Summary: The original title of this story was, Five Times Pavel Tried to Explain it to People, and the One Time They Saw for Themselves. That's as good a summary as any.
At first it was amusing. It was something Pavel laughed off with rolling eyes. He had brought it upon himself, after all, when he kissed Greg in front of half the bridge crew and made their relationship public knowledge. That had been Pavel's choice to make (though it felt less like a choice and more like gut-clenching fear caused by the 'Enterprise, we need a medical team on standby, damn it, cupcake, hold still' that filtered through the bridge and sent Pavel flying through the corridors to get to the transporter room), so Pavel would just have to be graceful in accepting the fallout.
One – From Scotty, which Pavel hadn't expected. It was rare that Scotty paid any attention to interpersonal dealings on his ship. If it didn't beep or require re-wiring, he usually paid it no mind.
The very day of the away mission when Greg took a disrupter blast in the arm, Pavel found himself back in engineering once McCoy had kicked him out of sickbay for hovering. He needed to stay occupied until Greg was discharged, and engineering was the best place on the ship to lose himself in some project or another.
"Evening, laddie." Scotty found him there and approached with his usual crooked smile. "How's that security bloke doing?"
"Doctor McCoy says he will be fine," Pavel answered, steady, through a smile, though his cheeks grew warmer with every word. He could hear the relief hiding in his voice, though, and wondered if Scotty could.
Greg would be fine, but nerve damage meant recovery time, physical therapy.
It meant someone had aimed a disrupter at Greg – at his Greg – and fired. It still made him feel shaky.
Scotty just gave that same crooked smile, like there was some joke there, some humor that no one but Scotty ever caught. Sometimes Pavel wondered if that was just Scotty, or perhaps some element of Scottish behavior in general.
No doubt Scotland was a very different place than Russia.
"Ye'd best be off to bed, Pavel," Scotty said finally, patting him on the shoulder with easy familiarity. "From the looks of things you have a stressful day. But...er. Pavel." He didn't let Pavel get too far towards the door before he kept going.
Pavel glanced back, and hesitated when he saw that Scotty's near-constant smile had faded, and he seemed somehow uncertain. "What is it?"
"Well..." Scotty flashed a sheepish grin after a moment. "Bloody tongue-tied, isn't that a wonder?"
Pavel smiled, but his nerves were bubbling up again. "Say what you want to, Scotty."
"You're a bairn, laddie." Scotty was getting fairly red-faced himself, ducking his head and scratching at the back of his neck. "It's not something I notice a lot, nor something I care a thing about. Ye knew that. But...are ye even old enough to be getting your leg over? With...that sort of bloke?"
Pavel was surprised, yes, but only because it was Scotty. He expected the question from everyone else.
But he answered bluntly, the way Scotty best understood. "My mama was a year younger than I am when I was born. Some might say she and my papa got married too young, but..." He shrugged, smiling in faint memory. "She was a happy and a good mama until she died. What is sex compared to that?"
Scotty nodded, his smile returning. If he didn't seem entirely convinced, Pavel didn't blame him. It had taken he and Greg a while to get where they were, he couldn't expect understanding in a single day.
Two - "He's gone. Released," came the gruff answer before Pavel could even speak.
Pavel just smiled, because 'released' meant that he was healthy enough to leave. "Thank you, doctor."
"Uh. Kid. Hang on a sec."
Pavel turned back in the doorway, nerves fluttering again instantly. "He's alright, isn't he?"
McCoy blinked. "Oh, Harris? Yeah, as good as anyone's gonna be with a phaser taking a chunk out of his arm." At Pavel's wince he grimaced and closed the distance between them. "He's fine, or he will be if he listens to me and completes a course of therapy."
"He will." Pavel answered easily. Greg was stubborn and proud at times, but his job was everything to him. He wouldn't endanger it.
"That's not what I..." McCoy sighed, scowling at a place just slightly over Pavel's head. "Look, this is none of my business in some ways, but in some ways it is. It's my job to look out for you kids. I've gotta keep you safe and healthy, so..."
Pavel studied him. McCoy was gruff, yes, but Pavel had rarely been nervous with him. He was gruff the way Pavel's father was gruff. His papa would always rush to get Pavel anything he needed, and he would do it with a glare on his face, and Pavel never felt less than loved.
McCoy dragged his eyes down to Pavel. "You and Harris."
