He can't focus on Hikaru's words. He can't echo the laughter of the people around them at the table, even to manage the weak smile he can usually force his mouth into.
He can't stop thinking about what is waiting for him when he leaves here.
He has done something, perhaps. Something to anger Len, something to make Len think that his words or his feelings are false.
All he said was what he has said a dozen times now. 'Love'. But Len has stopped responding the way he used to.
Perhaps it's thanks to Kirk, to whatever he has been telling Len that made Len try to distance himself the day before. Perhaps Kirk also scoffed at Pavel and his 'love' and made Len think it wasn't true.
But that's absurd. This thing, the love, the feelings, they have always been held strictly by Len and by Pavel. The recovery, their behavior, their wounds, those are things that Kirk is informed enough about that yes, perhaps he can comment on it and his opinion could hold some weight.
But what exists between Pavel and Len, what formed in that cell over so many days...no one can comment on that.
Len smiled at him and Pavel slept beside him in his bed, like he has since Len was released from Sickbay. Pavel talked him to sleep, stroked his hair, fell asleep beside him, as they have done for days now.
But Len is still slipping away from him.
Maybe that means that Pavel is wrong, that Kirk is right. Maybe this is how things were always going to happen. If what they feel for each other came from a cell, then maybe it's doomed to fade into nothing once the cell is left behind.
Pavel's own feelings aren't changing. They aren't fading. His frantic need to be close to Len, to make sure at every moment that he's safe, that he's comfortable and fed and healthy, that has faded into something more rational.
But he still knows every single time he sees Len that he loves him, that he will do anything for him. He knows Len, every contradictory, fascinating aspect of him. Len, more than anyone, more than iHikaru,/i knows Pavel and his life, his fears and his memories.
That won't go away. How can it? It is learned knowledge, not trained behavior. Nothing but amnesia can take that from them.
It is enough for Pavel. Perhaps it isn't enough for Len.
Pavel stands up after this thought, because it's horrible and he can't sit here and worry and debate with himself about it. Not when the answer lies with Len.
Hikaru looks over as he stands. "Hey, you leaving?"
Pavel nods, distracted, and takes his half-full tray. "I need to see Len."
Hikaru looks away from him fast. He doesn't answer.
Pavel doesn't need him to - he hardly needs permission. He takes his tray to the recycler and shoves it in, already thinking about how to best ask Len about all these fears of his.
Hikaru is standing there when he turns, close enough that Pavel jumps.
"Sorry," Hikaru says with a faint, tight smile. "I didn't want to say anything with everybody sitting around. Pavel..."
Pavel thinks to himself, with some twist of bitter, Len-ish amusement, and you, Brutus?
Hikaru takes his arm, leading him further from the recycler and the neighboring tables. "I'm worried about you, okay? I think you ought to sit here for one full meal. McCoy's doing okay, right? You don't have to go rushing back."
"You don't understand," Pavel says automatically. It's become an instinctive answer, but it's never less than the truth.
"I'm trying to." Hikaru meets his eyes, concerned.
He is the closest friend Pavel has ever had. He has never felt distanced by Pavel's sometimes-overbearing intelligence and his need to show it off. He hasn't ever demanded that Pavel be more social than he wants to. He hasn't pushed Pavel to go out and be young, to find someone to sleep with, to be normal. Not the way most people Pavel has called friends usually do.
Pavel finds it harder to resent Hikaru's concern than someone like Kirk's. But that doesn't mean his concern is valid.
"I just need to speak to him," he says, smiling at Hikaru as much as he can manage. "It isn't-"
"Pasha. Come on. You always just need to speak to him, or check on him, or take him some food or a data padd or some damned thing. Can you let it go for one day?"
The genuine snap of irritation in Hikaru's voice catches Pavel's attention. He blinks out at his friend, his usual instinctive answer dying in his throat.
Hikaru frowns at him, looking almost grim. "McCoy is getting better, right? He can't heal completely if you're still there enabling him to rely on you. I'm not a doctor or anything, but I can figure that much out."
