chaseasteroid (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chaseasteroid) wrote2011-01-17 09:39 pm
chaseasteroid) wrote2011-01-17 09:39 pm
Entry tags:
[Star Trek] Refit (5/?)
Title: Refit (5/?)
Author:![[personal profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chaseasteroid (AKA racheldeet)
Pairings: Chekov/Sulu, with a side of Kirk/McCoy and Rand/Riley
Rating: PG
Summary: Pavel had grown up in the cold, where clouds did not form as easily and the lights of the city were distant. Stars had always been easy to see from there, even if the sun was not fond of visiting.
Previously: "Under Construction.", Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four
Note: Sorry for the delay! A relative died over christmas, another is in the hospital, I moved apartments...you know the drill!
They didn't have nearly enough time to recover. Kirk managed to cut a deal in negotiations, but it included the Enterprise getting the hell out of orbit as fast as she could. They were beamed up with a handful of scans that McCoy had convinced the aliens to let him take, a large box of organic specimins from Pavel and Hikaru's trip to the surface, and an agreement for future contact that Starfleet was going to hate.
"Not much else I could do," Kirk grumbled as they materialized in the transporter room. "If I had ten more years to talk to them I might work out something better, but only maybe."
"The brass will live," McCoy said. "I will kill someone for a shower right now, I swear."
Pavel agreed. He wanted nothing more than a shower and to sleep in his own bed. Kirk wanted to debrief, though, so bed at least would have to wait. Hikaru half-dragged him to their shared chambers. Pavel's feet felt disconnected from his brain; he had done nothing physically taxing, but he was exhausted. He showered in record time, and sat naked in bed while Hikaru did the same.
Hikaru returned exactly six minutes later; the longer setting for the sonic shower was more luxurious, but they both rarely used it. He lay next to Pavel and pressed their bodies together. "Are you okay?"
"Mm, just tired."
"That's not what I meant."
Pavel forced himself to sift through the mass of emotions churning in him. Intense love for Hikaru, mixed with disappointment and sadness at the loss of his mother. The latter two had been growing since he had woken, but had not yet overtaken him, to his surprise. He wanted to be sad, and mourn the loss all over again. But it was like he did not have the ability to anymore. "I don't know," he admitted. "I think so, but…"
"You're processing."
Their eyes met, and they both smiled. Hikaru checked the chrono, then winked at him, smile brightening. "We have twenty minutes."
Pavel was a genius; it didn't take him more than a second to catch up with what Hikaru was thinking. "That's not enough time," he giggled.
"What, you've never heard of a quickie?"
Pavel rolled over on him, and kissed on Hikaru's face. "I'm always ready to learn."
* * *
After that, Pavel did exactly what he always did when he was bothered by something: he threw himself into his work. To the untrained eye, it wasn't much different from one of his obsessive moods — he took the occasional nigh shift at the lab, and stayed up too late to finish a set of computations scribbled on the wall in dry-erase — but Hikaru could tell the difference. It was in how he threw himself into it, not because he was interested, but because it was an easy thing to hide in.
Hikaru wished there was something he could do to try to make it easier. Harassing Pavel made him retreat further a lot of the time, so he walked on eggshells — pushing, then pulling away again. The one thing he could do, reliably, without fail, was to be ready when Pavel came stumbling in after a long shift, ready to talk.
Tonight was not that night. Pavel came to lay with him sometime after 0300, and gently put his head on Hikaru's stomach. He played with the drawstring on Hikaru's sleeping pants, but didn't say anything at all, as if content with just this. And maybe he was, but it was hard to tell.
Hikaru didn't want to break the silence, but he finally did. "Are you okay?"
Hesitation before he nodded, nose nudging Hikaru's navel. "I am now, I think."
"You've been doing a lot of thinking." It was a charged comment, a question without being one, and he felt he was toing some invisible line by voicing it.
