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silverfoxflowerTitle: Five Universes Where Hikaru Sulu Fell in Love With Pavel Chekov at First Sight (and the One Where He Literally Fell)
Author/artist:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
silverfoxflower
Recipient's name:meteorfire
Beta:mightyyawp
Rating: PG-13
Series: STXI
Pairing/Characters: Sulu/Chekov, very vaguely hinted Kirk/Spock and Scotty/Gaila
Word Count: 5000
Disclaimer: No ownage whatsoever
Summary: Pretty much the title :D
Warnings (if any): N/A
Author's notes: I really hope this is to your liking,![[info]](../../img/userinfo.gif?v=87.5)
meteorfire! I smashed together a couple of your likes: humor, kid!fic, AUs.
one
When Hikaru Sulu first meets Pavel Chekov, it’s after a long day of interviewing potential nannies, and even though this Russian kid didn’t look more than fifteen, he also comes in with Demora wrapped around his leg, babbling in her baby talk and already half-way in love.
“Thanks for helping me find her.” Hikaru says, running his fingers through is hair. “I really need to buy a new playpen. Or a cage.” His daughter, the escape artist, smiles widely at her father’s panic.
“She was in the downstairs bathroom.” Pavel says with a thick accent but no discernable condemnation that his potential employer had met him at the door with a panicked, Help me find my daughter!. Gently, Pavel bends down to untangle Demora’s sticky fingers from his knee and hold her out to Hikaru. “It was not easy to catch her. Very energetic.” He adds with a hesitant smile and something in Hikaru’s chest turns, like a key in a lock.
“Please, uh, don’t judge me.” Hikaru gives a weak laugh, taking and cradling Demora to his chest like a shield. She looks at her father rather disapprovingly, turning to Chekov like she wants to go back to clinging onto his leg. One of her pigtails is falling out of its pink elastic band, and Hikaru walks to the couch and sets her down to fix it. “Uh … you’re Pavel Chekov, right? My 2:30? You can sit if you want.”
Pavel hesitates only briefly before choosing a seat across from Hikaru, adjusting the grey messenger bag resting on his hip. His large eyes and narrow shoulders make him look like he should be in high school, but there are little details, like the worn cuffs of his jacket, that makes Hikaru hesitate to judge.
When Hikaru is done with the pigtail, Demora glances up at him and demands, “Down.”
“Okay.” Hikaru scoops her into his lap and leans over to rifle through one of his drawers that used to hold things like magazines and TV remotes, but is now cluttered with toys. He hands her a colorful ring full of interlinking chains.
Immediately, Demora throws it to the floor. “Down.” She repeats, kicking her heels, and Hikaru throws Pavel a helpless look before gingerly setting her on the floor, where she immediately totters to Pavel.
“Hello there.” Pavel says to her, softly, and Demora giggles before running back to her father and burying her face in his leg.
“Wow, I’ve …” Hikaru rubs the back of his neck. “I’ve never seen her warm up to someone so quickly.”
“When I found her in the bathtub, I sang her a song to calm her down.” Pavel says this shyly, as if afraid he will be admonished. “Is Russian song. My mother used to sing.”
Demora tugs on Hikaru’s pant leg. “Color.” She says, evidently growing tired of the conversation. “Color, Daddy.”
“Okay, sweetheart.” Hikaru is relieved. Coloring is one of the only activities that keeps Demora reasonably well behaved. He opens the drawer again and sets a few blank sheets of paper on the coffee table, followed by a box of crayons. Demora reaches eagerly for a yellow before settling down.
Pavel and Hikaru both watch her work for a minute before catching each other’s eye and trading awkward smiles.
“So, um,” Hikaru says, “As you probably read in the job description, I’m looking for a full-time, live-in nanny. It’s a long-term position. I am a pilot and a single father, so there will be days at a time when you will be Demora’s primary caretaker.” He glances up to find Pavel nodding along. “Sorry, but I have to ask, how old are you?”
“Nineteen.” Pavel answers, biting briefly on his lower lip. “But I have three years of experience.” He adds hurriedly.
Hikaru just nods because he read Pavel’s resume, which was sparse but came with glowing recommendations. It was Uhura, a college friend, who had recommended him, actually. On the table, Demora’s coloring has taken a ferocious edge, her paper filled with jagged red and orange lines, violent purple circles. Sometimes, Hikaru worries that Demora will grow up to become some sort of teenage delinquent because her mother abandoned her and her father has an inconvenient career and is frantically incompetent with kids.
“Do you have experiences with children Demora’s age?” Hikaru begins his usual string of interview questions, now-memorized after an entire, exhausting, day of meeting with potentials. Pavel answers each thoughtfully, pausing a bit when he has to choose certain words he seems unsure of pronouncing correctly. Hikaru listens and takes notes and tries very hard not to allow himself to be biased by Pavel’s energetic gestures, his genuinely fond affection for Demora, who pauses periodically in her drawing to beam at him. Also his floppy hair and wide eyes, but Hikaru needs that kind of complication in his life like he needs a hole in the head.
All in all, it is a good interview. Better, at least, than the one with the matronly old lady who pulled a paddle out of her purse and said that she believed in corporal punishment from a young age.
“So that’s all I have,” Hikaru smiles, worried at the tight feeling he gets in his chest when Pavel smiles back. He’s only twenty-four, but he’s got a daughter and the emotional baggage of a middle-aged man. He has no place to be falling for a nineteen-year-old nanny. Swallowing against the sour taste in his mouth, Hikaru decides then that he will not be hiring Pavel Chekov. “I’ll be making a decision sometime next week, so expect a call.” He says as he stands, and Hikaru has never been a man for one-night-stands (except, inexplicably, in the case of Demora’s mother), but this sounds suspiciously like the I’ll call you brush-off.
Pavel must sense this because his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yes. Thank you.” They shake hands over the coffee table, and Demora cranes her neck to look at what is going on above her.
“Demora, say goodbye.” Hikaru says hesitantly, touching her back. She looks at her father for a moment, then turns to Pavel, who has sunk to her level.
“Goodbye.” Demora says shyly, pushing her bright paper towards Pavel.
“I-“ Pavel seems speechless for a moment, and Hikaru feels an answering twist in his gut. “Is this for me?” Pavel glances at Demora, then at Hikaru, uncertainty in his eyes.
Demora nods slowly.
“It’s beautiful.” Pavel says with a sincere smile. He trips just the slightest over the last word.
Then they both turn to Hikaru, two sets of wide eyes, and it’s ridiculous, the idea that Pavel could have conspired with his two-year-old daughter to wring the guilt out of him, but Hikaru has the suspicion anyways. “When can you start?” He surrenders, and is rewarded with twin smiles, bright as stars.
two
The mortals call him Hikaru, and as gods go, he is rather sympathetic to their petty problems. Still, to be dragged so rudely between realms and collared by runes – it would sour even the most patient of tempers.
