Survival Tactics

Not Awkward At All

Burnham realized too late that she could probably have drawn out field gear from the quartermaster and completely avoided returning to her quarters, with too late being about the time Tilly tiptoed into the small room as Burnham stuffed equipment into her ruck.

"Um...hi?"

"Tilly," Burnham said neutrally. Pleasedon'tsayanythingaboutyouandKeylahavingsex...

"So, you wanna talk about what happened earlier, or...you know, I kind of think we should talk about it. Otherwise it's going to be this big...thingbetween us and everything will be all weird and..."

"Tilly," Burnham said, more sharply than she intended. She took a breath and turned to face her roommate. "Tilly, I owe you an apology." Seeing Tilly's confusion she put up her hands in a let me speak gesture. "No, I do. I should have knocked first. It was MWR night, and I should have considered that you might not leave the event alone."

Tilly blinked several times, her train of thought clearly having been derailed. "I...oh...I...no, it's fine." She laughed a stuttering, cathartic exhale of nervous energy. "You don't have to apologize..."

"I do," Burnham said. "This is a shared living space, and this evening I clearly failed to take that into consideration. It won't happen again."

"It's okay, really! I mean it's no big deal--just a little embarrassing..." Tilly's eyes widened comically, "Kinda killed the mood," she said and laughed nervously again.

"Well, I'm sorry for that."

"I mean, I'm just glad it wasn't weird for you seeing me and Keyla. But then again, you served together on the Shenzhou, so I guess you've probably seen her naked before, right?"

"There wasn't as much nudity on the Shenzhou as you seem to think," Burnham answered dryly, earning another barrage of nervous laughter from Tilly.

"It's so weird," she said, plopping down on her bed and squeezing her shoulders together. "I mean, I was never really into girls before. But then she came over to my table tonight, and we started talking, and doing shots and talking and doing more shots, and she just kept looking at me." Tilly sighed wistfully. "She has the most amazing eyes. I think the cybernetic implant kind of draws your attention to them."

"I'm familiar with her eyes," Burnham said, stuffing an extra pair of socks into her ruck with what was probably undue force.

"Right, so you know what I'm talking about. And all of a sudden, I'm just like, Wow...she's looking at me. No one but me. And I thought about how Terran women tend to be a lot more fluid in their sexuality than men, so I figured, well, I should take that sexual fluidity out for a test drive, and we ended up here." Tilly beamed and swung her legs expectantly.

"That's a...very nice story, Tilly. It sounds like it was a good evening."

"It totally was! Any night that ends with a hook-up goes in the win column, right?" Then she rolled onto her side, her legs still hanging off the bed. "And Keyla. Keyla! She's so...I don't know, like a rock star, I guess? I mean, she's a bridge officer! That's so amazing!"

Burnham felt an unexpected, inexplicable stab of jealousy and the urge to shout "I was a First Officer!"

"Like she's right there where the action is, taking her orders straight from Captain Lorca."

I was in command when the captain wasn't on the bridge! Burnham shoved a small med kit into her bag. Times like these—the interactions with humans and the irrational feelings they provoked in her—made her want to flee to Vulcan, crawl into an education pod and take computerized exams for a month.

"And a helmsman, which is like, so hot. This whole ship just obeys her touch. She moves her hands and the whole vessel responds...which, hey, me too!"

Burnham jolted upright, the scene of Tilly and Keyla running through her mind, bold and urgent. I once had to give Keyla a Performance Improvement Citation...and now I know uses a follicle-blocker on her pubic hair.

"Oh...sorry. TMI? I suppose it is. Omigod! She used to report to you. This must be super-weird for you."

Burnham managed a tight smile. "Like I said, it's none of my business."

"Right. So, um, what are you packing for?"

"Captain Lorca is sending me on a mission planetside," Burnham said, her relief at the new topic was almost a physical sensation. "It's part of a Starfleet Intelligence operation."

"Wow," Tilly said. "That sounds dangerous. And you're going alone? You're really brave."

"No, I'm going with someone else." Burnham regretted the words the moment they were audible.

"Who?" Tilly asked.