Summary: The boys have a fight. Pavel overreacts and is eighteen. Greg just doesn't fucking get it. And Hikaru Sulu is the best friend ever.
Notes: Couple of things. First off, this story was inspired by and written for katmarajade and secretsolitaire over at livejournal, because they are constant in their support and because they requested it. (I take requests. Is that silly?) I just got home from almost ten days in AZ for business, that's why this wasn't up faster. Sorry!
Second - the title is from a song, the full line being 'Love is hard, and love is tough, but love is not what you're thinking of'. If you know the song, you're brilliant. Either way, it fits. :-)
Right. Story.
The thing was, back when he was in school with Pasha Greg sometimes got this kind of possessive feeling. This weird vibe, this voice that said 'mine' whenever he saw Pasha.
It wasn't anything bad, at least Greg didn't think so. But it was there, and strong. It never really faded, Greg just got so used to hearing 'mine' whenever Pasha smiled his way that it sort of turned into white noise. There, but not there.
Except then he fucked Pasha. Then the murmur of 'mine' in the back of Greg's head turned into more of a triumphant scream, which was a little harder to ignore. Every time he saw Pasha, or touched Pasha, or waved goodbye to him in the morning when they went off to their shifts, his mind screamed it.
Pasha was his.
He knew that it maybe wasn't a good thing. He knew what some assholes were like when they got crazy about their lovers. A couple of muscle-head security cadets Greg used to know liked to beat on guys who looked at their girlfriends the wrong way. Seriously put guys in hospitals before, just because they thought the guy laid eyes on their property.
And Ensign Farraday, this girl in his self-defense class, this real sad-eyed soft sort of girl who got his attention the first class by admitting she'd punched someone before...she told Greg after class the next week that it was her old boyfriend she'd hit, because he wouldn't stop hitting her and one day she just couldn't take it anymore.
(He made sure that bastard fucker wasn't serving on the ship, then he promised her a little extra help whenever she wanted it. He really fucking hated bullies, and maybe it was chauvinist or sexist or whatever but he hated them more when they hit women.)
So Greg knew there was a line, and he knew guys like him, who thought with their fists, could cross it faster than anybody.
But he hoped maybe he wouldn't, even while this voice in his head told him that Pasha was his. He didn't figure he'd ever made Pasha afraid of him, and he never planned on that. He knew Pasha well enough to trust him, so when he came across Pasha and his pal Sulu sitting all close murmuring together in the mess, sharing inside jokes or whatever, he was cool with it.
Well, okay. Sometimes it made him feel weird, but only because he thought about what Sulu told him once, about how he didn't think a guy like Greg would fit into the other big parts of Pasha's life. Greg figured he was right, and he figured Sulu did fit in those parts, and sometimes it was hard not to get jealous of that.
Mostly it just made him wish he was smarter.
Dumb or not, though, Greg did know himself pretty well. So even though in theory he could be jealous (a little) and possessive (in his own mind) and even though in actual fact he'd already killed in the name of protecting Pasha (Klingons, though, and bad ones, and they deserved it, didn't they?), he still thought maybe he was doing okay.
As long as he kept everything inside his head, as long as he never turned into one of those bullying bastards he hated, he thought maybe he'd be alright. Maybe somehow he'd be able to make this work, this thing he had with Pasha. The love thing, and all the rest of it.
That's what he figured, anyway. That's what he meant to happen. That's what he wanted.
Given his luck, though, he probably shouldn't've been too surprised when things didn't turn out that way. And he shouldn't have been surprised that when things went to shit, it was his own fucking idiot fault.
The shore leave was what really made everything go fucked, but Greg thought maybe it started a few days before leave.
Pasha'd been in a bad mood for a while, maybe a week or something? Sometimes he got into bad moods, sure, but this one was different. Usually Greg could kind of talk him out of being mad. Pasha was a happy guy, and he was way too enthusiastic about way too much stuff to stay locked up in a bad mood for very long.
"It's nothing," he said when Greg first bugged him about it. And even though he smiled when he said it, Greg was just all the more certain that it was something.
"It's just work," he said when Greg pushed. And then, "It's just...I was given some news. Some disappointing news." And then a more honest-feeling "If it was something you could help me with, I'd tell you."
Greg left it alone after that. He did his class and worked his shifts and went back to his quarters and talked a lot to fill the silence and grinned at a lot of stuff that wasn't all that funny just because when he grinned at Pasha, Pasha usually smiled back. And even if it was fake it was something.
Pasha spent a lot of time in Greg's room. That wasn't anything new – Pasha pretty much moved in from the start, and mostly the little ensign quarters he was assigned held books and projects and things Greg didn't know much about. But it was unusual because Pasha usually stayed so busy with so much work, he didn't always spend a lot of actual hours in Greg's rooms.
But that week he was always there when Greg came in from work or class. Sitting around, reading or watching old vids or whatever.
That was the other big thing that made Greg know something was really wrong. It wasn't like Greg knew a lot about how Pasha's brain was wired. A guy like Greg would never understand that. But he thought, silently to himself because it made sense to him even if it wasn't true, that Pasha's brain was just working all the damned time. That it worked really fast and didn't take a break, and so Pasha's work and reading and experiments were things he had to feed it to keep it working like it did.
Like gas in a car, maybe. Like if he didn't have enough input coming in, he might stall out.
So there was that, too. Pasha wasn't keeping his brain busy. Bad sign.
Greg didn't know why, since Pasha wouldn't tell him, so he didn't really know what to do about it. But then, Pasha would talk to him and smile at him and laugh and they'd sleep together and it was all pretty nice, just...something was off.
Pasha didn't want his help, though. "If it was something you could help me with, I'd tell you." That's all he'd say.
Greg just nodded and pulled him close at night and thought about all the things he didn't understand, and all those huge parts of Pasha's life he didn't fit into.
So that was happening for a while, a week maybe of Pasha acting weird and sad and upset but not telling him anything.
And then the shore leave came.
"You have to stay here?"
Greg smiled, because Pasha looked sincerely upset, and it was better than his blank bad moods. "It's just my turn on the roster. Gotta keep a skeleton crew on the ship, just in case."
"But..." Pasha's brow furrowed like he was trying to think up a way around it. "I was looking forward to..."
Greg smiled. "Me too. I'm sorry about this."
Pasha went to him and heaved a loud sigh, pressing into Greg in silent demand to be held. "What's the good of shore leave without you there?"
Greg held him – of course – and lay his chin on Pasha's curly hair and felt cheered by his disappointment somehow. "Your friends are going down, right? Sulu and the captain and all of them. You'll have fun."
"Maybe." Pasha's arms came around him, fingers tracing up his back. "I don't see how."
"Well..." Greg hesitated. "I mean...if you wanted, there's nothing saying you have to go down just 'cause you're allowed to."
Pasha pulled back and regarded him, a little smile on his lips that looked sincere enough. "Isn't there?"
Greg grinning, feeling a little more confident then. "Nope. So...it's not anything exciting like this Rysus place, probably, but there's so few people staying behind that we'd just about have the whole ship to ourselves."
Pasha's smile vanished and he looked doubtful. "I don't know. Shore leave is a hard reward to let go of. There must be countless bizarre restaurants for Hikaru and Nyota to drag me around to, and there's nothing more comfortable than a strange hotel room all by myself."
Greg's grin got bigger, since he knew Pasha hated his friends' weird taste in food, and he sure as hell hated sleeping alone. "Guess that'd be hard to give up just to spend a little more time with me, huh?"
"Time with you?" Pasha's fingers curled in Greg's shirt. "You drive a hard bargain."
Greg chuckled. "Well, the food and beds are cheaper up here. And people are less likely to kick your ass if you stay on the ship."
Pasha laughed, then blinked. "What?"
Greg shrugged. "Just, the reports we've been getting in security about this planet, there's a lot of write-ups with Starfleet about the natives getting in fights with officers and stuff. There's always something like that, you know, but these fucking Rysians get kinda crazy."
Pasha stepped back, staring at Greg like he was saying something weird. "If it were a dangerous planet we would not have shore leave there."
"Well..." Greg had to stop from rolling his eyes, since sometimes the dangerous parts were why officers wanted to have shore leave places like Rysus.