"Yes, doctor."
"...is it a new thing?"
"Since the Academy," Pavel confessed – he had been sixteen, it had always been legal, and he felt no shame in it.
"Jesus, kid." Obviously McCoy didn't agree. "You're a fucking baby."
Pavel shrugged. "I am older than him in a few ways."
"Ain't gonna argue with that one. I just..." McCoy heaved a sigh and turned on his heel, stalking back towards his office. "I guess this means I don't have to give you any...er. Talks. About anything."
Pavel followed him uncertainly. "What do you mean, talks?" He almost laughed a moment later. "You mean about sex? No, doctor, it won't be necessary."
He stood in the doorway to McCoy's dimmed office and watched him, amusement refusing to fade.
McCoy grabbed a box and a few papers and turned, pushing them out towards Pavel. "Take these anyway. And never speak to me about them again."
Pavel had the slightest glimpse at a brightly colored diagram and some cheerfully large-printed words as he caught the offering and nearly dropped the small box.
Condoms.
Pamphlets.
He would have laughed if he didn't feel so entirely mortified.
McCoy didn't seem to be doing much better. "Just go. Fast. Go far away and do not make eye contact with me for a couple of days. Jesus, they should have warned me better about some aspects of this damned job."
Pavel clamped his mouth shut and turned, arms laden. One of the pamphlets fluttered to the floor and he didn't even slow down.
He was almost at the door when he heard McCoy's near-constant grumble suddenly get louder, before, "Hey. Kid."
He stopped, but wasn't sure he wanted to turn. He did, though, because he did like the doctor and the mental comparison to Pavel's papa made him strangely wistful.
McCoy hesitated, seeming to work his mouth around the words. "You and Harris."
Pavel nodded, red-faced. Condoms clutched to his chest.
"I mean...you," he gestured at Pavel's admittedly-skinny frame, "and...Harris," and there he straightened and puffed out his chest and gave some terse gesture of his arms that presumably was supposed to signify Greg's own massive body.
Pavel hesitated, waiting for the question.
"Just...Jesus, kid, how are you not constantly walking funny?"
Pavel frowned, then his eyes widened and he spun around and all but darted out of the sickbay. He would have been lost for words to successfully carry on that conversation in English, and he doubted he could have pulled it off in Russian.
Three - "I just don't even know, Pavel. I mean..."
Hikaru, at least, waited a couple of days for the gossip and giggles to die down before he sat Pavel down, wearing what Pavel was starting to call the Cupcake Face.
Hikaru was Pavel's best friend, so his concerns were a little harder to brush aside than any of the random officers who had been questioning him the past two days.
"I am not too young and he does not hurt me," Pavel answered, since those seemed to be the two main concerns people had. Trust Scotty and McCoy to at least give him a practice round for what would become horrifyingly familiar objections.
Hikaru lowered his voice, barely looking around at the growing group of officers filling the mess around them. "He almost killed Kirk, you know."
"Years ago."
"Even I remember how much trouble he was at the academy."
Pavel sighed, fighting back a scowl. "His reputation was undeserved, I think."
"You think."
"I knew him for two years, almost, at the academy." Pavel met his friend's eyes, knowing it was more important to convince Hikaru than almost anyone. "The only people I ever saw him hurt were the people he kept from hurting me."
Hikaru frowned at that, some flash of surprise in his eyes. Pavel, of course, had been in the academy during the same years as most of the crew, but aside from Greg and Kirk and McCoy, he hadn't known many of them. He had taken classes from Spock, had heard of Nyota, and knew a few of the engineers and science officers from his advanced courses. He and Hikaru had never met, and sometimes he wondered about that.
"Was it hard for you?" Hikaru asked suddenly.
Pavel shrugged. "As hard as you might think. Harder my first year, before Greg." He spoke seriously – he didn't like to complain about these things often, especially to Hikaru, who hadn't ever pitied or babied him – because it was important that Hikaru understood.
"I was too young and too smart, and I was an easy target. There was a group of students in particular. One student, Lepinski..." Pavel smiled to himself faintly. "I don't even remember his first name now. He was a physics major. He had been the youngest cadet to be awarded the academy's top science honors."
"Until you." Hikaru flashed a smiled, but it was muted.
