugh’s smile was bitter and grotesque, ugly on his typically open and welcoming face, “Paul got the drive to work under the parameters of what Starfleet and the Federation allowed. I’m the one who forced him to find another way.”
The silence left in the wake of Hugh’s words threatened to drag them through the decks, all the way down into the warp core of the ship. Tilly tried to pull them back up where they belonged.
“You couldn’t have known what he was going to do,” she said, fiery curls bouncing as she shook her head.
“No. I couldn’t.” Hugh looked down, fixated on a scuffed panel of floor plate.
“He doesn’t blame you--”
“I am aware,” Hugh retrieved a bottle of cleaner and a sponge from one of the cabinets and began to scrub the blemish on the otherwise pristine floor. “He doesn’t need to.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself ei--”
Hugh gave up on the mark and threw the sponge. It landed with a dull thwack on the far wall. Hugh popped his back as he rose and deliberately didn’t look at Tilly. “I’m going back to our quarters. I need to check on my husband.”
The farewell sendoff was small and intimate, confined to Stamets and Culbers’ quarters. Tilly sat on the sofa and nursed some Andorrian cocktail, glancing around the rooms that she knew as well as her own-- rooms that were, after tomorrow, actually her own, as she was named to the lead scientist position Paul was vacating. Gone were the personal touches that made the space Paul and Hugh’s own. There were no faded spots on the walls where holos had once hung, but that was only because the composite material that made up the interior bulkheads was impervious to discoloration. Tilly knew where they should have been. Hugh’s collection of arias. Paul’s antique Earth books, bound with real paper. All boxed up and already loaded onto the shuttle that would ferry them down to Earth in the morning.
Paul settled beside her, still sporting his uniform, but with the jacket undone and the sleeves rolled up, exposing the augments grafted into his forearms. She always wondered why he never had them removed once his jumping days were over. Emboldened by the booze and finality of this night on Discovery, Tilly asked.
Paul ran his fingers over the matte surface of one of the units, the corner of his mouth ticking up. “I barely notice them anymore. They’re a part of me. A part that Hugh made.”
Tilly snorted, “Hey, I helped.”
“You did,” Paul pulled Tilly close and used the moment to pluck her glass out of her hand and, glancing quickly around the room, downed the rest of the bright blue contents.
“Rude.” Tilly deadpanned.
“My dear doctor won’t let me indulge at my own 'too fucked up for Starfleet' party.”
“Don't call it that.”
“I’d get you a refill but Hugh is in full doctor mode. If I get within a foot of the bar, he pounces and I don't need that in my life.”
Tilly nods toward Culber, leaning against the wall between the sitting room and the kitchenette, smiling and chatting with a bottle of beer dangling from his fingers. He’s sporting his pristine uniform pants, but ditched the jacket for a black DISCO t-shirt, sleeves straining against his biceps. “I don’t know,” Tilly says, “He looks like he’s occupied.”
“Trust me, he is not . Hugh may be a cinnamon bun, but Dr. Culber has eyes in the back of his head.”
Tilly patted Paul’s knee in mock sympathy and they sat in companionable silence, watching their friends-- their odd, mismatched mess of a family-- mingle. Paul’s eyes lost some of their sharpness and Tilly feared he was drifting into the network until he broke the quiet between them.
“It’s funny how things work out.”
Tilly turned and followed Paul’s line of sight to Michael and Saru holding a lively conversation with Detmer and Owo, who gripped each other's hands and swayed to the soft music someone had queued up. Paul scratched at his arms, digging fingernails into the meat as though trying to hold on to something vital, something that was slipping away. Tilly hadn’t been on the ill-fated away mission, but she knew Paul had come back with angry red scratches on his arms, his neck and she had read Reno’s brief, learned that Paul had done it to himself as he slipped further and further away from the lucidity he so desperately clung to. Tilly reached out and stopped Paul’s hands from inflicting further damage. She held his hands and asked if he needed to go lay down. He shook his head.
“It’s worse when I’m alone.”
Tilly nodded and after a moment, Paul’s hands relaxed and he continued, “I never wanted to be on a starship.”
“Oh, I know. You were a total prick about it when you first got here.”
Paul ducked his head apologetically, “I never wanted to join Starfleet. I never wanted any of this…and now there’s nothing I want more.”
“Is that why you didn’t say anything when the spores started to fail?”
