169Going into Starfleet felt like dying. He never told anyone that – melodramatic bullshit, even if it was the truth. But it felt like the end of his life.
Len McCoy, PhD, all on his own. Not a husband anymore, not a father in anything more than the literal sense since Joanne had taken her mom's side in the war. A few friends left who hadn't defected, but not enough.
Macon wasn't exactly a one-stoplight town, but it was small. A private practice there wasn't anything to brag about, and Len McCoy was a damn good doctor. Too good for the little general practitioner shingle over his door. Too good for the small-time ailments of small-town people.
But Macon was his home, and he loved it. He never thought seriously about leaving.
The divorce killed that. The divorce was ugly and drawn-out enough that McCoy was left with a tarnished reputation and a rapidly-shrinking patient load. By the end his practice was failing, he couldn't made it work, and he'd forgotten why he even wanted to.
Being driven away from his own home by a vindictive ex and the maliciousness of small town gossip...it pissed him off beyond measure. More than almost anything else about the divorce, that made him a bitter old man before his time.
Like dying, signing up for Starfleet. On his own, driven away from home, driven off his goddamned planet. Alone.
Then came Jim Kirk: cocky and grinning and didn't take shit from anyone, no matter how outmatched he was. Jim had a lousy reputation with his professors. He cheated, he mocked, he wrote papers tearing apart long-held tactical defense maneuvers like tissue paper. He spit in the face of tradition with such complete irreverence that it pissed off everyone in the damned galaxy.
But he didn't care. Jim knew his papers were sound, his strategies were better, and that would get him a passing grade and a place on a ship. The professors couldn't take that away just because they didn't like him.
Jim Kirk wouldn't have left his home because of some ridiculous gossip after a divorce. McCoy hated that about him, and loved it, and for all the friends McCoy made in the academy he always knew Jim was the one that would stick.
So. First was McCoy, all on his own. Then it was Kirk and McCoy.
Then the Enterprise, the whirlwind of their first mission. Enter Spock, the stoic and infuriating bastard.
Something about the defeat of Nero had made Spock and Kirk weirdly close. Jim, who never cared what anyone else thought, suddenly asked Spock's advice and considered his opinions as if they'd been friends for years. And Spock respected Jim, in a strange way. He obviously didn't have much regard for the intuitive and spontaneous way Jim made pretty much all his decisions. But he did seem to understand that Jim's way worked, and worked well. He argued with Jim, but only until a decision was made, and then he supported his captain no matter how little he agreed with his choices.
It might've pissed McCoy off, the two of them getting along so well: McCoy didn't make friends easily, and he sure as hell didn't want to lose Jim to that condescending jerk.
But it didn't piss McCoy off, because he didn't lose Jim.
As much as Spock and Jim had their thing, their connection, McCoy and Spock had the same damned thing. They waged the same kind of wars. Spock hadn't learned to respect McCoy's opinions the same way he respected Jim's, and McCoy thought Spock's logic schtick was a joke, so when they argued it could spark real heat and draw real blood.
But Jim couldn't catch Spock off guard the way McCoy could. Jim didn't win arguments with Spock, because he didn't have to – the final call was his and he knew it. McCoy? He won arguments. Not most of them – not even a lot of them. But he did win. He forced concessions out of Spock time and again, and every time it happened Spock seemed shocked by it.
Spock argued the logical side of things, rationality and precedence. Kirk argued strategy, defense, winning. McCoy argued right. Compassion and morality. All three sides needed each other. All three arguments had to be made.
So.
First there was Len, then Len and Jim. Now there were the three of them. Kirk, McCoy, Spock.
They served together, ate together, drank and talked and played infuriatingly drawn-out chess games and traded books and debated philosophies, and...
It was nice. McCoy'd never had friends like them on earth. Even when he loved his wife, before he hated his wife, they'd never been friends that way. Hell, it was more than Jim and Spock. The longer they were on that ship, serving with the same loyal, brilliant crew, even their crowd of three just seemed like part of a larger group.
Scott? He was a riot. He and McCoy'd had long nights emptying bottles, fighting amiably about Scotch whiskey and southern bourbon. McCoy knew Sulu's hobbies, knew how obsessed Nyota Uhura was about culture and language – even outside of the requirements of her job, she was the most aggressively open-minded person McCoy had ever met.
