Another STXI Kink Meme Round-Up
Character/Pairing: Pike, Chekov
Rating: G
Request: "A fic in which Pike and Chekov play chess."
It's one of the perks of executive privilege, Pike tells him. You can make the ensigns to do the dirty work.
A chess game is dirty work?
The ensign hasn't seen anything yet. Just wait till after they move their queens out: Pike can get downright nasty.
Yes, sir.
So. Pike eases a bishop down the board. The Enterprise. Ensign Chekov is staying on?
If he can, sir, yes.
Dream ship, and all that?
Dream? Ah, like, dream for the life, a goal?
Like that, yes.
Chekov scrunches up his face, scratches his cheek absently with the top of his rook before he castles. He doesn't think so, actually. That is, the Enterprise was not his dream ship beforehand. Before he served on her, that is.
And now?
Chekov grins. Oh, yes.
And why's that? Certainly not her new captain?
Oh no, no, no sir! Not at all! Captain Kirk is very good but Captain Pike -- the Admiral! -- was, is, also quite good, very good indeed, and --
Chekov doesn't have to bust a ringlet; Pike was just kidding.
Yes, sir. But, it is because. Chekov is sorry for his poor Standard, his words are a mess, he knows -- but he really wants the Admiral to know how grateful he is for giving him the opportunity to serve on the Enterprise in the first place. It is sometimes hard for Chekov, his age, being in a different place; he loves Starfleet and loves new things but it has been a very long time since he felt, so fast, right away really, that someplace was his house -- his home, that is, and... that is to say... he is rambling.
Pike's mouth quirks as he studies the chessboard.
Chekov just wishes to give his thanks. Is all. Sir.
Pike sits back a little, folding his hands over his lap.
Nothing would please him more than to graciously accept undeserved accolades. But truth be told, he's been thinking it over, and he thinks the one responsible for that crew and that mission might be the Enterprise herself.
Sir?
Pike glances at him; shrugs. Stranger things have happened. Of all the culminations taking place that day, all the galaxy-shattering change, in a way the Enterprise crew coming together like they did seemed to be the focal point, the center of it all. Something that was meant to be.
But the Admiral was the one who led all of them there, sir.
Perhaps. And that in itself will be his own selfish pride, probably, for the rest of his life. Even if he's not meant to lead them, he'll always be the one who sent them on their way.
He looks up and smiles: so does Chekov. He takes Chekov's pawn, and Chekov takes his.
Character/Pairing: Chekov/Sulu
Rating: PG
Request: "Sulu trying to make sense of a death that served no purpose and just happened."
He's always viewed his life as a story, ever since he knew what a story was. It has been a surprisingly good modus operandi for him over the years, this constant reading of his life. Is the plot moving along smoothly? Is there an underlying message? Is the main character good, someone you'd like to be?
And of course the love story.
That's what McCoy and Kirk and the others can't seem to understand. They keep telling him that he's in shock, that it's okay, that he has to let himself feel it, and Sulu feels a little bad for them. But he'll be patient with them, he'll nod and let them fret over him, because that's what they seem to need.
Sulu himself is unconcerned. Quite simply, it did not happen. Every line and every letter, every chapter that makes up who he is, has built up and stretched and grown to culminate at the person he's chosen to share his life with. It's the two of them now, no way to go back, because that would be preposterous, completely nonsensical. If it actually happened it would make the story abrupt and absurd. Meaningless. What would be the point?
The idea makes him laugh.
It's not that he hasn't accepted it. He just knows he doesn't have to. So he will be patient, waiting here in sickbay, the days since he's spoken collecting in a higher and higher pile. If this was a book he happened to pick up, he might be troubled -- these signs, these signs -- but it's not. This is his blood and his breath, and he knows it by heart, the way this will go: mistakes discovered, miracles and relief, something conquering all. He knows it as easily as he knows he's alive at all, so he'll sit here and wait, for as long as he has to, for as long as it takes for the page to turn.
Character/Pairing: Chekov/Sulu
Rating: NC-17
Request: "Chekov/Girl!Sulu!"
