Chekov had never actually entertained the notion of marriage in even a passing moment. Now that he thought about it, he found that odd. It should have crossed his mind occasionally. He was an only child and the sole way his family's heritage and culture would be passed on was through him. He had grown up in a traditional culture where things like that still mattered.

Of course, technically, he was married. Chekov chewed on his lip as he thought about his marriage to Tatiana. Being 'married' had its advantages. He had also grown up in a culture where marriage and family were the backbone of the community: a requirement for society to work. A person did not take their place as an adult member of the community until they got married.

Only Pavel Chekov had cheated this requirement. He was married technically, so he could vote in Village Council meetings, stand judgment in trials, and–even better–no one bothered him about finding a wife. In fact, the Security Chief pondered, he was happy that it generally kept the young women away from him at home as well. When he was home on leave he wasn't interested in pursuing romantic interests. He could find romance while in space. While home he had precious little time to be with his family, his friends, and most especially, Tatiana.

Their relationship at first was dubious at best. He had been in pain, scared, and alone in a foreign world of strange adults and invasive medicine when he had met her. The sound of her young voice--with a Russian accent no less--had touched him with a thrill of hope he hadn't dared to feel since he'd been sent to the clinic. And he had tortured her for it.

He lurched out at her from around corners, behind doors, and inside closets. Hygiene products turned out to be adhesives or dyes. The creative changes he made to her food selections would have won awards anywhere else. Then, she suddenly fought back with a vehemence that gave the self-assured young man a sense of competition like he'd never had before.

Just when the virtual war against each other threatened to tear the fabric of the clinic's care for the other patients apart, however, the novelty of that particular game wore off. They had settled into blissfully playing every other game they could come up with together.

Pavel and Tatiana played every day far into the night: talking, laughing, tormenting until they collapsed spent and exhausted, more often than not without a voice left to speak with. He supposed now that he missed her more when they were together than not. Her presence made him aware of something missing--of some fundamental lack that seemed all too oppressing to him when she was near. Having her nearby, and yet not with him, was even worse. He was beginning to realize that this was a new game altogether.

At that thought, Chekov thrust his cheek onto his fist and petulantly studied the board in front of him for his next move.

"Ten minutes."

He blinked and looked up at Sulu, who sat across the desk from him. The Helmsman was bravely trying to give keep him occupied after he had been ejected–and banned–from the ballet company's practice. "What?" Chekov asked, confused.

"Ten minutes," Sulu repeated, a smile playing on his lips as his dark eyes regarded his friend. "It's taken you ten minutes of staring to realize you lost again. Pavel, you've just lost eight games of checkers in a row."

"Checkers?" he asked, straightening with a scowl. "Well, that explains it. I thought we were playing draughts."

"Same game," Sulu commented knowingly as he moved to reset the board. "So why are you sulking?"

"I am not sulking," the man retorted.

Grinning, the Helmsman shrugged. "Sorry. What are you thinking about?" he asked.

The Security Chief stared at the board between them, his eyes distant. Absently, he moved one of his pieces and let his fingers linger on its surface. "Hikaru," Chekov asked quietly. "When the men talk in the rec room…is it true?"

"Oh, hardly ever," the older man chuckled with a wry grin. "What topic in particular?" He shooed Chekov's hand off the board and moved his own piece.

Wide brown eyes met Sulu's. "What it's like to be a sixteen-year old boy."

Sulu burst out laughing, his dark eyes sparkling. "Ah, that blessed period of raging hormones and independent physical activity. 'The best time of your life'," he concluded. "Now, if teenage boys believed that age-old line, none of us would hang around to grow into men, would we?"

"So it's true then?"

"You remember," the Helmsman insisted with a curious grin. The younger man fully enjoyed the half-drunken revelry that was known to spring up late at night in any given rec room, but Chekov rarely added his own stories. He was too private for that, Sulu knew.

"No, I don't," Chekov answered tonelessly. He waited for Sulu's to meet his gaze before he continued. "I was never a sixteen-year old boy."

Dark eyes steady on his friend's, Sulu leaned forward after a moment. "Well, now there's a neat trick."

"I spent that year in the Chapman Clinic," the Security Chief said soberly.

Silently, Sulu jumped two men. He fingered the pieces he removed in his fingertips for a long moment. "Malyenki," he intoned quietly. "I know how hard it was for you to relearn to walk: but that doesn't just erase the time from your life. That horrible year is part of who you are.

"Besides," he added carefully. "That was almost ten years ago."

The Security Chief studied the board in silence, his fingers touching the pieces tentatively.

"Pavel," Sulu ventured, somewhat relieved that the man hadn't reacted with the violent outburst he'd expected. "I'm pretty sure there are rules, even in draughts, against making your own men kings."