Drunk officers and drunk natives fighting wasn't anything new. Hell, Starfleet probably wanted to keep Rysus off the shore leave approval lists, but the kind of guys who fought natives on planetside bars went on shore leave looking for just that kind of thing.
Everybody let off steam in their own ways.
Greg didn't bother explaining all of that, though, since Pasha wasn't the kind of guy who understood the fuck-and-fight testosterone thing that drove those kinds of officers.
He just shrugged again. "It's not a real sweet kind of place, that's all. And with me not going down, I just thought it'd be good if you stayed here."
Pasha's eyes narrowed. "I see." His arms came up, folded over his chest. He stared at Greg, no hint of a smile on his face anymore.
Greg blinked, thinking about what he'd said. Wasn't anything bad there, he didn't think. "It was...just a thought. I mean you don't have to stay here if you..."
"But you would prefer I did." Pasha's voice was strange.
Greg didn't know why. He had this weird feeling in his gut that he'd missed something. Still, he answered honestly. "Yeah."
"Because you read a report about some sort of bar fights and now without you to hold my hand you think I would be in danger."
Okay, and something was definitely wrong by then, because Pasha's voice was real soft and flat and he sounded extra-Russian in that way that meant he was mad.
Greg hadn't heard that voice often, and had hardly ever heard it directed at him. He frowned, studying Pasha's clouded face. "I said something wrong?"
"No." Pasha took another step back suddenly, like he was worried about Greg coming closer. He looked at Greg with hard eyes. "No, it's good that I hear this from you. Its important to know..." He looked down at the ground between them, his shoulders slumping.
And by then Greg was really getting nervous. He ambled forward a step, hands itching to reach out. "Hey, look. Whatever I said, it's not...is it the shore leave? Because you can go. It's cool, you know, I wouldn't make you stay here if you want to go."
Pasha shook his head. He turned away. "I do want to go. It's been weeks since our last planetside leave, and I have never seen Rysus." He looked around the quarters, his eyes wide and strange, like he had no idea what to do with himself.
Greg swallowed. "Okay. Should be fun, I guess. Just, you know, be careful."
"Careful." Pasha turned back to him all the sudden, and the sound in his voice that seemed like hurt or sadness was suddenly sharp all over again. Angry. "Be careful? Because I am useless without my bodyguard, is that it? That's what you think, that I am this frail, stupid, useless child who can't defend myself."
"What?" Greg gaped at him, unnerved by the anger. "I never said that. Never said anything like that. What the hell's got you so pissed off?"
"I thought you were different!" Pasha shut his mouth real fast after that, like he didn't mean to say it.
Greg scowled, irritation flickering up in him fast. He'd witnessed too many fights through his life to not respond to one, even if he had no fucking clue why it was happening. "Different from what? I don't know what the hell you're even talking about."
"Never mind," Pavel said fast, his cheeks red. His shoulders went back, and his eyes flashed. "I'm going."
"I said okay! Go if you want, I told you it was just some dumb idea."
"No, Greg." Pasha turned and stalked over to the small sofa, where a couple of padds he'd been reading off of were sitting. He plucked them off the table and hugged them to his chest, his movements sharp and terse. "I'm going."
"Wait." The little tendrils of irritation muted then, and Greg swallowed. "Wait, what? You're leaving?"
"Yes. For tonight, and then..." Pasha didn't look at him, just checked the room for anything else to grab.
Tonight. Tonight wasn't forever, but tonight was still leaving, and what the fuck was going on?
"I have my own quarters. I don't need your bed, Greg. I don't need you chasing after me like some guard dog. I have always been able to take care of myself, no matter what anybody thinks."
Pasha turned back to him without getting anything else. His eyes were bright, like he was ready to cry, and Greg itched to go over there. To grab him and make sure whatever it was that hurt him never got to him again.
"Wait," was all he said, though, this strange panic making his voice all tight. "I don't even know what I did."
Pasha sucked in a deep breath and went to the door. "Nothing," he said before he left, in that voice people used when they meant exactly the opposite of what they were saying. "You didn't do anything."
And he left.
And Greg didn't fucking get it.
He didn't get it the next day, when 'tonight' had come and gone but Pasha didn't show up at his door.
He didn't get it, and he tried. He laid awake all night, couldn't get to fucking sleep without listening to Pasha's quiet breaths in his ear. He laid there and thought about it, thought about what he had said and what Pasha said, and that stupid voice in his head that made him an asshole when he didn't mean to be.
The stupid leave was still a couple days away, and every time Greg heard someone talking about it, being excited and everything, he felt all tense and nervous.
He left Pasha messages at his room. Stupid fucking stammering idiot messages, because Greg wasn't good at talking even when he understood what the fuck was going on.
"Hey, it's me. Again. I just...um, could you comm me, or come up or something? I know I asked you that already, but...maybe just comm me and say no if you aren't coming? Because it's weird not hearing your voice all day, and...fuck, Pasha, I don't know what the hell I did, but if you tell me I'll make it better. No matter what, I'll...I'm just...it's fucking weird here without you, and..."
That's pretty much what he'd say. And then he'd end the recording, because even he was irritated with his own voice so he knew Pasha would get irritated.
He didn't see Pasha during the day since his work only brought him up to the bridge if some serious shit was going on, and there wasn't much excitement just traveling like they were. He hung around the mess a little too long after his meals, watching the doors and ignoring everyone.
And the evening before they were set to arrive at Rysus, someone came in who got his attention.
Sulu didn't sit, just came to where Greg sat and motioned like Greg should get up. "Come on, Harris. You're late."
"Late?" Greg looked at him, unmoving.
Sulu pointed to his wrist the way people did even though nobody wore watches in uniform. "It's five after seven, and Saturday. We have a date and you're late. It's rude."
Greg grimaced. He stood, since he'd been done eating for a long time and he didn't figure Pasha was ever going to show up.
He dropped his tray in the recycler, frowning when Sulu dogged his steps the whole way.
"Look," he said when he reached the door and Sulu kept right on following. "Sorry, guess I should have called or something. But...we don't have to do this shit, okay?"
"This shit?" Sulu repeated, eyebrows raised. He spoke the words precisely, like he was offended. He wasn't, though – Greg hadn't managed to offend the guy once. He doubted anything ever got to Sulu.
"I may not have an official class sanctioned by Starfleet like some of us do, but I take my responsibilities seriously. From seven to nine every Saturday, I'm your teacher."
Greg started down the corridor the opposite way from where Sulu was gesturing. He really didn't want to deal with this crap tonight. His mood was shit the last couple of days, and he couldn't help wondering how many hours Sulu got to spend with Pasha that day, when Greg didn't even get a god damned response to his stupid messages.
Sulu followed him without comment all the way to the turbolift, and got on right at Greg's heels.
Stubborn prick. Greg scowled, knowing Sulu would chase him all the way to his damned quarters. He stamped down on his anger and faced Sulu.
Sulu looked back with innocent eyes. "What?"
But Greg couldn't think of what to say. He didn't want to talk out all the shit with Pavel to this guy who was...not a stranger anymore, really, but not a friend. But he knew that as nice a guy as Sulu was, those two hours a week in a training room didn't make them close. It didn't make Greg anything more than Pasha's boyfriend, not to Sulu. And he didn't even fucking know if he was that anymore.
So. Shit. He couldn't say anything without saying everything.
Sulu, though, he was a good guy. And smart. And he did see Pasha, worked right beside him for hours every day, so he had to know what was going on. Maybe Pasha explained it to him. Shit, maybe Greg could get Sulu to tell him, because he hadn't fucking figured it out yet.
Sulu leaned back against the rail as the 'lift took them to the fourth level. "So Pavel's sleeping in his own room suddenly," he said, his voice mild and his expression only vaguely curious.
Greg tensed and wanted to punch a wall. He looked at the doors of the lift. "Yeah."
There was a moment when Sulu didn't talk, and Greg had time to hope he'd shut up about it.
"You know he's just angry right now. Pavel...he's good at a lot of things, but dealing with his emotions isn't one of them."
Greg frowned back at Sulu. "What're you talking about?"
"I mean, he's ticked off at Starfleet and he's taking it out on you. It sucks, and I've told him as much. But you might have to give him a little time to get over it."
"Starfleet." Greg blinked. "What's he mad at Starfleet for?"
Sulu studied him, frowning suddenly. "Because they denied his request. He told you about their answer, didn't he?"
