Road Trip
Fandom: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series
Rating: FRT, for language.
Pairing: Chekov/Sulu
Length: ~3,500 words
Summary: The shape of the horizon is a bit unnerving after so many years in space. While on shore leave between the first and second five-year missions, Sulu and Chekov rent a car and take a roadtrip.
The road ahead winds gently around another curve.
Pavel follows it, easing the rental car through a lazy bank that chases the natural curvature of the mountainside. To their right is the same rockface they've been following -- steep and stony-gray and crowding claustrophobically close to the road -- but the trees to their left suddenly open, falling away to reveal just how much of the mountain they've climbed. The foothills sprawling out beneath them are a rolling blanket of evergreen bathed in sunlight, and the sky is the kind of brilliant, deep blue that it's easy to forget exists in space.
Hikaru makes a vague noise, and when Pavel glances across to the passenger seat, he's twisted himself around and is leaning over the seatback with his camera poised. The wind whips through his hair, making him look wild.
It was Pavel's idea to spend some of their leave time travelling.
They've been back on Earth a month already. The crew was granted a minimum three months' leave while performance reviews are compiled, and Pavel spent the first two weeks in Russia, dutifully visiting with his aunt and grandmother and giving a brief lecture series at University. But after he'd fulfilled his familial and academic obligations, he'd fled back to San Francisco.
He feels a bit lost on Earth. The Enterprise is more home to him now than Novodvinsk, and after five years it's strange to have solid dirt underneath his feet again. It makes him feel heavy: like the gravity is stronger here, even though the graviton plates on Federation starships are all calibrated to Earth-standard. Pavel has strange nightmares where he's running from something terrible but he's too slow, his limbs all trembling with fatigue, and when he finally collapses the ground turns to sand around him and swallows him up.
In space he is capable, confident; he's the most accomplished navigator in all of Starfleet. But on Earth he is small again: little Pavel Chekov, the awkward, fumbling child. He was so lonely and so desperate to be liked when he was young, and then so furious at being treated like a child while at University and the Academy; he never learned how to properly talk to people, either overeager or arrogant by turns. He thought he'd outgrown that and shed his insecurities during the five-year mission, but it had all returned as soon as he'd set foot planetside again.
Hikaru doesn't appear to have lost any of his social graces and easy smiles when they disembarked. He introduced Pavel to his family, and maneuvered Pavel through the half-hundred greetings and invitations and family dinners with the same deftness with which he handles the helm. But Pavel suspects that Hikaru doesn't sleep as well on the ground, either. He's always awake when Pavel is roused by a nightmare, already shushing him and pressing a nose into his curls.
On these nights, Pavel wraps himself up in Hikaru's arms and stares at the ceiling, trying to see through the roof to the stars, and imagining they're both missing the familiar thrum of the Enterprise engines.
So it was Pavel who suggested that they travel. He had hoped that a change of scenery might help him recover a more sure footing; they're explorers, after all. But it was Hikaru -- perhaps trying to recreate his own piece of shipboard life -- who suggested they drive.
Pavel takes the next turn maybe a bit faster than he should, letting the acceleration press him into the seatback. He imagines that it's the warp drive engaging, and the brief delay before the internal inertial dampeners engage and compensate for the forward motion.
Hikaru collapses back into his seat with a huff of laughter. "Geez, Pavel, warn me before you decide to go to warp, yeah?" he says, and it burns warmly in Pavel's stomach to know that their thoughts are still mostly aligned, even when everything else feels so off-balance.
"It's inefficient," Pavel says, more to say something than out of actual complaint. "We wind this way, and then that. What did you call them again?"
"Switchbacks."
"These switchbacks are a horrible time. We could cross the mountain in a third of the time by travelling directly."
In truth he finds the back-and-forth weaving of the road soothing, and the view is so spectacular that he can't begrudge the inefficiency of it. But after three days in the car together, they've run low on earnest conversation, so they make sport of inconsequential topics.
"I'm sure they appreciated that sentiment two hundred years ago, when they were still using the combustion engine to scale these mountains."
"You probably think it's romantic."
"Oh god, yes," Hikaru laughs. "I have a giant crush on the asphalt. I'm writing it love poems in my head. 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's pavement?' 'How do I love tar? Let me count the ways.'" He says it with such exaggerated affection -- pressing one hand to his heart and throwing the other out like he's professing love -- that Pavel can't keep his composure. He barks a laugh against the windshield.