The younger man seemed to come back to the present and offered a cryptic smile. "There are things about my stay at the clinic that I never told you, Hikaru," he said. There were so many things only Tatiana knew about him, he thought: so many things they had shared and gone through that could never be explained adequately to anyone else.

Sighing slightly, Sulu moved a piece. "Even best friends don't know everything about each other, Malyenki: they don't have to. Friends just understand each other."

Chekov moved one of his own men. "Hikaru, do you remember when you cut your arm this spring?" the Security Chief asked suddenly in an apparent change of subject.

Sulu jumped two more of Chekov's men and growled low in his throat. "That type of pain is hard to forget. It wasn't even that bad a cut but I severed a nerve."

"Yes," the younger man agreed as he moved a checker. "The human nervous system is electrical. Doctors can repair the damage, but the body still has to take the time to remake the wiring connections on its own, if it even can. Until it does, a severed nerve is like an exposed, open circuit."

The Helmsman shuddered dramatically and nodded, moving another piece on the board. "I remember. Every time anything touched my arm it was like being electrocuted. It was unbearable."

"The accident severed the nerves in my leg, that's why I couldn't walk," Chekov observed quietly, his somber eyes seemingly mesmerized by the board before him.

Sulu stilled, dark eyes staring at his friend as the implications of his words settled on him. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "I never realized what you really went through."

Shrugging, Chekov made a broad gesture of dismissal and pushed a circular piece forward. "Long time ago," he agreed without looking up. "The pain was…" He stopped then, his dead, dark and averted eyes bringing a heavy silence between the men. Sulu's eyes rested on him knowingly and waited.

"Hikaru," Chekov said heavily. "Dr. Bob invented a drug cocktail to deaden the nerves while they healed. It basically deadened all my nerves. I couldn't feel anything," the younger man observed with another shrug, finally looking up at his friend.

"You must have had to be careful not to get hurt," Sulu marveled, but then stopped. He realized that he hadn't understood what his friend was saying. Frowning in thought, the Helmsman eyed him. " You mean you couldn't feel...anything?"

"Chemical castration," was Chekov's explanation. "Of course," he added with a sly grin, "It didn't affect my interest: which, happily, the nurses appeared completely unaware of."

"Pavel Andrievich!" Sulu burst out, leaning over the board with a grin. "You used your medical innocence to prey on those unsuspecting angels of mercy!"

Whatever reaction he was expecting, Sulu was rewarded with an outright giggle.

The Helmsman tapped the board in thought. "That explains," he mused aloud, "Why nothing ever happened between you and Tatiana at the clinic: nothing could, and it set a precedent."

The younger man scowled again in indignation. "She was only twelve at the time!"

Sulu's dark eyes held his friend's gaze in a solid challenge. "She's not twelve anymore, Malyenki."

The Security Chief squirmed visibly, his face flushing with color as he lapsed into silence.

His best friend watched the change curiously, a sense of victory beginning to churn within him and he understood for the first time that it really had a taste. It was a good taste. "Why are you suddenly telling me about the drugs now?" he asked suspiciously.

Chekov pushed at the checker pieces randomly. Sulu was the one person in Starfleet that he felt close enough with to talk about practically anything. "Hikaru," he drew out without raising his eyes. "Why didn't you tell me about the girl next door?"

The older man stilled and cleared his throat. "I remember telling you about the girl next door," he commented absently.

Crossing his arms, Chekov rested them on the desk and leaned forward. "Yes, you told me: like the poet told everyone about the riders that alerted Boston to the British invasion."

Sulu's jaw hardened. This was what Chekov's life had been before Starfleet—what his parents life was. As folklorists, they collected tales and legends, flushed them out, added the history, and made them count. Despite his numorous manipulations of history for the sake of humor, it mattered to Chekov that people knew that Paul Revere had not made the longest ride that important night in America. It was surprising that it actually took this long for him to look up the 'Girl Next Door' legend.

"Do you stop the story before Hanzel and Gretel escape from the witch?" the Security Chief demanded in irritation.

Taking a deep breath, the Helmsman stretched out his back. "Of course not, but it's a matter of relativity. What difference does it make that the love of friends turns romantic in that legend? It's not as though it relates to anything." Hesitating significantly, he fought back a wry smirk and fixed his eyes on his friend, a knowing glint shining in the dark depths of his eyes. "Does it?"

The Security Chief's fingers curled into fists slowly. "I don't remember when Tatiana wasn't part of my life. She's always there, always present in my mind, judging what I do like a second conscience. I know it's idiotic, but sometimes I say or do things just because I know that she would knock me upside the head for it."

"She's your best friend," Sulu observed quietly. Although the younger man generally reserved the term for the Helmsman, it was only because his relationship with Tatiana was so far beyond the confines of an ordinary friendship. An ingrained link connected their souls.