Pavel's mouth closes over his half-formed answers. He can feel his expression freezing, his shoulders squaring.
Hikaru must see it, because he speaks more hesitantly. "I'm just saying. It's not good for you, either, co-opting his recovery like this. You should be on the bridge with me, you should be able to sit through a meal with your friends the way you used to every day."
Co-opting his recovery.
For some reason those words stick in Pavel's mind, echoing. Co-opting his recovery.
Is that what Kirk thinks? Is that why he was so close to actually warning Pavel away from Len the other day?
Do they think...what? That Pavel is going back to Len again and again because he wants to somehow feel like they're both still suffering? That he can't let Len heal on his own?
Pavel wasn't hurt the way Len was. He is well aware of that. Is that the only thing anyone else can see? That he wasn't so badly hurt so he must be delaying his own recovery, trying to make himself seem worse off than he is so that Len isn't the only one still healing?
How...how horrible a person do people take him for, if they think...
He looks at Hikaru, not sure if he feels betrayed or scared that they might be right.
"I am leaving," he says, his voice cold enough to make Hikaru back up a half-step. "I appreciate your concern for Len, I'll be sure to pass it on to him."
He strides away from Hikaru, moving so quickly that the door almost doesn't slide open fast enough, and his eyes are hot and dry and cloudy and he would have run right into it.
Hikaru doesn't understand. He tries, he wants to, but he doesn't. And if Hikaru doesn't understand, no one ever will.
God, maybe there's nothing to understand at all. If the whole universe thinks he's an overdramatic child who needs to shut up and let the real hero recover unmolested, maybe it's Pavel who is wrong.
Maybe he's making Len worse. Maybe he's taking away attention from where it belongs. Len was hurt so badly, and he'll be hurt for so long, recovering. What did Pavel go through to compare to that?
That's what they all think, anyway. Even Hikaru. 'Leonard McCoy is a saint and a martyr, and look at the little Russian baby still crying because his stomach hurt.'
Maybe they're right. God, what if they're right?
Pavel doesn't look where he's going, and doesn't pay attention to whoever might be around him. So when a hand falls on his arm he jumps, his mind half in a dark, miserable cell, and he wheels around to face the intruder.
The face he sees isn't reassuring. That overgrown security guard, the one who's been lurking around so often lately.
Pavel takes a step backwards on instinct, tugging his arm away from the man's hand. But he stops and strands straight and faces the attacker the way he has trained himself.
"What do you want?" he asks, imperious though it's thin and wavering on his voice.
The guard, Harris – Cupcake, Pavel sneers unkindly in Kirk's voice – hesitates, dropping his arm to his side. He looks around, brow furrowed, as if checking for witnesses.
Pavel doesn't care. He doesn't know why some oversized violent security officer would want to come after him, but he doesn't damned well care anymore.
"You know Janice?"
Pavel blinks. His thoughts have to slow and swerve to edge onto this new path. "Yeoman Rand?"
Harris nods. He seems uncomfortable, looking around at everything but Pavel as if it's Pavel who has followed him down a corridor and pulled him to a stop.
Of course everyone knows Janice. Janice is Nyota's friend, lovely and blonde and popular, right-hand to Kirk when it comes to the administrative duties he hates so much.
There is gossip about her and Harris - there is gossip about everyone - that Pavel has heard but never paid much attention to. He does know that he's never seen the two of them together.
Pavel folds his arms over his chest and waits.
Harris lets out a breath and sets his jaw. He doesn't quite look at Pavel but he stops looking around at the empty walls around them.
"So we were going out, you know. At the Academy. Her and me." He talks strangely, halting, like he isn't used to carrying on conversations in full sentences.
Pavel frowns at him, seeing some kind of shadow in the man's eyes that makes him more patient than he wants to be.
