these relics of remembrance

[Abhorsen Trilogy] Remnants

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:35:16 GMT

Title: Remnants
Rating: PG
Prompt: Abhorsen Trilogy, Yrael/Kibeth: Fighting like cats and dogs.
Characters/Pairings: Yrael, Lirael Goldenhand; implied Yrael/Kibeth
Genre(s): General, introspective
Warnings: Major spoilers for the end of Abhorsen—but if you’re reading this, I don’t imagine that matters.

--

And just like that, it was all over.

Yrael didn’t think Kibeth was actually capable of dying any more than he thought he was ever capable of standing for the Charter or ever getting freedom. The Dog, he reminds himself, because she wasn’t Kibeth in her entirety. Some things were lost to the passage of time, to the formation of the Charter, and some things gained and preserved by the bell she gave her name to. Still, it was somehow jarring to feel the last warmth of her life on Nicholas Sayre’s forehead, to faintly hear the jaunty tune of her bell echoing just on the other side of the line into Death.

It was so like her, he thought, disappearing back toward the Old Kingdom.

That had been months before, or years. Time has a strange way of passing and not passing now, as if Abhorsen’s collar and bell had a way of binding him to the same understanding of time that his masters and mistresses knew. It is not even that he forgets, just that he can’t understand time the same way. What felt like moments after leaving, he was back in the Old Kingdom again. A few hours after that, he was in Belisaire, an unassuming cat again for the sake of avoiding attention, and he caught a glimpse of Sabriel in the Palace.

Either she’s older, or he forgot how to understand how humans age, or he just never noticed at all.

That was just a brief flash though, and he disappeared again, flashing a paw in a fish monger’s stand and darting into the night. It doesn’t scare people like it used to, with the Stones restored and the Kingdom prosperous, happy. Yrael had nearly forgotten that these people could be happy, that their lives weren’t just a miserable cesspool of death bleeding into life. It was true, what he’d told Orannis, that there were so many things to love about being alive.

This is what he was supposed to learn by serving Abhorsen.
Kibeth would probably want him to thank her for it.

She’s dead now, he supposes, and hates the way the thought pinches and keeps him awake on nights when he’d rather be sleeping instead of watching starlight gleam and thinking of a dead old woman with a dancing gait and a musically compelling laugh and later a cheerful bark and a beating tail. A dog. A dog. Somehow, it suited Kibeth as much as being a cat had suited Yrael when he’d been Mogget. She’s dead, for what it’s worth, because he knows there’s reincarnation and mysteries to life and death that no one else knows that’s still alive.

He’s the last.

The thought is enough to compel him out of his rest on the hill, warping and changing until he’s the same color and brightness of the stars in the sky, disappearing into the inky black just like one of them. It takes seconds or days, but he makes it to the old house. He doesn’t need to believe in ghosts to think that he’s being haunted by the spirit of something he knows isn’t ever going to be completely gone. Kibeth is gone and splintered like the other Bright Shiners, living in Charter and Stone and Bell, the way he isn’t and never has been. There will be no bell for Yrael because Yrael is still alive, because he’s around to do his own work himself, the way the others aren’t. It’s lonely and it only promises loneliness and that’s the only reason he’s doing this.

Abhorsen’s house is the same as ever. He knows all the sendings on a personal level because he was there when they were born, plucked from the sea of marks that make up the Charter. They don’t stop him and he wonders if they could if they wanted to. Probably not. He knows every last secret to this place better than any Abhorsen and better than any one of the sendings.

If Sabriel is still alive, he knows better than to think that she’s here. She’s lived in the Palace since the Restoration, and before then she was just traveling with Touchstone to mend the stones and give him the right to rule. She’s never actually lived in this place, but it doesn’t mean Lirael or her descendants don’t. He doesn’t pay enough attention to know who the Abhorsen of the time is, not like before, and there’s some kind of nostalgia in darting across the river-wet rocks over the Ratterlin and emerging on the other side.

It turns out that Lirael is there, and if she’s older it’s only by a decade at most. She’s hard at work in the study, golden hand gleaming under the charter-lights she’s placed in the ceiling. He can tell that she’s felt him before she sees him, before she looks up over her book and raises her eyebrows.

“Mogget,” she observes and she sounds far more surprised than she looks. Kibeth’s Abhorsen. All the others were his, but the last member of Abhorsen’s line he served was Sameth and Sabriel his last Abhorsen. Lirael was Kibeth’s from the moment she found her in the Clayr’s library (and who found whom, Yrael will never know) and there was never a greater sign that his time with the Abhorsens was over.

“Yrael,” he corrects and leaps onto the desk, tail twitching slowly because it’s a cat thing to do; because all the time he spent in this body made it more comfortable to him than his own.

“Yrael,” she repeats and closes the book, as if that will ask the number of obvious questions she has for him.

“Abhorsen,” he greets and licks a paw, as if nothing’s changed now or ever, as if he’s Abhorsen’s servant reporting for duty like he did for all the others. It is his question, gauging the atmosphere of the house, whether Lirael is Abhorsen or not.

Her face softens and she retracts the hand that she’d started to stretch out to pet behind his ears. Kibeth would have liked it, as a dog, but she would have laughed at him if he let Lirael do it to him now.

“I’m still Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” she explains with a smile. “Sabriel is the longest-living Abhorsen in…”

“Since Chlorr’s mother,” Yrael tells her, even though he recognizes the book as his own account of the Abhorsens’ lives and knows that she would know this; would certainly know the truth about Chlorr. He’d marked it in there along with other information. They were short, to the point, entries of birth, death and notable achievements. Sabriel’s was the last he’d written in, deep in the night when no one would see that he might have been sentimental enough to grow attached to the line and their well-being; to preserving their memories.

Nonetheless, he’s relieved at her words. He’d hoped Sabriel was still alive. Alive, because she was someone he knew and though she’ll die like everyone else, she treated him as trusted advisor rather than miserable, penitent servant.

It’s sentimental, ridiculous, and Kibeth would tease him for it if she were around to laugh at all. He almost wishes she were.

Lirael doesn’t say anything for a long time, but she does scratch his ears in a way that’s mildly irritating. It’s how she would pet a dog, not him, but he forgives her on account of not knowing; never having the chance to learn otherwise. She is Kibeth’s, through and through, even now. She knows it, too, as if somehow she intuitively understands the reason he came here in the first place. He’s sure she needed time to adjust to the idea that her Dog was Kibeth, but Lirael doesn’t look bothered by it now, when she leans her head against her golden, Charter-spelled hand and meets his eyes, her gaze piercing and clear.

“I don’t believe it sometimes. That she’s gone.”

Yrael hesitates, considers agreeing with her, then he just stands up, turns his tail to her, and leaps from the desk. He trots toward the door and doesn’t wait until he hears the scrape of the chair as Lirael follows him.

“It’s just like her,” he remarks lightly, as casually as he can; as if he’s not completely transparent and always has been.

“Just like you, too,” she retorts and overtakes him in a few steps. And when Lirael bends down and swipes her hand across his back like a cat should be pet, he even manages not to look too offended.

[Star Trek] First

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:19:55 GMT

Title: First
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Star Trek (AOS), Sulu/Chekov: first times - More endearing than sexy
Characters/Pairings: Hikaru Sulu/Pavel Chekov
Genre(s): Romance
Warnings: Non-explicit mentions of sex

Note: Written for springkink again, though it was due yesterday (ah, procrastination, my old nemesis, you return). I finally finished it today and… though I don’t know that it quite was what the prompter (who will remain oh-so-anonymous, though, really, there were only two of us posting Sulu/Chekov prompts) was looking for… well, the idea wouldn’t go away. :)

--

Pavel is sure there’s nothing more awkward than this very moment. His legs are tucked underneath him and he’s staring at Hikaru, who is sitting on his bed and boring a hole into Pavel’s mattress rather than risk looking at Pavel. He’s never had this problem with any of his previous lovers, never had to worry whether or not he was doing this right when it’s so obvious that he’s not.

“I don’t understand it,” Hikaru laughs, but he doesn’t look up from the bed and Pavel is wondering how likely it is that he could bend physics and disappear into it. At least then Hikaru would be looking at him. “I swear I’ve never had this problem before—I’m not a—I’ve definitely had sex before.” He looks up at Pavel, as if he expects him to have the answer, or at least to admit that he’s a virgin, and that this is somehow the result of nerves.

Which it may very well be, just not the kind of nerves that come with a trembling virgin.

“When was your first?” Pavel bursts out, because it’s not like there’s anything else they can do. They’ve already both suffered the indignity of coming too soon, before they could get anywhere at all, except maybe out of their pants, though their underwear have been ruined and already sent through the laundry chute.

Hikaru pulls his knees up to his chest, as if being naked now is more embarrassing than rutting so hard against Pavel that it took thirty seconds before they both lost control. “My senior year in high school—I was seventeen. We did it in the flight simulation room—the one they use to teach high school students the basics of flying.” He doesn’t mention that it took him so much longer to come then, so long that they nearly had been caught when a teacher came through while he’d still been pressed against the wall, smeared in his own come, clinging to his flight partner’s neck.

“What about you?” Hikaru turns toward him and Pavel doesn’t meet his eyes at first, and then finally summons his courage to look up and offer him a smile.

“I was fifteen—still at the university in Piter—and her name… Rather, she was my friend as a child. Irina—she came to visit me one night during exams. She brought pryaniki she had just baked and we sat on my bed to talk. I kissed her and we completely forgot about the cookies, so they were stone cold by the time we remembered two hours later.” He leaves out that it was the first time he’d been kissed, the first time Irina had, too. He doesn’t mention that he learned things that he hadn’t imagined that night, that they were clumsy and stubborn and laughed the entire time.

That said, they exchange another look and Pavel is the first one who starts laughing, just like that night in Piter, cold moonlight bursting through his window down on he and Irina. It’s just that it’s dark, mechanical like the flight simulator, and Hikaru laughs then, closing his eyes and pressing his head back against the wall.

“This is worse than that,” he observes when he finally stops laughing, and Pavel looks over at him, shrugging and stretching his legs back out from underneath him.

“It was not so awkward, then,” Pavel agrees as Hikaru relaxes and opens an arm for him. “Just…”

“Next time won’t be like that,” Hikaru promises. It could be worse. It could be so much worse, if they weren’t halfway in love already as it were; if they had been virgins this time, even.

There’s a long pause as Pavel gets comfortable, his head against Hikaru’s shoulder, the heat that had possessed the both of them not so long before completely dissipated and replaced by something warmer, more comfortable than the tense silence from before.

He finally closes his eyes and thinks back on all the years before this, all the times he’s slept with someone and fucked them and made love—all the times Hikaru must have done the same since his first time. The quiet persists around them until Pavel finally breathes out, laughing one last time.

“This time was not so bad.”

Dear Yuletide Author...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:38:06 GMT

First of all, thank you and I'm so sorry for my motley crew of prompts and characters and fandoms. For whatever reason, you've offered to write for one of them and I'm so very grateful for that. Second, this is my first Yuletide. hallowd made sure I knew all the dates and deadlines and rules and has been my Yuletide mentor, so to speak, but I tend to be stubborn and Miss The Point quite often. I'm kind of excited and I'm happy to have you, whomever you are, to be doing this for me. As for my fandom picks and prompts, I do understand they are, for the most part, scattered and confused and strange, but here's what I can tell you:

FlashForward

Ever since I saw the preview, I've been deeply intrigued by the show. Actually watching it, the first television show I've followed quite this religiously, has done nothing to temper my love for it. The cast of characters and their individual struggles is absolutely the best thing about the show, even more than the intriguing plot and the turns that the show makes (yes, I cried when Al died, no matter if it's only been, what, seven episodes?). I love how interconnected everyone is, all the lessons they learn from one another as much as from the new world they live in. Bryce Varley has been my favorite character since the first episode. His awakening, being jarred out of death and given a new purpose, was amazing to me. The steps he's taking now are fascinating to me. I'm excited to see where he's going... but I'd love some canonical explanation for why he got to the point he did. Similarly, Demetri intrigues me because of his struggle between hope and despair and not being sure which to put his faith in. I love his relationship with Zoey--one of few canon couples ever that I've just loved from the beginning. I love his friendships with people like Janis and Al, the implied backstory with them, and the vengeance he took to avenge Janis. I think it's safe to say that I love best friend character dynamics, and any play on that is welcome as far as I'm concerned.

His Dark Materials

I have fond memories of reading this book series for the first time, about eight or nine years ago. Since then, they've reigned as my absolute favorite book series ever. I treasure the characters, the atmosphere, and the way that I cried like an idiot when I finished The Amber Spyglass. Iorek and Will have always been my heroes and my favorite characters, though I have deep love for all of the characters. My prompts probably are a good indicator that I love genfic for this series. When I first read it, I was absorbed in the love story, and as I've matured, so has my understanding and appreciation for the books. There's so much growth in this series, so many things people learn, and a magical kind of world that just hooks me every time.

Star Trek RPF

I'm actually ashamed that I asked for this (and am keenly aware that I'll never live it down, thank you f-list), but Trek is the first and only fandom that's managed to haul me into the real-person side of it. It's the dark, shadowy side of fandom that I've avoided since I got into fanfiction in the first place. This is No-Man's-Land. I'm well aware of it, but I love the Trek cast (both versions of them) enough to read fic about them. I indicated a pairing and a friend-fic in my prompts and details, but I'm honestly not as picky as it makes me seem. This is perhaps the best example of something where you could mix up the characters and write whatever makes you happy with them. John and George discuss the meaning of life? Facing Asian stereotypes in Hollywood? Anton and Walter bond over Jewish heritage? I'll be happy for anything, as long as it's realistic and takes into account that there are real lives involved.

Hoo boy. Going to go bury my head in that pile of sand. ♥ But thank you, Yuletide author, for even considering this.

Abhorsen

Another old book series I read back in the day and loved. I reread it this weekend for the purposes of springkink and recalled how much and why I adored it in the first place. Sabriel got me hooked with the awesome female heroine, the understated and still heartwarming romance with Touchstone, and being a fantasy novel in a beautifully constructed world that doesn't take itself so seriously that it falls flat. And then Lirael happened, and my heart belonged to this series. There's banter, epic friendships, solid prose, and characters I can't help but get behind and cheer for. Yrael is amazing as Mogget or himself, his bickering relationship with the Dog, as Kibeth or otherwise. I love the friendship between Lirael and Sam... though I do feel that the "Aunt" title he starts using for her seems forced. They're very close, and I love the idea that they'll work together their whole lives. Touchstone and Sabriel are the epic romance that I can't help but love, and the gap between Sabriel and Lirael is something that interests me deeply.

However, all that said, dear author, I want nothing more than for you to enjoy writing this as much as I know I'll enjoy reading it. I'm not a terribly picky person as I tend to like most things, especially things written in the spirit of giving and... well. Holidays. Thank you and best of luck! :D

♥ echoinautumn

[Star Trek] Push It

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:14:51 GMT

Title: Push It
Rating: NC-17
Prompt: Star Trek (TOS), Sulu/Chekov; mirror!verse bloodplay - The agonizer was never enough
Characters/Pairings: Hikaru Sulu/Pavel Chekov
Genre(s): Smut, horror
Warnings: Bloodplay, knifeplay, cutting, smut, slash, explicit sex

Note: The beginning of springkink! I'm kind of excited about hauling people like 6street into this, because it's really my favorite fic challenge. :) I only have eight prompts this month, and six of them for Trek (two for the Abhorsen trilogy, if you're familiar), but they're spread across the month, so at least I'll be posting something while working on NaNoWriMo. Enjoy, though be warned that this one is kind of creepy and intense. I wish I could explain myself, but I don't even know.

--

There’s something about him, Sulu knows. His skin is the first thing Sulu notices and he doesn’t even care that it’s probably a little creepy to think so about someone. He can’t help it though, looking across the helm at Ensign Chekov and seeing the creamy, unmarred skin on his neck, his hands, even his stomach when he stretches too far and his shirt rides up. It’s distracting, something Sulu can’t afford to happen, but at least it helps that Ensign Chekov has a bad habit of getting himself in as much trouble as possible. It gives him an excuse to stare at his skin, to touch it when he threatens him smoothly seconds before pressing the agonizer against that smooth, perfect skin.

It’s perfect enough that he wants to be the one to ruin it, as if by doing so he could possibly be responsible for defiling Chekov in some way. Sulu isn’t stupid and he doesn’t think Chekov is weak, but he’s definitely young and there are so many things Sulu knows he cannot have seen. Things Sulu could show him.

Things Sulu fully intends to show him.

If anything, Sulu couldn’t have anticipated that Ensign Chekov might want it as badly as he does, to be touched and broken. He doesn’t even see it in him until he’s got Chekov in his office, cradling the ensign’s agonizer in his palm, when he sees the flash of excitement, of wanting this as badly as Sulu wants it.

He wonders how long Chekov’s been trying to grab his attention for this, but not for very long. Instead, he smirks down at him the second he gets his body pinned to the wall, a knee pressed between Chekov’s legs, threatening to lift and hit him hard if he missteps even for a second.

“I would have never thought that Ensign Chekov would want…”

Chekov’s lip turns up, but he looks triumphant, waiting for Sulu to finish. “Go ahead,” he murmurs, waiting for the touch of the agonizer, lifting his face and exposing more of his neck.

It never comes, the agonizer clattering to the floor next to them. The anticipation mounts higher in Chekov’s eyes, glinting like an out of reach gem that Sulu wants more than anything. His fingers touch him at first, pressing into the creamy skin hard enough to leave bruises for the entire ship to see. He’s heard stories, Ensign Chekov clawing his way to the top among the ensigns, leaving no room for doubt among them that he was the strongest. It makes this victory even sweeter, because Chekov is yielding to him without question, whimpering softly and urging him on with quiet whimpers and a chorus of breathy, Russian pleas. Sulu doesn’t need to speak Russian to translate them, to understand what it is that Chekov wants.

The dagger leaves his belt before either of them have time to think too much about it. When Chekov’s eyes fall on the blade, he stops moving around, stops fidgeting to force Sulu to do something more than what he’s doing now.

The first place he touches the blade is to the skin on Chekov’s cheek, teasing the tip over the smooth, freckled skin there.

“This is better than an agonizer,” he explains with a smirk as the blade finally finds a place to dig in on Chekov’s neck. It takes a full second before blood wells up on the blade and leaves a scarlet stain on the porcelain skin, broken and imperfect. Sulu pushes harder, draws out more blood, and feels his heart race.

“It’s so much more personal this way, I think.” His laugh is dark, but Chekov is gasping for breath, cock hard and pressed against Sulu’s thigh. He’s close enough that all he would ever have to do is turn, push a little harder and touch their cocks.

“Your shirt, Ensign,” he breathes, daring Chekov to defy his order, knowing fully that Chekov wouldn’t, not even for a second. It’s his turn to stop breathing as endless plains of untouched, moonbright skin glows in front of him, even in the dull glare of his office.

Sulu drops the knife on his desk and grabs Chekov by his curls, exposing his throat and tonguing the open cut he’s already left. The metallic tang explodes on his tongue, bitter and warm from the pulse in Chekov’s neck, and Sulu drags his thumb through what’s left on his throat, leaving a rusty stain. He can feel his frantic pulse beneath him, frantic like a hummingbird, even though Sulu is sure it has nothing to do with fear as much as overwhelming lust. This is supposed to be some kind of punishment for Chekov’s infraction, but even he can’t pretend that’s what this is anymore, if it ever was. He’s wanted him, and now he has him just where he wants him, Sulu can’t help but indulge himself completely.

He shoves Chekov against the desk and picks up the knife again, daring Chekov to deny him as he carves new scars into Ensign Chekov’s back to outmatch the ones he nearly gained in the Academy, had they not been removed. Chekov had avenged those, but Sulu is confident that these are scars that Chekov won’t replace, won’t even try to have removed, even though McCoy could do it if he really tried.

When he’s finished, sufficiently pleased with his marks, he pulls Chekov around and shoves him onto his knees, pulling him callously toward his cock.

“I’ve seen you do this before, Ensign,” he murmurs smoothly. Of course he knows. He’s seen Chekov on his knees in front of the captain himself doing this. This time, it’s Sulu’s turn, and it’s going to stay that way, God help him and anyone else who tries to change that.

Chekov, to his surprise, doesn’t even hesitate before swallowing his cock, though the slow trickle of blood down his back must be distracting.

Sulu drags his fingers through the blood, smearing it everywhere all over that perfect skin. Chekov is good at this—good enough to entice the captain—and Sulu comes hard within a few minutes, stroking his face in a parody of affection made clear by the bloody streaks he leaves on Chekov’s cheeks as he swallows Sulu’s come.

“Next time,” Chekov begins, as if this is routine; as if Sulu hasn’t intimidated him in the slightest. “Use the agonizer, too.”

Sulu cocks his head to the side and laughs darkly, his hands smeared in blood and a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

He’d known there was something about Ensign Chekov.

[A Kind of Magic] A Star Trek Big Bang Fanmix

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:39:33 GMT

Note: The first of two fanmixes I've made for startrekbigbang. This one is for selinamoonfire and her lovely fairytale-like fic A Kind of Magic (I'll post a link when she posts the story a little later!) Definitely check it out, because it's pretty amazing, especially if you're into Kirk/McCoy and a good, fun read.

My primary concern in creating this was more about fitting the tone she was trying to set up with her story than finding songs that fit thematically--that was another part of the search for songs, but first I had to sift through and find ones I thought fit the mood captured by the fic.

DOWNLOAD HERE

[Anywhere On This Road - Lhasa De Sela]

I live in this country now
I'm called by this name
I speak this language
it's not quite the same
for no other reason than this: it's my home
and the places I used to be far from are gone

[Alibi - David Gray]

stone blind alibi, I will eat the lie
find the word that could break any spell that binds you
prayers like ammonites, curled beneath the lights,
how I long to bite any hand that feeds you more
where'd it all go wrong?

[Dreams - Fleetwood Mac]

but listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness
like a heartbeat, drives you mad in the stillness of remembering
what you had, and what you lost...
say what you had, you know what you lost

[Bad Habits - Michael Tolcher]

they say that life is for learning
well, teach to me to live while I'm here
messages twisted and turning
what should I give?
make it clear, 'cause I can't figure it out
I can't figure it out yet,
just how to make it perfect for you
but I'm closer than I was yesterday

[Wedding Day Jig - Leahy]

Instrumental

[Halcyon - Jon Hopkins]

Instrumental

[Melt My Heart To Stone - Adele]

and I hear your words that I made up
you say my name like there could be an us
I best tidy up my head
I'm the only one in love

[Sunshine - Keane]

but if I'm one thing,
then that's the one thing I should know
can anybody find their home?
out of everyone, can anybody find their home?
lost in the sun, can anybody find their home?

[Snow Country - Klaus Badelt]

Instrumental

[Last Dance - Sarah McLachlan]

Instrumental

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:44:45 GMT

BECAUSE I LOVE PROCRASTINATING. ~~And 6street is trying to convince me otherwise.~~

Give me a pairing and a prompt/kink/whatever, and I'll write you a fic that's no longer than three lines long.

Same rules as before.

Be kind, guys.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:40:41 GMT

Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo?

...anyone else want to ~~force me to do it to the end~~ do this with me?

[Star Trek] Let it all stop here : Part II

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:09:54 GMT

Title: Let it all stop here
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Hikaru Sulu/Pavel Chekov, Leonard McCoy, Nyota Uhura, Demora Sulu
Genre(s): Alternate Universe, Romance
Warnings: Language, explicit sex, slash, fluff
Description: Hikaru Sulu is sure there's no way he could ruin his life more than he already has. He's twenty-two years old, in college, working full time... and the single father of a two-year-old daughter. Keeping it all in balance proves to be too much, and high school senior Pavel Chekov is rather desperately in need of community service hours.

Part I

--

Susan sends letters. Sometimes she sends money and sometimes she sends clothes, packages of things Demora either loves or hates, not that Susan would be able to know one way or another. Hikaru considered burning the first letter and even the second, but even his anger faded with time. This is all that’s left of the relationship they once had: Demora and letters that come at no discernible pattern.

Because he knows they come at random, Hikaru isn’t surprised to find a new letter when he checks the mail on his way into the apartment from work. It’s been weeks since Pavel’s graduation. They’ve established a whole new routine in the time since then, and there hasn’t been a letter since April, since shortly after Pavel started sitting for Demora.

Hikaru shifts the bills in his hands under his arm and stares at the plain envelope. Susan apologizes often for being unfit to live the life Demora needs, for leaving him with that life instead, but her guilt has retreated further into regret; into something she can’t change now. Before he opens the letter, Hikaru thinks that perhaps he doesn’t want to change it now. It’s been so long like this, he’s worked so hard to make it work that to have her come back now would be so far from helpful. He’s been embittered and strengthened by the betrayal and he likes it like this.

He makes his expression as impassive as he can, despite the churning in his stomach he feels every time he receives a letter. Someday, sooner or later, Susan will ask to see Demora. Someday, she may ask for more than just that. How likely would it be that he could keep Demora if Susan demanded otherwise? He doesn’t want Demora to see him worry. He definitely doesn’t want Pavel to see his discomfort over the letter.

This one isn’t very different than her last one. Hikaru didn’t respond to the letters at first, but he’s slowly started writing longer letters since the first one to reassure Susan that he had no desire to sue her for support. There isn’t much in his life to talk about that doesn’t have to do with Demora, and his disinclination to tell Susan about his life with Demora is as much because he doesn’t want it to be taken away from him as preventing more guilt on Susan’s part. She’s missing these things, the vital parts of her daughter’s life that Hikaru is fumbling through where a woman would be better suited, and it’s only her loss.

He swallows and stares at the paper in his hands, then folds it and shoves it back in the envelope. There’s a small box in the corner of his closet where he keeps these things for Demora because one day she’ll be an angry teenager scarred by her mother’s choice, no matter how hard he works to take care of her. This is their life, fragile and delicate and sacred as it is. For as long as he can have it, Hikaru will cherish it. Nothing lasts, he knows that much, even when he hopes that anything might last longer.

Straightening the bag on his shoulder, Hikaru slides the envelope among the rest of the mail and heads inside where Demora and Pavel are waiting for him.

For now, he’s content with where he is.

--

Pavel looks up from the floor when Hikaru comes inside, Demora hanging around his neck like a tree ornament. There’s a brief flash where Pavel is sure that something is wrong, but Hikaru covers it quickly with a smile, dropping a stack of mail onto the table in the dining room.

“Have a good day, Momo?” he asks cheerfully and Pavel pretends to gasp for air when she disengages herself from him to cling to her father’s legs.

Pavel picks up Demora’s green bear, Mendel, straightens the band-aid on its forehead so it covers some of the purple stitching and cradles it in his hands. “A few difficulties this morning, but altogether…” He shrugs. “Joanna was pleased to see her,” he adds quickly, watching Demora giggle against Hikaru’s shoulder now he’s picked her up.

“She gave Doctor McCoy some trouble, then,” Hikaru observes over Demora, but he’s smiling so genuinely now that Pavel supposes he imagined the distracted look on his face when he first came in.

“Just a broken picture frame,” Pavel sighs. “They were…”

“Playing too rough, got it,” Hikaru finishes for him and winces, shooting Demora a disappointed look. “I’ll call him tomorrow and tell him I’ll pay for it. They weren’t kidding about terrible twos.”

When Pavel gives him a blank look because the phrase is foreign to him—quite literally, in this case—Hikaru waves it off.

“It’s just a phase. You—did you want to stick around for dinner?”

Hikaru has gotten into the habit of asking every night these days, ever since Pavel told him that his father works out of town often and he spends a lot of evenings alone if he isn’t with Demora or friends, all of whom are preparing for college. He lives a totally different life from them. Half a year before now, he would have never imagined it. He goes to sleep relatively early instead of heading out to summer parties on the bay and babysits during the day rather than working or spending time doing other things his friends have been doing all summer.

Usually, he doesn’t accept the invitation, feeling too guilty to impose on what little time Hikaru does get to spend alone with Demora, something he knows Hikaru treasures more than anything else. Tonight, however, he nods. There’s still the matter of the expression on his face to get to the bottom of, and Doctor McCoy inadvertently hinted at the mystery of Demora’s mother earlier in the day again. Even when he tries to tell himself that it’s just not his business, he knows better. This is rapidly becoming his business the closer he gets to Hikaru.

“That would be great,” he agrees and relaxes, handing the bear to Demora when she tears herself away from her father’s neck. He doesn’t imagine the look of relief on Hikaru’s face and he knows that he’s made the right decision. It’s a relief to know that Hikaru wants him there as much as he wants to be there.

If he’s getting in too deep, he’s not sure he cares yet.

--

Getting Demora to go to sleep when she knows that Pavel is still there turns out to be more of a hassle than either of them anticipated. Hikaru has second-guessed the motives behind asking Pavel to stay the night since he asked him over dinner two hours before. He’s genuinely concerned with him walking home through the storm that’s hovered over them for most of the day, threatening to begin at any moment, but if he’d been that worried, he wouldn’t have asked him to stay for dinner in the first place. Hikaru isn’t sure why he’s letting himself perpetuate this, knowing it can only go downhill, that it can’t and won’t end well.

When Demora finally settles in, Hikaru closes the door to her room and leads Pavel back into the living room. There’s only half a second of awkward silence before Hikaru sits down and Pavel follows suit. He’s tried not to think about Susan’s letter any more than he needs to, but when Pavel finally speaks, his voice is cracked with disuse and his eyebrows are knit together. He’s tried not to let on, but that seems to be impossible.

“Is something going on?” he asks, and Hikaru flushes immediately.

“Is it that obvious?” he shoots back immediately, glad for the easy banter they’ve slipped into. It’s not making it any easier for him to resist the fear that he’s going to screw this up somehow.

“You do not have to tell me,” Pavel concedes quietly, picking at his jeans. “It was just—when you came in today.”

Hikaru takes a breath and nods slowly. “There was a letter.”

Pavel’s head jerks up and he bites his lip. “A letter,” he echoes, plainly waiting for Hikaru to finish his thought.

After a long sigh, Hikaru musses his hair with one hand and closes his eyes. “From Demora’s mother—my ex-girlfriend.”