The sun beats down warmly on their backs.
Hikaru had insisted on renting a convertible. He's covetous of his opportunity for exposure to authentic sunlight. Pavel isn't immune to the charm of the convertible; he appreciates how close he feels to the landscape without a roof closing him in, free to hear the world and feel the wind on his face. But he's fair-skinned and regrettably prone to burning.
"Too much sunlight," he'd said the first evening, when his skin turned an uncomfortable shade of pink despite liberal applications of sunscreen, "is not something we suffer from in Russia." Hikaru -- who had only become more handsome for the sun -- apologized about a hundred times and spent an hour covering Pavel's burns with aloe lotion. In the morning he bought Pavel a couple long-sleeve shirts to wear.
Now Pavel rests an arm out the side and lets the wind comb through his fingers. On the opposite side, Hikaru copies the motion.
The air is crisp and clean up here, and -- apart from the roar of the wind -- it's blessedly quiet. With regular shuttle service being so much more convenient, not many people choose to drive anymore; they have the roads mostly to themselves, particularly up here in the mountain passes. It's pleasant.
"You were right about driving," he confesses to Hikaru, glancing over again. "It was a good idea."
Hikaru has is eyes closed and is smiling beatifically into the sun. "Um. Duh. It was my idea."
Pavel snorts a laugh. "It's unfortunate you're such an awful navigator, though."
"Yeah? And I suppose you're a regular Andretti over there?"
In truth they set off with no fixed route and no plans. They have two months of leave left, and nowhere they need to be; they can afford to get a little lost. That doesn't mean Pavel is above teasing Hikaru for sending them in a circle the day before.
"All I am saying is: it's good that you brought me along. Otherwise you would be lost in the wilderness forever. And it would be a shame to have to train a new pilot when I have just broken you in."
Hikaru laughs in a short burst, loud and clear. "Ha!"
"Perhaps I would take over your job myself. It doesn't look so hard--this piloting business. Maybe I will do both jobs at once. More efficient that way, da?"
"Oh, god, yes, please. I would love to see the mess you'd make of spacedock trying to take her out all by yourself. Like interstellar pinball." Hikaru slides across the bench seat and kisses Pavel's temple, just at the edge of his curls. "In fact, Starfleet would probably find a way to use it to their advantage. Scare tactics against our enemies. The next time there's a skirmish at the border, they'll just broadcast footage of your flying."
"Naturally I would be brilliant. I don't know if you've heard, but I am something of a genius." Pavel gives Hikaru an indulgent smile. "In fact, Starfleet would probably never let me navigate again, if they discovered what an amazing pilot I would make. So you are really very lucky that I like you, Hikaru, because I think I will let you keep your job."
"So generous." Hikaru rolls his eyes and shoves playfully at him. Pavel rocks with the motion, grinning.
At the next turn they reach the crest of the pass.
There's a scenic vantage point set up, with a turn-off and some plaques to read. Pavel pulls the car in and coasts to a stop. Behind them the mountain still towers over them, but in front the ground has dropped away, pitching down into a narrow, carved-out river valley blanketed in trees. Pavel leans up over the steering wheel to get a better view, and can just hear the white roar of a nearby waterfall.
They both climb out, stretching.
Pavel arches up on his toes and bends backward to relieve the stiffness in his spine. His shirt rides up just a bit over his hip, exposing a sliver of skin, and Hikaru hums appreciatively. Pavel makes a face at him and wanders toward the edge to admire the view.
Hikaru recovers his camera from the car, and begins snapping photos.
This is another way that he and Hikaru are different: Hikaru's need to catalogue everything. Pavel is content just to drive, and to absorb the landscape as it moves beneath him. But Hikaru's life is told through photographs. The Sulus have an entire bookshelf of photo albums at their townhome in San Francisco, filled by years of birthdays and awards ceremonies and family vacations. Hikaru has his own burgeoning collection back in his quarters on the Enterprise, this one mostly of Pavel and Hikaru smiling in front of alien landscapes on shore leave, or the crew gathered together in spacedock bars or at various shipboard social functions.
