Chapter 8
Chekov had his socks and boots pulled off and thrown on the floor before his cabin door finished closing. He stood there a moment: the subtle vibrations in the deck resonating in his bare feet and echoing up into his legs. He stepped sideways and purposefully leaned his shoulders back against the bulkhead. The steady engine thrum that was the white noise of ship-board existence surged from the bulkhead, seeped through his shoulders, and swelled into his chest.
He leaned there, eyes closed, and enjoyed the silent union with the ship. From this stance he could sense the ship's brain too – the electrical undercurrent that signaled the ship's computer's activity. In his mind music interlaced with it: drifted into his mind, the words filling his senses. "Let me go far away: somewhere they won't never find me and tomorrow won't remind me of today…."
I'm disappointing absolutely everyone in my life. The thought consumed him.
Except my father. He could never disappoint his father: because, to disappoint someone, they had to have expectations of you. And his father had never put any expectations on him.
To Andrie, expecting something of someone meant you were projecting your own self onto them. Your values, your opinions, your wants, your needs – all dumped onto someone else with an added dose of entitlement and righteousness. It was a vile concept to him.
It was the same with pride: another concept of taking another person's life or accomplishments as somehow your own. Impressed? Yes. Routinely amazed at his son? Absolutely. But never "proud".
If Pavel had not turned out to be the moral, upstanding man of good character he'd been taught to be, Andrie would have liked him a lot less, not respected him at all: but he wouldn't have been "disappointed". Andrie had reaped enough disappointment from his own father and brother to have him never, ever, wander into that folly himself.
Which was for the best: because Andrie had a stout moral compass that no one else could ever live up to. Though Sulu often accused Pavel of trying: because if Andrie had not put expectations on him, the world certainly had. There was no getting around it. A lazy person or a thief amongst a sailing ship crew or rural peasant villagers soon had a dozen people knocking them back into line. A "reprobate Pavel" never had a chance.
And here he was: disappointing….the universe…Chekov thought heavily. Earth, Russia, the sailors, his family. Starfleet, his Captain, his friends….
A groan settled deep in his chest.
Sulu.
Sulu was a grown man and perfectly capable of taking care of his personal belongings and finances. The clumsiness he might have had as a cadet was now feigned to keep the "Big Brother/Little Brother" game going. When his own cabin was in order, Sulu would often stroll through Chekov's cabin on the way out – moving things. Sometimes inches, sometimes across the room. And later, he and Uhura would time how long it took Chekov to notice and repair the "damage."
The secret Chekov had kept from Sulu was pure manipulation, there was no denying it. He'd thought of it as amusing at the beginning: but as the years dragged on any claim that it was a "joke" had gone both stale and rank. And it simply wasn't possible that Andrie believed Chekov hadn't confessed to Sulu years ago.
Except – it still amused Chekov after all this time. Even if the "joke" had turned from an amusing secret to an outright betrayal.
"Let me go far away, somewhere they won't ever find me and tomorrow won't remind me of today…"
He dragged his eyes open and considered the crumpled pile of boots and socks he'd made. Using a foot, he pushed them aside so they weren't directly in front of the door any longer.
It didn't help.
In the midst of the comforting thrum of the engines, laced in the energy of the ship's computers – was a discordant shriek that ate its way into his spine. It wasn't because the boots were the final straw that made the chaos of his cabin unbearable: and he stood ruminating on all the ways he was fairly sure the universe wasn't going to change it no matter how long he stood there.
There was someone else in his cabin.
As soon as he'd stepped in he'd known it. And, he supposed, he was giving them the chance to have the good manners to disappear before he had to deal with it.
They didn't.
Whoever it was, they were content to sit and wait without coming into the bedroom to greet him after he'd entered so long ago. Well, being an ass hadn't kept the visitors away so he didn't suppose "not being an ass" would be any more successful.
He reluctantly pushed his shoulders away from the bulkhead and strolled toward the living area. He came around the room divider…and stopped dead in his tracks.
HOLY HELL….
The features of the woman curled in his desk chair had an eerie familiarity to them, giving him an instant – and fleeting – flash of having caught his own reflection in a mirror.
He took it all in at once: the thick, black curls spilling down around her shoulders; the flawless skin of her Slavic face; the long, shapely legs folded against her chest – her dress tumbled down from them into her lap. If one had ordered a stunning Georgian beauty, he thought This is who would have arrived at your door.
Her fingers twisted an apple in them and she pressed it up against her face to inhale its odor. He knew there simply was no universe in which her eating an apple in front of him wasn't an intentional metaphor.
Large, dark eyes shone at him from beneath a cascade of curls that escaped and fell over the left side of her face. "Gamarjoba, Pasha."
Despite all his best efforts, it was the single word in the Georgian language she'd learned.
"Sarah!"