Paul’s head shot up, mouth gaping, “How did--”
“C’mon, Stamets. You had to have realized there was a problem before the rest of us.” Tilly shrugged, “And I reviewed the last few months of your work-- don't look at me like that, Hugh asked me to. The hybrid experiments. You were trying to fix it on your own. I just don’t understand why . I could have helped. Hugh could have--”
“Hugh was offered the CMO spot on Enterprise’s next 5-year mission.” Paul said.
“Oh.”
“I was going to go with him. Work in Spock’s lab. It wasn’t a lead position but that’s okay. Hugh sacrificed a lot to follow me here. I wanted to follow him for a change. I wouldn't be cleared to serve on a Constitution-class ship with if I presented with a chronic health problem and an unreliable treatment and if I didn't go to Enterprise, then Hugh wouldn't go to Enterprise, and I just...I wanted him to have that.”
The monitor on Hugh’s wrist beeps and he looks down with a frown. Tilly holds her breath and questions him with a look.
“He’s fine.” Hugh refills his glass, takes a large sip, “Computer, play Musetta’s Waltz .”
He smiles at the glossy countertop as the gentle strings begin to swell and sway.
“I taught Paul how to dance to this song.”
Tilly laughs, “I always knew he had secret moves.”
“What secret moves? You were at our wedding! We danced at our wedding! You saw all the moves!”
Tilly is full-on cackling now, a balm over a wound that has a long way to go before it’s closed-- one that may never be fully healed. She snorts and then laughs harder, “Yeah but he never participated in our engineering dance parties! Not even when he was high!”
“Funny, he had no issue if he happened to be hanging around the sickbay when medical’s daily dance party broke out.”
“That fucker.”
Hugh snickered, sighed into his emptying glass, and held his hand out to Tilly, “May I have this dance?”
“What? No, I can’t dance.”
“You just told me about engineering’s dance breaks-- which you guys totally stole from us, by the way.”
“That’s different, and we did not!”
“C’mon. I won’t step on your feet!”
“No, but I might step on yours .”
“Humor me.”
Tilly lets Hugh take her hand and lead her in a slow, tentative twirl. She knows these steps. Reluctantly.
“My mother made me learn all the classic dances in preparation for my career of charming ambassadors.”
Hugh rolls his eyes, “Sounds fun!”
“Not really. She always said I had three left feet.”
“Well, Paul always said your mother was a short-sighted idiot who didn’t fully appreciate your genius, likely because she was too dim to understand anything more complex than 2 + 2.”
“He did not.”
“Cross my heart. He said some other stuff too but it’s not suitable for polite company.”
Tilly blushes and lets Hugh twirl her again. She moves with a little more confidence this time. She thinks about the sad, empty walls of their vacated quarters on the Discovery-- an entire life packed up and relocated, reestablished here on these walls. Faces disappear and reappear like lanterns in the dark, her own among them. There is no one thread running through a life, but dozens and dozens. Some are stronger than others. Some more vibrant with color, others strong but rough. Some are frayed. Some barely survive. They already know that time is not linear. Paul theorized, back on Discovery, that life and death were also not so clearly defined. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed and what is life at its very base element but energy at its most pure? Paul once said that the mycelial network-- the veins and muscles of the universe-- was unspeakably beautiful and he wished that those he loved could see it too. Tilly thinks that, in a way, anyone can see the beauty of it, altered DNA or not, if they just look hard enough.
As the recording comes to an end, Hugh and Tilly find themselves drawn closer, wrapped in a tight embrace, swaying softly in the silence. Tilly says, muffled against Hugh’s shoulder, “It’ll be okay.”
Hugh stiffens and Tilly feels him nod.
“There’s still time,” she says, “For a breakthrough.”
Hugh pulls back, smiles tightly and presses a chaste kiss to her forehead.
A soft voice comes from behind, “Adultery.” It deadpans. "Betrayal.”
They both turn toward the hall and there is Paul, leaning against the wall, divested of his blankets. He’s bleary-eyed and his hair is mussed as he runs a shaky hand through it. Hugh crosses the room in a few long steps and pulls Paul close. Paul grins and sags into the hold.
Hugh feigns a fluster, "Forgive me, mi amor. It's not what it looked like."
“Excuses.” Paul shakes his head when Hugh tries to lift him and they slowly make their way to the sitting area, claiming the sofa for themselves, leaving a deep, cozy armchair for Tilly.
“I didn’t think we’d see you awake,” Hugh marvels, adjusting so Paul can curl against his chest.
Paul absently mumbles, “Found a clearing,” as though that explains everything. To Tilly: “Did Hugh feed you?”