Pavel has never been much of a photographer, himself. Most of his life has been spent inside classrooms and laboratories, and the miles that he has travelled were done alone: no one beside him to hold the camera. He has a few pictures from when he was younger -- his mother and father beaming down at the baby cradled between them, a two-year-old wrapped in his mother's arms and laughing as she puts his chubby fingers to the piano keys -- but for the most part he'd done nothing memorable until he met Hikaru, and then he had Hikaru to take the pictures for him.
He has one framed photo of his parents, from their wedding day, which he kept on his bedside table throughout their five-year tour. It was joined by another frame somewhere around the three-year-mark, of Pavel and Hikaru together outside an ice cream parlor on the Ceti Beta system orbital way station. He'd angled them so the pictures were facing each other just slightly, like he could show them, See? See how happy I am?
The sound of the shutter interrupts his thoughts. Hikaru's stopped taking pictures of the scenery and started taking pictures of Pavel again.
"Hikaru," he sighs, "I'm going to be upset if all you have to show of this trip are pictures of me."
"Heh. I won't be."
"Yes you will." Hikaru is secretly just a little bit vain. But it's alright, because Pavel secretly likes it. "And so will your mother. And then she will hate me."
"What? She adores you." Hikaru snaps a few more pictures, which Pavel knows are going to be unflattering because he's hunched in on himself a bit, looking petulant. So of course Hikaru will love them. "The whole time you were in Russia she wouldn't shut up about you. I'm not kidding. 'When is Pavel coming back? What kind of food does he like? Keep your feet off the couch! I won't have Pavel thinking we live like animals. You don't keep your apartment like this, do you?'"
"That's because she'd forgotten me! I never know what to say."
"You were fine."
"I broke her antique picture frame!"
"Thank god. It was hideous."
"It was a gift from your grandmother."
"Yeah, that's why we had to hang it on the wall. Seriously, we've been trying to get rid of that thing for years."
He'd wanted Hikaru's family to like him. That had been the problem. He was so nervous, he'd done nothing but mortify himself at every possible opportunity: speaking too little or too much, always underfoot among the crowd of gathered family and friends. He presses his palms to his eyes and tries to forget it.
Hikaru wraps his arms around Pavel's waist. "Hey. They all loved you, I promise. Like, 'want to adopt you' loved you. I'm expecting to get The Talk from my dad any day now, on how if I break your heart he'll break my arms."
Pavel fiddles with the hem of his sleeve, and Hikaru puts a hand beneath his chin and tilts his face up so they're looking at each other. Pavel expects Hikaru to say something deep and heartfelt, but instead he just says, "Lunch?"
Somehow that's exactly what Pavel needed to hear. "Yes," he agrees, laughing. "Lunch."
They've packed a picnic lunch for this leg of the trip, with sandwiches and sodas and a bag of chips to share. They take their meal sitting on the edge of the rock barrier, dangling bare feet over the ledge to swing freely in the air.
The view is incredible; there's a lake that's collected from snow run-off from the surrounding mountains, and one wispy bit of cloud that's stolen in from between two peaks and is slowly crawling across the valley floor. The waterfall they heard is actually somewhere beneath them, bursting out from the mountainside with a thunderous roar and erupting into the air. A pleasantly cool mist drifts upward and cools the heels of their feet.
As they eat, Hikaru takes a few more photographs of the view, and then a few of the two of them pressed together. It takes nearly two dozen attempts to get the framing right from the other side of the camera; he repeatedly catches only half of his own face or just their hair or one where the focus is accidentally set to the tip of Pavel's nose. Hikaru says he likes that one because he can see all of Pavel's freckles.
Pavel takes the camera from him and snaps several photos uncomfortably close in retribution: leaning in to capture Hikaru's nose and the corner of his mouth, and a crooked shot of his ear and hairline, and one of his hand. Pavel is secretly very proud of this last one. He's always loved Hikaru's hands -- for the way they're simultaneously strong and gentle, worn but still soft, and always steady at the helm -- but just before he'd snapped the picture Hikaru had grabbed Pavel's free hand and woven their fingers together, and from the small digital preview of the image Pavel' can't tell whose fingers belong to whom.
He makes a noise of contentment and hands the camera back to Hikaru.
"Okay," Hikaru says, "Okay. Last one, I promise."
"So long as it's not of me."
"Not you -- just your feet."
"My feet?"