Chekov nodded deeply in agreement. "I suppose she is my best friend. I didn't realize how important she was in my life until…Hikaru, when I thought she was gone, that I may never see her again: I went dead inside. When I finally saw her alive, unhurt," he rushed on breathlessly. "I just lost my mind.

"Never have I felt anything like it before in my entire life. I didn't ever want to let go, to stop…"

"Good God Almighty!" Sulu burst out with a gleeful grin. "You kissed her! You actually kissed Tatiana!"

Chekov made a growl low in his throat, the sound echoing with the hollowness of guilt. "Yes, I kissed her. I didn't intend to, but it just…happened...somehow. Now, my body has a mind of its own. I can't seem to think of anything else!"

Sulu leaned forward, resting his cheek on his hand, dark eyes wild. "Are your thoughts…I mean, do they only involve kissing her?" he asked eagerly.

"Stop that!" Chekov roared.

The Helmsman grinned. "I can't help it. This is like the news of the century--soap opera style. Wait till your father finds out his son is incestuous!"

"Don't you even think of telling him!" the younger man ordered in horror.

A snicker met his words. "Oh, like he doesn't find out everything anyway. One look at the guilt in those big Russian eyes of yours…" He straightened, dropping his hand and laughing out loud as the emotion he spoke of swept over the younger man's features. "Pavel Andrievich!"

Chekov sank into a deep pout of over powering self-recrimination. "Hikaru," he said hoarsely, consumed by the need to confess his soul's evil secrets. "The things I've been doing. Unspeakable things. Slow dancing...brushing her hair..." he exclaimed in a rush of guilt-ridden horror.

Sulu smirked. By his cultural standards, Chekov had just admitted to molesting Tatiana. "Malyenki," he drawled. "That's what men do when they're pursuing a woman."

"I am not pursuing…!" the Security Chief retorted, but his body betrayed him as deep color washed into his cheeks.

The older man's blistering laughter interrupted him.

Chekov wilted, overcome with self-recrimination. "What do I do?" he pleaded desperately, shoving his fists against his temples as though the action could regain control of his spinning mind and out of control body.

Standing, Sulu tapped his fingers on the desktop before he turned to move away. "You're in love with her. Do what men in love do."

"She's my sister!" the Security Chief protested in horror.

Sulu hesitated at the end of the desk, and without turning, he observed quietly: "She is no more your sister than I am your brother."

"If I tell her, she'll hit me!"

The Helmsman smiled. "It won't be the first time."

"What if she doesn't…What if she does and then…I can't lose her, Hikaru," the young man said plaintively. "I can't risk destroying what we have. I need her."

Sighing, Sulu turned and gazed at his friend with the condescending affection of an older brother. "Malyenki, change is the very nature of life. You don't have the same relationship with Tatiana that you did while you were in the clinic, any more than we have the same relationship we did while we were at the Academy.

"The relationship between the two of you is going to change even if you do nothing. The decision is going to be made whether you choose to have any input into it or not. You have the opportunity now to decide what direction that change is going to take.

Chekov dropped his hands and shook his head fiercely. "I can't risk not having her there when I go home."

"You can't stop change, Pavel," Sulu repeated. "What makes you think she's going to stay with your parents forever, anyway?"

"What do you mean by that? Where would she go?" Chekov demanded hotly.

The Helmsman shrugged. "She's an adult, has a good job, friends, a life of her own...eventually I suppose that she'll move into her husband's home."

The Security Chief's face went pale.

Sulu smirked. "Odds are that she's going to marry someone, Malyenki. You can just hope that her husband doesn't mind her spending all her time with you when you go home on leave. If that's alright, do nothing." He stopped then, never having seen a human face as ghost-white as Chekov's had become.

"Stop sulking," the older man advised. "And decide what you want."

The younger man chewed on his lip, silently beginning to pile the checkers with great methodical care. "What if she doesn't feel the same way?" he mused aloud, almost to himself. "What if I drive her away?"

The Security Chief could feel Sulu hesitate behind him as he moved to leave. "Did she kiss you back?" the Helmsman asked.

"I don't know," Chekov muttered.

"Yes, you do. She let you brush her hair. Tatiana's not an idiot, she knew what you were doing. Talk to her," he urged.

Chekov shifted uncomfortably.

Sulu moved toward his own cabin, but hesitated again when he reached the bathroom door. He turned back to eye his friend. "Pavel Andrievich," he observed soberly. "I have a sister and the last time I took a bath with her, I was three."

Chekov's head snapped up, his eyes widening in horror. "I never…! Who told you such a thing!"

The older man merely grinned.

"We play war games with my boats!" the Security Chief spat out, his hands trembling as the Helmsman disappeared.

"You could wear swim suits," came the droll comment before the door slid shut between them.