“Who has summoned me?” Hikaru rolls his shoulders irritably as his temporal form takes shape. The bone and muscle and sinew of his mortal body feels like a cage, a too-small stretch of skin over roiling smoke and thunder that would splinter mountains. He smells first, the acrid, burning scent of herbs. The room around him becomes more distinct. It is dim, cramped and filled with books. There are strings of drying plants hanging from the far celling. The light comes from a scrawny fireplace, carved from rock and hanging with crockery. If this is a sorcerer’s cavern, it is a poor one.
There is a lad sprawled upon the floor and looking up at Hikaru with an expression of shock. Hikaru thinks for a moment that this could not possibly be his summoner – this curly-haired boy with his wide eyes and pretty pink mouth opened to an ‘o’. But there is a grimoire opened over his lap and when he manages to speak he says,
“I … I, Pavel Chekov am your summoner.” The lad stands on shaky legs, cradling his grimoire. Hikaru does not know whether to be charmed or irritated at the way the sorcerer squares his shoulders under his threadbare robes. “I have put you under compact, and will release you at the end of your duties.”
“I do not think you know the power of the one you are dealing with, boy.” Hikaru says not unkindly. “Although I am curious as to how one of your age has so much power to bind me.”
Pavel’s brows furrow and he begins paging through his grimoire frantically. “You are the one called … Hikaru, are you not? The one at whose touch flowers bloom and trees ripen with fruit, the carrier of the Narrow Blade?”
“Yes, it is I.” Hikaru folds his arms over his chest. Now that he has fully materialized, the human sensation of cold is assaulting his skin. The small, smoldering flame in the hearth is not enough, and for the first time, Hikaru realizes that he is wearing no human clothing. The lad has walked closer, standing carefully outside of the circle of binding runes. Hikaru has half a mind to reassure him that he will be met with no harm under Hikaru’s hand, but at the same time, he wishes to appear as awe-inspiring and impressive as possible while trapped in a nude mortal body and being inspected by an awed boy-sorcerer.
Silently, he sends forth his presence, testing the bounds of his binding circle. It impresses him more and more every time he is turned away. The runes Pavel chose were rough but effective. Hikaru is truly trapped.
Pavel blushes as his eyes rake below Hikaru’s waist, and Hikaru bites back a smile and an answering blush, although this is merely his human body, that there is even more to see in his divine form.
“I will … I will fetch you a robe.” Pavel stands abruptly and hurries to a corner.
Hikaru almost points out that he could conjure his own clothing, if Pavel released one of the runes, but it is more gratifying to receive one from his sorcerer’s earnest hand. The robe itself is short, swinging at Hikaru’s calves with edges frayed and sloppily mended. But it smells like Pavel, a mortal smell Hikaru finds that he inexplicably enjoys.
“What have you called me for?” Hikaru asks. Something about the sorcerer – Pavel – intrigues him, and he sincerely hopes that his summoning was not for a reason so petty that Pavel deserves to be smited. Hikaru is already dreaming of sweeping Pavel to the higher realm, watching his eyes widen in deserved awe.
But first, the matter at hand. Hikaru listens closely as Pavel begins to chatter excitedly, his fingers flying above the open grimoire like he has cracked open all the possibilities of the universe.
three
Hikaru Sulu is the rare college student who is not addicted to coffee. He likes the smell well enough, but the taste turns him off, and he prefers to his caffeine carbonated and cold. Kirk calls him a pussy for drinking diet coke. But Kirk also lives off of fluorescent orange energy drinks with names like HyperKrush and XX3400, and regularly falls into 48-hour comas after he’s been up for a week.
Either way, Hikaru and Jim’s room is the only one on their floor without a coffeemaker, and it takes to finals week of his sophomore year for Hikaru to finally step foot in Bigg’s, the only coffee shop on the entire campus, according to Uhura, that makes a drinkable dirty chai.
“You would not believe how much money I spend in this place.” Uhura slings her messenger bag over the back of her chair and places a laptop and a coffee cup on the table, taking infinitely more care with the coffee.
“Wait, don’t tell me.” Hikaru holds up a hand. “Four dollars times five days a week times fifty-two weeks a year equals … “
“Please.” Uhura throws him a withering look. “This is my third cup today.”
“You’re as bad as Jim.” Hikaru says in mock-shock. “But I never see you get the shakes.”
“Oh, baby.” Uhura opens her laptop and reaches for her coffee. She makes a production of it, too, snapping off the plastic lid and inhaling the aroma with a soft sigh before taking a slow sip from the edge of the cup, running it through her mouth and moaning so orgasmically, Hikaru can see a few heads snap in her direction. “Ah … it’s like they put crack in the sugar canisters.”
“Is filter, actually.” A slim hand alights onto their table. Hikaru stares at it for a moment before following it to a wrist, a forearm dusted with light hair, an elbow, the sleeve of a grey t-shirt, and finally a face framed by rumpled-looking curls and sporting the biggest, bluest eyes Hikaru has ever seen. And he lives with Jim Kirk.
“I knew that was your secret.” Uhura says from somewhere far away, while Hikaru stares and makes a sound like uhn.
“Do you have some test?” The kid turns away, rubbing down the table next to them in wide, sloppy strokes, and Hikaru finally forces himself to stop looking at his freckles, and shit, Uhura is supposed to be the one with the linguistics kink, but did the kid actually say haff?
“Paper. With my partner here.” Uhura pokes Hikaru with the pointy end of her pencil. She seems far too amused by the whole thing. “He’s normally more talkative. You know, when he’s not drooling into his napkin.”
Hikaru shoots her a Glare That Could Kill™, before turning to the kid’s direction. “Partner’s name is Hikaru,” He actually manages the nonchalant smile, but gets cocky with the handshake, banging his elbow against the bottom of the table as he tries to extract his arm from his lap.
“Pavel.” The kid says sympathetically, as Hikaru makes a strangled, mewling sound and Uhura almost falls out of her chair laughing.
four
When the young Labrador retriever, Sulu, is first introduced to the new cocker spaniel puppy, he is a little too curious with his nosing about and ends up scaring the poor thing into hiding at the foot of the stairs.
“Ach, Sulu, don’ be discouraged, the pup just needs a bit of time.” Scotty bends down to give Sulu a pat on the head as he whines in disappointment. Sulu snuffles at his master’s fingers, smelling ham, but when no bite of sandwich is forthcoming, he loses interest and begins scratching behind his ear.
“Chekov!” Scotty calls, but the other puppy does not come out. He does not come out even when Scotty whistles, although Sulu sees the sweep of a curly tail and a poke of a nose from the staircase.
