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5.They’re getting ready for bed, brushing their teeth side-by-side in their shared washroom, and Tilly can practically see the gears in Michael’s head spinning. It’s only a fear of spraying the mirror with toothpaste that keeps Tilly from asking about it immediately, and once they’ve finished and rinsed their mouths, Michael seems ready to talk anyway.“Tilly. Can we talk schedules for a minute?”“Yeah, definitely. Let me get my desktop up.” She walks over to her desk to do just that.“I’m just wondering if you have… an hour or two of free time coming up.”“Oooh,” says Tilly, flicking files out of the way on her display. “Very mysterious, Michael Burnham. Do I get to ask why?”Michael looks surprised, then suddenly satisfied, and Tilly realizes she shouldn’t have given her friend an out. “No,” Michael says with a grin, “you don’t.”Tilly almost wriggles with delight. She’d be worried writing such a blank cheque for anyone else, but she trusts Michael, and having a friend who plans surprises for her is so awesome.Her excitement fades as she finally gets to her calendar. “Ugh, I’m booked solid all week. CTP stuff, duty shift, lab stuff with Stamets, lunch with—oh hey, lunch with you!—” Tilly trails off as she continues scanning the list. “The bad news is, I can’t give you an hour or two. The good news is, we’re already having lunch twice, probably three times because you know how I get on Tuesdays, and I’ve got bridge shifts so we’ll see each other there, and we can sit together on movie night?”Michael’s still smiling, which is a good sign. “Now I feel greedy asking for more,” she says, ducking her head a little, and Tilly loses her train of thought for a second. “But that’s all right. All of it,” she clarifies, gesturing vaguely at Tilly’s whole calendar situation. “It’s not an urgent thing.”4.They do indeed have lunch three times that week. On Thursday, a Vulcan science journal accepts a paper Tilly co-wrote with Stamets, and she grabs Michael’s hands when they pass in the corridor between shifts.“Michael! Our article about special relativity in mycelial space is getting published! My first publication as an Ensign!”“That’s amazing!” Tilly basks in Michael’s smile for a minute. It’s warmer than a sunbeam. “I’m not the least bit surprised.”“Aw, well, I mean. Thank you.”“Can I take you to dinner? To celebrate?”Michael makes a quick call to Linus to trade her evening inspection of the ship’s labs for his morning briefing with the section heads, and she and Tilly head to the mess hall.3.“So how was your shore leave? Did you do anything fun on Starbase 16? Is there anything fun on Starbase 16?”“There’s actually a market! People come from all over the sector to trade, mostly stuff like artwork and furniture, but there was all kinds of stuff, really, and here’s the best part: they had a bookstore.”“Oh my god,” Detmer laughs, not unkindly. “You nerd.”“If spending literally hours in there with Michael makes me a nerd, so be it. It was hard not to come home with actual boxes.”“You and Burnham, huh?”“Yeah, then we found what we thought was this little stall that had artisanal chocolate, and it was just sublime. Well, it turned out to be a whole little restaurant, and we ended up having an entire meal there. Mostly chocolate. And wine.”“Damn,” Detmer nods. “I’ve got a couple of days before we head out. I should take Joann. That sounds romantic as hell.”“R-ro—what?”“You’re telling me you spent hours browsing a bookstore together, then ate chocolate and wine for the rest of the night. And I’m crazy for thinking that sounds like a kickass date?”Tilly just blinks for a second. “I mean, I guess? If you’re into that sort of thing. You guys should definitely do it, though. As girlfriends. Since you’re girlfriends. And dating.”Detmer’s coffee cup isn’t quite wide enough to hide her smile.2.Tilly is so fucking done with the Command Fucking Training Program. Three papers due the same week? Don’t they know she has a full roster of ship’s duties too? She’s so caught up in deciding whether to burst into tears or hit the mess for another espresso that she only vaguely registers Michael coming into the room with something spiky and very, very purple.Eventually she looks up from her exponentially expanding to-do list to her roommate, who has an expression on her face that Tilly’s never seen before. “I don’t want to interrupt,” the science officer begins, but Tilly waves a hand dismissively.“Please,” she says, “I’m begging you. Interrupt.”And then she looks at what Michael’s holding. It’s a flowering plant, potted in a transparent aluminum cube, and it’s—“purple” hardly seems adequate. Tilly’s seen vivid blossoms before, but this is really something else. She pulls her gaze back up to Michael. “Is this for me?”“It is,” says Michael, still with that mysterious look on her face. “It’s from Kaminar. Saru’s sister sent the seeds and he grew it in his quarters, and gave it to me, and I’m giving it to you.” This is more explanation than Tilly was expecting. Michael’s so concise; normally she’d have said “it’s from Kaminar” and trusted Tilly to infer the rest. Is she… nervous? Tilly wonders.“It’s beautiful,” she blurts. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”“Saru says the petals iridesce into the ultraviolet. Our eyes can’t quite see all the nuances, but…”“I love it! Michael, thank you so much.”The nervousness—or whatever—on Michael’s face is gone, and she sets the beautiful ultraviolet plant down on the corner on Tilly’s desk. “My pleasure. I’ll let you get back to your work now.”Tilly reluctantly submerges, but not before she feels the gentle kiss Michael presses to the top of her head. And she’d think about that, but she has to write a paper on the first four General Orders of Starfleet now.1.