"I beat him by three years." Pavel shrugged. "It is not easy for someone to accept that something as irrelevant as age would make another person's accomplishments seem greater than theirs. I don't agree with the accolades myself often, though what I did to earn the honors he once won I earned. I would have deserved the award no matter my age."
"Love your modesty, Pasha." Hikaru rolled his eyes, but the words weren't so chiding.
Pavel ignored him. "I was disliked from the start, Hikaru. But I met Greg – you should know this – when he stopped a group of them from beating me one day. It was early in my second year. People kept hating me every day after that, but no one ever touched me again. Because of Greg."
"I wish I'd known you." Hikaru frowned as he spoke those words for not the first time. "I really wish we'd've been friends back then, Pasha."
"Me too." Pavel smiled. "But he kept me safe so we could become friends now."
Hikaru regarded him for a serious moment, then sighed. "Okay, I guess I owe him for that, anyway."
"Yes. And...he has been in fights, Hikaru, I know this. But his temper is not so bad as people think. The only time he has ever raised a hand against me was when he was teaching me to fight people like him off."
"I just...I want you to be safe, Pavel. I don't like thinking..."
"Then don't think it." The first time he ever saw Greg Harris, Pavel was on the ground trying to make himself small, trying to keep his hands over his face so he wouldn't lose any teeth when they kicked him.
He was...not gentle. There was not much gentle about Greg, to look at him. He seemed remarkably big – perhaps because Pavel was on the ground looking almost straight up at him. Maybe because he had Matt Lepinski and his oversized friends almost cowering. Mostly, though, because Greg truly was big. He was broad and solid and none of it was fat, that was clear thanks to the unforgiving uniforms of the academy.
Big, and the first moment Pavel saw him and noticed him he was shouting, his hands were fists and he was shoving at the round, red-haired member of Lepinski's little bully cadre. Red-faced and glowering.
For a moment Pavel thought he was friends with the others, that some imagined insult or wrongly-aimed hit had set them against each other like apes. But when Lepinski strolled away (smirking even though the limp dragging his left hip seemed to say he'd lost the round) Greg stood there still, breathing hard and glaring at their backs.
Then he turned to Pavel and held out his hand, and his expression didn't change but for some reason Pavel knew that his scowl wasn't directed at him.
For some reason, even from the start, he knew Greg wouldn't hurt him. The memories were strong in his mind lately.
"I am not scared of him, Hikaru. I have known bullies all my life, and he is not one."
"Okay. I'll lay off." Hikaru grinned, wry. "Just...man, Pavel. You and cupcake, for God's sake. You can never do anything normal, can you?"
Four - "I dunno, man. He doesn't have much of a sense of humor, does he? What fun's a guy like that?"
Pavel raised his eyebrows and regarded Kirk, remembering many a time he had seen Kirk and Doctor McCoy sneaking off together and sharing soft words and private smiles and thinking they fooled anyone.
Still, he spoke generally. "Captain, have you ever known someone who is so weighed down that they don't smile? I have rarely heard Greg laugh, in all the time I've known him. He rarely smiles. But when he does, when he smiles at me, or because of something I've said or done...have you ever been there? Do you have any idea how good it feels to make someone smile against their nature?"
Kirk's eyes went distant, and his mouth turned up at the corners. "Okay, I'll give you that."
And whatever objections Kirk raised from then on about Pavel's boyfriend, he never did bring up that particular issue again.
Five - "If you want my opinion..."
Pavel bit back a smile. "For everyone else I know, opinion is given whether I want it or not. Do I really have an option with you?"
Nyota sighed as if put out. "Real friends never give you the option, Pavel. I was attempting to be nice."
Pavel nodded for her to go on, trying not to focus on the fact that his former professor and current senior science officer and first officer of the ship was lurking in the background, close enough to hear every word.
Pavel didn't know quite how to relate to Spock in his and Nyota's quarters.
"Well, speaking from a strictly linguistic sense...do you even speak the same language?"
Pavel dragged his focus back to Nyota. "What?"
"Well." She gestured, graceful but vague. "He isn't exactly your...intellectual equal. I mean..."
"I know what you mean." Pavel had expected someone to mention that, but he hadn't expected it to be Nyota.
He knew what she meant, and he knew that there was truth in it. Greg knew nothing about physics. He didn't care about transporter theory, he cared nothing about mathematics or the difficulties and pleasures of charting a course through an endless field of stars.
