Filling in the Blanks - 3/6 - Star Trek XI - Chulu
Next installment. Edited slightly from the original and grammar and spelling changed. Any mistakes please let me know. :)
Filling in the Blanks
Rating: PG (I think)
Warnings: Swearing. Impled slash. Drinking
Filling in the Blanks (3/6)
'Under observation' is as boring as it sounds. They were keeping him in Sickbay overnight to make sure he wouldn't develop any more symptoms. He couldn't fathom how him and Pavel had broken up. He could clearly remember the dinners, the holovids late into the night, the shore leaves where they had blown off going to the bar with the rest of the gang and instead spent all their time (and a great chunk of their money) at the arcade. He remembered teaching Pavel to play the pinball machines (though he was later claiming pinball machines were a Russian invention). Hugging, laughing, and talking.
What went wrong?
Time crawled on. A nurse came by to check his vitals and record them in her PADD.
"Have a pleasant night, Lieutenant." She added before ordering the lights low in his small annex room and moved out into the main bay.
'Pleasant. Right.' He had nothing but his dark thoughts to accompany him to sleep.
And that he couldn't stand. Grabbing his uniform shirt out of the cubby hole in the table beside his biobed, he hastily put it on.
~ ~ ~
Sneaking past the nurse on duty had been difficult, but once he was clear of the medical bay, the trip through nearly deserted halls was quick.
It was when he reached their quarters that he hesitated. They weren't 'theirs' anymore. He'd probably moved back to his old quarters after they'd -- he hated even thinking the words -- broke up. How can something so huge be completely forgotten? He needed to talk to him. He pressed a finger to the chime, hearing it quietly through the door. A moment later, a rumpled looking Chekov was standing where there had been unyielding door.
Hikaru crumpled under his wary stare.
"Yes, He-karu?"
"Whatever I did or said, I'm sorry. I am infinitely sorry. I'm even more sorry that I can't remember what happened." He felt incredibly stupid that his eyes had started to fill, willing the tears away he continued full throttle, "Just please... can you forgive me?"
"There is nothing to forgive, my friend."
"Really?"
Pavel couldn't help the small smile that crept into his feature, the unabashed hope in Hikaru's face. Even if they had been fighting, he just couldn't stay mad at him.
"Really. Good night." He stepped back to close the door when Hikaru spoke.
"Can I stay here? I promise not to bug you, it's just... been a while since I slept alone." His arms unconsciously crossed over his chest, blocking the rejection, "and all this is so confusing... I don't know what else I've forgotten."
Pavel licked his lips. How was he supposed to turn away his best friend when he was hurting so bad. He wouldn't, couldn't, do that to him.
He nodded, "Aye. Come in."
~ ~ ~
Once inside the door, Chekov didn't know what to do. He'd never had a relationship, he'd always been focused on school. Math. Numbers had been his passion. Numbers he knew. People, he didn't get.
"Umm, so..." this was his best friend, why was he finding it so hard to talk to him? "What now?"
In the low light of the small living area, Chekov was relieved to see the open confusion on his face as well.
"I meant what I said. I won't push you. Is it okay with you if I sleep next to you? I understand if it's not-" Hikaru felt a lump catch in his throat on a horrifying thought, "Are you seeing someone else?"
Pavel couldn't stop the chuckle that broke the tension within him, 'Someone else? Try ever.' Instead he simply said, "No. I am not dating anybody. Sleep next to each other, you say." He thought of it for a second, decided it was no different than sharing a bed with his brothers in Russia. "Aye. That will be fine."
It had been many years since he had lived at home. His parents recognized his talent, and with seven other mouths to feed, found that getting him a scholarship at the famous Russian military academy outside of Moscow would be to everyone's benefit. At home, he'd never had his own bed. At first he had welcomed the change, chance to spread out, and being able to hog all the covers. Then the homesickness kicked in and the small bunk felt cold and empty. Eventually, he'd gotten over it and used to his single bunk. It was both strange and exciting to be sharing again.
He dimmed the lights to five percent and then got into bed as Hikaru got in on the other side. The pilot seemed to calm immediately as he slipped in and closed his eyes, but Pavel wasn't feeling sleepy anymore. He turned on his side, toward Hikaru, feeling himself full of restless energy and thoughts. Hikaru suddenly had all these memories, though they weren't real. Pavel found himself curious.
"He-karu..." he whispered into the dark.
The pilot opened his eyes and turned his head to face the young navigator. "Yes?" he whispered back into the dark.
"Will you..." he hesitated, Doctor McCoy had said not to encourage the false memories, but curiousity won over in the end, "Will you tell me a story? Of us?"
Hikaru's answering smile was contageous.
"What would you like to hear?" the pilot answered, turning on his side to mirror his bedmate.
A shrug was his answer, "I do not know, you choose."
"Hmm, like how I couldn't understand you when we first met, your thick accent and how you talked so fast. I thought for the first half hour of our acquaintance your name was Pavlov, like the dog?" Pavel chuckled lightly. "Or on your eighteenth birthday, when we got you drunk and you walked around the party introducing me to everyone (that we already knew, mind you), but you kept pronouncing my name as 'sal-oo' like 'hey' in French." They both laughed at the shared memory, or fuzzy in Chekov's case, of that party. "Or last shore leave when you had Funnel cake for the first time and you kept poking at it, then you went to smell it and I guess some powdered sugar went up your nose and you sneezed, blowing powdered sugar into my face?"
Pavel cackled outright, "They called you Casper for a month!"
"A month? Try someone called me it last week when the mess was serving French Toast for breakfast."
If anyone had been walking past Chekov's quarters at one in the morning, they would've heard laughter even through the door.
~ ~ ~
Comments are appreciated. :)
Chapter 4
Once again, a reply to a prompt over at the st_xi_kink_meme
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