So it wasn't McCoy, Jim, and Spock, really. It was the crew of the whole damned Enterprise. McCoy had come a long way in five years. A long way from Macon and divorce courts and loneliness and anger. He was part of something now, part of something pretty damned special.
He didn't know most of the crew by name yet. There were people on the ship he'd never even met. He never figured he'd like them all. Even a crew like the Enterprise would have its share of bastards.
McCoy was no idealist, but despite his grumbling and grousing he wasn't a cynic, either. So finding out he was right, that this ship and crew he was proud to be part of was tainted by lesser men who could do evil things to innocents...
It threw him.
The night Bauer was dumped on him he went to his quarters angry about an attack on a strange, brilliant kid. As he lay there waiting for sleep that didn't come, the anger became a kind of sadness.
He was sad. For Jim, who would be so damned hurt that his crew wasn't as faultless as he wanted them to be. For the ship baby, Chekov, who had been betrayed by someone who wore their uniform. For Sulu and Uhura and Spock and Chris Chapel and for himself, for everyone on that crew who really was as faultless as Jim wanted.
They didn't deserve to be stained by things like this. None of them did.
"Doctor."
McCoy looked up from a data padd, squinting in annoyance before he remembered he'd practically demanded this guest show up.
Pavel Chekov stood in the doorway at attention – full uniform, chin squared, eyes straight ahead. All he was missing was a stern salute and a 'reporting for duty, sir'.
McCoy sat back, tossing the padd onto his desk. "Come on in, kid."
Chekov's eyes narrowed, but he did as he was told. He stepped in far enough that the door behind him swished shut, and there he stood.
"Jesus, relax, Chekov. Sit down, this isn't some official thing."
Chekov didn't sit, but his posture eased. He let his gaze focus on McCoy. "Then what is it?" he asked, that accented tenor voice soft, but firm. "I wasn't injured last night. I told Sulu, I told the Captain when he ordered me here..." He frowned suddenly. "I am in trouble."
"What? No. Would you sit down, for God's sake?" McCoy really wasn't much good at the psychology angle of medicine. "You're not in trouble."
Chekov hesitated. "I should be on the bridge right now, but I'm here. If it's not official and I'm not in trouble..."
McCoy pointed at the chair.
Chekov's jaw set, but he moved around the chair and sat down stiffly.
"Thank you," McCoy said, wry. But then he was stuck.
He studied Chekov, the stubborn, annoyed look in those too-young eyes. There was nothing there that indicated any kind of trauma, but even as McCoy looked at him he remembered him the night before.
He saw a moment, brief and then gone, when those eyes had filled with despair.
"Did the captain tell you about Bauer?"
Chekov nodded. "He is in the brig."
"Yeah. Not likely to get out, either. Kirk'll arrange for him to get picked up next time there's a ship in range that's headed back to Earth."
"The captain said..." Chekov hesitated, and the mask of annoyance he wore cracked a bit. "I don't understand, doctor."
"Don't understand what? Trust me, if the captain thought he could get away with it he'd've ejected the bastard from the ship without an EV suit."
"That's what I don't..." The kid frowned, regarding McCoy. "Last night...you said that things like this happen. That it will happen again. You didn't seem to think it was so serious. So why is he in the brig, and why am I here?"
"I said..." McCoy gaped at the kid in surprise – there was no way in hell he'd say anything like that. He would never even think...
But. No.
He did.
He did say that, when he thought Bauer was nothing worse than a bully. Boneheaded idiot that he was - what kind of doctor diagnosed a disease without all the facts?
"Jesus, kid..." He shook his head, pushing away his irritation at himself before it could get in the way here. "You didn't think I meant...I didn't know what..."
Okay, Len, you've got a damned PhD, form a complete sentence.
"I figured the guy just went after you. Jumped you for your lunch money, or whatever the hell bullies use as an excuse when they're older then ten. I thought he cornered you or something, and you walloped him one to get out of there."
Chekov sat back, a couple of different emotions passing behind his eyes. He looked away from McCoy, eyes on his hands as they curled on his lap.
He looked so fucking young sitting there slumped now that he wasn't pulling the angry officer act anymore. He looked like a kid who needed help. And McCoy was the only help these kids had.
