The new security officer's name is Brenin and he's a full head taller than Pavel when they're standing. The height difference isn't as obvious when they sit down next to each other in the mess for lunch. Brenin is telling Pavel about his life before Starfleet; he mentions an ex-boyfriend a bit tentatively, sneaking a glance over at Pavel to gauge his reaction. Pavel just smiles and tries to look reassuring. "Yes," he says, "I had a similar experience vit an ex at ze Academy. He told me zat ve vould alvays be friends and zen refused to speak to me after ze breakup."
In the past Pavel has always found the security officers to be, at best, a bit dim, and at their worst to be rough bullies. But Brenin is almost bashful, blushing down into his potatoes. He asks Pavel awkwardly if he's single now.
Dr. McCoy is sitting two tables over with Mr. Spock and the Captain. Pavel, as attuned to him as ever, knows the Doctor hasn't glanced at him even once the entire meal. He's ignoring him. But of course he has always been very good at that. Perhaps he does not even have, has never even had, to try.
"Yes," Pavel answers, tilting his head just so to seek out Brenin's eyes. "Are you?"
"Yeah," Brenin answers, his cheeks the slighest shade of pink. "Got my eye on someone, though…"
Pavel smiles again, laughs the slightest, smallest laugh under his breath. He moves his foot under the table so his boot touches Brenin's boot and he waits for Brenin to ask him out properly, which he does, before lunch is even over.
x
Brenin doesn't know much about navigation, the mechanics of transporters, or advanced calculus problems, but he'll let Pavel talk about all of these things as they lounge together in the corner of the rec room or eat late dinners in the practically-deserted mess. In return Brenin tells Pavel all the Enterprise's secrets. He shows Pavel her little used rooms, the back passages that even some of the highest ranking officers don't know about. At first Pavel thinks they'll use these new found hiding places for some fumbled groping in those spare moments after his shift ends and before Brenin's begins, but Brenin isn't the quickie in an abandoned closet sort. He's more of a romantic: hand holding in the hallways, long and slow and careful kisses, endearments.
They date for five weeks before they sleep together. Brenin switches his shift with another officer to get the evening off. He cooks Pavel dinner the old fashioned way. He tells Pavel exactly how he feels about him, and it's more than Pavel feels, but he carefully avoids saying so.
x
He still sees Dr. McCoy, on the bridge or in sick bay or in the hallways; sometimes they end up in the same party for away missions. They might exchange a hello, but more often than not they just nod at each other. Like there was never anything between them. One evening Pavel and Brenin step onto a turbo lift that's already transporting Dr. McCoy to level five, and when it gets stuck between levels they're all trapped there together for twenty minutes, McCoy glaring at the corner like he doesn't notice them there, Pavel holding tight to Brenin's hand, complaining with him casually about the stupid broken down lift, pretending he doesn't notice the Doctor's disgusted sighs.
It's not like how it used to be. If anything, some days, it feels like the beginning, when Pavel was just stumbling along blindly, not sure what each glance and each touch and each comment would add to but still somehow curious to see, needing to see. He finds McCoy staring at him again. He catches the Doctor's eye on him from his post next to the Captain's chair, from his table across the mess, but he always looks away just as Pavel meets his eye.
x
"Are you sure zis is a good idea?" Pavel asks, following Brenin a bit reluctantly onto the observation deck.
"Oh, look who's nervous now," Brenin teases back. "I thought you'd get off on something a little more risky. Not that it's really so much of a risk," he adds, turning to stare at the wide black expanse of space that stretches out on either side of them through the windows. "It's the middle of the night. The only people who are up are the ones on duty and they all have jobs to do. Everyone else is asleep. The chances of anyone catching us are miniscule."
Pavel sighs, but then nods like he's at least trying to believe that this is going to be okay. "I've," he starts, staring at the back of Brenin's shirt where it's stretched between his shoulder blades, Brenin's arms crossed against his chest and pulling the fabric at both ends, "I've never had sex in a public place before."
"Well this isn't exactly a public place," Brenin corrects, turning back to face him. "There's no one here but us." Then he gives Pavel his best sexy smile, and in that moment he looks so perfect, handsome and tall and trustworthy and so in love with Pavel his whole face shines with it and Pavel just wants him. He wants Brenin to fuck him against the backdrop of neverending space and he would say as much, except that it seems like a much better idea just to show him.
Brenin huffs like all the wind is knocked out of him when Pavel practically jumps on him, but he recovers quickly from his surprise, and soon he's kissing back, his tongue running over Pavel's, hands slipping down to grip Pavel close against him by the waist.
He's stretched out long beneath Brenin across a string of observation deck chairs when he first hears the footsteps. "Vait, vait," he manages. He pushes a bit at Brenin's chest so that he'll stop biting in just that perfect way at his favorite spot on Pavel's neck.
"What?" Brenin asks, shifting to meet Pavel's eyes. He looks more confused than anything, hair tousled and face flushed and in no state to be found by whoever is definitely approaching the door now.
"You do not hear zat?"
Brenin shakes his head, still confused. Then his expression changes, he looks to the door and back at Pavel; he hears it too. "Let's go," he says, pulling himself up and grabbing Pavel's wrist before he can protest. The problem is that there isn't anywhere to go, except through the doo,r which would mean running into whoever-it-is and which would not really help them escape unnoticed.