Greg hesitated. "What request?"
Sulu let out a breath, kind of a hiss. "His work with Spock. The proposed research into the Vulcan black hole. They had to submit a request for approval, and..." He stopped suddenly, frowning at Greg. "You have no idea what I'm talking about."
Greg shook his head, his face heating unpleasantly.
Sulu frowned deeper. "I swear, he is the dumbest genius I've ever met."
"Hey." Greg scowled. "He's not dumb. If this is something to do with his science work, he doesn't talk to me about that kind of stuff. Never has. That's just how we do things, and it's fine. So don't call him dumb."
Sulu held up a hand like he was surrendering, but his brow stayed knit up as the lift doors opened. "I don't get it. Why would that be how you do things? I know how important this work is to Pavel, why wouldn't he--"
"Because," Greg cut in, sharp. He didn't need Sulu bitching about Pasha, and he didn't want to feel that little hot unhappy feeling in his belly that he got from time to time thinking about Pasha's huge, involved life outside of Greg.
He shot Sulu a challenging look. "Because I don't fit in with that part of his life. Told me that yourself once, so don't act all shocked about it now."
Sulu didn't answer. He leaned back against the lift wall, frowning to himself.
Well, fuck it. Greg wasn't going to stand around waiting. He stalked out of the lift, and only looked back when he was getting close to the door of his quarters.
Sulu hadn't followed him.
The plan was the ship would stay in geo-sync around Rysus for three days. Regulations said that a ship's captain could dictate the terms of shore leave – for some ships that would have meant all the crew going down in rotation for like a day. For Kirk it meant obliging a handful of crew to stay on board and kicking the rest off with a cheerful "be back before 1800 hours in three days, or we're leaving without you."
Greg didn't mind it. Well, this time especially, but usually he didn't mind. Some people bitched, the ones who got stuck on ship. But a shore leave that only meant like ten hours on a planet before coming back up so the next rotation could go wasn't exactly relaxing.
Mostly he just didn't give a good shit. If he was thinking about shift rotations it meant he was just trying not to think about other things, it didn't mean he suddenly had some kind of fucking opinion.
He told himself he didn't care, and he stayed in his rooms while most people left (and it made him laugh, and it fucking hurt, because half the shit in his rooms was Pasha's, and what the hell did he wear when all his clothes were in Greg's closet, and why didn't he just come back, damn it).
He did leave Sulu a message the morning of leave, asked him to keep an eye on Pasha. He didn't realize he was as tense as he was until after his shift on the empty ship, when he found a message from Sulu that just said 'I always do' and he suddenly felt all this stress kind of ease out.
Pasha had been his for almost two years. If it pissed Pasha off that Greg looked out for him...well, that wasn't going to change just because he took off.
And was that it? Greg just kept tossing it around in his head, over and over again, trying to find the why and the what. He knew it was him, something he said, some dumb thoughtless fucking thing. But he didn't know exactly what.
Sulu said Pasha was mad at Starfleet. Some kind of request got denied. But Pasha got mad because he didn't like Greg being worried about him. Because he figured Greg thought he couldn't take care of himself, or something.
Which was dumb. Well, it was Pasha, so not dumb. But not right, either. Greg knew he could take care of himself – he'd taught him how to do it, after all. But Pasha was right that Greg did worry about him. Like a guard dog, Pasha said. Bodyguard.
And that was true. But that had always been true. It never bothered him before now, did it? When Greg went psycho on a bunch of Klingons who hurt Pasha, Pasha never got mad at him for it. He let Greg sit there with him in the sickbay until he got out, and hold on to him extra hard at night, and he never said anything if it bothered him.
Fuck, but Greg wasn't good at this kind of shit. He couldn't put it together in any kind of way that made sense.
He almost wished he had someone around to talk to about it. Like Pasha talked to Sulu. But Greg didn't talk to anyone but Pasha about personal shit.
He used to talk to his buddy Ray, sometimes, before Ray got killed on an away team mission. But Ray would've just laughed at him for being a bitch about one fight with his boyfriend. He would've called Greg a pussy and told him to go do something about it instead of sitting around wondering about shit he wasn't going to figure out on his own.
Maybe he'd see if Sulu wouldn't mind going over it.
Or...
Well, hell. Maybe he'd take Ray's imaginary advice.
It wasn't exactly fair, was it, that Pasha got all pissed off over something and took off without even giving Greg a chance. Maybe Greg did need to just stop being a bitch and corner him somewhere and make him talk about it.
But when he thought about that he thought about sometimes when his dad and mom were fighting, and dad would corner her somewhere so she couldn't get away, and he'd start wailing on her if she kept on fighting back.
The part of Greg that lived in fear of becoming his dad one day thought maybe it was better to be a pussy than to be that.
He just really needed someone to tell him what to do.
Chief Porter was part of the skeleton crew that stayed behind, so Greg went by his office at the start of his shift to see where he wanted Greg that day – rotations and schedules got fucked during shore leaves, since the same duties didn't have to be done.
Porter looked up at him with a smirk when Greg walked in the second day of shore leave.
"Hell, Harris, I'm surprised you didn't sneak down to that planet and start killing guys."
"Sir?" Greg didn't like Porter much – he kind of had that thing some officers did where he wanted to be pals with all the guys and never liked being a boss.
Kirk kind of had that, the wanting to be pals thing, but he could turn it off when shit got serious. Greg had seen him do it.
Porter, though, he was kind of always stuck in smirky pal-mode. So when Porter said some weird shit like that, it could've been a joke or there could have been something serious behind it, and Greg hated not being able to tell.
Porter sat back, nodding at the communications panel he was monitoring for planetside transmissions.
"I picked up the request for direct transport to sickbay. That Russian kid you're screwing? Just figured if you weren't up there with him you'd've snuck back to..."
He probably said more, but Greg didn't hear it. He turned and was out the door before he could remember that Porter actually was his boss and he was signing in at the start of a shift, and not exactly free to leave.
Direct transport to sickbay. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He was in the lift in a flash, and at the doors to sickbay in another flash. McCoy was down planetside, he remembered, but the blond nurse, Chapel, she looked up when he charged in, and with a faint smile she nodded towards one of the back corners.
Smile. Smile meant nobody was dying, right?
Greg couldn't slow down enough to worry about it. He looked around the all-but-empty sickbay, and one little curtain was drawn around one little bed. Just the sat of it, kind of alone and forlorn and all, made him slow down.
Jesus, Pasha. Pasha was hurt. Days of nothing, of silence and confusion and wondering what the fuck had gone wrong, and he was about to see Pasha. Hurt. In some sickbay bed. Again.
Fuck, if he was twenty years older he'd've had a fucking heart attack by now.
Luckily Pasha wasn't alone, because as Greg got closer he saw someone's boots under the curtain, and heard Sulu's voice.
"--to go back down there. Come off it, Pavel."
"You should."
Pasha. Greg nearly smiled hearing his voice all thick and Russian and tired, but alive and okay and it was his voice.
"This is stupid. Just go back and enjoy the rest of your shore leave."
"I'm not going to leave you alone after something like that."
Pasha cursed, low and Russian, and sounded somehow just as mad as he'd sounded when he left Greg's quarters days ago. "I am in the middle of sickbay, Hikaru. I don't need to be coddled any more than the nurses will coddle me. Just get out."
"Uh huh. You know how well that attitude of yours works on me."
"Hikaru."
"Pavel."
Greg approached quietly, interested. Sulu just sort of got mad right back at Pasha, though he did it in that weird cheerful way Sulu did everything. That was kind of cool, that they were close enough friends to do that. Greg thought he might ask Sulu sometime how he did it without getting scared of Pasha leaving for good.
"I'm not leaving until they give you the all-clear, at least. I'm not going to have any fun planetside thinking about you all pathetic and alone up here. So shut up and heal."
Pavel muttered something low that Greg didn't catch.
"Well, I could always arrange someone else to keep you company. Harris is still on the ship, isn't he?"
Greg perked up at that, smiling. Sulu was a fucking good guy.
But Pavel answered him fast, and wiped Greg's smile away. "Bozhe moi, Hikaru, that's the last thing I need. He was insufferable before now. All I need is for him to think he was right about me. I'll never get him to leave me alone."