He opens his eyes when Pavel sucks in a sharp breath.

“I did not know anything about… her. Or—I did not want to ask, it would not have been polite.”

“It’s fine,” he assures him quietly. “She left when Demora was a few months old. I’m just… I don’t know what happens now, you know? She’s a good woman, don’t… please don’t misunderstand that. We were young and we didn’t know what we were doing. I don’t have any hard feelings, but I’m not… sure I’m ready to handle whatever it is she might be working toward.”

Pavel doesn’t say anything, just wraps his arms around his knees and listens to him quietly. “You do not have to talk about it. I just… worried.”

“That was kind of you,” Hikaru smiles and nudges him with his shoulder. “Enough about that, though. It’s nothing I can deal with right now. What about you? I don’t know much about your love life.” He mentally smacks himself for even asking at all.

“What love life?” Pavel grins and shrugs. “I broke up with my boyfriend—or, rather, he sort of broke up with me when I told him I was not going to prom with him the day before.”

Hikaru’s eyebrows fly up. He’s not surprised that Pavel is gay. He’s probably more surprised that he’s had an active love life. “Was he that bad that you had to ditch him?”

“Oh, no.” He laughs warmly and presses his forehead into his knees. “He was very kind about it. I just had… well, I ended up not going at all, and he was perhaps a little indignant that we had made so many plans. He has school to look forward to and so do I. No bad feelings.”

“You didn’t go?” Hikaru asks immediately, his eyebrows dropping and knitting together. “Why not?”

Pavel hesitates, and then laughs brightly. “I had a date with a Miss Sulu,” he explains sheepishly and Hikaru feels a stab of guilt in his chest.

“Fuck, Pavel,” he swears, groaning. “You should have never refused to go to prom to sit for me. I would have—I would have insisted if I’d known.”

“I know,” Pavel agrees cheerfully. “And I knew that. It was not important, and we had a good day, all three of us.”

“That was—oh, God,” Hikaru moans and covers his face. “I’m so sorry. I’ll—somehow I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“Are you going to give me my dance for the evening?” Pavel teases. “No, it is fine. I would do it again, no matter what. I like—I prefer your company—and Demora’s.”

Hikaru moves his hand and Pavel looks up from his jeans and they stare at one another. It’s like they’ve come to some kind of agreement. Hikaru blushes and looks away, changing the subject before either of them can linger too long on it and do something they’d regret.

There’s still time for that.

“You don’t mind sleeping on the couch, do you?”

--

Things go more smoothly when Pavel is around the apartment, and even he’s noticed. Hikaru looks more relaxed, despite the dark circles that have seemed to be permanent features under his eyes since Pavel met him. It’s almost domestic, the way they live their lives, twining them closer and closer. Pavel stays for dinner more often, preferring the company and flirty teasing to solitude on nights when his father is away. He doesn’t trust himself to spend the night again, blissfully aware of where they’re heading with this. It’s inevitable, whatever it is, and he knows it.

He’s finishing the dishes from dinner as Hikaru puts Demora to bed, and he turns when Hikaru murmurs a soft, Good night into Demora’s room and closes the door.

“She’s tired tonight,” Hikaru observes, padding barefoot into the kitchen and leaning against the counter as Pavel dries a cup and sets it on the counter.

“She played hard with Joanna,” he explains and starts to hand off another cup to Hikaru, who takes it from him and wraps fingers around his wrist. Pavel freezes and stares between their hands and Hikaru, who smiles easily.

“I’ve got something to show you,” Hikaru explains quietly and leads him into the living room.

Pavel giggles nervously when he turns down the lights and shoots him a dirty look over his shoulder.

“Shut up,” he laughs and crouches down next to a small CD player in the corner. “I worked hard on this.”

“On what?” Pavel asks, crossing his arms over his chest and raising both eyebrows when Frank Sinatra bursts out of the speakers loud enough to make Hikaru cringe before turning it down.

“Figuring out how I was going to make up your prom to you. The streamers and confetti were a little too much mess for me, sorry.” He stands up again and holds out a hand, fighting back a laugh when Pavel grins at him and takes his hand.

“So you decided to actually give me my dance,” he teases, but really he’s touched. He’s not sure who else would have bothered with even caring that he missed his prom.

“In jeans and a t-shirt, no less,” Hikaru grins and wraps a hand around Pavel’s, fumbling to get them into as close to a proper dancing position as he can. “Nothing but pure class here.”

Pavel rolls his eyes and tries to take a step forward, laughing when their feet bump together. “You should know that I cannot dance,” he confesses as Hikaru mutters directions at him under his breath.

“You should know that I can’t, either,” Hikaru tells him as they finally find a rhythm of their own, taking the occasional half-step forward or back, just in time to avoid the other’s foot.

“We are pretty terrible at this.”

“Well, we’d probably suck a little less if one of us picked the girl position.” Hikaru pauses for a moment and Pavel swears under his breath when he runs into him, stumbling back where he’s pressed too close to him.

“Sorry,” he mumbles under his breath, but Hikaru doesn’t let him go. Instead, he stares at him as if he’s realized for the first time that they’re actually very nearly the same height, that Pavel may be younger, but he’s actually a couple of inches taller than Hikaru, and that seems to be enough.

Pavel swallows when he realizes that he’s stopped breathing. Hikaru doesn’t break eye contact, but it’s Pavel who moves first, leaning forward, down just a little to kiss him.

The first kiss is short, cut short when Pavel takes a breath and pulls away. Hikaru pulls him back toward him and kisses him again, harder, and Pavel forgets about breathing completely. Hikaru pulls his hand from Pavel’s and setting it on his other side, then down and over his ass, pulling him against him tightly.

He’s not sure what it was that started this, why this was enough to break the dam, but it is. It’s enough, just this, and Pavel gives up fighting it.

--

Hikaru is sure this is a terrible idea, knows better already than to give into this, but Pavel has his hands under his t-shirt, clutching his sides and kissing him hard. It’s been a long time since his last breath, and Hikaru breaks away, panting and staring at Pavel and his hooded eyes, flushed cheeks and swollen lips.

“Pavel,” he mumbles, not even getting his breath before Pavel kisses him again and he forces him back again, cock stiffening further when Pavel growls his disapproval at him. Hikaru swears under his breath and stares at him, disbelieving. “Bedroom, now.”

Pavel staggers back onto his feet, looking suspiciously like he can’t support himself, but steadies himself before Hikaru seized his elbow to help, feeling a bit punch-drunk. Hikaru loses track of how long it takes them to get to his bedroom, falling over themselves and pausing only to tangle around one another desperately. They do make it, even though Hikaru barely gets the door shut before turning around and nearly doubling over at the piercing rush of arousal that hits him while watching Pavel strip off his jeans with an elegant, smooth grace that’s practically criminal.

“Oh, fuck,” he moans, his cock hard in his pants, harder than he’s been in years, probably harder than he’s been in his whole life, and all over an eighteen-year-old kid with cherubic curls and a smooth, well-shaped ass. Hikaru isn’t sure if it’s because he hasn’t gotten laid in years or if Pavel is really just that good, but considering that he hasn’t even touched him yet, aside from that display in the living room, he suspects a combination of both.

When Pavel turns around, Hikaru feels his heart skip a few beats in a row, then race between slow and fast, finding the proper rhythm to deal with this. Pavel doesn’t look nervous, not even half as nervous as Hikaru knows he looks; especially when his hands are shaking and he’s staring at Pavel like he’s never seen another human being before, let alone a naked one. His cock is firm and red and pointing forward, and Hikaru is still staring at it, at him, without moving.

Finally, Pavel lowers his head and grins, crossing the room and stripping Hikaru’s shirt off finally, tossing it carelessly to the side with the heap of his own clothes. Hikaru whimpers when he stares up at him and drops to his knees, never moving his eyes from Hikaru’s, even when his fingers stumble over the buckle on his pants. It releases quickly and Pavel pushes Hikaru’s jeans down his legs, reaching up and stroking his cock firmly three times, a lucky charm before closing his mouth over the tip.

The whimper cuts off immediately into a whine and Hikaru fumbles behind him for the wall and comes up with nothing. He falls back onto the bed and Pavel follows, sucking him deeper into his throat and moaning wantonly around his dick.

“Shit, Pavel, do you want—do you want me to come already?” Hikaru demands, but Pavel pulls away, grinning at him and looking more pleased with himself than Hikaru thinks he has any right being. “Shut up,” he grumbles quietly, conceding to him even though he hasn’t said anything at all. Pavel sucks the tip back into his mouth, tonguing the underside teasingly. “I haven’t had sex in years—I haven’t kissed in years.”

“I have, though, so I can fix that,” Pavel promises and swallows his cock again, but Hikaru pushes him away, wanting more without knowing how to get it. He hasn’t had sex in so long—he doesn’t even have condoms anymore, never mind lubricant—and this is the first time he’s fucked a man. Or, he supposes, taking into account how easily Pavel has taken control of this, been fucked by a man. He isn’t sure, isn’t sure if he cares either way because his head is spinning and incoherent with lust.

“I don’t have anything. I wasn’t kidding when I said I hadn’t had sex in a—a long time.” Hikaru falls back onto the covers and stares up at Pavel, who looks unaffected by the confession, or the potential obstruction to where this is plainly headed, if it weren’t explicitly obvious before.

“I have something,” Pavel mumbles and stumbles back onto his feet, reaching for his jeans. He comes back holding a small tube and a silver-wrapped condom and Hikaru finds himself blushing, despite himself.

“You—you planned this?” he asks incredulously, but Pavel laughs and shakes his head, his cheeks flushed the same pink as Hikaru’s.

“I planned for this. I did not know if it would actually… happen at all. You are glad I did, though,” he insists, and Hikaru has to agree. He certainly has no objections to it, even if he’s stunned to find that he’s been the one stuck in place, held back by his own inhibitions, while Pavel has been finding ways around it.

“It seemed inevitable,” Pavel continues, kneeling on the bed and straddling over one of Hikaru’s legs, falling forward and kissing the side of his mouth. “We have been heading toward this since perhaps the beginning.”

“You mean since you came in to babysit Demora?” Hikaru doesn’t feel indignant, per se, but it’s definitely humbling and a little embarrassing to think of their circumstances, how they’ve come to this and all the little catalysts that have pushed them along. He definitely doesn’t like thinking of Demora, fast asleep in the next room, while he’s spread open, exposed and vulnerable.

Pavel doesn’t answer, aside from a soft hum that could mean anything, really. He kisses Hikaru again, deep and slow, far more controlled than Hikaru is about this. Of course he is, Hikaru thinks. He’s the one who’s been on his journey of sexual exploration in the years since Hikaru stopped his.

“Do you want this?” Pavel asks, voice husky and his fingers wrapped around Hikaru’s cock again, breaking through his thoughts and dragging him back to this, the present.

Hikaru pushes whatever remains of his conscience, his well-built system of fighting off the world and keeping to himself, and nods with a breathy yes.

They stare at one another, then Pavel nods, understanding perhaps that this is going to be something he does, that the first step has to be his own. “Okay,” he whispers back, almost a sigh, as if he’s suddenly placated by Hikaru’s consent, or if he’s realized that they do actually have to be quiet to avoid waking Demora.

His hands are quick, but Hikaru feels them shaking when he uncaps his lube, smearing it over his trembling fingers. Hikaru doesn’t feel much better, gripping the sheets tightly and waiting in anticipation. He’s been in control for the last few years and when he hasn’t been, he’s been clawing for it, fighting for every bit of it that he can muster. Giving that up, even the illusion of it, takes more effort than forcing himself to relax when Pavel presses the pad of his index finger against the pucker of his entrance. His breath comes hard, labored, and Pavel doesn’t stop him from it, just smiles and pushes in, slow enough to let Hikaru adjust or to tease him.

“Jesus,” Hikaru swears with the first breath he manages to take and Pavel laughs aloud, stretching at an agonizingly slow pace, pushing in a second finger finally.

“You will tell me if it hurts, right?” Pavel asks and Hikaru hears the hesitant catch in his voice, so he nods quickly, suddenly aware that Pavel is eighteen and of course he’s nervous about this.

“It’s good. It’s really—really good,” he stutters when Pavel turns his wrist, stretching and fucking him with both fingers. He chokes on his breath when Pavel slides a third in, watching his face carefully.

Hikaru tries to smile for him, but his mouth drops open silently when Pavel stops trying to stretch him and focuses instead on curling his fingers upward, beckoning gently. Before he can stop himself, Hikaru arches his hips and moans, “Oh, shit.”

The expression Pavel gives him makes Hikaru think that maybe he’s not even interested in anything but this, twisting his fingers almost experimentally, watching Hikaru’s pant and moan and reacting accordingly. He whines again and feels the rushing build toward orgasm until his throat is working, but nothing comes out but his audible groping for air.

“Pavel,” he manages, half a second after he starts coming, splattering over his chest and onto the sheets, the shaft of his cock still slick from Pavel’s mouth. It’s been years since he’s had sex, sure, but he doesn’t ever remember it being like this, where the world whites out and dissolves on the edges of his vision, leaving him blinded, hovering in some hazy bliss. Pavel kisses him again and Hikaru thinks he can almost taste Pavel’s relief when he responds, urges his lips apart with his tongue. He whimpers when Pavel pulls his fingers out, rolls the condom over his cock and presses into Hikaru, slow enough to remove the sting and so far from fast enough.

“Good?” Pavel asks, still uncertain, still concerned, but wraps a leg around his flank and arches into the slow thrust.

“They teach this in high school sex ed now?” Hikaru jokes, but the effect is lost by the way he’s panting out short, desperate moans. He can’t help it. Pavel is gentle but he knows what he’s doing, for whatever reason, and Hikaru tries not to think about how inexperienced it makes him feel until he realizes that it’s a little exciting like this. “Don’t stop, oh Christ, don’t you dare—fuck—yes.” He’s rambling, urging him on the only way he knows how, ignoring how ridiculous it must sound.

Pavel responds enthusiastically, first moving as if he’s trying to let Hikaru catch up to him, but picks up until he’s rocking harder against Hikaru, his hands firmly planted on either side of Hikaru’s head. Without warning, Hikaru reaches up and pulls him into another kiss, stunned to find that he’s hard again, rushing back toward orgasm through the mist that’s settled in his mind from the last one.

Between kissing Pavel and losing himself to the perfect rhythm of their hips, the inexplicable grace they’ve already found in this without fumbling for the right answer, Hikaru reaches for his cock and strokes it firmly. Pavel stares at him open mouthed, as if he wants to say something, but instead he squeezes his eyes shut and cries out, losing himself before Hikaru does, his hips shuddering and freezing after a final thrust into Hikaru. He kisses him while he’s still coming, and it’s somehow enough to send Hikaru over again, coming sticky between his fingers and over their chests.

When they catch their breath and Hikaru catches Pavel’s eye, he smiles deliriously and holds him against his chest. He doesn’t know what he hoped to accomplish with this, as if it might make him feel better about things, as if it might give him more control over the world around him. He pushes those things aside and arches when Pavel pulls out, knots off the condom and throws it away wrapped in a tissue.

Startlingly, Hikaru is speechless, completely unsure what to say now, but so is Pavel, who looks more awkward than anything. Then Hikaru remembers himself and breathes again, holding open an arm for Pavel, who smiles back and lies down in the crook of his arm, his damp curls tickling the exposed skin. Pavel doesn’t seem to know what to say either, but he doesn’t seem content with the silence, not when he leans up and kisses Hikaru again, sloppy and off-center, and suggests they take a shower.

Hikaru’s still not sure what he’s going to do about things, but for now, at least, there’s something to hold onto, something to hope for, even if that something is bare-assed and headed for his shower with a grin.

It’s something so much more than he had before.

--

Pavel’s experienced the afterglow of sex enough to know that it doesn’t leave anyone particularly clear-headed. The stark light of morning is another matter entirely. He wakes slowly, aware that he’s satisfyingly sore before he remembers why, where he is, or fully comprehends the softly snoring source of heat next to him. Memories come back slowly at first, but his eyes snap open when he finally makes sense of it all.

He’s in Hikaru Sulu’s bed at six in the morning. His clothes are scattered across the room.

Worst of all, he’s finally gotten in over his head.

For a few seconds, he considers dealing with this the way he ought to; with confrontations and awkward explanations that he really does like Hikaru—and he does, more than he ever intended to, though he should have known it was coming from the beginning. It’s just that Hikaru lives a different life than he does, that there’s some kind of taboo and trust they’ve broken. It’s nothing he didn’t know before, nothing that’s really a surprise, except this panicked feeling that he’s finally gone and screwed up something good.

Hikaru is sleeping soundly, to Pavel’s enormous relief. He supposes Hikaru is just used to waking up to Demora, not anyone else. Pavel slides out of bed and dresses quickly, not stopping to look at himself in the mirror. That would only cement this, make it real and him the kind of awful person who would just leave now because he can’t handle the implications that come with whatever this is.

He wants to justify it, to beg off on account of his age, his inexperience. He wants to say that he’s just not the kind of person Hikaru needs, that Demora needs, but he knows better. It’s more than that. Despite everything, that he’s finally been let in on all the secrets he wanted to know, that he knows what the disappointment will do to Hikaru, he can’t stop himself. He’s eighteen, and he’s frightened of this.

Pavel slips out of the apartment silently, pausing only once, outside Demora’s door to make sure she’s still sleeping. Hikaru needs better than this, something he can’t give, no matter how long or hard he tries.

And that’s the end of it.

--

Hikaru is disgusted with himself for being so disappointed.

At first, he figured Pavel just needed time, a day or two or a week to sort it out for himself. He’s still not entirely convinced that isn’t the case, scrubbing stains out of laundry in the apartment laundry room, but he is pretty sure that he’s largely at fault. He was the older one and if he’d just paid a little more attention, he might have seen the signs and stopped himself.

It’s just that he wasn’t the one pushing Pavel into the mattress that night, he thinks bitterly, shaking wrinkles out of clothes coming out of the dryer. It’s been a month and he’s gotten over the initial stab of betrayal, however unsurprising it should have been. Demora doesn’t understand where Pavel’s gone, and he can’t explain it to her, except to tell her that it was going to happen eventually anyway. It doesn’t feel like a lie, or even like he’s sugar-coating the truth for her. It only hurts more to think of it like that.

He sighs heavily and leans against the washer, pushing his hair out of his face. It’s past midnight on a Friday night and he’s washing laundry. This is what his life has become and what it’s going to be for as long as Demora is growing up. There’s a growing stack of unopened letters from Susan on his dining room table, one for each week since Pavel left. It’s coming, he knows it; the day that Susan will want more than what she’s got now. She’s going to want pictures soon if the request isn’t tucked into one of the letters he hasn’t had the heart to open yet. After that, she’ll want to meet Demora and slowly begin to wedge herself back into Hikaru’s life.

Grabbing the basket from the corner, he starts folding laundry into it. If this is his lot, that he’s always going to be walked out on when he finally starts to hope for something, when he finally becomes content with what he has, then he wonders if Pavel will somehow come back into his life just when he’s over this again. He hasn’t even had the will to call the lady at the agency when she left a message asking when he wanted to schedule a meeting with a new sitter.

Pavel’s moved on and Hikaru is just stumbling through the dark, trying to make sense of all he’s left with. He doesn’t care if it’s hard to schedule anything because he has to first find someone to watch Demora and it’s a lot of trouble. Nyota is coming back in a week and he’ll just get by until then.

The buzz of his phone interrupts his thoughts and Hikaru takes a deep breath before pulling it out of his pocket and answering, “Hello?”

Doctor McCoy’s gruff voice is on the other end. Hikaru relaxes and tucks the phone between his head and shoulder, checking the clothes in the washer before settling the basket on his hip.

“What the hell are you doing awake, Hikaru?” he grumbles over the phone and, despite the melancholy mood Leonard caught him in when he called, Hikaru grins.

“I’d ask you the same thing, Leonard,” he quips in response, pushing the door open and heading back toward the apartment.

“Paperwork,” the voice mumbles back at him. “What’s your excuse?”

“Laundry.” Hikaru laughs then, shifting said laundry on his hip. “The laundry room is packed any other time. What’s going on, Leonard?”

“Called to ask if you needed someone to watch Demora this week. I know you’re up to your eyeballs in incoming freshmen and their stupid questions. You never got me an answer when I asked last week.” Hikaru is actually touched, even though it’s obvious that Leonard is trying his hardest to sound as casual as possible about it, like he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’d been the first to ask about Pavel, the first to notice something was amiss with Hikaru in the days after.

You never think that hard, he’d muttered to him, not looking away from Demora and Joanna. And Demora’s never looked so unhappy to see Joanna.

Little reminders, that’s all Hikaru gets so he knows that he’s not totally alone in this. Leonard McCoy had a wife who walked out on him once, but she took Joanna and Leonard had to fight to get her back. Sometimes, Hikaru isn’t sure if Leonard is looking for someone to commiserate with, or if he’s just trying to prevent Hikaru from becoming as bitter as he had.

“I’d appreciate that,” he sighs, lowering his voice and stepping into the apartment. “She’s bounced back, so she’ll be thrilled to see Joanna.” He stops himself short of elaborating, edging far too close to the subject he’s been trying to avoid for a month now.

“What about you?” Leonard asks immediately and, as if he can see Hikaru’s wince, continues. “Don’t make the face I know you’re making right now. I’m a doctor, not a blind man, Hikaru. You haven’t been the same, either, and you still want me to think nothing happened?”

“I’m not trying to convince you nothing happened,” Hikaru groans and drops the basket onto the couch. “I just don’t want to talk about it. I’d love to just… forget about it.”

“Fat chance of that. If you want to bring Demora over here on Monday morning, Joanna will be ready, even if I won’t be. Eight work for you?”

“Eight’s fine,” he agrees and stands in the middle of the living room, staring down at a few scattered toys he hadn’t picked up before going to wash clothes. “I’ll get out of work a little early, so I can come get her around—”

“Don’t,” Leonard interrupts suddenly and Hikaru’s eyebrows go up immediately, but Leonard doesn’t let him get in a protest otherwise. “I’ll keep her a little longer. Go talk to him.” He doesn’t need to elaborate any more than that and Hikaru knows exactly who and what he means.

“Shit, Leonard. I don’t—I said I was fine. It’s just the way things go, right?”

“No, actually, it’s not.” He sounds uncomfortable, not that Hikaru can blame him. He’s not very comfortable about the conversation either, but he appreciates that Leonard is trying on his behalf. “The kid’s probably spooked—not that I want to know what it was that did it, don’t you fucking dare tell me, Hikaru—and he’s eighteen. He’s not gonna know how to come back after that.”

Hikaru doesn’t say anything for a moment, then closes his eyes and pushes a hand through his hair. “All right. And if he doesn’t want me to talk to him?”

Leonard sighs, but his laugh is genuine when it bursts through. “I forget that you’re just a kid, too. Do it, Hikaru. Trust me.”

As he hangs up, Hikaru thinks that it’s far easier said than done.

--

The days seem to stretch on forever ahead of Pavel the closer he gets to the beginning of classes in a few short weeks. He’s heard people describe this time as the last true vacation he’ll ever have, to enjoy his youthful freedom while he has it. Instead, he’s been trying to convince himself that his twisted up nerves have nothing to do with Hikaru and the last month of hiding from everyone else and everything to do with his worries for school. The lie is so flimsy, however, that he can’t even convince himself of it, not even a little bit.

Pavel is starting to think that he should just close that chapter of his life and try to move on. Hikaru hasn’t called and he hasn’t either. Even if he did, even if he did now, he’s not sure what he’d say. He could apologize, but he expects that wouldn’t make a difference, either.

It makes him a coward, and so he just wallows in it. He deserves this much, at least.

He actually jumps when the doorbell rings, clinging to the side of the couch and catching his breath before heading to the door. He expects the mailman or, hell, a few Jehovah’s Witnesses instead of what he finds on his doorstep.

“Hikaru,” he says weakly and grips the doorknob tighter, as if it might somehow return him to reality.

Hikaru shifts uncomfortably, hands jammed awkwardly in his pockets, and takes a breath before meeting Pavel’s eye.

Pavel is the one who looks away quickly.

“Did you know that you’re kind of hard to find?” Hikaru asks quietly, then shakes his head and amends his words. “Your house, I mean. It’s kind of tucked off in the middle of…”

“Nowhere,” Pavel finishes for him breathlessly and finds that he can’t even think straight. “I know.”

“Do you have a few minutes?” Hikaru continues. Even a month later, even with the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced than when he last saw him, he looks so much the same that it twists at Pavel’s heart.

“Oh,” he mumbles, shaking his head as if he’s just woken from a deep sleep, and waves him in. “Yes. Come in, please.”

Hikaru is silent as they step into the living room, but he sits down and stares at his hands until he finally finds whatever words he seems to be looking for.

“We don’t need to talk about what happened,” he tells him and releases a breath, like that’s all he’s been holding in since Pavel left a month before. “I was worried about you, not because you—we—not because of what happened,” he stammers a bit, shaking with the effort of staying calm. “Demora misses you, and you don’t need to come back. I just wanted…” Hikaru doesn’t finish, just sighs and twists his hands a little more.

“We can talk about it,” Pavel supplies quietly. “I should not have left—I was…” Admitting that he was scared feels like a stupid reason to have done what he knows he’s done to Hikaru. “I was wrong.”

The curious expression Hikaru shoots him before looking back down at the floor unsticks Pavel’s feet from the floor. He sits a respectful foot away from Hikaru and looks at him before saying anything at all.

“Doctor McCoy told me you were a good man when I first met him, and he was right. I wish I were not the kind of person who does awful things to good people. You should have someone who cannot do those things, who loves you and Demora—and I do, I just… it takes a long time to fall in love with someone the way that I would want to and—”

“You’re rambling,” Hikaru interrupts with a faint smile. “I didn’t come here to ask you to come back or—hell, I didn’t come here because I’m in love with you or because Demora misses you, though they’re both true. I came here because I didn’t want to leave it like that. Because if I let you walk out of my life without saying anything… if I let that happen to me again, then I’ll be vulnerable to it again when you come back, because you’re not like Susan and I’m not getting over you like her.”

“Hikaru,” Pavel groans and covers his face with his hands, his heart pounding wildly against his chest.

“Hear me out, Pavel. Then I’ll go and that’s okay. I’m not asking for anything but this, and for you to think about things when I go again. I don’t want this to torture either of us because we have regrets about things we did or didn’t do or… or whatever there is.”

“What can I give to either of you?” Pavel finally blurts out.

“I’m not asking for anything. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong, but I think you left because you were scared of what it means. We—yeah, we fucked, and that’s great, but it doesn’t mean anything more than what was already going on, and it just... happened because of that.”

“So it is a symptom of something else,” Pavel concludes for him and laughs. “You think I am in love with you?”

“You’ll decide that on your own.” Hikaru stands and looks up at Pavel again. This time, neither of them look away.

“Let me know this time, all right?”

Pavel nods slowly and follows him to the door, watching him head down the front walk without anything more than a wave and a hesitant smile. He doesn’t have control of this, he never did.

He wonders if Hikaru knows that he’s the one that does.

--

Making up his mind takes less than an hour, but actually figuring out what to do about it takes two days longer than that. By the time that Pavel finds himself outside Hikaru’s door, it’s Thursday afternoon and he’s not even sure Hikaru is even home. By grace of some power Pavel is hesitant to name, even if it’s just chance or luck or fate, Hikaru is home with Demora.

Hikaru’s smile fades into a look of plain surprise, but Demora’s eyes widen before she shrieks with excitement, launching herself at him with an enthusiastic, “Pavwel!”

“I do not have the excuse of not being able to find your apartment,” he explains and touches Demora’s hair hesitantly before picking her up and grinning back at her.

She jabbers at him and Pavel only nods, pretending that he can keep up with her, before looking back at Hikaru, whose expression has softened.

“I didn’t think you were actually going to come,” he laughs and waves him into the apartment.

“And go back to babysit for one of the other families I have worked with over the last week?” Pavel asks and shakes his head, groaning at the idea. “No, it was terrible.”

Hikaru shoots him look of mock disappointment over his shoulder, closing the door behind him. Demora notices that neither of them appear to be paying attention to her and wrinkles up her brow, nudging Pavel insistently.

“She’s been spending a lot of time with Joanna and Leonard,” he explains and helps pull Demora from where she’s tightened her arms around Pavel’s neck. “Go get Mendel,” he tells her quietly and sends her after the bear with a quick ruffle of her hair.

Pavel flushes and straightens his back. “You do not mind that I am here? If I should have called, I would have…”

“Don’t be silly.” Hikaru looks visibly more relaxed, so much more so than Pavel knows he’s been for some time. “I was serious, though. I didn’t think you’d…”

“I know,” Pavel sighs. “I did not know how. I thought if I came and just... talked to you.”

“Mendel’s in my room,” Hikaru tells him and smiles. “She’ll be a minute. What do you want to talk about?”

“What if I am in love with you? It takes time, and I still have school. I love Demora and I want to see what happens with you, but I will—it will not be normal. Not for you and not for me.” Pavel takes a deep breath and clenches his fists loosely.

There’s a moment of quiet, where the only sound is Demora darting around her room.

“Is that your answer, then?” Hikaru asks and sounds like he’s not even breathing.

“Would it be all right if it were? If I need time, but I want to try and I will not—I swear I will not leave again, not like before.” It’s been some time since he’s felt his age so acutely, painfully aware of the glaring differences between the two of them.

“We’ve got time,” Hikaru promises and looks like he’s holding himself back as Demora darts through the hallway toward his bedroom. “Take your time.”

Pavel hesitates for a few seconds, watches Demora run through, and leans over to kiss him ever so carefully. It only lasts a few seconds before he pulls back in time for Demora to rush back into the room, clutching Mendel to her chest.

Neither Hikaru nor Pavel move for a moment, then they’re both turning toward her, the focus of their lives from here on, no matter what they say or do.

It’s not really what Pavel expected out of his life.

He supposes that’s how it is for everyone.

-- Epilogue --

He’s running late.