Pavel kissed his belly. "I'm okay. I had to work things out in my head, but I think I found my peace."
That was the real issue, in the end. Hikaru accepted it, playing with Pavel's short curls and studying the low plays of light on the ceiling. In some rooms the lights were kept static, but they had theirs fluctuate the way the moon did on earth; it made them both feel a little better, irrational as it was. It was edging toward the west now, toward dawn.
Pavel poked him. "Are you going to sleep?"
"Wasn't really planning on it. Early shift." He always waited up for him, even tonight. "I love you," he said, just because he liked to say it.
"I love you too," Pavel replied, words enlongated by a yawn. "No shift, though. We have the day off."
"Why?"
"I asked. I have something I want to show you — it's important, to me, but first we sleep, yes?"
As if sleeping was easy when he had just been promised something like that. But Pavel was half-dead on top of him, and it would have to wait. Light snores began to drift from his belly area; Pavel was asleep.
"What the hell are you thinking, Pasha?" he asked the curly head, but only more snores answered him.
It took hours for him to doze off, and when he did, he dreamt of a tall sailing ship, and a sense of crushing loss as it crashed against the rocks just offshore, hull splintering. When he woke, he remembered little of it, though the feeling of loss lingered long after.
Pavel was out of bed, sitting cross-legged and shirtless at the low build-out that serviced as a desk in the tiny cabin. He was paging idly through a notebook — an honest-to-God notebook, with paper and covers decorated with fabric — and looked up when Hikaru began to stretch. "You finally slept," Pavel said brightly. "I went for coffee."
That got Hikaru upright. He loved coffee the way Scotty loved sandwiches; it had actually been known to freak some people out. He was on his feet and taking a deep draught from the mug in record time, and almost moaned aloud at how wonderful it was.
"That's disturbing," Pavel hummed.
"If you didn't love it, you wouldn't get me coffee." Hikaru came to sit on top of the desk, ducking his head so it didn't hit the bulkhead. "What's that?"
"This is what I wanted to show you." His long fingers held the book lightly, like it was a precious artifact from a lost civilization, or a baby bird whose wings might break if one breathed on it too roughly. "My mama kept a lot of diaries, but this is the only one I managed to get when I left home."
More precious than all of that, then. More precious than the dilithium core of the warp engines, or the tea that had shown them the impossible. There was no question whether this was real or a dream. This had been made by human hands, and cared for carefully under Pavel's watchful eye.
"Oh Pasha," Hikaru breathed, unsure what else to say.
Pavel took one of his hands and gently, reverently, laid the diary in it. He then placed the other on top of it. "I want you to read it."
Hikaru held Pavel's gaze as long as he could, but ended up being the first to blink, his eyes watering a little with the seriousness of what he was being trusted with. "Thank you," he whispered, then lightly kissed Pavel on the lips. "It's an honor."
Something occured to him. "I don't read Russian, though." He'd picked up a few spoken phrases from Pavel, of course — it was hard not to, really, even for those not sleeping with him — but a language with eleven vowels was out of Hikaru's ability to comprehend. There was a reason his father had given up trying to teach him Japanese, after all.
Pavel just smirked, though. "Papa wasn't a drunk when she was alive, but he was…nosey, the word is, yes? She wrote her diary in Standard because she knew he could not read it. It's not the best…but you can read."
Hikaru kissed him again, more grateful than anything else. While he had known for ages that he loved Pavel, and Pavel loved him in return, this was taking them to a new level of trust. He felt like he should have something to give in return. Their foreheads pressed together, eyes closed, he admitted that much.
"You don't have to give me anything. I just want you to understand."
He almost winced at that. He had known from the start he had no frame of reference to try to relate to Pavel, and he had struggled with understanding why it was still such a painful issue. He would do his best. That was all he could offer.