"Yeah. Just." Hikaru laughs. "Just stick your feet out."
"Why would you want to take a picture of my feet?"
"Just do it, okay? Geez." Hikaru stretches his legs out, so that he bare feet are hanging over the treetops far beneath them. Pavel is skeptical as to what this will accomplish, but he copies the motion.
Hikaru leans over and snaps a photo from above. From that perspective the camera doesn't catch their legs or knees, just their bare feet hanging out above the valley like they're skimming the treetops. Pavel's toes are splayed just a little bit, and Hikaru's are slightly tanned from the time he spent at the beach in San Francisco. Their closest feet are touching gently, like they're kissing.
Pavel smiles, and leans in to kiss Hikaru. He tastes like his sandwich. Hikaru hums smugly into his mouth.
"Okay, I like it."
"You thought I was crazy, didn't you?"
"Well. Because you are."
Hikaru can only laugh at that. Pavel imagines he can hear the sound of it echoing around the valley.
"So have you ever been up into the mountains before?" Hikaru asks, stowing his camera.
"Not these mountains, no. But I spent six weeks in University at Gora Narodnaya. Mmm, you would call it 'Mount Narodnaya,' I think? It's in the Uralskiye gory. There is a high-energy physics laboratory there, and I assisted a professor with his research. The mountains are good for shielding radiation, but not as--stunning as these."
"Hmm."
They lapse into silence. It's comfortable; their sides are pressed together in a solid line of warmth, and occasionally their feet brush against each other. Pavel chews at his sandwich and thinks about that frigid winter he spent on the mountain, and how it had felt like perpetual night as he scurried between buildings and collected data and tried not to let his toes fall off. Hikaru snakes an arm around his waist and pulls him closer, like he can guess the nature of his thoughts.
"And you?" Pavel asks, more for something to say than actual curiosity; he's reasonably sure he already knows the answer. Hikaru has travelled extensively. He has stories of family vacations from all corners of the Earth, and even the Luna and Mars colonies. He's surely seen many mountains.
"Yeah, we used to go skiing at Tahoe every winter. Or my parents and Yuki skied. Aiko and Kairi and I snowboard." Hikaru makes a motion with his hand that makes Pavel think of surfboarders at the Boardwalk. Pavel laughs, and Hikaru makes an indignant sound. "What? I was pretty good! I didn't do jumps or tricks or stuff, but, y'know, I clearly made it down the mountain alive."
"'Snowboarding,'" Pavel repeats. "You could teach me?"
Hikaru glances at him, a surprised smile growing at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah. It's the wrong season, here, but we could take a shuttle somewhere. Chile, maybe? Or New Zealand? If you're serious, that is."
"Of course I'm serious." Pavel frowns, and grabs at Hikaru's hands, lacing their fingers together. "I want to travel with you. I want to--" He searches for words, trying to articulate this thing. You make me want to do all the things that I never did. I want to have a bookshelf full of photo albums, and I want you with me, in all of them.
Hikaru just nods, "Yeah," like he understands. He stares out at the valley, quietly thoughtful.
Pavel is envious of Hikaru's golden childhood, which must have been so bright and happy and crowded full of loving people and exotic places. It's so different from Pavel's own life, which feels like it's always been cold and sterile and lonely, ever since his mother died, right up until that moment he stepped onto the Enterprise. But he can't be too ungrateful, because it's that same history that brought Pavel to Hikaru.
All those years spent locked away in classrooms were lonely, yes. But if he hadn't studied so furiously -- if he hadn't been so determined to prove himself worthwhile to the world -- he might not have graduated so early; he might not have finished his Masters in time to enroll at the Academy in the fall, he might not have made it to the Enterprise bridge that day. If he hadn't lived just the life he lived, he might not have been there to meet Hikaru across the helm and shake his hand and smile.
And Pavel wouldn't trade that for the whole world.
CREDIT: Written for captwingcdrhastheconn and chekovdidyoubreakmyship, who requested "Chekov and Sulu on a road trip in a yellow convertible. Chekov drives." And I distinctly recall saying it was only going to be about 750 words long, but then a week later it was 3.5k. Unfortunately this whole thing is just, like, awful, but I can't look at it anymore right now; I'll edit it later.
Now with delightful FANART by the immeasurably talented thimblesandmorethimbles.