Things are quieter in the office now that the semester’s started, so it’s easier to schedule his classes, but there’s still next year to look forward to, recruiting yet another class of freshmen that will come in months after Hikaru has graduated. The date hovers ahead of him, circled in red on his calendar, waiting for him to just catch up to it. There’s the future to think of, something that doesn’t worry him like it used to. Pavel has years to go to finish undergraduate, but Hikaru is thinking ahead, thinking of graduate studies and the research job he’s already been offered in the university’s botanical garden.

It doesn’t change that he’s late again for meeting Pavel after his class. Demora will start Pre-K in the next year, but for now they’ve made a schedule of shifts to take her so to make it easier. She’s blossomed under the constant affection, the stress-free system they’ve lived up to most of the time. Classes run over and work gets busy for Hikaru, Nyota and Leonard have stepped in where necessary to make things easier on them, but they make it work. Most nights, Pavel doesn’t bother going back to his dorm, though he’s expressed some guilt over paying for an excuse to hold off on moving in with Hikaru.

Demora doesn’t ever mind that he’s around a little more this way.

Hikaru shifts his bag and stands outside the math building, waiting for Pavel to emerge. He does, holding Demora’s hand before she skips off, kicking at the dirt beside the sidewalks.

“I could not save her shoes,” he explains apologetically when they stop in front of Hikaru and Demora hugs his knees tightly.

“Don’t worry about it. We can wash them. You have to get to class.”

“Yes, in a moment.” Pavel waves off the idea, brushes a hand over Demora’s hair—tangled, Hikaru can see, indicating that she and Pavel have probably been playing in the bushes around the buildings. “How late will you be tonight?”

“That’s my question,” Hikaru grins and kisses his cheek, flatly ignoring the freshman who appears to have just fallen off the sidewalk for staring at them.

“Right,” Pavel agrees and turns his head, kissing him full on the lips, his hand sliding down from Demora’s hair to cover her eyes thoughtfully. “I will be home for dinner.”

Hikaru takes Demora’s hand and waves to Pavel as he heads back into the building. It’s where he is for now, until mid-December, when he graduates and starts something new completely. He’s content with this, happy and smiling as he picks up Demora and starts walking. So what if it’s not perfect?

Nothing ever is.

--

and there’s the sun
‘hold my hand,’ he said
us three little gods with the world at our feet
just this day, I need no other
just this life, I need no more
just this moment, let it all stop here
let it all stop here, I’ve had my fill

[Star Trek] Let it all stop here : Part I

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:20:42 GMT

Title: Let it all stop here
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Hikaru Sulu/Pavel Chekov, Leonard McCoy, Nyota Uhura, Demora Sulu
Genre(s): Alternate Universe, Romance
Warnings: Language, explicit sex, slash, fluff
Description: Hikaru Sulu is sure there's no way he could ruin his life more than he already has. He's twenty-two years old, in college, working full time... and the single father of a two-year-old daughter. Keeping it all in balance proves to be too much, and high school senior Pavel Chekov is rather desperately in need of community service hours.

Note: Finally, my fic for startrekbigbang. I've been working on this for... um. A while. Yeah. A long while. This had several predecessors that will never be seen, but here it is. This is both for the Big Bang and a fill for this prompt from st_xi_kink. Title and end lyrics from Dido's "Us 2 Little Gods". Furthermore, and most importantly, the art for this fic, as created by alldoubtaboutit is HERE and the fanmix, made by kick_back_80s is HERE. Please go take a look and give all your love to these wonderful, wonderful people, who have put up with me and my insane schedule and crap communication and everything else for the last month trying to get this ready while I stumble through graduate school. PLEASE GO LOVE THEM.

--

He’s not sure what makes him do it in the first place. Probably desperation, if he’s completely honest with himself. Desperation and the loom of spring finals and the fourth time he’s gotten kicked out of the library because Demora is two, and two-year-olds don’t handle marathon study sessions as well as twenty-two-year-olds. Hikaru sacrifices whatever shreds of dignity he’s been clinging to for the last three years of his life and makes the call. It’s a volunteer-based organization created for the benefit of people just like him, careless, reckless people who have children they don’t have time for. It’s nothing anyone says explicitly, but he sees it in people’s eyes when he has to take Demora on campus with him, in his professors’ expressions when he explains that he’s twenty-two, a single father, and completely on his own.

There’s history there, history he doesn’t like to talk about to anyone because he’s still pretty fucking bitter about the way things turned out. It makes sense, really, because he was nineteen and careless and he didn’t give a damn how he was wrecking his life. Not that anyone could tell now, but Hikaru Sulu had been wild when he got to college at eighteen. He was in the aviation program, one of the best, a real natural. He got his three-point-eight-five GPA and aced his flight exams, blazing through his training hours and still finding time to party Thursday through Sunday without fail. He met Susan at a dance club, danced to closing time, and went home with her. The next time, she came home with him, and then it was as natural as breathing. Hikaru and Susan, Susan and Hikaru.

It all went to hell after that, but Hikaru doesn’t mind thinking about the bad things. It’s the things before then, the recklessness and goddamn blind stupidity that he’d lived his life by as if he was untouchable, that’s what makes him angry and bitter. He can handle thinking about his parents’ furious disappointment, when they cut him off and kicked him out of their lives and he all but lived with Susan, trying to think of what the hell they were going to do. Demora was born right on time, almost a year after he met Susan, and Susan started to fall apart.

That’s when it got unpleasant and torn up again, when Hikaru woke up five months later to an empty bed and a welling panic because it was 10 A.M. and Demora wasn’t crying and the apartment they had moved to was silent. It was the first time he really thought of himself as a father, really understood the magnitude of his new life, when he tore the sheets aside and frantically centered his thoughts around the earth-shattering, nightmarish notion that Demora might be gone.

Demora wasn’t gone, as it turned out, but Susan was, along with everything she had brought to their apartment. Hikaru called his mother for the first time in a year that day, holding Demora to his chest like she might have disappeared if he looked away, let go for even a second. Mrs. Sulu hung up on him when he choked out a greeting, but it wasn’t enough to make Hikaru cry, just stubbornly decide to keep going. He hadn’t been left with a choice, Susan had made it for him, and he had Demora now, who needed him more than he needed his mother.

When he goes to talk to his advisor, holding a baby and still figuring out how to change diapers with the effortless, mechanical movements he sees all the women in his parenting classes use, she suggests that he drop the aviation program, less than two years to graduation. He can’t do the flight hours anymore—he’ll barely make it to classes at all—but he can probably make it to biology labs, she says when he tells her that the only thing he gives a damn about, aside from his daughter and flying, is watering his plants. He doesn’t tell her that it’s because he can’t stand the thought of his plants dying, as if they’re all he’s got left. They almost are, really, because nearly all of Hikaru’s old friends party recklessly, too lost in their own youthful immortality to think of Hikaru at home with his books and his infant daughter. Hikaru talks to his plants, rages at them when he needs to get it out of his system, all the frustrations and self-loathing for fucking up his life as badly as he has.

So he agrees to change majors, all but starting over with the Biology core requirements that he could have been working on for the last two and a half years instead of wasting his time with the now lost dream of being a pilot. The school, however, is benevolent. They count some of his aviation classes toward his physics and mathematics credits, and even if he has to spend long hours burping Demora and memorizing periodic tables and stoichiometry for his chemistry classes, he doesn’t have to spend even more of those hours studying elementary physics and sine curves. The second turn of luck comes from the aviation professor most unhappy to see him leave the program, even if he understands why. He’s held Demora, rubbed her back and bounced her into the blessing of sleep while Hikaru worked himself to exhaustion, shadows so dark under his eyes that Hikaru is certain they’ll never completely fade.

He’s the one who finds Hikaru the job.

It works long hours, but it’s for the university and it will allow him to make enough money to live off of and finance the remaining years of his schooling without his aviation scholarship. Hikaru is endlessly grateful for it, but he’s not happy that it came to this, or really anything but lucky and resentful of whom he was before. He doesn’t regret Demora and he doesn’t blame her. He doesn’t even blame Susan, just himself for not being as careful with the good, fragile life he used to have; for not seeing the warning signs and helping Susan through her depression.

The next two years go smoothly, except his classes are harder and he spends more time in labs than he actually does in class. Nyota—a linguistics and language major he met before Susan—is the last of his friends from before who still sticks around, even if they weren’t as close back then. Now, of course, is different. Demora is perpetually enamored with Nyota’s long, smooth hair, warm smile and soothing words, and Hikaru knows that Nyota would be lying if she ever claimed not to adore Demora. She babysits for him when she can, but it’s often that she can’t, and while most of his professors understand, it’s just not enough for Hikaru.

One of the single mothers in his economics class gives him the number for the group, a small family-oriented non-profit right there in San Francisco that might be able and willing to help him. He doesn’t do it, not at first, not until that fourth time getting kicked out of the library. He calls that afternoon from his apartment, sitting on the couch and stroking Demora’s hair from her cheeks while she sleeps soundly, her face turned into his leg. It feels a little bit like he’s betraying her at first, he feels horrible the entire time he’s on the phone with the patient woman he was transferred to. She tells him that he needs to file paperwork, things for their tax records, but offers to help him with it and even walks him through the process as he paces the apartment with Demora in one arm and his tax returns in the other.

When he’s finished, hangs up the phone and sits back on the couch, it feels like it’s going to be okay again. Demora wakes up again and he kisses her forehead, drawing a fierce, choking hug around his throat and a laugh from her.

“Daddy,” she says simply, with the childlike innocence of someone who doesn’t know that things are so much more complicated than she can imagine. Hikaru prefers it this way, where she doesn’t know his worries, and so he laughs with her, grins and tickles her mercilessly until she’s squirming and wriggling against him, not even really trying to get away.

At first, Hikaru wasn’t sure how to love a baby. She was awkward and needy for those first months before he learned how to be a father, before Susan left them alone, completely unused to one another.

Now he’s not sure how not to love Demora.

--

Sheer desperation was what drove Pavel to do it, he knows that without question. The school counselor took him into her office, pushed him down into the chair opposite her desk and told him that, if he didn’t finish his community service hours, they weren’t going to let him graduate. He protested, explained that he was an exemplary student, that he’d been too busy working on the qualifying projects to earn grants for the school’s science program to even think of recording proper community service hours. His work with the grant project had been good enough for the old counselor, but this new woman, who had somehow overlooked his file for the entire year, did not have the same attitude toward the science program and his work.

“Those,” she began coolly. “Are not suitable community service projects, Mister Chekov. We require that they be beneficial to the community at large, and while securing the school’s funds is a noble endeavor, I assure you that we, as administrators, are perfectly capable of doing so ourselves.” He stared in horror, thinking over ways that he could possibly explain to his papa why he wouldn’t be graduating, wouldn’t be accepting his academic scholarships to study physics like he had been dreaming of since he was a young boy. She only continued on with her frosty expression, and Pavel thought that she must have majored in humanities while in college; that was the only explanation for her biased hatred of the noble sciences.

“There are a number of organizations in the Bay area who would certainly be extremely pleased to have your services. With some sacrifices on your part, I’m sure you can finish all fifty of the required hours that you have not even begun by graduation night. You can start by looking here.” She dropped a stack of pamphlets in front of him and the last thing he remembers is picking up the top one and handing it to her with a quiet mumble that he would work for them.

He’s sure it doesn’t matter who he does his hours with, as long as they’re done and the counselor is appeased.

What he didn’t know when he handed over the pamphlet, what he knows now, is that he has signed himself up to work as a babysitter. For free.

Pavel Chekov has never spent time around a small child in all his life. He is an only child and all his cousins are in Russia, half a world away with everything he knew up until he was ten years old and he and his Papa moved to San Francisco, tired of lonely, cold winters in Saint Petersburg after his mother died. That had been eight years before. Pavel speaks English now, only bothering with Russian when he talks on the phone to his grandparents or when his papa is too angry to remember his English. He submitted his application for U.S. citizenship on his eighteenth birthday, the day he was legally eligible, and is still waiting for the process to be completed. He is as American as he can be for as much as he loves Russia and this community service requirement is another part of that, even if Pavel resents it a little bit, that all his previous work has been for naught.

Getting involved with the little organization—it has a name too long to remember, related to its various funding sources and mission statement—is much easier than Pavel feared it might have been. He fills out a survey and receives his placement within a few minutes. It has brought him here, to an apartment development near the university, clinging to his papers like they’re going to save his life. Which, honestly, they might, because he’s babysitting for a single father, a student, and that’s all he knows. Pavel isn’t sure how he’d trust anyone to watch his children, but considering the background check he endured to even get this far, he figures that it’s safe enough this way. He knocks firmly on the door and steps back, waiting for the answer.

The man who opens the door is young, younger than Pavel expected, even though he sort of knew this was the case. Still, Pavel freezes under his gaze, which is intense and only dampened by the presence of a toddler clinging around his neck, mumbling incoherently. Pavel must have just interrupted naptime. He doesn’t know what to say for a long, long moment, and then the man grins and steps aside.

“You must be the babysitter.”

That, Pavel supposes, sums up this position. Even if it will do absolutely nothing for him professionally, he fully plans to at least try and be the best he can be. Instead of arguing the point, he nods and sticks out his hand.

“Pavel Chekov, it’s… it’s nice to meet you.”

Shifting the girl in his arms, the man takes his hand and smiles to him. “Hikaru Sulu, come in. Please. I’ll make a pot of coffee or something.”

Pavel follows him in and is surprised to find that the apartment is immaculate, with the exception of a mess of paper and textbooks on the small card table in the dining room. He feels awkward just standing there, but Hikaru works diligently with his daughter slumped against his shoulder. After a moment, he turns around again and smiles easily at him. Pavel can’t even imagine what he’s really thinking, seeing his babysitter for the first time and finding that it’s some strange, teenage boy. Pavel isn’t sure he would trust himself if he were in Hikaru’s position.

Instead of sending him out or explaining that this won’t work, Hikaru peers down at the girl in his arms and smiles when she stirs again, waking slowly.

“Demora,” he breathes affectionately. “Demora, there’s someone you should meet.” He looks back up at Pavel, the breathless smile not quite faded from his face. “She’s very affectionate, but she’ll probably have to get used to you, which should take about ten minutes—Demora, wake up.”

Demora squirms out of his arms and clings to the leg of his jeans, staring up at Pavel with her eyebrows pulled together and dubious. She looks up at Hikaru, who laughs and crouches down to her level.

“Demora, this is Pavel,” he explains kindly and Pavel feels more awkward than ever, but crouches down to her and smiles, hoping it’s genuine enough for her.

“Good to meet you.” He offers her a hand and she looks at him shyly, hiding her face under a hand.

“Demora,” Hikaru reminds her gently, the edge in his voice firm but definitely not too hard. She bites her lip and stares at Pavel.

“Pa—” she tries and frowns at herself. “Pav—wel.” Hikaru cringes, but Pavel laughs aloud.

“Close enough,” he tells them gently. “If Paul is easier, I know it is an American name…” Pavel looks at Demora hopefully, but her forehead is still screwed up in concentration.

“Pavwel,” she insists and looks proud of herself.

“I guess that’s it, then,” Hikaru laughs and looks back up at Pavel, who shrugs and laughs.

“It is a hard name for her.”

“Hers comes out worse,” Hikaru laughs and stands up again, Demora no longer clinging to his leg, but staring up at Pavel in plain interest, now her shyness has passed. “I’ll get the coffee,” he says and nudges Demora toward Pavel, who stands up and tries to look as unintimidating as possible.

Pavel isn’t sure how it happens. Sometime between Hikaru turning into the kitchen, retrieving two cups and pouring the coffee, Demora has abandoned any pretense of shyness and closed her chubby hands around one of Pavel’s. He looks up at Hikaru while she jabbers at him in a mix of English and baby, but takes the cup of coffee as Demora reaches for his chin.

“No,” Hikaru tells her firmly, but she stares back at him defiantly until his eyebrows go up and she drops her hands petulantly.

He’s not sure how to avoid being impolite, how to keep from taboo subjects he isn’t even totally aware of yet, but Hikaru looks completely comfortable, sitting across the table from him and packing away his schoolwork.

“Tell me about yourself,” Hikaru invites gently, moving Demora into his lap and rolling his eyes a little when she squirms, reaching for Pavel. “Less than ten minutes—have you ever been around kids? Find them inexplicably attracted to you?”

Pavel pauses before he realizes that Hikaru is joking, not interrogating him, and then laughs, shaking his head. “I will do my best and I will not let anything happen to her, I swear on my—everything. I will call and…” He grins and takes another drink of coffee before confessing, “This is new to me.”

Hikaru laughs and meets his eye. There’s something there, some hint of a deeper, bitter hurt that Pavel isn’t sure he’ll ever see again. He’ll never find out what it is, that’s for sure; it’s Hikaru’s thing, his life.

“That’s all right,” he assures him warmly. “To me, too.”

--

Hikaru runs late the first night Pavel stays with Demora and rushes home desperately, fearing the worst. All the way, he admonishes himself for leaving his daughter with a stranger, someone who doesn’t know her like he does. Pavel seems nice enough, he thinks, but he doesn’t know that Demora hates macaroni and cheese unless Hikaru makes it, because he always changes the cheese around and kisses her cheek and feeds her the first bite so she knows it’s safe; it’s from him. Pavel can’t know that, probably doesn’t give a damn enough to find out, either. He’s a nice kid, but he doesn’t know anything about Demora, who will probably chase him off, even though he’s a last ditch effort to get things under control so Hikaru can graduate on time. Hikaru suddenly feels like this is a bad idea, trusting his daughter to someone who is just trying to get community service hours and graduate high school; someone who couldn’t possibly care about how hard Hikaru has fought to keep his daughter. People talk about him because he’s a single father, but most often they just stare, which is no more comforting.

Along the way home, he trips three times on cracks in the sidewalk and leaves a shallow cut across his cheek. It bleeds heavily, but Hikaru brushes it aside, smearing the blood over his cheek, and starts running until he finally jerks to a stop outside the apartment. He takes a few seconds to catch his breath and unlock the door, adjusts his bag on his shoulder, and steps into the door, bracing himself for unhappy sobs and a harassed babysitter ready to quit.

To his enormous surprise, the apartment is quiet for the most part. The hum of the refrigerator kicking on is louder than the soft noises from Demora’s bedroom. Hikaru pauses and crosses the small living room to the hallway and stops two paces from her door.

“Tell me,” Demora insists and Pavel’s laugh sounds amused, rather than annoyed.

“You need to go to sleep soon, Demora, or your father will be angry with me for letting you stay up so late.”

The sound Demora makes is one Hikaru recognizes as a stubborn protest, and for moment he fears that she might throw a tantrum, but Pavel soothes her with another laugh.

“One more, okay? Then you must sleep.”

Hikaru leans against the wall and takes a soft breath of relief. His fears assuaged, he is more curious how Pavel had gotten Demora calm and presumably in bed. A careful peek in the doorway reveals Demora sitting cross-legged under her blankets, staring up at Pavel, who has taken his seat on the edge of her bed. He opens his mouth to say something, to announce that he had come home, but stops short when Pavel starts speaking, slow and even to make himself clear to Demora, telling stories of wise, talking horses, selfish kings and a princess of the sea.

Neither of them notices him, standing plainly in the doorway, until Pavel finishes his story (“The princess marries the archer and they ruled together, Tsar and Tsarina, for many years, happily.”) and Demora’s eyes lock onto Hikaru’s.

“Daddy!” she cries enthusiastically, but looks crestfallen when he puts a finger to his lips and enters the room, his bag still heavy on his shoulder.

“You heard him—bed now.” Hikaru leans down and kisses her forehead, satisfied that she’s safe and content. Pavel stands up awkwardly and leaves them alone, but when Hikaru follows a few seconds later, Pavel is waiting in the living room. He hasn’t picked up his bag, nor the heavy textbook from the kitchen table that he must have been studying from when Demora took her nap in the afternoon and never returned to, not even to close it again.

“I’m sorry—I know you said you wanted her in bed before eight-thirty, but she—”

“You’re fine, Pavel. It’s only nine,” Hikaru offers him with a smile, setting his bag beside the couch and putting off the moment when he will finally be able to sink down onto it and study. “To be honest, I thought I was going to come home and find that you wanted to quit.”

Pavel looks stricken and shakes his head. “No—not at all! Demora is a very wonderful little girl. I thought it would be bad, but she is… for the most part very well behaved.”

“Well,” Hikaru grins and rubs his hand over his face, frowning when he comes across the streak of dried blood. “She must really like you, then. She gives some of my friends hell if they’re not Nyota—that’s the girl who babysits her when she’s not in class. Great friend, but we—” He cuts himself off short and shakes his head, washing his face quickly in the kitchen sink. Pavel doesn’t need his life story.

“I really appreciate this,” he says instead and feels relieved when Pavel nods.

“I will be here tomorrow evening?” he asks, reaching for his book, then his bag. When he slings it over one shoulder, Pavel turns back toward Hikaru, who is weighing the pros and cons of falling asleep on the couch and doing his organic homework in the morning.

“Yeah,” Hikaru mumbles and walks to the door with him, resolving to read at least half of his chapter before sleeping. When Pavel pauses outside the apartment, Hikaru looks up at him, senses crashing back to him. “Is something wrong?”

Pavel shifts his weight, adjusts his backpack, and stares at his sneakers. “Demora—she would not…” he pauses and looks back up at Hikaru. “How will Demora eat macaroni and cheese?”

Hikaru considers kissing him in relief.

He settles on promising himself not to be so negative about this instead.

--

Finals creep up on Hikaru faster than he expects and he finds himself calling Pavel on his cell phone for the first time early one Friday afternoon. It’s only been a month since they started doing this and Pavel doesn’t answer when he calls. Hikaru supposes it’s only fitting and imagines Pavel’s annoyed expression when the phone rings on his end. It’s only when Pavel calls him an hour later that Hikaru realizes that he called in the middle of Pavel’s last period.

He swallows his pride and inexplicable nerves and answers the phone, “Hello?”

Pavel is breathless, but sounds relieved. “Hikaru! I saw that you had called and I—is everything all right?”

Over the last month, Hikaru has come to realize that Pavel is eager, sincere in everything he does, and willing to please. Demora loves his company and tries to tell Hikaru about him endlessly, usually dissolving into a string of garbled words that Hikaru can’t quite follow. He doesn’t care. He’s just glad his daughter is happy, that Pavel isn’t hurting her and that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. He’s got another semester before graduation, just a single semester later than he should have graduated from the aviation program, and he’s done it. It doesn’t feel so far off anymore, it feels possible.

He sighs out a laugh and runs a hand through his hair. “No—everything’s fine. I’ve just… I know you’ve got school and a social life and graduation and—” Hikaru closes his fist in his hair and turns on his heel, looking back over at his desk. “I’ve got my first final tonight and I really—my teachers have made enough concessions for me other than administering a final because it’s convenient. I could… probably use some help,” he finishes a little lamely.

There’s a long pause on the other end, punctuated by a few bumping noises, but when Pavel speaks again, the background noise is less than it was before. “What time do you need me there?” he asks plainly and Hikaru can almost see the determined expression on his face. “What about your other exams?”

Hikaru blinks at the receiver in surprise, but collects himself. “I—well, most of them are during the day, usually.”

“I have a few hours of classes in the morning,” Pavel tells him dismissively. “I work for the science teachers the rest of the day. I can come.”

Hikaru almost sobs in relief and nods, even though Pavel can’t see him. “That—I’ll get you my exam schedule, if it’s all right, and there’s work, so… Oh, God, you don’t even know—thank you.”

Pavel laughs. “It’s fine—I will get a note from the agency, if you will tell them what you need. That should cover things on other days.”

“All right. Awesome.” Hikaru nods again and releases his hair, the tight knot in his chest loosening. “I’ll call them next—thank you so much.”

“Oh,” Pavel murmurs and laughs brightly. “No, it—it’s fine. I will go over in an hour. Is Nyota there?”

“Yeah, I’ll be home about nine tonight. I’ll see you then.” The call ends with a cheerful note, and Hikaru leans against the wall. When this is all over, he swears that he’ll find a way to give Pavel the moon for helping him through this. He barely knows the kid; they don’t see very much of one another before Pavel has to leave for home. Every time he sees him he’s a little more grateful, a little more indebted to him, and even further intrigued. It’s hard to remember that Pavel Chekov is only eighteen years old, still in high school when he probably already knows more than most of the people graduating from the university this semester.

It’s something Hikaru forces himself to remember, especially when he sees how good Pavel is with Demora. Pavel will stop babysitting after his hours are filled, even though Hikaru is almost sure he must be close to finishing his hours already, just by how much time he’s put in already. After that, Hikaru isn’t sure if he’ll get assigned to a new sitter, or if he’s on his own again. He’s got summer classes lined up and Nyota’s going home for the summer, all the way back to Santa Barbara, and Pavel’s just not going to be around forever. He sighs and sits back at his desk to find three new e-mails, all frantic new students who need his help, and pulls his phone back out.

He stares at the text message for a full minute before pressing the send button, cancelling it, and then staring at it some more.

Could you stay a little later to talk about something tonight?

It doesn’t imply anything, but Hikaru hates that he’s going to end up begging for another favor. He’s been sure for so long that he’s finally given up on his foolish pride; he’s not in any position to hold onto it, anyway.

Finally, he gives in and sends it, knowing that it’s all too close to the end of the phone call, but hoping Pavel will forgive him for it, for seeming like a desperate father. He must be the male version of a babysitter’s worst nightmare: the overprotective mother.

Pavel’s answer comes a few minutes later, while he’s knee-deep in the incoming student’s queries of honors classes and GPA weighting, an unassuming, Absolutely, and Hikaru takes a breath again.

He’s still at work, an hour and a half later, when Nyota calls him. For a dark moment, Hikaru fears that Pavel didn’t show up, that his text must have shaken him, but her voice is cheerful when he answers, “Nyota?”

“Hikaru!” The syllables of his name bounce and he’s sure she must be jogging across a street somewhere, somehow keeping her balance in her heeled boots. “Pavel’s with Demora, before you ask. I just… I haven’t talked to you lately, and I—” He can hear her step up onto the sidewalk, always in perpetual motion, driving forward without any hesitance. Hikaru envies her that, just a little. She’s not the one who screwed up her life like he did; she’s just the saint who stuck it through with him.

“I really wanted you to know that you hit a good thing with Pavel. Kid’s punctual and Demora loves him. She talks about him all the time, I’m almost jealous. I think we might have a crush on our hands.” It’s nothing Hikaru didn’t know, but he’s glad it’s not just a part-time thing, that Nyota sees it too. She told him something similar when she first met Pavel, but that was two weeks before, and she’s seen him all of twice since then. Hikaru is grateful to hear it again.

“I know,” he sighs and leans back in his chair, checking the time before he’ll have to leave work and go to his last class of the day. “I’m thinking about asking him if he’ll stay on a little longer, since you’re going home.”

“You could do worse, Hikaru,” she says gently and is off again, in a graceful lope Hikaru can picture in his mind from all the times he’s seen it. “You could do a lot worse.”

--

Demora is fast asleep when Hikaru comes back, and Pavel looks up from his place on the couch, where he’s writing in a notebook in his neat, even handwriting. Too many years of laboratory classes and the vigorous education he had in Russia left him with flawless handwriting, even in English. He moves to close the notebook and stand up, but Hikaru waves him to sit back down, locking the door behind him and dropping his bag in its usual place beside the couch.

“What are you working on?” he asks, as if he’s genuinely interested, and Pavel smiles at him.

“English essay. Last one of the year,” he explains and closes the notebook anyway. He doesn’t know what Hikaru wants to talk to him about; it’s been worrying him all day, since he received the text message and started fretting over it. He isn’t sure if he’s accidentally done something wrong, stepped out of line and angered him. He doesn’t want that to be the case, not when he’s genuinely been enjoying working with Demora. It will end eventually, of course, when Hikaru doesn’t need him, when school ends and he has no real reason to keep coming.

Inexplicably, Pavel dreads that day.

“You’ll probably do great.” Hikaru sits down on the opposite end of the couch, far too relaxed to be about to chastise Pavel for some misstep with his daughter.

“We’ll see,” Pavel shrugs and grins anyway. He did poorly in English for a long time, still struggles in some ways, but his English isn’t bad and while he’s a scientist above all and will never be a great writer, he makes solid grades in all his classes, English included. “Just a reflection piece, how we feel about graduation.”

“That’s coming up soon, then,” Hikaru begins and Pavel can tell that he plainly wants to say more.

“Another two weeks,” he says with a smile. “All my hours are in, too. They cannot keep me from graduating anymore.” The counselor had been impressed that he’d finished so quickly, called the agency to confirm that it was all true, the signatures genuine, and received a glowing commendation for Pavel’s work. He wasn’t sure how much of that was because Hikaru had said something to them or if they just did it for everyone, but he appreciated it nonetheless.

Hikaru sucks in a tight breath and Pavel watches him expectantly. Whatever this is about, it’s going to come out now.

“I know you don’t have to stay any longer now, and maybe you’re just filling some kind of social obligation, but I really—really, I’ve been so glad to have you here. Demora really likes you and she usually doesn’t take to anyone at all. I just… I know it’s a lot to ask, and I really—I could probably, hell. I don’t know, I can’t offer you much in exchange, but I’d really…”

“Do you want me to stay around?” Pavel asks, frankly surprised that Hikaru would ask. It’s the opposite of what he thought, and he nods with relief. “I do not have anything I have to be doing and I—Demora is really wonderful, and… you’ll have classes this summer, yes?”

“Yeah,” Hikaru says and sounds as if he’s given up breathing, and he doesn’t know which question he’s answering. “Yeah, I have classes and work and—it’s not like it is now, no, but I… shit, I feel like a real asshole asking you for a favor like this.”

Pavel stares at him for a moment, considering the option. It would give him something to do, and it’s not as if he’s been looking forward to the end of this. He likes Demora, even if he doesn’t understand what’s brought her and her father to this point, where her mother is. He’s sort of supposed that her mother must be dead, because it’s hard to imagine anything else, but Hikaru doesn’t keep pictures and he’s not wearing a wedding ring. Hikaru’s nice, definitely nice on the eyes, and Pavel doesn’t have anything better to do. He looks down, then back up at him and grins.

“Well, you let Nyota…?” He’s not sure where he’s going with this, but Hikaru meets his eyes.

