If there was a single bad thing about finding a gorgeous, half-dressed teenager sleeping in his bed when he got in, Len McCoy was utterly unable to see it.

He shed his clothes quickly, sliding on some PJs in the spirit of taking things slow, and for the first time in years he climbed into a warm bed next to a welcoming body.

"Len?" Pavel stirred, shifting. "I fell asleep."

"It's nighttime. That's what it's for." McCoy gathered the boy close, warming beyond anything beer or bourbon could cause as Pavel curled in to him, laying his head on Leonard's chest and settling as if he was designed to fit right there.

He lay there stroking his hand gently through disheveled curls, and thought for a long time about transporter theories he didn't understand, and how less than two months ago he didn't know half the things he did now.

"Len."

His hand slowed, then took up his soothing stroke again when Pavel didn't move. "Hmm?"

Pavel was quiet for another long moment. "I fought with Hikaru tonight."

McCoy couldn't help a smile, remembering Pavel dumping water in Sulu's food and dragging him out of the mess. "Sorry about that. He's...you know he's just--"

"Worried. Yes." Pavel didn't sound exactly forgiving. "Whatever he told you about...about me, or about..."

McCoy's smile faded. "Irina?"

He could feel the tension as it strummed through Pavel's body. "Whatever he told you wasn't for him to tell."

"He really didn't...just her name, Pasha."

"That is too much!" Pavel drew in a breath, fingers curling over McCoy's shirt. "And I told him so. I told him a lot and I don't think he'll listen, but..." He sighed. "He told me something too. About me, about how the things I hide from people are the things I most need to tell."

McCoy answered flatly. "You're allowed secrets, even from me."

"Secrets are more powerful the less people that know them." Pavel's tension didn't fade. He slipped in as if he could get even closer than he was. "I don't want it to be powerful anymore. You've heard me talk too much today already, I know, but..."

McCoy frowned into the darkness. His arm slipped around Pavel's sleep-warmed body, curling across his side. "It's not like I get tired of it, Pasha."

"Good." Pavel seemed to be smiling for that one word, but the smile was out of his voice almost instantly. "Then I will tell you a ridiculous story that is very embarrassing, and then you will make me feel better because you always do, and then we will sleep."

McCoy looked down through the darkness at tangled curling hair. "You don't--"

"Len. It's very important that you don't talk. At all. Because I will never finish, and this way I can pretend to just be talking to myself and not feel so..."

He chuckled, but it ached in his chest. "Okay."

"Okay. Starting now. No talking."

McCoy smiled but obeyed, keeping his mouth shut.

There was a few seconds pause, and a quiet sigh. "I was completely ridiculous at the academy, do you know that? You can assume, at least. I was small and strange and Russian, I didn't drink at parties or watch football or date girls or any of the things that everyone else talked about constantly. I learned, that was all."

McCoy could picture it way too easily. A fourteen-year-old Pavel with huge eyes and round cheeks and all those curls everywhere, watching life go on around him because he didn't know how to contribute. He just knew how to learn.

It hit him with this sudden jagged stab of shock - McCoy himself was on the campus at the same damned time. The Enterprise crew was half made up of recent grads, which meant half the fucking crew had been at school with Pavel.

"Anyway, one day – I was fifteen – someone walked up to me in the courtyard outside the administration building. This girl, I'd never seen her before, or hadn't noticed her if I did. She walked right up and kissed me on the mouth."

The smile was back in his voice. "It was a dare from her friends. She told me so, right afterwards, while she was laughing at my expression. She lost a bet and had to kiss the strange little kid sitting by himself."

McCoy petted his hair slowly, trying not to tense. Knowing that something grim had to be coming made it hard for him to enjoy the levity in Pavel's story so far.

"As soon as I heard her speak, I forgot about the kiss entirely. She was Russian, her accent almost as bad as mine. So instead of being embarrassed I asked her where she was from. We talked, for hours. About home, and how different America was, and Americans. We were friends from then on. She would call my room and ask me to just say something- anything – in Russian."

McCoy wasn't sure why he hated this girl so damned much already. Maybe Sulu's grimness when he first brought her up, or Pavel's reaction when the name was spoken out loud earlier.

