Sulu/Chekov Fic: Now Disappear
Title: Now Disappear
Fandom: Star Trek
Pairing: Sulu/Chekov
Rating: R
Summary: Chekov develops amnesia during a mission and can't remember the past five years of his life. Sulu is heartbroken.
Notes: Thank you to chlorate for the beta read!
Sulu wakes up in a silent panic, his body jerking as if he's been bitten by a spider. He can't remember what he was dreaming about, but it wasn't anything good. His heart is pounding and he's overcome by the eerie feeling that someone is standing in the darkness of his room and watching him. He leans up over Chekov, who is sleeping on his stomach, hugging his pillow. Sulu slides his arm across Chekov's back as he looks around the room, his eyes beginning to adjust to the darkness. There's nothing there, just his things and the shadows.
He lets out his breath and lies back down, glancing at the clock. It's a little after four in the morning, and he'll have to get up in less than an hour. He rolls toward Chekov and watches him sleep, trying to calm down. They've been sleeping in the same bed for almost a year now, but it's still hard to look at him without touching him, and when Sulu spreads his hand across Chekov's back his skin is so hot with sleep. Touching him like this, when they're together in the cocoon of nighttime and Chekov is totally surrendered, sleeping deeply beside him, makes Sulu feel like he did the first time he saw the Earth from space, as if the experience is new and amazing and singularly his, as if no one else has ever appreciated the heat of someone else's skin this way.
He still gets stupidly emotional about Chekov, especially in the middle of the night, when he sometimes wakes up like this, feeling vulnerable as the Enterprise floats through space under the control of he and Chekov's second shift understudies. Lately, relations with the Klingons have been especially tense. Sulu thought Kirk was being dramatic when he talked about war, but he might have been underestimating Kirk's sense for things like this. Sulu has never been to war before, and he's never been in love before, either. It's kind of overwhelming at moments.
Sulu shuffles around, trying to get back to sleep, and Chekov groans a little, just the tiniest thing from the back of his throat. It makes Sulu ache for him, and he's glad when Chekov wakes up, blinking at him groggily. Chekov mutters something in Russian and then shakes his head at himself.
"What's wrong?" he asks, translating.
"Nothing. I don't know. I just have a weird feeling."
"What sort of feeling?" Chekov asks, moving closer. Sulu opens his arms and Chekov dumps himself onto Sulu's chest with a sleepy grunt.
"Like something bad is going to happen," Sulu says. "Now it sounds stupid. Forget it, I'm sorry I woke you."
"Did you have a bad dream?" Chekov asks, mumbling against Sulu's skin, his eyes shut. He's already half-asleep again, and Sulu wishes he weren't. As dumb as it sounds out loud, he does want to talk about it.
"No, I don't think so. Maybe. But it's this -- I don't know. I was thinking, what if we're attacked while we're off duty? What if there are two or three really critical seconds and we're not up on the bridge?"
"We have to sleep sometime," Chekov says.
"I know. I'm being stupid, sorry."
Chekov hoists himself up onto his elbows, groaning and looking down at Sulu with his eyelids heavy. He leans in to kiss Sulu's mouth, his lips dry but soft.
"If something happens," Chekov says, "We will run to the bridge. In our underwear if we must."
"Easy for you to say."
"What do you mean by that?" Chekov asks, grinning.
"That you can run a lot faster than I can."
"Oh, I thought you meant that I would like to be on the bridge in my underwear."
"Yeah, that too."
Chekov smiles and kisses Sulu more seriously, making Sulu feel self-conscious about his breath. Chekov still tastes like the coffee that he drank before bed. Sulu has never met anyone else who gets sleepy after drinking caffeine and sharper after drinking alcohol. Or maybe Chekov only seems sharp when he's drinking because Sulu is usually in the bag around the time Chekov is really getting started.
They have sex, Sulu sinking into the hot comfort of Chekov's body, all of his anxiety dissipating as Chekov pushes himself down onto Sulu's cock, Sulu on his back and Chekov still half-asleep as he moans and arches backward, propped up against Sulu's bent knees. He always sounds like he's just discovered some fascinating scientific principle when he's riding Sulu's cock: Ahhh, yes. He's different when he's on his hands and knees, Sulu slamming into him from behind: then it's all Fuck, fuck, Hikaru, like a filthy football cheer, until he dissolves into Russian. When they're face to face he just breathes very hard against Sulu's mouth, and that Sulu's favorite, really, though he can't imagine living without any of the noises Chekov makes when they're locked together.
"Gonna come for me?" Sulu asks, pulling on Chekov's cock as he continues to fuck himself down onto Sulu, his bounces getting shorter and slower now, and Sulu knows what that means.
"Yeah," Chekov says brokenly, panting. "Hikaru," he adds, whining it out like a plea.
"Yeah?" Sulu gives him the wicked grin he likes and strokes his fingers up and down the underside of Chekov's cock, way too lightly. Chekov whines again, wincing up at the ceiling.
"Hikaru, please," he says, but he doesn't reach out to finish the job himself, just pushes himself down harder around Sulu's cock, groaning in unrestrained agony, and Sulu actually kind of wishes that the others on the bridge knew this side of Chekov, that they would look at him in awe at moments like Sulu does, remembering it.
Sulu takes pity, he always does, too soon, not as good at these games as he sometimes thinks Chekov wishes he were. He closes his fist around Chekov's cock again and pumps him hard, because he loves this part and is too close to coming himself to hold out any longer. Chekov curses in the long stream of Russian that Sulu once asked him to translate, and if Chekov is to be believed he's saying something like motherfucking shit, yeah, only it sounds way better in his native language, and Sulu comes just afterward, squeezing Chekov's hips into his hands as he holds him down onto his cock.
They're both wrecked by it, still, a year after the first time, the night of Chekov's eighteenth birthday party, Sulu drunk and Chekov begging like please was the only word he knew in English. He didn't have to beg Sulu to kiss him, or whisper things against his cheeks: You're so perfect, I can't stop looking at you, want you more than anything. He didn't have to beg at all, but he kept doing it, even when Sulu was inside him, his mouth on Chekov's neck like it was a breathing apparatus, like it was the only air in the room.
"Hey," Sulu says, shaking Chekov awake when he starts to go under again. Chekov groans in annoyance and keeps his eyes shut. He's flopped onto his back like a fish, one hand thumped onto his chest and the other pressed against Sulu's cheek, a caress that becomes a warning when Sulu prods him again.
"Please, Hikaru," Chekov says, mumbling, the request quite different now.
"Remember the first time we had sex?" Sulu asks, feeling ridiculous but unable to help himself.
"No, I have forgotten it," Chekov says, grinning, as if he ever could.
"Oh, well, let me remind you. You kept saying please, it was like constant, and you never did it after that."
Chekov hums with disinterest. Sulu would hate to break it to him that they have to get up in about ten minutes anyway.
"I was nervous," Chekov says dismissively.
"Nervous! You just lay there, I did all the work."
"Hikaru, why are you thinking of this now?" Chekov asks, whining out the question so petulantly that Sulu is spurred into kissing his face, which only irritates Chekov further, though he lies there and takes it.
"I don't know," Sulu says. "Humor me. What were you begging for? I mean, I was giving it all I had."
"I think I was begging God not to make my heart explode because I felt like it might." Chekov rolls onto his stomach again. "But I don't really know."
"Hmmph." Sulu kisses the back of his neck. He's not sure why he's afraid to let Chekov fall asleep. "So you have forgotten."
"My thoughts were not very organized at the time," Chekov says. "Mostly I was thinking, here I am, getting what I've wanted so much. I was afraid I would wake up in the morning and find out it wasn't real."
Sulu opens his mouth and then shuts it. He was going to say I feel that way every night, all the time, but maybe that's ridiculous. Of course it is. He curls his arm around Chekov's shoulder and lets him sleep.
*
As soon as they're together on the bridge the next morning, things feel safe and stable again, every element in its place. Chekov is tired and quiet, plugging in coordinates and stopping occasionally to scribble calculations on the little notepad he keeps at his desk, which everyone teases him for, because it's so old-fashioned. Sulu is half-listening to Kirk trying to explain baseball to Spock as Spock attempts to break in and tell Kirk that he is perfectly familiar with the rules of this human game.
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you really get it," Kirk says, and Sulu snorts, because there is no possible reason for Kirk to explain the intangibles of baseball to Spock aside from annoying him, which is still Kirk's favorite pastime, even though the two have become close friends.
"If you're trying to communicate the cultural --" Spock begins to say, but that's the end of their peaceful morning, because suddenly every monitor on the bridge is flashing red with a blaring warning about incoming missiles.
"Captain!" Uhura shouts, ripping her headphones off, but Kirk is already at Sulu's shoulder, staring at his monitor.
"Shields," Kirk says, and Sulu has already initiated the sequence, but he's afraid it might be too late. His heart hasn't even begun to pound properly, but then the proximity alarms start blaring.
"Chekov, where are they firing from?" Kirk shouts.
"I don't know, sir, I --" Chekov is scrambling; Sulu can see him panicking out of the corner of his eye, but how could anyone have anticipated such a sudden attack? He can see the incoming missile on his screen, and he won't be able to warp away in time, so he flings the ship to the left as hard as he can, hoping that they'll at least be struck low on the right side, nowhere near the bridge or the quarters where half the crew is still sleeping.
Chekov's notepad slides from the desk, and he bends down to grab it. That's when they're hit. Sulu catches his hands against his console, careful not to jam any buttons, and Kirk steadies himself against the back of Sulu's chair. Sulu doesn't have time to do anything but punch in the warp coordinates, Kirk shouting in his ear, and Sulu doesn't need to hear the words, he knows what he has to do. He prays that it will work despite whatever damage was just done to the ship -- Scotty is screaming over the intercom but Sulu can't think about that yet -- and he glances over at Chekov just as the ship is jumping to warp. Chekov is on the floor, almost under the console, holding the left side of his head and wincing. The ship jumps away from its attacker just as the monitors begin to blare a second warning, and when they streak to safety Sulu remembers the sound he'd heard just after impact, right at his shoulder, like stone against metal. It was Chekov's forehead meeting the console as he fell.
