70"How about we let the kid go?"
Pavel doesn't turn, doesn't beam or beg or nod his enthusiastic agreement, though those are exactly the things he most wants to do. He stays calm, fingers still tapping out a course adjustment on the panel in front of him.
"What do you think, Spock?" Captain Kirk isn't a man with much use for subtlety, and he so obviously wants Pavel to hear him that he's all but shouting across the bridge. "You think Chekov's up for an away mission?"
Pavel doesn't-grin even harder, because he and Spock have worked on many projects together in the nine months since they set out on this five year assignment, and he is sure that he's proven his competence to Spock by now.
He hears Hikaru's throat clearing, soft and casual, and he manages to not-blush along with his not-grin when he glances over.
Hikaru smirks in that gentle way of his that tells Pavel the smirk is mask, and Hikaru's rooting for him. That might just be because Hikaru is tired of hearing Pavel complain about not being chosen for a single planet-side mission.
Still, Pavel takes what he can get.
"-and given the research-oriented focus of this particular assignment, I believe the ensign would be a fitting choice to accompany Doctor McCoy."
"Mmm. Very logical reasoning, Spock. How boring from you."
Chekov doesn't move, hands still skating across the panel, but his eyes rise slowly and focus on nothing as Captain Kirk's footsteps bring him right up to Pavel. He waits, nerves twisting in his gut, confidence and excitement making his face heat even before Kirk's hand lands on his shoulder.
"Okay, little man, moment of truth."
Pavel turns then, feels the smile blasting off his face as he looks up at his captain. "Sir?" he asks, the fake innocence entirely wasted.
Hikaru muffles a laugh.
Kirk doesn't bother muffling his. "Man, I'm glad I get to enjoy this moment, because in a few months you'll just groan and bitch like the rest of these lazy bastards when I send them planetside." His smile schools itself a little. "Let's be serious for a split second here, kid. You're the big one-eight now, you're clear to go as far as Starfleet's concerned, but this one's a weird mission for you to pop your cherry on."
Hikaru is outright snickering by then.
Pavel sends him an irritated look that might have been haughty if he'd been able to get rid of his own smile. "I understand the details of the mission, sir."
"I'm not questioning that, kid. I bet you've got the whole history of the planet memorized already."
Pavel blinks, trying for innocent again. "First contact was only months ago, sir. What little we know about the whole history of this planet is very easy to memorize."
Kirk rolls his eyes. "No wonder Spock talks you up. You're like a mini-him. A Vulcanlet. Okay, boy genius, you've got the job."
Pavel beams. "Thank you, sir! I will not let you down."
More than just Hikaru are muffling their grins and giggles in response, but Pavel hardly cares. It's more popular on Kirk's bridge to be casual and cool about everything, to meet Kirk's sarcasm and nicknames with like kind. But Pavel has never been afraid of being the earnest geek in a room full of popular kids. That's been his entire life, after all.
He used to dislike the informality of Jim Kirk's bridge on a typical shift. He has always been unsure when it comes to the social aspects of people, the camaraderie and teasing. He hasn't had enough experience with that sort of thing to be comfortable with it. There are lines and limitations to teasing, to rolling his eyes at his captain and not being punished for it. Pavel has never been sure of where those lines are.
But he iis/i eighteen now, and he's been on this bridge for almost a year. He still isn't always sure of himself, but he is sure of his position enough to know that if he does step out of line, he won't be immediately stripped of his rank and sent back to year one at the Academy like others his age.
He realizes that when Jim Kirk uses phrases like Vulcanlet, that means it's probably safe for Pavel to answer freely. If he were Hikaru he would call Kirk 'Jim' and tell him to go to hell, and then say thank-you in the very next breath.
Pavel isn't nearly as comfortable with the captain as Hikaru, of course. When Kirk grins his amusement and pats Pavel's hair like Pavel is a small child wanting papa's validation, Pavel just accepts it and turns, beaming at his panel.
"You gotta train that enthusiasm out of him if you really want your own Mini-Vulcan around, Spock," Kirk says, moving back up to his chair in the middle of the bridge.