“Yeah, she’s a friend.”

“Then,” Pavel reasons and shoves his notebook in his bag. “What if we were friends? Would that make it less of a burden?”

Hikaru gapes at him for a few seconds, and then starts laughing. “That’s your answer to this?”

Pavel shrugs, but his grin endures. “Perhaps that is hasty of me, but I like helping you more than—Well, I do not have anything better to be doing.”

There’s a long pause, and then Hikaru smiles. “Do you think you can come tomorrow? I have to study and… well, I’ll be studying, but I can try to cook dinner or something. Not that I’m really any good at it, but it’s the thought, yeah?”

“Sure,” Pavel checks the time, sighs and picks up his bag. “I have to go home before Papa worries too much and I need to call a friend, but,” he hesitates a second and nods firmly, making his choice. “I will see you tomorrow.”

He doesn’t say anything more, that there’s a suit hanging uselessly in his closet and a traditional, teenage coming of age ceremony he’s abandoning for the company of a social hermit and his two-year-old daughter, but it feels right this way; it feels better.

He steps out of the door and smiles back at Hikaru, whose shy grin is enough of a trade for this. He doesn’t want to think about a crush on Hikaru, the man he babysits for. He’s past the closeted teenage years of angst, when he agonized about his sexuality; it’s not like the idea of a man causing this fluttering feeling in his chest is so bad, so foreign to him. It’s more that he’s got Demora to think of, so does Hikaru, and there’s so many more layers to this than the string of relationships he’s had since he was fifteen and stealing guilty kisses behind the gym, or sixteen and sucking a cock in the back of a movie theater.

Pavel’s been there before and he’s sure it wouldn’t be like that with Hikaru. He’s also sure he’ll never have the chance to find out how it could be.

Still, when the door shuts behind him, he calls Kevin before his father, lowers his head and begins, “I don’t think I’ll make it to prom tomorrow night.”

--

Hikaru isn’t sure when he expected Pavel to arrive, they didn’t really make any plans, and so he wakes slowly. Or, really, as slowly as Demora allows him, but he draws her up into bed with him, sharing a pillow and all the secrets of the world he can tell her, every blessing and promise he can give to her. They don’t often get times like these, not even on the weekends, when Hikaru does the bulk of his homework for the coming week. They stay in bed until Demora complains of being hungry and he heads into the kitchen, wearing nothing but boxers, imagining what his mother would say if she knew the state he let himself be in around his daughter. He pushes the thought away and fixes breakfast, planning out his schedule for the day.

Half past eleven, his phone beeps its short alert and Demora perks, looking between him and the phone, but Hikaru retrieves it before she can grab it and try to call China. The message is from Pavel, asking if two is too late for him to come. Hikaru figures that since he needs a shower it’s as good a time as any.

Pavel arrives promptly, three minutes before two, while Hikaru is still toweling off his hair. What had been ample time to get ready had fallen apart after Demora insisted on a bath of her own and no less than five clothes changes before Hikaru put his foot down and gave up on being patient and yielding.

Demora is pouting on the couch, but brightens the instant Pavel walks in the door, looking a little guilty at Hikaru’s damp hair.

“I did not come too early, did I?” he asks immediately, but Hikaru waves it off.

“No, we just had a slow start today. Weekend, after all.” Hikaru closes the door behind him and Pavel kicks off his sneakers and smiles at Demora, who is beside herself until she leaps to her feet and throws her arms around Pavel’s leg. “Demora,” he warns, but Pavel waves it off and picks her up, greeting her in Russian and smiling when she tries to mimic the foreign syllables.

“You go and study,” Pavel reassures him, resting Demora on his hip as she launches into a lengthy explanation that Hikaru can only presume is about her morning, but as neither he nor Pavel can completely discern her gibberish from her mangled pronunciation of English, he doesn’t actually know one way or another. “We will be fine, da, Demora?”

She chirps something in response that sounds strangely like Pavel’s rumbling da after being filtered through birdsong, but Pavel beams at Hikaru, apparently pleased. Hikaru only shakes his head and hangs his towel up in the bathroom, straightening his t-shirt and sitting down at the small table beside the kitchen, where his books are already waiting for him.

There are a few hours of relative silence, where Hikaru is plainly amazed at how effectively Pavel manages to keep Demora both occupied and quiet enough to let him work. He finishes his studying by six, closing his book with an air of finality and the feeling like he can actually handle what’s been put in front of him, rather than like he’s floundering, gasping for a breath.

Demora and Pavel look faintly guilty when he crosses into the living room and if the mess of toys surrounding them isn’t what they’re up to, Hikaru is sure he doesn’t want to know. He crosses his arms over his chest and smiles down at them.

“Three toys, Demora,” he tells her firmly and she makes a face, looking as though she might consider crying, and then Pavel shakes his head and helps her pack away the ones she isn’t using.

“Thank you,” Hikaru murmurs quietly to Pavel when he’s back on his feet and only a few feet away. Pavel looks up from the carpet and his cheeks pink with a faint blush.

“You needed me,” he says and scoops up a toy Demora has forgotten, dropping it into her chest and closing it firmly. Hikaru barely finishes processing the thought that there’s more he wants to do to make up for this when Pavel meets his eyes, as if he’s read his mind, and laughs. “I would not have come if I did not want to be here.”

This time, Hikaru lowers his head and nods, but he keeps it down for only a few seconds before its back up and he looks between Demora, playing happily on her mat, and Pavel, with his fingers combing through his hair and watching Hikaru.

“Do you mind keeping an eye on her while I work out dinner?” he asks, even though it’s pretty redundant to ask. Still, when Pavel nods and settles on the couch, Hikaru can’t help but be elated.

An hour and two failed attempts at dinner later, Hikaru is relieved to find that Pavel not only likes pizza, but he’s not particularly picky about it, either. The pretext of studying has been abandoned entirely in favor of putting on a movie for Demora (The Little Mermaid, her favorite, to Pavel’s apparent dismay), and sprawling over one side of the couch, while Pavel takes up the other side. Demora, however, objects to the arrangement, given that she plainly prefers to be close enough to cuddle the both of them.

Pavel shrugs first, scooting closer toward the middle, and Demora waits until Hikaru is closer to him before climbing up onto their laps, snuggling happily before losing herself in the opening of the movie, squealing in delight.

Under normal circumstances, Hikaru studies through the movie, nodding in all the appropriate places for Demora’s benefit, but actually paying attention to the movie is a new experience for him. Pavel isn’t necessarily very into it, but he does distract Hikaru from the movie with the occasional question or witty remark. He also laughs a lot, which Hikaru finds far more distracting than anything he actually says. As usual, Demora falls asleep after the first forty-five minutes, but actually stays that way after the day at play with Pavel.

Hikaru doesn’t actually notice that she’s quietly sleeping until Pavel presses a finger to his mouth while Hikaru is mid-sentence regarding the witch’s motivations and points down at Demora. Not for the first time, Hikaru feels his heart melt a little bit, desperately in love with her more than he thinks perhaps he could love anyone ever again.

“I should put her to bed,” he says quietly and Pavel leans back, watching the movie for a few seconds, then nods.

“I’ll help,” he sighs softly and stands up, stretching his hands over his head while Hikaru gathers Demora into his arms and starts toward the bedroom.

Between the two of them, Demora sleepily stumbles into her pajamas and falls into bed, mumbling a muffled g’night at them without the energy to squirm and demand a kiss from Hikaru the way she does every night.

Pavel tucks his hands into his pockets and follows Hikaru into the living room while the movie keeps playing behind them. Hikaru flushes, rolls his eyes and turns it off, but the silence is somehow a little worse than the background noise.

Hikaru clears his throat and Pavel laughs, but then the inexplicable tension in the room breaks and Hikaru drops the remote back on the table. “You’ll make it home all right?” he asks, and Pavel shrugs.

“Of course, but I…” He laughs again and leans down to pull on his shoes. “We will have to do this again, if you want.”

“Yeah, I…” Hikaru laughs this time and nods. “I’d really like that. You’re—well, nothing I haven’t already told you, and sooner or later I’ll have to stop groveling in thanks. I—I owe you a lot.”

Pavel finishes tying his shoes and straightens. “It was worth it, every bit of it. I will see you on Monday, Hikaru.”

Hikaru holds the door open and watches Pavel retreat down the sidewalk, heading home through the darkness and islands of light under the streetlamps. He’s sure it’s because there’s some kind of easy grace around Pavel, some unsullied confidence that the world isn’t as bad as it could be that Hikaru both envies and abhors at the same time. He remembers the same naiveté in himself, the indestructibility that came with his youthful inexperience. Even so, Pavel is different than he was and Hikaru is all too aware of that, also.

He sighs and leans heavily on the door when it’s closed behind him, reminding himself firmly that it doesn’t make a difference either way, even if he’s not sure what ‘either way’ really implies.

--

The first time Hikaru mentions the play date, Pavel misunderstands him and thinks that he’s taking Demora to the doctor, which he knows he’s definitely not allowed to do based on any number of laws. Nyota is the one who has to clarify for him that while Doctor McCoy is Demora’s pediatrician, he is also the father of a three-year-old whom Demora regularly plays with. It’s usually Nyota who takes her to the play dates, but she’s leaving and the play dates continue, even when Hikaru has to work. It’s been tight for the last couple weeks since finals ended, especially since Hikaru needs someone to look after Demora while he’s working at the school, which has already rearranged his hours to accommodate him. Play dates, Pavel knows, are not legitimate reasons to miss work, even when Demora would be heartbroken to miss her weekly playtime with Joanna McCoy.

They meet up in the park, Pavel armed with water, juice, snacks and toys, all crammed into the bag hanging from his shoulder. Fortunately, Doctor McCoy looks about the same and so Pavel only feels slightly ridiculous among the crowds of other mothers with their children.

McCoy recognizes Demora immediately and even though he rolls his eyes at her enthusiasm, he picks her up and swings her around once before rounding on Pavel, who only ever keeps up with her for years of cross country training.

“You’re the babysitter Nyota’s been going on about?” McCoy asks gruffly in what Pavel supposes is a greeting. He doesn’t necessarily like babysitter as a term, but it’s about as close as he can get and so he shrugs in resignation.

“I am,” he sighs and watches as Demora climbs down from McCoy and runs toward Joanna, who looks equally delighted by Demora’s arrival.

McCoy doesn’t say much after that, but they do lean against the swings and watch the two girls play in the sandbox for a long time before McCoy clears his throat and sighs.

“Hikaru’s a good guy,” he says, as if it’s something Pavel wouldn’t already know, but doesn’t let Pavel answer him when he starts to tell him that he knows; that it’s something he sees so clearly every time he’s around him. He’s never thought Hikaru has been anything but good, not since the beginning, even if he doesn’t understand who he is. Or, rather, who he was. It only occurs to him when McCoy turns a dark stare on him that perhaps this is what he would have gone through if he had ever actually gone home with any of his boyfriends to meet their parents.

“He made a few stupid decisions, don’t get me wrong, had things go to hell for him, but he’s got himself together, whether he thinks so or not.” McCoy looks back to the girls and nods his head toward Demora, who is trying to get Joanna’s attention by dumping sand in her hair. “Demora’s all he’s got left after everybody left him behind and he’s taken care of her.”

Pavel isn’t sure what to make of the conversation, if McCoy is trying to chastise him for doing something wrong, prevent him from passing judgment on Hikaru, or remind him not to hurt him, but he shifts uncomfortably and nods. Before he can squeak out a surprised and polite affirmative, McCoy curses and shakes his head.

“But it’s not my place to tell you. If Hikaru comes around, I guess… Well, you’ll see, I’m sure. You’ve been around long enough,” he sighs and beckons for Pavel to follow him into the sandbox, set on stopping Joanna before her bucket of sandy water ends up over Demora’s head. Pavel swallows visible relief—Demora hates being dirty almost as much as she hates when Pavel tries to disguise vegetables in something she likes—and hurries after him, tucking the brief and admittedly one-sided conversation into the back of his head.

There’s more to this, he knows there is, and he can’t help the nagging urge to find out what.

--

Against all reason, Hikaru is nervous.

When Pavel handed him the invitation to his graduation, Hikaru had been sure that he was joking, but his eyes had been so earnest when he pressed the envelope into his hands on his way out the door. Hikaru considered not going, considered reasoning that Demora couldn’t handle it and giving his apologies, but puts all those things aside in the end and goes, holding Demora on his hip when he stands in line and finally finds his seat among a sea of families, friends, and other well-wishers. Hikaru doesn’t care about any of the rest. He cares about Pavel, that’s all.

His seat is next to Pavel’s father, and while it surprises him at first, it makes sense. Demora is, of course, the one to break the ice between the three of them when she reaches for the man’s hand and catches his attention.

“Sorry,” Hikaru mumbles to him, not quite able to meet his eye until the man laughs, a rumbling sound, and speaks with an accent thicker than Pavel’s. If there was any doubt in Hikaru’s mind before that this man, who looks precisely what Hikaru imagines Pavel will look like in twenty years, was Pavel’s father, it’s gone now.

“No, no. It is just fine,” he smiles and his eyes crinkle at the edges when he offers his hand for Demora to shake enthusiastically. Immediately, she turns her face into Hikaru’s shoulder and her giggle is lost in his t-shirt.

“You must be Hikaru, and this must be Dem… Demora.” Pavel’s father tears his eyes away from Demora and smiles at Hikaru. “Pavel talks about you often. He said you would come.” He looks momentarily surprised with himself and smiles in the same crooked way Pavel does. “Andrei Chekov, Pavel’s father,” he supplies, as if it weren’t obvious enough.

Hikaru nods numbly at him and rubs Demora’s back gently until she dares to peek over at Andrei again. “Glad to meet you,” he manages to get out before the principal steps onto the stage and taps the microphone for silence.

The room fall completely silent, with a few shushing noises all around, and it’s only then that the principal announces the start of the ceremony. Demora pulls her face from Hikaru’s shoulder and shouts in excitement when she spots Pavel—surprising Andrei and Hikaru both, as neither of them have quite been able to pick him out of the lines of nearly identical graduates.

To his own shame, Hikaru doesn’t actually pay much attention to the ceremony. He graduated high school once, what feels like a lifetime before, and it really isn’t so different now than it was for him. Mostly, he marvels over the possibilities facing Pavel in the future. He’s mentioned in the past that he’ll be attending the same university Hikaru is now, that he already intends to major in Physics, and that he has an academic scholarship guaranteeing his place there for as long as he keeps up the standard he’s already set for himself. He has a plan, and while Hikaru might have once been cynical—he too had a plan when he graduated high school—he isn’t now. Pavel seems so much more capable than he was, so much less vulnerable to the pitfalls that Hikaru once fell victim to.

Some part of him feels like he should look after him. He has an older sister and a younger sister, neither of whom he’s heard from since the fallout with his parents, but he remembers how to be a brother; how to care about someone and want the best for them at whatever personal cost. This doesn’t feel like that kind of protective affection.

Of course, there are similarities, things that make them seem so much alike, but Hikaru feels the difference plainly. He doesn’t care about Pavel like he would care for a younger brother, but he does care about him. There’s no way of telling where the difference lies, what makes Pavel so different from his sisters or, hell, from any of the other graduates he’s sitting with. It could be because he’s young and Hikaru knows him better than the others. It could be because he cares about Demora, or because Demora cares about him, if the squirming in Hikaru’s lap and endless mantra of his name (PavelPavelPavel!) is any indication.

The ceremony proceeds far faster than Hikaru expected, faster than he remembers it being for him. They’re listing off graduates names now, and he’s with Andrei when they call Pavel’s name, on his feet and shouting in excitement—along with, Hikaru doesn’t miss, a not at all modest group of students.

It’s over even faster after that, and even as they file out of the auditorium after the crowds, Hikaru feels distantly numb over everything. Pavel isn’t so different from him, from how he was, with his academic honors and cross-country friends and bright future ahead of him.

Hikaru just thinks, even when—especially when—Pavel hugs him tightly and knocks his cap askew, that maybe he can keep him from the same derailing fate. It isn’t because he knows him by some twist of fate, or even because Demora likes him, though that definitely doesn’t hurt. It’s because Hikaru likes him in all the same ways he liked Susan and his girlfriends and boyfriends before her.

The idea alone is more terrifying than anything other possibility.

Part II

[Star Trek] Vow

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:13:08 GMT

Title: Vow
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Sulu/Chekov/Uhura, Chekov/Uhura, established Sulu/Chekov
Genre(s): Smut.
Warnings: mirrorverse, threesome, slash, smut, viciousness, pegging, dubcon
Description: Security Chief Sulu is a manipulative bastard and Pavel Chekov his pawn. Nyota Uhura plans to make him pay for it.

Note: Ohai, I’m actually still alive and writing in free time. Not that you all need to know about my RL—just know that I’m alive and writing whenever I can, which is admittedly not nearly as much as I’d like. This is a fic for mirroriste, who’s been aching for some Sulu/Chekov/Uhura, and there was a kink-prompt meme in my personal journal and… well. Here we are. Heed the warnings on this one. It’s about 98% porn. And 4000 words. I’m kind of astounded at myself.

Also, I listened to a whole lot of Garbage while writing this. I didn’t realize how apparent this was until afterward. Therefore, title is from the song by the same name.

I came to shut you up
I came to drag you down
I came around to tear your little world apart

--

She finds him in the shower room hours after shift, standing under a steaming stream of water and scrubbing his scalp viciously with his long fingers. His knuckles are bloody from the fight he got into an hour before his run, the one he’s already been agonized for by the Security Chief, and those are the first thing she kisses when she catches his wrist in her hands, just when he’s flicking soap suds off.

He freezes immediately. Nyota really can’t blame him for that, really. Better men have fallen to their knees in front of her. Lesser men know better. Pavel Chekov, though, he fears a monster worse than Nyota Uhura and she knows it.

Of course she knows.

Nyota presses against his back so he knows that she’s as naked as he is, her slim fingers still loose around his wrist.

“I have a proposition for you,” she breathes against his ear. She remembers how it made his breath quiver when Sulu did it to him in public, how he had glared and how she had known then that he hated Sulu. There was something to be utilized there, something to twist into a weapon if Chekov could just get past his fear.

They aren’t so different, Nyota and Chekov, at least when it comes to their hatred for Sulu and his harassing arrogance. Chekov is weaker because he gave into it, lets Sulu do what he does to him where Nyota would have slit him throat to balls for the intent alone. For all his weakness, though… despite that, he is still brilliant and vicious. No fewer than twenty men are dead by Chekov’s hand since he joined Starfleet and sent to the Academy at fourteen. She knew him then and ignored him because he was unimportant until that first kill, two months into the year.

Pavel Chekov is notorious for killing his first man and losing his virginity in the same breath. No one has ever underestimated him again, not even Sulu, who must only keep such a tight leash on the boy because he knows. Chekov could destroy him with the right encouragement, the right training. Just as easily, he could destroy her.

He won’t.

With her free hand, Nyota reaches down and touches his half-hard cock with long, sure strokes of her hand, kissing where his neck reaches his shoulder, the base of his skull where the fragile bone-armored brainstem lies. With the right weapon, she could kill him now.

She won’t.

Chekov rips away from her and wheels around furiously. She lets him shove her against the wall, pinning her in place with a hand beside her head, as if she would run when she was the one who sought him out in the first place.

“What do you want?” he hisses and doesn’t touch her, not yet, but while he looks her over appraisingly, she allows her own eyes to wander down his chest, mottled with scars from the years in the Academy, the harder years with Sulu, and settle on his cock. It isn’t very surprising to see that he’s completely hard now and standing so close that the tip is centimeters from her thigh.

Neither move from their stalemate, but after a few seconds their eyes are drawn back to one another. Chekov’s chest is heaving with the adrenaline rush that is still pulsing through his veins. She reaches for his cock again and this time he grips her wrist with tight fingers.

“You did not answer my question,” he grits out and she can see the dilemma in his eyes. She outranks him, but he’s stronger. He is in the position of power, but she has something that he doesn’t know, something that he’s burning to know. Nyota smirks at their position and curls her other hand around his cock anyway. His eyes close and when he swears under his breath she laughs aloud at him.

“Revenge. And I want your help to get it.” Her voice is smooth and even as her strokes, even while secretly pleased to find that Chekov is a pliant lover, willing to hear her out for as long as she’s doing this.

“Who do you want to die?” he asks breathlessly and opens his eyes when she laughs again. Of course he would think that. It’s supposed to be a secret that he assassinates for Sulu where necessary, when Sulu’s involvement would be the wrong political move on his part, but Nyota knows because she’s been watching him.

“Die?” she echoes when the laughter stops and Chekov’s crushed-glass green eyes glitter quizzically. She’s got him hooked by his own curiosity, the desperate, selfish need to take knowledge and hoard it that has driven him for so long. “No, I don’t want anyone dead. I just want Lieutenant Sulu to—”

“Shut up,” he growls and Nyota is actually surprised when he presses against her completely and whispers against her ear like a lover, his cock pressed between her thighs. She almost whimpers when she realizes that she’s wet, not just from the shower, and kisses the lobe of his ear.

“I know you hate him, Chekov. I have a plan to make him pay, to give him the comeuppance he deserves for what he does to you, to me, to everyone.”

“He watches everywhere,” Chekov tells her, rather than responding, and it takes her a few seconds before she realizes that it’s why he told her to shut up, that she never had to explain to him what she wanted. “Even the showers.”

With a spike of fury comes another, sharper sting of inexplicable lust, knowing that Sulu could be watching them, seething the way she wants him to. She pulls back and grins at him.

“Even now?”

“Especially now,” he answers quietly and Nyota understands. Sulu has the need to possess things, even when he doesn’t necessarily care to maintain them. Chekov is one of those things, one of the only things he would kill to prevent someone from touching. He’s done it before, and only Riley was lucky enough to survive Sulu’s wrath. She’s always wondered if he did it to set an example, to leave someone to warn everyone else not to touch Chekov.

It’s not enough to stop her. She’s wet and his cock is already there, so close; close enough that all he’d have to do is shift his weight, keep her pushed against the wall, pinned in place by his cock. Nyota moves just slightly, enough to drag her cunt along the shaft of his cock and marvel at the way his mouth drops open just slightly.

“Do it,” she urges him and groans when he pulls his cock away, bends slightly to grab her legs from behind the knee, and shoves her back against the wall without fanfare, without even the pretense of being gentle.

Chekov is much slower about actually pushing into her, teasing the tip of his cock along her slit until she finally caves in and gives him a moan. This wasn’t a mistake, but she’s starting to think that for all her presumed understanding of Chekov and his surrender to Sulu, she forgot that he doesn’t surrender to anyone else; that he plays this game just as hard as anyone else on the Enterprise. He wanted a moan out of her, and she has given it to him, then gives it to him again when he pulls out and thrusts into her again, the hot water streaming over the angry red of his skin, irritated by the stinging rain all around them that just doesn’t seem as hot as how Nyota feels.

She throws her head back and shouts to the ceiling, clinging to his back with rivers of water running over the both of them as the pleasure builds. Half of it is psychological, the rush of fucking a man she could kill or be killed by, of knowing that Sulu’s watching, doubtlessly entranced and furious and flushed with arousal. She wants Sulu to see, to know that his power isn’t as absolute and that Nyota will deny him at every turn. She wants him to know that she won’t fuck him, but she will fuck the man that he’s tried to keep for himself.

She hopes it makes his blood boil and his cock hard. It will make the next part of this so much sweeter.

Between the deep thrusts, going slow enough that it feels sinfully, unspeakably good but not enough to make either of them come, they plan. Chekov’s breath is deep and heavy, but they work out the details in Russian, the security codes Chekov has and can get from Sulu’s office. When it’s done, Chekov pauses everything, balls deep inside her and staring into the warmth of her brown eyes with piercing clarity.

“I will kill you if you betray me, Lieutenant,” he whispers and she kisses him angrily, biting his lip sharply and relishing the throb of his cock inside her when he moans at it. She’s sure that Chekov would defy the Captain himself, that he fears Sulu more than all of them together. Nyota shivers and clenches around him, digging her nails into his back.

“Don’t give me a reason to betray you, Ensign.” It’s a fair warning, but it seals their truce and Chekov nods his affirmation once.

For a moment, Nyota wonders if that’s it, if he’s going to pull out and leave her wanting, but he sets his jaw and shoves back into her. She whimpers in relief and he gasps, setting into a harder, faster rhythm. She clings to him, waiting for his arms to tire out and drop her, but it never happens. Sulu has probably done worse to him, this pretty, dangerous boy with sharp eyes and a mind like a trap. He could have trapped her, could be manipulating her through her own manipulation, but for the moment she doesn’t give a damn about anything except the numbness of her skin for standing under the stream of water and the ache his cock leaves when he hits the right angle and doesn’t stop.

Her orgasm builds slowly, slow enough that Nyota pants and whines, bucking against him and leaving bloody streaks across his back that make him hiss when the steaming water washes the blood away from the open scratches. Chekov isn’t doing better by any stretch, but at least he doesn’t lose the rhythm, not even when Nyota howls when she comes, screaming and hoping that Sulu’s cameras have exceptionally good microphones, especially when Chekov nips at her neck and keeps fucking her through her it, sure and fuck it’s almost too much—it is too much. She feels a secondary burst inside her and she goes limp against him, holding tightly, even when she realizes that his thrusts have slowed to a stop and he’s still fully hard.

He pulls out of her and she slides down to the wall, her knees far too weak to support herself, but he’s pushing her head back and her hair out of her eyes when she realizes what he wants. It doesn’t feel like surrender when she parts her lips and swallows his cock anyway. His palms are flat against the wall and he moans, fucking her mouth to slow time against the bob of her head until he comes with a shout.

Nyota considers spitting out his come until she remembers that this is an act; that Chekov caught on faster than she thought and made sure to put on a good show. She swallows and Chekov hauls her back to her feet, kissing her hard to taste himself on her tongue.

“Tomorrow night,” he mutters to her in Russian and she nods, smiling triumphantly as she pulls away and leaves him under the water, sashaying away with a slow swing of her hips, picking up her uniform from the benches nearby.

Tomorrow night, Nyota thinks, won’t come fast enough for her or, judging by his expression when she suggested it, for Chekov.

--

Chekov impresses her. For all the abuse he suffers from Sulu, for all the times she’s heard Sulu describe him as arrogant, inefficient and useless, she’s started to believe it. If their encounter in the showers weren’t enough to convince her, the blaring alert on her PADD at precisely 2030 is enough. It’s all ready, and Nyota feels an electric tingle of anticipation on her skin. She wears her uniform to Sulu’s quarters and doesn’t even have the will to agonize Yeoman Rand for getting in her way before she arrives.

It’s somehow more satisfying when Sulu is the one to open the door, giving her a feral smile that almost makes her think Chekov has double-crossed her and she’s stepped into a trap. The plan is still on, however, when Chekov stares at her over Sulu’s shoulder. Her confidence restored, Nyota steps forward and presses Sulu against the wall, kissing him hard and leaving no time for the door to close. Chekov is the one who slams the button to close the door behind them and Nyota smirks into her kiss when Sulu hums approvingly. He still thinks this is in his favor, still believes whatever it is Chekov told him.

She is surprised to find that Hikaru Sulu is so seemingly naïve when he thinks with his dick. Chekov’s hand is on the inside of her thigh, past her boot and up her skirt, teasing the tips of his fingers over the outside of her underwear. Her mouth falls open and her eyes close because it’s distracting, what he’s doing, and she needs to focus. When Sulu’s hand joins Chekov is when she acts, seizing his wrist and pinning it behind his back quickly. Just as suddenly, Chekov acts, drawing his fingers away from her cunt and overpowering Sulu, who is suddenly swearing at the both of them.

Nyota takes a step back to let Chekov work, arms crossed over her breasts and a single, manicured eyebrow raised in amusement. Sulu is hard and struggling violently against Chekov, who is expressionless as he secures the handcuffs around Sulu’s wrists. She watches as Chekov pushes him onto the bed and undresses him as quickly and effectively as he can. She’s pleased that he managed to get his shirt off before she even arrived; that Sulu is bare and helpless in front of her, just the way he’s always wanted her to be. She strides toward the bed, toward Chekov standing beside Sulu’s feet with a fierce expression, and smirks down at Sulu.

“I should blindfold you,” she tells him with a simpering smile, drawing her sash from her waist and caressing it between her fingers. “But I would rather that you watch.”

“You filthy whore,” Sulu swears at her, but the continued sounds of his abuse are lost in her laugh, trailing off completely when she steps out of her boots, throws her uniform top to the side and pushes her skirt down her legs. She’s left standing in her underwear and soon Chekov is the only one left wearing anything at all. Sulu looks over her body eagerly, but he isn’t in control and Nyota doesn’t fear that he will be.

Chekov is behind her again and when she turns to look at her co-conspirator, he kisses her hard enough to leave her breathless and her thighs wet in anticipation. Just as suddenly, he pulls away and retains a length of rope. They move away from one another at the same time, he to Sulu’s feet and she toward his torso.

Sulu’s eyes widen when he looks away from spitting curses at Chekov to see her approaching and Nyota doesn’t give him the chance to even begin speaking before straddles his chest and fingers her sash again, robbing him of speech with a triumphant smirk.

“Do it, Chekov,” she orders firmly and doesn’t have to see him do it to know that he’s got a finger in Sulu now, stretching him roughly, if the sharp gasp from Sulu is any indication. Nyota reaches down and strokes Sulu’s cheek with a long fingernail and he turns his attention back to her. “You, Lieutenant, have another job,” she purrs and grips the headboard, shifting her hips forward at just the right angle. She’s done this much before, knows exactly how she likes it, and she’s sure Sulu knows exactly what he’s doing.

“The hell I will,” Sulu growls and struggles in futility against the combination of cuffs and Chekov’s expert knots.

Nyota only laughs at him and pushes her fingers into his hair, twisting and pulling him up until his lips, still moving in a litany of every swearword he must know, meet her cunt. “Do it. I know you watched in the shower. It was just last night, I can still feel him.” Sulu’s growl pulls another laugh from her chest, but he stops cursing and lays an open-mouthed kiss on her cunt. It feels good, even more so when he groans intermittently, reminding her that Chekov is still stretching him. This isn’t all they have planned, all that Sulu will have to endure, but even this alone feels good; vicious and angry, but good.