* * *
Page 76
It is so shameful not to be able to have a large family. I continue to try not to feel guilty, but it seems as though I have done something terribly wrong for God to do this to me. I work twice as hard, now, to try to give Pavel the teachings he is missing out on by being one alone, rather than one of many. Andrei does not understand. I do not expect him to. He marches forward, never back. The way of a man who follows where others lead. I wish my Pavel to be both a follower, and one who may lead. He must be able to see backwards as well as onward. There is no use ignoring a wound, and how one got it. One must nurse it, and think on how it was given, in order to avoid it in the future.
I do not think my Standard is good enough to explain.
What I mean is that he is our only chance to do well. We must do what we can. I must do what I can.
* * *
It took less than two days to read it all, and then he read it again. When he found parts he liked, he would send Pavel short quotes to his PADD — especially if they were not on shift together. He stopped the first time he got a message from Kirk to cut it out, because he didn't need his navigator bursting into tears in the middle of an asteroid field, thanks. Pavel returned that evening looking more than a little contrite.
"I'm sorry," he hissed. "I hope I did not get you reprimanded. The captain is…overly perceptive."
Hikaru just laughed at him and pulled him toward the shower. "Slap on the wrist. He knows a mistake when he sees one." He worked on undressing them both.
"Pushy today," Pavel sighed, though he definitely wasn't objecting. He jerked his own shirt off, then distracted Hikaru long enough to kiss him thoroughly.
"I made you cry. Can't let that go without making it up to you." The rest of their clothes wound their way into piles on the floor. He flicked on the water — they kept hot-water showers as an occasional treat, preferring the efficiancy of sonic showers the rest of the time — and pulled them both inside.
Pavel pressed against him like he wanted sex — he was eighteen, of course he wanted sex — but that wasn't the goal this time. The warm water drummed on Hikaru's neck and shoulders, tension he hadn't known he was carrying ebbing away. He kissed Pavel with an open mouth, tracing every corner he could reach like it was unexplored territory, then turned them around so the younger man was under the spray. "No sex right now. Just relax for me."
He made a little contented sound in the back of his throat, and let his arms fall to his sides — open and at ease, for once. Hikaru guided those arms to the shower's wall, to give him a better angle. He started the gentle massage at the base of his spine, just above his hips, rubbing easy circles into muscles that remained clenched no matter how much he willed them to relax. Pavel practically melted, and honest-to-god mewled a little.
"Sounds like that should be illegal."
Pavel curled his fingers so that he was flipping Hikaru off. Hikaru actually giggled at it before digging his fingers into Pavel's hips, and getting another whine. Their ration of hot water began to run cold before all the knots had been worked free, but it was an improvement. They toweled themselves off before tumbling into bed. Pavel kissed him sweetly, and whispered "thank you," lips brushing his cheek.
"Tell me something," Hikaru asked after a long while. "Why did you wait to show me the diary?"
Pavel blushed deeply. "Do not ask," he mumbled, and buried his face against Hikaru's shoulder.
"Please?"
"It's stupid."
He tugged Pavel back to look in his eyes. "Pavel."
Pavel sighed. "I was afraid that if I shared what I had of her, I would lose her. She wouldn't be mine anymore. But it is different now that you've seen her the way I remember her…" he ducked his head a little.
It didn't make any sense, really. But Pavel had always been strange when it came to his family, and he wasn't about to judge him for that. He just kissed him on the forehead. "Thank you for sharing with me. I promise, Pasha, it doesn't make her any less yours."
They got comfortable again, lightly touching all the way down their bodies — from foreheads to fingertips to knees to feet — and Hikaru had almost dozed off before he remembered something else. "I've never heard you play piano," he yawned. "You said she taught you? She wrote about how much she loved it…"
Pavel giggled like a girl and nudged a little closer. "If you can find a piano — a real piano, 'Karu — then I will play for you."
* * *
Page 109
Four hours spent fixing keys on the piano. Too much time, but I refuse to get a new piano; this is my father's. Even those that I use when performing do not seem right. They lack depth and soul. The notes are correct but there is no emotion, only cold fact…some day, I will say this and will be thought insane. But I know I am right. An old piano is the only kind of piano that is.