Spock's sigh is audible – not emotion-based, of course, but a long-suffering sort of sigh. "Captain, I find it hard to-"
"Oh, but wait! Don't turn him into you until after the mission. Half the fun of this assignment is going to be telling Bones he's gotta camp out planetside for two weeks with a hyperactive teenager."
Pavel's breath sticks in his throat.
His stomach curls instantly, and everything he hasn't thought about regarding this mission suddenly comes screaming into his head.
Hikaru's laughter quiets, though no one's paying to the helm any attention anymore.
Pavel ignores Hikaru's silence, feeling his face heating red and his smile fading at the corners. He looks down at his panel, makes a course correction that will make absolutely no difference.
Kirk is talking about other things, teasing Spock again about something, by the time Pavel looks over at his best friend.
Hikaru smiles at him, small and wry. He nods his head back towards Kirk and rolls his eyes.
Pavel returns the smile, only a little wilted.
If being young and over-eager and incapable of playing it cool hasn't dented Pavel's will or his ambition to succeed in Starfleet, then his absurd reactions toward Leonard McCoy aren't going to either.
"-this is how I first developed the model that would disprove Conway and Kochen's free will theorem. It was quite a stir at the Conservatory when I wrote the paper. In fact, one of my professors, Romanov, this self-important child, threatened to walk out if they passed me. Of course they did. And Romanov..."
He clears his throat, only aggravating the burn as he talks.
Everyone has left them to the silence of sickbay. Kirk and Hikaru have gone for the first time since Pavel and Len were recovered.
No one knows what to do with them. It's still new, this thing, this being rescued and back where they belong, but Pavel knows that already people are scared of them. Even Kirk, even Hikaru. They are scared of what they've gone through and scared to find out what they've become as a result.
Absurd, since they aren't back yet. They aren't recovered. There is no result here. The cause hasn't yet ended, and so the result can't begin to be measured.
He doesn't have to think about recovery, so he is free to go on as he's gone for weeks. Talking, staying close.
"I have no idea what became of Romanov," he says. "I don't think he left, though."
Len is sleeping, so of course he doesn't respond. Pavel doesn't talk for response. He tells aimless stories and sings childish songs and fills the silence for just that reason: to fill the silence.
He curls up on the bunk beside Len, supporting him as he sleeps. He is supposed to be resting in some other bed, in some other room, but that's impossible.
He has to be with Len, or else nothing at all in this strange new reality will seem real.
There is a soft bed here, not the cold stone ground, but Pavel knows that Len is still mostly in that cell. Pavel is, surely Len must be.
He knows it, and that's such a strange thing. To be so certain of the now, the ship and the rescue and the reactions they are causing, but to iknow/i as certain as he has ever known anything that he and Len are still trapped, still prisoners.
He feels like he exists both places at once, and the only thing he has in both places is Len.
"I'll tell you about the theory behind the paper. The theorem I was disproving states, to put it simply, that if we live in a universe that isn't determinist, if free will exists, than certain elementary particles must exercise that free will..."
He goes on.
Physics, star charts, mathematics, the reason he has always hated the color red. He never talks with an aim in mind. He just can't run out of things to say, or else he has failed.
The lights have lowered to the artificial dimness of third-shift when a nurse comes near them and tries to push her way into their world.
Pavel doesn't know her, this red-haired night nurse. Len will, but he's asleep and Pavel's job is to let him rest, not bother him.
She looks at them in distant surprise – like someone warned her, warned the night shift, warned the whole crew, but she didn't believe them – and looks over Len's head at the diagnostic panels.
Pavel watches her, unhappy, even as his fingers stroke through Len's hair and his low murmurs continue without pause. He does switch to Russian – Len doesn't ever mind, and this woman doesn't need to hear his nonsense words. They're not for her.
The nurse meets his eyes and looks away fast, uncomfortable. No bedside manner, Len wouldn't like her.
She moves closer, and his gaze sharpens on her as she pulls his own diagnostic off the side of the bed – they rigged his vitals into the same bed when he refused to move and they didn't have the heart to force him.
She frowns at whatever she sees, and steps in to examine the tube attached to Pavel's arm.
Archaic, the IV stand. Pavel had no idea they're still used in today's medical practices, but apparently there's no hypo of drugs that can fuse a month's worth of food into Pavel's body.