"Anyway." Harris sighs again, scratching at his neck awkwardly. "This one night we were out in the city, during hols. Didn't either of us have nowhere to go, so we hung around the city, went downtown. You know." His eyes drop lower. His face is going pink as he talks.
Pavel finds himself focusing on his story, wondering.
"So we're downtown walking around after some movie, and these guys come up. Young little fucks all dirty and skinny like they been on drugs their whole fucking lives. Guy starts coming up on me like he wants a piece, like I pissed him off just from walking around, big as I am." He shrugs. "Guys like me get that a lot, you know?"
Pavel almost smiles. "How would someone like me know that?"
Harris seems to almost smile back, but it drops like a weight from his face. "Anyway, they were skinny little punks, but guys like that are fucking mean when they're hopped up on whatever shit they're taking. I tried not to wail on them since we used to get in trouble for fighting with townies, but one of them grabbed Janice."
Pavel's stirring sense of calm stutters. He frowns up at the oversized guard.
Harris leans back against the corridor wall, his gaze losing focus as he speaks. "I'm about to fly at that guy, you know, fucking laying a hand on her like that. But one of his punk friends gets me when I'm distracted, hits me over the head with this chunk of concrete right off the damn curb." His arm comes up, hand brushing back through his short hair rubbing at some spot behind his ear.
Pavel leans back against the other corridor, waiting with nerves rolling in his stomach.
Harris draws in a deep breath. "So I hit the ground and everything goes fuzzy, and when I get my focus back one of the dirtbags is sitting on me, you know? Got my hands pulled back and he's holding my wrists, fucking sitting right on my back. And these other three guys..."
His throat works. A vein in his neck throbs visibly. "They got Janice cornered. She's...shit. A lot of girls can fight or whatever, and that's great, but she wasn't ever one of them. She didn't know anything about protecting herself."
Pavel recognizes the shadow that's been in Harris's eyes this whole time now.
It's familiar.
Harris clears his throat. "Anyway. By the time I got my head clear enough to focus, they had her sprawled out on the ground. Had her shirt torn open and this one fucker's kissing her with his filthy fucking mouth and she's crying, and..." He shrugs. "I couldn't make myself move, my head wouldn't come together, not right away. And it felt like fucking hours, and by the time I got that junkie fucker off me and got over there to help..."
Pavel swallows, looking away from that shadow he knows so well. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Everybody knows about the shit that happened down on that planet." Harris shrugs. "I heard some of what Sulu was saying to you. He...he doesn't get it, but...that doesn't mean he's right."
Pavel's breath stalls, caught in his throat. He looks up at the dark eyes of a man he never gave a second thought to, and speaks slowly, feeling like the answer to his question will mean everything in the world. "Right about what?"
Harris meets his eyes, and it's clear, it's there on his face that he does know.
"It's harder to watch," he says simply.
Pavel lets his frozen breath escape.
"In some ways," Harris adds after a moment. "For some people. Janice...she's the one that got hurt. They didn't manage to...you know, do everything they were trying to do to her. I got there in time to stop the worst of it. Still, she had to go to the hospital, got the cops involved. Had to go stay with her sister for a while just to get over it however she could. And that...I'm not saying what happened to me was worse. But sometimes having to watch it can be as bad as going through it. Especially if it's happening to someone you love."
It feels like validation, like the tiniest little kernel of understanding that is all Pavel has wanted, all he was trying to get from Hikaru.
Len is the one who got hurt. It's Len's hands that were crushed, Len who suffered hour after hour, beaten and abused and humiliated.
But Pavel had to watch. He had to sit there safe in his little cell and listen to the screams, and tend to Len when they brought him back. He had to patch his wounds and talk to keep up his spirits in whatever pathetic way he could.
He has to live with that. With knowing that the two of them were in the same little box, held by the same people at the same time, but Len was the one they targeted, and Pavel got to sit there unbothered, above it all.
He went through it all with Len, damn it. Just because he doesn't have scars to prove it doesn't make what he suffered a lie, or a delusion, or a ploy to get attention.