Greg found that he'd stopped moving, and his feet were stuck. He was so close he could hear Pasha shifting on the bed, could see Sulu's outline behind the thin privacy curtain.
Sulu spoke softly but Greg heard every word. "Sometimes you're such a shit it's hard to remember why I like you so much."
"I don't want to argue about Greg again. Not now."
"Tough luck."
"No, Hikaru. You call me a shit if you want to, but I would rather sit here alone than have to deal with him fretting over me like I'm his child instead of his lover."
"You don't think he's going to find out anyway?"
"When people come back from leave, yes. By then I will be out of here and able to avoid him." There was a pause, and Pavel's voice was softer suddenly. More sincere. "It is humiliating how he treats me, now that I know what he thinks. I can't deal with it right now, on top of all this. Please, Hikaru."
Sulu sighed.
But whatever he was going to say in answer, he never said. Because there were some movement behind Greg, and a voice barked out across the empty sickbay.
"Yo, Harris. Porter's asking for you."
Greg blinked at the curtain. He couldn't move, even to turn around and see which guard it was who was marching up behind him.
The curtain opened suddenly. Sulu's face was pale, but when he saw Greg standing so close he seemed almost relieved.
Greg's eyes didn't stay on him, though. He was helpless to keep from looking past him at the bed. At Pasha.
God, he looked awful. His face was strange and swollen in that way that meant he'd been hurt, but the dermal regenerators had taken the bruises and blood away already. His eyes were round and bright and injured, his hair was a mess. His hands curled around the sheet they'd pulled over him, and he stared back at Greg like he was scared of him. Like he was scared Greg would go over there and start...humiliating him. Again.
Greg backed up, because he couldn't hurt Pasha. But he had hurt Pasha. Somehow. And he didn't know what to fucking do.
"Harris, you deaf? Come on, the chief needs you asap."
He turned. Purcell, one of the guards he didn't know all that well.
Porter was asking for him. And he was a fucking security officer, and that's the only thing in the world he was sure about at all suddenly.
So he went.
Rysus was a strange planet from the start. It was heavier than earth. Gravity, Porter had briefed him quickly before sending him down. The force of gravity was just a fraction stronger than earth, so everything weighed more, and felt heavier.
Greg didn't like it, feeling like his arms and legs moved a fraction slower than he wanted them too. But he knew his body, and he figured out fast just how much extra effort it took to move as fast as he was used to moving.
By the time he reached Kirk to report for duty, he thought he had his shit figured out. He'd be sore when he got back, and he'd tire more easily than he was used to, but he was moving at the same speed as always.
"Sir."
"At ease, Lieutenant Commander." Kirk returned his salute, slow and heavy because of the gravity thing, and spoke sharply, and Greg was reminded all over again that, unlike Porter, when Kirk wanted to be The Captain he didn't fuck around.
Kirk didn't lose the Captain attitude, but when his salute lowered he relaxed a little. "Appreciate you coming down, Harris. Unfortunately, we've got reason to believe we're going to need some extra security tonight. Come on, I'll brief you on the situation."
Greg didn't ask why Kirk asked for him personally – he suspected, and he hoped. But Kirk talked around it, so Greg didn't ask.
Kirk walked him around this dusty, heavy road, where almost half the people in sight were in Starfleet uniforms.
"You might have heard," Kirk said as they went, "we've already had an incident with a group of natives."
Greg ground his teeth, thinking of Pasha all pale and hurt in sickbay, but just nodded when Kirk looked at him. "The Chief didn't give me any details, sir."
Kirk flashed a tight grin. "Details. Those are the problem. There was an incident a few hours ago between one of my officers and a group of natives, but we don't have any witnesses. What we have is a group of four natives who vanished from a bar at the same time as our officer. My officer was found shortly after, badly injured, and the natives were spotted a couple of hours ago bragging about pushing around Starfleet."
Kirk wasn't saying Pasha's name, Greg noticed. Keeping things official. But he'd asked for Greg personally, and he hadn't told Porter any of this. That meant something.
"Now," Kirk went on as they approached a small, dusty building crowded with people. Drinks in hand, voices too loud, and bars were the same on every planet Greg had ever been on.
"Starfleet does not believe in retaliation, especially on ally planets. If we believe we know who was responsible for the situation earlier, it's policy to submit those names to the authorities planetside and let them attend to their own people."
Greg frowned at him.
Kirk seemed serious, though. "You're not here to retaliate, Harris. You got me?"
"Yes, sir," Greg answered, even as his hand itched to form a fist.
Kirk met his eyes a moment and flashed a sudden, wicked kind of smile. "You're here because when I go into this bar where these suspected natives are hanging out, I might be at risk. And if I talk too loud about this shithole planet and piss those natives off, and they take it upon themselves to repeat their earlier actions against an officer of Starfleet, I'd like someone to watch my back."
Greg understood suddenly. He straightened and looked at the crowded doorway of the bar.
"We're not allowed retaliation, Harris," Kirk went on, clapping a hand around Greg's back like they were pals. "But we're allowed to defend ourselves. So how about you and me go put ourselves in some danger."
When he walked through the door Kirk shocked Greg by lurching to the side, nearly running into a guy, and shouting all slurred and weird like he was drunk.
"Who's a guy got to blow to get a decent drink on this piece of shit planet?"
Five minutes later Greg reached out and caught a hammy rough-skinned alien fist before it could pound into Kirk's face in the dark street behind the bar, and suddenly he was free to pound into the four fuckers who had led Kirk outside without worrying about Starfleet policy.
Somewhere between the bar and the fight behind it, Greg realized that his captain was fucking awesome.
Didn't make the day less of a disaster, but when Kirk flashed him an adrenaline-drunk grin over four groaning or dead-silent prone alien shitheads, Greg returned it.
***two***
Pavel Chekov was only eighteen years old, yes, and he didn't have very many truly awful moments in those eighteen years. So the odds that two moments that might very easily rank in his top five worst of all time would happen in the same two-week period...
Well, he didn't believe in luck, or fate. But, to borrow a phrase from Hikaru...it really sucked.
Moment one came with a communication packet from the Starfleet Science Academy. An answer, finally, to the proposal he and Spock had worked so hard on.
Pavel had a superior memory, and he doubted he would ever forget that communication. The sincere interest in their project, the fascination in their proposal and the particular angle of their research.
And then, the damning paragraph.
Cold and clinical and numbing, it spoke of the Academy's confusion over Commander Spock's proposed research partner. It used words like youth, and inexperience, and 'we doubt very highly he has the emotional maturity,' and ended with the implication that the citizens of New Vulcan would be fascinated by the research but offended by the researcher.
Offended.
Pavel had been beaten and bruised before, but he had never been struck so hard. It was the official response from Starfleet that the entire Vulcan race would take his involvement as an insult. Because of his age, his inexperience. His involvement, in a project whose very proposal he had spent a hundred hours of research to assemble, was offensive.
Pavel had always been different than most people around him, and he had developed a thick skin towards the taunts of others. But this. This was a judgment from the very people he thought of as his future peers. There were the top minds of Earth.
And they thought he was a joke. A child. Emotionally immature.
It was humiliating to go to the bridge for his shift after that letter arrived. To face Spock, knowing he had received the exact same message at the same time. Spock was his mentor. His superior in title, his teacher. A motherless son, and when Pavel thought about how hard it had been to approach Spock with his ideas...
Starfleet thought he was emotionally immature? They would never understand the strength it took for Pavel to go to a man whose mother had died with Pavel's hands on the controls, and to tell that man that he wanted to study the hole that had swallowed her.
How could he not be devastated by that response? How could he not wallow in his devastation, look for signs that others felt the same way about him? How could be not take every ruffled hair as an insult, every remark about his age as a slap in the face?
How could he stay with Greg when he discovered that Greg too thought of him as nothing but a helpless kid? How could he love someone who pitied him? Who saw him as weak where he had always thought he was strong?
But...now.
The second of those two worst moments, the blow to drive him back even as he was still reeling from the first: he looked past Hikaru into the muted white stillness of sickbay, and saw Greg's face looking back at him.
He thought he was angry at Greg. He thought he was humiliated, insulted, devastated, because the man he loved thought of him as a child. He thought that ignoring Greg's comm messages and avoiding him on the ship was the only possible way to react.
Then he saw Greg. He took one look at Greg's white face and horrified eyes, and his heart almost cracked right in two.