"Have we been followed?" Kirk asks as Chekov climbs back into his chair, blood streaking down the side of his face.
"No, sir," Chekov says, leaning forward to squint at his screen. "It does not appear that we were."
"What the fuck was that?" Kirk bellows. "Where -- how --?"
"Must have been long range," Sulu says, scooting his chair over to Chekov's. "He's hurt," Sulu says to Kirk as Chekov leans forward, hissing and putting his head in his hands.
"Let me see," Kirk says, turning Chekov's chair toward him and bending down to see his cut. "Spock," he shouts over his shoulder. "Review the surveillance tapes, find out what just happened -- and for God's sake, somebody tell Scotty that we're on it, send a team to check out the damage." He turns back to Chekov, who is shaking his head. Sulu is just shaking, staring at him.
"I'm okay, Keptin," Chekov says, though he's looking at Sulu.
"Are you sure?" Kirk asks. "I can get Hansen back up here if you need to go get a bandage or something, that looks pretty --"
"No, I'm fine, I'm fine," Chekov says. He's still got his eyes locked on Sulu's, and the way he's looking at Sulu braces him like cold poison more than the attack on the ship or the blood leaking from Chekov's wound. He's looking at Sulu not with fear but with a sort of apologetic resignation, like one of them is about to go away for a long time.
"It is just a bump on the head," Chekov says. "Not serious." As he says so a dark trickle of blood streaks down from his nose, and he reaches up in surprise to wipe it away.
"I think you should --" Sulu starts to say, and then Chekov pitches forward, his eyes rolling back into his head. Kirk curses and catches him, and Sulu falls to his knees to yank him from Kirk's grip.
"Pavel!" he says. The frantic activity on the bridge goes still for a moment as Chekov's head slumps back lifelessly against Sulu's arm.
"Get Bones!" Kirk is screaming. "Bring him here!"
Then all the sound on the bridge fades slowly to background nonsense, and all Sulu can hear is his own breath, shuddering and unsteady and thinning out with every second that Chekov doesn't open his eyes, because Sulu has lost his only source of air.
*
Kirk knows enough about what's been going on between Sulu and Chekov to order Sulu to accompany Chekov to sick bay when McCoy is ready to transport him. There would be no point in Sulu staying on the bridge; he can't think straight, he can't even breathe. He walks alongside Chekov's stretcher, stumbling and staring at him, feeling like he did when Chekov was still a trembly seventeen-year-old, like he wants to put his hands around Chekov's face and protect him from everything. Instead, he's hurt him -- this is Sulu's fault. He pitched the ship too hard, let himself get too panicked.
McCoy performs emergency surgery to drain the internal bleeding. Sulu sits on the floor in the hall outside the sick bay during the surgery, trying not to break down. Uhura arrives after a few hours and sits down beside him with a sigh.
"What's the situation?" Sulu asks, staring straight ahead.
"New Klingon technology," Uhura says. "We've received threats. It's going to be bad." She reaches over to place a hand on Sulu's knee. "What's the situation in there?" she asks.
"Nobody's telling me anything," Sulu says. His eyes get wet, the way Uhura is looking at him breaking through his stoic disbelief. "Uhura, if --" That's as far as he gets. She nods.
"I know," she says softly.
When her break ends she returns to her post, and Kirk is the next one to show up. He reaches down and pulls Sulu up from the floor.
"You saved us with that warp," Kirk says, squeezing Sulu's shoulder. Sulu shakes his head.
"I -- the way he fell -- that was sloppy, what I did --"
"Hey, hey. The damage to the hull could have been much worse if you hadn't moved us like that. He'll be okay, Hikaru, and he'll be real proud of you for what you did."
Sulu sighs and leans back against the wall. For the past two hours he's been trying to envision Chekov's recovery, how he'll wake up and put his arms around Sulu's shoulders, telling him not to worry, that he's fine. Sulu has never had a hard time conjuring fantasies; God knows he became an expert at that in his first six months aboard the Enterprise with Chekov, before they'd ever touched. But his visions of Chekov sitting up in bed are vague and hazy at best, less of a comfort than his intricate fantasies about holding and kissing him once were. His worry is much sharper than his hope, and it's clouding everything else.
"Uhura said the Klingons have new weapons," Sulu says when Kirk lingers.
"It was definitely a Klingon attack," Kirk says, his face changing easily from pity to anger. "Fucking bastards. We're going to rendezvous with headquarters and talk about what our next move is once we get to Bahal, should take just three days or so. Depending on what they throw at us next," he adds gravely.
"Fuck," Sulu mutters.
"Yep," Kirk says. He slaps Sulu's shoulder again. "Tell Chekov we're all thinking of him when he wakes up."
"I -- okay. Do you need me on the bridge?"
"No, man, we're good, you just -- be here when he wakes up, alright?"
Sulu sniffs in surprise, smiling at Kirk as he walks off. Kirk can be such a nosy asshole when it comes to his crew's interpersonal relationships, and then he'll come out of nowhere with something like that.
About twenty minutes after Kirk leaves, the sick bay door finally opens and Sulu jumps, turning toward the door as if an enemy combatant is about to come barreling through it. McCoy walks out, and the uncharacteristically cheerful smile on his face is kind of jarring. He looks like he's about to tell Sulu that Chekov just gave birth to healthy twins.
"Everything went great," McCoy says, and Sulu actually exhales a sort of whimper of relief, too happy to be humiliated. McCoy squeezes Sulu's shoulder.
"He'll be okay," McCoy says. "Should come to in the next hour or so, once the anesthetic wears off. He's going to have the worst headache of his life, so I'm going to give him some painkillers. Just keep an eye on how many he's taking, because they can be addictive. Hopefully I should have him off of them in a week."
"That's -- that's it?" Sulu asks, laughing in disbelief. He peeks over McCoy's shoulder through the still-swinging door, but can't spot Chekov. "He's really okay?"
"Yeah, he's fine, it was a time sensitive surgery but we got in there before any real damage was done. I'd barely rate that bleed grade at 1, and anything under 3 is easy enough to clean out of there if you catch it in time," McCoy says. "Of course," he adds, and the change in his tone yanks the rug out from under Sulu. "With head injuries like that, you never really know until it's right on top of you. So we'll keep a close watch on him while he recovers. But physically, he's great. I wouldn't expect any lasting damage."
"Can I see him?" Sulu asks, peering over McCoy's shoulder again.
"Sure," McCoy says. "He's asleep, but you can sit with him. I'm going to go get something to eat -- tell the nurse to give me a call if he wakes up. He might be a little woozy at first, but that's normal."
"Okay, um." Sulu is struck by the totally inappropriate urge to hug McCoy. McCoy gives him a wary look, as if he anticipated this.
"Thanks," Sulu says, breathing out the word as gratefully as he can.
"You got it," McCoy says, slapping Sulu's back before he walks off. Sulu hurries into the sick bay, heading for the curtained area where McCoy operated on Chekov. The sight of Chekov tucked under the blankets makes him feel heavy with too much of every emotion, some of which he has no words for. Chekov is tucked in very neatly and snugly, and Sulu imagines it must have been a nurse who folded him into the bed with such care, unless there is a side to McCoy he doesn't know about. Chekov has a bandage around his forehead, but they haven't shaved his hair, and Sulu feels stupidly glad for this. He pulls a chair over to the side of Chekov's bed and leans down to stare at him. He looks serene, his lips slightly parted and his cheeks a little paler than usual. Sulu picks up Chekov's hand, and he can't stop rubbing his cheek against the tiny hairs on the back. He hopes that no one is watching from across the sick bay but can't take his eyes away from Chekov long enough to find out.
Chekov's eyes crack open sooner than Sulu expected, and he opens his mouth to call the nurse, but decides it can wait a moment and kisses Chekov's palm instead, breathing out against his skin in relief. When he looks up Chekov is frowning a little, blinking heavily. He pulls his hand from Sulu's grip and shuts his eyes, moaning. When he opens his eyes again he's still frowning.
"Pavel, hey," Sulu says, his voice shaking. "Are you okay? I was so worried --"
Chekov says something in Russian, and Sulu only recognizes what might be the word for mother. The development is a little startling -- what if something has happened to Chekov's brain and he's forgotten his English? -- but Chekov does this when he's out of it, in bed or during sex, and he certainly seems out of it now.
"Tracy?" Sulu calls, turning from the bed, and the head nurse jogs in from the next room, still in her operating scrubs. "Can you get McCoy?" Sulu asks her. "He's waking up."
Tracy nods and jogs away again. Sulu turns back to Chekov and smiles at him, sighing with relief, because part of him had still been worried that McCoy was wrong and that Chekov wouldn't wake up on schedule.
Chekov says something else in Russian, sitting up a little and wincing.
"Hey, hey," Sulu says, putting a hand on Chekov's shoulder; he flinches away. That's. Kind of weird. "Try not to move," Sulu says, sitting back. The way Chekov is looking at him is definitely starting to bother him.
"McCoy is on his way," Sulu says when Chekov only stares at him as if -- as if -- but, no. "Are you feeling okay? Is -- he said he would give you some pain medication --"
"English?" Chekov says, loudly and with his accent three times thicker than Sulu has ever heard it. "I do not speak."
Sulu's mouth hangs open for just a moment, his heart rate climbing back up to the levels it reached when the bridge was attacked. But McCoy did say that he might be woozy. Tracy reappears to smile down at Chekov and try to check his vitals, but Chekov recoils from her touch, too, still speaking in Russian and beginning to get rather agitated.
