A.N. Wrote this a couple years ago - I'm just moving things over from my lj.
Speed
"Slow down, Hikaru!" His mother would call to him when they'd go walking by the water. Sometimes Hikaru would hold her hand and hop along beside her, but sometimes – sometimes when he'd see a transporter shuttle flying high above them, or watch the waves roar in from the deep, deep sea and crash against the rocks, he'd run. He'd run and run until his legs got tired and his lungs started burning and his mother's cries for him to slow down faded into the distance.
He thought it would be different when he got to the Academy. It wasn't. The instructors were less concerned with breaking speed records and more concerned with pumping out uniform pilots who performed uniformly. The only difference was that, instead of 'Slow down, Hikaru,' it was 'Slow down, Mr. Sulu.'
Half a year after Jim Kirk becomes captain, he comes up to the bridge with a small smile on his face.
"Lieutenant," he tells Sulu. "Mr. Scott believes he has made modifications to the warp cores to make them suitable for maintaining warp nine for several hours."
Sulu holds his breath.
"If you would be so kind as to oblige?"
Sulu doesn't even realize he's grinning as his hands punch in the calculations and grip the thruster controls.
"Yes, sir," he says.
Oh, hell yes, he thinks.