She lets him continue until Chekov pulls his fingers away, cleans them off and touches her shoulder. He whispers into her ear, pushing something into her hands. Nyota doesn’t bother looking down at it, but she’s again impressed at his efficiency. She pulls away and stares Sulu in the eye when she buckles the harness around her hips.

“Tell me, Pavel,” she murmurs and smirks when Sulu starts swearing again, her fingers curling around the phallus. “Does he ever suck your cock?”

She only catches a hint of his displeasure at the use of his first name in the firm no he murmurs back to her, two paces from the bed, watching with an amused smirk. Nyota brushes it off and pushes the tip of the dildo past his lips, silencing the violent threats he spits at them.

“That’s so much better, don’t you think, Pavel?” He mutters something in Russian that she can’t quite make out, despite her exceptional hearing. This isn’t the way she likes to do things under normal circumstances, but when they planned this and Chekov mentioned that he’d never fucked Sulu, it was too good an idea to pass on. The perfect revenge for the both of them and Security Chief Hikaru Sulu left desperate for release and satiation.

When he can’t bite her, Sulu is actually almost resigned to the task, despite its futility. He almost seems to enjoy it in a private way she knows he would never admit to. He doesn’t need to admit it. She sees it better than he could ever articulate it. Nyota reaches for Pavel and pulls him into a hard kiss when he steps into her arms.

“Ready?” she murmurs against his lips, as close to affection as she’ll allow herself like this. She doesn’t feel affection for anyone, lest it be used against her like every other woman on the ship. Nyota Uhura isn’t like them because she’s managed to choke that out of herself. Chekov nods and she strokes his cock three times before pulling away from Sulu and reveling in his gasp for breath.

“Fuck you both,” Sulu growls and Nyota rolls her eyes, shoving her sash into his mouth instead.

“You’re so much more pleasant with a cock in your mouth, Sulu,” she hisses and braces herself on Chekov’s arm as she stands up again, proud and strong, even with the unusual weight around her hips.

Chekov is oddly silent through the whole thing, something Nyota writes off as his nerves for doing this to Sulu, or just quiet acceptance of her dominance of the situation. Her head is straight as she kneels between Sulu’s spread legs, dragging her fingernails over his thighs and watching them tremble in desire and fury only barely restrained.

She doesn’t hesitate after that, tightening her fingers on his knees and pushing into him, her only pleasure the vindication from the expression on his face.

“You want this,” she laughs when his breaths come short. She almost forgets about Chekov until he rests a hand on the small of her back and pushes her down against Sulu’s chest, finding her cunt with his fingers, teasing like he did when she first entered the room. This time she can afford to be distracted by the maddening need for more, and Nyota pushes back onto his fingers when she pulls out of Sulu for the first time.

Chekov’s laugh is rough and low when he pulls his fingers away and pushes into her, thrusting her into Sulu. She throws out a hand and braces herself against the mattress, panting out a heavy laugh. Sulu’s expression is perfect, everything she’d dared to hope it would be in this. She hopes he looked like this when Chekov fucked her before, in the shower. It’s so close to what Sulu wanted, but instead it’s everything he couldn’t possibly want and she laughs brightly at the bubble of triumph bursting in her chest.

She fucks him as hard as Chekov fucks her and she encourages Chekov to fuck her harder and harder, clawing at Sulu’s shoulders when she comes hard, high on victory over him.

Sulu’s angry protests are muffled into her sash, and she pushes herself up from the way she’s bonelessly laid overtop him, the dildo still shoved deep into him, hard and unyielding. Chekov’s breathing is harder and when she gathers her breath, she rocks back against him, letting him fuck the strap-on into Sulu through her.

“Come on him,” she orders hoarsely. This last thing will make it perfect, all of it; the absolutely perfect domination over Sulu that she’s accomplished. Sulu doesn’t have the chance to protest or even shoot either of them a glare before she hears Chekov’s response, whispered against the shell of her ear.

“No,” he tells her, more firmly than before, and she realizes how much she’s underestimated him. More than Sulu ever could have, she fell harder into the same trap of misunderstanding Chekov’s strength of will. She starts to turn, but he fucks her harder, thrusting in one last time and coming hard enough that she actually feels it with the echoing response of her body, coming again and clenching around him.

Nyota tears away from Sulu, shoving Chekov away and electric with shocked disgust. “You weren’t—” Her legs tremble and he catches her, smirking down at her. She isn’t nearly as angry as she lets on. They never agreed on anything. The only thing Chekov did was refuse what she wanted for what he wanted. She had forgotten that he was real, more than just a body to help her fulfill her revenge.

She straightens her back and smiles down at Sulu, drawing her sash from his mouth and pulling her clothes on efficiently. He’s still hard enough that she imagines and hopes that it hurts. When she turns around to bid Chekov, her co-conspirator, a good night, her mouth drops open in surprise.

“What are you doing?” she hisses, watching Chekov loose the ropes on Sulu’s legs, rubbing his circulation back into them.

He looks up at her and laughs the same rough laugh as before. “Do not look so surprised, Lieutenant.”

“But you—” she spits furiously, straightening her sash and sliding a knife back into her boot. “You’re no better than his dog.”

“My loyalties have never been with anyone else,” he laughs and uncuffs Sulu, who rubs his own wrists, surprisingly quiet as he watches the two of them with an amused expression Nyota would love to slap off his face.

“It figures,” she growls and turns on her heel to Sulu’s amused laugh, slapping her hand over the release for the door. “You two deserve each other.”

Her only consolation is that Sulu’s laughter breaks when the implication of her words sets in. Chekov is silent.

Her head stays high.

[Star Trek] into the haze of time

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:07:18 GMT

Title: into the haze of time
Rating: PG
Characters: Andrei Chekov/Marta Chekova
Genre(s): Romance, angst
Warnings: Implied character death, angst
Description: He promised her a lifetime, happily ever after. It never occurred to him that a lifetime might have been far shorter than he imagined.

Note: Another attempt with Chekov’s parents, from eudaimon’s headcanon for them. She asked for their first and last dates, and though the last date aspect might have been lost in an attempt to tie it all together and it’s really rather, um… It’s sad. We’ll leave it at that. A lot of this is me doing meta from what she’s already created, and there are far fewer allusions to what she’s written here.

Sooner or later, she’ll ask me to stop.

Lyrics below and title taken from David Gray's The Other Side. :)

--

we may race and we may run
we'll not undo what has been done
or change the moment when it's gone
meet me on the other side

--

They meet on a bridge in autumn, both of them slick with sweat from exertion that lies cool on their foreheads, staring at one another. Andrei had a table, a job he had to do for his apprenticeship (Learn a practical trade, his father had told him, and so he had), and Marta had her running, He’d seen her before, running along the banks of the Neva like she never touched the ground. He’d seen her, but he’d never said anything until she yelled at him and he moved the table and watched her run again.

Andrei Chekov knew then, without any doubt, that he’d spend the rest of his life like this, watching her run and waiting for him to stop and notice him. He considered another table, setting it up in the middle of her bridge (because even though it had a name, an old name, older than any of them and any of their parents, it would always be hers), if he thought she might pay him any attention.

Fortunately, he never had to resort to blocking bridges and risking arrest for causing civil upheaval for the sake of getting a date. He runs into her again at the beginning of winter, when the snow is falling, and she doesn’t even yell at him then. When it’s over, he doesn’t even remember what he said to her, how he managed to convince Marta Nikolovna to go out on one date with him. Just the one, because he’s sure he’ll never get more than that.

He’s never like this, never so awkward and confused when it comes to dating girls. It’s been years since he lost his virginity, so it isn’t like this is the first date.

It feels like it, though.

They walk through the streets in awkward silence, afraid to touch, afraid to hold hands, and Andrei is frankly afraid to do anything about it. All the plans they had made for a quiet evening are spoiled or over too quickly. The snow is falling hard now, a week to Christmas, and Andrei can’t think of a single thing to say to her.

From their awkward silence comes the idea to skate, passing by the frozen water and warm shouts and laughs of other skaters, twisting and playing on the ice. It’s almost a relief when Andrei kneels in front of her and ties her skates tightly for her, returning her shy smile with one of his own and patting the side of her foot before standing up and helping her onto the ice.

There’s nothing they have to say, still floundering in awkward silences and hesitance on both their parts. Andrei is distracted by her grace, hardly tempered by the skates that keep her firmly tied to the ground, so different than her graceful run. Later, he thinks that if he’d just paid a little more attention to himself, rather than the way this date has failed him, it could have been prevented.

Somewhere between the instant his skate finds the chip in the ice and when he starts falling, Andrei thinks that he must have cursed himself in thinking that he has been on the worst first date in history. Of course, of course it can only get worse, but even the very worst must only be the mortifying knowledge that he’s just made a fool of himself. It isn’t.

Of course.

The resounding crack that precedes the bloom of pain in his knee is his warning before he shouts in pain and Marta wheels around, stumbling on her own skates.

He sees stars, thousands of them exploding behind his eyes, which must have closed at some point after the first cry of pain, and then again when he tries to look at Marta; to somehow make sense of her frantic babble. Her face is pale and worried, but when he starts swearing she starts laughing and doesn’t stop. She laughs at him until the paramedics finally arrive, cradling his head in her lap while he keeps swearing at his luck, at a terrible date; that it took a shattered kneecap to break the ice between them.

It can only get better from there, they both say over the years when they look back and laugh, even though it wasn’t very funny when it actually happened. Their lives pass by, past their wedding and their only son and the five daughters that came after him. Pavel falls on the ice for the first time when he’s just started walking, just when he is a year old, and busts his lip wide open. Marta doesn’t laugh then, just soothes him gently while Andrei clears the front walk of blood-stained ice, reliving memories of his boyhood and also the limp that plagues him worse as the winter gets colder.

The end, the bitter end of their dreams, starts slow, so slow that neither of them notice at first, until her ankle twists and she falls on the ice for the first time in October, the world spinning faster on its axis and she at the very center. Andrei worries, but they have six babies and all so young that it is brushed away as exhaustion until it happens again; until Marta starts to forget their memories. Then she forgets the more important things, heaving into bushes during her daily runs that have become weekly, bimonthly, until her legs rebel against her free-spirited nature.

When the doctor explains, all Marta feels is weight in her head, as if her head has been emptied of all her loves and filled with stones too heavy for her to carry. Andrei promises her she won’t do it alone, that he’ll carry her all the way if she asks him to, but Marta forgets every day. Every day, he promises her again, cuts away a little more of his aching, sick heart to carry a little more of her burden.

Marta forgets their meeting, the table and Andrei’s fall.
Andrei has a hard time reliving the memories by himself.

Treatments have improved considerably in the last two and a half centuries, but it can never be enough to help, to prevent the inevitable. Her veins sink quickly into her delicate arms and when he finally breaks, just can’t stand to see her holding in the tears, he pleads with the doctors to stop, to somehow heal her and make her stop hurting. He isn’t sure how much he could possibly take of this, how he could possibly keep living with the memories of their happier times taunting him from the back of his mind at all times. The children stay with Andrei’s mother while he sleeps in hospital chairs, adding a sore back to his faulty knee, but he never leaves Marta and he never brings the children around to see their mother like this.

At the end, in one of her rare remaining moments of clarity, Marta chooses. She doesn’t want to die with her hair thinned and unable to leave her bed for being so terribly sick. She chooses to be comfortable, refuses the doctors and their new, untried treatments, and leaves the hospital.

Halfway home, Marta stops him by the river, by a bridge Andrei has started to forget for all the pain it brings with it. He’s sure the medicine in her blood has left her delirious, but she looks up at him and breaks all that’s left of his heart.

“I know this,” she murmurs and pushes out of the chair, stumbling on her feet until he catches her hand and helps steady her when her limbs tumble down. She stands on the side of the bridge and looks down at the frozen river before turning toward him. “Andrei,” she murmurs and falls against his chest.

Andrei remembers a time when he thought he would spend his life running after Marta, when he was so certain she would fall into his arms like this every day after her run. He never imagined her falling like this, weakened by something other than the need to be close to him.

Now, he is the only one weakened by that.

“Marta Nikolovna,” he whispers into her ear and lifts her against his chest, sighing against her throat when she clings to him like a frightened child; like any of their children who cannot understand their adult fears. “I love you.” He reminds her like this sometimes, touching her cheeks and kissing her lips when she remembers well enough, when she doesn’t fear so much what will come and how they will break away from one another.

She searches his eyes and for a moment he sees the sparks, the old flickers of the girl who shouted at him on this bridge, who cradled him in her lap and laughed at his curse words. He recalls Pavel and her pregnant belly for all of their six children, kissing her every day before classes and cradling her, protecting her.

Not even he, for all his wishes to care for her, could protect her from this.

“Tell me,” she pleads softly, kissing his eyes, just where the involuntary tears bloom in the crinkled edges. Andrei Chekov is hardly twenty-five and there are wrinkles from years of laughter and worn lines from only a few months of worried tears and the creases on his face catch his tears and her kisses. Marta rarely remembers like this, rarely remembers that she is desperately in love with him and has always been, but Andrei lives for these moments and has no idea how he’ll get by on memories alone when he no longer has even this.

“Tell you what?” he asks and thinks of a hundred thousand things he could tell her, stories of their lives that should have been different. He promised her on this bridge a lifetime together and they have had precisely that, but if only they had known that their lifetime would be only a fraction of what he had intended, naïve and seventeen and as desperately in love with her then as he is now.

“Our story, please. One last time,” she sighs against his lips. “I have forgotten.”

He can’t refuse her anything, not now, and so he tells her the story, whispers of the bridge in autumn, of a fall on the ice that had nothing to do with fallen stars in her head or Pavel’s broken lips, and promises her everything he has offered her all their time together.

“Happily ever after,” he swears against her ear and she laughs quietly, her voice cracked and broken with exhaustion. She will need to get into their house soon, where she will forget and die sooner than Andrei can bear to imagine. He will make her ever after as happy as he possibly can with their babies and all the love he can pour out of himself, but then… then he isn’t sure what comes next.

Instead of anything more, he cradles her close, so like that night on the ice when it was reversed, but she is the one still laughing and at least the only oaths from his mouth are the kind he can’t keep any more now than he ever could.

“Do you remember?” she asks, her breaths shallow and too cold against his neck, but she never finishes which memory she means, whether it is real or promised or imagined completely. Andrei supposes she doesn’t need to finish, not when she slides back into the haze of medicine and loses herself again, clinging to him tighter than to the intangible memories slipping away from her faster than anything.

“Of course,” he murmurs, carrying her home through the swirling, heavy snow. A week to Christmas, if the spark in Marta’s eyes can last so long. Happily ever after, for however long it does. Another ten lifetimes before he may be allowed to follow her, a solitary figure of ice and steel living with memories and six children who will grow and love long before he is allowed to follow Marta.

It is not so different than he imagined when he met her and knew what the rest of his life would be like with or without her.

The end.

He supposes there must be worse ways to spend his life.

[All Fandoms]

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:29:22 GMT

Meme snagged from kirax2. While she left it open, I'm only going to take five of these for now. If/when I have time, I'll do this again.

Also, I'm not opening this to the same rules as the three line fics (...which I might work on tonight, so keep lookout for those), so I'll just kindly request that you all use your discretion regarding what I can and can't handle.

1. Pick something YOU'VE written. Long or short is fine.
2. Post a link to the story in this thread.
3. I will write a follow-up of some kind to your story.
4. Feel free to make suggestions: missing scene, missing sex scene, ten years after, what happened right after x, etc. Be as specific or as vague as you like.

[His Dark Materials] & the moment's gone

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:59:52 GMT

Title: & the moment’s gone
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Will Parry/Lyra Silvertongue
Genre(s): Romance, introspection
Warnings: Mentions of sex, sort of
Description: Falling from grace means a lot more than losing the ability to read an old compass. Lyra Silvertongue’s greatest loves are all beyond her reach.

Note: I haven’t touched this fandom in probably two years, but I couldn’t help but dive in with this. I started writing it on the train last night and it just wouldn’t stop until it was done. It’s a bit of a meta-ish look at Lyra and her life. I’m not sure if I’ll do a companion piece or not, but I’m actually rather happy with it. If some of my canon information is off, please forgive me. It has truly been years since I’ve read the books.

--

The winters in Oxford are mild when she thinks of the biting cold of the North, of Svalbard and the kingdom of the bears; of all the places she has been before now. It’s the farthest it will ever be from Midsummer and the fulfillment of a child’s promise, a naïve one made in desperation and fear, but one for a lifetime. She remembers the first Midsummer in the Botanical Gardens and a thousand things she was bursting to say to Will, as if angels and Dust would take pity on her and make her thoughts clear to him. They couldn’t, of course, no more than she could reach across the abyss and find Will’s thoughts.

In the third year, at sixteen, Lyra laughed in the Garden and Pan curled against her neck, even when she batted him away because it was hot out and she’s never been able to stand the heat after she came back from the North with John Faa.

“They made me a lady, Will,” she had said wistfully, ignoring the looks she always earns herself, not for the first time. They will always talk of her, the witchchild crazy already from adventures she was too young to survive. She did survive, though, against the odds.

Maybe that’s what makes her crazy as far as they’re concerned. Lyra isn’t convinced they’re completely wrong, especially on Midsummer’s Eve when she always wonders why she goes, why she’s doing this to herself. Midsummer’s Eve, she’s always convinced that Will has given up on it for a long time now, if he ever upheld the promise at all.

And why would he have done so? Will was the sensible one, always, and she the flighty dreamer, spinning tales and dreams. Her whole life is stories, in reading them and telling them. She was a child when she could read the alethiometer and speak the truth with graceful lack of hesitation. The difference between now and then is so clear, even when she tells herself every day that she’s learning to do this the right way, a way that will never leave her. Lyra misses those days, just the same, when she didn’t second-guess her readings, her choices, her whole life.

She would have never doubted Will, not then.

At nineteen, she lost her virginity to another strong-jawed young man, another student at the university with her. When it was done, she rolled over and pulled her underwear back on, then her skirt, not even turning to face him when he asked what she was doing. She fastened her bra and told him she had to leave, already regretting the choice; already thinking of Will when she swore to herself that she wouldn’t, not then.

You’ve got a heart like the bear’s kingdom, he had laughed at the time, as if he hardly believed she was leaving him there like that. She had turned around then and frowned tightly, wondering if her expression was anything like the ones she remembers Will making, and told him that no, she didn’t, she just left her heart there.

It’s not a complete lie, but it’s the first one she’s told in years. It comes slow and hard, an old, rusted habit that she doesn’t know how to pick up again. Everything feels like that these days, something she’s forgotten and has to relearn the hard way.

Lyra has forgotten how to love anyone who isn’t out of her reach. She’s not so sure it’s something you can just relearn when grace flees. It takes more than experience; it takes faith.

Her faith is in Texan aeronauts and bear-kings and a dark-eyed boy with two missing fingers. These are things of an old world, things out of place with the world she lives in now, with parties and ladies and research for her dissertation.

Sometimes the wind is cold enough to make her feel it, to make her remember fur and oilskin and her witchblood, but it passes quickly and she remembers that it’s just a chill; just someone treading on her grave. There’s too much going on in the world, too many things to be mended for her to do more than send letters and imagine she can see the northern lights flashing across the sky, as if she might see Cittàgazze in the middle of them. She could, of course, if she went North and looked right, but she’s not sure she’d ever want to. Too much temptation lies there. Lyra doesn’t trust herself not to give in and throw it all away for ten, twenty years and die like Stanislaus Grumman, far from home but not far from love. She’d have that much, at least.

You’re too strong for that, she had received in a letter from Iorek (really, Serafina pens the letters for Iorek so Lyra has something tangible to cling to), months after she first had the thought and wrote them in terror, afraid to leave; afraid to stay.

In the end, she couldn’t do it to Pan, couldn’t live knowing she was making them happy and killing them at the same time. She lives this life, walks this way because it’s the only way she’ll ever keep going.

The wind turns. Lyra Silvertongue turns with it, facing the bitter chill with her scarf and coat and hair whipping around her.

It will be ten years this coming Midsummer since she came home again. She doesn’t have to go to the Garden now, she has six months before then, but she goes anyway. The garden is closed and she ignores the signs, hikes up her skirts, and jumps the wall anyway. There’s no one here to care that it’s not ladylike enough, and even if someone saw, she doesn’t know that she’d care. Everyone knows that Lyra Silvertongue took a little of the wilds of the North into herself, mixed it with the crazed street child she had been and became a witch.

The sky is a dusky blue, faded with weariness at the short, heavy days of winter, but at least the sky is clear, wide and enormous enough to swallow her whole if she just knew the magic words. She wonders if she had known them before, if she might have known them if she had never lost that grace and become neither witch nor lady but somehow both.

Sitting on the bench in the garden, Lyra closes her eyes.

For a moment, it’s cold enough for her to remember how to love.

[All Fandoms]

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:34:27 GMT

What the hell. Let's do this again, since I'm having a time focusing on anything.

Give me a pairing and a prompt/kink/whatever, and I'll write you a fic that's no longer than three lines long.

Remember that all fics may be under the three lines... or over, depending on what happens. ._.

Hit me up, guys. Same rules as last time.

[Star Trek] tell me about the fire

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:40:33 GMT

Title: tell me about the fire
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Andrei Chekov/Marta Chekova, passing mention of Sulu/Chekov
Genre(s): Romance, shameless fluff
Warnings: Light smut, fluffy romance
Description: They learn to tell stories together in the dark; promises and dreams. Some come true.

Note: This is… well, to be honest, it’s kind of fanfiction of… fanfiction. This canon view of Andrei and Marta is borrowed from eudaimon, whom I am blaming all 2500 words of this on. I’m also doing this with her permission, but this is a special disclaimer that they really are the children of her brain. This is heavily littered with allusions to most, if not all of her Sulu/Chekov fiction, where these two feature in their own way and also where I fell in love with them. Title is borrowed from Sara, by Fleetwood Mac, and… enjoy, but please, please—if you haven’t read eudaimon’s anything do so immediately and before this. This is a pale comparison to the real thing.

--

“Let me tell you the story of us,” he says to her one night, standing on the bridge she runs on every day. She usually catches only a glimpse of old, worn stones and the hoarfrost clinging to the banks before she drops her head again and disappears into her world again, running to the rhythm of her beating heart. This is special, like the world is holding its breath for them. Her lungs seize like she’s running when he leans down and brushes his lips against her ear with more intimacy than if it had been her lips, and she bursts into a fit of giggles, bursting with the thrill of being alive, the endorphin rush not so different from runners’ high.

Andrei Dimitrievich Chekov isn’t a runner; he’s a scientist, rooted in the notions of science and hard facts, of proven hypotheses and variables measured in mathematical algorithms. He isn’t a dreamer, can’t lose himself to the rush of running somewhere and nowhere at all. His passions endure so much more than her fleeting dreams, the ones that come and go like specters in the night; like Marta Nikolovna on the banks of the Neva. He’s here anyway, against logic and reason, holding her hand and smiling at her as if it isn’t January in Piter and he’s forgotten the scarf his mama made him at home in his rush to see her.

“Humor me,” he pleads with the persuasive rumble of his voice, and she laughs at the idea that love has made his voice rough and his sensible nature scrambled with fantastical visions of an uncertain future.

“Tell me our story, then,” she agrees and expects that to be the end of it, but Andrei loops his arms around her middle and sets his chin on her shoulder, as if he’s telling her a secret, something neither of them should know. She shivers at his first words, I am going to marry you, whispered against her neck more like a promise than a story he’s fabricating for the sake of romance and the mood set by the still, winter night around them.

Her giggles trail away to silence and so does his shivering until she turns in his arms and kisses him. Then he starts shaking again, more a tremble than a shiver, and settles his broad hands, shaped for building things, understanding their mechanics, on her hips.

“You have not let me finish,” he laughs against her mouth, ignoring the undignified way they must look, two hormonal teenagers on the bridge, pretending they know how dangerous the world is. Andrei isn’t a fool, he knows that things are difficult in the world, but he loves Marta more than he fears the things that could happen to them. With her, he feels as if both he and this will endure forever and she by his side, in love and untouchable.

“I will marry you and build you a house of stone, something that will last forever or…” He breathes a short laugh, closes his eyes with his mouth turned up with a smile. Marta falls in love with him again and again, like an infinite loop. “Or at least until the end of the Earth. I will carry you through the door and love you in our house, with all of our children and all their children, and then their children. It will be you and I, until we are old and wrinkled and clinging together in the night, waiting.”

“Waiting?” she echoes, coaxing him to open his dark eyes when her fingers, slim and long like everything about her, slide into his tight curls.

“Until Death do us part,” he quotes the old marriage vows and something tightens in her chest, as if it’s the real thing and he’s just pledged forever to her, not only to death, but beyond; as if they’ll always be together, or waiting to be together again.

“Andrei…”

He quiets her with another kiss, shows her what he means with the nudging push of his lips, urging her apart so he might show her their first child, the seventh, and all the years between. His kiss is earnest, so much like the rest of him, as if it’s a promise, a premonition, something that has always been foretold, not only as a teenager’s wish.

Marta believes him because he has never told her wrong, never shown her the wrong path. He has always just waited for her on the bridge, holding his battered, electric lantern, steadfast and smiling; eternally and always in love with her. She believes him, and so she stands on her toes to speak into his ear, blood rushing madly in her veins when she presses the kiss there, just behind the lobe, and he shivers again.

“Yes,” she says, because Andrei Chekov does not tell stories; he asks questions, and she knows what this one is, knows the answer without thinking twice: Yes, I will, yes.

--

They marry while the Neva is swollen with the spring thaw, when there is only another month or two before Marta will also swell. Andrei keeps his promise to carry her through the threshold, even when she protests and clings to his neck, torn between laughing and terror that he will drop her and hurt a nameless, faceless baby she is already so fiercely protective of. The year progresses slowly, Andrei studying during late nights and Marta lying out on the couch, watching him work with one hand spread defensively over her growing, vulnerable belly and the other cradling a worn, old rhinoceros.

He rubs her feet and laughs when she complains that she can’t run anymore, that it’s been two months since she’s even been able to wear her running shoes over her swollen feet. It doesn’t matter, Andrei whispers to her, setting his pen aside from where he’s worked his equations so hard that the soft wood of the table he built them is eternally etched with his labor; the mechanics of the world they live in. He pushes his chair back and takes the rhinoceros from her, giving it a fond smile and a soft pat on the head when he sets it aside and gathers her into his arms.

“You have to finish,” she protests for a moment, but he laughs again and leans against the arm of the couch, pulling her against him and pressing his hands against her belly. She gasps when the baby kicks, but it turns to a laugh at Andrei’s surprised expression. She had wanted a girl for him, imagined a tall, beautiful daughter with her father’s curls and her long legs, but the scans told them they would have a son. Pavel, they decided, son of Andrei, and Marta didn’t have the heart to be disappointed rather than excited.

“I can finish in the morning,” he sighs and closes his eyes, circling thumbs over her belly the way he does when he digs them into her aching heels. She sighs the same way, shaky and a little breathless, and circles her arm around his neck, twisting and pulling him into a kiss that he returns slowly. It’s early November, the leaves have nearly finished falling and the morning air is bitter when he leaves for classes, walking along the Neva with Marta’s kiss still warm on his lips. Every morning, it’s more than enough to keep him warm all the way to the university, the soft glow in his chest like his old lantern at the end of their bridge.

Today, though, he doesn’t have class and her warm kisses, but he does have her and the early sunset fading into darkness and stars outside their window.

She breaks the kiss and presses her cheek against his heart, which thumps slow and steady and sure against her. Her heart has always been like a hummingbird’s, her mother would say, laughing at Marta Nikolovna and her flighty dreams to run and run. For the first time in all her life she can’t run and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She says so and Andrei smiles wistfully.

“When he comes, you run,” he says and his chest rumbles, sending a rush of warm pleasure straight to her toes. “He will be patient like his papa and we will wait for you together.”

“What if he ends up like his mama?” She only asks to be contrary rather than ornery. She hasn’t suffered much in the way of bad temper like the women in her birthing classes, the ones who complain of their swollen ankles and sore backs, but that, she thinks, is more because she has Andrei.

“Then he will have to find someone to run to,” Andrei reasons softly and his fingers trace lower and lower, past her belly and under the band of her skirt. Marta gasps and her hips jerk reflexively, which surprises her more than the gentle touch of his roughened hands because until now she’s thought that she’s forgotten how this worked, how he makes her laugh before she inevitably sighs.

After that, the first touch under her panties doesn’t surprise her, but she does moan with a desire they’ve restrained until now. She feels the hard press of his cock on her back, but he doesn’t move to do anything about it, not yet. His fingers press into her cleft and she feels a pang of irrational fear that this will hurt the baby, Pavel, but it passes quickly, washed away with the next burning thrill in her veins.

Andrei knows her better than she ever knew herself. In barely two years, he has learned her more completely than she had the chance to in the sixteen years before she met him. Her orgasm builds slowly, but bursts like the distant stars in the sky, which she sees faintly in the afterimage on her eyelids. He pulls his hand away slowly and she presses it against her lips, kissing broad, calloused palms that promise the same thing he did when he was seventeen. When she releases his hand, it’s only to press her own, slim hand against the uncomfortable bulge in his trousers.

“I am not sure how,” she begins hesitantly, but he kisses her when she bites her lip, takes it between his teeth and sucks gently until she moans again.

Instead of answering, he picks her up, as if it’s no different than when he first carried her into their house. She cries out and clings to his neck, laughing and terrified that he might drop her. He doesn’t, of course he doesn’t, not until he lays her onto their bed and strips her slowly, reverently, until he finally rolls her panties down her thighs and kisses her. She sighs and loosens his belt, but he pushes her hands away and undresses much faster, with less care than he spared for her. He doesn’t cover her with himself the way she expects him to, the way she wants him to, but he does kiss her, patiently and lingering. Then he pulls away and pushes into her, throwing out a hand to catch his balance on the edge of the bed.