He doesn't care. He likes the archaic IV because Len finds that old-fashioned sort of medicine to be so useful. He doesn't mind the burn in his arm, or the way he's forced to be still to keep it in where it belongs. It means he is stuck where he is, and he doesn't want to be anywhere else.
The nurse frowns at his arm and the IV.
"Ensign Chekov," she says, her voice a soft murmur.
Pavel fixes a glower on her, but Len doesn't stir at her voice so he doesn't stop his quiet words to Len long enough to answer her.
She meets his eyes, and seems disturbed. But she brushes it off and sets her expression.
"Ensign, you've got to get back to your own bed. Your body needs to rest, and you can't..."
Without quieting his Russian monologue – he's reciting old bits of songs his mother used to sing him now – Pavel looks at the woman.
He doesn't intend to leave, of course, but he pulls his hand from Len's hair and slips to the edge of the bed, away from Len, as if he's going to obey her.
Len's calm sleep disintegrates. His brow furrows, his mouth moves, his breathing is uneven. The monitor over his head...Pavel can't see it, but he knows Len's heart must be speeding up.
It's difficult, like trying to halt an involuntary reflex, but Pavel lets his words dry up when he comes to the end of a verse, and he clamps his lips together. Silence falls.
Len mutters in his sleep, twitching, curling onto his side and almost reaching out in his sleep. As if chasing something. His breath is audible, his wordless murmurs sharp with distress.
Pavel glares at the nurse – this is her fault – and calls his own bluff. He slides back in, keeping his one arm still and bringing the other around Len's head to twist fingers through his hair again. He goes right into the last verse of the song he'd stopped on, and his eyes dare the nurse to speak again.
Len murmurs and falls silent. His brow smooths, his body falls into stillness again.
Pavel has caused him pain. Len is asleep, yes, but that's no excuse. He will make amends for it when Len wakes up – that is a solid vow to himself, as grim as any promise ever made.
The lullaby he sings reaches its ending, and he doesn't even pause before finding himself humming the tune of an absolutely horrible American pop song that was blasting all over campus his first year at the Academy. He only knows some of the words, but he hums around the rest, and Len never cares either way.
Len sleeps.
When Pavel can make himself look up from Len's dark hair and bruised skin, the nurse is gone.
The written language of these aliens is something the computers are still working to tear apart, to turn into phonetic standard and so begin the long process of twisting these beings into seeming like every other bland humanoid species the Federation has ever come across.
Len does some reading up on the basics while the Enterprise careens through space towards their planet. Most of his research needs to be physiology, but of course that's what they have the sparsest data on. So he reads up on what he can.
They've got half a dozen sounds that aren't particularly translatable to human mouths, which just figures. The closest thing to their name, their planet and their race, was written by the first contact team as Maalox.
It wasn't a fond sort of humor that accompanied that decision, but despite unflattering old Earth references, Starfleet seems to have accepted the name.
The first contact team wasn't overly impressed with the species. They didn't warn the Federation away, but the final recommendation was not to offer Federation membership.
Of course the bureaucrats back on Earth won't let first impressions be the final word, not until they're sure there's nothing to be gained by having access to this planet and its people. But the matter was almost settled for them: some genius on the away team for the first contact brought some damned virus with them – some remnants of a cold, a flu, some innocuous thing they were recovering from or just coming down with.
Human beings never fucking learn.
Now there's a disease ravaging this unfriendly but innocent planet full of beings. They are dying from this thing they have no immunity against. It's the fault of Starfleet, the Federation, and they're desperate for a cure they can translate to their physiology, fast.
It's Jim who recommended Len. Say what he will about Jim, Len knows he's got a loud loyal streak in him that makes his doctor the best doctor in the universe, just like his engineer and his pilot and his third-shift admin clerk.
Len doesn't argue the assignment, though. He does have a knack for physiology, a talent for finding links in completely disparate species. He's quicker than a lot of the self-important diagnosticians filling the medical journals with bullshit.
He can do this.
But first there's the journey, the frustratingly limited research.
Their spoken language is terse and staccato – Len sits for a few minutes and listens to some recordings made of the first contact – and it's strangely unsettling. Uhura is fascinated, of course, and Len leaves her to tear through the other recordings.