"I can not believe zis, I can not believe zis, I can not believe zis," Pavel whispers over and over as Brenin pulls him around a corner and tells him to hush. They flatten themselves as well as they can against the wall and try not to breathe. Pavel's pretty sure whoever is coming will be able to hear his heart, though, it's beating so hard, for so many reasons.
The door of the observation deck opens with a whoosh and two distinct sets of footsteps walk in. Pavel wishes he could snap something about perfectly safe not public at all over at Brenin but the best he can do is to shoot him a glare, which Brenin returns with his best innocent, apologetic face.
He's thinking that at least it can't get any worse, but that's not a very good thought to have because as soon he has it, it does. It gets worse. The footsteps stop, and there's a pause, just Pavel's heart and Brenin's heart and they're both trying not to breathe, and then a very familiar voice says, "You don't have to do this, you know, Jim."
Pavel closes his eyes and tries to take very big, very quiet breaths.
"It's nothing, Bones, really," the Captain's voice answers. "You stayed up with me plenty of nights when I had insomnia at the Academy. I'm just paying back the favor now."
There's another patch of silence after this exchange—Pavel thinks he can hear Dr. McCoy grumbling something but it's hard to tell—and then the Captain's voice again, quieter this time but still intelligable, asks, "So do you want to talk about it?"
"Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a sixteen year old girl," McCoy scoffs in answer. "No, I do not want to sit around with my best friend forever and talk about my feelings. It's—"
"Embarrassing?"
The Doctor doesn't answer. Pavel closes his eyes. He can't believe he's hearing this, can't believe that Leonard McCoy is right around the corner, so bothered by something he can't even sleep and maybe, maybe—no, he's sure it must be something else.
"Don't be ridiculous, Bones," the Captain is saying. "How many times did you walk in on me in a compromising position at the Academy? And do you remember that time you treated me for that weird STD that turned my dick blue? And it was just last week that you were giving me stuff for those awkwardly placed scratches."
"Damn Vulcan," McCoy interjects, under his breath but Pavel picks it up anyway. Apparently so does Brenin; when Pavel sneaks a glance at him he sees his eyes have gone completely round, though perhaps that's just because he's thinking that he'll never be able to look at his Captain quite the same way again.
"The point is," Kirk continues, "that there is no more room for embarrassment between us. So go ahead. Act like a sixteen year old girl. Later we can gossip about the rest of the crew and, oh I don't know, braid each other's hair or something. Right now you talk about your feelings."
Pavel can't see, and he's too afraid to look, too afraid to move, but he's sure McCoy must be glaring at the Captain right now.
"I think all we've proven is that you have no shame," McCoy grumbles. "And I don't—" he cuts himself off and lowers his voice, aware that it was growing loud with emotion, "I don't want to discuss this."
Pavel chances another glance at Brenin. The expression on his face is clearly one of curiosity, but also complete incomprehension, and before he can stop himself from thinking it Pavel is wishing that Brenin was anywhere else on the ship but here with him in this room. Brenin flicks his eyes over to where the Doctor and the Captain are standing, out of sight, and raises his eyebrows. Pavel shrugs back.
Kirk's voice is more understanding, less upbeat and joking, now, more like it was when he first asked the Doctor if he wanted to talk. "I get it," he's saying, "I do. You fell for someone you didn't mean to. I know what that's like."
He pauses again and waits for McCoy to answer but he doesn't, and in that silence Pavel shuts his eyes tight again and tries to calm down his breathing so Brenin won't suspect that on the inside, he's so scared and excited and tense and ecstatic and miserable that he feels about ready to burst. You fell for, fell for, fell for, echoes in his ears. What does that mean anyway, does that mean love?
"To be honest, I think you're just overcomplicating things," Kirk continues. "If this were just about losing a reliable fuck buddy then you could find somebody else. And don't give me that look because you know you could find somebody—hell, I'd volunteer myself if I weren't already taken. My point is, you're not awake at completely indecent hours because you're upset you're not getting any anymore. You're awake because you miss him, so man up, stop moping—"
"I don't mope."
"—and win him back."
McCoy snorts. Pavel clenches his hands into fists and waits to spontaneously combust. "Too late anyway," the Doctor says. "He's found someone else."
The Captain just laughs at that one like it's a damn good joke, then tells McCoy that he's steering him back to his quarters now so maybe he'll dream up some sort of great winning-his-boy-back plan, and not five minutes later the coast is clear and Brenin makes a dramatic show of releasing his held breath and stumbling around over himself to apologize even though, really, who could ever have forseen that.
"No one could," Pavel reassures him, staring more at the closed door of the observation deck than at Brenin. "It vas completely unexpected."
x
At first he's ecstatic. He lies on his back in bed and grins up at his ceiling so hard his face hurts, and he imagines everything he'll say when Leonard comes back to him and everything he'll do, every inch of skin he'll touch and kiss, what those hands will feel like running down his body again.
His euphoria doesn't last long, though. He remembers Brenin. He remembers hands locked together over the mess hall table all through dinner and his head on Brenin's lap as he stretches out on a rec room couch for a lazy afternoon off and the way Brenin's face always lights up when he runs into him unexpectedly in the hall. The Doctor has never done these things. And one overheard conversation in the middle of the night does not change what Pavel told him two months ago. He cannot be used and thrown aside.
"Let him try to vin me back," he tells his ceiling. "Let him try as hard as he can and just see if he succeeds."