“Oh well,” Scotty shrugs, looking at Sulu apologetically. “Shy, I suppose.” He stands up. “Don’ intimidate the wee thing, now.” Sulu barks disapprovingly at the false allegation, because he has never bullied other dogs, unlike Kirk, the big yellow mutt next door. Sulu still hasn’t forgiven Kirk for tossing Sulu around like a volleyball when he was a tiny pup, until Uhura, the neighbor woman Scotty makes love-eyes at, came to save him.
As soon as Scotty leaves, Sulu trots closer to where Chekov is hiding. The curly pup has squeezed himself as close to the corner as possible, whining softly in distress. Sulu decides to sit down and wait. He’s good at waiting. He’s learned at mealtimes, that if he waits beneath the table, Scotty will sometimes get an idea and run off to his computer, leaving his sandwich unfinished and unprotected. Sulu will then pilfer the ham.
He’s not as good at waiting as Spock is, though. Sometimes, Sulu will see him looking out of Uhura’s upstairs window, when Scotty takes him for a walk, then, when he comes back, Spock will have not moved. Cats are weird.
So Sulu sits and stares at Chekov for a while, and after a little bit, a small black nose peeks out of the corner, followed by wide eyes. Sulu gives an excited bark, and the nose disappears. Sulu sits down sadly. All he wants is to be friends with the cocker spaniel pup. He whines, sadly, and the little nose peeks out again, through the bars of the stairs.
This time, Sulu is very quiet and friendly, and keeps himself from rushing over as Chekov peeks out his head. He has curly ears and is very small. No wonder he is afraid. Sulu thinks that if Kirk sees Chekov, he will want to bounce him around like a ball for sure.
Chekov finally eases out all the way, looking at Sulu rather nervously. Sulu keeps waiting, and finally Chekov pads towards him shyly, keeping low to the ground, almost a belly-crawl. When he gets close enough, Sulu makes a happy noise and buries his nose in Chekov’s fur. He is curly all over, and it tickles Sulu’s muzzle. Sulu feels a cold press as well, as Chekov begins nosing him curiously.
They learn each other’s scents, circling each other and snuffling. Sulu gets excited, remembering the play fights he had with his sisters, and he leaps on Chekov, tumbling him to the ground. Chekov makes a surprised, squeaking sound, and struggles briefly before giving up, lying on his back and panting in short, trembly breaths. Sulu feels guilty, because he promised Scotty that he wouldn’t intimidate the pup, so he licks Chekov’s cheek in apology and lets him up.
Sulu heads for the doggy door, because he suddenly wants to show Chekov the outside, because the outside was the best. Chekov looks at him curiously, but doesn’t hesitate before following. Scotty’s house has a small, fenced yard. There is nothing planted but a few bushes near the perimeter, but they, and the grass, are in reasonably good condition because Sulu does not dig them up.
Sulu is proud of this fact, and makes sure to point it out to Chekov. McCoy’s yard, he bets, is covered in dirt and holes because his dog Kirk likes to dig.
Chekov seems happier outside, exploring all the new scents and nosing excitedly near the tree. But when he hears a noise, he comes streaking over to Sulu’s side. Chekov can run very fast, Sulu observes with surprise.
The bushes at the far end of the yard are shuffling. Sulu barks in alarm, because they shouldn’t be doing that. Behind him, Chekov quivers. Finally, a head pops out from the bushes. It is Kirk, mouth wide and panting, grinning at them as he wriggles through the hole he dug under the fence.
Sulu narrows his eyes and growls, even though Kirk is so much bigger as he comes forward. Kirk is curious about Chekov, leaning down to nose him, even as Sulu struggles to keep himself between them. He needs to protect Chekov! He can’t let Kirk toss him around or nose him roughly or scare him.
When Kirk gets too close, Sulu snaps up and narrowly misses nipping Kirk’s ear. The bigger dog rears backwards, looking at Sulu in surprise as a low growl begins rumbling out of his chest. Sulu can’t help it, he cowers, and Chekov cowers behind him.
But instead of lunging forward angrily, Kirk suddenly turns his head. Spock, who was picking his way gracefully across the top of the far fence, freezes. With a happy bark, Kirk bounds towards him. Spock does not sound as happy as he yowls before turning and running away. Kirk follows him, wriggling under the fence again in a blink.
Sulu feels relieved. He does not know why Kirk likes to chase after Spock the most of all, but it is a good thing for them. He hears Chekov whining in fright and comforts him with licks, feeling strong and heroic as Chekov wriggles into his embrace.
five
When Hikaru Sulu waves in the curly-haired kid in the waiting room, it is at the end of an 11-hour shift, and what affability he had ever possessed had long since been drained away. Also Pavel Chekov, as it says on his chart, is apparently an ensign, and Hikaru has learned from experience that they tend to ask stupid questions.
“Isn’t working with Doctor McCoy scary?” Are the first words out of Chekov’s mouth, as soon as Hikaru is left alone with him.
“Yeah, a little.” Hikaru runs the tricorder over the kid’s wrist. Engineering ensigns have been trickling into the medbay all day in groups of twos and threes, stammering ridiculous explanations for their light burns and pulled joints. Either an accident involving Scotty’s not-so-secret still, or an orgy gone wrong. “Not as much as when I started, though.” He picks up a PADD and begins typing one-handedly. “You have a light sprain. The regenerator’s not going to do much good, but I can administer a mild painkiller and give you a brace for that.”
Chekov nods, his shoulders thin the in bleak medbay lighting. Hikaru wishes he could forcefully feed the kid. And get him some sun.
He turns away to get the hypospray and adds, “Try to stay away from stressing that wrist for the next three days or so.” He has to say it, even though he knows that the chances of an engineer putting his hands on ice, so to speak, are slim to none. “I can write you a pass for medical leave.” He even offers, because there’s something about Chekov that makes him want to. Reaching for the kid’s wrist, Hikaru makes the mistake of looking him directly in the eye and getting a too-bright smile in return, like a flash of sun.
Hikaru frowns as his heartbeat trips and quickens. Pulmonary hypertension, atrial fibrillation, his brain recites dryly, aortic stenosis, cocaine abuse. Hikaru had been barely average in medical school, and that was only because he made flashcards on his PADD and reviewed it every night when his friends were at bars or watching movies. It’s not gotten him any dates, but his response to observed symptoms is immediate.
“No … no thank you. I cannot take medical leave.” Chekov ducks his head, “I am working on a project with Meester Scott and we are very close. I cannot take so much time away-“
“Okay, stop.” Hikaru pinches the bridge of his nose. It’s something McCoy does a lot, and Hikaru has always thought that it was a habitual tic until he began to get tension headaches that seemed to radiate out of a point between his eyes. “Look, Chekov … was it?”