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Rating: FRT, for language.
Pairing: Chekov/Sulu
Length: ~3,500 words
Summary: The shape of the horizon is a bit unnerving after so many years in space. While on shore leave between the first and second five-year missions, Sulu and Chekov rent a car and take a roadtrip.
The road ahead winds gently around another curve.
Pavel follows it, easing the rental car through a lazy bank that chases the natural curvature of the mountainside. To their right is the same rockface they've been following -- steep and stony-gray and crowding claustrophobically close to the road -- but the trees to their left suddenly open, falling away to reveal just how much of the mountain they've climbed. The foothills sprawling out beneath them are a rolling blanket of evergreen bathed in sunlight, and the sky is the kind of brilliant, deep blue that it's easy to forget exists in space.
Hikaru makes a vague noise, and when Pavel glances across to the passenger seat, he's twisted himself around and is leaning over the seatback with his camera poised. The wind whips through his hair, making him look wild.
It was Pavel's idea to spend some of their leave time travelling.
They've been back on Earth a month already. The crew was granted a minimum three months' leave while performance reviews are compiled, and Pavel spent the first two weeks in Russia, dutifully visiting with his aunt and grandmother and giving a brief lecture series at University. But after he'd fulfilled his familial and academic obligations, he'd fled back to San Francisco.
He feels a bit lost on Earth. The Enterprise is more home to him now than Novodvinsk, and after five years it's strange to have solid dirt underneath his feet again. It makes him feel heavy: like the gravity is stronger here, even though the graviton plates on Federation starships are all calibrated to Earth-standard. Pavel has strange nightmares where he's running from something terrible but he's too slow, his limbs all trembling with fatigue, and when he finally collapses the ground turns to sand around him and swallows him up.
In space he is capable, confident; he's the most accomplished navigator in all of Starfleet. But on Earth he is small again: little Pavel Chekov, the awkward, fumbling child. He was so lonely and so desperate to be liked when he was young, and then so furious at being treated like a child while at University and the Academy; he never learned how to properly talk to people, either overeager or arrogant by turns. He thought he'd outgrown that and shed his insecurities during the five-year mission, but it had all returned as soon as he'd set foot planetside again.
Hikaru doesn't appear to have lost any of his social graces and easy smiles when they disembarked. He introduced Pavel to his family, and maneuvered Pavel through the half-hundred greetings and invitations and family dinners with the same deftness with which he handles the helm. But Pavel suspects that Hikaru doesn't sleep as well on the ground, either. He's always awake when Pavel is roused by a nightmare, already shushing him and pressing a nose into his curls.
On these nights, Pavel wraps himself up in Hikaru's arms and stares at the ceiling, trying to see through the roof to the stars, and imagining they're both missing the familiar thrum of the Enterprise engines.
So it was Pavel who suggested that they travel. He had hoped that a change of scenery might help him recover a more sure footing; they're explorers, after all. But it was Hikaru -- perhaps trying to recreate his own piece of shipboard life -- who suggested they drive.
Pavel takes the next turn maybe a bit faster than he should, letting the acceleration press him into the seatback. He imagines that it's the warp drive engaging, and the brief delay before the internal inertial dampeners engage and compensate for the forward motion.
Hikaru collapses back into his seat with a huff of laughter. "Geez, Pavel, warn me before you decide to go to warp, yeah?" he says, and it burns warmly in Pavel's stomach to know that their thoughts are still mostly aligned, even when everything else feels so off-balance.
"It's inefficient," Pavel says, more to say something than out of actual complaint. "We wind this way, and then that. What did you call them again?"
"Switchbacks."
"These switchbacks are a horrible time. We could cross the mountain in a third of the time by travelling directly."
In truth he finds the back-and-forth weaving of the road soothing, and the view is so spectacular that he can't begrudge the inefficiency of it. But after three days in the car together, they've run low on earnest conversation, so they make sport of inconsequential topics.
"I'm sure they appreciated that sentiment two hundred years ago, when they were still using the combustion engine to scale these mountains."
"You probably think it's romantic."
"Oh god, yes," Hikaru laughs. "I have a giant crush on the asphalt. I'm writing it love poems in my head. 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's pavement?' 'How do I love tar? Let me count the ways.'" He says it with such exaggerated affection -- pressing one hand to his heart and throwing the other out like he's professing love -- that Pavel can't keep his composure. He barks a laugh against the windshield.