McCoy spoke more gently in the silence. "Why don't you tell me what did happen, Pavel."
"You seem to have figured everything out already," came the quiet reply.
"I'm a doctor, kid, I'm not a mind-reader." He frowned. "I can diagnose that Bauer's pain was caused from injuries to his groin, and I can see that those injuries are shaped a hell of a lot like bite marks. But I'm missing the whole set-up. There's a lot I can assume - and I have, believe me - but I'd rather hear the facts from you."
Chekov was pale by the time McCoy was done. His face was bowed, his eyes hidden. The hands on his lap were curled into limp fists. "The captain knows all this?"
"Me and Jim go back a few years, but even I can't get him to throw an officer in the brig without offering some reason."
"And Hikaru?"
"No."
Chekov looked up at that, eyes wide and green and clouded.
"Just the captain," McCoy confirmed. "And only because I had to, kid. Sulu doesn't know."
Chekov swallowed, but his heaviness didn't ease. McCoy resisted his normal urge to demand information, figuring it was probably the more sensitive thing to actually give the kid time to think through everything.
"You were right," Chekov said finally, drawing in a deep breath and looking straight at McCoy. "Last night."
"About what?"
There was something in those green eyes, something like determination. Like strength. "It isn't the first time that's happened to me. You are probably right that it won't be the last."
"What?" Something flared in McCoy's gut, hot and sharp and angry. He drew in a breath and let it out to keep himself calm.
"He isn't the first to try. But he isn't the first to fail, either." Chekov straightened, dark pride burning on his face. "I have always fought back, doctor. They have never...no one who has tried..." His throat worked. "They have never gotten what they wanted from me."
Son of a bitch.
There was strength in the kid, but just the sight of it made McCoy's anger grow. No one should have to be strong that way, damn it. "You're telling me someone here...?"
"No. Before I came here." Chekov actually smiled, small and sad. "Before last night I thought that it was past. I thought being an officer, being on this ship, meant I might have finally gotten away from things like this. But I suppose that was...naive."
"Jesus." McCoy sat up, scowling, infuriated all over again.
Chekov returned his look almost impassively. "Just because you thought you were talking about something different last night doesn't mean your words were wrong. It happens, doesn't it? I just have to keep fighting back."
"No. No, kid, Jesus. It doesn't happen. It shouldn't."
"You said-"
McCoy cut him off with an angry jerk of his hand. "Stop quoting my own dumbass words at me. I know what I said. People pushing you around, playing pick-on-the-little-guy, yeah. That happens. Someone putting you in a position where their dick is in your mouth and you have to bite down to get away...that doesn't happen. That should never god-damned-well happen."
Chekov fell silent, studying McCoy.
McCoy ran a hand over his face, feeling like he was entirely out of his depth. He wasn't meant for talks like this.
He glowered at the padd on his desk, because the glower was unmovable and he didn't want Chekov thinking it was aimed at him. "There's a lot of crap we have to put up with in our lives, kid. Pavel. But not this. Whoever it was that made you think it's inevitable deserves to be kicked in a brig right next to Bauer."
"No one had to tell me." Chekov managed another small, sad smile. "I've always been smart, Doctor. Smart enough to draw my own conclusions."
Damn it. McCoy winced.
"Smart enough, also, that I know what you'll likely say to me about what happened last night." Chekov's smile grew, almost looking sincere. "I am aware that people aren't meant to hurt each other that way. I have read studies, psychological journals. Statistical histories. I'm aware of the causes of such behavior, and I'm very familiar with the effects. I think I can tell you more about this than you can tell me."
McCoy studied him, thrown off by his words, his strange approach to this whole conversation. He didn't understand Chekov, and was keenly aware of that fact right then.
"I, uh...I guess it's not all it's cracked up to be, is it? Being a genius."
Chekov raised his eyebrows, as if curious whether McCoy was actually asking a real question.
McCoy regarded him, silent. If Chekov wanted to talk, even in the form of some strange recitation of research, it was the least McCoy could do to listen to him. It was a new disease for McCoy to handle, and a new patient, and a good doctor had to take the latter into account when figuring out treatment for the former.