“You can call me Pavel.” The kid offers another of those bright smiles, and Hikaru should be too fucking tired to feel like he’s just gotten his breath stolen away.
“Pavel,” Hikaru feels the name unravel between his teeth, and he hopes he isn’t blushing. If Chapel saw, she would tease Hikaru about it for weeks. Just to make sure, he glances around the infirmary, but it’s empty. He turns back to Pavel, crossing his arms over his chest. “As your attending physician I am asking you: how many hours of sleep have you had in the past two days?”
Pavel opens his mouth immediately, and then wilts under Hikaru’s gaze. “Seven.” He admits sheepishly, tripping over the ‘v’.
“Medical leave for two days.” Hikaru scrawls on the PADD, ignoring Pavel’s protests. “Mandatory bedrest. And don’t,” He raises an eyebrow and Pavel freezes with his mouth open. It looks slick and pink and almost distracts Hikaru from his diatribe. “Don’t make me supervise you in the mess. I know how you engineering types eat.”
Pavel closes his mouth and something in Hikaru’s stomach flutters in disappointment. Celiac disease, his brain supplies helpfully, Colon cancer.
“I’ll get you that brace.” Hikaru mutters, turning away. It’s not like he really had a chance with Pavel anyways, not after going all mother hen on him. Naggy, Hikaru’s ex-boyfriend had called him, over-fucking-protective.
He hears Pavel sigh behind him. “If I take medical leave-“
“You are taking medical leave.” Hikaru grabs the clear plastic brace from a top drawer and a packet of coolant from another.
“If I take medical leave … will you eat dinner with me tomorrow?” Pavel is fidgeting on the biobed, flushing so hard that Hikaru’s brain is reading it as fever while the rest of him is trying to figure out if the geeky engineer just asked him out. “For … nutrition. Of course. To give me tips.” He adds hurriedly.
“Uh … yeah. Sure.” Hikaru sees Pavel trying to fight a smile and knows he’s doing the exact same thing. “You’d better let me see that wrist, now.”
and one
When Hikaru Sulu first sees Pavel Chekov, really sees him, as more than a teenaged wunderkind or an elbow to jostle at the helm, he has just stepped off of the transporter on wobbly legs after the most exhilarating and terrifying six seconds of his life.
“I remember thinking, I’m really going to die.” Hikaru would say, six months later, his legs tangled in the bedsheets and his head pillowed by a bent arm. “I’m going to die, falling to my doom in the arms of a man I barely know, and fuck if that isn’t what my mother always warned me about Starfleet.” He pauses. “Also about being gay.”
“You said you’d stop talking about the Captain in bed.” Pavel, the master thief of blankets, is cocooned up to his chin and has to fish a hand out to push playfully at Hikaru’s shoulder. “Hurry to the interesting part.”
“You mean the part where you save me?” Hikaru slides closer, until their foreheads brush and his hands begin to unwrap Pavel from the covers like a he’s fiercely anticipated Christmas present. “Where you plucked me from the air, and held me in the palm of your hand. And that’s where I’ve been ever since.”
“That is terrible.” Pavel wrinkles his nose, and Hikaru kisses it, because he can. His fingers have found the smooth skin of Pavel’s hip, and he rubs little circles along his lover’s sharp hipbone, the slim line of his spine.
“How about this,” Hikaru composes his face into a very serious expression, which is only possible by staring past Pavel’s shoulder and ignoring his breathless, muffled laughing. “Pavel never saved me from falling, because I’m still falling every day. More in love with him.”
“Stop,” Pavel gasps between his helpless laughter. The entire mound of blankets is shaking, and Chekov’s face flushes dangerously red. It doesn’t help that Hikaru has been tickling him through the covers. “Ya ne mogu dyshatʹ …”
Hikaru relents, mouthing at Pavel’s neck until the laughter has dissolved into soft moans and Pavel is wriggling excitedly against him, already half-divested of blankets and quickly losing more.
“Enough. I will be the one to tell everyone the story of how we first met.” Pavel says breathlessly, attempting to be serious as Hikaru kisses the love bites scattered over his shoulders.
“I think that’s for the best.” Hikaru replies just as seriously, too in love with how Pavel’s says we. It’s second only to the way he says Hee-karu, moaned or sighed or giggled or cooed. “It’s a good story. I wouldn’t want to ruin it.”
“Yes. Our friends would be jealous, I think.” Pavel says triumphantly, because he tends to be competitive about strange things, and Hikaru’s still in the stage of the relationship where he finds this adorable. He hopes, as he moves forward to kiss the corner of Pavel’s lips, that he never loses this feeling.
If they were on the ship, this would be the part where they roll into each other frantically, trying to squeeze a quickie into the half-hour overlap of their lunch breaks, always half-anticipating the scream of a ship-wide alarm. But this is Christmas, shoreleave, Hikaru’s San Francisco apartment, and he has had Pavel in his bed all day and will have him for seven more. Their kisses are languid, their movements unrushed, and when Pavel pulls away slightly, Hikaru lets him go, indulgent.
“Do you ever think,” Pavel whispers between them, “What would have happened if we did not meet?”
“I would be dead.” Hikaru says lightly, although he means this statement more than literally. Already the years he spent without Pavel seem grey and tasteless, and he wonders how he ever managed to exist before he tumbled, breathless and half-dead, to the feet of Pavel Chekov.
“Don’t say that, Hikaru.” Pavel squeezes Hikaru’s hand under the covers, like he is truly worried. “I mean … do you ever wonder about other universes, if is possible that events did not align like this and we … ?” Pavel flaps his free hand halfheartedly as his words trail away.
“No.” Hikaru answers truthfully, because he really doesn’t wonder about things like that. Pavel has always been the one to ramble dreamily in bed. Post orgasm, it’s all Hikaru can do to curl around Pavel and hold him until they are both coherent again.
But Pavel misinterprets his response and smiles so brightly that at that moment Hikaru can believe that there is no universe where a Hikaru Sulu does not love a Pavel Chekov.
Author/artist:
silverfoxflowerRecipient's name:
meteorfireBeta:
mightyyawpRating: PG-13
Series: STXI
Pairing/Characters: Sulu/Chekov, very vaguely hinted Kirk/Spock and Scotty/Gaila
Word Count: 5000
Disclaimer: No ownage whatsoever
Summary: Pretty much the title :D
Warnings (if any): N/A
Author's notes: I really hope this is to your liking,
meteorfire! I smashed together a couple of your likes: humor, kid!fic, AUs.one
When Hikaru Sulu first meets Pavel Chekov, it’s after a long day of interviewing potential nannies, and even though this Russian kid didn’t look more than fifteen, he also comes in with Demora wrapped around his leg, babbling in her baby talk and already half-way in love.