Marta fists her hands around the covers, holding her cries back into labored breathing, as if she’s coming out of the morning fog with her shirt sleeves over her hands, running hard to his waiting arms. His steady heartbeat speeds up to match hers, pacing and outpacing one another until they stabilize, matching the movement of their hips as naturally as it has always come for them. She comes again before he does; her legs loose around his hips and spread open over the bed, vulnerable and exposed and feeling as safe as she possibly ever could. Andrei will never let anything happen to her, she knows it as plainly as she knows that she would do anything to guarantee the same for him.

He forces his eyes open, meets the wide green of hers and his sobbing moan comes out like a slow cry, heralding his own orgasm, but he keeps himself standing by pressing his knees against the mattress until he catches his breath. When he falls beside her on the bed and pulls her back against his chest, he whispers against her cheek, a soft ya tebya lyublyu that she echoes back to him, the stars shining far and cold through their window. Her hands cover her belly and his hands cover hers and they whisper through the night, asking questions and telling stories they learned together, like the fairytales born in their homeland. Marta believes every word of them because she may be a dreamer but Andrei is not. There is heartache and pain in the world, but they are immune to it, now and forever, as long as they’re together.

--

Pavel is born in the middle of a winter night, with the starshine gleaming on the fresh snow promising his future to him; a story that Marta hears in his first cry. She knows when he opens his eyes, hears a new part of the story with every passing second until she knows it as well as her own, the story of she and Andrei. Now it’s the story of Pavel, of stars and algorithms and running, chasing the answers of the universe and someone waiting to catch him at the end of a bridge.

His eyes are still blue like every other baby is born, but they’re vividly alive with questions, like his father, set ablaze by the eager pursuit that he inherited from her. She presses him against her chest and gives him everything of herself that she can. He’s so much like Andrei, so much like her, but his story will be different from theirs. He will go farther than she can run, farther than she could ever run in all of her long, promised life, but Marta only hopes that he finds someone with a patient heart and their own, old, battered lantern. She blesses him with the power of a mother’s wish and sends a prayer to the universe that he will find someone to steer him, to love him and make Pavel’s story their story.

Andrei goes to classes the same as usual, with a kiss to Pavel’s forehead and Marta’s warm on his lips, and Marta stays in the doorway, watching him walk through the snow. The scarf she made him is still on the table in the hall, but he doesn’t seem to notice. She looks down to Pavel and his wide, intelligent eyes and smiles. She could tell him stories, stories of his parents and promises of their life, the future they will have for years to come. She could, but instead she turns toward the house and cradles Pavel closer. He gurgles with a laugh that will one day match hers and so Marta laughs with him.

Happy endings were invented somewhere other than Russia, she knows, but Pavel… Pavel will travel across the universe to find his, wherever they were invented.

“Let me tell you your story,” she says to him, and steps back into the house, carrying him over the threshold.

[Star Trek] on this side of twilight

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:21:55 GMT

Title: on this side of twilight
Rating: R
Pairings: Leonard McCoy/James Kirk, Hikaru Sulu/Pavel Chekov, James Kirk/Hikaru Sulu
Genre(s): Drama, Angst, Romance
Warnings: Slash, aborted smut, character death, major angst
Description: After it’s all done, they end up just like their mothers, set adrift by tragedy and scrambling for something to hold onto.

Note: Thanks to live_with_love and 6street for the beta on this one, even though I endured some unhappiness from both of them as a result. Written for eudaimon and her prompt, “second brightest star”, which was just asking for angst, no matter how I tried to work it. Also using the prompts given to me by hallowd all those ages ago for the title. :)

--

Hikaru isn’t the navigator Pavel was. He can name the stars but his duty is to follow the direction his navigator gives him, to follow and not chart the course. It’s always been like that, a perfect balance between them, weight and counterweight carried within each of them. There is nothing about him that Pavel doesn’t complement in some way, the way a navigator fits with their pilot and a pilot to their navigator. He doesn’t want to be the one giving directions; he knows only how to follow them.

It happens quickly, faster than a star dies in reality but as startling as if one had been snuffed out of the night sky like a passing draft over a brightly burning candle. For a few, frantic heartbeats after, a void opens where the stark line between life and death is clear, then the universe collapses into the abyss and the blanketed shock of Death rushes up like the ground after a long dive. Hikaru doesn’t breathe, not in those seconds, not in the ones after; never again. He is struck dumb, dizzy and light-headed and voiceless. He is not and will never be the navigator Pavel was. He doesn’t know how to give directions for anyone, not even himself.

The days after are nothing more than a blur, stretching into weeks; lonely hours where Hikaru doesn’t even notice that he’s not the only one mourning. An entire away team died on the planet, all at once, but Hikaru only remembers one of their number. He only remembers one name, flashing red on a blaring console, the frantic shouts over communicators that silenced quickly, leaving only dead silence and hollow echoes across the silent bridge for the long seconds before they realized and reacted. It was over so quickly after that, even the recovery team that brought five bodies back.

Hikaru knows that Doctor McCoy was on the same mission; that his is one of the bodies beamed aboard, but he and most of the bridge crew—Captain Kirk included—are barred from seeing them. He doesn’t believe it at first, no matter how much he knows it’s true; no matter how clearly he heard Pavel’s surprised shout on the bridge before it was drowned out by the angry scream of the console announcing his death. He didn’t even know that McCoy was dead, that the other three security officers who had gone with them were also dead, until after, when Kirk resigned the captaincy to Spock and they were ordered back to Earth by Command.

Spock takes him aside and asks him if he needs to follow the Captain’s example and resign his position voluntarily, a temporary arrangement for bereavement. Hikaru Sulu is twenty-five years old and he hasn’t known a life without Pavel for over four of those years. He hasn’t lost sleep over nightmares since he was twelve. He doesn’t know what to do with himself now, thinking always of Pavel and back to having nightmares every night, without fail.

He takes the break, and leaves the ship quietly when they make it back to Earth. His apartment in San Francisco is the same as it was when he left, tended carefully by his mother, whom he distantly recalls informing about their unexpected return. He isn’t sure he ever thought to tell her why; that Pavel wasn’t coming back with them, just going to Russia when she had wanted to meet him at the end of the mission. He doesn’t leave the apartment, not to talk to anyone, still half in shock, not sure he’ll ever recover the way he wants to. He doesn’t have duties to keep him stable, nothing to do to guide him through this, and so he just loses himself completely.

The third day of the second week, Jim Kirk comes to visit, looking just as unsettled as Hikaru is. Hikaru can see that he’s missed no less than three spots on his neck shaving that morning, while there are at least that many cuts on his chin.

“You look like hell,” Hikaru greets, but Jim doesn’t protest, just returns with a wry smile that Hikaru isn’t fooled into thinking to be even remotely cheerful.

“You don’t look any better,” he says roughly, his voice tattered and broken. He hasn’t been to see anyone, either. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah.” Hikaru steps aside and closes the door behind him, leading him into the kitchen, going through the motions of making coffee, pouring cups for both of them, and acting like a proper host. It’s something he remembers, something he knows; something he doesn’t have to rely on someone else to remind him how to do. It’s a start.

They don’t say anything, and then they talk about nothing at all, until the conversation dwindles away from small talk. They haven’t done anything since the last time they saw one another, so there isn’t anything much to talk about but the obvious, the crushing topic that neither of them really wants to approach. Hikaru mentions his mother, doesn’t mention that she’s been stopping by every day to make sure her son—her only son—is still alive. There’s a fear he hasn’t seen in her eyes since his father died and she would come to his bedroom every night and stand in the doorway, watching him in what he thought was a fear that he would just disappear.

It’s not the same now, of course it isn’t, because Hikaru is the one who has lost, and even though he’s always in danger when he’s in Starfleet, he’s safely home and he wasn’t the one who died anyway. He’s the one who survived, the one who has to mourn and keep living the way his mother had all those years before. It’s because she knows what he’s going through, he thinks, that she’s like this again. She knows what he’s going through, and he finally understands why she came to his room every night. She knows the despair, knows how deep it can get, knows Hikaru needs whatever he can get to anchor him to life when it seems so much easier to just let go.

His mother is the strongest person he knows, to have found her way anyway, to have kept going with nothing more than a few minutes of staring at her son to keep her alive. Hikaru isn’t sure how he can ever be like that, and he tells Jim as much.

“I used to be so mad at my mother,” Jim begins, leaning heavily on his elbows. “Growing up, she was so broken up about my father dying, like she was never going to get over him. It was all I ever knew her to be like, and so I—I really—really believed that. Then she went and married my step-father and I was so angry… I felt like she had somehow betrayed Dad, betrayed me, when she just…” His voice catches and he covers his eyes with a hand. Hikaru can’t be sure if he’s about to cry, but if Jim does, he doesn’t know how he’ll deal with that, because this is Jim Kirk. He’s unshakeable, unbreakable, foolhardy, and the greatest hero Hikaru is sure he’ll ever know.

“She couldn’t do it anymore; couldn’t be that horribly lonely. Her heart couldn’t take that, and when I… when I finally figured that out, I realized that I was even angrier at my father for being a goddamn hero, for saving her life and breaking her heart. She couldn’t live like that, lonely and heartbroken. I couldn’t blame her for trying to move on, and I couldn’t blame my father for leaving her behind, not really.” Jim is almost rambling incoherently now, even though neither of them have had anything to drink, but Hikaru understands that sometimes things just need to come out. Everyone needs to bleed their wounds for a little while until it runs clean, congeals, and finally starts to close. If Jim needs him to witness his pains for a little while, then he will, if only to hide from his own for a little while; a few minutes or a lifetime, as long as he can get away from their haunting clutches.

“Then they had to go and fucking do the same thing to us, didn’t they?” Jim grates out and a cold shudder crawls up Hikaru’s spine, like a creature out of the abyss. For a moment it’s back, the cold darkness, and the two of them staring into its gaping maw.

Then Jim stands slowly, as if he’s considering leaving the apartment, retreating back into his own loneliness because being around Hikaru, someone just as miserably lonely as he is, is worse than being alone on his own. It is, however, another human body, someone who understands and connects on some level.

It’s more than Jim knows what to do with, more than Hikaru has dared to think about even finding while wandering directionless through the last few weeks, all but counting down the rest of his life, waiting for some kind of release from this. Hikaru stands up and meets Jim halfway around the table, reaches for him before Jim can protest and he can realize that this is a really fucking stupid idea, that this is desperation and loneliness driving the both of them.

He doesn’t think what it means when Jim pushes him against the wall and kisses him hard, but he does think of how Pavel used to kiss him, insistent, laughing and—God, being in love with Pavel had been fun. This isn’t fun but it’s something he needs, something Jim needs. Even with Jim’s hands under his shirt, tearing it off over his head, they’re both distracted, thinking of anything but one another. Hikaru thinks of gentler, smaller hands that would tease their way up his chest and push every interfering layer of clothing away without ever betraying the eager impatience that his laugh and unyielding love for being alive always did. Pavel—he doesn’t know how he’s even breathing without him, let alone pretending that he can carry on with life—was never weak, would never let anyone think that for even a minute, but he turned out to be just as fragile as every other creature in the universe; just as capable of dying as anyone else.

They aren’t fooling anyone with this, not one another and definitely not themselves. They’re still achingly lonely, no matter how much skin touches, no matter how much of a slashed and broken love they expose with every staggered step down Hikaru’s hall. They slam into walls, pull hair, kiss with careless abandon, without a thought for how they’ll feel about this in the morning; how their bodies can’t take the abusive punishment they’re putting them through, not with the smothering heartache that possesses and drives them into this. Hikaru swallows a keening sob when his fingers circle around Jim’s cock, closes his eyes and just manages not to show that the cry Jim makes doesn’t sound encouraging. It only sounds as miserable as Hikaru feels, but Jim wears his heart in his eyes and on his sleeve, where everyone can see and take a swipe at it. Hikaru isn’t like Jim, not in that way, but he bares himself with every piece of clothing frantically pulled away, clutching one another and leaving bruises where lips touch.

It’s over. They’ve had the best they’re ever going to know and that’s already passed them. This is them, all that’s left of them anyway, and this is all they’re ever going to be, now and forever: two broken parts that don’t fit with anything but what’s long gone out of their reach. They can pretend that they aren’t lonely, that they aren’t breaking apart and coming together, shoving themselves together and chipping the pieces of their hearts in recklessness, not caring what happens next. Nothing, nothing could break them more than this.

Jim gasps against his ear, an incoherent cry because he doesn’t cry, never learned to cry as a child. On the other hand, Hikaru lowers his head and breathes in choking sobs, his cock hard because it only knows that this is different, wrong, but it can’t know why; that the familiar touch that knew him better than anything, better than his mother, is gone. They manage not to whisper the wrong name into each other’s ears, but the names of the dead hang around them anyway. Hikaru can’t stop thinking of McCoy, knowing that they’ve both reversed their dynamics because Jim is fumblingly awkward with a man and Hikaru doesn’t know how to yield to anyone. He wonders what McCoy was like, if he was methodical and earnest with rough words and a soft touch, but that passes quickly, leaving him with nothing, just flimsy memories that slip away with every touch of Jim’s hands and then he realizes.

He can’t do this either. It’s so wrong and he knows he’ll never forgive himself if he does this; he’ll lose it all, all the memories he now gathers up like he could possibly hold them in his hands, press them against his heart and fill the widening abyss.

“Stop,” he cries, voice broken like a thousand biting shards in the bloody wreckage in his chest. “Fuck, I can’t… I can’t.” He’s crying real tears, sobbing and forgetting that he’s half naked, cock out and slumped against the wall that separates him from his neighbors, who have just been treated to the unmistakable sounds of Hikaru being ravished against his wall.

Fortunately, Jim seems to be in a similar state, trembling and looking as though everything he’s ever known has been shaken. It probably has, because Jim Kirk has never hesitated to fuck anyone, but it’s there in his eyes, right there with his bared heart: Jim can’t do this either.

“I’m not like my Mom, Hikaru,” Jim whispers hoarsely, tucking clothes back on shamefully, lips swollen and a bruise rising on his neck. “I can’t do what she did. I can’t make you my second best—I can’t be yours either.”

Hikaru nods then, pulling himself back together and zipping his pants up like he’s embarrassed. He is, even while he hopes to God that this doesn’t affect his professional relationship with Jim. But if he knows Jim, and he knows him perfectly well enough, then he knows that this isn’t going to change things, even if it stays with them forever as a dark reminder that they’re not over this, they’ll never get over it.

“I know,” he shudders and stares at Jim, swallowing back down the tears and forcing himself to breathe, to quell the sobs. “Fuck.” Hikaru covers his face with a hand and manages to find his mobility again, leading himself back to the living room and dropping down on the couch. A few seconds later, Jim sits down next to him and they don’t say anything for what could be hours or a few ages. It doesn’t matter; it’s all the same to them now.

Unsurprisingly, Jim breaks the silence, as if he doesn’t realize or care that neither of them are wearing shirts, that they’re both lost in years of memories, living alone in an inimitable past, no matter how many people are around them.

“It’s going to be like this forever, isn’t it?” He asks and looks up at Hikaru, who doesn’t know how to do anything but nod and surrender his head to the cradle of his hands.

“Yeah,” he sighs and doesn’t look back up. “They die like heroes and we stay lost, right where they left us.”

“Bastards,” Jim laughs humorlessly, leaning further into the cushions, but Hikaru hears the affection, the envy in his voice. “Leaving us behind like this, like we’re supposed to know how…”

“How to keep going without them,” he finishes gently. Jim nods, head low and heart split wide open in his eyes, just like Hikaru’s mother every day since his father died, just like Winona Kirk since her first husband died and Hikaru knows that they’re consigned to the same fate now, tomorrow, and for the rest of their lives. It’s almost too much effort. Almost. It isn’t impossible, even if it feels like it.

Hikaru lifts his head slowly and sighs, uncovering his eyes and wincing in the evening sun. He’ll ask his mother how she does it when she comes again with the morning, her eyes shadowed and worn from years in the abyss. It may not be the same for him, like it won’t be for Jim and it wasn’t for Winona, but there is no camaraderie in this, no shared identity, just them, fumbling directionless in the dark for something they’ll never find again.

[Star Trek] The summer and her

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:37 GMT

Title: The summer and her
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Montgomery Scott/Gaila
Genre(s): Romance, AU
Warnings: Mild language
Description: Gaila has worked so hard for everything she has for so long that she doesn’t know how not to work for it.

Note: Yet another for my lame Seasons AU, this time in summer and het. This is sort of a disconnected piece, in that it takes place in the summer following beneath the winter snow and like a distant star, but you don’t have to read either of those if Sulu/Chekov isn’t your cup of tea. Thanks to 6street for looking over this and persuading me to actually post it after letting it sit on my desktop for the last few weeks. Title taken from Porcupine Tree’s “Trains”, which, for whatever reason, is sort of the verse’s theme song for these two. Expect more to come from the verse and, *gasp*, eventually an all-encompassing story that will demonstrate the ties between all the characters.

--

Gaila has worked so hard for everything she has for so long that she doesn’t know how not to work for it. She knows she’s drop-dead gorgeous, that men fall all over themselves to just be close to her, but that’s hardly something that’s helping her in this field. She enjoys it, definitely, being beautiful and knowing it. That’s no reason not to show it. She has loose, oddly coppery curls from some genetic fluke on her father’s side, the blood of the long-dead British Empire that carried its way through the generations, waiting to crop up when he coupled with her mother, whose caramel skin and wide eyes Gaila inherited. There’s a certain joy in stretching long, well-toned legs and watching everyone in the room stop and stare, but it’s nothing like the stares she gets when she answers every question right, out-thinks her professors, or gets the top score in a class. Those are satisfying reminders of who she is, what she’s really capable of, but they’re different still from the envious, disbelieving stares her friends from class get when she says that she’s with them: the nervous, awkward guys who study computer systems and engineering in the library with her four nights a week. They spend the other three learning how to let loose, laughing and hanging on one another and still making it home safe at the end of the night.

Too often she’s picked out for being one of two women in the program, the only one who isn’t unfortunate to look at, because this is a male-dominated profession. Even more often, Gaila’s found herself on the receiving end of sneers and suggestions that she’s fucked all her professors, all of the admissions committee, and half her classmates. When her credentials and hard work isn’t enough, those are the times that those hopeless nerds have proven themselves as her friends, standing by her when no one else would; defending her honor like they carried swords instead of PCs and wore armor like mirrors instead of pocket protectors and short-sleeved button-ups.

Her father told her that she’d be a good catch one day, a pretty wife for some lucky man. You could be so much more, her mother whispered to her in the night, brushing through her ringlets with her fingers. In the end, Gaila believed them both. She is a good catch and she’ll make a pretty wife for a lucky guy, but she is so much more than that, will always be more than that. She just needs to find the right guy and, loathe as she is to admit it, none of the guys who have stood beside her through school are really the right guy. She’s also sure none of them want to be, judging by the way the group of them acts whenever she has a boyfriend. She should feel sorry for her dates, the way they get pinned down and questioned by her friends as if they’re collectively her father, only worse. She should feel sorry for most of them but they usually deserve it, and so she saves her regretful pity for the ones that really didn’t earn the sort of wrath that only the most nerdy can dole out.

She meets him over summer break while running some pre-emptive tests on the program that will hopefully earn her a pretentious Doctor to add to her name at the end of the coming academic year. She’s put more work into it, let it take up more time in her life than it should have, but she’s ready to finally start tweaking it as needed, which honestly may take more time and frustration than writing the program itself, but she’s relieved. Software programming isn’t easy, and she has no illusions that she’ll end up like Bill Gates, but she’s good at what she does—really damn good—and as long as it sees some use, she’ll be satisfied with the program before embarking on some new project. There’s a heat wave sweeping across the country and even though she’s known hotter summers in hotter places, she’s lived in Boston all her life and she shudders when she thinks of Florida, where the temperatures have been hovering above 110 for two weeks. Momentarily, while thinking of hotter places, she’s glad that it’s cooler in Boston before remembering that 95 is still blistering hot and the reason she’s in wearing a thin-strapped shirt and the shortest shorts she owns.

It’s while she’s leaning over the computer screen, her curls falling over her shoulder and rolling back and forth on the balls of her feet, moaning in pleasure as the muscles in her calves tense and release after sitting down for too long, that the loud bellow comes from nowhere.

“What are you doing?”

She goes flying forward in surprise before catching herself and turning around, leaning with her ass against the desk and her chest heaving, gasping for air made frigid by over-worked air conditioners desperate to keep the room cold for the computers. “What?” Not exactly the most splendid of responses, especially not while she’s glaring back at a man who looks about thirty and disgruntled, leaning against the doorframe and staring at her like she’s some alien invader.

“How did you get in here?” He demands in a thick accent she can’t quite place, but it only serves to make him sound more gruff and annoyed. “You can’t just waltz in here off the streets and use the computers—you’ll break something, these are—”

“Highly specialized super computers built to run program simulations for MIT engineering students. I know,” she cuts him off, standing as straight and tall as she can in her bare feet, because she left her flip flops by her bag and laptop across the room. All manners left her in an instant, memories of her parents teaching her to be polite to men, always a flower—a lotus, a doe, her mother had told her, delicate and gentle—and never an elephant, loud-mouthed and harsh like Gaila has never been able to stop herself from being.

The man gapes a moment, then snaps his mouth shut, collects himself, and then continues incredulously. “You’re a student?”

“Yeah,” she tells him, crossing her arms under her breasts defensively, even though she’s used to this. It happens more often than it should, someone thinking that she doesn’t belong here, and why would they? “I was trying to run some diagnostic simulations on this program.”

He scoffed and crossed the room in a few strides, pointing angrily to the computer beside hers. “You weren’t the one using this station, were you? Fool of a person trying to do this—was it you?”

There’s a moment where she stares at him and he stares back, eyebrows low and dark and scandalized, and then she realizes that he thinks she’s the moron who didn’t check his work and left the computer running on an infinite loop for the last three hours. Then she laughs, shakes her head and points to the one she had been hunched over when he came in. “No—that was one of the other guys.” She doesn’t mention that it’s one of the guys who’s gone out of his way to make her life difficult that left the computer like that, nor that it’s because of that reason that she left it running for three hours so that when he comes back later in the day he’ll find that none of his work is done. It isn’t that she couldn’t fix the error in his program—it’s pretty obvious on the screen, right there in front of her face—but she’s not that nice.

Another scoff, and then the man enters a few commands to cancel the program and shuts off the computer completely. “Always in such a damn hurry, the lot of them. Can’t bother to stop and check what they’re doing before they enter it into the computers and leave—have you got a pen and paper? Got to leave a note for this ass, trying to overheat the computers, hot as it is here.”

Gaila stares at him for a moment before clearing her head with a shake and crossing the room to her bag. She pulls out a notebook and pen, slides on her flip flops casually, before this maniac of a man tells her that there’s something illegal about running around barefoot in the computer labs, and hands it to him.

“Thanks,” he mumbles and scrawls something across the page, tears it out neatly and lays it across the keyboard. Gaila dares to peer down at it, to decipher the illegible scribble, and gives up after a moment. The only part of it she thinks she can make out is in his signature, a broad ‘D’ and a faint scribble after that looks suspiciously like Doctor.

“You’re a professor?” She asks, can’t help the curiosity, even though her parents are all but shouting at her in her head for being too forward, not modest or coy enough.

“And you’re a student,” he shoots back and shoves her notebook back at her, taking his time to cap the pen before giving it to her a little more kindly, as if he realizes the inconvenience that has had him so riled up wasn’t her fault. “Aye, Montgomery Scott. I teach in the—”

She can’t help the surprised gasp, and then claps her hands over her mouth. “Doctor Scott?” She doesn’t know all the teachers who work here, but Scott is pretty famous for some of his engineering work, things that revolutionized space mechanics and a load of other things she only knows a little about because it’s not really her field. He should be working for NASA, but he teaches at MIT instead, building improved thrusters and revolutionizing every physical aspect of space shuttles. He is, quite literally, a rocket scientist. She couldn’t go to MIT without knowing about Scott, and her annoyance evaporates into embarrassment and a bit of awe.

“Aye,” he tells her and settles for an easy grin. “Sorry about all that there. They asked me to come by, check on the computers once in a while when I’ve got the time—I’ll be damned if IT comes in and does their job, but I guess that’s not their fault, great lump sitting up at the head with a bunch of undergrads working under him. All they can do to keep the rest of the student body from infecting themselves with viral programs and God Himself only knows. I came in and saw that one and saw you and just thought you might have—I didn’t really mean to imply you didn’t know what you were doing in here, Miss…?”

“Saluja—Gaila Saluja. I’m doing my doctorate in Advanced Software Engineering.” She sticks out her hand, smiles brightly and is actually surprised when Dr. Scott stares at her, looking completely thunderstruck before taking her hand and shaking it gently.

“Well I’ll be damned—this is your program that you’re going to be running?” He gestures toward the screen and she turns back toward it, stepping aside for him and nodding numbly because she almost forgot about it completely.

“Yeah,” she breathes and watches him look over the lines of coding, the things she’s slaved over for months, all too aware that this is surreal and wonderful at the same time. “There’s some experimental things in there, things I sort of—”

“This is brilliant.” Dr. Scott declares and looks up at her, beaming. “A few negligible things here and there you could clean up to make it run a little faster, but do you have any idea what this could do?”

He’s launching into some theoretical application for her program, things she’s only dreamed of using it for; things she was sure she’d never get the chance to use it for. She’s starting to think Dr. Scott might be an expert in everything, because he talks about her field as if it’s his own. It’s pretty stupid of her, acting like she’s ten years younger than her twenty-four years and she’s got a massive crush, but she doesn’t care. It’s a conversation she hasn’t dared to have with anyone, whether her work will ever see practical application, but this is heartening, hopeful.

Three hours later, their discussion has turned technical and heavy, and Gaila is sitting in a chair in front of the computer with her knees pressed against her chest, explaining the finer details of her programming. It’s then that the previously declared fool returns to check on his program, scowling at Gaila until he sees Dr. Scott, recognizes him much faster than Gaila had, and pales, ducking his head when Scott admonishes him to the same tone of his long forgotten note. When he leaves, Scott scoffs and rolls his eyes to Gaila, who is just glad that he didn’t have the balls to even shoot her a dirty look.

Dr. Scott looks up at the clock and curses violently at the time, shoving to his feet and apologizing immediately for the language. They ran all the simulations she had planned during their conversation, working through some of the snags in Gaila’s programming, and she’s only now realizing that it’s past nine-thirty and the insistent ringing from the corner for the last two hours has been her roommate trying to find out where the hell she’s been.

She bounds up after him and beams back at him when he smiles. “It’s been a real pleasure, Dr. Scott—I really can’t thank you—I mean… It means a lot. I’ve worked really hard on this and I’m glad—”

He shrugs and takes her hand again, shaking it enthusiastically and nodding to her things. “Don’t worry about it. You should get out of here before they close down the lab for the night.”

When she slides back into her flip flops and slings her bag over her shoulder, Dr. Scott is still there, holding the door open for her when she steps out of the cool air and into the stifling, humid summer air, once again glad to be in shorts. There’s a moment she doesn’t know what to say, how to thank him for returning her faith in her work, for helping her with something that no one else has been willing or able to help her with, or just for being the best company she’s had in a while. He sticks his hands in the pockets of his jeans and grins easily at her.

“You’ll be working in here tomorrow, I’d guess?”

“Yes,” she grins and fingers the hem of her shorts. “You’ll be guarding the computer lab again?”

For a second they stare at one another awkwardly, and then Dr. Scott ducks his head and grins. “Aye, I’ll be here.” He pauses and then looks back up at her as if he’s decided on something. “You going home now, or have you got an hour or so? There were a few things I saw in your program, nothing major, just—”

Gaila realizes somewhere during his rambling speech that he’s asking her out, probably to discuss her work, but out. She hesitates a second, and her phone rings obnoxiously from her bag. “I…”

She thinks about it, weighs the options, thinks of what her parents would tell her (Don’t be too eager. Let him chase you a little. Be modest.), and reaches into her bag to press the button on the side of her phone. It silences immediately and she grins.

“That would be great.”

[Star Trek] Across the Universe

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:47:20 GMT

Title: Across the Universe
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Hikaru Sulu/Pavel Chekov
Genre(s): Romance
Warnings: pre-slash/slash
Description: The boy catches him completely by surprise, striking him out of the blue as if he fell from the pristine, glowing evening sky itself.

Note: Written for this prompt at st_xi_kink on a whim, and because it was too adorable to pass up. Not at all what I’m supposed to be working for, but it’s a short bit of pre-slash fluff to soothe the ~~pre-start of school~~ soul. I had thought about adding a bit at the end, but I think it’s pretty well implied by canon what might happen next, so enjoy :) If you’d like visuals of what the Summer Garden is like in autumn, you can see a whole collection of pictures here!

--

He’s come from across the world to see this place. Letniy Sad, the locals call it in awed whispers and fierce pride, one of the last standing treasures of Great Peter’s works; the last, following only the name of their city, Sankt Peterburg, Piter. It isn’t that Hikaru came here just for that, he’s actually here for a conference in astrophysics and aviation. Nineteen years old and already his name is attached to an academic paper, the one he’s here to present with one of his professors. In his lifetime, he’ll go farther than he’s come to be here, so much farther than most people ever imagine, but even this place feels as though it could easily be across the universe from San Francisco, from the Earth he’s known.

It’s fall in Saint Petersburg, even though it is still two months before it’ll start cooling off in San Francisco, in all of America, but Hikaru knew that before he came here. It’s a bitter cold that he’s not used to, not when California is totally different than this place with its marble relics of another time, its withered flowers and clear, cool days that herald the coming of winter. The gardens are scattered with fallen leaves, not the picture of beauty it is in the summertime with golden rays scattered on emerald leaves and the few marble statues that have barely survived the wear of time: wars and age and half a millennium of human history. It doesn’t matter; it’s one of the most beautiful things Hikaru can remember seeing in his whole life, huddled in his wool coat and jeans on the only day of this trip that he has any free time, the only day he can get away without wearing his uniform.

Then it happens, standing in front of some splintered statue, remembering a bloody history in this garden, a stronger tradition of beauty and pride. Hikaru breathes out a sigh, watches it condense in the air, twisting with the lengthening shadows, and reminds himself that it’s actually late enough for nightfall. He has to get back to the hotel, to change into his uniform and go to another academic reception for his professor and, in turn, also for him, the man’s protégé; the brilliant pilot who will one day captain a ship of his own.