"I..." Chekov hesitated, his cheeks going the slightest bit pink. He cleared his throat, glancing at the door behind him as if remembering suddenly that he was supposed to be on duty, that this was a visit ordered by his captain.
He sighed and turned back to McCoy. "I have spent most of my life surrounded by people who were older, bigger. I have been...resented? I suppose that's what it is. I haven't been liked, anyway, by most of those people. What you first thought happened – that I was picked on, or cornered? That is usually what happens. There have always been people who have resented me."
He hesitated, his eyes going distant.
McCoy cleared his throat. "Stay with me, kid. I'm listening."
Chekov focused again. "Doctor, I am only trying to tell you that I'm alright. I only mentioned those other times so that you would know why I am alright. Nothing has happened that hasn't happened before, and I have always been fine."
McCoy had to stop himself from scowling. He wasn't much of a therapist, and apparently Chekov was lousy at being a patient. But there was something about all this, something to this kid who McCoy had never tried to understand.
He wanted to know what it was. "So. You've always been resented, and...?"
"It isn't important."
"Pretend it is." McCoy was stern.
"You..." Chekov shifted in his chair, uncertain. "I...in Russia, in Izhevsk where I was raised..."
McCoy stared at him.
Chekov looked away, but kept going hesitantly. "It is never good to be different in a place like Izhevsk. My family...they are not wealthy. They are practical people. They didn't see how my being smart would ever put food on the table, but..." He shrugged. "Smart is all that I am."
McCoy's eyebrow quirked up, but he didn't say anything.
"I was too smart for Izhevsk, for the schools there. When I was given a chance to study in St. Petersburg my parents sent me gladly. Not because it was particularly important to them, but because the university paid for my schooling and I was one less mouth to feed."
McCoy blinked, because 'university'? The kid was a frigging kid. Too young for Starfleet, let alone some university before that.
"How old?"
Chekov smiled, a glimmer of pride chasing some of the solemnity away. "Twelve. The youngest they have ever accepted. Too young, I know. I did not do well. The classes were easy, but...I could not live in the classroom."
There was a lot unsaid there, and McCoy nodded.
"So I decided not to finish there. I learned English and applied for Starfleet."
McCoy almost grinned at the way he tossed off 'I learned English' like it was a quick thing he set aside a weekend to accomplish. "San Fransisco must've been a shock," he said in encouragement when Chekov seemed to be done talking.
Chekov blinked, looking surprised that he was still listening. "A good shock. The heat." He smiled, and for a moment it was the smile of a teenager. "I like the heat."
His file said he was a runner. Marathons, McCoy remembered. Won some awards. The kid probably didn't do anything he couldn't master.
"But the rest of it...not such a shock. It wasn't different from St. Petersburg, not the way I hoped. I thought, because it was Starfleet, that there would be discipline. I thought because of the sciences that there would be others like me there." He sighed. "I was naive again."
McCoy's grin faded. He sat back in his chair, drawing the padd to his lap. Idly, surreptitiously, he called up Chekov's medical history.
Chekov went pink again, maybe misinterpreting McCoy's gesture as impatience. "The point is...whether it was at home or at university or the academy, certain things have never changed. And now they have followed me here. So...I am smart. I draw conclusions. I see that those things will continue to follow me. It is..."
He drew in a breath. For a moment a hint of last night's despair was back on his face, but it was quickly stifled.
"It is disappointing. I wish things were different."
McCoy scowled, barely glancing at the pages of history scrawling over the padd screen. Hell, he knew what he'd see. Abrasions and bruises and broken bones, and no one paying the slightest bit of god damned attention.
"Things are different," he said, gruffer than he meant. "The difference here is that you're not a genius little Russian kid all on your own in the big bad world, okay? You're part of the A crew on the bridge of the Enterprise. And the people who mess with you now? They mess with every single one of us. That's different."
"Bauer is a part of the Enterprise as well."
"Not for long." McCoy had to stop himself from getting up, pacing around. He wanted a couple of fingers of bourbon and a few minutes alone with Ensign Bauer. "Look, maybe you were too young for that university. You were probably too young for Starfleet. Maybe you didn't belong, but you survived it okay."
He set the padd back down, leaving Chekov's records up so he could go through them later and make a few less-than-civil calls back to earth.
