The Lines Between: Chapter 4

By Delmantheevil

"Pavel!"

Chekov jerked his head up to see Sulu and Uhura grinning and waving at him from the other side of the crowded bar. He smiled back and signaled for them to come over, his pulse quickening in mounting excitement.

They had been planning this for months.

It wasn't every day they were on leave for a week. Almost never, in fact. They had agreed that tonight he, Sulu, Uhura, and Scotty would all meet up here, and they were going to drink, and laugh, and…..well…drink.

Uhura had taken some convincing, but eventually she had agreed to go along with it just this once. They were going to party all night, and completely forget duty, completely forget that they served in Starfleet, and if they were lucky, their names. Then in the morning, they would all crash, and there would be no regrets and no one there to yell at them.

It was, of course, something they would probably never do again, but they were going to do it tonight. It was going to be perfect, and they were going to do it.

They were.

There were to be no excuses this time. They had planned it all out perfectly, and nothing was going to get in the way.

They were going to ignore the fact that every time they had planned this in the past, something had gone wrong and they had to reschedule only to be interrupted again the next time. They were going to ignore the fact that Starfleet seemed to love to bother them in particular at exactly the moment they had planned something. Of course, nothing bad ever happened when they had nothing to do.

Perhaps the only reason they planned something so absurd was because it was so unlikely to ever happen.

It was as if the Enterprise had some horrible curse. It was always in the right place at the right time for something to go wrong.

But this time, it was going to be different.

Uhura and Sulu finally reached the table Chekov and saved for them, and fell into their seats.

"How long you been here, Pav?" Sulu asked him as Uhura leaned over to give him a hug.

"Ah, not too long." Chekov answered, then suddenly scanned the bar. "Ver is Mr. Scott?"

"He isn't coming," Sulu said, then he broke out in a smile, "he couldn't stand it. I guess you won the bet, Ny."

"Of course I did." Uhura beamed.

Everyone who knew Montgomery Scott best understood that with him, the only thing that could win out over drinks was his baby.

Their laughter was just dying away when Chekov asked the question.

"Should ve order some dreenks?"

There table became suddenly quiet as they all, in turn, locked eyes with each other.

No communicator beepers went off.

No one approached their table to interrupt them.

No lightening bolted down from the sky to destroy the pub.

Nothing.

Then Sulu broke though the apprehensive silence.

"Let's do this."

And all three broke into huge smiles.

A few minutes later, Uhura raised her glass above the middle of the table.

"To the crew of the Enterprise."

Sulu lifted his glass.

"To shore leave."

And then a voice boomed across the loudspeaker.

"Attention all Starfleet personnel, this is an emergency recall: if you have been serving or have been commissioned to serve aboard the Enterprise you are ordered to return to your ship immediately for duty. Repeat: This is a code red situation, all commissioned Enterprise officers report to their assigned stations immediately."

They stared at each other in ironic disbelief, each waiting for the other to burst out on an angry rampage.

Instead all three burst out laughing.

Struggling to catch their breath from the hysterical, almost impossible, nature of their forever-hopeless situation, they grabbed their coats and exited the table, leaving their drinks untouched once again.

A.N. I know, I know, this took forever. Sorry. I had a family emergency in Arizona so I've just now gotten back to my writing. As for the shortness, well, there was actually a whole other section to it, but I decided with them both together the chapter would be to long. Anyways, I should be posting chapter 5 pretty soon. Live long and Prosper \\//.