The boy catches him completely by surprise, striking him out of the blue as if he fell from the pristine, glowing evening sky itself. He catches Hikaru’s shoulder and stammers something in Russian, pauses, and corrects himself.

“I think you have dropped this,” he tells him and looks proud to have pieced together the entire sentence while holding out Hikaru’s cadet badge, which he had dropped into his bag earlier in the day. It must have fallen out at some point. Hikaru takes it slowly, looks between the badge and the boy offering it to him with flushed cheeks and an expression that looks as though he would like very much to disappear into the collar of his own coat.

“Thanks,” he grins and slips it into a smaller pocket in his bag where it won’t fall out again. He offers another thanks in Russian, the one from the list of phrases he was given before the conferences and winces at the way the word breaks apart on his inexperienced tongue.

Fortunately, the boy takes it in stride and points at his bag, where the badge is now. “You are an… an…” He looks frustrated for a moment, says something in Russian, and Hikaru laughs.

“I’m here for the conference at the university. The… um…” He doesn’t remember the Russian name for the conference, and he’s already gotten a few blank stares from other locals who don’t recognize the Standard words. It’s surprising to him sometimes that not everyone on Earth speaks Federation Standard, that it isn’t as standard as the name implies, because everyone speaks it in San Francisco, all across America, but especially where Starfleet Academy is based. Here, and in countries all over Earth, people still cling to their cultural traditions, to the things that define them beyond human.

The boy looks at him again and rattles something else off in Russian, looking increasingly agitated and frustrated at himself, before he gestures at the bag again. “Starfleet?”

It’s the first thing Hikaru catches properly between the various words he can only catch in passing, but they’re all wrong, his foreigner’s ears hearing what sounds familiar when it could mean something entirely different. He’s pretty sure this kid isn’t talking about directions to the transporter station, not when “Starfleet” has come across loud and clear.

“Yeah,” he grins and nods back to the badge. “I’m a Starfleet cadet.” The boy looks impressed, relieved to be understood, and then cocks his head to the side curiously at him, studying Hikaru with a frank kind of consideration that, for whatever reason, doesn’t unnerve him the way he knows it should. He says something in Russian again and bites his lip.

“I think that I know you,” he mumbles in English, but Hikaru laughs and shakes his head.

“I’ve never been to Russia before the conference,” he tries to explain, already knowing that the language barrier is too high for either of them jump. He speaks very rudimentary Russian, just enough to ask for directions, to order something that isn’t borscht, and to get by in the city for the week. This boy looks so young, fourteen or fifteen if Hikaru is generous, and his Standard is passable but tempered by a lifetime of speaking Russian. It’s just as likely that he meant to say something else, an introduction perhaps, but mixed up his meanings, his words.

Hikaru smiles and holds out his hand. “Hikaru Sulu,” he says and can’t help the way his smile grows when the boy takes it and turns a brilliant grin at him.

“Pavel Chekov,” he says and looks down shyly. Hikaru isn’t sure what he’s just done, if there’s some Russian cultural norm he’s offended, but then the boy—Pavel—looks back up at him and starts speaking in Russian, unbroken and without hesitation this time. He seems like he’s trying to explain something, but he doesn’t let go of Hikaru’s hand and if Hikaru was confused before, it’s nothing like now. Pavel looks earnest, determined and certain, speaking as if Hikaru could understand him even though he knows, must know, that Hikaru speaks Russian like he probably spoke Standard a few years before.

The shaky breath Pavel takes seems to be the indication that he’s finished his speech, and he’s looking at Hikaru with something like desperate hope, obviously willing him to understand. He says something in Russian, short and insistent, then repeats it again, imprinting the words in Hikaru’s mind so that he will always recall them when he thinks of Letniy Sad, Saint Petersburg and the bite of autumn air in Russia. Hikaru repeats the words back to him, turning them into a mantra, a query; a message hidden in a code Hikaru isn’t sure he’ll ever know how to break, not when they’re just mangled syllables in his mouth.

Pavel looks proud for a moment, then his face drops when he realizes that Hikaru doesn’t actually know what he means. He takes a breath and points back to the bag. “I will learn how to say. I will come. You…” he points at Hikaru, then at himself, and repeats the words again before tucking his hands into the pockets of his coat.

“Starfleet,” he says firmly, as if he’s made up his mind, the intonations the only thing Hikaru can use to discern his meaning. “See you,” he says with that brilliant smile that leaves Hikaru a little weak-kneed. Before he even realizes that the conversation is over, Pavel is leaving him in the shadows of Letniy Sad and the only thing he has is his name and a meaningless mantra as his souvenirs of the encounter.

“See you,” he repeats back and desperately hopes that it’s true.

[all the strengths you have inside] an Abarai Renji + Kira Izuru fanmix

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:39:19 GMT

Note: Made for kawree, who writes and plays the very, very best Renji I've ever had the pleasure to read—and even play my Kira against. Happy birthday to both of you. :) Apologies for my photoshop skills not being quite up to the standard set by pretty much everyone else, but... I tried? Click on each song name for individual songs and the download link for the .rar file.

First off: this isn't a romantic fanmix—it's not supposed to be. What it is meant to be is an exploration of the friendship between the two of them. The two of them aren't quite complete without Momo to round off their trio and smooth things out with a feminine influence, but they have a very distinctive dynamic on their own. Though Kubo doesn't do much to explore that friendship, it's safe to say that it's at least implied that Kira and Renji have kept up a very strong friendship over the years since they met. Kira and Momo are the ones to tell Renji about his promotion, have fought together in the Academy and in the Fifth Division alike, and not even being split between three different divisions seems to have tarnished that. Momo comes to Kira for advice concerning Renji's disappearance, and despite being a stickler for rules and regulations, Kira tries to quietly recover Renji, who has already defected. Again, though it's not exactly explored in detail and there's hardly enough time for Kubo to explore all the character relationships he's established, it's sort of a background friendship that's fallen out of notice by fandom. Most people are surprised by the notion that they're good friends. After all, they're pretty different.

And that, I think, is the point.

DOWNLOAD HERE

[Help! — The Beatles]

when I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way
but now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,
now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors

[Under Pressure — Keane]

it's the terror of knowing
what this world is about
watching some good friend
screaming, 'Let me out'

[Hold Me Now — The Polyphonic Spree]

hold me now
don’t start shaking
you keep me safe
don't ever think you're the only one
when times are tough in your new age.

[For All These Times Kid, For All These Times — Lostprophets]

for all these times that we walked away
for all these times that I've heard you say
'give me something to believe in,'
give me someone to believe in.
for all these times, and it starts today.

[Darkest Side of Houston's Finest Day — Blue October]

with shaking hands I dropped it instantly
then kicked the phone and stood invincibly
oh, then started to cry
but I'm twenty now and I wanna see my nineteenth year again
hold onto me, you are the closest thing I've ever had to a real friend

[Come As You Are — Nirvana]

come as you are, as you were
as I want you to be
as a friend, as a friend, as an old enemy
take your time, hurry up
the choice is yours, don't be late
take a rest as a friend
as a known memory

[Song For A Friend — Jason Mraz]

life’s too short anyway but at least it’s better than average.
as long as you got me and I got you
you know we've got a lot to go around
I’ll be your friend, your other brother
another love to come and comfort you.
and I’ll keep reminding
if it’s the only thing I ever do
I will always love you

[Aristotle and Averroes — Kareem Salama]

at first you spoke little and I said a lot
but in time you would trust me with the depth of your thought
and though we were only young men at the time
we had souls of the ancients with the youth left to climb

I was like you and yes, you were like me
we were so much alike but unique as can be
friends 'til the end and we were quite the right team
like those two men, Aristotle and Averroes

[Bleach] for now &—

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:10:07 GMT

Title: for now &—
Theme #33: "fall"
Rating: PG
Characters: Abarai Renji, Hinamori Momo, Kira Izuru
Genre(s): Genfic! A bit of humor and... also, friendship :)
Warnings: Gratuitous drinking, general tomfoolery, and aged up characters :)
Description: Some things don't change, not over a year or a hundred. They've got one another, then and now and forever.

Note: Dear Bleach muses: Where the hell have you been? Also, look, Ama wrote genfic again! :D Written for kawree, who asked for something with Academy Trio shenanigans in my fic request meme ~~two months ago~~.

--

“This was a bad idea.”

Renji looks up at Izuru from where he has his back pressed against the stone wall, where he had been facing the ground and staving off the urge to throw up. “No kidding,” he moans and shudders when the ground buckles underneath his feet. “I didn’t think we were too old for this.”

“We shouldn’t be too old for this,” Izuru retorts, but he’s facing the wall, pressing his forehead against the cool stone and regretting the extra hour they spent drinking when they should have gone home just the same as Momo had. Were it not for that, had they listened to Momo when she told them that they should go home with her, rather than being boys and dense and stubborn, then they wouldn’t be clinging to walls near the Eighth division. The Fifth and Third Divisions aren’t very far away under normal circumstances, but now it seems like miles before they’ll make it home.

“Captain Kyouraku makes it look so easy,” Renji mutters, heaving away from the wall and stumbling forward a few steps, smiling gratefully when Izuru turns and catches him, stumbles into him and they stagger away.

“Captain Kyouraku has a few hundred years on us.” Even ripping drunk, Izuru has managed to maintain his dignity—something he’s learned over the years since becoming captain. It’s not the first time they’ve ended up like this, staggering home through the streets of Seireitei and clinging together, hoping to whatever powers that be that they might actually make it home without passing out in a gutter, which they did in the Academy. Three times, if Izuru recalls correctly and only once if anyone bothers to ask Renji.

“Think we should send a butterfly to Hinamori?” Renji groans and sways, leaning heavily on Izuru, who grunts under the effort and shoves back at Renji, forcing a counterbalance against Renji’s weight so they can stumble a few more steps forward.

“She’ll laugh at us again,” Izuru protests and swallows hard when his stomach lurches and the accompanying wave of nausea nearly sends him crashing to the ground. Renji holds him up and grins down at him.

“She’ll laugh when she finds out about this anyway, and she will, you know she will. She always finds out.”

“Only because you don’t know how to handle a hangover, you big—baby…” His voice hitches with another twist in his stomach, and then he flounders a second and falls back against the wall. “Yes. Okay. Send the—ugh—the butterfly.”

Renji is laughing when he summons the butterfly, but he hiccups halfway through and the background noise of Izuru moaning with the impending headache is enough to give them away completely.

Momo is kind enough to come quickly, keep her laughter stifled, and only chastise them a little bit when she passes the water she brought with her between them.

“I haven’t done this since the Academy,” she tells them with a cheeky grin, helping Izuru back to his feet and dusting off the smudged white of his captain’s haori. “When you started drinking, Kira-kun.”

Izuru mutters something under his breath, but still manages to look grateful as the three of them cling together. “We’re not old enough for this,” he protests again, sending Renji into a raucous fit of laughter, which pulls them all down to the ground again, this time outside the Sixth Division, so close to Renji and Momo’s Division, where Momo will see Renji back to the captain’s quarters and forbid Izuru to go back to the Third until morning.

“I don’t mind, Kira-kun,” she says affectionately, pulling Renji back up and giggling with them, the same way she always has: without ever taking a single drink, as if she’s drunk on their company, the way their reiatsu twists and warps when they drink.

“Good,” Renji says when he finally recovers, heaving for breath and beaming down at them with a grin that’s too wide to be sober. “Izuru’ll always need it.” He makes a face when Izuru reaches out and shoves him, sending Renji tumbling down and earning himself a dirty look from Momo, even when Renji pulls the both of them down with him.

They lie in a heap, two captains and a lieutenant, in the middle of the street and Renji’s laughter returns, infecting all of them until they can’t breathe, collapsed and gasping for breath, reaching for one another because they are what they each have, what they’ve always had since they met, and what they’ll always have. It’s never changed, not over an entire century.

It’s not going to start changing now.

[Star Trek] like a distant star

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:59:41 GMT

Title: like a distant star
Rating: PG
Characters: Hikaru Sulu/Pavel Chekov (pre-slash)
Genre(s): Romance, Alternate Universe
Warnings: Pre-slash, but otherwise none!
Description: Life goes on, even in the darkest, coldest days of the year.

Note: This and the previous story (beneath the winter snow) are companion stories, meant to be read together, but they can stand alone and could be read in any order. This one follows the other in the timeline, but, again, is a pretty decent stand-alone piece. Both are in my lamely-dubbed Seasons AU verse, which is set in modern-day Boston. Everyone is, predictably, a ridiculous academic, and this might be my way of coping with my nerves before and during grad school.

--

When Hikaru’s mother died, everything changed.

It had been sometime in his third fall of doctoral research, while he was isolated in the frozen wasteland, thousands of miles from San Francisco and the home that was now his not-home. His mother had been all that had drawn him back home, season after season, inventing reasons to fly across the country and see his sisters and the place he’d known as his own. Try as he might to keep up with it, time went by anyway, and San Francisco started to change, no matter how much Hikaru had willed it to always be the same. His mother had warned him that things change, that people make new places their home as a way of coping with the changes life threw at them. People changed and so the places around them changed also. By the end of his first year away from San Francisco, Hikaru was already walking around what had once been familiar to him and catching himself surprised that his old haunts were closed and gone and replaced by something newer, different; familiar to someone else who lived there in his place.

Five years from San Francisco, and sometimes Hikaru could see only the skeletons of what he had once known. Things changed so quickly, and he had changed also. Winters in San Francisco—the ones where he had whined when the temperatures dipped below fifty—were not only bearable, but practically balmy compared to the ones in Massachusetts. He talked more about botany and plants and forgot to lament the lost chance to be a pilot, even forgetting to mope on the anniversary of the accident that had robbed him of the coveted, mandatory night vision that would have allowed him to keep shining as the aviation program’s star pilot. Instead, he had settled into the life of an academic, forgetting the adrenaline rush that came with flying; forgetting even that he was an adrenaline junkie at all.

He was grounded, tamed and chained to the ground, staring up at the sky sometimes and thinking what it would have been like if he hadn’t been so damn unlucky, if that test flight hadn’t gone so badly. He sure as hell wouldn’t have ever gone to Boston, that was certain, and he would have never started work on his doctoral thesis, never even considered it. He would have been flying high, losing himself in the clouds and barely thinking to look down at the ground, at the life he was blasting through on a wave of adrenaline that couldn’t carry him through the rest of his life. He knew now—the way he hadn’t known when he was nineteen and high on life—that he would have burned himself out.

His mother’s death cemented it. His sisters were married, Cordelia was pregnant with her first child, and Mina was getting settled in the house she and her husband had just bought in the suburbs of San Diego. Their mother died in the middle of the pre-finals rush that had left Hikaru three days without a proper night’s sleep, falling asleep on open books in the library and functioning primarily on unhealthy amounts of caffeine. When Cordy called to tell him about the accident, he had stared at a paragraph detailing the pollination of an Amazonian flower for a full minute and a half before he completely understood what she had said. Then the whole world had crumpled in on itself, constricting his chest and pushing out the breath he had gasped for in a whining cry. He had slammed the book closed—he would never be able to look at Aphelandra aurantiaca with its bright, flared blooms without thinking of blaring horns and screeching metal and the slow trickle of blood down his mother’s temple—and told Cordy that he’d call when he had booked a flight, that he’d be there the next morning. He snapped his phone shut, stood up, and promptly blacked out.

Three days later, his mother was buried next to his father in a San Francisco cemetery, Cordy and Mina grieving with their husbands, and Hikaru on a plane back to Boston for Thanksgiving, the last three weeks of the term, Christmas, New Year, and then the rest of his life.

It had been like that for two years after that. His sisters spent Thanksgiving with their in-laws and Christmases with their husbands and then the children they had since given birth to. Hikaru visited once a year around mid-summer or whenever his research took him back to the West Coast, and stayed alone in Boston the rest of the year. It really wasn’t as miserable as it sounded to anyone else. He really didn’t mind very much. It was actually quiet and peaceful, if not also lonely when he paused to think about it, huddled under blankets on winter nights when he hadn’t gone out with friends. He was getting used to it there, following his own shortcuts that no one but locals knew and establishing new haunts with a new crowd. Slowly, Boston displaced San Francisco as home, and Hikaru didn’t think to be bothered by it. People changed, places changed, and he was just changing with them.

Winter was really the only time of the year that was particularly hard being alone. He’d had a string of short relationships, a spree of dating here and there when he had time, but it was only filler, temporary respite from the unceasing loneliness. He had spent that first Christmas aching and tugging himself back together in the botany lab, working ceaselessly on research and talking to the rows of flowers as he walked through, watering them each lovingly. New Year wasn’t much better that year, but he spent the next with friends, bundled up and singing in the coming year from the streets.

This year promised to be a lonely one already. Friends were growing up, going home, getting married and having children like his sisters had, and Hikaru… Hikaru was still holding onto the life of a single man, without any real direction where that aspect of his life was heading. He went to their weddings and the occasional baby shower and made toasts and laughed with them and told himself that he didn’t really need this life right now anyway.

At the end of the year, though, it didn’t matter that his one great love of his life was academia—the second, really, but he tried not to think about his bitter, star-crossed love for flying anymore. It only mattered that it was the holidays, the one time of the year that people were naturally drawn into groups, to huddle together for warmth and companionship through the winter months, and he was still entrenched in the same, lonely routine.

He’d thought about going to San Francisco for Christmas, but Mina was seven months pregnant and Cordy had the twins to deal with. Even an extra pair of hands would have been too much for them to handle, and so Hikaru had relented and chosen to stay behind. He went to sign up for lab duty, only to find that the task had already been claimed by another one of the students, a new name that he didn’t even really know all that well, just that her thesis was on arctic flora and she’d studied on Svalbard for two years. It was starting to get to him, the promise of being alone for the single time of the year when he just wanted someone to lean on a little bit. He found himself refusing invitations on account of his loneliness, which was really just feeding into the same thing he was trying to avoid. He wasn’t sure which was lonelier: being alone, or being alone around other people.

Four days to the end of term, Hikaru slung his bag over his shoulder and waited for the undergraduate lecture class he taught for Dr. Kelly on Tuesdays and Thursdays to file out. They all looked exhausted, impending finals had that effect, and it still was nothing on how Hikaru was feeling. He rubbed a hand over his face and followed the last of the students out. Stepping out into the cold—it was perhaps even colder than usual—he bundled into his coat and resigned himself to the long walk back to his apartment.

Instead, ahead of him, he saw a familiar figure leaning against a stone pillar and found himself smiling. Pavel Chekov, the twenty-one year old Physics genius from MIT that he’d met a couple weeks before and since seen around campus in passing. He checked his watch, thought it over a moment, and approached him. He couldn’t keep to himself forever, just for the sake of being alone. The world was always changing, always rushing forward to some great unknown and taking them along with it. There was no saying when the carelessness of a young driver running a red light or a walk across campus would start or stop a life.

He could keep walking, or he could stop and talk to Pavel again. He could go back to his apartment and wallow in loneliness, wrapped in a blanket and flipping through his field notes from the last trip to the Botanical Gardens in Berkeley that summer; the ones that he already knew by heart. He could also stop and endure the cold a little longer and see what happened with Pavel.

Pavel, who was brightly intelligent and engaging, driven and enthusiastic, passionate about what he studied; forever eager to learn more. Hikaru knew all of these things from their last meeting, the one where they had spent two hours talking amiably about the nebulous details of their separate research. He imagined getting to know him more intimately than that, hours bent over a coffee shop table while Hikaru sketched the orchids he was cultivating on a napkin and Pavel wrote out the answers to the universe on his hands. He imagined laughing and giving him his number and maybe it was too late in the season to spend it with someone else, but there was a ridiculous sort of naïve hope in all this. Maybe it wouldn’t work out the way Hikaru imagined. Probably it wouldn’t work out that way.

That wasn’t, however, a reason not to find out what way it would work out.

[Star Trek] beneath the winter snow

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:59:33 GMT

Title: beneath the winter snow
Rating: PG
Characters: Hikaru Sulu/Pavel Chekov (pre-slash)
Genre(s): Romance, Alternate Universe
Warnings: Pre-slash, but otherwise none!
Description: Life goes on, even in the darkest, coldest days of the year.

Note: This and the following piece (like a distant star), both rated PG, are set in what was supposed to be an AU world that came up only the once... but seems to have grown into a whole verse of its own. I'm still working out the details of the fic verse, but here are the first two stories, which pre-date a longer, more inclusive story, and series of stories, which will have more pairings, more seasons, etc. These can be read in any order, but they do allude heavily to one another. These were originally written for trekbootcamp, a few weeks ago, when we did our AU challenge. I kept meaning to post them, and only remembered now, while I had the nagging urge to write more of it.

This 'verse was pretty well inspired by "Winter Song", by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson, and the titles are ganked from the lyrics. For your listening pleasure (and to help set the mood, because I do realize that it's summer), I've uploaded the song here.

--

The northeastern winter is inevitably bitter, always cold and sharp enough that the air itself is hard to breathe without the pinprick of the icy wind. Fashion takes a turn for the decidedly conservative: undershirts, shirts, sweaters, woolen coats… and all that atop and underneath pants and thick socks and heavy shoes, hats and scarves and soft, lined leather gloves. It’s all an attempt to stay warm when people find that they must go outside, otherwise it’s just a mad dash between the buildings on campus, shuddered shivers and gasps when they step outside and the cold hits them like a brick wall.

Hikaru Sulu is never going to get used to this place.

He came here five years ago, twenty-one, recently graduated from Berkeley, brilliant and utterly unprepared for that first winter. He had called his mother December third and begged to come back home to San Francisco where it was warm and it didn’t seem preposterous to imagine studying botany in what passed for winter in California. His mother had laughed at him on the phone and sent a package with a hat and scarf his sister knitted for him and money to buy himself a new coat. Five years later, Hikaru had a new coat, the scarf had frayed and the stitches fallen out the winter his mother died, and a better idea of what to expect from winter in Massachusetts. Knowledge, however, could only prepare him with what to expect, not keep him warm or somehow otherwise readjust his body chemistry so he didn’t wither up like his plants when winter rolled in.

Even the knowledge that January was going to be worse didn’t make the bitter, December chill any better, even when Hikaru tightened his scarf over his face and ducked his head from the cold. The research lab wasn’t far from the science lecture hall where he had just finished giving a lunchtime lecture on botanical hibernation habits and photosynthetic compounds to group of wide-eyed, eager undergraduates. Suiting subjects for bitter, winter cold.

He had barely looked up to see where he was going when a loud exclamation, rough and garbled and foreign, broke through his sullen reverie half a second before a body collided with his in a blitz of sharp, long limbs and more foreign cries that sounded more like a jumble of consonants than actual words. He stumbled back, tripped on a crack in the pavement, and hit the ground hard, staring up finally at the spitting, cursing, surprised object that had collided with him when neither had been paying attention.

Another loud cry, and then Hikaru found himself staring into a pair of wide, apologetic blue eyes as bright as the winter sky on a clear day. “Sorry,” he gasped. “I wasn’t paying attention at all. The cold—”

“Not at all.” The boy—he looked so young, he had to be one of the undergraduates running around campus—hauled himself to his feet and offered a hand out for Hikaru. “I should not have been in such a rush. I thought I was late for a meeting with my dissertation committee, they changed it again, and I found a note and I had just turned around and I did not see you.”

The information sank in slowly enough, and Hikaru was shaking his head, dismissing the apology with a wave of his hand and one of his own when the rest of it occurred to him. “Dissertation committee?” He asked incredulously. This kid couldn’t be older than twenty, twenty-two at the oldest. He was scheduled to defend his own dissertation in the spring, just a few short months away, and the lecture series was a part of presenting his research to the community at large, even if it was only attended by some students who were compelled by free lunch or extra credit or, in the most rare of occasions, genuine curiosity and interest in the subject.

“Yes!” The boy straightened, tucking a book that had flown astray back into his bag and turning back to Hikaru. “I am a doctoral candidate in physics, and I have an appointment with a Doctor Patel to discuss my dissertation research.” He carefully pronounced the words, turning them over as if they were uncomfortable and too big for his mouth. Which, given his thick, Eastern European accent, was probably true and also explained why his previous exclamations had sounded so strange to Hikaru’s ears.

Hikaru was fascinated, watching the way he spoke, turning words over in his head until he could be sure that he had understood them. Finally, he nodded and pointed toward the direction he had been heading. “The science departments are this way,” he said, drawing his hand back toward his body and tucking it into the pocket of his coat, moaning unhappily at a strong gust of icy wind that blew between them. He burrowed deeper into his pea coat and noticed then—only then—that the young man was wearing a similar black, woolen coat, but looked entirely comfortable, despite that it was ten below and threatening snow. In fact, his scarf was loosely knotted at his throat, but his hands were bare of gloves and his face lacking Hikaru’s misery.

“Sh-shit,” Hikaru groaned. “Why aren’t you freezing?”

The boy looked amused and shrugged. “This is not so bad,” he told him calmly and looked toward the science divisions. “That way, then?”

“Yes,” Hikaru gasped. “I’m headed that way, myself.”

“Then we can walk together,” the boy suggested. “You are also a physicist?” The shine in his eyes was bright and intrigued, hopeful and eager to find kindred spirits.

“Afraid not,” Hikaru chattered, glad to start walking again. “A Ph.D. candidate in Botany.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and offered it to him. “Hikaru Sulu. I did pretty terrible in my Physics classes in undergrad.”

“Pavel Andreievich Chekov,” he greeted brightly, shaking Hikaru’s hand firmly, then nudged the hand back toward Hikaru in silent, gentle suggestion that he pocket it again for warmth.

“That’s, uh… Pol—Romanian?” Hikaru took a shot in the dark and felt a pang of stupidity when Pavel looked outright offended.

“No,” he deadpanned, as it if took enormous patience not to express his distaste. “It is Russian. I am Russian.”

Hikaru ducked his head and nodded, laughing to himself. “Sorry. I’m crap with names and all that. What’s your research on?” He transitioned the conversation back toward academics smoothly, the thing they had in common and the thing that bound them together, despite the difference in their disciplines.

When Pavel started talking, he waved his hands, explaining the his thesis in the most general of ways, with sweeping gestures and enthusiastic explanations that continued long after they’d stood outside the biological sciences building for five minutes and then continued on. They completely ignored the physics laboratories and offices as they walked past companionably, as if they had known one another for months and not minutes, without even a destination, just the conversation to lead them. Hikaru watched him, nodding where was appropriate, half the terminology and simplest of theoretical basis for his research going straight over his head and not caring for even a second, just watching and listening and slowly forgetting everything else, even the cold.

[Star Trek] Open Hostilities

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 04:32:37 GMT

Title: Open Hostilities
Rating: NC-17
Characters: Hikaru Sulu/Pavel Chekov
Genre(s): Smut, Romance
Warnings: Slash, explicit sex, explicitly slashy sex
Description: Love and hate straddle a very fine line.
Note: Written for this prompt at st_xi_kink, at emiime’s request. No beta on this one, but, er, enjoy?

--

He’s pretty sure he hates him.

The problem with that is that he doesn’t usually hate anyone, not really; not even Nero, and he was the one who killed most of the Vulcans and tried to wipe out Earth and the Federation as well. Of course it angers him on a deeply moral and idealistic level, just the idea that someone could try to do things in selfish heartbreak, but it’s not like this. This, Sulu thinks, is hatred. Which is pretty stupid, because Chekov is just a kid and a junior officer while he is supposed to be an adult, a lieutenant, and completely capable of doing his job without abhorring his partner at the helm.

It hadn’t really been so bad when they were fighting for their lives and the lives of every single civilian living under the Federation, all of Earth and all the Enterprise. They’d been so overwhelmed by the tragedy of it all, Sulu more so because he had come all too close to a brush with death, something that Chekov had saved him from so effortlessly. And that, he’s almost certain, is where it all started: trying to thank him for it in the aftermath, when he’d really been overwhelmed with gratitude rather than the staggering death tolls. He’d seen the kid around the Academy. Everyone knows about him, the Russian whiz kid who ran around correcting tenured professors and war heroes and the most brilliant minds in the Federation when he was in the Academy, and so Sulu would have had to be stupid not to know who Pavel Chekov is. So when he came to thank him, to ingratiate himself to the brilliant mind who saved him, he was stunned when Chekov blew him off, waved it away like it was nothing more than an accomplishment that he would have made regardless, like Sulu’s life wasn’t what had hung in the balance.

It’s when they’re on the Enterprise months later, when he has to work with him every single goddamn day that Sulu realizes this might be hell, that Sartre had a point and this is his personal hell: flying his dream ship with Pavel fucking Chekov as his navigator. He’s not even sure what it is that drives him so insane, if it’s the kid’s arrogant attitude, the fact that he can do most things better than most of the ship, he knows it, and he’s not afraid to demonstrate with a grin that Kirk and the rest of the crew thinks is endearing. Sulu, on the other hand, is sure that it’s taunting, not charming. He hates that he can’t even vent his frustrations to Uhura—his go-to since the Academy—because the only time he ever did, she told him to stop being a child and promptly defended Chekov by listing all his virtues. Virtues that, as far as Sulu was concerned, were what made him so detestable.

Chekov isn’t exactly quiet about it, either, what he thinks of Sulu and his quiet but biting words, his cold and disinterested exterior. How, Sulu hears him muse to Scotty one day, is he supposed to work with someone who can’t be bothered to say more than a few words, to clarify his requests or just to be companionable in some way or another? Sulu thinks that it might be easier if he were partnered with anyone else—even Riley and his quiet singing during shifts might be better than Chekov and his youthful arrogance—but he’s not, and so he grits his teeth and bears it.

It’s only a five year mission. Only five years that he has to deal with Pavel Chekov, or maybe he’ll get lucky and Chekov will be sent on some away mission where he becomes the love slave of some alien priestess who takes a shine to skinny, obnoxious, teenage Russian ensigns with their ridiculous curly hair, pale skin and scattered freckles. Sulu hasn’t made it this far by being impatient, and he’ll be damned if he’ll be stopped now by Chekov and his annoying habits; the ones where he tangles his fingers through his hair on shift or biting his lip when he needs to work through an equation that would be impossible for anyone, but is just mildly difficult for him.

