rivers_bend

Title: The morning after
Author: rivers_bend
Pairing: Sulu/Chekov
Rating: R
Words: ~3000
Summary: Once the Brindmolian sex venom wears off, everything hurts. (coda to The one with the Brindmolian sex venom)



When Pavel Chekov was eleven years old, he went to stay with his grandmother for two weeks while his parents were in London. Unlike in the city—where the hover plows sucked up the snow and turned it into water—in the countryside, the council still used old fashioned plows, the kind that rolled along the roads and pushed the snow into great banks.

A boy named Dmitri lived next door to Pavel's grandmother. He was older than Pavel and much larger, but while Pavel was used to being around older and larger boys, the ones he went to school with were not bullies. He did not know what to do with Dmitri.

Pavel's grandmother had warned him the day he arrived that he must not play on the snow banks because they were unstable and unsafe. Dmitri was determined to get Pavel to break his grandmother's rule. Finally after three days of taunting and threats and having hard-packed snowballs thrown at his head, Pavel gave in, agreeing to climb the bank nearest his grandmother's drive. Dmitri said he would not bother Pavel anymore if he walked along its crest.

Pavel struggled to the top of the twenty-foot bank of ice and snow, scraping his wrists where his gloves slid up, and dirtying his pants, but he finally made it to the top and started to walk. The footing was precarious, snow thrown up in jagged lumps, some pieces mushy and others frozen solid, but Pavel was determined, and careful, and he made it nearly to the end. He was just starting to wonder how he was going to get down when a chunk of snow gave way under his foot and he fell towards the road. He tumbled ass over face, wrenching his shoulders as he tried to grab on to protrusions, cutting his forehead and chin, ripping his jacket, and getting bruises everywhere.

Painful as it was, it was a relief to land on the hard surface of the road, just because it meant he couldn't fall any farther. Dmitri looked on as Pavel cried, twisted with pain and shame, sure his grandmother would never forgive him. She did yell, but she yelled louder and longer at Dmitri. And, after sending Dmitri home in disgrace, she bundled Pavel up and took him inside, put him in a hot bath scented with lavender, washed his cuts and left him to soak. Despite the bath and the love, he was stiff and sore for days, hobbling around favoring pulled muscles and bruises.

When he was exhausted and sore after running a marathon, he thought, At least it's not as bad as falling off the snow ridge—and again when he got in a bar fight his third year at the academy, and when he fell against the console in a battle and dislocated his shoulder.

But when he wakes up in sickbay, the Atarax venom finally out of his system, all he can think is, even that horrible snow bank might have been better than this.

His eyes are too heavy to open, but he can feel someone in the room with him, can smell the clinical scent of the ward, hear the soft beeps of medical equipment. "Doctor?" he asks.

"No."

It's Sulu. His Hikaru, here in sickbay. With an effort, Pavel opens his eyes.

"It's only me," Hikaru continues. "Would you rather—Would you like me to get the doctor?" He looks very stoic. Pavel does not like that look.

"This is ridiculous of you to say that. Of course I would not prefer the doctor; it was just that I heard beeping that sounded like a tricorder."

Hikaru flushes and steps forward, hesitantly putting a hand out as though to touch Pavel's arm or shoulder, but stopping short. Pavel cannot read his face and it hurts more than all the pulled muscles in the world.

"Are you—" Pavels' breath hitches and he has to try again. "Did you need to be admitted too?"

"No. I'm fine." Hikaru sits, drawing Pavel's attention for the first time to the chair next to his bed, a table beside it littered with two PADDs and three empty mugs. "I just wanted to sit with you. Be here when you woke up."

The band around Pavel's chest eases slightly, but Hikaru still won't touch him, is sitting with his hands folded tightly in his lap. Pavel edges his own hand closer to the side of the bed, close enough that Hikaru could easily reach up and take it, but Hikaru doesn't.

"You slept for eighteen hours," he says, instead. "Did it—Are you feeling better?"

Tamping down the crushing feeling of being disgusting and untouchable to the man he loves, trying to focus on his relief that at least Hikaru seems still to care about him in some way, to want to be his friend, Pavel gathers himself to answer. "I—the toxin is gone. I will no longer need you to—will no longer hurt you." He wants to apologize again for that, for everything, but he doesn't trust himself to speak.

"You didn't hurt me," Hikaru says, but Pavel knows it's a lie. "It's you I'm worried about. The human body isn't meant—" He's wringing his hands now, won't even look at Pavel.

The last of Pavel's control cracks. "Isn't meant to do those disgusting things?" he says, his voice rising. "Isn't meant to almost kill another person with making love? Not meant to be passed around like some I don't even know what until it becomes useless?" Pavel starts weeping then, curling into a ball, though it hurts to do so, facing away from the man he loves more than math, more than his career with Starfleet, more than anything. The man he will never get to kiss again, or hold—who will never again slide his hands up Pavel's thighs, parting them so he can slip between, push inside Pavel's body.