"So here's the difference, kid. If you were the one who didn't belong back in school, on the Enterprise it's bastards like Bauer that don't fit."
Chekov frowned. His brow furrowed.
McCoy took his thoughtfulness as a sign that he was on the right track. "You think Jim Kirk is old enough to be a captain? You should hear the way they talk back on Earth. A lot of bitter old idiots who never rose so far, they hate Jim for what he's already got. Hell, kid, look at me. I'm not as young as some of you, but there aren't a lot of CMOs anywhere that don't have heads full of gray hair and fifty years of medicine behind them."
The kid nodded slowly. The dullness of despair was fading from his eyes little by little.
McCoy grinned. "Scotty's turned a thousand years of engineering on its ear, and Kirk's got more victories under his belt that anyone else in the fleet. Uhura speaks about a dozen more languages than the Lieutenant that filled that seat first." He leaned in, lowering his voice, eyes twinkling. "You won't believe it, but even Spock was considered a punk kid when he joined up. Or, you know, the Vulcan equivalent of 'punk kid'."
Chekov's mouth quirked up.
"This is a young ship, kid, full of young people who probably don't belong where they are. But we win anyway. You may have been hot stuff back on earth, but here? I hate to break it to you, boy wonder, but here you're just another face in the crowd. Nothing special at all."
Chekov drew in a breath, his quirk now a real smile. His face lifted, eyes open and receptive as they met McCoy's gaze. "Do you know, Doctor? That's all I ever wanted to be."
McCoy grinned, but whatever he was going to say in response didn't come out. He was stuck, studying Chekov, the sad edges of that smile, those bright green eyes that seemed so fucking full, like the brain right behind them was jammed with every piece of knowledge in the universe and he had to carry it all around with him.
The kid was mystery. McCoy didn't understand him, especially now.
What was it like, having that huge mind in the middle of frozen Russian poverty? To get shipped off at twelve, and from then on to make his own path in a too-big world that was made for older people?
To be so hammered on that he taught himself to expect torment wherever he went, but to be so determined that he went anyway?
McCoy called him kid because he was so painfully young. But had Chekov ever been a kid a day in his life?
He knew too damned much to be a kid.
A little fragment of something he'd once read flitted through his mind, and it seemed fitting since he was pretty sure it was a Russian guy who'd said it. Something about staying true to talent instead of age. Something he never really understood because for himself, age and talent were pretty equivalent.
Made more sense to him suddenly. "'Let the gap between them be embarrassing,'" he muttered to himself. Maybe it was a Russian thing. Jesus.
Chekov tilted his head. "What?"
"Nothing." McCoy stood up to move around the desk. "Look, kid, you-"
"No. That was...'let the gap between them...'" Chekov jumped to his feet, grinning as if the last few minutes never happened. "That is Yevtushenko! 'Be true to your talent, not your age.'"
McCoy felt his face heating. He shrugged. "I don't like to brag about it but I do read books."
Chekov laughed, tenor and light and musical. "It's just that I have always loved him most of Russian poets. I never expected to hear something of Yevtushenko here of all places. And that passage, of all of his work..." He was practically glowing as he spoke. "'Ravna vashemu talantu, a ne v vashem vozraste. Poroju pust' razryv mezhdu nimi byt' postydnym.'"
"That's the only bit I remember. I wasn't ever really into poetry." McCoy chuckled, moving around the desk to clap Chekov on the shoulder. "It sounds better in the original language," he said.
Chekov grinned up at him. "It sounds better coming from you," he replied. "From me it was always an attempt to find some kind of...art, maybe, in the stupid things that happen to me. Because sometimes I think it's entirely ridiculous."
McCoy hesitated. He regarded Chekov, amused but sensing something there. "What's ridiculous?"
"All of it." Chekov waved a pale, slender hand with unconscious grace. "What I am, and what has come of it. I am a genius," he said, matter of fact. "There are some people who love me for it, some people who hate me, and a great majority of people will never care for an instant. But it's the one thing that has made me who I am. And that's ridiculous, doctor, isn't it?"
McCoy was struck then, for a moment, by the kid. By the knowledge in his eyes. Naive, he called himself, and God knew he probably was. He was too young not to be, no matter how those years may have hurt him.