"He's confused," Sulu says, and for some reason he's more embarrassed by what's happening than anything, his cheeks burning every time Chekov looks at him like he's a stranger who wants to hurt him. "He's -- speaking in Russian, and --"
"Yeah, I can hear that," Tracy says, reaching again for Chekov's wrist. He pulls away, nearly falling out of the bed. "It's probably just -- I don't know, a reaction to the anesthesia --"
"Okay, no," Chekov says sharply, holding up his hands when Tracy reaches for him. "No, please, okay, no."
"Honey, I'm just trying to check your heart rate," Tracy says, and she sounds more irritated than concerned. Sulu tries to be comforted by that, because he feels like he's going to break in half if Chekov frowns suspiciously at him one more time.
"Hey, look who's already awake!" McCoy says, striding into the sick bay with a huge grin that fades when he sees Tracy's and Sulu's expressions. "What's going on?" he asks, going quickly serious.
"He says he doesn't speak English," Sulu says, aware of the ridiculously panicked tone in his voice.
"He won't let me touch him," Tracy says.
"Okay," McCoy says. He stands at the foot of Chekov's bed, frowning down at him. Chekov is staring at all of them as if he's an animal in a cage and they're about to subject him to lab tests.
"Ensign," McCoy says. "Can you tell me your name?"
Chekov narrows his eyes and gives everyone in the room another suspicious appraisal.
"Name?" he says, practically shouting, his chest beginning to heave with fear. "Pavel Andreievich Chekov."
"Okay, good start," McCoy says. He flicks his head at Tracy and Sulu to indicate that they should back off. Sulu is starting to think that he's probably going to throw up.
"When were you born?" McCoy asks. "Birthday?"
"Birthday -- birth, you, okay." Chekov says something in Russian confidently. It sounds like a date. McCoy scratches the back of his head.
"You know what, I don't know when his birthday is in English, either," McCoy mutters.
"Bones!" Sulu shouts. "This is -- serious -- he's --"
"Okay, okay," McCoy says, holding up his hands. "Of course this could be serious, and we're going to treat it as such. But it could just be an effect of the drugs wearing off. Try to stay calm, everyone." He looks back at Chekov, who is panting his breaths out now.
"And somebody get Uhura up here," McCoy says. "Quick."
When Uhura gets to the sick bay she looks very confused, but not as confused as Chekov, who has begun to shout and thrash so much that McCoy has tied his hands and feet to the bed to keep him from aggravating his head injury. Sulu wants to untie him and hoist him into his arms, carry him away from here until he's better, but until he's better, Chekov isn't going to want anything of the sort.
"What the hell is going on?" Uhura asks, her eyes popping when she sees that Chekov is bound to the bed. "He's -- what happened?"
"Just tell us what the hell he keeps shouting," McCoy says in a growl. "I can't give him a goddamn sedative, it's too dangerous, and he's panicking because we don't speak Russian and suddenly he doesn't have too much English."
Uhura looks aghast, staring at Chekov as he shouts and cries, the same words over and over, every one of them stabbing Sulu in the heart even before he knows what they mean.
"Uhura!" McCoy shouts.
"He's -- he's saying 'Who are you people?'" Uhura says, her voice strained with shock. "And 'Where am I?'"
*
That night, Sulu is standing in the middle of his room and staring at his bed, facing the prospect of sleeping alone for the first time in over a year. It feels like he's been sleeping with Chekov for much longer than that; he can't even remember what it's like not to roll over and hold onto him when space just gets too fucking quiet and he needs to be reminded that he's not alone and adrift in it. He can't even imagine sleeping without Chekov's irritating habit of rolling Sulu onto his side when he starts to snore. He sits in his desk chair and wonders if he should just try to sleep with his head on the desk.
After several hours of speaking to Uhura in Russian and another hour of sobbing on a video call with his mother, Chekov has been calmed as much as possible. He still thinks, however, that he is fourteen, that he has never left Russia let alone Earth, and that just yesterday he was going to school in his hometown, correcting his physics teacher and learning transitive verbs in English class.
Sulu puts his head down on his desk and sighs into the dark of his folded arms, trying not to let the choppiness of his breath drag him into crying. He's grateful that Chekov is alive, even if he looks right through Sulu at best and as if Sulu wants to hurt him at worst. The only person on board he seems to trust is Uhura, and he has been entrusted to her care. Sulu is jealous of Uhura for her ability to speak Russian -- he's asked Chekov to teach him some things but their lessons always devolved into sex after five or six minutes -- angry at McCoy for doing this to Chekov during surgery and furious at himself for not being able to prevent this, for turning the ship too hard, for not catching Chekov's notebook himself, and for not somehow foreseeing this. More than anything, he's worried. Chekov has already lost five years and it's completely possible that his condition could continue to deteriorate. McCoy has him in the sick bay, where Uhura is at his bedside, saying soothing things to him in Russian. Sulu winces at the thought.
There's a knock on his door, and he sits up feeling bleary and sore, realizing that he'd fallen asleep with his cheek on his desk. He goes to the door, praying that it will be McCoy, telling him that the post-surgery confusion has worn off and Chekov has remembered everything, or that it will be Chekov himself, ready to throw his arms around Sulu's shoulders and make a thousand unnecessary apologies.
Instead, he finds Uhura standing in the hall, looking rather apologetic herself. Sulu lets her inside his room without a word. He and Uhura have been friends for awhile, since before they were assigned to the Enterprise together. He still remembers her telling him about an obnoxious yokel who hit on her in a bar and proceeded to start a bar fight with five of their fellow cadets.
"How is he?" Sulu asks, offering her his chair. He goes to sit on the bed, trying not to think about how much the sheets still smell like Chekov, and how he'll probably sob into his pillow all night long, hating himself for it but unable to stop.
"He's -- okay," Uhura says. "I think it helped to have someone he trusts telling him that he's actually nineteen and a navigator on a starship. You should have seen him crying when he talked to his mother, it was like he really was a child again."
"Oh. Well, you should -- I mean, I hope you, like. Hugged him or something," Sulu mutters.
"Yeah, Hikaru, I'm trying to take care of him," Uhura says. "Sorry," she adds when Sulu looks down at his hands.
"No, it's okay -- I -- I mean I'm sure he appreciates it. I mean. You're the one who speaks his language. What has he been saying?"
"Mostly that he wants to go home," Uhura says, and the sadness in her voice isn't helping Sulu hold back his tears. "But we won't be back to Earth for years. We could leave him on Bahal when we dock there and arrange for a transport --"
"But he could still remember everything, couldn't he?" Sulu asks, hating this defeatist attitude.
"Sure, but if he doesn't by the time we reach Bahal it would be cruel to keep him here. He's sick and he wants his mother, he doesn't know us. He wouldn't know how to help us navigate anyway. He started at the Academy when he was fourteen."
"This is crazy!" Sulu shouts, standing so abruptly that Uhura jumps. "He -- is McCoy saying now that he won't remember? Maybe he's still just woozy from surgery!"
"Hikaru, it's been ten hours," Uhura says, keeping her voice soft, as if she's afraid to startle him again. "He's lucid, he just -- it can take a long time to fight your way out of amnesia after a trauma, and I know this is horrible for you, I know how much you love him --"
Sulu scoffs, because he's never said that to anyone, not even Chekov: love. Though of course he does. He pulls his hands through his hair and groans.
"This is not about me," Sulu says, mostly a lie. "I'm thinking of him -- what if we drop him off on Bahal and he remembers everything a week later? His career would be ruined, the opportunity to navigate for the Enterprise lost --"
"And you," Uhura says, giving Sulu a knowing look. "He would remember you and be heartbroken."
"Well --" Sulu mutters, falling back to a seat on the bed. "Yeah. That too."
"We're all hoping he'll remember," Uhura says. She stands and walks to the bed, sits down beside Sulu and places a hand on his arm. "And maybe he will -- it's been ten hours, not ten days. But who knows when we'll have another chance to dock on a planet, the way things are going now? It wouldn't be right to keep him aboard the ship while we're at war, not if he's so confused and frightened."
"I know," Sulu says, though he feels like he doesn't know anything anymore. They're being attacked by invisible enemies and Chekov isn't Chekov anymore, he's a scared fourteen year old who wants his mother.
"Could I speak to him?" Sulu asks. "Maybe if I show him some photos or something it would jog his memory." Sulu is thinking of the photographs he keeps in a box under his bed, the box he takes with him when he's on a mission off ship while Chekov mans the conn. The pictures are from space station bars and shore leaves, many of them featuring a motley assortment of friends, but the ones Sulu looks at when he has down time on missions are the pictures of Chekov, grinning into beer steins at alien pubs and smiling sleepily as he hugs his pillow in hotel room beds.
"I don't know about pictures," Uhura says. "That might only startle him. But you can speak to him if he's willing. He knows more English than he was letting on - he does remember taking classes and you know he's a brilliant student, he's just not that comfortable speaking it."
"I'd like to try talking to him," Sulu says, though he's actually pretty terrified of the idea. He's never felt worse than he did when Chekov looked at him with accusation, not in the familiar way he does during their arguments at work but as if Sulu were nobody, just an annoyance on the periphery.
"Okay," Uhura says with a sigh, standing. "Just don't be disappointed if he doesn't have a breakthrough. And don't forget -- he does love you. He just. Doesn't remember it."
"I know," Sulu says, grumbling as he heads for the door, but he doesn't know. He's been afraid for the past year that Chekov is only with him because they're stuck on the ship together, and that when the mission is over Chekov will be ready to move on. He's pretty fucking impressive. He could have almost anyone. Now, instead of moving forward without Sulu, he's moving backward without him, and it hurts just as badly.
*
The lights are on but turned down low when Sulu walks into the sick bay. McCoy is bent over a desk in the far corner, scowling at some brain scans on his monitor. Sulu walks behind him, keeping quiet and wondering if that is Chekov's brain he's looking at. It makes Sulu feel a little queasy and cold to think of it, that everything he loves about Chekov might be pictured there in McCoy's scans, everything that makes Chekov who he is. It's too fragile, like everything Sulu cares about.