He's thinking bemused thoughts about Uhura, about how this whole damned crew is so obsessive about their particular interests, when he runs into The Kid in the corridor outside sickbay.
Almost literally runs into the kid, since the kid is fucking running like some maniac's chasing him.
"Doctor!" The kid is nothing but elbows and eyeballs as he wheels to an awkward stop. He's in these ridiculous little shorts, face flushed, curls sweaty and wilted over his forehead.
McCoy smirks, pretending he doesn't find this kid unnerving in like ten different ways. "The hell are you doing jogging around at this hour, Ensign?"
Chekov's healthy flush gets darker, but he smiles in that earnest-squirrel way of his, and Len feels disconcertingly like he's stepped out the door of a dark bar after a bender and is squinting gritty, drunk eyes at an unexpected sunrise.
"If I run before my shift I seem to get right into the paths of a dozen crewmen in search of coffee, and they assure me that they're much more genial after the caffeine, so..." He shrugs, pert and healthy and a fucking kid. "I run after my shift instead, and when I get between crewmen and their beds they are at least too tired to protest."
Len flashes a smile despite himself. "You could just use the equipment in the rec rooms like a sane person."
Chekov grins back. "I prefer to be eccentric. Of all the reputations I've gained so far in my life, it is the most fun to live up to."
Len almost chuckles – hell, the kid's got himself a sense of humor. Who knew?
And why's it coming out now? They've been serving together almost a year, Len hasn't ever heard the kid talk this much, except when he invades the bridge to police Jim and his reckless little crew.
He figures it out pretty fast – he can still see Jim's smirk and hear his obnoxiously gleeful 'but guess who you're going with?' - and it makes his smile twist a little, wry.
"Looking forward to your first taste of planetside work, kid?"
Chekov can't contain his reaction. He all but beams, glowing under his sweat-dampened flush. "Very much, doctor! I am pleased that the captain has such faith in me."
Sewenteen, Len says to himself, instant and instinctive, the way he has to at least once a week. He's fucking sewenteen. And his mind says it with that chirpy little voice and that accent that Chekov so proudly announced it in once, ages ago, on their very first mission.
But for fuck's sake. It would take a way more damaged guy than Len McCoy to not respond to that bright, happy-to-please voice and the shadowless grin, and Jesus fuck the kid needs some running shorts that cover a little bit more of those fucking mile-long runner legs of his, and...
He clears his throat fast, biting his smile off at the edges. "Just make sure you're ready. Jim's giving us a week down there on our own before he comes checking up, and I want the whole damned planet inoculated and rosy-cheeked by then."
The kid's expression tames a little, but none of his glow fades. "I'll be ready. I have no medical experience, of course, but I took several advanced courses in chemistry, and a rather interesting biomedical engineering elective for fun one term, and I've been working out how to bend that experience to best assist you in your work."
There's a pause, as if the kid is waiting for a pat and a cookie. Len can barely resist groaning.
He brushed Jim off when he teased him over days being trapped with such a perky little guy, but God knows if he'll be able to tolerate such intense need for validation without smacking the kid like a bad puppy.
He doesn't particularly want to be a shit, but he has the unpleasant feeling that he's going to dampen the kid's enthusiasm more than once by the time they get to come back home to the ship.
On the bright side...the more annoyance he can muster towards the kid, the less times he'll have to blast the word sewenteen through his brain to calm his perverted-old-man mind from wandering too far in the wrong direction.
He wakes up with the familiar grip of thin fingers in his hair, and Len lets out a breath before opening his eye. One more day.
But it's sickbay greeting him when he forces his eyelids up, and his mind makes the connection a little faster this time than last time.
He turns his head and grimaces at the uncomfortable-looking way Pavel has jammed himself into the bed beside him. He takes in the IV still attached to the kid, the exhaustion painting dark circles under Pavel's eyes, and he sighs.
He should wake Pavel up and send him to his own bed. He's surprised that M'Benga and Christine have even allowed this.
Then again, he also knows what kind of fight Pavel can put up when someone tries to separate him from Len, and if the kid's mind is as slow as Len's to accept that they're out of their cage...
He doesn't move, and doesn't attempt to wake Pavel. He wants to reach out and touch him, to smooth his fingertips over that too-sharp cheekbone and trace the edges of a fading bruise, but when he reaches out the white of the bandages over his numb hands catches his eye and stalls his arm.