But he knew enough to know he was naive. He knew himself, and seemed to accept what was there. It was strange, at least to McCoy.
Chekov, he realized, wouldn't have fallen apart if Kirk hadn't ordered him into this little ramshackle therapy session. He would have been fine. He would have kept on thinking that attacks like Bauer's were inevitable, and that would have hurt him. But he carried that around with him already, didn't he?
The kid had himself a fan club of devoted, protective friends, but McCoy knew then as sure as anything that he didn't really need them. Hell, look at what happened the night before: Chekov had to almost bite a guy's dick off to keep it out of his mouth, and when he called Sulu for help it was only because he couldn't lug Bauer all the way to sickbay by himself.
McCoy moved to the door finally, letting it slide open to reveal an almost-deserted sickbay beyond. His hand felt warm and comforting on Chekov's shoulder, so that's where he kept it.
"You know, even geniuses get things wrong now and then, kid."
Chekov laughed, hesitating in the doorway when McCoy did. "My friends take great delight in telling me as much."
"Uh huh. Well, I'm gonna tell you again – you're wrong."
"About what?" Chekov looked up at him, eyes sparkling.
McCoy cleared his throat, that damned flush from earlier not fading. He tugged the kid out of the doorway and headed for the door out of sickbay. "You may be a genius, and maybe that's the one thing that's brought you where you are now, but...you said earlier that smart is all you are. And that's flat-out wrong."
Chekov's steps slowed. His gaze swung over to McCoy, the glitter of humor fading back. "Maybe," he said, slow and thoughtful. "But it's all anyone's ever needed me to be."
McCoy's eyebrows shot up. "Can I be in the room when you tell Sulu and Uhura that?"
Chekov opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again silently. His brow furrowed.
Not pressing the moment – the kid was too smart not to think about it – McCoy walked him out into the corridor and got them moving slowly towards the turbolift.
"You gonna be okay with last night, Pavel?" McCoy pitched his voice low though there was no one in sight. "Doesn't matter if it's happened before, I don't like that it's happened now. I'm no shrink but even I know a guy doesn't stop feeling after his first fight."
Chekov drew in a breath, the furrows leaving his forehead. "I will have nightmares, I think. For a while." He spoke as matter-of-factly as he did about course settings on the bridge. "But I'll be fine."
McCoy didn't care for it, the way Chekov spoke so casually. The way he was so set to deal with it on his own. "Well, look, if I'm not working late here I'm up late in my quarters. So if you feel a nightmare coming on, you come around and knock on my door. Talk my ear off about Russian poetry or whatever. You promise me that, and I'll keep off your case about all this."
He half expected Chekov to argue, to protest his need for help, or ask if he could go to one of his pals instead.
But Chekov kept on being strange. "I can't say no to the man who brought Yevtushenko onto the Enterprise just for me, can I?"
McCoy grinned, suddenly thankful he'd remembered some smidgen of something he'd read ages ago. "Don't go spreading that around, especially to that pointy-eared devil you hang out on the bridge with. I've got a reputation to maintain."
Chekov nodded, solemn but for the humor in his eyes. "I will tell anyone who asks that you were stern and impersonal and swore quite often."
The laughter welled out of McCoy from a deeper place than he was expecting. He reached out the press the panel to summon the lift. "I doubt anyone will question that. Now go on, get back to the bridge."
"I will, sir." The doors slid open and Chekov turned, but he looked back almost the same instant. "Doctor, I don't suppose I am a particularly good patient, and I would never have come if the captain hadn't ordered me to. But you've said things that I haven't thought before, and I'm glad I came. I..." He paused, unsure. "May I say thank you?"
McCoy shrugged. "You just did, kid."
"No." Chekov seemed hesitant. "I mean..." His cheeks lit with red, but he took a step to close the space between them, and leaned up on his toes.
Warm, quick press of lips to McCoy's cheeks, left then right, and Chekov spoke softly in his ear. "Spasiba, iscelitel'."
McCoy blinked in surprise, catching just a flash of blushing skin and bright green eyes as Chekov wheeled away from him fast and practically dove into the lift.
For the next few hours, when he caught himself grazing an absent knuckle over invisible lip prints on his cheek, he told himself it was just because it had been a few years since anyone had really touched him in a non-clinical way.