Spencer Reid: Criminal Minds.
Hugh Culber and Paul Stamets: Star Trek: Discovery.
Hugh and Paul get married.
And they want to adopt a child!
Spencer’s father abandons him, then takes his mother away, having her committed to a psychiatric hospital because of her schizophrenia and Spencer is left behind in an orphanage.
Paul: Autism Level 1 / Asperger’s
Spencer: Autism Level 1 or 2 (No one is really sure!)
Spencer Reid is born with a mind that operates faster than the world around him can understand.
At the age of four, his father abandons him. He cannot bear the idea of having a “disabled” child (a word that, even in a society as advanced as the 23rd century, still lingers in the cracks of humanity).
He considers Spencer a boy who “will never be able to work like others,” failing to realize that his difference is not incapacity, but a distinct way of perceiving the universe.
When Spencer turns six, his mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia. In an attempt to “protect” him, his father commits her to a Federation psychiatric hospital.
For Spencer, that means losing her while she’s still alive a slow, bureaucratic disappearance, more painful than death.
With no mother or father, he ends up in an orphanage run by the Federation.
There, children of many species coexist Vulcans, Humans, Andorians, Trills…
A mixture that could have been his salvation, but only confuses him further.
His brain processes information quickly, but his emotional and social expression is awkward. His tone sounds arrogant when he’s merely quoting facts. His gestures are stiff.
He can’t tolerate noise, flickering lights, or the rough games of the other children.
Every attempt to connect ends in mockery or isolation.
The caregivers describe him as “too egocentric/intelligent” and “difficult to integrate.”
Spencer knows this and stops trying.
He retreats into physical books (the few the replicator hasn’t yet turned into digital files), into PADDs filled with equations, and into small mechanical projects he builds alone.
In a corner of the orphanage, his world has order.
Paul Stamets and Hugh Culber arrive at the orphanage years later, looking to adopt a child.
Paul, the space mycologist with a logical, direct, and almost abrasive mind;
Hugh, the empathetic and serene physician who balances Paul’s chaos.
Both want to expand their family not to “complete” it, but to share it.
While Culber speaks with the caregivers and other children, Paul notices someone in a corner.
A human boy thin, disheveled, surrounded by books and electronic parts.
There’s a faint smell of ozone: a short circuit has just ruined his small experiment.
Spencer covers his ears tightly at the noise. No one comes near. No one helps.
Intrigued, Paul approaches.
His gaze holds no pity, only recognition he sees a distant reflection of himself, a mind that works in another language.
"Can I help you calibrate the frequency?” he asks, his tone neutral, calm.
Spencer doesn’t reply, but he watches.
Paul sits beside him, examines the circuit, adjusts a few connections. After a few minutes, the device emits a sound.
The same one Hugh listens to while cooking at home.
Paul smiles with quiet pride. Hugh, who’s come closer after seeing the scene, smiles too. There’s tenderness in that moment an impossible coincidence between two worlds: a lonely boy and two men who understand loneliness, connected through music.
The caretakers quickly intervene:
"He’s very intelligent, but… he needs a lot of care. He doesn’t talk. He has crises. Maybe you’d prefer another child.”
Hugh and Paul exchange glances.
That sentence decides them faster than any recommendation.
If there’s something both understand, it’s what it means to be considered “too much.”
Spencer doesn’t speak during the first weeks in his new home.
He observes, analyzes, memorizes every gesture of Hugh’s, every inflection of Paul’s.
He doesn’t feel unsafe, but he doesn’t feel comfortable either.
He has his own room, a replicator, and silence.
But the silence of a family is different from the silence of an orphanage: this one has a warm texture.
Culber is the first to break the barrier.
He doesn’t force him. He leaves simple notes on his desk:
Spencer begins replying with short written phrases, and then with spoken words.
When he finally speaks, it’s with the torrent of someone who’s kept years of thoughts unspoken.