"Morning."
The voice almost makes him jump. He jerks his hand down, out of his view, and blinks out at the room beyond.
Jim's smile is thin, his mask a little weaker than normal. He stands there in uniform, arms folded over his chest, and despite the Captain pose he seems a little unsure.
Len can remember talking to him for a little while before, and he wonders what kind of screaming mess he dissolved into between then and now.
He smiles, as brittle as Jim's but not insincere. "Hey, Jim."
Jim lets out a breath and his arms uncross and drop to his sides. He moves in close to the bed, gaze flickering to Pavel for a moment before he moves around to Len's other side and sits on the edge of the cot.
Len thinks about telling him that the damned thin med cots aren't designed for three separate bodies, but he sees the exhaustion and worry behind Jim's eyes and the words don't come.
"How you feeling?" Jim asks, quiet.
Len hums instead of shrugging, not wanting to disturb Pavel. "A little bit more present, anyway," he mutters in answer. There's not much else he can say. His body is numb and heavy, his mind is spotty, and there aren't a lot of words for how he's feeling beyond that.
"That's a start," Jim says with a slightly more sincere smile. "I probably don't have to tell you that we're-"
"What happened back on that planet?"
Jim stills, his words cutting off. He clears his throat quietly. "What...which part?"
"To the bastards who had us."
"We killed most of them," Jim answers, matter-of-fact, his eyes suddenly harder than they were. "The ones in that detention center we pulled you out of. They worked for the government, the Empress that just died, so it's become this diplomatic shitstorm, even worse than it was when they were just sick and dying."
Len regards him with blank eyes. "The Empress is dead?"
"A few days ago," Jim confirms with a nod. "The day after we got you back."
McCoy thinks about that, his gaze leaving Jim and moving to the side. Towards Pavel, but not all the way to him. He smiles, and it feels brutal and cold.
"Good."
Jim winces so hard that Len catches it in his peripherals. But he doesn't pay it any mind. Yeah, it's not his typical response to death.
But he's not insincere.
"How long?" he asks.
"Three weeks," Jim says after a moment. "A month on the planet, three weeks since you last contacted the ship."
Len stares at him. The words almost seem to tunnel, to go distant in that way he's been fighting since he woke up here. But not because he suddenly thinks he's back there. Just because the words don't make any fucking sense.
"Three weeks," he repeats.
Jim nods.
"It felt like..." Len wants to scrub the shock out of his eyes, but his hands may as well not exist. He wants to laugh, but he's not sure he remembers how. "I'd've believed three years before three weeks."
"It was a fucking lifetime," Jim says, his voice suddenly sharp. "I don't care if it was three hours, it was too long. I shouldn't have sent you-"
"Jim."
"I shouldn't have." Jim reaches out as if to touch his arm, but hesitates. His hand twitches back. "I should have known better than to trust you to some planet we hardly know anything about." He looks past Len at Pavel. "Sure as hell shouldn't have sent him. Jesus, Bones, his first away mission. He's a fucking kid. And you..."
Len swallows, looking away from Jim's guilt and over at Pasha's slack face instead.
"Hikaru is so pissed off at me over it. Every single day...and not just him. Jesus, the whole ship seems to have some fetish for Russian jailbait. Even Spock, Christ, in his own way, you know. 'In hindsight it was perhaps inadvisable to allow the ensign a place on the away team'. Which coming from him is like a screaming tantrum from anyone else. Even the fucking Vulcan."
Len doesn't want to answer, doesn't want to think about it, because all it will do is make him wonder how the last month would have gone without Pavel there. And that way lies madness.
"You're going to have a lot of people coming by to thank you," Jim goes on, obviously trying to pitch his voice to be more cheerful. "For keeping the kid alive despite my bad judgment."
Len wants to laugh, but the sound that grounds out of his throat isn't very amused. "You got that wrong, at least."
Jim hesitates. "What?"
"I didn't keep him alive."
Len's eyes are stuck on Pavel's pale skin. Maybe the kid is thin, maybe dangerously starved, but Len can't remember ever seeing him looking different than this. He's always had these sunken eyes and cheekbones that look like they're a deep breath away from carving out of his skin.