He walks to the bed where Chekov is now sitting unrestrained, propped against his pillows with his knees pulled to his chest and his arms folded over them, his head bent down. He looks up when Sulu approaches, his face clammy with stale distress and his eyes wide. Sulu shatters all over again for those eyes, thinking of the first time he suspected Chekov might care for him, the way he had looked at Sulu when Sulu came back from fighting with Kirk in the air above Vulcan. Chekov had been out of breath when he arrived in the teleportation bay, and his fists had flexed at his sides when Sulu thanked him for saving him, as if he'd wanted to reach out and put his hands on Sulu to make sure he was real.
"May I sit with you?" Sulu asks, feeling like a dirty old man, though Chekov is still in his nineteen year old body, wherever his mind is. Sulu still feels more than four years older, and he'll be glad when Chekov no longer has a teen suffix on the end of his age. If they'll even be together on Chekov's twentieth birthday. If Chekov hasn't been shipped away like damaged goods by then.
"Where is Uhura?" Chekov asks, speaking slowly. He's scratching at his wrist, which is what Sulu's Chekov always does when he's nervous.
"She'll be back soon," Sulu says, trying not to appear crushed by the question, and probably failing. "You really don't remember me," he says softly.
Chekov shifts, letting his legs slide down onto the bed. Sulu can hardly stand for how much he wants to crawl onto the mattress beside Chekov and pull him into his arms, stroke his hair and tell him things are going to be alright. He doesn't know how to live in a universe where he can't do that anymore.
"You stay, okay," Chekov says, and Sulu sits down in the chair beside the bed. His chest feels tight and achy, and he wishes that Chekov didn't look even more pathetic and adorable with that bandage wrapped around his forehead.
"How is your head feeling?" Sulu asks. "Does it hurt? Did McCoy give you any medicine?"
"Head is okay," Chekov says, holding up a hand and nodding a little. "Thank you," he says primly, and Sulu bites down on his lip to keep from moaning with some new kind of agony he's never experienced before. He's like a ball of nothing but want, and it's far more complicated and painful than any lust he ever suffered for Chekov.
"We were friends," Sulu says when silence descends between them. "We are, I mean. You and me. We fly the ship together."
Chekov shrugs and shakes his head, looking sad.
"I do not know," he says, and Sulu isn't sure if he's trying to tell Sulu that he doesn't understand him or that he's not sure he believes this.
"This must be very strange for you." Sulu doesn't want to leave him. He'll sit here until Chekov falls asleep, and maybe he'll stay for awhile afterward, too. He might as well. It's not as if he'll be getting any sleep until this is resolved, and his only hope for any future sleep is to have that resolution involve Chekov returning to his bed.
Chekov sighs and pulls his legs in to sit Indian style. His posture is worse than usual, more teenager-ish. His hair is a mess and he looks like he could use a shower.
"I do not know this place," Chekov says.
"It's the U.S.S. Enterprise," Sulu says, wanting to feed him answers until everything clicks back into place. "You work here. You're very important to us." To me.
"Is like time machine," Chekov says meekly, and Sulu can't help but laugh. He bites down on it quickly, feeling guilty.
"I'm sorry," Sulu says. "I shouldn't laugh. I'm -- nervous, I think. It's strange to be around you when you don't know who I am."
"We are friends here?" Chekov asks, looking skeptical about this.
"Yeah," Sulu says glumly. "Friends."
"You seem very old," Chekov says, and Sulu bursts into anxious laughter again. He chews his tongue when Chekov wilts.
"My English is not good," Chekov says.
"Sorry, I'm not laughing at you," Sulu says. "And anyway, yeah, I feel pretty old right now. And worthless. I wish I could help you."
"They say -- they will put me home."
"Yeah. I guess that's the plan."
Chekov sighs and leans down onto his pillows, keeping his eyes on Sulu as if he doesn't trust him not to snap and try to kill him at any moment. Sulu tries to imagine what it would be like to wake up five years from now and have no idea what was going on. He'd be looking for Chekov and wondering where he was, how things had ended, how he could find him again.
"Maybe if I took you up to the bridge," Sulu says, glancing over his shoulder at McCoy. "And showed you some familiar things, outside of the sick bay. Maybe you would remember, then."
Chekov frowns a little, considering this. Sulu is pretty sure McCoy would kill him if he found him sneaking Chekov out of the sick bay, but he's got to try something. Chekov -- his Chekov -- would want Sulu to fight to keep him on the Enterprise. He told Sulu, when they were in bed together one night, worn out from work and too tired to do anything but whisper to each other in the dark, that he never felt like he had anything close to a purpose in life until he was behind the controls of the Enterprise. He'd been picked on a kid, a loner and a mama's boy, and Sulu got to watch Chekov become a man day by day as he grew confident and cool beside him at the console. Sometimes, though, he still treats Chekov the way he wanted to when they first met, as if he's a helpless boy who belongs curled in Sulu's arms. Chekov usually indulges him in this, sometimes grumbling about it even as he curls in closer.
"Want to go for a walk?" Sulu asks, keeping his voice quiet. "It might make things less confusing if you see the place where you've been living for the past year."
"You are my friend?" Chekov says, as if he wants to make doubly sure that Sulu isn't an enemy who is trying to trick him. For all he knows, everyone here is.
"I'm more than your friend," Sulu says, his voice almost breaking, but he tampers it down. "This will sound weird but I -- love you, actually. I love you so much, Pavel." And then, fuck, his voice breaks like glass. He puts his head in his hands, knowing that he's screwed this up, that fourteen-year-old Chekov probably hasn't even kissed anyone yet and might not be comfortable with the fact that he likes boys, if that's even occurred to him. He and Sulu haven't really talked about the way he discovered that he did, but Sulu figured Chekov must have had some experience in that area when he swallowed Sulu's cock so fearlessly during that first drunken evening together, then begged to be fucked with his please please please.
He feels a hand in his hair, soft and reassuring, and assumes that McCoy has wandered over to offer him some sympathy and tell him to get out, but when he lifts his head it's Chekov who is patting him and looking at him as if suddenly he recognizes him. The moment passes, and Chekov takes his hand away.
"You love me?" Chekov says, the lightness and wonder in the question making him at least sound like he's only fourteen.
"Yes," Sulu says. He blinks his tears back, trying to laugh at himself. "More than anything."
"A kiss love?" Chekov says, squinting a little, and Sulu knows what he's trying to say. He always does, even when Chekov accidentally slips into Russian. Sulu might not know the literal translations, but he can hear What's wrong? when Chekov wakes in the night and asks him, no matter what language he uses.
"Yeah, there's -- kissing involved," Sulu says, nodding. Chekov raises his eyebrows and purses his lips in surprise, sitting back a little.
"I ask my mother do I look old." Chekov touches his face experimentally. "She tells me to her I look very young always."
"You haven't seen your reflection yet?" Sulu asks. Chekov looks puzzled. "Uh, mirror?" Sulu tries, and Chekov nods enthusiastically.
"Yes, mirror, yes! Please?"
Sulu hesitates. What if McCoy has kept Chekov away from reflective surfaces for a reason? But whatever McCoy has tried to bring Chekov back to himself hasn't worked so far, and he was wrong about the surgery being uncomplicated, so what the hell does he know? Sulu motions for Chekov to get out of bed, and he does. They walk very quickly to the sick bay door, and Sulu sneaks Chekov out into the hall, feeling as if he's stealing an animal from the zoo, something exotic that will probably suffer in his care.
"C'mere," Sulu whispers. The whole ship feels quiet and still, and Sulu likes it, as if the world has been paused until Chekov is ready to return to it. He draws Chekov over to a glass panel near the entrance to the cafeteria, which is closed for the night. Their reflections are clear in the surface of the glass, and Chekov leans in close to his, frowning. Sulu's heart is racing, and he's not sure if it's because he feels like he's doing something wrong or because he hopes this will fix everything.
Chekov touches his face, and then the glass. He sniffs a little in amusement and turns to smile at Sulu, which is like seeing the sun on Earth, something Sulu misses every day. Chekov fills Sulu's longing for that particular light pretty well in substitute.
"This is good," Chekov says, as if he approves of how he's turned out. Sulu grins.
"Yeah, I agree."
"Understand," Chekov says sternly as they walk down the hall toward the bridge. "Before, not good."
"Oh, yeah right. I've seen pictures of you as a kid. You were fucking adorable." He feels guilty for the curse, but Chekov is beaming.
"Fucking!" he says cheerfully. "This word, I know it."
"Well." Sulu is flooded with guilt, pretty sure that it's somehow amoral to want to grab Chekov and rut against him crazily, because he doesn't hate Sulu and he's not averse the idea of kissing a man and he knows the word fucking. "Kids always want to learn the bad words first, I guess. I made you teach me Russian curses." He leaves off the part about wanting to know those words because they're the ones that Chekov screams when he's being fucked.
They reach the bridge, the lights down low and the console unmanned, Chekov and Sulu's understudies on the other side of the room muttering through their coffee break. There's also a woman at one of the stations along the back of the room, but she seems absorbed in whatever is on her monitor, and Sulu hopes none of them will notice as he sneaks Chekov up toward the main console. He puts a finger over his lips to signal for Chekov to be quiet and Chekov nods in understanding. They creep over to the console and Sulu stands there watching Chekov look at it, not knowing what to do next.
"You sit there," Sulu says, pointing to Chekov's chair. "And I sit here." His whole world and the entirety of his happiness is finally that simple, and he realizes this as he points to their chairs. You sit there, I sit here. He would give Chekov a similar demonstration at the foot of their bed if he could, pointing out their separate pillows.
"I want to touch it," Chekov whispers, drawing close to Sulu, and Sulu flushes, holding down an embarrassed laugh.
