Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek, never will own Star Trek… I just find the cinematic awesomeness of John Cho and Anton Yelchin to be truly inspiring. So I borrow them.
A/N: I started this story honestly, by using the shuffle music prompts as a writing exercise. This is a much longer version of the short story I wrote for the song 'Hot Mess' by Cobra Starship. This does contain spoilers for the movie and goes beyond the movie and sometimes behind the scenes (not enough of Sulu and Chekov screen-time). It also contains fairly tame slash, though it is rated M for a reason. If you don't like the thought of two boys being together, don't read.
Pairings: Eventual Sulu/Chekov, background eventual Uhura/Bones
Summary: Pavel Chekov led a very sheltered life before he left Russia, so it was only natural that he became a party animal once he turned 15 and was legal by international standards. One thing led to another and he met Hikaru Sulu. Would there ever be a future from it?
Pavel Andreivich Chekov was not the most enlightened person, not even at university. So as soon as he turned 15 at the Academy, he crashed every dorm party he possibly could; many people wondered how he continued to be the top or near-top of his classes – he never came in third. But no one ever turned him in. He was emancipated at age 12, and according to international law he was legal 3 years after emancipation, and he never did anything stupid. Plus, he didn't screw the curve for the rest of them if he went to the parties.
He'd been going to the parties for about half a semester when he did his first stupid thing. He drank; well, more to the point, he drank more than his usual, but later blamed it on Irina and the good Russian vodka she had procured. His second stupid thing was dancing with a stranger; usually he would find a good friend if he felt the itch to dance. But he found himself dancing with a smoky-eyed Asian man, at least 3 years his senior.
The next morning he woke up tangled in sheets and golden skin with hazy recollections of the actions leading up to that moment. The man was staring at him with no recognition.
"You vere as drunk as I vas, da?" he asked, pulling away from the Asian and running a hand through his hair. The man looked vaguely amused, but mildly horrified.
"Maybe more," he rumbled in return. "I don't even think I got your name."
"Pavel Andreivich Chekov." He winced at the confusion in the man's face. "Is custom to introduce oneself with full name. Sorry."
"Hikaru Sato Sulu," the Asian replied with a sudden smile. He then looked around and groaned quietly. "Your shirt didn't survive the night," he noted, motioning to the torn remnants.
"Aiyah, it vas my faworite, too," Pavel lamented, then sat up. "Vell, it vill not be the first time my shirt vas ruined, though usually it is from spilled alcohol, not… vell, this." He suddenly felt self-conscious and very glad that Sulu didn't have a roommate or that said roommate was not present. "I should go. It vas nice meeting you, Hikaru." He got up and quickly pulled on his boxers and jeans, looking at the ruins of his shirt with slight dismay. Suddenly a shirt hit him in the face and he saw a brief-clad Hikaru standing near a chest of drawers.
"You can have it." The shirt was ratty but serviceable, proclaiming a dojo in the local area. He slipped it on quietly, hissing slightly as it brushed a bite mark on his shoulder. The night had to have been fun, then.
"Thank you. Vell…" He waved and stepped closer to the door after putting his shoes on. "I did have fun… I think."
"Me, too. Bye, Pavel." He made it back to his room, where his roommate stared at him in confusion when he carefully folded the t-shirt and put it in his drawer of sleep-shirts.
The encounter was mostly forgotten, until Pavel sat at the helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise two-and-a-half years later, expecting his usual partner, McKenna. Instead the pilot was a vaguely familiar stranger. He ignored the man in favor of checking his instruments one more time before Captain Pike entered the bridge so that he would have a report to give.
"Where's Ensign McKenna?" Pike asked when the pilot tried to put them into warp and they didn't move. Pavel could feel the shaking as the engines tried and succeeded to engage, but there was no movement other than that. He probably could have pointed out the mistake, but he honestly wanted to see how the pilot would handle the delay.
"He has lungworm, sir, couldn't report to his post. I'm Hikaru Sulu."
Had Chekov been a dog, his ears would have perked. That name was familiar. He snuck a look but couldn't tell if he'd ever seen him except in passing. Then Commander Spock made the comment about the external dampeners, and for some reason he recognized the look on the pilot's face as he released them. He didn't have time to process it before Captain Pike asked him to do a ship-wide broadcast. He flinched internally; someone in the upper echelon thought it was funny to give the Russian with the speech impediment an authorization code with two Vs in it.
He only had to repeat the code once, thankfully, but knew everyone would laugh inside, as the broadcast was almost strictly about the crisis on Vulcan. He could have sworn he heard a muffled snort from beside him as he began the broadcast and glanced over to see a tiny grin on Sulu's face.