Greg didn't read books for pleasure. He didn't speak about his Academy classes with a fond smile. He didn't display much curiosity about the universe at all.
"Speaking for myself," Nyota went on after a moment, her eyes going past Pavel towards the sounds of Spock's quiet movements through their quarters, "I can't imagine being with a partner who doesn't challenge me, who I can't challenge in return. And you, Pavel, you're so much smarter than me, you must have an even harder time finding people to relate to in that way."
He didn't know how to answer that. He had always been content to consider Einstein and Feynman and T'Pril to be his challenges. He related to them well enough as a child, when there was no one in his village or his schools or even the University who could speak to him as they did in their books and vids.
Sometimes there was no greater thrill than getting lost in a theory-laden talk with Scotty, with arguments flying fast and hard between them. When Pavel would tear into Scotty's ideas and Scotty could tear into his objections and they were on the same wavelength and it was amazing.
Or with Spock, digging into new data about first-contact planets, extrapolating predictions from slight measurements of data and going back and forth in half-finished sentences that the other seemed to understand perfectly.
It could be a very intimate thing, really.
Nyota leaned over and lay her hand over his suddenly. "I'm sorry, it's none of my business." She spoke as if realizing she had bothered him. As if she felt suddenly guilty for making him aware of something he hadn't consciously realized.
He was quick to absolve her of that guilt. "You know, Nyota...I had never realized what being on a ship like this for a mission like ours would involve."
She sat back slowly, regarding him with those wide, thoughtful eyes.
He hesitated, glancing back at Spock. Apparently all that moving around was him preparing dinner. "I didn't realize that being Ensign Chekov on the bridge of a starship meant for five solid years I would never be anything but Ensign Chekov. If that makes sense?"
He turned back to her. "It isn't a job for us, it is our lives here. I am always the alpha navigator of the ship. You are always communications officer. Even on our off hours, to the other crew it's how they see us. We are always on call, always relating to each other through our jobs here. With you, and Hikaru, and some others, I am Pavel. But there is always the job, even then. Hikaru and I are helm partners, my closest friends are bridge crew. The job is always there."
She nodded.
He smiled slowly. "When I need to debate physics theory there will never be anyone better than Scotty to debate with. When I need to puzzle out matters of science, or logic, I couldn't hope for better than Commander Spock." His smile grew wider. "When I wish to turn all that off and just be Pavel, there is Greg. He has no interest in the bridge, or physics, or logic. He has interest in me."
Nyota's eyes were going soft as he spoke. Her mouth curled upwards.
Pavel smiled back. "I think if it weren't for Greg I would forget there was anything to me under the job and the theory and the science. He brings me back to myself. I would not change that for anything."
She didn't argue, though as Pavel left them to their dinner he thought he saw a rather unconvinced look on Spock's face. No surprise there, though. For Spock the exercising of his brain would always be a top priority.
He asked Greg that evening, as he mothered Greg into bed to make sure his poor wounded arm wasn't jostled or strained or anything else, if he was having any of the same issues with his friends.
"You mean are they giving me shit about you?" Greg just shrugged, sleepy. "Nah, I told 'em that's how things were, and if anyone had a problem with it they could bring it to me off-duty and I'd be happy to work it out with them."
Pavel laughed, curling up beside him and calling for the lights to dim. "Of course no one did."
"Go figure."
"I don't have that sort of luck with my friends."
"Yeah, well. No offense, Pasha, but your friends are snobs."
And maybe that was true, but they were his snobs, and Greg was his boyfriend, and as long as everyone accepted that arrangement Pavel would be happy.
And One:
"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit."
"Captain, I find the amount of energy you are expelling on pacing and repeating that word to be disturbingly out of proportion to the usefulness of the endeavor."
"In other words, Jim, shut the hell up."
Jim stopped where he was, glowering at Spock. But when he tried to turn the glare on McCoy his eyes fell on Chekov instead and his guts clenched.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
"Bones..."
McCoy didn't look up from Chekov. His hands didn't still, didn't let up on the pressure even as the torn fabric under his hand started to soak through with sickening red.
"Just get us out of here, Jim," came his only answer, grim and terse.
Damn it. Fucking Chekov. Of all the people those animals had to single out, it had to be the smallest, the weakest one. Young, happy, energetic, adorable fucking Pavel.
"I thought you fuckers were supposed to believe in honor," he shouted through the bars as he took up his useless pacing again.