"She was bright, and she had friends everywhere, boys all around her. She was beautiful," Pavel added, "but I was the last to notice something like that. Remembering her now, though, she was. She was as tall as any of the boys who followed her around, and pale as a ghost, and blonde."

He fell silent for a little while, as if picturing the girl he used to know.

McCoy looked out at the darkness, wishing he could see Pavel's face. Pavel couldn't hide much of anything, and he usually didn't even try.

Then again, maybe that was the reason Pasha wanted to talk about this now, in the dark.

"She used to ask me why I knew no one else." He curled his hand over McCoy's chest, fingertips smoothing over the fabric of his bedclothes. "Irina said I was terrified of doing something I didn't already know I was good at, that's why I never tried to make friends. She talked to me about girls, and about boys. She offered to set me up with friends, and tried to convince me to join clubs or go off campus and meet people..." He sighed, his voice wry. "People my own age."

He looked up suddenly, head lifting off McCoy's chest. The darkness made it hard to see details, but the glitter of his eyes was clear as he looked at McCoy.

"You should know, I wasn't unhappy. She said it was unnatural, a boy like me being so uninterested in people. She said I was scared, and maybe I was, but..." He hesitated, looking for words. "I never had friends, not until I came to this ship, but I get along with myself enough that I never felt the lack. Does that make sense?"

McCoy hesitated, but nodded. He didn't like it much, but it did make sense. It was probably a good thing Pavel was so content in his own head, or he wouldn't be half as well-adjusted as he was.

Pavel sighed. He lay back against McCoy, but his body didn't relax. "She was my first, I suppose. My first friend. But on my sixteenth birthday she came to my room with a bottle of vodka. Real Russian vodka, sent from home. We toasted a dozen things, and she kept pouring more and more. And then she kissed me again."

McCoy's hand stilled in his hair. He looked out at the darkness, feeling his expression hardening.

Pavel didn't look at him again. His voice was getting softer in that quiet, confessional way of his. He wasn't scared of telling the truth, even an embarrassing truth, but he didn't like it.

"She kissed me and drank more vodka, and I didn't know what..." He shrugged. "It wasn't like when the others had touched me – the man at university, or the boy I tutored at the academy. It wasn't the same. I was drunk, a little, when she took her shirt off and put my hand on her. Her breast. You know." Pavel shifted, voice going even softer. "She told me to take my shirt off, too, so I did..." His voice stuck for a moment.

McCoy swallowed, but he kept himself quiet and still.

Pavel inhaled, deep and ragged. "She started to cry. As soon as she saw..." He gestured awkwardly at himself, his own chest. "She kissed me through her tears until she couldn't stop crying. I didn't understand any of it."

He laughed, small and bitter. "She got drunk because she thought it would help. She told me this after she finally gave up and put her shirt back on. She wanted to give me sex. As a present, because I was lonely, she thought, and I would never manage it on my own." He inhaled raggedly, his face dipping into McCoy's shirt until his words were muffled. "She pitied me my age and my fear of people, and she drank herself stupid so that she could give herself to me."

He kept his face buried against McCoy's chest, hiding from the story. "But in the end she couldn't even do that. She took one look at me, my body, and she called herself sick because I was a child. She begged me to let her leave."

McCoy didn't wince, because he didn't want Pavel to feel any kind of reaction he might misinterpret. He stayed quiet and stayed still, and it was maybe the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life.

"I never asked for any of it. I wasn't normal, but I was happy with my books and lessons. I never felt like...like the freakish little child everyone saw me as. Not until that night, when she wept at the idea of forcing herself to touch me, but pitied me so much she still tried."

It was some crack about pedophilia that made Sulu look at McCoy so furiously. It was that stupid joke that made Sulu tell him to ask about Irina.

Pavel recounted the unwanted touches of three different, strange men without shedding a tear. But this girl, this friend who couldn't bring herself to touch him, seemed to have hurt him worse than anything Bauer could have done.

Sulu was a smart guy, and a good friend. He was right about a lot of things.

Maybe everything.

"Pavel." McCoy blinked burning eyes at the darkness around them and stroked the thin fabric of Pavel's bedshirt. "Pasha..."

Pavel didn't move. His face stayed buried in McCoy's shirt and his fingers gripped his pajamas tightly.

He didn't sob, though. He didn't even cling for that long. He spoke into McCoy's chest. "If it weren't for Hikaru, I might never have told you about her."