Author:
chaseasteroid (AKA racheldeet)Pairings: Chekov/Sulu, with a side of Kirk/McCoy and Rand/Riley
Rating: PG
Summary: Pavel had grown up in the cold, where clouds did not form as easily and the lights of the city were distant. Stars had always been easy to see from there, even if the sun was not fond of visiting.
Previously: "Under Construction.", Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four
Note: Sorry for the delay! A relative died over christmas, another is in the hospital, I moved apartments...you know the drill!
They didn't have nearly enough time to recover. Kirk managed to cut a deal in negotiations, but it included the Enterprise getting the hell out of orbit as fast as she could. They were beamed up with a handful of scans that McCoy had convinced the aliens to let him take, a large box of organic specimins from Pavel and Hikaru's trip to the surface, and an agreement for future contact that Starfleet was going to hate.
"Not much else I could do," Kirk grumbled as they materialized in the transporter room. "If I had ten more years to talk to them I might work out something better, but only maybe."
"The brass will live," McCoy said. "I will kill someone for a shower right now, I swear."
Pavel agreed. He wanted nothing more than a shower and to sleep in his own bed. Kirk wanted to debrief, though, so bed at least would have to wait. Hikaru half-dragged him to their shared chambers. Pavel's feet felt disconnected from his brain; he had done nothing physically taxing, but he was exhausted. He showered in record time, and sat naked in bed while Hikaru did the same.
Hikaru returned exactly six minutes later; the longer setting for the sonic shower was more luxurious, but they both rarely used it. He lay next to Pavel and pressed their bodies together. "Are you okay?"
"Mm, just tired."
"That's not what I meant."
Pavel forced himself to sift through the mass of emotions churning in him. Intense love for Hikaru, mixed with disappointment and sadness at the loss of his mother. The latter two had been growing since he had woken, but had not yet overtaken him, to his surprise. He wanted to be sad, and mourn the loss all over again. But it was like he did not have the ability to anymore. "I don't know," he admitted. "I think so, but…"
"You're processing."
Their eyes met, and they both smiled. Hikaru checked the chrono, then winked at him, smile brightening. "We have twenty minutes."
Pavel was a genius; it didn't take him more than a second to catch up with what Hikaru was thinking. "That's not enough time," he giggled.
"What, you've never heard of a quickie?"
Pavel rolled over on him, and kissed on Hikaru's face. "I'm always ready to learn."
After that, Pavel did exactly what he always did when he was bothered by something: he threw himself into his work. To the untrained eye, it wasn't much different from one of his obsessive moods — he took the occasional nigh shift at the lab, and stayed up too late to finish a set of computations scribbled on the wall in dry-erase — but Hikaru could tell the difference. It was in how he threw himself into it, not because he was interested, but because it was an easy thing to hide in.
Hikaru wished there was something he could do to try to make it easier. Harassing Pavel made him retreat further a lot of the time, so he walked on eggshells — pushing, then pulling away again. The one thing he could do, reliably, without fail, was to be ready when Pavel came stumbling in after a long shift, ready to talk.
Tonight was not that night. Pavel came to lay with him sometime after 0300, and gently put his head on Hikaru's stomach. He played with the drawstring on Hikaru's sleeping pants, but didn't say anything at all, as if content with just this. And maybe he was, but it was hard to tell.
Hikaru didn't want to break the silence, but he finally did. "Are you okay?"
Hesitation before he nodded, nose nudging Hikaru's navel. "I am now, I think."
"You've been doing a lot of thinking." It was a charged comment, a question without being one, and he felt he was toing some invisible line by voicing it.
Pavel kissed his belly. "I'm okay. I had to work things out in my head, but I think I found my peace."