Even if Greg thought of him as a child, Greg loved him. Pavel didn't doubt that, even when his wounded pride made him walk out of Greg's room. Greg loved him, and Greg would never do anything to hurt him.
Pavel didn't want to hurt Greg, either. Pavel loved Greg, despite his hurt and his pride and his anger. Being away from him was strange, and wrong. Pavel laid awake at night and longed for Greg's low voice rumbling in his ear. Greg's arms around him, Greg's sheepish smile.
He was mad when he walked out of Greg's quarters. He was hurt to think that for all they had shared together, Greg agreed with Starfleet about him. He meant to sleep in his own room for a night or two, sulk, cry, get his system clear of it all. And then figure things out from there.
But he talked himself out of figuring things out.
His brain told him that being with someone who treated him like a child was unhealthy. Everything else inside of him argued, how could Greg be unhealthy when being without him felt so wrong?
His brain argued right back that he was just used to Greg, and that so many people were so shocked by their relationship that it obviously wasn't natural.
Then he looked up from that hospital bed, cold and afraid, when he heard someone say Greg's name. He looked past Hikaru as he pulled back the curtain and he saw Greg standing there, haunted and pale and staring. And his brain was silenced.
Greg met his eyes for just a moment. Then he turned away, shoulders slumped as if he had done something wrong.
Pavel watched him go, mind desperately playing back whatever he'd just been saying, whatever Greg might have heard. Humiliating, he'd said to Hikaru. Humiliating, and insufferable, and Pavel didn't want to have to deal with him.
When Greg was gone, out the door on the heels of another security guard Pavel didn't know, the silence was broken by Hikaru.
Hikaru turned to him, and Pavel nearly blanched at the sheer anger brewing behind his best friend's eyes.
"You are so stupid."
Pavel wanted to argue, but his brain was still stricken into silence and he couldn't think of a response.
Hikaru stood over him, folding his arms across his chest. "You are so damned stupid sometimes, Pavel, I don't understand it. You know that guy loves you, and this is what you do in response?"
"You don't understand, Hikaru." Pavel's response lacked heat, but Hikaru was radiating enough for both of them.
"What don't I understand?"
Pavel shook his head, but when he looked away from Hikaru's clouding expression his mind only showed him Greg's devastated face instead.
He blinked hot eyes and drew in a breath. "He agrees with Starfleet."
Hikaru sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Come on. He wouldn't...he does?"
Pavel nodded, miserable. He sat up in bed, body aching from the fight. Those Neanderthals had hurt him, but nothing bad. He didn't have to be there, but of course Kirk ordered the doctors to watch him overnight. Because he was poor baby Pavel.
He scrubbed at his face with a shivering hand, trying to clear away the threat of tears from his eyes. "He does. He think I'm a child who needs to be tended."
"Pavel." Hikaru hesitated, his anger down to a low simmer behind his eyes. "I'm sure that's not true."
"It is. He told me as much himself." Pavel tilted his head back against the wall behind the bed, wishing for a moment that he really was a child. That he could sob and hug Hikaru like his life depended on it, and get back a little of the affection he felt so bereft of without Greg.
"He wanted me to stay on the ship so he could protect me, because he read some report about incidents with natives." Pavel looked at Hikaru suddenly. "And yes, I recognize the irony about protesting that from a sickbay bed, but I talked my way into this...this fight, and I can handle the aftereffects."
Hikaru's brow furrowed. He moved in and sat down on the edge of the bed, facing Pavel with a look on his face like his thoughts were only half-formed and he was waiting for input.
Pavel's hands settled on the sheets, and he found himself looking at a lines of scratches on his knuckles that the nurse had missed.
"Every man on this crew has or will get into a fight like this. I have to be allowed to make those same sort of mistakes, or what am I?" He sighed, turning his hand palm-up on the sheet to put those scratches out of sight. "I am a pet, a half an officer. Not capable of the same things regular officers are expected to do."
He looked up at Hikaru, grateful to see him looking thoughtful instead of angry by then. He found himself leaning forward, speaking seriously, wanting to be heard.
"I love Greg," he said, intent. "But I can't love who I am in his mind. I don't love myself helpless and young and weak. And to really love someone, I think, you have to be able to love who you are when you're with them. The person that you are in their eyes. Does that make sense?"
Hikaru blinked, that mild surprise coming and going from his face that said Pavel had just said something Hikaru hadn't expected to hear. Those moment came less and less the longer the two of them were friends, but now and then Hikaru still seemed to forget that Pavel was intelligent enough despite his age to have learned things that weren't in textbooks.
"It makes sense," he said slowly, regarding Pavel. "And I agree with you, though I haven't thought about it in those exact terms before."
Pavel nodded, for a moment disappointed at the agreement. As if in some small way he had wanted Hikaru to argue, to convince him it was alright to love Greg despite this.
"Then you understand." He drew in a strengthening breath and looked over at the spot where Greg had been standing. "I don't want to hurt him, but...it's for the best that he knows we are through. Because I can't bring myself to end it directly." He looked back at Hikaru, his eyes hot and his vision a little blurred at the edges.
Hikaru frowned at him, and over at that spot Greg had been. "You should tell him all this, you know. Especially if you really care about him as much as you say."
Pavel shook his head. "Why? To give him a chance to argue with something I know to be true? Or to ask him to change it? I may have only had the one relationship, Hikaru, but I know that asking someone to change themselves never works." He sat up, forcing himself to look back at that spot yards away. "This is the only way things can be."
"Huh." Hikaru slid from the cot onto his feet. "Starfleet...that message they sent. What was it they called you? Immature? Young?"
Pavel frowned but nodded, and it still hurt almost as much to hear as it did to read the first time.
Hikaru regarded him. "You know I love you, Pasha. You're my best friend, and I am in complete awe of you so often it's silly. But this? What you're doing with Greg?"
Pavel swallowed, meeting his eyes though there was something in Hikaru's face he wanted to turn away from.
Hikaru shook his head, turning and moving towards the doors. He spoke over his shoulder, but didn't look back.
"This is you proving Starfleet right."
He couldn't sleep in his tiny room all alone.
He couldn't eat in the mess for fear of running into Greg. He couldn't meet Hikaru's eyes. He couldn't breathe between eighteen- and twenty-hundred hours that Friday, when he knew Greg was teaching and being brilliant and helping so many people.
He couldn't talk to Kirk, because whispers said he had beamed up from shore leave in mid-laugh with Greg, and apparently whatever had taken Greg down to that planet had brought him back up with a new friend.
Spock approached him after one silent, interminable shift. "Ensign. You realize of course that I disagree with Starfleet's decision. Perhaps I should have spoken about this sooner, given your waning concentration on the bridge recently. I think the decision should be overturned, and I believe the majority of Vulcan survivors would as well. I could contact New Vulcan for testaments to that affect."
Then he couldn't talk to Spock anymore, because the idea of an entire species having to write 'but admiral, he's really a good boy' letters to Starfleet was humiliating beyond anything else he could think of.
His life was getting worse by the second, it seemed, and he had no idea when it had all spiraled so far down that he couldn't seem to reverse the descent.
He missed Greg.
And then Hikaru cornered him on the lift after a shift and wouldn't let him get off at his level. Instead he grabbed Pavel's arm and didn't say a word as he marched him off the lift on a different level, and walked him right up to a painfully familiar door.
"Open it," Hikaru said, pointing at the door.
Pavel swallowed and wanted to be safe in his quiet, miserable quarters. "Hikaru."
"He isn't there, he's meeting me in the gym for practice. And being late is rude, so open the damned door before you make me late."
Pavel only looked at Hikaru long enough to recognize that steel in his dark eyes – Hikaru was as easy-going a person as Pavel ever knew. Most of the time. When he got his heels dug in to something, though, he was absolutely unmovable.
He swallowed again and reached uncertainly for the entry pad to put in a code he knew as well as his own door. "He's probably changed the code by--"
The door swished open.
Pavel shut his mouth and moved in when Hikaru nudged him. He looked around, his gut clenching at the sight of all his things, his journals and padds and the framed photo of his parents from when his mother was alive. All untouched.
There was a box, a slim plastic storage case, sitting on the floor beside the small sofa. It sat open and waiting, and when Pavel past it he looked in to see one of his books laying at the bottom. One book.
