New Fic: Trading Places

[jackwabbit]

Trading Places

Fandom: Star Trek Discovery
Rated: G
Category: Triple Drabble. Culmets. (Re)stablished Relationship.
Season: Post-Two, Pre-Three. (Probably? Inter-season speculation.)
Spoilers: General Series Knowledge Only.
Summary: Hugh Culber once offered his hand to a near stranger named Paul Stamets. Thankfully, Paul had accepted it. Now, the roles are reversed. Can Hugh do the same?
Note: Written for Culmets Celebration 2020, Day Two (On Our Way).

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Paul was excited.

And therefore, he was babbling.

“You’ve got to see this,” he said, grinning like a very well-educated idiot. “It’s a whole grove of them. The mycelia must cover nearly a kilometer. And that’s just what I can see from here.”

He rushed up a wooded path as he spoke, nearly tripping over a large tree root in the process, but paying it no mind. He just kept going  – both with his feet and his mouth.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. The closest thing on Earth is probably Armillaria, and  it’s sort of like the Subsilva species on Vulcan, but the gill structure is totally different, and there are so many colors. It’s unbelievable.”

As he spoke, Paul extended a hand behind him, unconsciously reaching for the man trailing in his wake even as he kept plowing forward.

The gesture stopped Hugh dead in his tracks, and somehow, that managed to break through to Paul.

He slowed, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder at Hugh.

His hand was still extended, and when he realized their relative positions, he froze. His eyes bored into Hugh’s. His face was a mixture of fear and hope.

Hugh stared back blankly – but only for a moment.

Then he smiled, surged forward, and captured Paul’s hand in his own for the first time since the jahSepp.

And in that moment, Paul knew everything he needed to know about Hugh – again.

But he had to be sure.

“Hugh?” he said, eyes shining.

“Yeah,” Hugh replied, with a shaky nod.

Nothing more needed to be said. Paul simply tugged Hugh’s hand to turn them both back down the path and they resumed their travel.

Hugh had no idea where they were going.

But he didn’t care.

So long as they went together.

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A/N: A note on Armillaria, a real mushroom here on earth – per Wikipedia, the largest known organism (of the species Armillaria ostoyae) covers more than 8.8 km² in Oregon’s Malheur National Forest and is more than than 2,400 years old. And I made up Subsilva (underground forest in Latin according to Google) because I still have my artistic license I got out of a Cracker Jack box when I was six.