McCoy frowned, trying to look down at him.

Pavel stayed stubbornly close, though. "It is embarrassing. But. Len. Lyonya..." He drew in a deep breath and pulled his head back, lifting up and looking through the darkness. He still clung tight to McCoy's shirt.

"Embarrassing is all it is." Most of his features were lost to the darkness but his wet eyes were steady on McCoy. "If Irina haunted my memory, you have already driven her away. You didn't even know about her, but you replaced her with new memories. You showed me how good it should have been." He smiled suddenly, shy. "When I all but trapped you in my quarters the first night...when I took my shirt off, and you looked at me like I was beautiful. Even when you saw...me, as I am. You called me beautiful. You made me feel it."

You are beautiful, McCoy wanted to say. To drive home to Pavel, because it was all the more important in the light of that story that Pavel really believe it. Irina might have stopped herself because he was too young, but that kind of humiliation didn't discriminate. All Pavel knew was that a friend he cared for couldn't force herself to touch him.

All McCoy knew was that Pavel had never asked her to. He'd never asked anything from any damned body.

McCoy met his eyes; his tears had stopped but the tracks were drying on his cheeks, gleaming dully, and McCoy had to remember to never ask what Irina's last name was. Because he would find her if he knew how, and he would break his Hippocratic Oath.

Pavel relaxed after a moment. Maybe he saw something in McCoy's face that echoed the words McCoy couldn't have ever said clearly, or well, and so didn't say at all.

He curled back in to McCoy and sighed. "And now...now there are no more unpleasant stories for me to hide. You have them all, you've taken them from me."

McCoy blinked heated eyes and stared out at the darkness, wondering how the fuck he was ever going to be worthy of that kind of trust.

Pavel, almost in answer, leaned up suddenly. His mouth, damp with tears, brushed over McCoy's cheek, and he whispered into the darkness, "Spasiba, iscelitel'."

When the door chimed he rolled his eyes and thought impolite thoughts about always having to be on call.

But he answered, or at least growled from across the room with his ass staying firmly in the chair he was sprawled in. "Damn it, but come in."

The door – and if computers could think he sometimes wondered what the sensors in his room would've thought about the grouchy bitch living there – recognized it as a command and opened obediently.

He was completely blatant about his displeasure, barely flickering his eyes up from him book. "It's my day off," he said in greeting to whoever was damaged enough to pester him in his off hours.

"Yeah, well. I don't want to be here either, doc." Sulu came in, hands in his pockets and looking the very picture of a sullen kid sent to the principal's office.

McCoy covered his surprise with a tight smile. "Punching hours are over for the day, flyboy."

Sulu actually turned a little pink. "I come in peace. Or at least in non-violence."

McCoy sighed and set the book down, marking his spot carefully. "He's not here, if you're looking to talk some sense into him again."

"Yeah. Nyota told me earlier that he was stealing Spock from her for the evening. Something about bison theory, or boson, or what the hell ever." He flashed a faint smile. "He's somewhere being smart at people."

McCoy returned the smile just as faintly, wondering what the hell Sulu was after. He stood up, stretching lazily. "I'm due a warm-up," he said, grabbing the cold dregs of a cup of coffee. "Want some?"

"Sure."

He glanced back as he thumbed the replimat for a refill and a second cup of coffee. "Black?"

"Sugar. Double cream." Sulu moved to his couch and sat down, looking instantly comfortable in his surroundings the way he always seemed to.

Funny, he'd never seen Sulu lose his constant Zen cool until he decided to come in and slug McCoy. Lucky him.

Sulu looked at the table, at the book McCoy had deserted. "What're you reading?"

"The Brothers Karamazov," he answered with a wry smile.

"Ouch."

"Yeah. At least I got a pass on War and Peace. Apparently even Pasha can't keep all those characters straight, so he knew I'd be hopeless." McCoy grinned to himself, but tried to school the expression as he went over and stretched out the second cup of coffee.

Sulu took his coffee and sat back. He frowned, looking from McCoy to the cup and dropping all pretense of casual small talk.

McCoy dropped into his chair with a sigh.. He almost told Sulu not to bother, that he'd lie to Pavel and tell him they were square. But hell, Sulu had sought him out, and that must've been tough.