Suddenly he was watching a veritable ping-pong match of a discussion between Captain Pike, Commander Spock, and a Cadet identified as Kirk. The conversation boiled down to the fact that the were rushing into a Romulan attack, not a rescue mission for a world in natural crisis. He spun back to his console quickly and brought up red alert, making sure the shields were at full power.
They dropped into the remains of a massacre. He could almost feel how hard Sulu was working to keep the ship in one piece, and he did all he could to help, instinctively course-correcting while the pilot maneuvered the ship. Then the Romulan appeared on the view screen. He was riveted; it was like a train wreck, he just couldn't look away. Then he was watching Sulu leave the bridge along with the Captain, First Officer, and Kirk. The Asian volunteered to be on the team to disable the drill because of his 'advanced hand-to-hand' training.
"Chekov, you have the con," Pike ordered as they got into the turbolift.
"A-Aye, sir." He hastily rerouted the other helm console readings to his own console and dispatched another pilot to the bridge before dispatching another Science Officer and pulling the command readings to his upper console so he could keep an eye on them as he continued to monitor the enemy ship. When Commander Spock came back as Acting Captain, he moved the command readings back to the upper right of the view-screen and pulled up all four officers' vitals on his upper console, directing a feed to the view screen. Pike's vitals remained steady, while Engineer Olsen's jumped erratically, Kirk's rose to a higher level and held steady, and Sulu's barely registered heightened activity as they jumped out of the shuttle and down into the atmosphere.
He was monitoring transporter controls out of the corner of his eye, and knew in the back of his mind that anyone else who looked at his console would be horribly confused. He had the vitals, the transporter and communication controls, and the monitoring equipment up, as well as the shields and weapons' display. He flinched and reported when Olsen's vitals disappeared from his monitor, and the other two in the Away Team had highly elevated heart-rates, indicating extreme stress.
He huffed in satisfaction when the controls came back online but quickly sobered as he brought the complete monitoring of Vulcan to the main of his console, blotting out everything else. His quick calculations painted a bleak picture; a singularity was forming at the heart of Vulcan, destroying the planet from the inside out. After he notified Acting Captain Spock, he once again gained the con, dropping the Vulcan monitoring window to the bottom corner of his console and maximized the vitals, enemy monitoring, and transporter controls.
The operator of the transporter started baulking when Sulu and Kirk fell from the drill and their 'chute failed, complaining that she couldn't get a lock. He knew the reason why and jumped up from his console, leaving everything as it was and threw a hasty "You have the con" at the pilot as he sprinted for the transporter room. Thankfully he was a runner and made it in record time, pushing the woman aside and taking manual control. Tongue between his teeth he inputted calculations at blinding speed and got a lock on them just in time to keep them from splatting to the deteriorating rock of the surface. They landed hard, and he heard a crunch that he hoped was broken glass before Spock kicked them off the pad and beamed himself to the surface of Vulcan to rescue the Vulcan High Council, among which his mother and father were members.
Moments later, Spock called for the beam up, and he locked on all of them and began the beam. As the transport started, the cliff under the woman's feet broke and he frantically pulled and pushed, trying to keep the lock on her signal. "I'm losing her, I'm losing her!" He frantically input commands, even as the rest of the party appeared on the pad. "No, I've lost her." The woman had to be Spock's mother; she was the only human signature. He winced at the hastily concealed look of anguish on the Half-Vulcan's face and could feel the accusing stares baring down on him. He couldn't breathe, he had to get out.
He pushed past everyone in his way to get out of the room, only stopping when Sulu grabbed his arm in the hallway. "Hey, you okay?" The man was covered in bruises and dirt and blood and he had the nerve to ask Pavel if he was all right.
"Is vhat I should be asking you, Lieutenant," he replied softly, staring at his hands.
"Ensign Chekov." Spock exited the room and came toward him. "Thank you."
"For vhat, Keptain?"
"For attempting to save my mother's life. Those were very advanced calculations that the computer could not assimilate in time."
"But… I failed."
"You made the attempt. Thank you." Spock then continued on, leading the Vulcans toward sickbay to get checked out.
"See? Blame this Nero guy, not yourself!" Sulu said, patting his back. "I'll see you on the bridge, Pavel." He returned to his post, puzzling over the name usage by the Asian, before pulling up the transport records, confirming what Spock had said; there simply wasn't enough time. The computer was slow, not him. Sulu returned to the helm and offered him a smile. He smiled back tentatively before continuing to monitor, watching in horror as the planet on the view-screen imploded, eyes only half on the readouts on his console telling him the rate of deterioration.
