Fic: Once Upon A Time, Like The Last Day On Earth (1/1)
Title: Once Upon A Time, Like The Last Day On Earth
Rating: R
Pairing: McCoy/Chekov
Word Count: 1,374
Summary: The kid is seventeen, and he’s not supposed to die like this. For toestastegood, who requested “ McCoy/Chekov” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. Warnings for implied underage sexuality (as a function of the characters); Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For toestastegood: I'd never even really thought about these two before now, so I don't really know if I got them right or not; but it didn't end in total disaster (I don't think), so that was actually a huge improvement on what I'd initially expected would happen if I ever tried writing McCoy/Chekov ;)
Once Upon A Time, Like The Last Day On Earth
Seventeen. It’s all he can think about as the dust settles, and the world goes dark - the kid is seven-fucking-teen, and he’s not supposed to die like this.
Communications were knocked out hours ago, days maybe. They’d been wandering like a couple of nomads on this godforsaken rock in the middle of nowhere, walking until the sky fell and the walls caved in, and all Leonard knows now is that there’s more red - dried, crusted red; already spilled, already dead - than gold on that uniform, now; knows that the world’s gone wrong when his heart pounds a little harder with foolish, impossible hope every time that red soften, dampens, flows anew, because that means there’s still time, still a chance. There’s a heart still beating under all that fucking blood, and Leonard’s not giving up until it does, until he does.
And choking, gasping, biting his lip to the point of puncture; Pavel Chekov’s not going down without a fight.
_________________________
Their medical supplies had been exhausted long before the worst had settled in; the best they have are precious strips of cloth ripped from their uniforms, sacrificing warmth for blood as he ties tourniquets that only slow, only postpone the inevitable.
And Leonard, who emerged from the womb a terminal pessimist, can only think about how he’d fought this from the very first; told the kid that it was a bad idea, a really fucking bad idea. And it was, it always had been - there was nothing in this universe for a bright, beautiful young man who hitched his wagon to a dying star already burning out.
He can only think that, if he’d just said no, one more time, Pavel might have gotten the message, might have given up; he can’t help but think that, if he’d stopped this - whatever this is - between them, before it began, then Pavel wouldn’t have been with him when the bastards opened fire, when the cave in took them down. He would have been with Sulu, with Jim; fuck, he’d have been with that hobgoblin-son-of--a-bitch; he’d have been with anyone, anyone else.
He’d have been with anyone else, and he would have lived.
Dying star, indeed.
_________________________
In the fleeting intervals of consciousness, the ones where Pavel knows he’s not home in Russia, knows that it’s Leonard tending to him, next to him, never leaving his side; in those sparse and scattered moments, Pavel breaks Leonard’s heart.
The requests to send his love from beyond the grave to various family members, that’s not unusual, nothing Leonard’s not been asked before; it just hurts deeper this time around, cuts with a duller blade and leaves a more jagged mark, harder to heal - harder to forget. When he asks Leonard to make sure that certain friends get his things - like Hikaru, who should have his niliroot, the only plant he owns, and the Captain, who should have the first-edition copy of The Brothers Karamazov that he inherited, flaking and falling apart, from his great-grandfather, Mikhail - Leonard runs careful, steady hands over Pavel’s, tells him in a cynical tone, with more levity than his heart can take, not to count his chickens before they hatch. But Pavel, though, he just laughs - devolves into a gurgling moan as he struggles for the breath, and Leonard curses himself, wonders how many precious minutes, moments he’s cut off the poor kid’s life when it counts, at its end; laughs, and tells Leonard that he can have his vodka glasses, the ones his uncle had blown himself, crafted by hand, but only so long as he promises to drink proper Russian vodka from them once in a while - promises to drink it, and to think of Pavel.
At that, Leonard can’t help the tears that escape his eyes, that draw patterns in the dirt on his cheeks.
The worst thing, by far, is when Pavel reminds Leonard of what he promised him, the first time they’d kissed.
‘It is a pity,’ he says, softly - too soft; ‘perhaps the most regrettable of all.’
Leonard doesn’t ask him to elaborate, checks the makeshift dressings on his wounds, watches them seep with the words, lets the letters bleed along, uninterrupted, uninhibited - unstoppable.
‘You had promised me...’ and even now, at the end, the kid’s still just a boy, more than a man; ‘that we might make attempts at... intimacy, as soon as I reached my eighteen years.’
And of course, Leonard remembers, knows - had pushed it from his mind as best he could in hopes the kid would wake the fuck up and realize that he deserved better than a washed-out cynic from cotton-country (in hopes he’d never wake up, not ever); had tried to forget it as he watched Pavel slip, watched him fall away.