“Thanks for helping me find her.” Hikaru says, running his fingers through is hair. “I really need to buy a new playpen. Or a cage.” His daughter, the escape artist, smiles widely at her father’s panic.
“She was in the downstairs bathroom.” Pavel says with a thick accent but no discernable condemnation that his potential employer had met him at the door with a panicked, Help me find my daughter!. Gently, Pavel bends down to untangle Demora’s sticky fingers from his knee and hold her out to Hikaru. “It was not easy to catch her. Very energetic.” He adds with a hesitant smile and something in Hikaru’s chest turns, like a key in a lock.
“Please, uh, don’t judge me.” Hikaru gives a weak laugh, taking and cradling Demora to his chest like a shield. She looks at her father rather disapprovingly, turning to Chekov like she wants to go back to clinging onto his leg. One of her pigtails is falling out of its pink elastic band, and Hikaru walks to the couch and sets her down to fix it. “Uh … you’re Pavel Chekov, right? My 2:30? You can sit if you want.”
Pavel hesitates only briefly before choosing a seat across from Hikaru, adjusting the grey messenger bag resting on his hip. His large eyes and narrow shoulders make him look like he should be in high school, but there are little details, like the worn cuffs of his jacket, that makes Hikaru hesitate to judge.
When Hikaru is done with the pigtail, Demora glances up at him and demands, “Down.”
“Okay.” Hikaru scoops her into his lap and leans over to rifle through one of his drawers that used to hold things like magazines and TV remotes, but is now cluttered with toys. He hands her a colorful ring full of interlinking chains.
Immediately, Demora throws it to the floor. “Down.” She repeats, kicking her heels, and Hikaru throws Pavel a helpless look before gingerly setting her on the floor, where she immediately totters to Pavel.
“Hello there.” Pavel says to her, softly, and Demora giggles before running back to her father and burying her face in his leg.
“Wow, I’ve …” Hikaru rubs the back of his neck. “I’ve never seen her warm up to someone so quickly.”
“When I found her in the bathtub, I sang her a song to calm her down.” Pavel says this shyly, as if afraid he will be admonished. “Is Russian song. My mother used to sing.”
Demora tugs on Hikaru’s pant leg. “Color.” She says, evidently growing tired of the conversation. “Color, Daddy.”
“Okay, sweetheart.” Hikaru is relieved. Coloring is one of the only activities that keeps Demora reasonably well behaved. He opens the drawer again and sets a few blank sheets of paper on the coffee table, followed by a box of crayons. Demora reaches eagerly for a yellow before settling down.
Pavel and Hikaru both watch her work for a minute before catching each other’s eye and trading awkward smiles.
“So, um,” Hikaru says, “As you probably read in the job description, I’m looking for a full-time, live-in nanny. It’s a long-term position. I am a pilot and a single father, so there will be days at a time when you will be Demora’s primary caretaker.” He glances up to find Pavel nodding along. “Sorry, but I have to ask, how old are you?”
“Nineteen.” Pavel answers, biting briefly on his lower lip. “But I have three years of experience.” He adds hurriedly.
Hikaru just nods because he read Pavel’s resume, which was sparse but came with glowing recommendations. It was Uhura, a college friend, who had recommended him, actually. On the table, Demora’s coloring has taken a ferocious edge, her paper filled with jagged red and orange lines, violent purple circles. Sometimes, Hikaru worries that Demora will grow up to become some sort of teenage delinquent because her mother abandoned her and her father has an inconvenient career and is frantically incompetent with kids.
“Do you have experiences with children Demora’s age?” Hikaru begins his usual string of interview questions, now-memorized after an entire, exhausting, day of meeting with potentials. Pavel answers each thoughtfully, pausing a bit when he has to choose certain words he seems unsure of pronouncing correctly. Hikaru listens and takes notes and tries very hard not to allow himself to be biased by Pavel’s energetic gestures, his genuinely fond affection for Demora, who pauses periodically in her drawing to beam at him. Also his floppy hair and wide eyes, but Hikaru needs that kind of complication in his life like he needs a hole in the head.
All in all, it is a good interview. Better, at least, than the one with the matronly old lady who pulled a paddle out of her purse and said that she believed in corporal punishment from a young age.
“So that’s all I have,” Hikaru smiles, worried at the tight feeling he gets in his chest when Pavel smiles back. He’s only twenty-four, but he’s got a daughter and the emotional baggage of a middle-aged man. He has no place to be falling for a nineteen-year-old nanny. Swallowing against the sour taste in his mouth, Hikaru decides then that he will not be hiring Pavel Chekov. “I’ll be making a decision sometime next week, so expect a call.” He says as he stands, and Hikaru has never been a man for one-night-stands (except, inexplicably, in the case of Demora’s mother), but this sounds suspiciously like the I’ll call you brush-off.
Pavel must sense this because his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yes. Thank you.” They shake hands over the coffee table, and Demora cranes her neck to look at what is going on above her.
“Demora, say goodbye.” Hikaru says hesitantly, touching her back. She looks at her father for a moment, then turns to Pavel, who has sunk to her level.
“Goodbye.” Demora says shyly, pushing her bright paper towards Pavel.
“I-“ Pavel seems speechless for a moment, and Hikaru feels an answering twist in his gut. “Is this for me?” Pavel glances at Demora, then at Hikaru, uncertainty in his eyes.
Demora nods slowly.
“It’s beautiful.” Pavel says with a sincere smile. He trips just the slightest over the last word.
Then they both turn to Hikaru, two sets of wide eyes, and it’s ridiculous, the idea that Pavel could have conspired with his two-year-old daughter to wring the guilt out of him, but Hikaru has the suspicion anyways. “When can you start?” He surrenders, and is rewarded with twin smiles, bright as stars.
two
The mortals call him Hikaru, and as gods go, he is rather sympathetic to their petty problems. Still, to be dragged so rudely between realms and collared by runes – it would sour even the most patient of tempers.
“Who has summoned me?” Hikaru rolls his shoulders irritably as his temporal form takes shape. The bone and muscle and sinew of his mortal body feels like a cage, a too-small stretch of skin over roiling smoke and thunder that would splinter mountains. He smells first, the acrid, burning scent of herbs. The room around him becomes more distinct. It is dim, cramped and filled with books. There are strings of drying plants hanging from the far celling. The light comes from a scrawny fireplace, carved from rock and hanging with crockery. If this is a sorcerer’s cavern, it is a poor one.