Suddenly, everything pours out: theories, statistics, bits of Terran history, details about alien species.
Paul is fascinated he tries to keep up, though sometimes he’s left behind.
Culber watches their connection tenderly.
Paul, who rarely shows affection in conventional ways, finds in Spencer an interlocutor as quick as he is, as odd as he is.
Sometimes they argue over data; other times, they simply work in silence side by side, synchronized minds that understand without words.
Meanwhile, Hugh handles the human side reminding Spencer to eat, hydrate, and sleep.
The same things he reminds Paul, when both lose themselves in research.
For Hugh, care isn’t a medical duty it’s a constant act of love.
The house becomes a mixture of laboratory and emotional refuge.
The hum of the replicator, the lab lights, the murmur of data and Kasselian opera become the new family language.
Over time, the dynamic balances out.
They speak the same language data, patterns, equations.
Paul teaches him about mycelium and the quantum network that connects the universe.
Spencer listens and makes connections that even surprise Paul.
They can spend hours without speaking, but thinking the same thing.
Spencer seeks him out when he can’t decode others’ emotions.
Hugh teaches him to translate gestures, tones, and pauses.
When Spencer goes into sensory overload, Hugh just sits beside him, without touching, breathing at the same rhythm.
Spencer calls him “my stabilizer dad.”
Paul marvels at how Hugh can enter Spencer’s inner world so delicately.
Hugh, in turn, loves seeing how Paul.the scientist once clumsy with human emotions has become a father.
Dinners are chaotic and brilliant:
Spencer lists facts about unknown species;
Paul adds quantum theory;
Hugh tries to maintain nutritional order.
Amid the chaos, there’s harmony each occupies a precise place in the family system.
At sixteen, Spencer announces he wants to enter Starfleet Academy.
Culber fears the environment will be too rigid.
Paul, however, encourages him:
"If the universe is a system, you’re meant to understand it.”
Spencer has no doubts but fitting in isn’t easy.
At the Academy, other cadets find him intimidating: too logical, too serious.
Some Vulcans respect his rationality; some Humans avoid his intensity.
He specializes in Xenoneuropsychology and Quantum Pattern Analysis a hybrid field between cognitive science, applied mathematics, and alien behavior.
His goal: to understand how different species perceive reality and how their brains interpret the same stimuli divergently.
Deep down, it’s a reflection of his own search to understand why his way of seeing the world was always different, and how that difference could save lives.
Spencer doesn’t seek recognition. He seeks understanding.
And in that, Paul and Hugh are always there not as heroes, but as a network.
Paul’s mycelial network, Hugh’s emotional network, and Spencer’s cognitive network all connected by love.
The Discovery and the Reunion:
At twenty, Spencer’s name is suggested for a delicate project: analyzing mental fluctuations associated with the spore drive of the USS Discovery.
No one knew that his father, Paul Stamets, was the system’s creator.
Destiny, like a mycelial echo, was calling him back.
His arrival on the Discovery was quiet, methodical, almost unnoticed.
He settled in, organized his lab, began his analyses.
He knew his parents were aboard, but chose to keep his distance not from lack of affection, but because he didn’t know how to manage the emotion.
For him, emotions were equations with no clear solution.
Chance brought them together.
One night, Paul was reviewing the mycelial system when he heard someone mention the name “Stamets” in a technical report.
Turning, he saw him: the same focused expression, the rigid posture, the gaze that seemed to see beyond the visible.
"Spencer… how long have you been here?” Paul asked, astonished.
“Three days,” the young man replied, without looking up from the panel. “I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
Paul let out a laugh half disbelief, half joy and hugged him without asking.
Spencer stayed still for a few seconds, then returned the gesture with a small pat on the back.
It was an awkward hug, but full of meaning.
When Hugh found out, he immediately arranged a family dinner.
That dinner was everything it needed to be chaotic, sincere, strangely tender.