She tipped her head, letting the curls fall away from her face and focused the dark eyes on him, the light in them sparkling wickedly. "So….is that it?"
"It?" he repeated in confusion.
"Yes," she said, placing the apple on the desk and uncurling her legs to stretch them out before her. Her eyes shifted and raked over his form in an openly embarrassing examination. "The boots. That's all you're going to take off?"
Then she pouted.
Holy hell.
He didn't ask what she was doing there. There was only one reason they ever saw each other and they both knew full well what it was.
A wild grin split his face then and leapt into his eyes. It was an instant, spontaneous response he had no control over. There was no fighting it - his response to her presence was a guttural burst of joy. And with that smile he felt it all melt away: the drivel, the misery, the overpowering weight of it all.
Sulu, he thought. Is a GOD.
He quickly stripped both his shirts off and threw them unceremoniously and randomly behind him. By his second step, she had leaped on him: wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. He pulled her lean body tight against him in an almost violent embrace. His lips caught hers in a desperate, hungry kiss and she surrendered to it: sliding her hands up and through his hair, knotting it around her fingers. He dug his mouth into hers deeper: more ravenously.
He pulled back and breathed a moment before he changed tactics and leaned down: this time tentatively, gently: catching her mouth in a soft, thoughtful kiss. She responded with the softest, sweetest…
Normally, he'd have pulled the clingy silk dress up and off her by now - but something was...wrong.
Chekov pulled his lips away from hers and touched his forehead to hers gently. Releasing her from his fierce grip he, instead, gently guided her legs off his hips and she lowered her feet to the floor. He reached up and pulled her arms from around his neck. His slid his hand down over her arm, entangled his fingers in hers, and led her into the bedroom. He guided her onto the bed and climbed on top of her. As he kissed her again, his hand caressed her: moving down past her arm, onto her side, her waist, her hips...
He stopped then and rolled off of her, growling low in frustration. "You are kissing me like I'm paying you to do it," he observed as he lay on his back next to her. "And I'm not paying you enough," he broadened the description.
"Well don't go looking for any Academy Awards."
He turned his head and looked into her eyes. He found the same questioning in them as his own.
And relief. At least it's both of us.
He shuffled backwards to the pillows and let his head fall backward. "Shit!" Reaching backward, he pulled the top pillow out from under his head and tossed it on the floor.
He felt her purposely rearrange herself into, what he assumed without looking, was a seductive pose. "I can fake it."
"That's very thoughtful of you," he observed wryly. Still…he glanced over at her experimentally.
Nope.
He settled his head back on the pillow again and stared up at the ceiling. Well, isn't this something?
"Are you sure?" she drew out as her fingers traced patterns in the hair on his chest: twirling, moving down to...
His hand caught hers reflexively as her fingers reached the waistband of his pants. "That's just annoying," he rasped. As if the thought of a woman openly 'faking it' wasn't revolting enough. Regretting his tone immediately, he rolled onto his side to face her. "I'm a male," he continued, softening his tone. "For me to 'fake it' would require drugs." Drugs…he obviously didn't have available in his cabin.
"God," he complained. "It was like I was kissing my..."
"Cousin," she finished as she laid back on the pillows herself. "Dammit, it was like kissing my first cousin."
He giggled involuntarily.
She scowled at him.
"I just…" he tried to wave away the laughter, but it just deepened it. He rolled back, laughing ridiculously - hysterically as he pictured himself explaining to McCoy his need for the drugs to 'fake it'. "Doctor, I am just not turned on by my cousin…."
She grinned, and just lay there waiting for him to stop laughing like a madman.
He finally did. Twisting, he reached up and took a carved wooden ship from the shelf behind his head. His fingers absently stroked the palm-sized toy as he lay there.
The instant, raging passion that roared between them at every meeting was gone - gone so completely he knew he'd wonder in the future if his brain was exaggerating the memory. There was no denying that something had irrevocable changed between them.
Six years was a really long time for a 'one night stand', he admitted to himself begrudgingly.
"Maybe we just got too old," she postulated, as if reading his thoughts.
"I'm 23!" he rasped – eyes still on the ceiling, wooden ship still drifting through his fingers.
"Exactly, she agreed. "A 28-year-old chasing a 23-year-old around the galaxy is an entirely different thing than a 22-year-old chasing a 17-year-old cadet. Or maybe," she continued after a moment's thought. "I just finished your education."
He snorted, and took a minute to actually look at the ship in his hand. "I grew up with sailors who had a lot of time to talk. I didn't need an education – just a lab partner."
She snorted this time – but he felt her glare at him. "I don't know if I like that characterization of myself."
Doesn't change the truth, he thought. He brushed his nail over a carved initial in the wood. He didn't know if he was aware previously that this particular one of his toy ships had been carved by Dimitri. He rested it against his stomach.