"You'd better not," Sulu whispers back, but Chekov has already lost interest in the console. He's caught sight of the view through the front window of the bridge, and his eyes are getting wider and wider as he gazes out at the endless stretch of space.
"Oh," he breathes out, and Sulu feels like he could die from loving Chekov as much as he does, even while he's like this. Especially while he's like this.
"Yeah," Sulu says, standing beside him to take it in himself, trying to imagine not having seen what looks like the same empty quadrant of space ten thousand times already. "Pretty good view, huh?"
Chekov walks around the console and stands with his nose almost touching the glass, his breath fogging against it. Sulu follows him, enjoying the way Chekov's silhouette looks against the backdrop of space. When Chekov turns around he has tears in his eyes, and Sulu's stomach drops, because he might have hurt him further, or this might be the end of the amnesia.
"I thought I might never," Chekov says, wiping at his eyes. He smiles shakily, and Sulu walks over to put a hand on Chekov's shoulder. He doesn't flinch this time, and he feels like he always has, like the proper place for Sulu's hands.
"Me too," Sulu says. He's never confided in Chekov about this before, that he worried all throughout his time at the Academy that he wouldn't make it to active duty, that some essential flaw in him would show itself during his final evaluations, some weakness or cowardice or wicked truth.
"This makes me sad," Chekov says, turning back to the console. "To look here, sad." He glances up at Sulu shyly. "And you. To look at you."
"Are you remembering something?" Sulu asks. Chekov shakes his head and shrugs.
"I am wanting to," he says, wiping at his eyes again.
*
Part II
Fandom: Star Trek
Pairing: Sulu/Chekov
Rating: R
Summary: Chekov develops amnesia during a mission and can't remember the past five years of his life. Sulu is heartbroken.
Notes: Thank you to chlorate for the beta read!
Sulu wakes up in a silent panic, his body jerking as if he's been bitten by a spider. He can't remember what he was dreaming about, but it wasn't anything good. His heart is pounding and he's overcome by the eerie feeling that someone is standing in the darkness of his room and watching him. He leans up over Chekov, who is sleeping on his stomach, hugging his pillow. Sulu slides his arm across Chekov's back as he looks around the room, his eyes beginning to adjust to the darkness. There's nothing there, just his things and the shadows.
He lets out his breath and lies back down, glancing at the clock. It's a little after four in the morning, and he'll have to get up in less than an hour. He rolls toward Chekov and watches him sleep, trying to calm down. They've been sleeping in the same bed for almost a year now, but it's still hard to look at him without touching him, and when Sulu spreads his hand across Chekov's back his skin is so hot with sleep. Touching him like this, when they're together in the cocoon of nighttime and Chekov is totally surrendered, sleeping deeply beside him, makes Sulu feel like he did the first time he saw the Earth from space, as if the experience is new and amazing and singularly his, as if no one else has ever appreciated the heat of someone else's skin this way.
He still gets stupidly emotional about Chekov, especially in the middle of the night, when he sometimes wakes up like this, feeling vulnerable as the Enterprise floats through space under the control of he and Chekov's second shift understudies. Lately, relations with the Klingons have been especially tense. Sulu thought Kirk was being dramatic when he talked about war, but he might have been underestimating Kirk's sense for things like this. Sulu has never been to war before, and he's never been in love before, either. It's kind of overwhelming at moments.
Sulu shuffles around, trying to get back to sleep, and Chekov groans a little, just the tiniest thing from the back of his throat. It makes Sulu ache for him, and he's glad when Chekov wakes up, blinking at him groggily. Chekov mutters something in Russian and then shakes his head at himself.
"What's wrong?" he asks, translating.
"Nothing. I don't know. I just have a weird feeling."
"What sort of feeling?" Chekov asks, moving closer. Sulu opens his arms and Chekov dumps himself onto Sulu's chest with a sleepy grunt.
"Like something bad is going to happen," Sulu says. "Now it sounds stupid. Forget it, I'm sorry I woke you."
"Did you have a bad dream?" Chekov asks, mumbling against Sulu's skin, his eyes shut. He's already half-asleep again, and Sulu wishes he weren't. As dumb as it sounds out loud, he does want to talk about it.
"No, I don't think so. Maybe. But it's this -- I don't know. I was thinking, what if we're attacked while we're off duty? What if there are two or three really critical seconds and we're not up on the bridge?"
"We have to sleep sometime," Chekov says.
"I know. I'm being stupid, sorry."
Chekov hoists himself up onto his elbows, groaning and looking down at Sulu with his eyelids heavy. He leans in to kiss Sulu's mouth, his lips dry but soft.
"If something happens," Chekov says, "We will run to the bridge. In our underwear if we must."
"Easy for you to say."
"What do you mean by that?" Chekov asks, grinning.
"That you can run a lot faster than I can."
"Oh, I thought you meant that I would like to be on the bridge in my underwear."
"Yeah, that too."
Chekov smiles and kisses Sulu more seriously, making Sulu feel self-conscious about his breath. Chekov still tastes like the coffee that he drank before bed. Sulu has never met anyone else who gets sleepy after drinking caffeine and sharper after drinking alcohol. Or maybe Chekov only seems sharp when he's drinking because Sulu is usually in the bag around the time Chekov is really getting started.
They have sex, Sulu sinking into the hot comfort of Chekov's body, all of his anxiety dissipating as Chekov pushes himself down onto Sulu's cock, Sulu on his back and Chekov still half-asleep as he moans and arches backward, propped up against Sulu's bent knees. He always sounds like he's just discovered some fascinating scientific principle when he's riding Sulu's cock: Ahhh, yes. He's different when he's on his hands and knees, Sulu slamming into him from behind: then it's all Fuck, fuck, Hikaru, like a filthy football cheer, until he dissolves into Russian. When they're face to face he just breathes very hard against Sulu's mouth, and that Sulu's favorite, really, though he can't imagine living without any of the noises Chekov makes when they're locked together.
"Gonna come for me?" Sulu asks, pulling on Chekov's cock as he continues to fuck himself down onto Sulu, his bounces getting shorter and slower now, and Sulu knows what that means.
"Yeah," Chekov says brokenly, panting. "Hikaru," he adds, whining it out like a plea.
"Yeah?" Sulu gives him the wicked grin he likes and strokes his fingers up and down the underside of Chekov's cock, way too lightly. Chekov whines again, wincing up at the ceiling.
"Hikaru, please," he says, but he doesn't reach out to finish the job himself, just pushes himself down harder around Sulu's cock, groaning in unrestrained agony, and Sulu actually kind of wishes that the others on the bridge knew this side of Chekov, that they would look at him in awe at moments like Sulu does, remembering it.
Sulu takes pity, he always does, too soon, not as good at these games as he sometimes thinks Chekov wishes he were. He closes his fist around Chekov's cock again and pumps him hard, because he loves this part and is too close to coming himself to hold out any longer. Chekov curses in the long stream of Russian that Sulu once asked him to translate, and if Chekov is to be believed he's saying something like motherfucking shit, yeah, only it sounds way better in his native language, and Sulu comes just afterward, squeezing Chekov's hips into his hands as he holds him down onto his cock.
They're both wrecked by it, still, a year after the first time, the night of Chekov's eighteenth birthday party, Sulu drunk and Chekov begging like please was the only word he knew in English. He didn't have to beg Sulu to kiss him, or whisper things against his cheeks: You're so perfect, I can't stop looking at you, want you more than anything. He didn't have to beg at all, but he kept doing it, even when Sulu was inside him, his mouth on Chekov's neck like it was a breathing apparatus, like it was the only air in the room.
"Hey," Sulu says, shaking Chekov awake when he starts to go under again. Chekov groans in annoyance and keeps his eyes shut. He's flopped onto his back like a fish, one hand thumped onto his chest and the other pressed against Sulu's cheek, a caress that becomes a warning when Sulu prods him again.
"Please, Hikaru," Chekov says, mumbling, the request quite different now.
"Remember the first time we had sex?" Sulu asks, feeling ridiculous but unable to help himself.
"No, I have forgotten it," Chekov says, grinning, as if he ever could.
"Oh, well, let me remind you. You kept saying please, it was like constant, and you never did it after that."
Chekov hums with disinterest. Sulu would hate to break it to him that they have to get up in about ten minutes anyway.
"I was nervous," Chekov says dismissively.
"Nervous! You just lay there, I did all the work."
"Hikaru, why are you thinking of this now?" Chekov asks, whining out the question so petulantly that Sulu is spurred into kissing his face, which only irritates Chekov further, though he lies there and takes it.
"I don't know," Sulu says. "Humor me. What were you begging for? I mean, I was giving it all I had."
"I think I was begging God not to make my heart explode because I felt like it might." Chekov rolls onto his stomach again. "But I don't really know."
"Hmmph." Sulu kisses the back of his neck. He's not sure why he's afraid to let Chekov fall asleep. "So you have forgotten."
"My thoughts were not very organized at the time," Chekov says. "Mostly I was thinking, here I am, getting what I've wanted so much. I was afraid I would wake up in the morning and find out it wasn't real."
Sulu opens his mouth and then shuts it. He was going to say I feel that way every night, all the time, but maybe that's ridiculous. Of course it is. He curls his arm around Chekov's shoulder and lets him sleep.
*
As soon as they're together on the bridge the next morning, things feel safe and stable again, every element in its place. Chekov is tired and quiet, plugging in coordinates and stopping occasionally to scribble calculations on the little notepad he keeps at his desk, which everyone teases him for, because it's so old-fashioned. Sulu is half-listening to Kirk trying to explain baseball to Spock as Spock attempts to break in and tell Kirk that he is perfectly familiar with the rules of this human game.
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you really get it," Kirk says, and Sulu snorts, because there is no possible reason for Kirk to explain the intangibles of baseball to Spock aside from annoying him, which is still Kirk's favorite pastime, even though the two have become close friends.