Sandbar
Chekov, wading in after her, was doing well, remarkably well, until the first proper wave loomed in the distance and he turned around and ran, very slowly, away.
The wave ended up crashing against the backs of his knees. Sulu's laughter carried all the way over the water.
"You got really close!" she called out to him, a figure in the distance treading water.
"Was a strategic retreat," he called back in agreement. He squared his shoulders and tried again, striding purposefully into the surf, arms swinging.
"Oceans are from Russia," he said, spluttering a little as he tried to jump with the motion of the water.
"Are they?" He could see her grin even in the glare of two suns. "I should have known. But then isn't it kind of weird that you've never gone swimming in one?"
"Ai, very tourist thing now," Chekov said with a dismissive wave that turned into a sort of slapping flail at the sudden spray that drenched his mouth. He coughed a little, but soldiered on, step by laborious step. "Too trendy. In Catherine the Great's time, oh, was best, but now it --"
He was too distracted by Sulu's inexhaustible smile, the endless entertainment she seemed to find in his stupid jokes, to notice the wave.
The last thing he heard was Sulu's desperate "Dive into it!" before the water closed over his head.
In the dark whirling rush underwater, he wasn't sure which way was which, in instead of out. He chose a direction anyway, dove until he hit sand, and then flung himself up till he broke the surface, coughing and sputtering.
"Pavel!" he heard faintly in the distance. He pushed his dripping hair out of his eyes just in time to see Sulu break into her breaststroke.
"No, no, it's okay," he managed to call out to her, still wiping at his face and jumping with the waves. "I'm okay!"
She paused, still a good ways out.
"You sure?" she said, visoring her eyes with one hand. "You don't have to come so far out, you know, it's okay --"
In reply, he huffed and ducked down into the next approaching wave and managed to get back up in time, only swallowing a few mouthfuls of water along the way. He spat and dove again, keeping his eyes shut against the salt and using the sound of the ocean as his guide instead.
"Not when," duck, dive, "someone," duck, dive, "is waiting," dive, swim, "for me..."
He'd just gotten the rhythm down when his feet hit sand. He stood up, surprised.
The water was almost calm now, bobbing against his chest and warm in the sunlight. He turned around, squinting at the way he'd come, the waves furling and breaking maybe ten meters away. It seemed like miles.
"That was very brave," he heard someone murmur against his shoulder.
Chekov turned, grinning, easing back into the water as naturally as he eased a hand down Sulu's back. "Yes, a fearsome quest, I think?"
She held his hand in place and glanced up at him, giving him that look that made his mouth go dry, the one that said I'm not laughing about this. It was like he hadn't seen her for ten days, instead of ten minutes. Her hair was a wet black fall down her neck, her throat, and the sight of the white straps of her bikini against her already-tanned shoulders made him linger again over every little detail he'd memorized about her, lifeguard summers and semesters in Australia and weekend surfing every year since she was sixteen. His California girl.
She was already starting to kiss him, her legs wrapping around his waist under the water where no one could see, wet and slippery and sun-warmed like... some kind of metaphor about summer itself that he couldn't formulate just now. He was a lot more interested in just kissing back, and in how she tasted, cool and clean against the salt-flavored air and around his deep breaths. Like he really was some kind of hero and she was the princess he'd just saved.
"Hikaru," he said with closed eyes, not knowing what he wanted to say.
She wrapped one arm around his neck and brought the other between his legs, still kissing him like an answer in the hot sunshine. The drop in his stomach with the weightlessness of the water, the heat of his cock in the coolness of the current, everything was unsteady and breathless, a feeling no one had ever had before.
He didn't try to pull away; for the first time didn't feel ashamed for how crude and desperate he wanted her. He bucked in the way she had told him she loved, let his face contort in the way she had told him was beautiful, and let her stroke him all the way through the pulses of his orgasm, holding tight to her warm back and letting her hear his sharp grunts and soft moans and finally his slow, stunned breaths.
She didn't say anything, before or after, and never stopped kissing him, either. Why would she need to? It was clear to them both. He'd gotten the hang of it at last.