"Not helping, captain," Sulu stated flatly from his exhausted slump on the ground. The blood dotting his uniform was at least not his own. Fucking badass with that fucking sword. Jim would make sure he got it back when they got out of there.
Not helping, no, but not hurting. The fucking Klingon bastard shitheads weren't even looking their way anymore. Six of them were hanging around – six – to babysit a bunch of bruised and beaten officers in a cage. To watch the smallest and youngest one bleed to death.
Damn it.
They were waiting on something. He knew that, his gut had been pinging at him like crazy since Chekov was brought back. Since he had gasped with almost unintelligible accented words that what they did to him was done for an audience. A monitor or a vid recorder or something.
The Klingons had been sending a message. They were waiting for the answer.
"Jim."
He turned, along with everyone else when he heard the darkness in Bones' hoarse voice. He went over and crouched on Chekov's other side, wincing as Bones switched out blood-saturated fabric with the last of their offered stack of uniform jackets. Bones was fast enough to be a blur, and gentle as ever when dealing with a wounded officer, but Chekov gasped a wet, rattling breath. Jim could hear the liquid in his lungs.
He looked over Chekov at Bones.
Bones shook his head, pale and shadowed. "It's got to be soon. Real soon." His hands were steady, but his voice shook.
Jesus. Jim reached down and brushed curls from Pavel's face, ignoring the swelling around his eye and lip.
God, come on. Not this kid.
The growl of Klingon words caught his attention, or maybe he just wanted something else to think about. He stood up slowly, stepping back when a worried Hikaru pushed in to take his place beside his best friend.
Fucking Klingons. He glared at them, as if it did any good at all, as they tossed a few words back and forth and one of them pushed through the door of the larger room their cage made up half of.
He had to press his mouth tightly closed to keep from shouting at the oversized fuckers. He moved to Spock's side.
"Any chance they're going to find us without our communicators?"
"The odds are slim, captain. Given the nature of the political situation between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, I doubt the Enterprise has been allowed to continue the search."
Kirk nodded. He had no doubt of his crew – they were looking. But if they were looking without Starfleet authority it meant the odds were even worse.
A sharp guttural command issued from one of the five remaining bastards, and one of them turned and marched out the door.
Jim moved up to the bars, his brow furrowed.
There was a tension there that hadn't been there before. The four remaining Klingons stood stiff, watching the door instead of the cage as if waiting for something. The two that were carrying those (admittedly wicked) double-edged blades were holding on to them where earlier they'd been laid against the walls.
He listened but could barely hear anything. One of the blade-wielding pair suddenly barked out something in their strange, harsh language and went to the door as if going into an unexpected battle.
Jim's hands were wrapped around the bars by then. He watched the door, listening hard, trying to get a sense of what was happening out there.
Behind him he heard Bones' voice, low and hoarse and pleading. He didn't listen, just grasped the bars more tightly and willed Chekov to hang on a little longer.
The three leftover Klingons had a short, terse talk among themselves, and two of them started moving at the same time towards the door.
They didn't get all the way there.
The door, out of fucking nowhere, seemed to implode inwards. The blow of it was loud enough to make Jim jump, but the Klingons didn't seem rattled until they realized that the big bulky thing that had been thrown in to the door to knock it open was that last blade-wielding Klingon who'd left the room.
In the doorway came a shadow that revealed itself to be a wide, broad swath of red Starfleet uniform.
Jim might have crowed in triumph, except when Greg Harris's broad form moved into the room, no more uniforms followed him.
Cupcake had a phaser in his hand, but Kirk knew from experience that those things rarely did the job on Klingons with one shot. He fired a couple of quick bursts, enough to make the blade fall from the hand of the one armed Klingon.
He was covered in splatters and streaks of darkness – Klingon blood was darker than human, almost black as it dried. His uniform was stained and torn, shredded up one arm. His already-injured arm, Kirk realized with a sinking feeling.
Under the blood, there wasn't a thing recognizable in Harris's face. There was only the burn of a rage so dark it made Kirk's first meeting with the guy seem like a flirty dance at a debutante ball.
For a moment there was a standoff. The fourth Klingon, the one who had been used as a lockpick to open the door, lay where he'd fallen. The other three stood, snarling and ready.
"You human and your guns." One of the Klingons moved a step, his hands braced in front of him. His words were strange, stilted – not many of the fuckers spoke any English at all. "You are no sense of hon--"
Harris shifted his phaser at the talker and pressed and held the trigger.