He draws in a breath and rubs his hands over his face roughly, and looks up at Harris.
"Thank you," he says, his voice as young as it's ever been.
Harris shrugs almost casually, but his eyes understand. "People don't get it, that's all. You don't gotta make them get it, either. You gotta come to some kind of peace with it in your own head, and that's hard enough as it is."
At least he doesn't toss the words out there like it's an easy task. His voice is grim.
Pavel nods slowly. "Did you? Come to peace with it?"
Harris laughs, a sharp kind of sound. "I still can't look at her without wanting to kill everyone in a ten foot radius of her. She got over it and I never fucking did. I kept trying to talk her into defense classes, kept growling at any fucker that got too close. Couldn't let a day go by without telling her I was sorry for letting it happen."
He shrugs, pain in his eyes that Pavel aches to see, because he knows that pain may well be his soon.
"I couldn't argue when she snapped and dumped my ass. Said she couldn't even look at me anymore without being back in that street with those shitheads, and I was turning into some crazy stalker and she couldn't deal with it."
And that must be the origin of the rumors floating around Harris. A bad breakup, Janice scared of her maniac over-protective ex, the whole crew knowing half-truths and spreading gossip and sneering at Cupcake Harris for hurting their friend.
Pavel clears the clog from his throat. "Thank you," he says again, "for telling me. It sounds wrong to say it, but...I'm glad that someone understands."
"Nah, I know what you mean. It's fucking hard being where you were, and most of these idiots around here don't think anything but a physical wound can cause scars. Just...shit, just don't let them turn you against yourself. Madness in a silken thread, you know? Fuck 'em."
Pavel blinks, and somehow finds himself smiling faintly. "Madness in a silken thread?"
Harris shrugs. "Yeah...they dress up shit they don't understand. Talk pretty about the kind of pain they never been through."
"I know what it means," Pavel says, his smile growing. "I just didn't expect to hear Shakespeare from someone like you."
Harris grins suddenly, and it's quick and oddly bright and then it's gone just as fast. "See, that's the point. Doesn't matter what people think about me, doesn't matter what they know about me. To them I'm some muscle-brained shithead who probably beat on Janice or something. Everybody who knows her hates me, and that's most everybody on this ship. But in the end I'm the one who knows my side of things, and I know...even if I didn't do right by her, I didn't do wrong. I did the only thing I could do."
He has only reached Feynman when his throat starts burning almost constantly.
He doesn't let it stop him. He drinks more water than usual, but he can still talk and he does. Len perhaps doesn't listen, but Pavel can't forget every time he wants to shut up and just sit for a while that Len still ineeds/i this.
He is exhausted and his throat hurts, and he feels so weak sometimes that he has to simply rest his hand on Len's forehead, because stroking his hair takes too much energy.
"My privykli dumat' ob jelementarnyh chasticah, tipa jelektrona...I mean, like electrons..." He has caught himself slipping into Russian the more drained he feels, and that's a strange thing but it doesn't seem to bother Len. Still, he tries to switch back to Standard every time he catches it happening.
"Electrons. Sorry." He reaches for the water pitcher, but his hand falls limp a few inches away. He has to reach to get it, and that seems like a great deal of trouble right now. "I was saying," he says to the wall as Len lies heavy over his legs, "that we thought of these particles as zero dimensional objects. But when we looked at matter as strings...one dimensional...oni beskonechno tonkie, but only because the number is so small compared to..."
It takes him a moment to realize he's trailed off. He blinks, trying to remember where he is in the lecture.
It's rather interesting, actually, recounting the history of physics. It tells him where his blank spots are, what periods or theories, even disproved, he ought to study up on when he gets out of here. He ought to make his knowledge more uniform.
Not that they're ever getting out of here.
He doesn't believe that rescue is impossible, just so improbable that it hardly rates as a consideration.
He had hoped after speaking to Kirk, after being dragged from this room only to be stood in front of a device and crudely ordered to speak, that he helped their odds. He thought he spoke enough to tell Spock, at least, how to find them.