When Spock and Kirk were both back on the bridge, a conversation started about why the Nerada hadn't destroyed them and why Nero wanted Pike. It culminated in Kirk being marooned on Delta Vega and the Enterprise plotting a course to the rest of the fleet.
A very boring few hours later, he reported unauthorized access to water-turbine controls. Security was dispatched and suddenly Kirk and another man, identified as Mr. Scott were on the bridge, the latter soaking wet. Kirk forced Spock to react with a combination of insubordination and downright offense until Spock nearly killed the man after throwing him into Pavel's console. Thankfully the broken panel was not an important one.
Kirk then took over as Captain and set them all to finding a way to ambush Nero. He took over a work screen at the back of the bridge and quickly did calculations and course plotting until he was proud of the fact that he had a workable solution. He outlined his plan to the captain and was seconded by Scotty. The CMO, however, began to shoot him down because of his age, which had never been a detriment before.
Thankfully, before he had to violently protest, Spock returned to the bridge and confirmed his telemetry, and he and Sulu plotted a course to Saturn. "All stop in 3… 2… 1." Sulu typed in commands as the ship came to a standstill, causing Pavel to lurch slightly. "Give ¼ impulse burst for 5 seconds, I'll do the rest with thrusters." Pavel inputted his own set of commands. "On my mark."
"Aye." He waited, finger poised over the correct execution command.
"Fire." They rose slowly through the ion cloud around Saturn, both of them typing quickly to course correct until they were in place a few moments later. "Transporter Room, we are in position over Titan." There was a garbled reply from Mr. Scott, and then Kirk's voice came out over the small set of speakers in the center console, set up for the helmsmen only.
"Whatever happens, Mr. Sulu, if you think you have the tactical advantage you fire on that ship, even if we're still on board, that's an order."
"Yes, sir." Pavel heard the resignation in his voice and brought up the vitals on both of their consoles, and monitored Earth, as per instructions.
"Otherwise we'll contact the Enterprise when we're ready to beam back." Sulu pressed the communication command.
"Good Luck." The connection dropped and Pavel exchanged a look with Sulu that ended abruptly when Uhura reentered the bridge.
"Communications and transporter are inoperative; Sulu please tell me you have them." Sulu looked at Pavel quickly and slammed his hands on the console. The vitals display had malfunctioned when the drill was lowered, then come back online, but they had no idea where they were, just whether they were alive.
"Kirk and Spock are on their own now," the Asian finally said sullenly. Pavel quickly pulled the vital display over to his own console and continued to monitor the Nerada. A few minutes later, a small ship left the Mining vessel and destroyed the drill, bringing controls back up. He quickly worked with Scotty in symphony to lock onto Pike, Kirk and Spock and waited with baited breath for the signal. Suddenly the little ship went into warp and the Nerada followed. Pavel and Sulu quickly followed, emerging from warp just in time to destroy the missiles that were targeting the futuristic little craft. Just before the ships collided, Kirk called for the beam up and Pavel barely registered the energizing before the ships finally met.
"Keptains!" he called as Kirk and Spock returned to the bridge, turning to face them with a grin. "The enemy ship is losing power; their shields are down, Sirs!"
"Hail them now," Kirk bit out as the two continued to stand in front of the view-screen.
"Aye." As he worked on hailing the Nerada, he noted the budding singularity in the midst of the ship with a pleasant satisfaction.
"This is Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Your ship is compromised; too close to the singularity to survive without assistance, which we are willing to provide." Pavel looked at the other blonde incredulously, certain the man was crazy. Then he read the conversation between the Captain and Science Officer, and smirked.
"I would rather suffer the end of Romulus a thousand times. I would rather die in agony than accept assistance from you."
"You got it." Pavel dropped the conversation immediately, anticipating the orders along with Sulu as they began to ready all weapons. The last of the ship was destroyed by their phasers (which would have to recharge for several hours) and photon torpedoes (which they were out of afterward) just before the singularity stabilized slightly and began pulling them in. Even maximum warp wasn't getting them away from the gravity well.
Pavel's heart was beating too fast, and the hull was cracking and Kirk was yelling orders to Scotty and then suddenly he was shoved back into his seat as the explosion from the detonated warp core pushed them out into space, and they were free. For some reason his heart stuttered when Sulu turned the full force of his relieved grin on him, but pushed it aside; there was still a lot of work to do.
A/N: So this is only the end of the chapter, not the story. Thankfully I wrote the entire thing out before I typed or this would end up like some of my other stories in that the bunnies run away and kidnap the muses.
Anyway, this story will continue on past the end of the movie and into their mission. Read and Review please, though there is no way I'm not posting the rest of this story.
A/N2: also, Pavel was referring to reading their lips when he 'read the conversation'.