That was the real issue, in the end. Hikaru accepted it, playing with Pavel's short curls and studying the low plays of light on the ceiling. In some rooms the lights were kept static, but they had theirs fluctuate the way the moon did on earth; it made them both feel a little better, irrational as it was. It was edging toward the west now, toward dawn.
Pavel poked him. "Are you going to sleep?"
"Wasn't really planning on it. Early shift." He always waited up for him, even tonight. "I love you," he said, just because he liked to say it.
"I love you too," Pavel replied, words enlongated by a yawn. "No shift, though. We have the day off."
"Why?"
"I asked. I have something I want to show you — it's important, to me, but first we sleep, yes?"
As if sleeping was easy when he had just been promised something like that. But Pavel was half-dead on top of him, and it would have to wait. Light snores began to drift from his belly area; Pavel was asleep.
"What the hell are you thinking, Pasha?" he asked the curly head, but only more snores answered him.
It took hours for him to doze off, and when he did, he dreamt of a tall sailing ship, and a sense of crushing loss as it crashed against the rocks just offshore, hull splintering. When he woke, he remembered little of it, though the feeling of loss lingered long after.
Pavel was out of bed, sitting cross-legged and shirtless at the low build-out that serviced as a desk in the tiny cabin. He was paging idly through a notebook — an honest-to-God notebook, with paper and covers decorated with fabric — and looked up when Hikaru began to stretch. "You finally slept," Pavel said brightly. "I went for coffee."
That got Hikaru upright. He loved coffee the way Scotty loved sandwiches; it had actually been known to freak some people out. He was on his feet and taking a deep draught from the mug in record time, and almost moaned aloud at how wonderful it was.
"That's disturbing," Pavel hummed.
"If you didn't love it, you wouldn't get me coffee." Hikaru came to sit on top of the desk, ducking his head so it didn't hit the bulkhead. "What's that?"
"This is what I wanted to show you." His long fingers held the book lightly, like it was a precious artifact from a lost civilization, or a baby bird whose wings might break if one breathed on it too roughly. "My mama kept a lot of diaries, but this is the only one I managed to get when I left home."
More precious than all of that, then. More precious than the dilithium core of the warp engines, or the tea that had shown them the impossible. There was no question whether this was real or a dream. This had been made by human hands, and cared for carefully under Pavel's watchful eye.
"Oh Pasha," Hikaru breathed, unsure what else to say.
Pavel took one of his hands and gently, reverently, laid the diary in it. He then placed the other on top of it. "I want you to read it."
Hikaru held Pavel's gaze as long as he could, but ended up being the first to blink, his eyes watering a little with the seriousness of what he was being trusted with. "Thank you," he whispered, then lightly kissed Pavel on the lips. "It's an honor."
Something occured to him. "I don't read Russian, though." He'd picked up a few spoken phrases from Pavel, of course — it was hard not to, really, even for those not sleeping with him — but a language with eleven vowels was out of Hikaru's ability to comprehend. There was a reason his father had given up trying to teach him Japanese, after all.
Pavel just smirked, though. "Papa wasn't a drunk when she was alive, but he was…nosey, the word is, yes? She wrote her diary in Standard because she knew he could not read it. It's not the best…but you can read."
Hikaru kissed him again, more grateful than anything else. While he had known for ages that he loved Pavel, and Pavel loved him in return, this was taking them to a new level of trust. He felt like he should have something to give in return. Their foreheads pressed together, eyes closed, he admitted that much.
"You don't have to give me anything. I just want you to understand."
He almost winced at that. He had known from the start he had no frame of reference to try to relate to Pavel, and he had struggled with understanding why it was still such a painful issue. He would do his best. That was all he could offer.