He expects Hikaru to leave, send Dr. McCoy in to deal with him, but instead Pavel feels the bed sink behind him, feels a familiar hand on his arm.

"Pavel." A sigh when Pavel remains rigid. "Pavel, what are you talking about?" Hikaru moves closer, one hand in Pavel's hair, the other stroking across his chest, down his ribs, his thigh, trying to get him to relax enough that he can spoon behind him, wrap an arm around Pavel's middle the way he has so many nights before.

"Nothing you did was disgusting," Hikaru murmurs. "And you didn't almost kill me. Pavel, please."

Pavel cannot resist the man holding him, and uncurls enough that Hikaru can rub his stomach in the same soothing way he does when there is Malavian cake in the mess and Pavel eats too many pieces.

"And," Hikaru goes on, words hot against Pavel's skin, "you are the least useless person I can imagine." His voice breaks on the last word and Pavel realizes the face pressed against his neck is wet.

"I'm still good to navigate, if the captain wants me." Pavel would like to link his fingers with Hikaru's like he used to, but he doesn't dare. "But if you do not want me anymore, I will feel useless."

"How could I—" Hikaru shifts back, a hand pulling at Pavel's shoulder. "Pavel. Look at me." He sounds so sad; Pavel must obey. "Pavel, nothing has changed in the way I feel about you. Nothing. I still want to touch you all the time."

He says this thing, but still his hand is hovering over Pavel's face, not caressing it. There is a saying Pavel knows: Actions speak louder than words.

Through the pain in his chest, Pavel says, "If this is true, then why do you not touch me? Why do you treat me as though I am unclean?"

"Unclean?" Hikaru does touch him then, cups Pavel's cheeks in both hands, runs his thumbs across Pavel's brows. "I am treating you like you're injured. You have bruises everywhere, bruises that I gave you because I wasn't careful enough. And McCoy told me about the side-effects from metabolizing the venom. You were screaming in pain, begging him for drugs."

Pavel remembers that, lying in the captain's bed feeling as though all his joints were unhinged and he'd been rubbed raw with sand, his veins burning like they were filled with acid. He had screamed, suddenly forced to wonder how he could have possibly thought the ache of not being filled was painful. Kirk tried to hold him while McCoy called down to sickbay for his med kit, but that just made the pain worse, so he'd sat there, hovering, saying, "It's okay, you'll be okay," over and over until McCoy finally pressed the hypospray to Pavel's neck and there was blackness.

"You are afraid of hurting me?" Pavel asks.

Hikaru nods, smoothing a thumb over Pavel's cheekbone.

"You still—" Pavel takes a deep breath. "Still want to kiss me?"

"Yes. God, yes."

Pavel hooks a hand around Hikaru's neck—realizing as he does that most of the pain is gone; he's just stiff now—and tugs. Hikaru comes easily, pressing his lips to Pavel's almost reverently.

"I love you," he whispers before pressing a kiss to Pavel's forehead, and then comes back to his lips, kissing more gently this time, smaller touches that trace the shape of Pavel's mouth.

Weaving fingers through Hikaru's hair, Pavel sighs into the kiss, inviting more, but just then a knock sounds at the door and it swishes open. Dr. McCoy clears his throat, prompting Hikaru to sit up on one elbow, though he leaves a hand to continue tracing where his lips left off.

"I'm glad to see you're feeling better, Mr. Chekov," the doctor says, ignoring the way Hikaru's arm slides possessively across Pavel's chest when he steps into the room. "One last scan to make sure you're finished metabolizing the toxin, then I'll send you back to your quarters to finish recuperating under Mr. Sulu's care."

He doesn't move any closer and Pavel realizes he's waiting for permission to do his job. It is disconcerting—not the doctor Pavel has come to know in his time on the Enterprise, though he cannot imagine what the doctor and the captain must now think of him, so he shouldn't be surprised that Dr. McCoy is not himself.

Pavel finally says, "Yes, fine, thank you," when Hikaru and the doctor remain frozen.

"Great, great." McCoy steps forward, tapping at the buttons on his tricorder, moving finally close enough to do his work.

Or what would be close enough of Hikaru, flustered, hadn't hunched over Pavel, in an instinctive attempt to get between Pavel and the doctor. Then he seems to realize he's in the way and jumps back instead, apologizing, and nearly falling off the bed in his haste.

"If you'd just sit down for a minute, Mr. Sulu, he'll be all yours." Dr. McCoy frowns slightly, making Pavel wonder what he has done wrong now.

Running a palm over his forehead, McCoy continues, "Anyway. If you'd just lie still for me, Mr. Chekov."

With Hikaru back on his chair, there is room for Pavel to lie flat and give the tricorder easier access. It keeps up its contented humming noises as McCoy scans him, confirming what Pavel himself already knew: that the toxin is gone. That he's fine.