"If you're trying to communicate the cultural --" Spock begins to say, but that's the end of their peaceful morning, because suddenly every monitor on the bridge is flashing red with a blaring warning about incoming missiles.
"Captain!" Uhura shouts, ripping her headphones off, but Kirk is already at Sulu's shoulder, staring at his monitor.
"Shields," Kirk says, and Sulu has already initiated the sequence, but he's afraid it might be too late. His heart hasn't even begun to pound properly, but then the proximity alarms start blaring.
"Chekov, where are they firing from?" Kirk shouts.
"I don't know, sir, I --" Chekov is scrambling; Sulu can see him panicking out of the corner of his eye, but how could anyone have anticipated such a sudden attack? He can see the incoming missile on his screen, and he won't be able to warp away in time, so he flings the ship to the left as hard as he can, hoping that they'll at least be struck low on the right side, nowhere near the bridge or the quarters where half the crew is still sleeping.
Chekov's notepad slides from the desk, and he bends down to grab it. That's when they're hit. Sulu catches his hands against his console, careful not to jam any buttons, and Kirk steadies himself against the back of Sulu's chair. Sulu doesn't have time to do anything but punch in the warp coordinates, Kirk shouting in his ear, and Sulu doesn't need to hear the words, he knows what he has to do. He prays that it will work despite whatever damage was just done to the ship -- Scotty is screaming over the intercom but Sulu can't think about that yet -- and he glances over at Chekov just as the ship is jumping to warp. Chekov is on the floor, almost under the console, holding the left side of his head and wincing. The ship jumps away from its attacker just as the monitors begin to blare a second warning, and when they streak to safety Sulu remembers the sound he'd heard just after impact, right at his shoulder, like stone against metal. It was Chekov's forehead meeting the console as he fell.
"Have we been followed?" Kirk asks as Chekov climbs back into his chair, blood streaking down the side of his face.
"No, sir," Chekov says, leaning forward to squint at his screen. "It does not appear that we were."
"What the fuck was that?" Kirk bellows. "Where -- how --?"
"Must have been long range," Sulu says, scooting his chair over to Chekov's. "He's hurt," Sulu says to Kirk as Chekov leans forward, hissing and putting his head in his hands.
"Let me see," Kirk says, turning Chekov's chair toward him and bending down to see his cut. "Spock," he shouts over his shoulder. "Review the surveillance tapes, find out what just happened -- and for God's sake, somebody tell Scotty that we're on it, send a team to check out the damage." He turns back to Chekov, who is shaking his head. Sulu is just shaking, staring at him.
"I'm okay, Keptin," Chekov says, though he's looking at Sulu.
"Are you sure?" Kirk asks. "I can get Hansen back up here if you need to go get a bandage or something, that looks pretty --"
"No, I'm fine, I'm fine," Chekov says. He's still got his eyes locked on Sulu's, and the way he's looking at Sulu braces him like cold poison more than the attack on the ship or the blood leaking from Chekov's wound. He's looking at Sulu not with fear but with a sort of apologetic resignation, like one of them is about to go away for a long time.
"It is just a bump on the head," Chekov says. "Not serious." As he says so a dark trickle of blood streaks down from his nose, and he reaches up in surprise to wipe it away.
"I think you should --" Sulu starts to say, and then Chekov pitches forward, his eyes rolling back into his head. Kirk curses and catches him, and Sulu falls to his knees to yank him from Kirk's grip.
"Pavel!" he says. The frantic activity on the bridge goes still for a moment as Chekov's head slumps back lifelessly against Sulu's arm.
"Get Bones!" Kirk is screaming. "Bring him here!"
Then all the sound on the bridge fades slowly to background nonsense, and all Sulu can hear is his own breath, shuddering and unsteady and thinning out with every second that Chekov doesn't open his eyes, because Sulu has lost his only source of air.
*
Kirk knows enough about what's been going on between Sulu and Chekov to order Sulu to accompany Chekov to sick bay when McCoy is ready to transport him. There would be no point in Sulu staying on the bridge; he can't think straight, he can't even breathe. He walks alongside Chekov's stretcher, stumbling and staring at him, feeling like he did when Chekov was still a trembly seventeen-year-old, like he wants to put his hands around Chekov's face and protect him from everything. Instead, he's hurt him -- this is Sulu's fault. He pitched the ship too hard, let himself get too panicked.
McCoy performs emergency surgery to drain the internal bleeding. Sulu sits on the floor in the hall outside the sick bay during the surgery, trying not to break down. Uhura arrives after a few hours and sits down beside him with a sigh.
"What's the situation?" Sulu asks, staring straight ahead.
"New Klingon technology," Uhura says. "We've received threats. It's going to be bad." She reaches over to place a hand on Sulu's knee. "What's the situation in there?" she asks.
"Nobody's telling me anything," Sulu says. His eyes get wet, the way Uhura is looking at him breaking through his stoic disbelief. "Uhura, if --" That's as far as he gets. She nods.
"I know," she says softly.
When her break ends she returns to her post, and Kirk is the next one to show up. He reaches down and pulls Sulu up from the floor.
"You saved us with that warp," Kirk says, squeezing Sulu's shoulder. Sulu shakes his head.
"I -- the way he fell -- that was sloppy, what I did --"
"Hey, hey. The damage to the hull could have been much worse if you hadn't moved us like that. He'll be okay, Hikaru, and he'll be real proud of you for what you did."
Sulu sighs and leans back against the wall. For the past two hours he's been trying to envision Chekov's recovery, how he'll wake up and put his arms around Sulu's shoulders, telling him not to worry, that he's fine. Sulu has never had a hard time conjuring fantasies; God knows he became an expert at that in his first six months aboard the Enterprise with Chekov, before they'd ever touched. But his visions of Chekov sitting up in bed are vague and hazy at best, less of a comfort than his intricate fantasies about holding and kissing him once were. His worry is much sharper than his hope, and it's clouding everything else.
"Uhura said the Klingons have new weapons," Sulu says when Kirk lingers.
"It was definitely a Klingon attack," Kirk says, his face changing easily from pity to anger. "Fucking bastards. We're going to rendezvous with headquarters and talk about what our next move is once we get to Bahal, should take just three days or so. Depending on what they throw at us next," he adds gravely.
"Fuck," Sulu mutters.
"Yep," Kirk says. He slaps Sulu's shoulder again. "Tell Chekov we're all thinking of him when he wakes up."
"I -- okay. Do you need me on the bridge?"
"No, man, we're good, you just -- be here when he wakes up, alright?"
Sulu sniffs in surprise, smiling at Kirk as he walks off. Kirk can be such a nosy asshole when it comes to his crew's interpersonal relationships, and then he'll come out of nowhere with something like that.
About twenty minutes after Kirk leaves, the sick bay door finally opens and Sulu jumps, turning toward the door as if an enemy combatant is about to come barreling through it. McCoy walks out, and the uncharacteristically cheerful smile on his face is kind of jarring. He looks like he's about to tell Sulu that Chekov just gave birth to healthy twins.
"Everything went great," McCoy says, and Sulu actually exhales a sort of whimper of relief, too happy to be humiliated. McCoy squeezes Sulu's shoulder.
"He'll be okay," McCoy says. "Should come to in the next hour or so, once the anesthetic wears off. He's going to have the worst headache of his life, so I'm going to give him some painkillers. Just keep an eye on how many he's taking, because they can be addictive. Hopefully I should have him off of them in a week."
"That's -- that's it?" Sulu asks, laughing in disbelief. He peeks over McCoy's shoulder through the still-swinging door, but can't spot Chekov. "He's really okay?"
"Yeah, he's fine, it was a time sensitive surgery but we got in there before any real damage was done. I'd barely rate that bleed grade at 1, and anything under 3 is easy enough to clean out of there if you catch it in time," McCoy says. "Of course," he adds, and the change in his tone yanks the rug out from under Sulu. "With head injuries like that, you never really know until it's right on top of you. So we'll keep a close watch on him while he recovers. But physically, he's great. I wouldn't expect any lasting damage."
"Can I see him?" Sulu asks, peering over McCoy's shoulder again.
"Sure," McCoy says. "He's asleep, but you can sit with him. I'm going to go get something to eat -- tell the nurse to give me a call if he wakes up. He might be a little woozy at first, but that's normal."
"Okay, um." Sulu is struck by the totally inappropriate urge to hug McCoy. McCoy gives him a wary look, as if he anticipated this.
"Thanks," Sulu says, breathing out the word as gratefully as he can.
"You got it," McCoy says, slapping Sulu's back before he walks off. Sulu hurries into the sick bay, heading for the curtained area where McCoy operated on Chekov. The sight of Chekov tucked under the blankets makes him feel heavy with too much of every emotion, some of which he has no words for. Chekov is tucked in very neatly and snugly, and Sulu imagines it must have been a nurse who folded him into the bed with such care, unless there is a side to McCoy he doesn't know about. Chekov has a bandage around his forehead, but they haven't shaved his hair, and Sulu feels stupidly glad for this. He pulls a chair over to the side of Chekov's bed and leans down to stare at him. He looks serene, his lips slightly parted and his cheeks a little paler than usual. Sulu picks up Chekov's hand, and he can't stop rubbing his cheek against the tiny hairs on the back. He hopes that no one is watching from across the sick bay but can't take his eyes away from Chekov long enough to find out.
Chekov's eyes crack open sooner than Sulu expected, and he opens his mouth to call the nurse, but decides it can wait a moment and kisses Chekov's palm instead, breathing out against his skin in relief. When he looks up Chekov is frowning a little, blinking heavily. He pulls his hand from Sulu's grip and shuts his eyes, moaning. When he opens his eyes again he's still frowning.
"Pavel, hey," Sulu says, his voice shaking. "Are you okay? I was so worried --"
Chekov says something in Russian, and Sulu only recognizes what might be the word for mother. The development is a little startling -- what if something has happened to Chekov's brain and he's forgotten his English? -- but Chekov does this when he's out of it, in bed or during sex, and he certainly seems out of it now.