But it's been days, and frankly he isn't sure if that whole thing actually happened.
He looks out at the wall and feels Len stirring against him, and he remembers to speak. "Struny byvajut otkrytymi i zamknutymi. Dvigajas' v prostranstve-vremeni...I mean...space-time. They move in...in space-time, and..."
There is a sound, the grind of the door opening.
Pavel's words trail off, and he begins this part of the routine that his life has become. He shifts Len's head from his leg and begins the struggle to his feet, making a mental note like a bookmark in his mind, so that after he has lost this fight and Len leaves and then comes back, he'll know where he left off.
He turns to the door, squinting out at the light from outside, the large forms silhouetted in the doorway. "Nyet," he says, and as they get closer his exhaustion cracks and his voice gains real heat. "No! Don't touch him!"
Len sits there, balancing his journal and his glass of bourbon - he's allowing himself one a night for now, to make sure he doesn't fall into the bottle and let himself drown like he sometimes wants to - and reading the same sentences over and over again as he waits for the door to open.
When it does open, later than usual, his eyes snap up and he doesn't let Pavel say hello.
"Why didn't you tell me you're the one who got us rescued?"
Pavel seems tense himself, wired for some reason, but he doesn't hesitate at Len's question. He moves in, peeling off his uniform jacket and smoothing it over the back of a chair.
"I didn't get us rescued," he answers simply. "Rene did."
Len sets his padd down and eyes the kid. "You know what I mean."
Pavel moves in, settling down on the couch. "Rene is the one who died on that planet. You are the one who told me that he was buried outside of their sensors. All I did was get an opportunity to give that news to the ship."
Len scowls at his glass. "I can't fucking believe Jim didn't say anything."
"Is there something wrong with that?" Pavel flashes a wan smile. "At times I didn't know if it actually happened. I do feel guilty that I wasn't more concerned about Rene, that I still can't manage much grief for him. But in the end he did get us rescued. He and you and I, together."
"It's not that." Len frowns at the amber of the bourbon. "Jim didn't tell me. Spock had to. Jim's come at me with all kinds of..."
Pavel's slight smile fades, but he nods as if he knows perfectly well what Len will say. "That isn't the same. He feels like I'm hurting you, that has nothing to do with a message I got through to Spock."
Len looks over at the kid.
Pavel's eyes are steady. He even seems calmer than he has lately. Definitely more calm than the day before, when Len let Jim get to him and all but tried to throw Pavel out.
Something in Len relaxes to see that calmness. It's like Pavel's got some kind of new information, some kind of fresh confidence about what they're doing. And Jesus, one of them has to have some kind of faith in this thing.
Spock's voice comes to his head, telling him he ought to have faith in Pavel, in himself. But Len isn't up to that yet, he can't manage it, and he has no fucking clue why.
Pavel returns his gaze for a moment, then sighs when Len doesn't speak. He stands up and holds out his hand. "It's late, we ought to get some sleep."
Len reaches out - he always reaches out when Pavel holds out a hand, and maybe that means something as strong as faith - and slips his glass on the table as he stands up.
"You stuck around after dinner with Sulu?" he asks, trying to be casual, to not be the weak one for once. He leads Pavel around the table and towards the bedroom.
"No." Pavel smiles over at him. "Actually, I had a very long talk with a security officer, Lieutenant Harris."
"Cupcake?" Len flashes a grin back at him. "What the hell did he have to tell you?"
Pavel squeezes his hand gently, that same calm light in his eyes. "That sometimes strangers can understand you better than friends."
"Uh huh. That's all?"
Pavel shrugs. "That's enough. I needed to hear what he said, at least." He lets Len lead him through the door, but slows his steps and releases Len's hand. "If you wish to pull away from me because I remind you of what happened...you should tell me."
"What?" Len stops and turns to face him, surprised. "Where the hell did that come from?"