He could almost see Greg standing there after putting that book in, arguing with himself over whether he really ought to pack Pavel's things up.
He saw a small stack of dishes sitting by the recycler, and the wrinkled uniform jacket slung over the back of the couch. His throat worked – Greg wasn't particularly neat before Pavel moved into his space. For Pavel's sake he tried, but it looked like he was slowly starting to forget the urge to be tidy.
Pavel wanted to look around at everything, to pick up that wrinkling duty jacket, to pull his book out of that horrible box.
But Hikaru grabbed his arm after only a few moments, and led Pavel in a line straight to the bedroom. When they were through the door Hikaru turned to him, steel determination on his face.
"I'm going to meet Greg for practice. You are going to sit here, in this bedroom. And you're not going to move, no matter how long it takes anyone to show up here."
Pavel sighed against the thickness in his throat. "Hikaru, this is useless. Whatever Greg or I might say to each other isn't going to--"
"You don't seem to understand me." Hikaru stared at him, hard. "You aren't going to say anything. You're going to stay in the bedroom, and you're going to keep your mouth shut. It's not a request, Ensign, it's an order. Sit down."
Pavel couldn't manage to glare at Hikaru like he wanted to, so he went to the hard-backed chair against the wall and sat, petulant.
"If you leave before I say you can..." Hikaru shook his head as if he was at a loss for a threat sufficiently vicious. For a moment his wall of firm strength slipped down, and he seemed almost pleading. "Just don't leave."
Pavel wanted to answer, but Hikaru was out the door before he could.
Pavel was left in silence, staring at the bed he shared with Greg since his first night on the Enterprise. The bed Greg held him in as they drifted to sleep. The bed Greg fucked him in that first amazing time. They stroked and rubbed and touched in that bed, laughed and murmured to each other and said I love you like the words were some kind of mystical revelation.
He wanted to crawl in, bury himself under the covers, smell Greg's scent until he fell into the peaceful sleep he couldn't get in his own small, cold bed.
He hated Hikaru sometimes.
But he obeyed, sitting in that chair and replaying too many memories, waiting for Greg to show up and find him there, and for the whole ugly thing to start again.
He had to wait less time than he expected. Hikaru and Greg didn't keep any regular schedule, but they spent at least an hour in the gym whenever they met for practice. But it couldn't have been twenty minutes before Pavel heard the swish of the outer door open, and the thump of footsteps.
Before he could decide if he wanted to run or throw himself at Greg, he was stilled by Greg's voice.
"Dunno what you're making such a big deal about."
"Easy." Hikaru's voice, cheerful and bright, answered Greg's rumble. "Your focus is horrible, and it's getting worse every time I see you. I'm not going to let you insult the sword by practicing without giving it your full attention."
A pause, and a heavy thump. Greg's gym duffel, Pavel recognized, dropping to the floor by the couch.
"Shit. I guess that's fair. I'm sorry, you know. Just..."
"Just what?"
"I don't know. Just."
"Not good enough."
Pavel recognized that tone. Hikaru used it on him when he wanted to get some reticent story out of him. It was his persuasive voice.
He frowned, but stood and moved to the wall, approaching the doorway quietly.
"I don't wanna talk about it, Sulu."
"You think I followed you back here for my health? I don't think you've talked to anyone about anything, and if you ask me that's why your concentration is shot. The last few practices, and when I force my presence on you in the mess at meals, it's like watching a vid on the dangers of depression."
Pavel winced – he hid himself away lately, he didn't know what anyone did outside of their shifts. It was ridiculously easy to picture Greg sitting alone, or silent in a crowd of chattering security officers.
"I don't think you've got a lot of friends up here," Hikaru went on, cheerful. "But I count myself as one of them. That means I have the right to bully you into confessing when something's wrong."
There was a heavy pause, and a low sigh. "Not like you don't already know what's wrong."
"Mmm. Yeah, I've had a few talks with Pavel about it, actually."
"Yeah?" Greg sounded surprised, like he didn't figure anyone but him actually cared about the whole situation.
"Yeah. But...come on, Greg. It's been a couple weeks now. Don't you think it was maybe for the best that all this happened?"
Pavel flinched and turned to the open doorway, wanting to glare out at Hikaru.
When Greg didn't answer right away Pavel's glare faded and he edged in closer, almost holding his breath.
"I don't know," Greg said finally. There was some movement, and a thump Pavel knew was Greg dropping onto the couch. "Maybe."
"I know you liked him," Hikaru went on instantly, and there was a lighter sound as he sat himself beside Greg. "But you two...I just don't think it would have worked, you know?"
It did work, Pavel wanted to bark out. It worked for two years, that was a lifetime at his age. That was forever.
Hikaru went on, dismissive. "He's kind of young for you, right?"
"Nah." Pavel could almost hear the shrug in Greg's voice. "It's just he's too damned smart for me. He needs to be with a guy he can talk to about...things. Important things. And I'm not that guy."
"No?"
Greg's voice was thick even though his tone was casual. He was trying, Pavel could hear, to talk about this like it was just any old subject. But it took effort.
"Come on, Sulu. I mean...he used to tell me he didn't care about all that. About me being a lunkhead, you know? Said his friends gave him a lot of shit about it, but he said he really didn't care. But then this thing you told me about, the thing he was all upset over before that fucking shore leave..."
"His research project."
"Yeah. I mean, he doesn't care that I don't understand half the shit he does, but he didn't tell me nothing about all that. He needs to find somebody he can talk to about it, so they don't fuck up with him the way I did."
"Hmmm." Hikaru sounded thoughtful. "So what happened? What did you do to fuck up?"
Greg laughed, and Pavel wanted to cry listening to it. That was Greg's hurting laugh. The laugh he'd use to dismiss his feelings whenever he started talking about his family back home, or when he told Pavel about that man he'd slept with years ago when he moved to California to start at the Academy.
"I still don't fucking know. I heard him talking to you...in sickbay, you know."
Pavel winced.
"So I guess it was me being all overprotective and everything? And it had to have been that shore leave, when I asked if he didn't maybe want to stay here instead of going down."
"So why did you ask him that?"
"I dunno, 'cause I wanted him here. That planet wasn't all that safe, and I wasn't gonna be down there with him to look out for him."
Pavel stared at the floor, his chest aching as he heard his own fears reflected.
"You don't think he can take care of himself?"
"Pasha?" Greg sounded surprised. "Sure he can. I mean, he's not big like me, but he can get out of a fight easy enough. I saw those shitheads, the ones who hurt him. They were fucking huge, and they outnumbered him. Wasn't his fault what happened."
It kind of was, but Hikaru was nice enough not to tell Greg that. Pavel had been angry when he went down to the planet. He drank far too much and spoke to loudly and too angrily, and drew attention to himself. He didn't pull back when those aliens started to react, and he could have. He thought he may have been able to get himself out of it, but he was too angry and hurt and drunk to try.
"Well, if you're so sure about that why did you care you couldn't be there with him?"
Greg sighed like Hikaru had missed some major point. "Come on, Sulu. Security officers aren't here because all the rest of you guys are helpless weaklings. Most officers can fight. But that don't mean they should have to fight."
"Okay, but you're not talking about an away mission here. It's shore leave."
Greg snorted. "You gonna act like shore leave with a bunch of drunk officers and a pack of upset natives doesn't end in as many fights as away missions do?"
Hikaru sounded amused. "Okay, I'll give you that."
"Anyway, I tell the guys in my class, all the time – there's no such thing as a good fight. Nobody in their right mind wants to throw down if they don't have to. So if me being around keeps other people from having to fight, hell. That's my whole job. I'm not about to turn it off around Pavel just cause I'm off-duty."
Pavel frowned, leaning back against the wall.
It didn't sound like such an unforgivable offense, really, when it came from Greg directly. Was that why Hikaru told him to talk to Greg, and got so angry when he refused? Was that why he staged this whole thing?
Then again, it didn't change Pavel's belief that he was weak in Greg's eyes, and that he would feel weak whenever he was with Greg if he let it go on.
"This may be a dumb observation," Hikaru said suddenly, the same blasse cheerfulness in his voice, "but if he doesn't like you being so protective maybe you need to learn to shut it off, huh?"
Pavel looked up, his eyes on the far wall but his focus on the silence from the next room.