Most important, he's always been right here. Always with his fingers in Len's hair, always breathing in his ear, murmuring in sleep and talking while awake. Always talking. And Len has always listened. He's always known about the kid's family, about a stunted childhood spent in the libraries and universities of Russia, and his hopes and fears in going to the Conservatory, and signing up for Starfleet.
He's always known this kid inside and out. And the kid has always known him. Always been here for him.
"It was the other way around," he says finally, letting himself turn back to Jim.
Jim searches his face, grim and nervous.
Len meets those vibrant blue eyes set in that carelessly attractive face, flush with health and pale with worry, and he can't reconcile the memories he has of Jim with this lifetime of knowing Pavel that he's convinced he's had.
Maybe he's not as close to being incoherent as he was when he first woke up here, but he's still not much closer to sanity.
Pavel isn't sure that Doctor McCoy senses it, but there's something strange about this planet. Something off-putting about this place that they've been housed in, and the strangely-accented, grim men who seem to come and go, but never all at once. Never so their human guests are alone.
They aren't doctors, these men. At least they take no interest in Doctor McCoy's work. They watch and listen to everything, but react to nothing. McCoy pays them no attention, but Pavel can't help but wonder.
He has come to believe they are guards of some kind, but with that revelation comes the disconcerting fact that he has no idea if they are protecting the Starfleet officers or trapping them.
Lieutenant Desmarais wonders as well.
He is security, the lieutenant, a soft-spoken man with a musical sort of accent, not much like most of the overbearing giants in Security. He is the third and final member of the away team, sent with them because Captain Kirk refused to send them to even this non-combatant planet without some measure of protection.
Pavel doesn't mind - he likes Desmarais. Desmarais seems to like him as well, which is rare in someone he hardly knows.
"You pronounce my name correctly," Desmarais told him at the beginning, at the nervous last minutes before they climbed on the transporter padd to appear on this planet. "There is much to be said for that."
Pavel just smiled. "My grandmother was French. I have never seen her outside of Russia but she tried to teach me some of the language growing up."
They bonded some over the fact that Desmarais has the misfortune of being named Rene and being surrounded by mostly American, machismo-crammed security officers who think that a man named Rene is simply hilarious. Pavel tells him about his own familiar name, Pasha, getting out to some of the cadets during his few months at the Academy.
They bonded further when Nyota came around to pass out the translators she rigged. Quick and crude, she said about her own programming job, but Pavel knows Nyota and her talents.
It was McCoy who shot the two other members of his landing team a look and asked Nyota if the translators were good enough to understand a couple of heavy accents.
Pavel smiled at the doctor as innocently as he could, and replied, "You tink I hef eccent? Wery strange."
Desmarais shook his head solemnly. "I seenk zee doctor ees hearing sings. We speak zee, how you say, bootiful Engleesh."
And of course it hadn't gotten more than a glare from McCoy, but Nyota laughed.
Needless to say, of the many officers Pavel has met he doesn't get along with most of them. But he rather likes Desmarais.
"Is this what you expected?" Pavel asks him the second night, after they have left the lab and gone to the oversized quarters they share, and the silent aliens who have been their constant guardians are safely shut away behind a closed door.
Rene seems to understand him instantly, and he seems unsettled as he looks out at that closed door. "I didn't expect anything," he says in answer. "But it isn't particularly comforting."
Pavel hesitates but turns to the doctor. "What about you, sir?"
"What?" McCoy asks, distracted as he often seems to be, flipping through an unreadable book given to them by the Speaker for the Empress, who seems to be the only diplomatic contact they'll have. The book contains images, charts, of Maalox physiology.
Pavel almost regrets interrupting the doctor's study.
"Is this what you expected?" he repeats himself dutifully. "All this," he continues awkwardly when McCoy doesn't look up from the book. "I suppose I thought we would have more contact with the people here."
"Hmm?" McCoy looks over at him and Rene, seeming to comprehend his words after a delay. "What, you wanted to play wandering healer to the ailing people?"
Pavel ignores his smirk with some difficulty, willing his face not to turn red. "That isn't what I mean. I mean...patients, at least. What they are doing, keeping us indoors here and bringing you samples of blood, of skin..."