"You aren't silent anymore," Pavel says. His eyes are steady but his voice catches almost imperceptibly. "But there are things you haven't said. I wonder if it means something, especially now that...now that the captain is getting to you with his words about us."
Bad time to leave the bourbon behind.
Len keeps his eyes on Pavel, because he's trying to be stronger than he is. "If there's something you're waiting for me to say, might as well tell me what it is."
Pavel meets his challenge. His throat works and he draws in a breath and keeps Len pierced in his eyes. "I love you."
Len looks away.
It's instant, before he can tell himself not to. He looks away because of all the things his faith is shaky in, this one's the biggest.
It's got the most potential to hurt them both. It's the thing Jim objects to the strongest. As much as Len wants to hold on to Spock's reaction, to his soft congratulations and his words about Pavel, Jim is louder in his head.
Pavel might be right. The fact that Len can't say it back might mean something. If it does...they have to face that.
Even if he doesn't love Pavel, even if it's just need based in trauma, he doesn't want to lose him. That is one thing he's certain about enough to overpower Jim in his head.
Pavel doesn't move as Len turns away and trudges to his bed to peel off his shirt.
"You..." When Pavel speaks that calm is shaken. Gone. "You have never said it back, which I understood. But now we are...we are better. Your reason for being silent now isn't...isn't the same as before."
Len has woken up nights lately to see Pavel sleeping beside him, and sometimes his urge to reach out and stroke his fingers over that pale face is almost uncontrollable.
He's always been attracted to the kid, the way someone is attracted to a vid star or something. Attraction he never thought of realistically, because the kid was isewenteen/i and Len is a bitter old man.
Love is a word he hasn't said since Joce, and he didn't ever plan to say it. At first he was silent because he simply didn't speak, because it was Pavel's job to talk and Len's job to listen.
Now he doesn't say it because Jim Kirk brays in his head about unhealthy reactions and how there's nothing between them but a cell and a month full of agony.
He opens his mouth to speak, to give voice to some of that conflict chasing itself around his brain, but he lets out a breath and doesn't say anything.
"I didn't suffer as you did," Pavel says, his voice trembling. "But I deserve to know one way or the other."
Len looks back at him, helpless against it. He can see brightness in the kid's pale green eyes. Can see fear. It hurts like a fucking knife in his chest that Pavel's fear is because of him. He can't let this kid be hurt, he can't see it happen.
Causing it...that's too fucking much.
But he can't force words to make it go away. Spock for all his support said as much: if he has to go against his judgment to indulge Pavel's feelings, than what they have is wrong.
Okay, his mind fires back at him in his own little-heard voice, but is it my judgment I'm going again, or Jim's?
Pavel folds his arms over his chest, looking more cold and lost than defensive. "You know you won't lose me entirely if you say you don't...you can't lose me. We need each other. But I deserve...some answer. A yes or a no or a maybe later. Anything."
Len shakes his head; he doesn't even have to open his mouth to know the words won't come.
"Why?" Pavel asks, and Len's heart twists inside his chest at the break in his voice. Pavel's eyes are wild, too bright. Desperate, hurting. "Why do you stop yourself? Why don't you want me?"
It would be funny if it wasn't so fucking painful. Len's fingers twitch to reach out, his fingertips feel unnatural without Pavel's achingly soft skin under them.
He has to fist his hands to stop from reaching, from showing too clearly just how badly he wants Pavel.
"The doctor in me," he says, his voice scratching its way out of his throat, "agrees with Jim. This isn't love. It's trauma."
"Bozhe moi, you stubborn idiot! You think that I can't tell the difference?" The words want to be angry. Pavel wants so badly to be angry, but all Len can see is the pain, the humiliation.
The need shining so bright underneath.
"You're too smart not to see it," Len says, wanting to take that thin body into his arms. Wanting to soothe him, to show him that the humiliation is misplaced. But Jesus. "What we went through would have traumatized anyone. This...us, from the start, it's been..."
"For God's sake, Len, of course it was trauma! But trauma and love aren't mutually exclusive."