“He tried,” Tilly slides onto the floor and scoots closer to the men sprawled on the sofa. She reaches out and rubs Paul’s back, the ridges of his spine are sharp enough to feel through the oversized sweatshirt that she suspects belongs to Hugh. She runs her fingers over each sharp peak and says, “You should eat.”
“Terrible idea.” Paul blanches. He reaches with the hand not trapped between himself and Hugh, “Come here. Tell me what you’re working on.” His grip is stronger than Tilly is expecting, but the trembling is still there-- a constant reminder of a deteriorating nervous system.
“Don’t make her sit on the floor, Paul.”
“Then scoot over. I can’t see her all the way over there.”
Tilly and Hugh exchange a look-- the chair is barely four or five feet away from the sofa. Paul groans, “I can hear you both fretting. Stop it.”
Hugh adjusts and Paul maneuvers until Tilly is able to take a seat on the sofa, Paul curled between them with his head tucked beneath Hugh’s chin and his legs crossed in Tilly’s lap. Truffle slinks back inside and, ignoring Hugh and Tilly entirely, leaps into Paul’s arms to tuck herself into his tummy.
“Ok,” Paul smiles up at Tilly, wry and smug and so very Stamets that for a moment, she’s a freshly minted cadet, just assigned to the staff of the self-proclaimed “future of astromycology.” He is terrifying. Infuriatingly brilliant. And, Tilly will eventually learn, the bravest person she knows. “Defend your dissertation to me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No! I presented to the panel already! Twice! And I passed and I don’t have to do that anymore and you can’t make me!”
“I’m smarter than everyone on that panel.”
“Yet another reason why I am not revisiting that particular experience solely for your amusement.”
“But it’ll be fun.”
“For you, maybe.”
“Fine.” Paul snuggles into his husband’s chest and freezes, briefly, before pulling himself away from whatever it was that pulled him away from them, “Just tell me about it, then.”
“No Stamets-ing.” Tilly warns.
“I won’t!”
“I’ll pinch him if he does,” Hugh assures, with a warning poke in Paul’s side.
“I hate both of you.” he retorts with a smile.
“Of course you do, dear.” Hugh brings a hand up to cup the side of Paul’s face, tenderly turning his head until their noses touch and he can brush their lips together.
Paul pulls away with a quiet and undignified snort, “Not in front of the kids.”
“This is hardly the most compromising position I’ve ever been exposed to by you two.”
The three of them state, in near-perfect unison, “The cultivation bay.”
Tilly launches into the rundown of what she’s been working on officially and what she’s been working on unofficially . There’s a promising fungi specimen that the Farragut brought back from a perpetually hazy planet in Gamma quadrant that healers on the planet explained was the key to maintaining sharp memory and neurological health well into old age-- the average lifespan of its inhabitants reached the high 200s in Earth years though their brains could not be differentiated from those of middle-age when scanned. She was told that the spores glowed a low gold when potent, but she hasn’t been able to replicate such growth in her lab. She’s awaiting soil and air samples from the planet to determine what factor the environment itself plays into the potency of the fungi.
Paul and Hugh don’t ask many questions and Tilly knows that they know what she’s hoping to do with the samples. They’ve talked about the gamma spores before and Paul had cautioned her not to get her hopes up, not to sacrifice the science in search of a miracle. “It took Justin and I almost six years to make any kind of meaningful breakthrough with the stellaviatori.”
Paul doesn’t have that kind of time.
He reaches out and grips her hand when she’s brought them all up to speed on her latest studies.
“I’m so proud of you,” he says, except the words sound like “goodbye” and Tilly won’t accept that, so she just offers a polite thank you and pets Paul’s legs as Hugh holds him as though his arms are the only thing standing between Paul and oblivion. It’s a quiet moment-- a blip of calm in the maelstrom-- Tilly wants bend time and make it last even longer. She wonders if, somehow, it is longer for Paul, who acknowledges that he “exists outside the normal flow of time.” May his good moments last forever and the painful ones merely seconds.
Paul’s lips are moving, but his eyes are clear, and he is present. Tilly leans forward to hear, but between Paul and Hugh and the cat, she doesn’t quite make it. She watches Hugh’s face-- a tight smile and a sharp nod and a kiss pressed to the crown of Paul’s head. A single tear runs from the corner of Hugh’s eye, along the ridge of his nose, dripping into Paul’s hair.
“What did he say?” Tilly asks, suddenly feeling very small, as though intruding on something precious and private.
Hugh smiles and reaches for Tilly’s hand and the three of them must look like some kind of mutated Pieta with Paul tucked into their laps-- the sacrificial lamb whose blood saved them all.
“He said this is perfect.”