Hugh asked too many questions; Paul interrupted with technical explanations; Spencer answered with short, honest, unfiltered sentences.
For an instant, everything fit again.
But the Discovery was never a stable place.
Between impossible missions, quantum jumps, and Section 31 secrets, tension grew like an invisible crack.
And amid that instability came Ash Tyler an officer, an ally, a man sharing his mind with a Klingon.
An emotional bomb waiting to explode.
Paul and Hugh sensed something was wrong with Tyler but they never imagined he’d be the one to rip Hugh’s life from their hands.
When it happened, the ship fell into silence.
Culber’s body lay in sickbay, and with it, something inside Paul shattered completely.
Spencer found out hours later.
He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream.
He simply locked himself in his quarters, wordless.
He spent days reviewing medical logs, security reports, recordings searching for logic in an act beyond reason.
But grief can’t be solved with data.
Paul, drowning in pain, buried himself in work.
He stopped eating, sleeping, speaking.
Sometimes Spencer sat across from him silently, just to make sure he was still breathing.
It was his way of keeping vigil, though neither knew how to comfort the other.
And in that loneliness, father and son bonded in silence without words, through the sheer persistence of existing.
When Hugh came back, the entire universe seemed to collapse on them.
Paul didn’t understand how.
Spencer didn’t understand why.
And Hugh… didn’t understand who he was.
Returning to life left him disoriented part of him still stuck in that non-place where time didn’t flow.
He tried to return to work, but his reflection in the mirror felt foreign.
Paul tried to act as if nothing had happened, but everything in his body screamed fear and confusion.
Spencer, unable to handle the emotional chaos, began avoiding him.
He didn’t know whether to hug him or stay away he didn’t know if this man was his father or a different version of him.
Home became silent again, three presences orbiting without touching.
Paul slept little, Hugh ate at erratic hours, and Spencer hid in the labs, where the machines’ noise was predictable.
For months, every attempt at conversation ended in misunderstanding or heavy silence.
Love remained, buried under discomfort.
Chaos caught up with them again the jump to the 32nd century.
The temporal leap didn’t just fracture history it fractured their bodies.
During an emergency maneuver, Paul was severely injured; the spores had reacted unpredictably, and his body collapsed amid energetic discharges.
Seeing him unconscious, Hugh finally realized he couldn’t keep running.
The distance he had maintained out of fear, confusion, feeling like a copy of himself became meaningless in the face of possibly losing him again.
He treated Paul himself, refusing to delegate.
He didn’t sleep. He didn’t speak.
Spencer watched from the doorway, standing rigid to keep from falling apart.
He knew Hugh needed that moment just as Paul needed to survive it.
When Paul awoke, the first thing he saw was Hugh’s silhouette holding his hand.
He said nothing just breathed slowly, as if recognizing the world again.
Hugh looked at him, tears restrained.
"Im not losing you again,” he whispered.
“Then don’t let go,” Paul murmured back.
It was the beginning of forgiveness.
Not the kind that erases the past, but the kind that accepts it.
And Spencer, who had witnessed it all in silence, stepped forward, resting his fingers lightly on the bed.
For the first time in years, the three shared the same space without fear.
In the 32nd century, the galaxy had changed.
New technologies, new species, new rules.
But amid it all, the Stamets–Culber family kept trying to figure out how to live together.
Paul returned to being the brilliant scientist though calmer now.
His mind was still full of patterns, but he’d learned that some human ones don’t always need solving.
Hugh learned to live without guilt, allowing himself to be softer, more present.
And Spencer… found his own language for affection: small gestures, shared silences, tasks done without being asked.
They didn’t say “I love you” in words.
They showed it through action: coffee replicated exactly how the other liked it, reports proofread at midnight, a handwritten note on the console.
Their home was a blend of science and life: experiments, music, replicated plants from Terralysium, and discussions about mycelial patterns that ended in quiet laughter.
Each remained who they were, without trying to change the other.
That was their version of peace.