There is a lad sprawled upon the floor and looking up at Hikaru with an expression of shock. Hikaru thinks for a moment that this could not possibly be his summoner – this curly-haired boy with his wide eyes and pretty pink mouth opened to an ‘o’. But there is a grimoire opened over his lap and when he manages to speak he says,
“I … I, Pavel Chekov am your summoner.” The lad stands on shaky legs, cradling his grimoire. Hikaru does not know whether to be charmed or irritated at the way the sorcerer squares his shoulders under his threadbare robes. “I have put you under compact, and will release you at the end of your duties.”
“I do not think you know the power of the one you are dealing with, boy.” Hikaru says not unkindly. “Although I am curious as to how one of your age has so much power to bind me.”
Pavel’s brows furrow and he begins paging through his grimoire frantically. “You are the one called … Hikaru, are you not? The one at whose touch flowers bloom and trees ripen with fruit, the carrier of the Narrow Blade?”
“Yes, it is I.” Hikaru folds his arms over his chest. Now that he has fully materialized, the human sensation of cold is assaulting his skin. The small, smoldering flame in the hearth is not enough, and for the first time, Hikaru realizes that he is wearing no human clothing. The lad has walked closer, standing carefully outside of the circle of binding runes. Hikaru has half a mind to reassure him that he will be met with no harm under Hikaru’s hand, but at the same time, he wishes to appear as awe-inspiring and impressive as possible while trapped in a nude mortal body and being inspected by an awed boy-sorcerer.
Silently, he sends forth his presence, testing the bounds of his binding circle. It impresses him more and more every time he is turned away. The runes Pavel chose were rough but effective. Hikaru is truly trapped.
Pavel blushes as his eyes rake below Hikaru’s waist, and Hikaru bites back a smile and an answering blush, although this is merely his human body, that there is even more to see in his divine form.
“I will … I will fetch you a robe.” Pavel stands abruptly and hurries to a corner.
Hikaru almost points out that he could conjure his own clothing, if Pavel released one of the runes, but it is more gratifying to receive one from his sorcerer’s earnest hand. The robe itself is short, swinging at Hikaru’s calves with edges frayed and sloppily mended. But it smells like Pavel, a mortal smell Hikaru finds that he inexplicably enjoys.
“What have you called me for?” Hikaru asks. Something about the sorcerer – Pavel – intrigues him, and he sincerely hopes that his summoning was not for a reason so petty that Pavel deserves to be smited. Hikaru is already dreaming of sweeping Pavel to the higher realm, watching his eyes widen in deserved awe.
But first, the matter at hand. Hikaru listens closely as Pavel begins to chatter excitedly, his fingers flying above the open grimoire like he has cracked open all the possibilities of the universe.
three
Hikaru Sulu is the rare college student who is not addicted to coffee. He likes the smell well enough, but the taste turns him off, and he prefers to his caffeine carbonated and cold. Kirk calls him a pussy for drinking diet coke. But Kirk also lives off of fluorescent orange energy drinks with names like HyperKrush and XX3400, and regularly falls into 48-hour comas after he’s been up for a week.
Either way, Hikaru and Jim’s room is the only one on their floor without a coffeemaker, and it takes to finals week of his sophomore year for Hikaru to finally step foot in Bigg’s, the only coffee shop on the entire campus, according to Uhura, that makes a drinkable dirty chai.
“You would not believe how much money I spend in this place.” Uhura slings her messenger bag over the back of her chair and places a laptop and a coffee cup on the table, taking infinitely more care with the coffee.
“Wait, don’t tell me.” Hikaru holds up a hand. “Four dollars times five days a week times fifty-two weeks a year equals … “
“Please.” Uhura throws him a withering look. “This is my third cup today.”
“You’re as bad as Jim.” Hikaru says in mock-shock. “But I never see you get the shakes.”
“Oh, baby.” Uhura opens her laptop and reaches for her coffee. She makes a production of it, too, snapping off the plastic lid and inhaling the aroma with a soft sigh before taking a slow sip from the edge of the cup, running it through her mouth and moaning so orgasmically, Hikaru can see a few heads snap in her direction. “Ah … it’s like they put crack in the sugar canisters.”
“Is filter, actually.” A slim hand alights onto their table. Hikaru stares at it for a moment before following it to a wrist, a forearm dusted with light hair, an elbow, the sleeve of a grey t-shirt, and finally a face framed by rumpled-looking curls and sporting the biggest, bluest eyes Hikaru has ever seen. And he lives with Jim Kirk.
“I knew that was your secret.” Uhura says from somewhere far away, while Hikaru stares and makes a sound like uhn.
“Do you have some test?” The kid turns away, rubbing down the table next to them in wide, sloppy strokes, and Hikaru finally forces himself to stop looking at his freckles, and shit, Uhura is supposed to be the one with the linguistics kink, but did the kid actually say haff?
“Paper. With my partner here.” Uhura pokes Hikaru with the pointy end of her pencil. She seems far too amused by the whole thing. “He’s normally more talkative. You know, when he’s not drooling into his napkin.”
Hikaru shoots her a Glare That Could Kill™, before turning to the kid’s direction. “Partner’s name is Hikaru,” He actually manages the nonchalant smile, but gets cocky with the handshake, banging his elbow against the bottom of the table as he tries to extract his arm from his lap.
“Pavel.” The kid says sympathetically, as Hikaru makes a strangled, mewling sound and Uhura almost falls out of her chair laughing.
four
When the young Labrador retriever, Sulu, is first introduced to the new cocker spaniel puppy, he is a little too curious with his nosing about and ends up scaring the poor thing into hiding at the foot of the stairs.
“Ach, Sulu, don’ be discouraged, the pup just needs a bit of time.” Scotty bends down to give Sulu a pat on the head as he whines in disappointment. Sulu snuffles at his master’s fingers, smelling ham, but when no bite of sandwich is forthcoming, he loses interest and begins scratching behind his ear.
“Chekov!” Scotty calls, but the other puppy does not come out. He does not come out even when Scotty whistles, although Sulu sees the sweep of a curly tail and a poke of a nose from the staircase.
“Oh well,” Scotty shrugs, looking at Sulu apologetically. “Shy, I suppose.” He stands up. “Don’ intimidate the wee thing, now.” Sulu barks disapprovingly at the false allegation, because he has never bullied other dogs, unlike Kirk, the big yellow mutt next door. Sulu still hasn’t forgiven Kirk for tossing Sulu around like a volleyball when he was a tiny pup, until Uhura, the neighbor woman Scotty makes love-eyes at, came to save him.
As soon as Scotty leaves, Sulu trots closer to where Chekov is hiding. The curly pup has squeezed himself as close to the corner as possible, whining softly in distress. Sulu decides to sit down and wait. He’s good at waiting. He’s learned at mealtimes, that if he waits beneath the table, Scotty will sometimes get an idea and run off to his computer, leaving his sandwich unfinished and unprotected. Sulu will then pilfer the ham.