The sun beats down warmly on their backs.
Hikaru had insisted on renting a convertible. He's covetous of his opportunity for exposure to authentic sunlight. Pavel isn't immune to the charm of the convertible; he appreciates how close he feels to the landscape without a roof closing him in, free to hear the world and feel the wind on his face. But he's fair-skinned and regrettably prone to burning.
"Too much sunlight," he'd said the first evening, when his skin turned an uncomfortable shade of pink despite liberal applications of sunscreen, "is not something we suffer from in Russia." Hikaru -- who had only become more handsome for the sun -- apologized about a hundred times and spent an hour covering Pavel's burns with aloe lotion. In the morning he bought Pavel a couple long-sleeve shirts to wear.
Now Pavel rests an arm out the side and lets the wind comb through his fingers. On the opposite side, Hikaru copies the motion.
The air is crisp and clean up here, and -- apart from the roar of the wind -- it's blessedly quiet. With regular shuttle service being so much more convenient, not many people choose to drive anymore; they have the roads mostly to themselves, particularly up here in the mountain passes. It's pleasant.
"You were right about driving," he confesses to Hikaru, glancing over again. "It was a good idea."
Hikaru has is eyes closed and is smiling beatifically into the sun. "Um. Duh. It was my idea."
Pavel snorts a laugh. "It's unfortunate you're such an awful navigator, though."
"Yeah? And I suppose you're a regular Andretti over there?"
In truth they set off with no fixed route and no plans. They have two months of leave left, and nowhere they need to be; they can afford to get a little lost. That doesn't mean Pavel is above teasing Hikaru for sending them in a circle the day before.
"All I am saying is: it's good that you brought me along. Otherwise you would be lost in the wilderness forever. And it would be a shame to have to train a new pilot when I have just broken you in."
Hikaru laughs in a short burst, loud and clear. "Ha!"
"Perhaps I would take over your job myself. It doesn't look so hard--this piloting business. Maybe I will do both jobs at once. More efficient that way, da?"
"Oh, god, yes, please. I would love to see the mess you'd make of spacedock trying to take her out all by yourself. Like interstellar pinball." Hikaru slides across the bench seat and kisses Pavel's temple, just at the edge of his curls. "In fact, Starfleet would probably find a way to use it to their advantage. Scare tactics against our enemies. The next time there's a skirmish at the border, they'll just broadcast footage of your flying."
"Naturally I would be brilliant. I don't know if you've heard, but I am something of a genius." Pavel gives Hikaru an indulgent smile. "In fact, Starfleet would probably never let me navigate again, if they discovered what an amazing pilot I would make. So you are really very lucky that I like you, Hikaru, because I think I will let you keep your job."
"So generous." Hikaru rolls his eyes and shoves playfully at him. Pavel rocks with the motion, grinning.
At the next turn they reach the crest of the pass.
There's a scenic vantage point set up, with a turn-off and some plaques to read. Pavel pulls the car in and coasts to a stop. Behind them the mountain still towers over them, but in front the ground has dropped away, pitching down into a narrow, carved-out river valley blanketed in trees. Pavel leans up over the steering wheel to get a better view, and can just hear the white roar of a nearby waterfall.
They both climb out, stretching.
Pavel arches up on his toes and bends backward to relieve the stiffness in his spine. His shirt rides up just a bit over his hip, exposing a sliver of skin, and Hikaru hums appreciatively. Pavel makes a face at him and wanders toward the edge to admire the view.
Hikaru recovers his camera from the car, and begins snapping photos.
This is another way that he and Hikaru are different: Hikaru's need to catalogue everything. Pavel is content just to drive, and to absorb the landscape as it moves beneath him. But Hikaru's life is told through photographs. The Sulus have an entire bookshelf of photo albums at their townhome in San Francisco, filled by years of birthdays and awards ceremonies and family vacations. Hikaru has his own burgeoning collection back in his quarters on the Enterprise, this one mostly of Pavel and Hikaru smiling in front of alien landscapes on shore leave, or the crew gathered together in spacedock bars or at various shipboard social functions.
