Fic: Freefalling [Star Trek XI]
My contribution to DRABBLE ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER over at yahtzee63's journal. This sort of grew out of prompt 58. Kirk and Sulu, falling but as ever when I try my hand at prose somewhere along the way it became something else.
Title: Freefalling
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Characters: Sulu, Kirk
Note: Gen. Completely unbeta-ed
Prompt: Kirk, Sulu, falling
In the days after the Narada, after they limp back to Earth with Pike immobilised in sick bay and Kirk manning the bridge with bruises and blood but no rank, before the inquest begins but the memorial services have already begun, Sulu invites Kirk for a drink.
They all still have “acting” in front of their job titles, and it's easier in some regards to think of Kirk as the man who threw himself off the drill platform and saved his life rather than his perhaps-past-tense-or-maybe-future commanding officer.
Kirk quirks an eyebrow, insolent, cocky, and Sulu finds himself remembering the adrenaline fueled laughter that took them all, save Spock, in those moments after they escaped the black hole.
“Only a drink,” he clarifies, but Kirk is already amusing himself drawing his own conclusions with suggestive eyebrows.
“Only a drink.” Sulu repeats with emphasis. “There's a bar I know. Cadets don't go there.”
He lets the offer hang in the air, sees the dawning realisation on Kirk's face. Ever since they got back planet side the acting-Captain (or mutinous cadet depending on who's telling the story) has been besieged with admirers or detractors. That first night back, when Kirk had made a point of buying the drinks in the academy bar they'd almost started a riot. 80% of the graduating class may have died with Vulcan but there was enough junior classmen and academy hangers on to prompt the barman to call security.
Scotty had set off some distraction - whether it was the fire alarm or some kind of panic button Sulu didn't know, and in the ensuing chaos Kirk and McCoy had ducked out the back while Uhura and Spock slipped away through the crowd. Sulu and Chekov had escaped mostly unharmed, though the Russian navigator's youthful joy at their sudden notoriety had paled as the triumphant Scott, fresh from a dressing down by Academy security had returned to their table clutching a bottle of single malt and determination to share.
Sulu had made sure Chekov got home, though he was hardly in a better state by the end. Frustratingly Scott might as well have been drinking water for all the inebriation he showed, but Sulu knew better than to resent the engineer - if his return to Earth had been greeted with as many angry communiques as Mr Scott had apparently received from Admiral Archer's office, he wouldn't want to drink alone either.
Sulu shook off the memory with a smile, returning his attention to Kirk.
“There women at this bar?” Kirk asks.
“No one you know.”
“Then yeah, why not?”
Kirk slaps Sulu's shoulder with one of those hearty thumps he favours and Sulu represses the urge to wince.
*****
Technically he knew Kirk from an astrometrics course sometime in his second year. No one at the Academy had stayed ignorant of James T. Kirk, the son of the hero of the USS Kelvin, for long. He was too loud, rambunctious - too often engaged in debate with professors or the subject of outlandish rumours making their way around campus. It wasn't that Sulu didn't like Kirk, but they'd never really met - sharing a class didn't count - and they just didn't move in the same circles. Sulu's spare time was filled with pilot hours on any class of shuttle he could find, fencing and martial arts. From what's he'd heard Kirk's off-hours tended to involve...less scholarly pursuits.
Kirk bursting onto the bridge in the moments before they reached Vulcan had seemed at the time to mark the beginning of yet another story beginning “did you hear what Jim Kirk did?”
Here, in the darkened room of this Chinatown bar Kirk seems far less colourful.
“Did you know her first name's Nyota?” Kirk drawls, not looking away from his beer.
Sulu frowns. “Who's?”
“Uhura's. Uhura.” Kirk stretches his mouth around the vowels. “U-hura.”
Sulu shrugs, unconcerned. “What's my first name?”
Kirk looks at him, eyes intensely focused.
“Hikaru.” Kirk smirks. “Chekov is Pavel Andreievich. Spock is Spock. Scotty's Montgomery. Monty. Monty Scott.”
Sulu feels his eyebrows raise.
“It's nothing,” Kirk admits, waving a hand, “I'd been chasing that name for three years.”
Sulu has to ask. “You and...Uhura.”
“Nope,” Kirk admits, goodnaturedly. “Too good for the likes of me. More of a hobby, I guess. Something to pass the time until they let me out to the stars.” Kirk waves an empty glass at the bartender. “If they ever do again.”
“It'll be in your favour,” Sulu interjects, “I mean, we, you saved the planet.”
“Just this one.”
Sulu sobers. “We couldn't have done anything for Vulcan. They were already there, already drilling.”
“Yeah,” Kirk admits.
“If we'd just been earlier -”
“We'd have died with the rest of the fleet.”
“Yeah.”
In the pause that follows Sulu drinks the rest of his beer.
The silent bartender places two more on the bar in front of them.
Sulu takes a breath.
“I wanted to thank you,” Sulu says.
Kirk sips his drink.
“For what?”
“The drill. The parachute.”
“You already thanked me for that man.”
“Yeah but,” Sulu pauses for a moment, remembering the weight of the planet pulling him down, the wind burning his face, the sudden severe revelation that this was it, “it bares repeating.”
“I was just returning the favour,” Kirk replies between drinks.
Sulu considers as Kirk drains another glass. It's getting late. There's another memorial service tomorrow, this time for the USS Farragut. And in the afternoon the inquest begins.
“What's next for you?”
Sulu starts, jolted out of his revelry.
Kirk's looking at him again, considering him. “What's next?”
“They say I'm done with the Academy,” Sulu admits, “I've got enough hours logged to make Senior Helmsman. I'm being rushed through - fleet needs new bodies.”
“Yeah, you all are,” Kirk acknowledges, “Even Chekov is graduating early.”
“What about you,” Sulu asks, “Sir?”
“Sir?” Kirk quirks another eyebrow. “Not yet, not now. Right now you outrank me First Lieutenant Senior Helmsman. You get a ship posting with that?”
“Not yet.”
Kirk's already halfway through the latest drink the bartender's brought them. As Sulu watches he finishes the measure, tipping his head back, smacking his lips when the last drop's gone. He pushes back from the bar, retrieving his jacket from the back of the seat.
“I'll just have to take you with me then, when they give me the Enterprise.”
“We broke the Enterprise,” Sulu feels obliged to point out, “Structural damage from gravitational forces.”
“Scotty'll have her up and running in a few weeks.” Kirk says impishly.
“Scotty's not assigned to the Enterprise yet.”
Kirk grins, smug and confident.
“He's not,” Sulu adds, “None of us are.”
“We'll see.” Kirk shrugs into his jacket. “Gotta go.”
It's Sulu's turn to raise an eyebrow. “Hot date?”
“Wouldn't you like to know.”
Sulu can't help but grin. But he sobers quickly.
“But seriously Kirk,” he says, reaching out to catch the other man's arm before he goes. “Thank you.”
“It's in the past Sulu, it's done, it's over. And if you thank me for it one more time I might start regretting the whole damn thing.” Kirk grins. “Let's look forward, okay?”
Sulu nods. He raises his drink to Kirk. “To the stars.”
Kirk's grin widens.
“To the stars.”
And he's gone, slipped out the door.
Sulu turns back to the bar.
For a second he remembers how it felt, falling through the sky, no parachute, no safety line, no shuttle around him to steer or land. Free falling.
And he remembers what it was like to be caught, first by Kirk and then by the Enterprise.
Hikaru Sulu sips his drink and smiles.