Rene nods with his small but constant frown. "The only infected people you have been allowed to see have been corpses. It seems that if they truly wanted a cure quickly they would give you more."
McCoy's smirk fades and he hums. "It's sure as hell not ideal. And no, honestly, this set-up isn't what I was expecting. I don't know if they're hiding us from the rest of the planet, or hiding the planet from us. Either way it's not how I want to work something like this." He looks back at the book. "Then again, it's not the worst circumstances either. We knew these people weren't exactly warm to Starfleet, since the last pack of uniformed monkeys who showed up here brought this disease with them."
"But they do themselves no good limiting our exposure," Pavel says, looking around the quarters. It is no replacement for the lab they spend their days in, but he and McCoy have filled it with texts, with charts of their own making, with the equipment brought from the ship.
And that's strange, and unsettling: except for that book McCoy is reading, everything they have to help them was brought by they themselves. The Maalox have been no help.
He sighs, knowing it's useless to talk about it. "We should be treating people, not samples."
McCoy meets his eyes for a moment, eyebrows raised, amusement barely hidden under his expression. "Spoken like a true doctor. Sure you don't want to switch fields?"
Pavel smiles instantly, and it's ridiculous to do so but he realizes what sort of compliment that is coming from a healer like McCoy.
"I couldn't," he says, only half joking. "I already know that I would never have your talent, and if I'm not to be the best at something..."
"Why bother trying? Christ Jesus, kid, how did we fit on board the Enterprise with your ego taking up half the ship?"
Pavel sees him rolling his eyes and looking back at his book, but he isn't bothered. McCoy thinks Pavel would be a good doctor. There is no snort or contempt that can take that from him.
Rene pats him on the shoulder as he leaves them, wandering around to do one of his regular checks out the narrow windows into the dark landscape beyond.
Pavel watches him go, but turns back to McCoy. "I'm not egocentric, doctor – though if I were I'm young enough to get away with it."
McCoy scoffs, not looking up from the charts on the heavy pages of the book. "Nobody wants as much validation as you do without having a massive ego to feed."
"Validation?" Pavel smiles to himself, taking one of the padds they have already filled with ideas and possible tests, scanning down the screen absently. "You think that I want you to tell me that I'm a genius?"
"You saying you don't want me to tell you you're a genius?"
Pavel grins at the padd, picks up a stylus and makes a quick change to an absently-jotted formula he had written earlier seemingly apropos of nothing. "As little as I want you to reassure me that I'm Russian."
McCoy snorts.
"Honestly, doctor, I know what I am. I have never looked to someone else for recognition or appreciation."
McCoy looks up again, and he isn't a man subtle about his doubts. They show all over his face.
Pavel regards the padd. "I am a genius," he says, "because 'genius' is a human term with defined parameters that I fit into. That is decided, it needs no validation."
"Oh, come on." McCoy straightens, eying Pavel like he's another sample, another alien version of a thing that McCoy feels he should recognize. "Kids like you are always..." He hesitates, mouth creasing.
Pavel raises his eyebrows and waits.
Hikaru thinks that because Pavel has an overdeveloped interest in Doctor McCoy that Pavel will spend his time on this planet following him around in addled adoration. He said as much to Pavel before they left the ship, gave him a well-meaning warning about taking the bad-tempered doctor too seriously.
But Pavel isn't without his opinions, and he's never been scared to voice them. If he does have something as banal as a 'crush' on McCoy, it isn't enough to change who he is.
So he regards the doctor with steady, amused eyes. "Yes? Kids like me? What are we always doing?"
McCoy rolls his eyes. "Want me to go on? Fine. I knew kids like you all through med school, during my residency. The gifted, the genius, the ones who were younger or tested better or learned faster. And every one of them talked like they were hot shit, but every one of them was constantly coming to us lesser mortals and making sure we knew every single thing they did that was better than us. Nothing they did mattered on its own merit, it mattered when they could lord it over us. And that kind of ego ain't nothing but fear in disguise."
Pavel moves to the other side of the table that McCoy has his books spread out on. He sits on a narrow-framed, hard chair and sets the padd down, careful not to disrupt the piles of work around them.
He feels McCoy's eyes on him, knows the doctor is waiting for him to get angry or offended or protest his comparison to some oafish braggarts in med school.