Her postulating was useless, because they both knew what had happened.
They'd met in an extension course his first year at the Academy. He was an eager 17-year-old cadet taking an extra class, she was a 22-year-old outsider adding to her resume. She, of course, had recognized him at once (one of the downfalls to being a celebrity in his Motherland.) He didn't know she even existed - not until her unholy proposition during a tutoring session she never actually needed.
The fact that these two strangers had the same grandfather had been the entire basis of their relationship.
Well, not entirely.
Her father was, for all intents and purposes, a monster. Not only to her – but, many years ago, to Chekov's own father. The man that government leaders feared for his moral steadfastness had started out life as a bullied child who'd been told at 12 not to come back to his home: until he was willing to be someone else.
He'd never been back.
Andrie's brother hadn't softened in the ensuing years. Mentally and physically abusive, he was a bitter man who's violent criticism of people was equaled only by his brother Andrie's unwavering support of them. She'd been raging angry at her father that day: looking for a way – any way – to exact revenge on him for his latest asshole behavior.
And a tryst with the son of the outcast, banished brother he hated seemed the perfect opportunity.
Chekov, for his part, had every sound reason to want to avenge the bullying his father received at his brother's hands. Not to mention….he was seventeen, and she was….there.
The truth was, they both knew why things had changed so drastically. There was one, single thing that had fueled their wild liaisons for all these years: the thought of the reaction her father would have to their relationship. That maybe he'd walk in on them someday: his daughter and the man that looked hauntingly like his younger brother. Someday, he was going to find out. And every one of their meetings just added to the stockpile of revenge they were building for him. If there was any question, any doubt, that it was the sole thing that fueled their unholy plot for revenge - it was gone.
Because now he knew.
"I ruined it," Chekov admitted, voicing what were both thinking. "When I confronted your father. It..." he waved his hand in the air in defeat. He had confronted the man 4 months ago - let his anger get the best of him. And Chekov had detailed exactly what had been happening between the man's daughter and he for the last 6 years: in horrid, graphic detail.
The revenge had been had: spent.
"I should have discussed with you whether it was time to tell him."
"What choice was there, really?" she asked reflexively. "I mean, what else could you have done in that situation?"
Chekov thought back to her father's visit to the Enterprise. How he'd heroically held himself together - until he couldn't. "I could have stabbed him," he suggested. "Repeatedly." he emphasized.
"Too messy," she mused. "I would have liked to see it, though. I mean - did blood vessels in his face simultaneously burst? Did steam come out of his ears like a cartoon?"
"It's still in the ship's computer banks: you can look for yourself. I'll leave my computer terminal open so you can watch it."
He could have got up and showed it to her himself: but he had no desire to ever re-live the abuse her asshole of a father had reaped upon him until he had to finally lash back. It was neither an exposure to reality he wanted to be reminded of nor a response he was proud of.
They lay next to each other, staring at the ceiling in silence.
"Is this it?" she finally asked into the silence: a resonance in it that said she wasn't sure she was prepared for the answer. There was no doubt now what had fueled their relationship. And now…there was no need for it. "Or….are we…friends?"
"No," Chekov replied. He held up the little ship in front of him and shifted the focus of his eyes from the ship, to the ballerinas on the wall behind it, and back again. After he'd earned his commission and was stationed on the Enterprise, their trysts became strung together with messages, letters, the random gift. The purely physical relationship of his cadet years had evolved so they actually knew each other now. He not only cared for her: he loved her. But not in anything close to a romantic way. "We aren't friends," he finished.
At her sharp intake of breath, he turned his head to look at her. He lay there, waiting – until she turned too. He smiled softly, and made sure the affection was overwhelming in his eyes.
"We're not friends," he repeated. "We're cousins. It's better."
She returned the affectionate smile. "I'll take your word for it. You're my only cousin."
He turned back to the ceiling again. "You are not mine," he replied. A wicked smile flashed over his face. "My mother has a niece."
She hit him.
And they both burst out laughing instantly. Chekov hadn't smiled in a week: and with this laughter he felt something crumbling inside him. Something deep and unidentifiable. Something heavy and oppressive.
He raised his arms above his head and stretched. He continued the stretch through his neck, down his back, through his legs. He scrunched his toes, then stretched them out again.
She must have seen the movement. "Don't you ever wear shoes?"
"Just when I'm dancing."
She snorted in disproval of the joke. She sat up, her eyes exploring the rooms. "They should carpet the cabins. That way your feet wouldn't be cold."
"The cabins do have carpet."
"Not yours."
"They missed mine apparently."
"Well, you should put in a reminder. These floors are horribly scuffed. A work order?" she questioned, turning back to him. "Because…."
The toy ship was resting in the sea of his chest hair and the hand that'd held it limp on his stomach.
He was sound asleep.