"You don't get it, Sulu. You really don't. And it doesn't fucking matter anymore, anyway."
"Come on, Greg. You're not getting rid of me, so talk."
Greg sounded quieter suddenly, though Pavel felt like he was somehow listening even harder. "You really think of me as a friend?"
"Yeah. I do." Hikaru answered as firmly and confidently as Pavel might have hoped.
"Huh. Well...might make you mad, but sometimes I get really fucking jealous of you." There was a pause, like Greg expected Hikaru to respond, to be angry, to demand reasons. But Pavel knew Hikaru better than that, and after a mild pause Greg went on.
"Just...because you can do so fucking much. We all heard stories about those Romulans you and the captain fought off, and now I've seen you with that sword so I know you're a badass. But...you've got all this other shit, too. Got a degree in some shit I don't even understand, and you're on the bridge and at the helm and everything."
His voice went even quieter, and Pavel found himself leaning in, close to the open doorframe.
"And Pavel."
"He's my best friend," Hikaru answered easily.
"I know. And I'm not saying I thought you two were fucking, or even wanted to. He says you like girls, and he likes...you know."
Pavel almost smiled at the sheepishness in Greg's voice.
Hikaru played along, sounding way too innocent to really be innocent. "He likes what?"
"He's a size queen," Greg answered, some kind of life back in his low voice.
Pavel nearly laughed, even bringing a hand up to cover his mouth just in case.
"He, uh...he told you about that, huh?" Hikaru chuckled.
"Uh huh." Greg paused, and the life drained right back out of his voice again. "But no, it wasn't jealousy like that. It was just...you could talk about things. That project you told me about that got him so upset..."
Pavel's smile faded.
"He can't talk to me about that kind of shit, and it makes me so fucking jealous sometimes that you know all this stuff about him that I don't. He doesn't care that I'm not...that I'm this fucking dumbass. He says he doesn't. But shit like this...it makes me care."
Pavel turned to the doorway, eyes wide.
"Pisses me off, you know? We got cures for fucking alien plagues, we can grow a guy's hand back on, but they don't have some pill or injection or anything that can make a guy smarter. You'd think they'd figure that shit out."
"Greg...you realize that I know you well enough now to call bullshit on that. You're not stupid."
"Compared to Pasha?"
"Compared to Pasha everyone on this ship, except maybe Spock – and that's a maybe – is an idiot. If Pasha wanted to be with someone as smart as him he'd have a roomful of about twenty hundred-year-old Vulcans and misanthopic scientists to choose from."
"He can't fucking talk to me. That's not right, Sulu. If he was with you he'd talk to you. You or Spock or Kirk or anyone else in that little pack of yours that's so close. Don't fucking patronize me, either – I'm not smart like you guys. I'm not funny or clever or any of that other shit. My whole fucking life I've been good at one thing. I'm a fucking security guard."
"I don't think that's--"
"Fuck off, Sulu. I'm not fucking asking your opinion. I'm telling you. I been living with me for almost thirty fucking years now, I know what I am. I'm not smart, but smart isn't everything. I'm good at my job. I'm good at that class I teach, and I'm good at keeping people safe. It's the one fucking thing I've got that I'm good at."
He paused, his anger bleeding into something thinner. "It's all I can give him. He can't even fucking talk to me, but I can look out for him better than anyone on this ship. And now he doesn't want that, and you tell me I should turn it off, and..."
Pavel held his breath, his eyes shutting as he listened to Greg's voice waver.
"And if I was just a little fucking smarter, I could turn it off. I could give him something else. But I'm not, so...so maybe you're right and this was all for the best. Maybe he don't belong with someone like me. I've just been lucky because he didn't notice this whole time. Not until now. And...fuck it, Sulu, I just fucking wish..."
"What?" Hikaru asked quietly.
"It's just I love him, you know, and why isn't that enough? Why can't I just be a little...damn it. I just wish I was a little fucking smarter."
Pavel couldn't stand that.
He realized it like a punch to the brain – he really couldn't handle Greg this way, sad and self-conscious and thinking things that weren't true. Greg being so hard on himself. Greg feeling alone and stupid.
Greg without Pavel there.
He thought he was ready for that, but apparently he couldn't stand it for more than a few minutes.
Pavel moved without thinking, taking the one step that was all he needed to bring Greg and Hikaru into sight. He looked out at Greg's bent head and slumped shoulders, and Hikaru's quiet, sympathetic observation.
"I don't."
Hikaru glanced over, unsurprised if a little relieved to see him there.
Greg's head snapped up, his eyes finding Pavel and freezing there in surprise.
Pavel kept moving, forgetting Hikaru after that first glance.
It was a shock. An unhappy shock to think he had been hurting Greg that way. To think that if Greg made him worry about being helpless or weak, he made Greg worry about being stupid or worthless. But he didn't think that about Greg, not for a second in the entire time he had known him.
Greg didn't think that about Pavel. He cared so little about Pavel's youth that Hikaru's one mention of his age was dismissed without mention.
Pavel approached the couch, his gaze locked on Greg's surprised, unhappy face. And God, how long had it been since he last looked Greg in the face? He looked like he was barely sleeping, hardly eating. Circles under his eyes, misery painted like makeup on his face.
Pavel swallowed and moved in to him, his heart aching for all the time they had missed. For the bad things Pavel had thought that weren't even close to the truth.
He held out his hand, but Greg looked at him with unhappy hesitation and he let his arm drop. "I don't wish you were smarter, Greg. I swear to you I don't. If you were smarter or dumber or smaller or bigger, or different at all, you wouldn't be you anymore."
"Sulu's right," Greg answered, his voice hoarse. "You deserve..."
"I deserve," Pavel answered firmly, "to be miserable for what I've done. I would deserve it if you hated me." He glanced at Hikaru, gratitude in his eyes. "I deserved everything you said to me."
Hikaru grinned but shot to his feet. "Me? I didn't say anything. I'm not even here right now. Later, guys." And without waiting for any kind of answer, he was at the door and out into the corridor in a flash.
Pavel didn't deserve a friend like him.
He looked down at Greg as the door shut after Hikaru. "I hurt you," he said.
Greg shook his head, but looked away from him. "I hurt you, too. I didn't even know...none of that, what you said in the sickbay. I didn't know any of that was going on."
"I should have said something. But...I thought it meant something that it didn't, and I never asked you, and if you never forgive me for that I won't be surprised."
"Forgive you?" Greg frowned, but studied him. There was doubt in his eyes, like he wasn't sure where Pavel was going with this or why he was even there. "I just...I don't..."
Pavel swallowed. "I miss you," he said, the most honest thing he had said in weeks.
Greg seemed to wilt a little where he sat. "I miss you too," he said to the floor. "Don't know what to do with myself when you're not..." He drew in a breath and looked up, shoulders squaring like he was about to go into battle. "Pasha."
"I miss you and I love you and I want to come back." Pavel spoke fast – he wanted to be the one to put the words out there, because he was the one who caused this whole mess.
"But..." Greg's breath hitched. He shook his head, miserable. "I can't stop it, Pasha. I know you hate it, me looking out for you. But I've done it for two years now and I can't just turn that off. But that hurts you, and I can't hurt you."
Pavel hesitated. He moved around Greg's legs to sit beside him on the couch.
"Starfleet...this project Hikaru mentioned. I worked very hard on it, but Starfleet refused to let me be involved. Their response said that my proposed role in the project was insulting. I am too young, too immature, too inexperienced. They feared that New Vulcan would take my presence as offensive."
Greg's brow furrowed. "But. Wait, they said that? That's..." He blinked, frowning at Pavel as his surprise overpowered his misery. "That's so fucking stupid. There wouldn't even be a New Vulcan if it wasn't for you. Everybody here knows that."
Pavel didn't allow himself the luxury of enjoying Greg's honest shock. "I am the youngest officer in the fleet, Greg. Of course they think that--"
"What the hell does that have to do with anything? They let you into the Academy and let you on this ship, so they already fucking well said you weren't too young. They can't change their minds now."
"It's not such an easy concern to dismiss, though. My age is--"
"Who gives a shit?" Greg asked, scowling. "Everybody that knows you knows there isn't a fucking thing you can't do."
Pavel reached out, unable to stop himself. He lay his hand on Greg's arm, meaning to calm him down but there was no denying the jolt of memory, of want and need and familiarity and comfort that went through his own body at the touch.