"Tracy?" Sulu calls, turning from the bed, and the head nurse jogs in from the next room, still in her operating scrubs. "Can you get McCoy?" Sulu asks her. "He's waking up."
Tracy nods and jogs away again. Sulu turns back to Chekov and smiles at him, sighing with relief, because part of him had still been worried that McCoy was wrong and that Chekov wouldn't wake up on schedule.
Chekov says something else in Russian, sitting up a little and wincing.
"Hey, hey," Sulu says, putting a hand on Chekov's shoulder; he flinches away. That's. Kind of weird. "Try not to move," Sulu says, sitting back. The way Chekov is looking at him is definitely starting to bother him.
"McCoy is on his way," Sulu says when Chekov only stares at him as if -- as if -- but, no. "Are you feeling okay? Is -- he said he would give you some pain medication --"
"English?" Chekov says, loudly and with his accent three times thicker than Sulu has ever heard it. "I do not speak."
Sulu's mouth hangs open for just a moment, his heart rate climbing back up to the levels it reached when the bridge was attacked. But McCoy did say that he might be woozy. Tracy reappears to smile down at Chekov and try to check his vitals, but Chekov recoils from her touch, too, still speaking in Russian and beginning to get rather agitated.
"He's confused," Sulu says, and for some reason he's more embarrassed by what's happening than anything, his cheeks burning every time Chekov looks at him like he's a stranger who wants to hurt him. "He's -- speaking in Russian, and --"
"Yeah, I can hear that," Tracy says, reaching again for Chekov's wrist. He pulls away, nearly falling out of the bed. "It's probably just -- I don't know, a reaction to the anesthesia --"
"Okay, no," Chekov says sharply, holding up his hands when Tracy reaches for him. "No, please, okay, no."
"Honey, I'm just trying to check your heart rate," Tracy says, and she sounds more irritated than concerned. Sulu tries to be comforted by that, because he feels like he's going to break in half if Chekov frowns suspiciously at him one more time.
"Hey, look who's already awake!" McCoy says, striding into the sick bay with a huge grin that fades when he sees Tracy's and Sulu's expressions. "What's going on?" he asks, going quickly serious.
"He says he doesn't speak English," Sulu says, aware of the ridiculously panicked tone in his voice.
"He won't let me touch him," Tracy says.
"Okay," McCoy says. He stands at the foot of Chekov's bed, frowning down at him. Chekov is staring at all of them as if he's an animal in a cage and they're about to subject him to lab tests.
"Ensign," McCoy says. "Can you tell me your name?"
Chekov narrows his eyes and gives everyone in the room another suspicious appraisal.
"Name?" he says, practically shouting, his chest beginning to heave with fear. "Pavel Andreievich Chekov."
"Okay, good start," McCoy says. He flicks his head at Tracy and Sulu to indicate that they should back off. Sulu is starting to think that he's probably going to throw up.
"When were you born?" McCoy asks. "Birthday?"
"Birthday -- birth, you, okay." Chekov says something in Russian confidently. It sounds like a date. McCoy scratches the back of his head.
"You know what, I don't know when his birthday is in English, either," McCoy mutters.
"Bones!" Sulu shouts. "This is -- serious -- he's --"
"Okay, okay," McCoy says, holding up his hands. "Of course this could be serious, and we're going to treat it as such. But it could just be an effect of the drugs wearing off. Try to stay calm, everyone." He looks back at Chekov, who is panting his breaths out now.
"And somebody get Uhura up here," McCoy says. "Quick."
When Uhura gets to the sick bay she looks very confused, but not as confused as Chekov, who has begun to shout and thrash so much that McCoy has tied his hands and feet to the bed to keep him from aggravating his head injury. Sulu wants to untie him and hoist him into his arms, carry him away from here until he's better, but until he's better, Chekov isn't going to want anything of the sort.
"What the hell is going on?" Uhura asks, her eyes popping when she sees that Chekov is bound to the bed. "He's -- what happened?"
"Just tell us what the hell he keeps shouting," McCoy says in a growl. "I can't give him a goddamn sedative, it's too dangerous, and he's panicking because we don't speak Russian and suddenly he doesn't have too much English."
Uhura looks aghast, staring at Chekov as he shouts and cries, the same words over and over, every one of them stabbing Sulu in the heart even before he knows what they mean.
"Uhura!" McCoy shouts.
"He's -- he's saying 'Who are you people?'" Uhura says, her voice strained with shock. "And 'Where am I?'"
*
That night, Sulu is standing in the middle of his room and staring at his bed, facing the prospect of sleeping alone for the first time in over a year. It feels like he's been sleeping with Chekov for much longer than that; he can't even remember what it's like not to roll over and hold onto him when space just gets too fucking quiet and he needs to be reminded that he's not alone and adrift in it. He can't even imagine sleeping without Chekov's irritating habit of rolling Sulu onto his side when he starts to snore. He sits in his desk chair and wonders if he should just try to sleep with his head on the desk.
After several hours of speaking to Uhura in Russian and another hour of sobbing on a video call with his mother, Chekov has been calmed as much as possible. He still thinks, however, that he is fourteen, that he has never left Russia let alone Earth, and that just yesterday he was going to school in his hometown, correcting his physics teacher and learning transitive verbs in English class.
Sulu puts his head down on his desk and sighs into the dark of his folded arms, trying not to let the choppiness of his breath drag him into crying. He's grateful that Chekov is alive, even if he looks right through Sulu at best and as if Sulu wants to hurt him at worst. The only person on board he seems to trust is Uhura, and he has been entrusted to her care. Sulu is jealous of Uhura for her ability to speak Russian -- he's asked Chekov to teach him some things but their lessons always devolved into sex after five or six minutes -- angry at McCoy for doing this to Chekov during surgery and furious at himself for not being able to prevent this, for turning the ship too hard, for not catching Chekov's notebook himself, and for not somehow foreseeing this. More than anything, he's worried. Chekov has already lost five years and it's completely possible that his condition could continue to deteriorate. McCoy has him in the sick bay, where Uhura is at his bedside, saying soothing things to him in Russian. Sulu winces at the thought.
There's a knock on his door, and he sits up feeling bleary and sore, realizing that he'd fallen asleep with his cheek on his desk. He goes to the door, praying that it will be McCoy, telling him that the post-surgery confusion has worn off and Chekov has remembered everything, or that it will be Chekov himself, ready to throw his arms around Sulu's shoulders and make a thousand unnecessary apologies.
Instead, he finds Uhura standing in the hall, looking rather apologetic herself. Sulu lets her inside his room without a word. He and Uhura have been friends for awhile, since before they were assigned to the Enterprise together. He still remembers her telling him about an obnoxious yokel who hit on her in a bar and proceeded to start a bar fight with five of their fellow cadets.
"How is he?" Sulu asks, offering her his chair. He goes to sit on the bed, trying not to think about how much the sheets still smell like Chekov, and how he'll probably sob into his pillow all night long, hating himself for it but unable to stop.
"He's -- okay," Uhura says. "I think it helped to have someone he trusts telling him that he's actually nineteen and a navigator on a starship. You should have seen him crying when he talked to his mother, it was like he really was a child again."
"Oh. Well, you should -- I mean, I hope you, like. Hugged him or something," Sulu mutters.
"Yeah, Hikaru, I'm trying to take care of him," Uhura says. "Sorry," she adds when Sulu looks down at his hands.
"No, it's okay -- I -- I mean I'm sure he appreciates it. I mean. You're the one who speaks his language. What has he been saying?"
"Mostly that he wants to go home," Uhura says, and the sadness in her voice isn't helping Sulu hold back his tears. "But we won't be back to Earth for years. We could leave him on Bahal when we dock there and arrange for a transport --"
"But he could still remember everything, couldn't he?" Sulu asks, hating this defeatist attitude.
"Sure, but if he doesn't by the time we reach Bahal it would be cruel to keep him here. He's sick and he wants his mother, he doesn't know us. He wouldn't know how to help us navigate anyway. He started at the Academy when he was fourteen."
"This is crazy!" Sulu shouts, standing so abruptly that Uhura jumps. "He -- is McCoy saying now that he won't remember? Maybe he's still just woozy from surgery!"
"Hikaru, it's been ten hours," Uhura says, keeping her voice soft, as if she's afraid to startle him again. "He's lucid, he just -- it can take a long time to fight your way out of amnesia after a trauma, and I know this is horrible for you, I know how much you love him --"
Sulu scoffs, because he's never said that to anyone, not even Chekov: love. Though of course he does. He pulls his hands through his hair and groans.
"This is not about me," Sulu says, mostly a lie. "I'm thinking of him -- what if we drop him off on Bahal and he remembers everything a week later? His career would be ruined, the opportunity to navigate for the Enterprise lost --"
"And you," Uhura says, giving Sulu a knowing look. "He would remember you and be heartbroken."
"Well --" Sulu mutters, falling back to a seat on the bed. "Yeah. That too."
"We're all hoping he'll remember," Uhura says. She stands and walks to the bed, sits down beside Sulu and places a hand on his arm. "And maybe he will -- it's been ten hours, not ten days. But who knows when we'll have another chance to dock on a planet, the way things are going now? It wouldn't be right to keep him aboard the ship while we're at war, not if he's so confused and frightened."
"I know," Sulu says, though he feels like he doesn't know anything anymore. They're being attacked by invisible enemies and Chekov isn't Chekov anymore, he's a scared fourteen year old who wants his mother.
"Could I speak to him?" Sulu asks. "Maybe if I show him some photos or something it would jog his memory." Sulu is thinking of the photographs he keeps in a box under his bed, the box he takes with him when he's on a mission off ship while Chekov mans the conn. The pictures are from space station bars and shore leaves, many of them featuring a motley assortment of friends, but the ones Sulu looks at when he has down time on missions are the pictures of Chekov, grinning into beer steins at alien pubs and smiling sleepily as he hugs his pillow in hotel room beds.