He stayed quiet.

Sulu regarded McCoy over his cup, his fingers tapping the rim slowly. "I just don't know, doc. I really don't."

McCoy nodded. "If it's any consolation I'd react the same damned way if our roles were reversed. Hell, I'd make you look like a saint in comparison."

"It isn't that I don't trust you," Sulu said in return, his eyes solemn. "I'd put my life in your hands any day, doc. I'd put his life in your hands and not worry. But this?"

"Don't sweat it, kid. I understand – have from the start. I bet I've called myself worse names than you ever could." McCoy frowned, sitting back and tilting his head up to frown at the ceiling. "You know, there's really not a god damned thing I can say to you. I've given it some thought, too, lately. Trying to make things easier for Pavel."

"Yeah."

"I can stick with him, and I will, and that'll wear you down eventually. I can keep him from being miserable as best I can, maybe even make him happy. But there's not a quick fix." He regarded his cup, thinking that over. "Hell, I don't even want to fix it all that bad, because if you ask me it does Pavel some good. He needs to see that people care about him enough not to take the passive, easy road when they're worried about him."

Sulu was quiet. McCoy lifted his head to look over and saw that the kid was smiling. Small and controlled, like everything else he did, but it was a real smile. "I don't know, doc. Maybe there's no instant fix, but maybe it won't take as long as either of us thinks."

"Yeah?" McCoy hesitated, looking at him closely. "If you don't mind me asking, what's making you think that? What brought you here at all?"

Sulu took a long swallow of coffee and sighed, sitting up and setting the cup on the table. "When Pavel dragged me out of the mess yesterday? He let me have it. I mean, big time."

He stood up suddenly, a little of his calm belied by the apparent need to pace around while he talked this out. "I deserved it, too. Irina...I shouldn't have said anything to you about her. That was out of line. I think you should know, I think you'll understand why I did it, but that doesn't make it right."

McCoy considered telling him about the night before. About Pavel's soft story and his shivers of humiliation. The damp warmth of tears on McCoy's bedshirt.

But he stayed quiet, figuring he'd let Sulu get his words out first.

Sulu paced lightly, moving on the balls of his feet with the natural stride of an athlete. "When he was done yelling, he said a few things that made me think. He said that it's bullshit – his word, doc, and thanks for progressing his education like that."

McCoy chuckled.

Sulu flashed him a grin. "He said it's bullshit that I spend half my time reassuring him that he isn't some child, that he's not some mascot to the ship, or to Nyota and I, and then I turn around and say 'oh, except in this one way. You're totally a kid this one way and you can't be trusted to make your own decision'."

McCoy considered that.

Sulu's grin went wry. "He told me that if he was ever going to learn to be his own man than he couldn't let people, even his friends, even me, pick the ways we thought he was still a kid. He's got to be one or the other, kid or man, equal or mascot. Not half and half, especially if he's not even the one picking which half is which."

Smart kid. Fucking smart, fucking old kid. McCoy almost wondered if Pavel told those things to Sulu hoping Sulu would tell them to McCoy. Because fuck if he wasn't guilty of the same crime.

Sulu moved back to the couch, flopping into a boneless slump that only a guy who hadn't hit thirty yet could manage. "So, fine. If he's a man then he can be with whoever he wants. And if I think the guy he's with might not be good for him..."

McCoy tensed.

Sulu sighed. "Well, he can make his own decisions, which means he can make his own mistakes. I can't go around slugging people or throwing temper tantrums - that makes me the child, doesn't it?"

"I wouldn't have said it to your face," McCoy answered, looking away from Sulu in the interest of keeping the peace.

Silence fell.

Sulu broke it soon enough. "You know that's your cue to tell me how you are good for him."

McCoy snorted, but didn't answer.

"Come on, you gave me the talk once. You're a doctor and a good man and all that other crap, remember?"

McCoy grimaced and looked to the side, at the book he was slogging his way through.

"Real bad time to go silent, doc." Sulu's voice was getting tense.

"I'm not a shrink," McCoy said finally. And the moment those words were out he kept going – Sulu wasn't Jim, he wouldn't mock his uncertainty. McCoy sure as hell couldn't talk to Pavel about this, and hell, maybe he wanted someone to agree with him, with his fears.