He spoke through a thickening throat. "You never thought I was too young, did you?"
Greg shook his head, looking baffled by the whole thing. "That's what I just said. There's nothing you can't do, so if Starfleet really wants you to sit on your fucking hands until you're some proper fucking age, they're even bigger idiots than me."
Pavel swallowed and nodded, amazed all over again at how badly he had read his argument with Greg. How horribly he had confused Starfleet's beliefs and pushed them onto Greg.
There was a beat, and Greg twisted to look at him suddenly. His eyes were wide. "Wait a minute. You said...in the sickbay. Something about me treating you like my kid or something. Is that what...you thought just 'cause Starfleet said that..." He gaped at Pavel. "You think I think that too? About your age?"
"I did." It was a hard confession, because Pavel wasn't often wrong and this entire situation had kept him oversensitive from the start. "And that's what hurt me."
"But...that's bullshit!" Greg stared at him. "That's not even..."
Pavel wasn't sure if he wanted to smile or cry. "I thought you saw me as weak, as young and helpless. I thought..."
"Because of what I said about that planet," Greg finished, slow. "Fuck, Pasha. You gotta know me better than that, right? Maybe the way I said it...maybe it came out wrong or something, but..."
"I know." Pavel settled for smiling as his eyes clouded. "I know now. I was angry, I made a mistake, and I took my anger out on you. I'm sorry."
"Huh." Greg regarded him, sinking back into the couch with a furrowed brow. "Well, that's fucking funny, isn't it?"
"What?"
"That someone like me can say the right thing now and then, and someone like you can get something completely fucking ass-backwards."
Pavel hesitated – now he was the one who felt like he was on unsteady ground, unsure where Greg was going or what he intended.
"Greg..." He slipped his hand up Greg's arm, his throat dry. "I'm sorry. Really. I miss you and I can't do this anymore. Please...let me come back?"
Greg chuckled, but when he looked at Pavel there was this warm kind of amazement in his eyes. "Come on, have you met me, and you gotta ask me that?"
Pavel held his breath, trying not to hope too much too soon. "Is that a yes?"
Greg grinned, but suddenly pulled away from Pavel's hand and stood up. "Hang on..." He went around to the side of the couch. Reaching into that box Pavel had seen when he first came in, he pulled out that solitary book and took it over to the messy bookshelf crammed with the rest of Pavel's tests and padds.
He turned back to Pavel with a wide, crooked grin. "There. All unpacked."
Pavel wasn't sure how it happened – some physics law he had yet to master – but suddenly in the blink of an eye he was across the room, hurling himself with some force into Greg's body.
And suddenly Greg's arms were around him, solid and warm and strong, comforting in that silent way that Greg had always been comforting. Suddenly Greg's heart was beating right under Pavel's ear, and his smell – like the detergent he used on his often-washed gym clothes and soap from the showers down in security – filled Pavel's nose.
Pavel wanted to cry, it felt so good. He had taken it for granted, this secure feeling of belonging right where he was. He had stopped appreciating Greg, maybe, stopped listing all the ways having Greg around helped him.
He drew in a shuddering breath, arms tight around Greg's waist just in case Greg ever thought about pulling away ever again.
"God," he said, murmured into Greg's shirt. Almost talking to himself, almost talking to Greg. "I want to be strong on my own, but I need you so much."
Greg just held him tighter. "Doesn't have to be a bad thing, does it?" he asked, his voice a bass rumble. "Like maybe I'm not...not a crutch or something. Just...I dunno. A partner."
Pavel smiled, watery and uneven. He could tell from Greg's sheepish voice that he was blushing as he said that, but he couldn't force himself to pull away enough to look.
"It doesn't sound so bad if you say it that way," he said, his voice tight. "I love you, Greg. I don't think I even knew how much before the last couple of weeks."
"Love you," Greg said into his hair. He pressed a gentle kiss on Pavel's forehead. "I should've fought you harder when you left. I should've..."
"No." Pavel pulled back then, just relaxed enough for a few inches distance. He looked up at Greg's face, his heart twisting when he saw the wetness gathering in his eyes. "No should have's, no sorry's. We just have to do better now. We have to say something if we're feeling hurt. And I'll bore you with talk about physics and research projects, and you'll remind me that when you worry about me it's just because you love me, not because you think I need it."
Greg grinned. "And maybe you'll tell me the name of whichever dumbass in Starfleet called you a kid, and you won't get too mad when I kick his ass all over the place."
"Maybe not," Pavel laughed. But he didn't wince to think about that message from the Science Academy. He didn't flinch to think about those comments. He just heard Greg's instant, honest shock. His outraged 'who gives a shit'.
He thought suddenly, looking up into Greg's grin, that maybe he would take Spock up on his offer. Maybe he would let New Vulcan tell Starfleet how entirely illogical their refusal was. There was no shame in that if it was the truth, was there?
Greg reached out suddenly, threading his fingers through Pavel's curls and hauling him in close. He didn't kiss him, just tilted his head until their mouths were centimeters apart.
"Does it make me a jerk that I just got you back here and all I can think about is that I really want to fuck you?"
Pavel laughed, and it melted into a groan when Greg pulled him in harder and sealed their mouths together, and if that did make Greg a jerk, than they would just have to be jerks together.
And long minutes later, when Pavel was on his stomach in their bed gasping 'missed you' like the words were necessary to breathe, and Greg was buried inside of him murmuring 'mine' in a way that made Pavel's body tighten and throb, and they were moving like they had never been apart for a single moment, Pavel felt himself crying into the pillow.
He wasn't strong all on his own. He was lonely and sad and guilty.
He was strong with Greg. He took Greg into him and was made better for it. And God, even if there was something young or weak about that, he wouldn't give it up again without a fight.
There were better things than independence.
A shadow appeared over their table and Pavel looked up, and up, and beamed when he saw Greg, still in his uniform.
But Greg wasn't smiling back. He looked stern, angry. He held up his wrist and pointed at it, and glared. Right at Hikaru.
"Oh, shit!" Hikaru jumped up from his seat. "Sorry! I spaced completely. Duty, you know? We were going over course charts for the next--"
"We were talking about girls," Pavel chirped cheerfully, already anticipating the sweaty, glowing Greg he'd have all to himself in a couple of hours. "Hikaru insists there's something great about them."
Greg flashed Pavel a quick grin before glowering back at Hikaru. "Some sense of honor, Sulu. Late for practice so you can gossip like you're a teenager at a sleepover or some shit."
Hikaru rolled his eyes, but waved goodbye to Pavel and started for the door. "I would have thought getting you laid again would put you in a better mood."
Greg let him go ahead. "You gonna be there when I'm done?"
Pavel nodded enthusiastically, jumping out of his seat long enough to grab Greg's shirt and haul him down. "Ready and waiting for you," he promised against Greg's mouth.
Greg sealed the promise with a quick but deep kiss.
"Cupcake! Way to make your captain proud!"
They broke apart and Pavel rolled his eyes as Kirk moved in behind Greg.
Greg looked over his shoulder at Kirk. He grinned. "Shit, captain, who's a guy got to blow to get some privacy around here?"
Pavel gaped, but Kirk cackled like it was some joke between them, slapping Greg's arm as he passed. "Looks like you've got the 'who' part down. But the privacy needs work."
Greg squeezed Pavel's arm and kissed him – quick and light – before returning Kirk's smack and taking off after Hikaru.
"Jesus." Kirk grabbed his shoulder, scowling after Greg. "I've got to remember that guy fucking hurts when he hits."
Pavel flashed him as innocent a smile as he could manage. "You're still on your feet, sir. Don't be such a girl."
Kirk sighed, passing Pavel with a quick ruffle of curls that Pavel decided firmly didn't bother him. "Mutiny. That's what it is, good old fashioned mutiny."
"If it is I'm sure you deserve it," Doctor McCoy was good enough to answer from a nearby table.
Pavel sat back down as the captain went to McCoy to pout, and for the rest of his meal he lost himself in musing exactly what Greg's face would look like if Pavel met him at the door naked and ready for him. Or in bed, on top the sheets. Naked and ready.
Maybe on the couch, studying his course routes. Naked. And ready.
Luckily the problem he was obsessing over was, for the first time in weeks, just the kind of dilemma a person really wanted to have.