‘I do not believe that I shall make my eighteen years, Doctor,’ he whispers, and the regret there isn’t, isn’t for himself, which is something that Leonard will never quite comprehend; ‘It is indeed a shame, to have missed such an opportunity.’
He doesn’t know what prompts him to move, what leads him to ease the kid to sitting and settle at his back, to let his legs stretch long, limber at either torn and tattered side; what drives him to reach around, lip bit hard as he asks for forgiveness from whoever’s listening, from himself, to slip his fingers past the waist on the young ensign’s trousers, reach further until he feels the gasp that wracks every delicate bit of him, hanging onto this world by a thread.
‘What,’ the boy begins, chokes, but Leonard tells him to be still, and Pavel listens; it’s not how he wanted this to happen, not how he’d pictured it a million different times in his head.
And Leonard knows the kid’s body’s not up to this, knows it’s more than just a risk, it’s fucking suicide; but goddamn, he won’t deprive him what he wants. Leonard might be a physician, but he’s not stoic enough, not heartless enough - just desperate enough - to steal borrowed, fleeting moments from death at the cost of not giving the boy he cares for, the man he loves, what he’s ached for from the very start.
Five days. He’d have been eighteen in five fucking days.
_________________________
They’re slowly approaching the end, now; their time is almost up, and if they don’t know it, their lungs sure as hell do as they burn for air, as their pulses hit heavy in their ears, drums of the apocalypse; but they keep close, pressed against one another, Pavel’s hold upon him as breakable as ice, delicate as lace - but Leonard’s never felt anything so certain, so warm.
And for a moment, he doesn’t think about the percentage of oxygen left swirling around them, doesn’t count the feeble beats beneath his lips as he presses his mouth tenderly to the hollow of those heaving, shivering collarbones. For a moment, he closes his eyes and feels only the warmth still there, instead of the pervasive cool taking over; consecrates the faltering rhythm of a heart too vibrant, too young to be so fragile, so faint (seven-fucking-teen, goddamnit) - for a moment he breathes, lets his head rest above those too slow-lungs, and he tastes youth and life and a soft sweetness that burns in the center of his chest; and he hopes, foolishly, that infinity can stretch just a little bit farther, just for the two of them.
Rating: R
Pairing: McCoy/Chekov
Word Count: 1,374
Summary: The kid is seventeen, and he’s not supposed to die like this. For toestastegood, who requested “ McCoy/Chekov” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. Warnings for implied underage sexuality (as a function of the characters); Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For toestastegood: I'd never even really thought about these two before now, so I don't really know if I got them right or not; but it didn't end in total disaster (I don't think), so that was actually a huge improvement on what I'd initially expected would happen if I ever tried writing McCoy/Chekov ;)
Once Upon A Time, Like The Last Day On Earth
Seventeen. It’s all he can think about as the dust settles, and the world goes dark - the kid is seven-fucking-teen, and he’s not supposed to die like this.
Communications were knocked out hours ago, days maybe. They’d been wandering like a couple of nomads on this godforsaken rock in the middle of nowhere, walking until the sky fell and the walls caved in, and all Leonard knows now is that there’s more red - dried, crusted red; already spilled, already dead - than gold on that uniform, now; knows that the world’s gone wrong when his heart pounds a little harder with foolish, impossible hope every time that red soften, dampens, flows anew, because that means there’s still time, still a chance. There’s a heart still beating under all that fucking blood, and Leonard’s not giving up until it does, until he does.
And choking, gasping, biting his lip to the point of puncture; Pavel Chekov’s not going down without a fight.
_________________________
Their medical supplies had been exhausted long before the worst had settled in; the best they have are precious strips of cloth ripped from their uniforms, sacrificing warmth for blood as he ties tourniquets that only slow, only postpone the inevitable.
And Leonard, who emerged from the womb a terminal pessimist, can only think about how he’d fought this from the very first; told the kid that it was a bad idea, a really fucking bad idea. And it was, it always had been - there was nothing in this universe for a bright, beautiful young man who hitched his wagon to a dying star already burning out.
He can only think that, if he’d just said no, one more time, Pavel might have gotten the message, might have given up; he can’t help but think that, if he’d stopped this - whatever this is - between them, before it began, then Pavel wouldn’t have been with him when the bastards opened fire, when the cave in took them down. He would have been with Sulu, with Jim; fuck, he’d have been with that hobgoblin-son-of--a-bitch; he’d have been with anyone, anyone else.