Len hesitates.
Pavel scrubs at his eyes with a rough hand. "Why can't this be both?"
Len's voice dries in his throat.
He instantly wants to be back in time with Jim, having this same argument, and he wants to ask him that last question. Jim is perceptive in a way that Len isn't, so maybe there's an easy and obvious answer that Len isn't thinking of.
His traitorous mind feeds him images instead: Pavel jogging through the ship in his little exercise shorts. Pavel's bright eyes and overly-eager gaze. The sewenteen Len had to keep chanting at himself to remind him that the kid was out of bounds.
That was before Maalox, before the trauma. Whatever complicated and forbidden things he feels for Pavel began before that away mission.
But that was just lust. That was a worn out old man scoping out a hot young piece of ass that he couldn't score.
Hikaru thinks that I'm in love with you, Pavel tells him in his mind, a memory from the cell, the planet. That was during the trauma, yeah, but if Hikaru said those words than it means that Pavel and his best friend talked about Len before. And whatever Pavel said about Len made Hikaru think of love.
"You feel nothing for me?" Pavel forges on when Len doesn't answer, brave in his own strange way, the way Len has noticed so often before.
His eyes are bright, burning with pride and embarrassment and something so fucking base. So openly needy.
"You don't want me. Tell me, if that's the case. Don't tell me 'this must be trauma'. Tell me you feel nothing for me that didn't come from that cell and that planet. You tell me that, Len, and I will never say a word of this again. I will never..." Pavel's voice twists, breaks.
Len's hands feel strange, twitchy, like they might act out on their own. His own body is mutinying, taking Pavel's side despite his common sense and Jim's sharp words.
He shuts his eyes and drops his head. He sits down on the edge of his bed, hands falling from his forgotten shirt.
"You want to know what I feel?" he asks, his voice grounding out too sharply. "I feel weak, and filthy. I'm the last person in the universe who should be allowed to touch you. And yeah, it came from that planet. Whatever I might've felt ibefore/i that planet, it's buried under those new feelings."
"Then you are a fool," Pavel says fast, but there's a sudden hush in his voice. "But what do you feel for me?"
Len swallows and tries to match Pavel's shameless honesty. "If I even touch you, if I get my dirty hands all over you, I'll be ruining the most perfect thing I have ever fucking known."
Pavel's voice breaks, a sob somewhere in his throat. He throws himself at Len, biting off choked Russian words in a thick voice even as he grips handfuls of Len's shirt and straddles his lap without a moment's pause.
"You are a fool," he says again when he finds some English in his words. He leans in and breathes it against Len's cheek, and its followed by the warm, desperate press of his mouth against Len's rough skin.
Len's arms twitch to hold him, but he hesitates. He shuts his eyes and groans at the impossibility of what Pavel is offering him. What he's all but begging him to take.
"Please," Pavel gasps against his skin, pressing small, frantic kisses over Len's cheek, down his jaw. "Please, I could never deserve you, but please."
Pavel's slim waist is suddenly under Len's hands, his shirt hiking up and his skin, smooth and pale and perfect, shivering under Len's restless fingertips.
Somehow, without one single coherent thought, Len gets them up and somehow ends up pressing Pavel to the bed. Somehow he's devouring Pavel's mouth with every shuddering inch of need that has clogged him up so badly.
Pavel meets him halfway, kissing back with a graceless awkwardness that says he hasn't kissed many people in his life. But fuck, the enthusiasm more than makes up for any lack of experience.
When Len probes Pavel's eager mouth, Pavel lets out a shuddering noise and welcomes Len's tongue as if from the very start this is the only thing he's ever needed. He tastes like need, sweet and desperate and shameless about showing it.
The part of Len that still lives in that Maalox interrogation room can't come to terms with this. Someone this soft and innocent shouldn't be allowed to exist in the same universe as that room. And if he does truly exist, someone like Leonard McCoy shouldn't be allowed anywhere near him.