Page 76
It is so shameful not to be able to have a large family. I continue to try not to feel guilty, but it seems as though I have done something terribly wrong for God to do this to me. I work twice as hard, now, to try to give Pavel the teachings he is missing out on by being one alone, rather than one of many. Andrei does not understand. I do not expect him to. He marches forward, never back. The way of a man who follows where others lead. I wish my Pavel to be both a follower, and one who may lead. He must be able to see backwards as well as onward. There is no use ignoring a wound, and how one got it. One must nurse it, and think on how it was given, in order to avoid it in the future.
I do not think my Standard is good enough to explain.
What I mean is that he is our only chance to do well. We must do what we can. I must do what I can.
It took less than two days to read it all, and then he read it again. When he found parts he liked, he would send Pavel short quotes to his PADD — especially if they were not on shift together. He stopped the first time he got a message from Kirk to cut it out, because he didn't need his navigator bursting into tears in the middle of an asteroid field, thanks. Pavel returned that evening looking more than a little contrite.
"I'm sorry," he hissed. "I hope I did not get you reprimanded. The captain is…overly perceptive."
Hikaru just laughed at him and pulled him toward the shower. "Slap on the wrist. He knows a mistake when he sees one." He worked on undressing them both.
"Pushy today," Pavel sighed, though he definitely wasn't objecting. He jerked his own shirt off, then distracted Hikaru long enough to kiss him thoroughly.
"I made you cry. Can't let that go without making it up to you." The rest of their clothes wound their way into piles on the floor. He flicked on the water — they kept hot-water showers as an occasional treat, preferring the efficiancy of sonic showers the rest of the time — and pulled them both inside.
Pavel pressed against him like he wanted sex — he was eighteen, of course he wanted sex — but that wasn't the goal this time. The warm water drummed on Hikaru's neck and shoulders, tension he hadn't known he was carrying ebbing away. He kissed Pavel with an open mouth, tracing every corner he could reach like it was unexplored territory, then turned them around so the younger man was under the spray. "No sex right now. Just relax for me."
He made a little contented sound in the back of his throat, and let his arms fall to his sides — open and at ease, for once. Hikaru guided those arms to the shower's wall, to give him a better angle. He started the gentle massage at the base of his spine, just above his hips, rubbing easy circles into muscles that remained clenched no matter how much he willed them to relax. Pavel practically melted, and honest-to-god mewled a little.
"Sounds like that should be illegal."
Pavel curled his fingers so that he was flipping Hikaru off. Hikaru actually giggled at it before digging his fingers into Pavel's hips, and getting another whine. Their ration of hot water began to run cold before all the knots had been worked free, but it was an improvement. They toweled themselves off before tumbling into bed. Pavel kissed him sweetly, and whispered "thank you," lips brushing his cheek.
"Tell me something," Hikaru asked after a long while. "Why did you wait to show me the diary?"
Pavel blushed deeply. "Do not ask," he mumbled, and buried his face against Hikaru's shoulder.
"Please?"
"It's stupid."
He tugged Pavel back to look in his eyes. "Pavel."
Pavel sighed. "I was afraid that if I shared what I had of her, I would lose her. She wouldn't be mine anymore. But it is different now that you've seen her the way I remember her…" he ducked his head a little.
It didn't make any sense, really. But Pavel had always been strange when it came to his family, and he wasn't about to judge him for that. He just kissed him on the forehead. "Thank you for sharing with me. I promise, Pasha, it doesn't make her any less yours."
They got comfortable again, lightly touching all the way down their bodies — from foreheads to fingertips to knees to feet — and Hikaru had almost dozed off before he remembered something else. "I've never heard you play piano," he yawned. "You said she taught you? She wrote about how much she loved it…"
Pavel giggled like a girl and nudged a little closer. "If you can find a piano — a real piano, 'Karu — then I will play for you."
Page 109
Four hours spent fixing keys on the piano. Too much time, but I refuse to get a new piano; this is my father's. Even those that I use when performing do not seem right. They lack depth and soul. The notes are correct but there is no emotion, only cold fact…some day, I will say this and will be thought insane. But I know I am right. An old piano is the only kind of piano that is.