Truthfully, he does want to protest it.
He is used to being judged and disliked just for what he is, for the circumstances surrounding his unlikely position in the universe. But Leonard McCoy – and Pavel can't help but to hear Hikaru sighing his name, McCoooy, in that way he does when he's trying to tease Pavel into confessing his grand love – isn't everyone else.
Pavel doesn't know if he admires the doctor, if he has some attraction, or if it's something else that draws him to the man. But he knows that the idea of McCoy regarding him the same way so many other people have doesn't sit right.
The doctor isn't like anyone Pavel has ever known. He is sharp, yes, a bundle of pointed edges under his surprisingly thin skin, but at the same time he is the very opposite of dangerous. Pavel watches him often, on the bridge talking to the captain, and it's such a striking thing.
He speaks tersely, he is honest beyond politeness, he relies on sarcasm and disbelief. But the words he says in such a sharp voice, those words are all about healing, about goodness and morality, right and wrong. The jagged edges are in his tone, not in the words themselves.
To Pavel there is something familiar about the conflict surrounding McCoy. The goodness and the sharp edges. Like a man who has so much to say that he can't help but stutter. McCoy...he has such open, utter faith in the world, in people, that he feels like he can't show it or he'll make himself too vulnerable.
McCoy will argue with Kirk and Spock, heatedly, about how they ought to do a thing because it's the right thing to do. And McCoy believes it, that the right thing should always be done, just on the basis of it being the Right Thing to do. But McCoy has lived too long and seen too much, no doubt, to really believe that anyone does the right thing for its own sake.
McCoy sees his own goodness as a weakness. That is the conclusion Pavel has come to in his months of studying the man. McCoy knows that the universe is cold and empty, that people are self-centered creatures interested in the continuance and betterment of their own lives and not much beyond that.
His heart is open to the world like a gaping wound, and instead of covering it with bandages he hides it inside a suit of armor, behind a barbed wire fence.
What amazes Pavel the most is that McCoy doesn't ever stop his fight for what's right. The barbed wire, the sarcasm, they are what he retreats behind, but he never stays hidden for long.
Pavel is a genius, but unlike most young geniuses he has as good a grasp on people as he does on theory and science. Pavel has been able to read most of the people he's ever met within moments. But Leonard McCoy is a constant wonder to him.
Hikaru calls it a crush. Pavel thinks it is something deeper.
So he doesn't jump on the doctor with protests about being compared to whatever immature self-centered cretins he knew in medical school. He simply realizes that he must show McCoy that what's true for some isn't true for all. He must get McCoy out from behind the barbed wire.
"Doctor," he says finally, his eyes on the padd in front of him because he is bad at speaking when it matters to him, "I wanted so badly to be chosen for this assignment because the challenge is fascinating to me. When a cure is found and this planet is saved, no one will credit me with the victory. This is your mission. I am one more tool at your disposal. No one will honor the doctor's assistant. If I wanted fame or compliments or validation, I wouldn't be here."
He hesitates, looking up and across the table. His cheeks heat when he sees McCoy regarding him with genuine curiosity on his face.
He wants to be interesting to this man.
He clears his throat, feeling oddly nervous. "But when they give the credit to you, where it will belong, I will know that I did help. That some of the work was mine, and that my presence was an aid. I will know it, and that will satisfy me. I've got a list of credits pages long that won't mean as much." He smiles, unsure. "Also you will know, and that will satisfy me even more."
McCoy's eyebrows lift in silent question.
Pavel thinks he understands it, and he shakes his head. "Not because I'll want validation, doctor. Just because...it's you."
McCoy blinks. His brow furrows, a small you-can't-mean-what-it-sounds-like-you-mean sort of expression.
Pavel doesn't answer, because even he doesn't know what he means. Not exactly. He isn't sure why he feels so strongly towards McCoy, but he does feel it, and he is honest and strong enough to speak out about his feelings, even without certainty.
McCoy turns back to his book after a moment.
Beyond them, on the far side of the room, Rene sits on one of the small bunks and begins his usual nightly practice of cleaning his phaser.
Pavel takes up the padd to re-review the day's notes, and he smiles at his little algebraic doodle before clearing it from the side of the screen and scanning the words instead.