The Klingon was caught square in the face mid-insult, and he stumbled backwards and roared. The phasers in their current form didn't kill Klingons often, but an extended blast to the face would come damned close.
But extended blasts from phasers drained their power cells really fucking fast, and from the looks of things Harris had already taken out a few of the bastards.
The Klingon fell even as the phaser blast sputtered and died.
Harris tossed the thing to the ground. He didn't look at the cage, he just turned to the two upright Klingons, and...
Hell.
Decimation was the only word Kirk found later that even came close to describing what happened next. He knew his security guy were tough, but if he hadn't watched it with his own eyes...
Harris fucking decimated two healthy adult male Klingons, and that was something one human simply didn't do. The first one went down hard and died fast, the double-sided blade of his own weapon buried in his chest.
The second took longer – neither of them had weapons anymore, but it seemed to suit them both fine. For minutes that felt like months Kirk stood useless in his cage, grasping the bars, watching two oversized forms hurling each other around the room. He flinched with every hammy fist Harris took to the face, and bit back crows of triumph when it went the other way.
He bit back a shout of defeat when the Klingon grabbed Harris's newly re-injured arm and twisted, squeezed.
He heard the deep, sickening crack when Harris's boot in the Klingon's chest broke bones.
He knew he should have been shouting for Harris to get it over with, he knew that for Chekov time was going to be the difference between life and death. But he watched, silent and gaping, as the wheezing Klingon sank to his knees and couldn't pull himself back up. He saw the hate and pride on that dark, ridged face as he regarded his victorious enemy.
There was something like respect there, too, even as Harris limped over to wrench the blade from the other Klingon's body and limped back to finish the job.
It was only later that Kirk even began to realize he might have encouraged Harris to leave the bastard alive, to hold a prisoner for the Federation's use. There, in that room, it didn't once occur to him.
Kirk had to go over the story quite a few times for Starfleet and the Federation and a bunch of scowling diplomats who had to clean up the mess.
But he never mentioned his strongest memory of the entire day: watching Harris's face change as he got the cage open and saw what was left of Pavel Chekov. A man who had just taken on an entire squad of Klingon warriors showed such sudden, stark fear that it was jarring, even as his shaking hands worked the communicator in his sleeve and contacted the ship.
It wasn't bad luck that Harris was the only officer who had found their cage and prisoners. Harris had actually been alone. The message the Klingons had recorded, the message they had tortured Chekov to make, had been broadcast far and wide. From what Kirk pieced together from a few crewmembers' statements, Harris didn't even wait for the message to end.
Scotty was on the bridge, in charge with most of the bridge crew missing, but he didn't try too hard to find the engineering officer who had helped Harris beam against Starfleet orders onto the planet, into the Klingon camp.
Kirk didn't try too hard either.
When M'Benga and Chapel gave the rest of the away team a clean bill of health and released them – without much word about how Chekov was doing – Kirk showered and ate enough to have the energy to argue with Pike over the comm system for an hour about how they got free and how a dozen Klingons ended up dead.
The Federation and the Klingons were roaring about any trouble between them, any threat to whatever kind of accord the diplomats were trying to build.
Pike was still more officer than admiral, though, and Kirk ended the transmission confident that Pike would understand why there would never be an officer from his ship handed to Starfleet for disciplinary measures.
His next trip was back to sickbay, to stand with Sulu as McCoy ignored M'Benga's advice and went right back to work, tending the ensign he'd fought to keep alive in that damned cage. Spock arrived with a worried Uhura a bit later.
Kirk didn't focus on the others standing vigil with him, so he didn't know where their focus was. He knew for himself he watched the silent figure sitting by the bed as much as he watched Chekov and McCoy.
Harris refused to leave. Covered in wounds, splattered all over with dried Klingon blood, he sat there with Chekov's limp hand swallowed by his own loose fist, paying little attention to anything but Pavel's pale face.
Strangely, annoyingly, Kirk found himself thinking about a talk he'd had with Pavel less than a month ago. About how the guy had no sense of humor and Pavel was better off with someone else. Anyone else.
Harris was too old, too big, too mean. Too different from Pavel. Pavel could do so much better.
Oh, well. It wasn't news to anyone on that ship that Jim Kirk could be a fucking moron.