He’s not as good at waiting as Spock is, though. Sometimes, Sulu will see him looking out of Uhura’s upstairs window, when Scotty takes him for a walk, then, when he comes back, Spock will have not moved. Cats are weird.
So Sulu sits and stares at Chekov for a while, and after a little bit, a small black nose peeks out of the corner, followed by wide eyes. Sulu gives an excited bark, and the nose disappears. Sulu sits down sadly. All he wants is to be friends with the cocker spaniel pup. He whines, sadly, and the little nose peeks out again, through the bars of the stairs.
This time, Sulu is very quiet and friendly, and keeps himself from rushing over as Chekov peeks out his head. He has curly ears and is very small. No wonder he is afraid. Sulu thinks that if Kirk sees Chekov, he will want to bounce him around like a ball for sure.
Chekov finally eases out all the way, looking at Sulu rather nervously. Sulu keeps waiting, and finally Chekov pads towards him shyly, keeping low to the ground, almost a belly-crawl. When he gets close enough, Sulu makes a happy noise and buries his nose in Chekov’s fur. He is curly all over, and it tickles Sulu’s muzzle. Sulu feels a cold press as well, as Chekov begins nosing him curiously.
They learn each other’s scents, circling each other and snuffling. Sulu gets excited, remembering the play fights he had with his sisters, and he leaps on Chekov, tumbling him to the ground. Chekov makes a surprised, squeaking sound, and struggles briefly before giving up, lying on his back and panting in short, trembly breaths. Sulu feels guilty, because he promised Scotty that he wouldn’t intimidate the pup, so he licks Chekov’s cheek in apology and lets him up.
Sulu heads for the doggy door, because he suddenly wants to show Chekov the outside, because the outside was the best. Chekov looks at him curiously, but doesn’t hesitate before following. Scotty’s house has a small, fenced yard. There is nothing planted but a few bushes near the perimeter, but they, and the grass, are in reasonably good condition because Sulu does not dig them up.
Sulu is proud of this fact, and makes sure to point it out to Chekov. McCoy’s yard, he bets, is covered in dirt and holes because his dog Kirk likes to dig.
Chekov seems happier outside, exploring all the new scents and nosing excitedly near the tree. But when he hears a noise, he comes streaking over to Sulu’s side. Chekov can run very fast, Sulu observes with surprise.
The bushes at the far end of the yard are shuffling. Sulu barks in alarm, because they shouldn’t be doing that. Behind him, Chekov quivers. Finally, a head pops out from the bushes. It is Kirk, mouth wide and panting, grinning at them as he wriggles through the hole he dug under the fence.
Sulu narrows his eyes and growls, even though Kirk is so much bigger as he comes forward. Kirk is curious about Chekov, leaning down to nose him, even as Sulu struggles to keep himself between them. He needs to protect Chekov! He can’t let Kirk toss him around or nose him roughly or scare him.
When Kirk gets too close, Sulu snaps up and narrowly misses nipping Kirk’s ear. The bigger dog rears backwards, looking at Sulu in surprise as a low growl begins rumbling out of his chest. Sulu can’t help it, he cowers, and Chekov cowers behind him.
But instead of lunging forward angrily, Kirk suddenly turns his head. Spock, who was picking his way gracefully across the top of the far fence, freezes. With a happy bark, Kirk bounds towards him. Spock does not sound as happy as he yowls before turning and running away. Kirk follows him, wriggling under the fence again in a blink.
Sulu feels relieved. He does not know why Kirk likes to chase after Spock the most of all, but it is a good thing for them. He hears Chekov whining in fright and comforts him with licks, feeling strong and heroic as Chekov wriggles into his embrace.
five
When Hikaru Sulu waves in the curly-haired kid in the waiting room, it is at the end of an 11-hour shift, and what affability he had ever possessed had long since been drained away. Also Pavel Chekov, as it says on his chart, is apparently an ensign, and Hikaru has learned from experience that they tend to ask stupid questions.
“Isn’t working with Doctor McCoy scary?” Are the first words out of Chekov’s mouth, as soon as Hikaru is left alone with him.
“Yeah, a little.” Hikaru runs the tricorder over the kid’s wrist. Engineering ensigns have been trickling into the medbay all day in groups of twos and threes, stammering ridiculous explanations for their light burns and pulled joints. Either an accident involving Scotty’s not-so-secret still, or an orgy gone wrong. “Not as much as when I started, though.” He picks up a PADD and begins typing one-handedly. “You have a light sprain. The regenerator’s not going to do much good, but I can administer a mild painkiller and give you a brace for that.”
Chekov nods, his shoulders thin the in bleak medbay lighting. Hikaru wishes he could forcefully feed the kid. And get him some sun.
He turns away to get the hypospray and adds, “Try to stay away from stressing that wrist for the next three days or so.” He has to say it, even though he knows that the chances of an engineer putting his hands on ice, so to speak, are slim to none. “I can write you a pass for medical leave.” He even offers, because there’s something about Chekov that makes him want to. Reaching for the kid’s wrist, Hikaru makes the mistake of looking him directly in the eye and getting a too-bright smile in return, like a flash of sun.
Hikaru frowns as his heartbeat trips and quickens. Pulmonary hypertension, atrial fibrillation, his brain recites dryly, aortic stenosis, cocaine abuse. Hikaru had been barely average in medical school, and that was only because he made flashcards on his PADD and reviewed it every night when his friends were at bars or watching movies. It’s not gotten him any dates, but his response to observed symptoms is immediate.
“No … no thank you. I cannot take medical leave.” Chekov ducks his head, “I am working on a project with Meester Scott and we are very close. I cannot take so much time away-“
“Okay, stop.” Hikaru pinches the bridge of his nose. It’s something McCoy does a lot, and Hikaru has always thought that it was a habitual tic until he began to get tension headaches that seemed to radiate out of a point between his eyes. “Look, Chekov … was it?”
“You can call me Pavel.” The kid offers another of those bright smiles, and Hikaru should be too fucking tired to feel like he’s just gotten his breath stolen away.
“Pavel,” Hikaru feels the name unravel between his teeth, and he hopes he isn’t blushing. If Chapel saw, she would tease Hikaru about it for weeks. Just to make sure, he glances around the infirmary, but it’s empty. He turns back to Pavel, crossing his arms over his chest. “As your attending physician I am asking you: how many hours of sleep have you had in the past two days?”
Pavel opens his mouth immediately, and then wilts under Hikaru’s gaze. “Seven.” He admits sheepishly, tripping over the ‘v’.
“Medical leave for two days.” Hikaru scrawls on the PADD, ignoring Pavel’s protests. “Mandatory bedrest. And don’t,” He raises an eyebrow and Pavel freezes with his mouth open. It looks slick and pink and almost distracts Hikaru from his diatribe. “Don’t make me supervise you in the mess. I know how you engineering types eat.”