He ignores him most of the time, even when Chekov stops ignoring him on shift and starts purposefully goading him at every chance he gets, teasing him for some recent event or another, particularly when Sulu came out a little less gracefully than he might prefer. It’s on such a day eight months into the mission, eight months that he’s endured it, that he finally snaps, just can’t fucking take it any more, not when Chekov’s got this grin on his face that’s driving him insane.

“I’d like to talk to you after shift, Ensign,” he says stiffly, cutting Chekov off mid-sentence and feeling a surge of victory when Chekov snaps his mouth shut and looks back down at his console with a quiet yes, sir.

Their counterparts for beta shift arrive at the same time, but Sulu doesn’t say anything until they’re off the turbolift, on the level where most of the officers are quartered. Then he looks down at Chekov with his eyebrows pulled tightly together and slams his hand against the wall just by Chekov’s head.

“I really can’t stand your attitude, Chekov,” he snarls, or tries to, because it’s hard to stay like this when Chekov’s giving him that wide-eyed innocent look, the same one he levels on everyone else, and Sulu hates him even more for it.

“I do not understa—” Chekov starts, but Sulu has his other hand against the wall, glaring down at him furiously.

“The hell you don’t. Have you ever heard of undermining an officer? That’s what you do every day on the damn bridge with your—look, I really just… I would really like it if you cut the crap and just did your job. The only thing I ever tried to do to you was thank you for saving my goddamn life. You don’t like me, fine. Just let it go so we can work together in peace for the next four years, okay?” He starts to push away from the wall, to walk away and go back to his quarters where he can stew for the rest of the night, replicate some dinner, take a shower and jerk off before bed, still angry and frustrated and hoping it’ll relieve at least some of the tension that’s built itself up within him. He almost does just that, just as he planned, but Chekov’s expression stops him, and he glares at him again. “What?”

“You…” Chekov stops, as if he’s holding back a full on giggle, and then shakes his head, grinning and making Sulu hate him even more. “You think I do not like you?”

Sulu just takes a step back, bewildered because that’s hardly the response he expected. “Yes—I mean—you don’t not—I mean…” He sputters, trying to put it all together in his head, because if Chekov doesn’t hate him too, then he hasn’t got much of a reason to hate him in the first place, except for that time after Nero… but that, that could just be… “You act like you do,” he reasons quickly, trying to pull the situation back under control and failing already, before he’s even started trying.

Chekov’s laugh isn’t grating, not harsh, but it is amused, and Sulu isn’t sure if he hates that more or less than the idea that Chekov might hate him. He gets his answer pretty quickly when Chekov lays his hand on the back of his neck and pulls him down into a fierce kiss, nipping at his lower lip, urging him to kiss back, pressing into Sulu’s mouth and daring him to do the same to him. Sulu doesn’t know how to say no to that and he clenches Chekov’s shoulders tightly, biting back and gasping into Chekov’s mouth when he parts his lips for him, invites him in with a needy little moan that both makes everything clear and banishes any clarity of thought Sulu had remaining.

He pulls away and leans his forehead against Chekov’s, panting for breath and incoherent for a full half-minute before he manages to piece together the only logical option left for them. “My quarters,” he gasps. “They’re closer than yours—down the hall.”

After that, he’s not even sure how they actually make it there, how his codes end up tapped into the keypad or how their boots come off, followed by shirts, trousers and underwear. All he knows is that he’s got Chekov pressed into his bed, rolling their hips together and moaning, not even thinking that an hour before—hell, fifteen minutes before—he thought that he hated Chekov, that the feeling was reciprocated when, really, this was all that was reciprocated and Sulu can’t think of anything he wants more.

“Fuck,” he moans against Chekov’s ear, who moans back, reaching for his cock and letting out a little sob when Sulu grabs his straying hand and slams it into the mattress above his head, by the pillow. He can’t, however, keep Chekov’s hands at bay, not when he’s fumbling for the lube, slicking his fingers and pressing them into him. There is, however, another moment of victory when he realizes that he doesn’t even have to hold Chekov’s hands down, not when he’s gripping the sheets in tight fists and arching against him, breathing like he’s run for miles, swearing like he really does hate Sulu.

“God, Sulu—Hikaru, fuck—come on,” he pants, the smear of pre-come at the tip of his cock glinting in the lights Sulu forgot to turn down in his desperation to get closer, faster.

The sound of his name, pressed out between the moans and shallow floundering for breath, goes straight to his cock and bites his lip to hold back his own groan because he needs to be patient—he can be patient, dammit—until Chekov’s ready. Eight months of miscommunication and thoughts of abandoning Chekov to aliens with nymphomania and this is what it’s come to, and Sulu just can’t bring himself to care. He definitely can’t when he’s got three fingers in Chekov, who squirms underneath him, switching between Russian and English, begging and cursing him.

Finally, he pulls his fingers out and shudders when Chekov shouts at him unhappily, murmuring for him to be quiet when he finally pushes in and gives up trying to quiet either of them because Chekov’s too loud and so is he, groaning and clenching him close, tight as he can without care for whether it hurts him or not. “Chekov,” he sighs, pulling out slowly and slamming back in quickly. He can’t stand not being in constant motion, needing more than just this, even if it’s hard and fast and nothing at all like any other fuck he’s ever had in his life; not when he’s used to going slow and thorough. He’s always been appreciated for being a good guy, a tender lover, but Chekov’s broken him out of that, exposing parts of him that even he hadn’t quite known about.

There’s a searing pain across his back, a swipe of Chekov’s nails because he didn’t notice that he had abandoned his grip on the sheets. He gasps, choking back a scream that Chekov gladly vocalizes for him. Sulu drops his forehead against Chekov’s and growls for him to be quiet, but Chekov only laughs and pulls him into another kiss, hissing in appreciation when Sulu hits just the right angle and keeps with it until Chekov’s coming, screaming without restraint and clenching his hair in a fist, digging his nails into his back and pulsing around him until Sulu goes falling with him, cursing with his eyes pressed shut because he can see stars that have nothing to do with the ones that are always surrounding them in every direction.

It takes him a few seconds to register that he’s actually falling, tumbling down overtop Chekov, who might be laughing or heaving for breath against him. Sulu doesn’t have it in him to sit up and glare, so he just rolls off him, trying to catch his own breath, or just catch up to his own mind because he doesn’t do hate sex. It never feels quite good enough and, besides, he isn’t even remotely irritated by Chekov any more, anyway.

“So,” Chekov breathes, and it’s fucking gorgeous while he’s sweat slick and grinning at him, his hand still lingering in Sulu’s hair. “Do you still think that I hate you?”

No, Sulu thinks, he doesn’t suppose he does.

[Star Trek] through paper & refracted sun : Part VI

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:10:50 GMT

Title: through paper & refracted sun
Rating: PG (overall R)
Characters/Pairings: Hikaru Sulu/Pavel Chekov
Genre(s): Drama, Romance, Action
Warnings: ...none this chapter! :D Plot progression! Character development! And, uh, slash.
Description: There's no such thing as stepping in the same river twice. Pavel is given a choice.

Note: Beta by live_with_love and fringedweller, who by now will have to fight it out for my first born child for all that I owe the both of them. Part six of the response to this prompt at st_xi_kink. Aaaand after this we're heading toward end plot, everyone. :) Four more parts and perhaps two more interludes, and I'm hoping to have them written by the end of the month! We'll see how that works for me.

--

Pavel finds quickly that the brig is easily the most boring part of the ship. He isn’t permitted any personal items, receives meals twice a day, and spends the rest of the day sitting. The gnawing worry over what will happen, what Starfleet Command will rule when Captain Russell will be pushing for his discharge from Starfleet, eats at him all the time, every day. Too often he is too worried, too tired, too electric with fear, to sleep. There are sleepless nights and equally sleepless days, during which he turns over the ways things could finally play out. Commander Rabenold has petitioned on his behalf, but he has no idea if that’s enough. He thinks of his father if he has to return home, shamed and frowning. He thinks of Hikaru, finding out about the ruling when he might as well be on the other side of the universe, not just the other side of the quadrant.

He can’t think of things he wants to, of equations and star maps and that which he has always calmed himself with. He paces sometimes, but he’s restless and there’s no room to run in the cell. There’s barely enough room to be alive, to feel human. All he feels is caged, pacing frantically, waiting for the week to end.

Rabenold visits after his shifts, keeping him updated on what’s going on with the proceedings. There will be no change until Command makes up their mind one way or another, and Pavel already knows that there is no way of knowing how long or how short a time that could be. He paces, and when Rabenold comes on the fourth day, he looks up from the far wall and tries not to look as if this is getting to him as much as it is.

“You were authorized to have personal items,” Rabenold tells him calmly and opens the cell long enough to come inside and hand him his PADD. “Starfleet Command will come back with their decision soon. Things have been…” He trails off, pauses, and then stops entirely without finishing his thought. “You will hear soon.” And then he’s gone again.

Pavel sits back on his mattress, clutching his PADD for a moment with his eyes shut. He doesn’t know what to think of Rabenold’s cryptic suggestion that things are not going entirely well and he doesn’t want to think of what it took to afford him even this luxury. He’s grateful, more so when he keys in his codes and his PADD flashes to life and he sees a series of messages from Hikaru.

The first few, from the immediate aftermath, are routine, with a touch of concern in the later ones. The concern fades, though, when Pavel opens a message where Hikaru tells him that he’s heard about the move for disciplinary action. He wonders how he’s heard of it, he has certainly never heard of the affairs of another ship being broadcast to the fleet. Then again, he supposes that lieutenants violating the Prime Directive are news when it happens off the Enterprise. He isn’t even sure what’s happened on Sirius IV in the aftermath of their disastrous away mission, if there has been any need for diplomatic negotiations after his blunder. He has no way of knowing either way, and it’s certain that no one is telling him, either.

After a few minutes of methodically reading through his messages, he finally composes one to Hikaru, explaining what happened the best way he knows how while being brief. His attempts to keep it short are aborted by the third paragraph, but he hasn’t had time to recover from the trauma on Sirius IV, and he just needs to talk about it all. He’s seen death before on the Enterprise, but he was never one of the commanding officers on a mission. He understands a little more why Hikaru would come back from away missions when some officer had died with a haunted, dark look in his eyes and an overwhelming need to just talk about it. And so he talks, writing the whole thing out, venting his fears and frustrations of the last few days, and sends the message.

Messages between ships take some time to transmit, but not very much. To his surprise though, Hikaru’s response comes within minutes. When he opens it, it’s disappointingly short and cryptic, even as it’s a little hopeful.

I’ll talk to Uhura about talking face-to-face. Later this week. Let me know.

It’s not what he was looking for, especially when he needs someone to talk to, but it’s something. He repeats parts of the message to Uhura and receives a longer response, reminders that he’s strong and he’s survived this far. She mentions his talking to Hikaru soon, which confirms that it’s going to happen. He takes a deep breath and sets aside his PADD. He doesn’t know what to think of this. Hearing from them doesn’t exactly comfort him or alleviate his nervousness about the ruling. He doesn’t exactly feel chastised, but he does feel like he’s stuck in limbo with no control over where his life is going to go.

After a minute, the heavy weight of all his worries and fears settles back on him and he stands up again, breathing out a slow sigh when he starts to pace again, waiting with forced patience he wouldn’t otherwise have. He doesn’t know what else to do.

--

He’s pacing when he hears the doors to the brig open and turns around, expecting to see Rabenold in his daily visit. Time means little to him here, and it’s better not to think about it, even with his PADD, because then he doesn’t have to agonize about how long it’s taking to drag by. His visitor—he’s the only one in the brig, so they must be for him—takes longer than Rabenold to come to the cell, but he waits patiently, standing at attention.

To his enormous surprise, it is Captain Russell standing outside his cell, his arms clasped behind his back and staring in at him. “Lieutenant,” he says calmly, and Pavel straightens further.

“Captain,” he says back to him and wishes his voice wouldn’t crack from disuse. He can’t think of any reason for Russell to be here aside from his court martial, and his heart hammers in his chest.

“Starfleet Command commends you for your heroics on Sirius IV,” he begins with obvious dislike for the words he is forced to say. “And clears you of the charges on account of your situation on the planet being unusually desperate.”

Pavel breathes an enormous sigh of relief before remembering himself when Russell glares at him sternly.

“However, Lieutenant, I do not need to remind you that this is luck on your part, and due to the efforts of Commander Rabenold and the other members of the landing party, despite my advice that they do not encourage rule-breaking.” Russell doesn’t make a move to release him from the cell, not for a long moment, but then he reaches over and keys in the necessary codes and the force field holding him there falls away. For a full minute, Pavel can’t move, and then he picks up his PADD and starts out of the cell.

“Before you go, Lieutenant,” Russell interrupts him as he’s about to pass by, turning to look at him with a deep-set frown. “I know you don’t like it here. You’ve made it perfectly clear that you don’t, but if you intend to keep out of trouble on my ship, then perhaps you should reconsider your loyalties. This is not Kirk’s ship. This is not the Enterprise, and defying regulation cannot go unanswered by discipline forever.”

Pavel stops and looks at him in frank surprise, stunned that Russell has even said the words. All of the events that have happened over the last two weeks, however, are too much for him, and his face darkens. “I am doing what I can, Captain,” he tells him coldly and tries to keep walking past.

“It isn’t enough, Chekov,” Russell watches him walk away, his expression like granite. “It’s never going to be enough as long as you carry the attitude you have been.”

He grits his teeth and reminds himself that this is a superior officer, but superior officers rarely try to goad their crew. Pavel whips around and stares back at him. “You have just put me through a court martial for saving your crew, and you say I am not giving enough?”

Russell’s expression doesn’t falter, but he does take a few steps closer to him. “Do you listen to yourself, Lieutenant? Yes, they are my crew and I will do everything I can to keep them safe. You’re here, but you act like they aren’t your crew. You will always belong somewhere else for as long as you think like that. You can perform all the heroics you want, break all the regulations you want, be as much like Kirk as you want, but you will never be part of the Reliant’s crew as long as you treat us as separate from you. No one is blind, Lieutenant Chekov. We aren’t fools, and if you intend to continue to be disruptive to the balance that has kept this ship together when we have suffered, then you’re welcome to request to be transferred off the ship. I will gladly sign off to transfer you wherever you want.”

“Captain,” Pavel says, surprised again. The offer is tempting, so much more tempting than he wants to admit to, and Russell seems sincere; he couldn’t be anything but sincere with that cold, understated fury on his hardened face.

“You think you can come onto this ship after everything my crew has been through and expect them to accept you without returning the favor? I demand excellence from my crew, but you could have all the talent in the Federation behind the navigation console and you can do what Kirk has taught you and throw away your life, but it will mean nothing as long as you have no loyalty to this crew.”

Pavel finds that he doesn’t have words, and this time it’s Russell brushing past him, taking long, even strides out of the brig and leaving him there, clutching his PADD. He has been trying, but he could try harder. He’s risked his life for these people, but, with the exception of the discussion he had with Rabenold on Sirius IV, he hasn’t dared to open himself to them, to let go of the Enterprise and his lingering heartbreak. It would be easier if it came both ways, if Russell hadn’t planted that first seed of doubt that this would work out, but…

He was the one who came into this with a fatalistic acceptance from the beginning, from the moment he received his transfer orders. If he’s been alone, it’s because he hasn’t tried like he had on the Enterprise. Pavel had given everything he had to belong the first time, had made friends for his whole life, and never thought that he might have to do it again and again.

For a few long minutes, Pavel just stands alone in the brig, until his PADD flares to life and tells him that he has a message waiting for him. He doesn’t look at it, just tucks it under his arm and walks slowly back to his quarters.

--

Pavel is scheduled for Alpha shift the following morning, and so he has the rest of the day and night to think about the confrontation in the brig. Russell has a point, even if Pavel doesn’t like it; even if he didn’t have to make his point in quite the way he did. He’s been offered the chance to transfer, though, as if it was always just that easy. It can’t be. He can’t imagine, after all the trauma of transferring him to the Reliant in the first place, that it could just be so simple as Russell signing off on a transfer back to the Enterprise.

The message on his PADD is from Uhura, telling him that she’s arranged communications between the Enterprise and the Reliant on his personal console. He doesn’t want to know what she’s had to go through to arrange it, but she has, and he couldn’t be more grateful to her for it. The communication link is scheduled in half an hour, which is barely enough time for Pavel to clean himself up, take a shower, and prepare for it.

When the connection is established Uhura’s face appears on his screen and she looks him over the best she can, frowning deeply.

“Chekov,” she breathes at him, and Pavel guiltily realizes that this is the first time he’s actually seen her since he left the Enterprise months—a lifetime—before. “I heard—How are you?”

“Uhura,” he says softly and forces half a smile that comes out too weary and heavy, so he lets it drop. “I am tired. It has been a long week.”

She nods and looks at him again, then forces a smile of her own. It’s too strained for her face; when Uhura smiles, it’s always so much easier and calming. “Let me get Sulu,” she says, but before she can turn away from the screen, he chokes on his words and finally speaks.

“Wait—Uhura.”

“Hm?” She turns back to the screen and Pavel smiles genuinely for her, despite the effort it takes from him.

“It is good to see you again,” he breathes and means it completely. The Enterprise is where he has belonged, even if he’s gone now. It’s good to see the face of someone who knows him as well as he knows them, but there’s a distance that has nothing to do with light-years and everything to do with time, growing older and the inherently human ability to adjust to whatever happens.

Her smile is easy this time, just like he remembers it, and she nods. “Good to see you, too, Chekov.” For a moment she looks at him, an old friend glad to see a face they’ve missed. She then stands up out of her chair; beckoning to someone Pavel can’t see until Hikaru steps into view from where he must have been waiting to the side.

“I heard you’ve been making trouble,” Hikaru says, but both his voice and smile crack when he looks at Pavel.

“I did not know gossip traveled so well between ships,” Pavel can’t help but smile. It’s been over a month since he’s seen Hikaru, and he looks tired, as if he’s been worried, but he’s well and that’s all Pavel can bring himself to care about when he just needed to see him. Even before they were lovers, before everything fell apart and fell into place at the same time, Hikaru was the person he has gone to for comfort and advice. He pulls his desk chair over and sits in it heavily. “You knew about this before I told you.”

“Yeah,” Hikaru sighs and sits down in Uhura’s chair. “Captain Russell filed complaints against Kirk for misguiding junior officers. That’s when we found out that you had been arrested.”

“Misguiding junior officers?” Pavel asks incredulously. He’s sure he’s never heard of the charge being filed against anyone since a captain urged some of his crew to take up prostitution while on shore leave, and that had been forty years prior, but if Russell filed a complaint against Kirk’s captaincy it would at least explain how the crew of the Enterprise found out about his court martial.

“Starfleet threw out the complaint with his recommendation to have you discharged. Kirk gave testimony on behalf of your character, since you were on the Enterprise longer than you’ve been on the Reliant. He’s been keeping me—all of us—updated.” Hikaru smiles at him, a little more genuine this time, and stares at Pavel like he’s the only thing keeping him alive, like a breath of air that isn’t enough no matter how many times it’s taken. “Oh, God. Pavel, I thought they were going to go through with it, the way Kirk was talking.”

“Everything is fine now, Hikaru,” Pavel tells him gently, even though it’s a lie. There is still Russell’s offer to consider, if it was even an offer in the first place, or just a reminder that everything about his career is held under his power. “I am not being discharged from Starfleet. I will return to the bridge tomorrow.”

“You didn’t say you were having problems with the captain. You said you missed us, you’ve been having trouble adjusting—I have, too. God, you don’t even know how hard it’s been for me. You just… you never said anything about Russell after you got onto the Reliant.”

For a moment, Pavel considers telling him everything: that he’s had trouble and Russell has hardly made it easier on him, that he might come back to the Enterprise, or even that it would just be easier on the Enterprise, but there’s nothing Hikaru can do about it. He has to make the decision on his own, and he can’t expect Kirk or Hikaru or anyone but himself to fight his battles. Instead, he shakes his head. “I could have done better, and I will,” he promises and looks over Hikaru, the crease in his forehead as his eyebrows tighten and he frowns.

“Pavel, this shouldn’t have even happened. I saw the report from Sirius IV and Starfleet made the right call, awarding a commendation instead of a dishonorable discharge like Russell wanted.”

“Hikaru,” Pavel interrupts him and smiles at him, wishes he could reach through the screen and brush away the stray piece of hair that keeps falling into his face. “Trust me, okay?”

They stare at one another, and then Hikaru lowers his head and laughs. “It’s hard to remember that you don’t need me to look after you. You never did, but now…”

“I love you, too,” Pavel grins and twists his hands together where Hikaru can’t see, missing him so much that it hurts. This isn’t enough and there’s no way it ever could be enough for either of them.

Hikaru looks up at him and smiles. From the side of the screen, he sees Uhura’s mouth tighten unhappily, but her gaze isn’t at him, not at the screen but down, as if she’s looking at Hikaru, whose hands are out of sight of the monitor. She turns away and leaves them alone, aware that this is a private conversation that she probably shouldn’t be present for.

“Tell me about the Enterprise,” Pavel tells him, fingering the fabric of his trousers under the desk. “We have said enough about me.”

They share a knowing look for a moment, but Hikaru gives and says nothing about it. He just leans back and tells him about his most recent mission. Pavel doesn’t even have to close his eyes and focus to recall the familiar comfort of the Enterprise: the pristine, metallic smell that filters through the whole ship, the glow of the lights around him at all hours and the hum of the warp engines that the entire ship moves with, the only things keeping them separated from the cold death of space. He basks in the memories for the entire conversation and by the time Uhura returns to tell them that they’ll have to shut off the connection, he’s sure he’s ready.

With a deep breath, Pavel shuts off his console, stands up, and lets go of all those things. He can do better than he has been with the Reliant and he knows it.

--

The forms for transfer are sent to his PADD sometime during the evening, and Pavel looks them over. He hadn’t actually thought that Russell was serious, but the forms prove that he is. He considers them again, turning over the option in his head. It’s all he’s wanted, but he knows himself well enough to know that if he does this, gives in and takes the offer, then he’ll never quite forgive himself for it. He shouldn’t feel like he has anything to prove, but he does. It’s as he told Hikaru so long before: the crew of the Enterprise made him the officer he is, but he wants to prove himself as more than that. It’s clear that Russell doesn’t think he could make it on any other ship, is all but daring him to prove otherwise.

He hasn’t slept more than a few hours, but he has spent plenty of time making up his mind about the transfer, and his well shined boots are a good indication of that. When the doors to the turbolift open, Pavel is surprised to see Rabenold standing by the far wall. His face betrays nothing, but it’s when he speaks that Pavel understands that he’s been waiting for him.

“The captain said you were considering transfer.”

Pavel presses the button that will take them to the bridge and stares at the doors with Rabenold. “I have considered it, yes,” he admits honestly.

There is a long pause, but Rabenold doesn’t look away from the doors when he finally speaks. “The captain is a strict man, and I understand your experiences on the ship could have been different, but he is a good leader. I would not want you to leave with the impression that Captain Russell has ever failed any of us.” Rabenold looks down at him, and Pavel stares back up and smiles.

“I said I had considered it, Commander,” Pavel tells him as the doors open and he waits for Rabenold to lead the way onto the bridge. “Not that I was transferring from the Reliant.” He’s sure he isn’t imagining the surprised relief on Rabenold’s face and feels a pang that he had even considered the transfer. The crew of the Enterprise has been his own for so long, and he never considered that, in its own way, the crew of the Reliant is starting to mean just as much to him.

There is only a second of silence before Rabenold steps onto the bridge and Pavel follows him, pausing long enough to salute Russell before taking his station at the helm beside him.

“Lieutenant Chekov,” Russell’s voice isn’t a surprise, but the note of amusement in it is. Pavel turns to look at him and is further surprised to see that Russell’s expression isn’t cold. “Chart a course to Starbase Fourteen.”

“Aye, sir.” Pavel acknowledges immediately, turning back to his console and entering the coordinates with a small smile.

It’s not like the Enterprise, but Pavel supposes that it never will be. This is the Reliant and this is where he is. He breathes in the smell of this ship, consciously familiarizes himself with it as he hasn’t done yet, as he hasn’t thought to do. The fundamentals are the same, the hum of warp engines and the distant smell of the heated metal as it drifts through the ship’s ventilation system. The controls are used to his touch even if he’s not used to them, as if they’ve been waiting for his epiphany, to come to know them the way they already know him. Pavel takes a breath, completes his work with the star maps in front of him and immediately transmits the course to Rabenold and his console.

He closes his eyes as they glide easily into warp and thanks the stars around him—all the stars are his lucky ones—that he’s even been given a second chance. He promises himself not to waste it. He finally feels comfortable with this, like he’s not betraying the Enterprise and the people he cares for there by doing what he needs to. When Rabenold interrupts the reverie he slides into as he works, asks him to the rec room that night with the rest of the crew, Pavel doesn’t have to think twice. This is where he is.

So this is where he’ll belong.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | first interlude | Part V

[All Fandoms]

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:28:13 GMT

Snagged from eudaimon

Give me a pairing and a prompt and I will write you a fic that is ~~no more than three lines long!~~ going to probably be more than three lines, due to layout.

All pairings, all fandoms I've ever written for, anything I know, I'll write it. Consider it welcoming to new f-listers, love to old f-listers (those of you have requests on my other meme, know that yours are in progress), and general procrastination on my BB fic and other long-term projects.

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- Nu!Kirk+Shunsui, inglorious bastards – for jaina

“It’s all in the smile, I’d bet you,” the captain tells him and turns the smile in question on Kirk. He’s not sure if it’s supposed to be titillating or teasing or somehow a bit of both, but he grins back just the same.

“You got it,” he says and slams his glass back onto the table. “Five minutes, tops. I’ll get the girl on the left. You get the one on the right.”

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- Kira Izuru/Winry Rockbell, playing doctor – for akane_nara

His attempts at reason, reminders that he was the doctor here, that he appreciated her efforts but his cold would go away with bed rest, were silenced quickly with a sharp look and an all too violent fluffing of his pillow as she shoved him back against it.

Honestly, though, Izuru wouldn’t have minded her taking care of him, really, if it weren’t for the soup.

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- Kankuro/Hinamori Momo – for pretty_kozi

There’s a point where he stops thinking of ring shopping like choosing his chains and more like something he should be excited about; something to look forward to, a future, a new way of living life. He’s not sure when it came, when it passed him by, but he’s sure he hasn’t reached the point where he’s comfortable acknowledging it, not even when Momo asks if he’s excited.

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- Sulu/Chekov, fashion faggotry – for mirroriste

Demora doesn’t even have to reach the bottom of the steps and Pavel doesn’t even have to look up from his PADD before sending her back up to change with a roll of his eyes.

“Her fashion sense,” he tells Hikaru evenly, “Is your fault.”

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- Chekov/Sulu - you're the only one that can hurt me like this – for eudaimon

Hikaru could get him to do anything, could break him apart easily, with nothing but a word. He’s sure he could do the same if he tried but he hates him for it, just a little; just enough to make every touch, every graze of skin to skin and lip to lip, a desperate plea to never abuse the power.

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- Sulu/Chekov ~ San Francisco – for hollycomb

There are lonely nights when he realizes that he has spoken English and lived here for twice as many years as he has spoken Russian and run wild in the streets of Sankt-Peterburg. Those are the times he forces himself to think of his blessings, to count a whole lifetime of them. There have been years in Starfleet, years still yet to come, and Hikaru, who doesn’t ask, has never asked, just understands.

It’s really because of that, these years of understanding and steadfast love, that he’s stayed so long.

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and we burn in heaven - Chekov/Sulu, love is like a friendship caught on fire. – for alldoubtaboutit

This was such a natural change for them, as simple as breathing, their metamorphosis from friends to lovers, as if they had caught aflame the moment they met and were only waiting—waiting—waiting for the inevitable resurrection.

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while my blood's still flowing - Chekov/Sulu, the open road – for duckduck

He pulls his head down and they laugh, clinging together and too drunk to know what it looks like, what’s happening to them, to remember abstract concepts like Hikaru and Pavel when there's only we, us and here, now, please to think of. They’re just falling all over each other, laughing harder when people stop to stare on the street. It’s only by happenstance that he stumbles back into the wall and he follows so quickly after, pressing against him with breath by his ear and his jaw and his cheek and they lose themselves completely.

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Sulu/Chekov, "what about Uhura?" – for mirroriste

It’s a desperate, ridiculous hope that perhaps changing the subject could change what was always going to happen—how could anything else happen? It’s where they’ve always been going, since the first time they met, since the first glance across the helm with hooded, lusty eyes and grins that were all too obvious.

Uhura, the subject being changed to, is across the room, laughing with an old friend from the Academy, and it’s then, realizing that nothing’s changing this, that Pavel finally turns into the kiss, gives in and tangles his hands in Hikaru’s hair. Uhura will catch up later.

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Iba/Nanao - Out of the Rain – for winteraconite

He’s never carried an umbrella, not once in all his life. There’s no storm he can’t brave and a thousand things he has to fear more than a little rain, but he walks down the street with his arms tucked in his sleeves, the cold rain pouring over his skin, and is actually surprised at the sharp yell behind him.

It’s not until her umbrella has snapped open and is hovering above his head that Iba actually realizes what’s just happened, that Ise is looking away as if she’s embarrassed. He doesn’t protest, just falls in step beside her, his footfalls a quiet thank you.

Yes, okay, he can brave the rain. He just doesn’t have to do it alone.

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Kira/Momo - tribbles – for live_with_love

"What is it?" Izuru stared at it, just barely stopping himself from prodding it with a finger while Momo curled her hands around the small ball of... well, fluff was his best guess.

"I don't care," she declared, beaming at it happily. "It's cute!" And that was the last word on it because Izuru knew better than to argue.

At least, he thought later, when there were innumerable heaps of the strange balls of purring fluff, his caution hadn't been unfounded.

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- Toph/Aang, nature – for orange_fuu

It’s hers to be rough, callous and secretive. It’s his to care, to be honest and whimsical. Somehow, they’ll make it work.