Pavel has never been much of a photographer, himself. Most of his life has been spent inside classrooms and laboratories, and the miles that he has travelled were done alone: no one beside him to hold the camera. He has a few pictures from when he was younger -- his mother and father beaming down at the baby cradled between them, a two-year-old wrapped in his mother's arms and laughing as she puts his chubby fingers to the piano keys -- but for the most part he'd done nothing memorable until he met Hikaru, and then he had Hikaru to take the pictures for him.
He has one framed photo of his parents, from their wedding day, which he kept on his bedside table throughout their five-year tour. It was joined by another frame somewhere around the three-year-mark, of Pavel and Hikaru together outside an ice cream parlor on the Ceti Beta system orbital way station. He'd angled them so the pictures were facing each other just slightly, like he could show them, See? See how happy I am?
The sound of the shutter interrupts his thoughts. Hikaru's stopped taking pictures of the scenery and started taking pictures of Pavel again.
"Hikaru," he sighs, "I'm going to be upset if all you have to show of this trip are pictures of me."
"Heh. I won't be."
"Yes you will." Hikaru is secretly just a little bit vain. But it's alright, because Pavel secretly likes it. "And so will your mother. And then she will hate me."
"What? She adores you." Hikaru snaps a few more pictures, which Pavel knows are going to be unflattering because he's hunched in on himself a bit, looking petulant. So of course Hikaru will love them. "The whole time you were in Russia she wouldn't shut up about you. I'm not kidding. 'When is Pavel coming back? What kind of food does he like? Keep your feet off the couch! I won't have Pavel thinking we live like animals. You don't keep your apartment like this, do you?'"
"That's because she'd forgotten me! I never know what to say."
"You were fine."
"I broke her antique picture frame!"
"Thank god. It was hideous."
"It was a gift from your grandmother."
"Yeah, that's why we had to hang it on the wall. Seriously, we've been trying to get rid of that thing for years."
He'd wanted Hikaru's family to like him. That had been the problem. He was so nervous, he'd done nothing but mortify himself at every possible opportunity: speaking too little or too much, always underfoot among the crowd of gathered family and friends. He presses his palms to his eyes and tries to forget it.
Hikaru wraps his arms around Pavel's waist. "Hey. They all loved you, I promise. Like, 'want to adopt you' loved you. I'm expecting to get The Talk from my dad any day now, on how if I break your heart he'll break my arms."
Pavel fiddles with the hem of his sleeve, and Hikaru puts a hand beneath his chin and tilts his face up so they're looking at each other. Pavel expects Hikaru to say something deep and heartfelt, but instead he just says, "Lunch?"
Somehow that's exactly what Pavel needed to hear. "Yes," he agrees, laughing. "Lunch."
They've packed a picnic lunch for this leg of the trip, with sandwiches and sodas and a bag of chips to share. They take their meal sitting on the edge of the rock barrier, dangling bare feet over the ledge to swing freely in the air.
The view is incredible; there's a lake that's collected from snow run-off from the surrounding mountains, and one wispy bit of cloud that's stolen in from between two peaks and is slowly crawling across the valley floor. The waterfall they heard is actually somewhere beneath them, bursting out from the mountainside with a thunderous roar and erupting into the air. A pleasantly cool mist drifts upward and cools the heels of their feet.
As they eat, Hikaru takes a few more photographs of the view, and then a few of the two of them pressed together. It takes nearly two dozen attempts to get the framing right from the other side of the camera; he repeatedly catches only half of his own face or just their hair or one where the focus is accidentally set to the tip of Pavel's nose. Hikaru says he likes that one because he can see all of Pavel's freckles.
Pavel takes the camera from him and snaps several photos uncomfortably close in retribution: leaning in to capture Hikaru's nose and the corner of his mouth, and a crooked shot of his ear and hairline, and one of his hand. Pavel is secretly very proud of this last one. He's always loved Hikaru's hands -- for the way they're simultaneously strong and gentle, worn but still soft, and always steady at the helm -- but just before he'd snapped the picture Hikaru had grabbed Pavel's free hand and woven their fingers together, and from the small digital preview of the image Pavel' can't tell whose fingers belong to whom.
He makes a noise of contentment and hands the camera back to Hikaru.
"Okay," Hikaru says, "Okay. Last one, I promise."
"So long as it's not of me."
"Not you -- just your feet."
"My feet?"