Pavel closes his mouth and something in Hikaru’s stomach flutters in disappointment. Celiac disease, his brain supplies helpfully, Colon cancer.
“I’ll get you that brace.” Hikaru mutters, turning away. It’s not like he really had a chance with Pavel anyways, not after going all mother hen on him. Naggy, Hikaru’s ex-boyfriend had called him, over-fucking-protective.
He hears Pavel sigh behind him. “If I take medical leave-“
“You are taking medical leave.” Hikaru grabs the clear plastic brace from a top drawer and a packet of coolant from another.
“If I take medical leave … will you eat dinner with me tomorrow?” Pavel is fidgeting on the biobed, flushing so hard that Hikaru’s brain is reading it as fever while the rest of him is trying to figure out if the geeky engineer just asked him out. “For … nutrition. Of course. To give me tips.” He adds hurriedly.
“Uh … yeah. Sure.” Hikaru sees Pavel trying to fight a smile and knows he’s doing the exact same thing. “You’d better let me see that wrist, now.”
and one
When Hikaru Sulu first sees Pavel Chekov, really sees him, as more than a teenaged wunderkind or an elbow to jostle at the helm, he has just stepped off of the transporter on wobbly legs after the most exhilarating and terrifying six seconds of his life.
“I remember thinking, I’m really going to die.” Hikaru would say, six months later, his legs tangled in the bedsheets and his head pillowed by a bent arm. “I’m going to die, falling to my doom in the arms of a man I barely know, and fuck if that isn’t what my mother always warned me about Starfleet.” He pauses. “Also about being gay.”
“You said you’d stop talking about the Captain in bed.” Pavel, the master thief of blankets, is cocooned up to his chin and has to fish a hand out to push playfully at Hikaru’s shoulder. “Hurry to the interesting part.”
“You mean the part where you save me?” Hikaru slides closer, until their foreheads brush and his hands begin to unwrap Pavel from the covers like a he’s fiercely anticipated Christmas present. “Where you plucked me from the air, and held me in the palm of your hand. And that’s where I’ve been ever since.”
“That is terrible.” Pavel wrinkles his nose, and Hikaru kisses it, because he can. His fingers have found the smooth skin of Pavel’s hip, and he rubs little circles along his lover’s sharp hipbone, the slim line of his spine.
“How about this,” Hikaru composes his face into a very serious expression, which is only possible by staring past Pavel’s shoulder and ignoring his breathless, muffled laughing. “Pavel never saved me from falling, because I’m still falling every day. More in love with him.”
“Stop,” Pavel gasps between his helpless laughter. The entire mound of blankets is shaking, and Chekov’s face flushes dangerously red. It doesn’t help that Hikaru has been tickling him through the covers. “Ya ne mogu dyshatʹ …”
Hikaru relents, mouthing at Pavel’s neck until the laughter has dissolved into soft moans and Pavel is wriggling excitedly against him, already half-divested of blankets and quickly losing more.
“Enough. I will be the one to tell everyone the story of how we first met.” Pavel says breathlessly, attempting to be serious as Hikaru kisses the love bites scattered over his shoulders.
“I think that’s for the best.” Hikaru replies just as seriously, too in love with how Pavel’s says we. It’s second only to the way he says Hee-karu, moaned or sighed or giggled or cooed. “It’s a good story. I wouldn’t want to ruin it.”
“Yes. Our friends would be jealous, I think.” Pavel says triumphantly, because he tends to be competitive about strange things, and Hikaru’s still in the stage of the relationship where he finds this adorable. He hopes, as he moves forward to kiss the corner of Pavel’s lips, that he never loses this feeling.
If they were on the ship, this would be the part where they roll into each other frantically, trying to squeeze a quickie into the half-hour overlap of their lunch breaks, always half-anticipating the scream of a ship-wide alarm. But this is Christmas, shoreleave, Hikaru’s San Francisco apartment, and he has had Pavel in his bed all day and will have him for seven more. Their kisses are languid, their movements unrushed, and when Pavel pulls away slightly, Hikaru lets him go, indulgent.
“Do you ever think,” Pavel whispers between them, “What would have happened if we did not meet?”
“I would be dead.” Hikaru says lightly, although he means this statement more than literally. Already the years he spent without Pavel seem grey and tasteless, and he wonders how he ever managed to exist before he tumbled, breathless and half-dead, to the feet of Pavel Chekov.
“Don’t say that, Hikaru.” Pavel squeezes Hikaru’s hand under the covers, like he is truly worried. “I mean … do you ever wonder about other universes, if is possible that events did not align like this and we … ?” Pavel flaps his free hand halfheartedly as his words trail away.
“No.” Hikaru answers truthfully, because he really doesn’t wonder about things like that. Pavel has always been the one to ramble dreamily in bed. Post orgasm, it’s all Hikaru can do to curl around Pavel and hold him until they are both coherent again.
But Pavel misinterprets his response and smiles so brightly that at that moment Hikaru can believe that there is no universe where a Hikaru Sulu does not love a Pavel Chekov.
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-19 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-19 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-19 07:00 am (UTC)Thank you so much for writing this! I love it! It's just absolutely wonderful.
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Date: 2011-12-19 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-19 10:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-19 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-06 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-06 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-07 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 04:57 am (UTC)1. Yay! Long comment, I love you so much! *smishes* and
2. ARE YOU ME?
..because I completely love Chulu (I got into the ST fandom about a year late, lol) and immediately read everything I could find on it. My favorite fics were by hollycomb, who, hands down is the best Chulu writer ever in my opinion (and she has soooo many stories) and now I'm in the Sherlock fandom as well (but too intimidated to write in it because there are SUCH good writers and I suck at britishisms lol)
so yeah, I adore your comment because it was as adorable as Pasha's big puppy eyes and it reminded me of me for a second thar XD
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Date: 2012-01-08 04:19 pm (UTC):DDD Anton Yelchin's eyessss, ahh. <3 No problem, babyy
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Date: 2012-01-08 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 05:28 pm (UTC)Writing them as dogs, though? That's just weird
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Date: 2012-01-17 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-18 04:57 am (UTC)lol, that was my weak attempt at a joke...
http://fairhearing.livejournal.com/14226.html
;)
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Date: 2012-01-19 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-27 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-07 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-10 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 07:57 am (UTC)Honestly, for some of them, I'd love to see them expanded into a longer fic~ I just want more more more XD
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Date: 2012-05-07 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-21 04:55 pm (UTC)Go Ahead and Kill Me Now, God, I'm Ready
Date: 2014-10-24 02:58 am (UTC)I wasn't kidding about the obsession part.