Those first words were just drips – the faucet opened hard.

"I'm not a shrink, and I never bothered with psychology. I never took classes for this shit. Yeah, I'm a doctor, but Pavel's not hurt anywhere I can fix." He faced Sulu, oddly eager to get this out to someone. "I might be hurting him worse. Every fucking thing I say to him, everything we do, it might be dead wrong. I might be pushing him too far, no matter what he says. He could fucking well break on me, Sulu, and it'd be my own fucking fault for being so selfish."

God, it felt good. It was a form of release, getting these ugly dishwater thoughts out of his head.

"He never wanted anyone before, he says, and now he wants me – me, of all fucking people. So I do the most shallow, idiot thing in the world andsay yes. Because I miss touch, and because he's beautiful and I can't get over the things...what he says sometimes, and how his mind works, and how he's so determined to be a man that he takes responsibility for everything that happens to him, especially the shit. Even Bauer's dick in his mouth...he gave me this whole theory once, this whole rap about causality, and he blamed himself as much as Bauer. Who does that, Sulu?"

He paused, but no answer came. Frowning, he glanced at the table, the Russian book he was reading to reward Pavel, because Pavel had agreed with him that Tom Sawyer wasn't as good as Huck Finn.

He thought of a different book. Yevtushenko. Fury and Envy.

"You know, he gets so pissed off that he was screwed out of a normal life. He's even more pissed than I am that he got hurt so young, that those bastards fucked up sex and love and kissing and touching for him. He wants to fix that, and he wants me to fix it with him. He trusts me to...and there's no way to live up to that."

He slumped back, dropping his face into his hand and rubbing at frustration that never went away.

"I had a beautiful wife and a perfect little daughter and I couldn't make that work. I couldn't get something that simple right, how the fuck am I going to do this?"

Dark humor bubbled up, and his chuckle sounded dry and raspy. "Fuck of it is, I have no choice now. He wants me, and that kid is damned well going to get everything he wants. I can't walk away, and I don't want to, but...it's like I'm going into surgery with the wrong god damned equipment: I have to do it, and I have to do my absolute best, but the odds I'll get it right are shit."

"Doc."

McCoy turned back to Sulu, for a moment wanting nothing more than agreement, a dark glower and reassurance that Sulu would keep trying to talk sense into Pavel.

But.

Sulu was smiling.

Bright, that smile, fucking incongruously bright and sincere.

Sulu stood smoothly, taking his cup of coffee and moving in graceful strides back to the replimat. When he turned to McCoy again the smile was still there.

"Okay."

He glared at Sulu. Okay?

"You win."

McCoy frowned, stirring from his own heaviness. "What?"

"You win. I trust you with his life, and I guess I trust you with this, too. Which figures, really. All this drama just to get one more I-told-you-so from Pavel."

"Come on." McCoy sat up, leaning forward. "How the hell...you heard all that shit, right? I wasn't talking to myself. I'm not a fucking psychologist, Sulu. I don't know what--"

"Okay, but. He's not your patient."

McCoy's words dried up.

Sulu grinned. "It'd be some pretty extreme therapy if he was, don't you think? And no offense, but if I ever thought you were doing this as some kind of treatment, I would never have kept my mouth shut for a second."

McCoy opened his mouth. Closed it.

"Look, you're an awesome doctor, we all know this. But that's not all you are. It's sure not how he thinks of you." Sulu chuckled to himself. "I think 'lover' is the word he used, but to be honest I blocked the exact words out of my mind. And will continue to block it out every time I hear him say anything like that."

McCoy just sat there, his breath uneven, his thoughts way too sluggish.

"This time, doc, you're going to have to be content just being the cure."

"I'm not..." McCoy stopped. He frowned.

Sulu laughed suddenly. "Man, Pavel was right. Who are we to call him a kid when we can't even figure our own selves out?" He headed for the door, apparently content his job was done. "See you, doc."

McCoy muttered something that might've been an answer. His gaze went distant, his mind grinding slowly into gear.

He sat there for a long time, coffee getting cold again as Sulu's words repeated in his head, over and over. Words he should have known, should have figured out for himself.

He's not your patient.

Jesus mother fucking Christ.

Sometimes he feared for the health of this crew, because obviously Leonard McCoy was the dumbest piece of shit who ever lived.