"No more sign of the toxin's components," Dr. McCoy says, turning off his tricorder before reaching up and turning off the wall monitor too. "Everything checks out. It's 0940. I'll note in my files that you both may return to duty from 0600 tomorrow."

Hikaru thanks him, but Pavel, too tired of this whole situation, only manages a nod.

"I'll leave you to dress then, Mr. Chekov. You know where we are if you need us."

It isn't until the door is closed behind McCoy and Hikaru is handing him pants and a shirt to replace his pajamas that Pavel realizes McCoy meant the medical team, that he wasn't making a not-funny joke about Pavel and Hikaru needing him and the captain.

"I am never volunteering to help the science team again," Pavel says vehemently, jerking his top off and his shirt on.

They go back to Pavel's quarters, even though they usually stay in Hikaru's so that he can keep an eye on all his plants. "Felton said she'd water them," Hikaru says when Pavel looks at him questioningly.

Pavel takes it as a good sign that his friend can still read his mind.

Once inside however, Hikaru seems nervous and Pavel has no idea what to say. Then his stomach growls, making him realize that a large part of the sick dread he's feeling could be hunger. He hasn't eaten in more than forty-eight hours.

"Good point," Hikaru says, finally smiling with his whole face. "A couple of protein bars and whatever nutrients they had you on is no replacement for a real meal." He heads for the food dispenser in the far wall. "What do you want?"

Pavel does not believe it's possible to make that sort of decision right now. "One of everything," Pavel says.

Hikaru takes him at his word, covering the desk with food, just laying plates down on top of the scattered papers, pushing PADDs to the back. When there isn't another inch of space available for plates or bowls, they start to eat.

Toast and eggs, oatmeal with butter and sugar melting on top, steak, caviar, apple turnovers, peach cobbler—they both just dig into whatever looks good in the moment. Before long they're both grinning, saying, "You have to try this," feeding each other bites, using thumbs and fingers to catch drips.

Once the food hits their bloodstreams, they slow down a little, start sharing reminiscences of great food they'd eaten growing up: Potato soup made with fresh cream, and leeks pulled out of the ground that very morning; fried lake trout caught with a line and hook just in time for lunch; cookie dough snatched daringly from a mixing bowl while a grandmother's back was turned. Finally they run out of stories and capacity, pushing back from the make-shift feast table with twin groans.

"I was going to shower the smell of sickbay off," Hikaru murmurs, "but maybe a nap first."

"Not in a chair," Pavel admonishes. "There is a perfectly good bed ten feet away. What is it the English gentlemen say in the old stories? 'Let us adjourn.'"

"As long as you don't expect me to smoke a cigar or drink brandy."

They lie side by side for a while, clutching their bellies with both hands. Then Hikaru rests his near hand on the bed between them. Even with his eyes closed, Pavel can feel the warmth of it next to his hip, so he lowers his own hand, threading their fingers together, relishing the way the warmth spreads up his arm into his chest.

"If I hadn't just eaten a week's worth of food in under an hour, I would kiss you right now," Hikaru says.

Pavel opens his eyes, tilting his head to the side so he can see this man he is so lucky to have. "We maybe should not have tried one of absolutely everything"

"Vulcans kiss with their fingers, you know." Hikaru strokes a thumb over Pavel's knuckles, giving Pavel the smile that's just for him.

"We will kiss like Vulcans then. Until our stomachs are feeling better. Then I think we will kiss like humans."

"Definitely."

The Vulcan kissing is lovely, but rather too soothing, and the next thing Pavel knows, he's waking up, cheek pressed to a patch of drool on Hikaru's shoulder, bladder full to bursting. He tries to sneak out of bed, let Hikaru sleep, but he can't untangle his fingers from the knot their hands have made. Hikaru murmurs something that Pavel thinks means, "Don’t go," so he murmurs back that he shall return shortly, even as he's prying his hand out of Hikaru's grip.

Bladder empty and face washed, Pavel is brushing his teeth when Hikaru comes into the bathroom. Naked. With a sleepy-but-hopeful look on his face. There are purple bruises on his hips, smaller ones already yellowing on his ribs, and love bites blossoming all across his chest.

When he sees Pavel looking, Hikaru says, "I've come back from shore leave with worse, and this is nothing compared to even the most straight-forward away mission."

Pavel spits out his toothpaste and swishes his mouth out. "You are not mad?"

"Not even a little." Hikaru brushes a thumb over a particularly large bite near his nipple, blushing faintly. "I like your marks on me. And though I don't like you hurting, it's kind of a turn on knowing these," he touches the bruises on his hips, "match the ones on your ass."

"Oh." Pavel can feel his cheeks heating and keeps his gaze away from the mirror so he doesn't have to see his face turn bright pink, knowing that will only make it worse.

Hikaru reaches out and tugs at the hem of Pavel's shirt. "So I think you should shower with me so we can see where else we have matching bruises," he says.

Pavel thinks he might like that.