But god, here he is. Len is jaded to the point of occasional self-loathing but he's not an idiot. He isn't going to turn this away if it's being offered.
Len's hand slides under Pavel's loose uniform shirt and Pavel gasps against his mouth. All Len can feel is soft skin, thin lines of muscle, the angles of bones too close to the skin.
He's perfect, from the arch of his back as Len presses him to the bed to the helpless sounds that escape him when Len gives him a chance to breathe.
Pavel has fed him, bandaged his wounds, kept him going from one endless day to the next. Pavel has been his guardian, his protector.
Len's mother would call him Len's angel. Len doesn't lose himself in religion the way his parents did, but when Pavel gasps and flushes under his touch, when his cheeks stain red and his back arches and he shivers against Len's mouth, he feels fucking sacred.
When Len's hand dips between their bodies, between Pavel's legs, there's no mistaking the erection waiting there to meet him. He palms Pavel's flesh, and the kid might be sacred but there's enough profane about him that Len can't deny himself anymore.
Pavel whines, high and broken, driving his hips up into Len's hand in mindless want.
Len can't sleep without Pavel, can't eat. He needs Pavel to remind him that he's human. Every waking moment Len feels helpless, vulnerable, weak without Pavel there.
But right now he feels strong. Right now he is giving back, being for Pavel what Pavel has been for him. His basic, clutching need to have Pavel near is matched right now by the desperate need that drives Pavel into him.
"Touch me," Pavel whispers, hoarse and thickly-accented. "Len. Please. Touch me, your skin, your hand. I need-"
It's unacceptable to think that for one moment this kid needs something that he's not getting, so Len acts fast to give him what he wants. He manages somehow to get Pavel's slacks unfastened, and his fumbling hand dips in to wrap around that impatient erection.
"Yes," Pavel breathes out, sounding pained. His head drops back, his throat bared. "Please, please, please."
Len can't look away from him. He wants to drop his head, to mouth that exposed throat, to taste the kid's ragged, quickening breaths, but he can't look away long enough. His hand must feel rough against Pavel's flesh but he can't let him go even long enough to find some lube.
Pavel's hips drive upward in time with Len's rhythmless strokes, his eyes wide and unfocused. His whimpers grow sharper too fast. There's some surprise under the pleasure as his body jerks too soon and his cock pulses in Len's fist.
Len works him through his orgasm, stroking through spatters of cum until Pavel is drained dry and shuddering like an overheated engine under his hand.
"Jesus," he murmurs, hoarse. He doesn't want to let go yet, but he stills his hand around Pavel's cock and sucks in unsteady breaths.
Pavel's green eyes are fever-bright when they open, when they look up at Len and fight to focus.
Len doesn't know if Jim's right about their mistaking trauma for love, or if Pavel's closer to the truth when he says that it's both. He does know that he'd have to be blind not to see the adoration on Pavel's face when he looks up at him in that moment.
He'd have to be more self-deluded than he is to not recognize that the same look must be on his own face. Len can argue to hell and back that he's too ruined, too dirty, too old to be with Pavel, but he can't argue that being with him is what he wants. He can't deny his body's reaction to getting Pavel off, can't deny that he's never wanted anything as much as he wants to bury himself inside Pavel and never fucking leave.
Trauma, love, lust. He doesn't know what it is. The psychology-minor in his brain knows that Jim's right about the dangers of mistaking one for the other, but there isn't a cell or an atom in him that can doubt Pavel's answer: they aren't mutually exclusive.
This thing feels so fucking complicated, so real and so deep, that Len is pretty much convinced as he watches Pavel shiver beneath him that it has to be all three at once.
"Captain." Spock's voice rings through the hushed bridge, strong and clear.
Jim watches Hikaru twist in his chair, fast as a cat. He turns more slowly, feeling this desperate expectation clawing at his gut.
It's been days longer than anyone hoped for, but just to hear the words at all are a miracle that makes Jim want to praise some fucking diety:
"I've found it."