He’d have been with anyone else, and he would have lived.
Dying star, indeed.
_________________________
In the fleeting intervals of consciousness, the ones where Pavel knows he’s not home in Russia, knows that it’s Leonard tending to him, next to him, never leaving his side; in those sparse and scattered moments, Pavel breaks Leonard’s heart.
The requests to send his love from beyond the grave to various family members, that’s not unusual, nothing Leonard’s not been asked before; it just hurts deeper this time around, cuts with a duller blade and leaves a more jagged mark, harder to heal - harder to forget. When he asks Leonard to make sure that certain friends get his things - like Hikaru, who should have his niliroot, the only plant he owns, and the Captain, who should have the first-edition copy of The Brothers Karamazov that he inherited, flaking and falling apart, from his great-grandfather, Mikhail - Leonard runs careful, steady hands over Pavel’s, tells him in a cynical tone, with more levity than his heart can take, not to count his chickens before they hatch. But Pavel, though, he just laughs - devolves into a gurgling moan as he struggles for the breath, and Leonard curses himself, wonders how many precious minutes, moments he’s cut off the poor kid’s life when it counts, at its end; laughs, and tells Leonard that he can have his vodka glasses, the ones his uncle had blown himself, crafted by hand, but only so long as he promises to drink proper Russian vodka from them once in a while - promises to drink it, and to think of Pavel.
At that, Leonard can’t help the tears that escape his eyes, that draw patterns in the dirt on his cheeks.
The worst thing, by far, is when Pavel reminds Leonard of what he promised him, the first time they’d kissed.
‘It is a pity,’ he says, softly - too soft; ‘perhaps the most regrettable of all.’
Leonard doesn’t ask him to elaborate, checks the makeshift dressings on his wounds, watches them seep with the words, lets the letters bleed along, uninterrupted, uninhibited - unstoppable.
‘You had promised me...’ and even now, at the end, the kid’s still just a boy, more than a man; ‘that we might make attempts at... intimacy, as soon as I reached my eighteen years.’
And of course, Leonard remembers, knows - had pushed it from his mind as best he could in hopes the kid would wake the fuck up and realize that he deserved better than a washed-out cynic from cotton-country (in hopes he’d never wake up, not ever); had tried to forget it as he watched Pavel slip, watched him fall away.
‘I do not believe that I shall make my eighteen years, Doctor,’ he whispers, and the regret there isn’t, isn’t for himself, which is something that Leonard will never quite comprehend; ‘It is indeed a shame, to have missed such an opportunity.’
He doesn’t know what prompts him to move, what leads him to ease the kid to sitting and settle at his back, to let his legs stretch long, limber at either torn and tattered side; what drives him to reach around, lip bit hard as he asks for forgiveness from whoever’s listening, from himself, to slip his fingers past the waist on the young ensign’s trousers, reach further until he feels the gasp that wracks every delicate bit of him, hanging onto this world by a thread.
‘What,’ the boy begins, chokes, but Leonard tells him to be still, and Pavel listens; it’s not how he wanted this to happen, not how he’d pictured it a million different times in his head.
And Leonard knows the kid’s body’s not up to this, knows it’s more than just a risk, it’s fucking suicide; but goddamn, he won’t deprive him what he wants. Leonard might be a physician, but he’s not stoic enough, not heartless enough - just desperate enough - to steal borrowed, fleeting moments from death at the cost of not giving the boy he cares for, the man he loves, what he’s ached for from the very start.
Five days. He’d have been eighteen in five fucking days.
_________________________
They’re slowly approaching the end, now; their time is almost up, and if they don’t know it, their lungs sure as hell do as they burn for air, as their pulses hit heavy in their ears, drums of the apocalypse; but they keep close, pressed against one another, Pavel’s hold upon him as breakable as ice, delicate as lace - but Leonard’s never felt anything so certain, so warm.
And for a moment, he doesn’t think about the percentage of oxygen left swirling around them, doesn’t count the feeble beats beneath his lips as he presses his mouth tenderly to the hollow of those heaving, shivering collarbones. For a moment, he closes his eyes and feels only the warmth still there, instead of the pervasive cool taking over; consecrates the faltering rhythm of a heart too vibrant, too young to be so fragile, so faint (seven-fucking-teen, goddamnit) - for a moment he breathes, lets his head rest above those too slow-lungs, and he tastes youth and life and a soft sweetness that burns in the center of his chest; and he hopes, foolishly, that infinity can stretch just a little bit farther, just for the two of them.