"Yeah. Just." Hikaru laughs. "Just stick your feet out."
"Why would you want to take a picture of my feet?"
"Just do it, okay? Geez." Hikaru stretches his legs out, so that he bare feet are hanging over the treetops far beneath them. Pavel is skeptical as to what this will accomplish, but he copies the motion.
Hikaru leans over and snaps a photo from above. From that perspective the camera doesn't catch their legs or knees, just their bare feet hanging out above the valley like they're skimming the treetops. Pavel's toes are splayed just a little bit, and Hikaru's are slightly tanned from the time he spent at the beach in San Francisco. Their closest feet are touching gently, like they're kissing.
Pavel smiles, and leans in to kiss Hikaru. He tastes like his sandwich. Hikaru hums smugly into his mouth.
"Okay, I like it."
"You thought I was crazy, didn't you?"
"Well. Because you are."
Hikaru can only laugh at that. Pavel imagines he can hear the sound of it echoing around the valley.
"So have you ever been up into the mountains before?" Hikaru asks, stowing his camera.
"Not these mountains, no. But I spent six weeks in University at Gora Narodnaya. Mmm, you would call it 'Mount Narodnaya,' I think? It's in the Uralskiye gory. There is a high-energy physics laboratory there, and I assisted a professor with his research. The mountains are good for shielding radiation, but not as--stunning as these."
"Hmm."
They lapse into silence. It's comfortable; their sides are pressed together in a solid line of warmth, and occasionally their feet brush against each other. Pavel chews at his sandwich and thinks about that frigid winter he spent on the mountain, and how it had felt like perpetual night as he scurried between buildings and collected data and tried not to let his toes fall off. Hikaru snakes an arm around his waist and pulls him closer, like he can guess the nature of his thoughts.
"And you?" Pavel asks, more for something to say than actual curiosity; he's reasonably sure he already knows the answer. Hikaru has travelled extensively. He has stories of family vacations from all corners of the Earth, and even the Luna and Mars colonies. He's surely seen many mountains.
"Yeah, we used to go skiing at Tahoe every winter. Or my parents and Yuki skied. Aiko and Kairi and I snowboard." Hikaru makes a motion with his hand that makes Pavel think of surfboarders at the Boardwalk. Pavel laughs, and Hikaru makes an indignant sound. "What? I was pretty good! I didn't do jumps or tricks or stuff, but, y'know, I clearly made it down the mountain alive."
"'Snowboarding,'" Pavel repeats. "You could teach me?"
Hikaru glances at him, a surprised smile growing at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah. It's the wrong season, here, but we could take a shuttle somewhere. Chile, maybe? Or New Zealand? If you're serious, that is."
"Of course I'm serious." Pavel frowns, and grabs at Hikaru's hands, lacing their fingers together. "I want to travel with you. I want to--" He searches for words, trying to articulate this thing. You make me want to do all the things that I never did. I want to have a bookshelf full of photo albums, and I want you with me, in all of them.
Hikaru just nods, "Yeah," like he understands. He stares out at the valley, quietly thoughtful.
Pavel is envious of Hikaru's golden childhood, which must have been so bright and happy and crowded full of loving people and exotic places. It's so different from Pavel's own life, which feels like it's always been cold and sterile and lonely, ever since his mother died, right up until that moment he stepped onto the Enterprise. But he can't be too ungrateful, because it's that same history that brought Pavel to Hikaru.
All those years spent locked away in classrooms were lonely, yes. But if he hadn't studied so furiously -- if he hadn't been so determined to prove himself worthwhile to the world -- he might not have graduated so early; he might not have finished his Masters in time to enroll at the Academy in the fall, he might not have made it to the Enterprise bridge that day. If he hadn't lived just the life he lived, he might not have been there to meet Hikaru across the helm and shake his hand and smile.
And Pavel wouldn't trade that for the whole world.
CREDIT: Written for captwingcdrhastheconn and chekovdidyoubreakmyship, who requested "Chekov and Sulu on a road trip in a yellow convertible. Chekov drives." And I distinctly recall saying it was only going to be about 750 words long, but then a week later it was 3.5k. Unfortunately this whole thing is just, like, awful, but I can't look at it anymore right now; I'll edit it later.
Now with delightful FANART by the immeasurably talented thimblesandmorethimbles.
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