“Well, this is certainly, um, rustic,” Tilly says. She wonders if it would be considered rude to give the bench—really just a log split lengthwise—a quick tricorder sweep before sitting down.Michael chuckles as she takes a seat, and pats the dirty wood next to her. “Come on, Tilly, it’s all right. Did you never go camping?”“Camping? Like, in the woods? Oh my god, Michael, three hundred light-years away my mother just got a splitting headache and she doesn’t know why.” Michael actually laughs, which makes Tilly feel better about making such a fuss. “I was an indoor kid. I am still, very much, an indoor kid.” But she sits down reluctantly.Michael scooches over a little bit. “So,” she says. “Your first first contact mission. How do you feel?”Tilly gestures around: at the firelight, the Starfleet officers mingling with aliens, the unusual but extremely pleasant music being played on instruments that look like a cross between a bongo drum and a guitar. “It’s almost going too well. Nobody’s, I don’t know, chased us out of town with a pitchfork yet. Doesn’t that usually happen?”“Well,” Michael laughs again, “the Priaanans are technically the ones who contacted us, and Starfleet has been working to set up this meeting for a few months now. It’s certainly one of the smoother ‘first contact’ experiences I’ve had.”“I’m definitely not complaining,” Tilly says, managing to forget for a second that she’s basically sitting on the ground, where dirt lives. A Priaanan comes by and offers them refreshments: sweet-sour red berries that are fuzzy like peaches, and clay pots of something light, fizzy and fermented. Tilly thanks her through the UT, but Michael has already picked up a few word-gestures of Priaanan, and delights the alien with her attempts at rendering “thank you.”They eat, and drink, and relax, and as the suns finish setting behind the eastern mountains, the music gets livelier, and a few Priaanans and Starfleet officers clear a space for dancing. Tilly, grateful for an excuse to stand, pulls Michael to her feet. “Come dance with me!”After a few upbeat numbers, the music changes to something slow and… familiar? Tilly thinks she’s imagining it, but she sees looks of puzzled recognition on a few other Earth-raised faces, and notices Gen Rhys standing near the drum-tar players grinning and giving them a thumbs up. The song is, indeed, “Me and You and Me,” a late-21st-century power ballad, and Tilly groans theatrically.“Rhys!” she calls across the fire. “You have the same taste in music as my grandmother!”“Your grandma sounds great,” he calls back. “What’s her comm?”Tilly cackles and turns back to Michael, whose face has softened so much Tilly almost feels disoriented. “Is… everything okay?”“Everything’s great, Tilly.” A pause. “Do you want to dance?”Dance. With Michael. Slow dance. With Michael. A little tipsy, on a new planet, slow dancing, with Michael. To the most stereotypical wedding/high school graduation song ever. Tilly’s eyes flick over the “dance floor.” The Priaanans are into it, and a few other crew from Discovery have paired off, including Detmer and Owo. Airiam appears to be “dancing” with a little Priaanan girl standing on the tops of her feet. Rhys is still next to the band, arms folded, looking enormously pleased with himself.Her mother’s voice pierces the static in her brain: Sylvia Tilly, you will never be a starship captain if you can’t think on your feet! And for once, the voice is right.Tilly holds out her hand to Michael. “I’d love to.”0.It’s been a long and deeply unsatisfying day. None of her tests finished running, none of her reports came in on time (which meant she had to go chasing after lieutenants—lieutenants!—like a teacher nagging about homework), and Stamets accidentally spilled a tub of fungal growth medium in her hair, which was both gross and reminiscent enough of her trip through the mycelial transporter to be mildly triggering. All Tilly wants now is a shower, a beer, a few chapters of a trashy adventure novel, and the sweet oblivion of sleep—in that order.And then she opens the door to her quarters, and the smell of whatever’s inside makes her realize she’s ravenously hungry too. Unfamiliar spices that somehow still smell like home—universal comfort food, whatever it is. What is going on?There’s a table set. Holographic candles. Soft music playing. Her stomach drops. Michael’s bringing a date over. This had to happen. It was going to happen. Michael was getting over Ash; they’d talked about it. Tilly is going to be happy; she is going to be happy for her friend; she is going to drink one very large beer and read the stupidest book on her PADD and sit in the mess hall until she’s absolutely sure–“Tilly! You’re home!” Michael steps out of the washroom, looking—ugh, looking stunning in a soft green tunic and what Tilly always thinks of as her “Vulcan yoga pants.” And here Tilly is, trying not to cry for reasons she’s trying not to think about, growth medium still sticking her sweaty hair together, and she decides that Stardate 1671 can officially go fuck itself.Michael’s face falls. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”“No, no, just,” Tilly waves her hand, “long day. I’m gonna grab my shower stuff and then I’ll get out of your way.”“Okay,” says Michael. “I’ll keep dinner warm for us.”Tilly’s mind goes completely, uselessly blank. “Us?”Michael gestures to the table, the candles. “I got us dinner. K’et maktos—sort of a Vulcan curry. I think you’ll like it.”“It smells amazing,” Tilly says almost automatically. “Wait, this is all for me? I thought—this looks like—I mean, candles…”A smile slowly blooms on Michael’s face. “What does this look like, Tilly?”“Um…” Tilly says in a very quiet voice. “A date?”Michael’s smile becomes a fully-fledged grin. “Very perceptive, Ensign Tilly.” She leans up on her toes and kisses Tilly gently on the corner of her mouth. “Go shower. I’ll be here when you come back.”Stardate 1671, Tilly thinks, I forgive you.