"I don't know about pictures," Uhura says. "That might only startle him. But you can speak to him if he's willing. He knows more English than he was letting on - he does remember taking classes and you know he's a brilliant student, he's just not that comfortable speaking it."
"I'd like to try talking to him," Sulu says, though he's actually pretty terrified of the idea. He's never felt worse than he did when Chekov looked at him with accusation, not in the familiar way he does during their arguments at work but as if Sulu were nobody, just an annoyance on the periphery.
"Okay," Uhura says with a sigh, standing. "Just don't be disappointed if he doesn't have a breakthrough. And don't forget -- he does love you. He just. Doesn't remember it."
"I know," Sulu says, grumbling as he heads for the door, but he doesn't know. He's been afraid for the past year that Chekov is only with him because they're stuck on the ship together, and that when the mission is over Chekov will be ready to move on. He's pretty fucking impressive. He could have almost anyone. Now, instead of moving forward without Sulu, he's moving backward without him, and it hurts just as badly.
*
The lights are on but turned down low when Sulu walks into the sick bay. McCoy is bent over a desk in the far corner, scowling at some brain scans on his monitor. Sulu walks behind him, keeping quiet and wondering if that is Chekov's brain he's looking at. It makes Sulu feel a little queasy and cold to think of it, that everything he loves about Chekov might be pictured there in McCoy's scans, everything that makes Chekov who he is. It's too fragile, like everything Sulu cares about.
He walks to the bed where Chekov is now sitting unrestrained, propped against his pillows with his knees pulled to his chest and his arms folded over them, his head bent down. He looks up when Sulu approaches, his face clammy with stale distress and his eyes wide. Sulu shatters all over again for those eyes, thinking of the first time he suspected Chekov might care for him, the way he had looked at Sulu when Sulu came back from fighting with Kirk in the air above Vulcan. Chekov had been out of breath when he arrived in the teleportation bay, and his fists had flexed at his sides when Sulu thanked him for saving him, as if he'd wanted to reach out and put his hands on Sulu to make sure he was real.
"May I sit with you?" Sulu asks, feeling like a dirty old man, though Chekov is still in his nineteen year old body, wherever his mind is. Sulu still feels more than four years older, and he'll be glad when Chekov no longer has a teen suffix on the end of his age. If they'll even be together on Chekov's twentieth birthday. If Chekov hasn't been shipped away like damaged goods by then.
"Where is Uhura?" Chekov asks, speaking slowly. He's scratching at his wrist, which is what Sulu's Chekov always does when he's nervous.
"She'll be back soon," Sulu says, trying not to appear crushed by the question, and probably failing. "You really don't remember me," he says softly.
Chekov shifts, letting his legs slide down onto the bed. Sulu can hardly stand for how much he wants to crawl onto the mattress beside Chekov and pull him into his arms, stroke his hair and tell him things are going to be alright. He doesn't know how to live in a universe where he can't do that anymore.
"You stay, okay," Chekov says, and Sulu sits down in the chair beside the bed. His chest feels tight and achy, and he wishes that Chekov didn't look even more pathetic and adorable with that bandage wrapped around his forehead.
"How is your head feeling?" Sulu asks. "Does it hurt? Did McCoy give you any medicine?"
"Head is okay," Chekov says, holding up a hand and nodding a little. "Thank you," he says primly, and Sulu bites down on his lip to keep from moaning with some new kind of agony he's never experienced before. He's like a ball of nothing but want, and it's far more complicated and painful than any lust he ever suffered for Chekov.
"We were friends," Sulu says when silence descends between them. "We are, I mean. You and me. We fly the ship together."
Chekov shrugs and shakes his head, looking sad.
"I do not know," he says, and Sulu isn't sure if he's trying to tell Sulu that he doesn't understand him or that he's not sure he believes this.
"This must be very strange for you." Sulu doesn't want to leave him. He'll sit here until Chekov falls asleep, and maybe he'll stay for awhile afterward, too. He might as well. It's not as if he'll be getting any sleep until this is resolved, and his only hope for any future sleep is to have that resolution involve Chekov returning to his bed.
Chekov sighs and pulls his legs in to sit Indian style. His posture is worse than usual, more teenager-ish. His hair is a mess and he looks like he could use a shower.
"I do not know this place," Chekov says.
"It's the U.S.S. Enterprise," Sulu says, wanting to feed him answers until everything clicks back into place. "You work here. You're very important to us." To me.
"Is like time machine," Chekov says meekly, and Sulu can't help but laugh. He bites down on it quickly, feeling guilty.
"I'm sorry," Sulu says. "I shouldn't laugh. I'm -- nervous, I think. It's strange to be around you when you don't know who I am."
"We are friends here?" Chekov asks, looking skeptical about this.
"Yeah," Sulu says glumly. "Friends."
"You seem very old," Chekov says, and Sulu bursts into anxious laughter again. He chews his tongue when Chekov wilts.
"My English is not good," Chekov says.
"Sorry, I'm not laughing at you," Sulu says. "And anyway, yeah, I feel pretty old right now. And worthless. I wish I could help you."
"They say -- they will put me home."
"Yeah. I guess that's the plan."
Chekov sighs and leans down onto his pillows, keeping his eyes on Sulu as if he doesn't trust him not to snap and try to kill him at any moment. Sulu tries to imagine what it would be like to wake up five years from now and have no idea what was going on. He'd be looking for Chekov and wondering where he was, how things had ended, how he could find him again.
"Maybe if I took you up to the bridge," Sulu says, glancing over his shoulder at McCoy. "And showed you some familiar things, outside of the sick bay. Maybe you would remember, then."
Chekov frowns a little, considering this. Sulu is pretty sure McCoy would kill him if he found him sneaking Chekov out of the sick bay, but he's got to try something. Chekov -- his Chekov -- would want Sulu to fight to keep him on the Enterprise. He told Sulu, when they were in bed together one night, worn out from work and too tired to do anything but whisper to each other in the dark, that he never felt like he had anything close to a purpose in life until he was behind the controls of the Enterprise. He'd been picked on a kid, a loner and a mama's boy, and Sulu got to watch Chekov become a man day by day as he grew confident and cool beside him at the console. Sometimes, though, he still treats Chekov the way he wanted to when they first met, as if he's a helpless boy who belongs curled in Sulu's arms. Chekov usually indulges him in this, sometimes grumbling about it even as he curls in closer.
"Want to go for a walk?" Sulu asks, keeping his voice quiet. "It might make things less confusing if you see the place where you've been living for the past year."
"You are my friend?" Chekov says, as if he wants to make doubly sure that Sulu isn't an enemy who is trying to trick him. For all he knows, everyone here is.
"I'm more than your friend," Sulu says, his voice almost breaking, but he tampers it down. "This will sound weird but I -- love you, actually. I love you so much, Pavel." And then, fuck, his voice breaks like glass. He puts his head in his hands, knowing that he's screwed this up, that fourteen-year-old Chekov probably hasn't even kissed anyone yet and might not be comfortable with the fact that he likes boys, if that's even occurred to him. He and Sulu haven't really talked about the way he discovered that he did, but Sulu figured Chekov must have had some experience in that area when he swallowed Sulu's cock so fearlessly during that first drunken evening together, then begged to be fucked with his please please please.
He feels a hand in his hair, soft and reassuring, and assumes that McCoy has wandered over to offer him some sympathy and tell him to get out, but when he lifts his head it's Chekov who is patting him and looking at him as if suddenly he recognizes him. The moment passes, and Chekov takes his hand away.
"You love me?" Chekov says, the lightness and wonder in the question making him at least sound like he's only fourteen.
"Yes," Sulu says. He blinks his tears back, trying to laugh at himself. "More than anything."
"A kiss love?" Chekov says, squinting a little, and Sulu knows what he's trying to say. He always does, even when Chekov accidentally slips into Russian. Sulu might not know the literal translations, but he can hear What's wrong? when Chekov wakes in the night and asks him, no matter what language he uses.
"Yeah, there's -- kissing involved," Sulu says, nodding. Chekov raises his eyebrows and purses his lips in surprise, sitting back a little.
"I ask my mother do I look old." Chekov touches his face experimentally. "She tells me to her I look very young always."
"You haven't seen your reflection yet?" Sulu asks. Chekov looks puzzled. "Uh, mirror?" Sulu tries, and Chekov nods enthusiastically.
"Yes, mirror, yes! Please?"
Sulu hesitates. What if McCoy has kept Chekov away from reflective surfaces for a reason? But whatever McCoy has tried to bring Chekov back to himself hasn't worked so far, and he was wrong about the surgery being uncomplicated, so what the hell does he know? Sulu motions for Chekov to get out of bed, and he does. They walk very quickly to the sick bay door, and Sulu sneaks Chekov out into the hall, feeling as if he's stealing an animal from the zoo, something exotic that will probably suffer in his care.
"C'mere," Sulu whispers. The whole ship feels quiet and still, and Sulu likes it, as if the world has been paused until Chekov is ready to return to it. He draws Chekov over to a glass panel near the entrance to the cafeteria, which is closed for the night. Their reflections are clear in the surface of the glass, and Chekov leans in close to his, frowning. Sulu's heart is racing, and he's not sure if it's because he feels like he's doing something wrong or because he hopes this will fix everything.
Chekov touches his face, and then the glass. He sniffs a little in amusement and turns to smile at Sulu, which is like seeing the sun on Earth, something Sulu misses every day. Chekov fills Sulu's longing for that particular light pretty well in substitute.
"This is good," Chekov says, as if he approves of how he's turned out. Sulu grins.
"Yeah, I agree."
"Understand," Chekov says sternly as they walk down the hall toward the bridge. "Before, not good."
"Oh, yeah right. I've seen pictures of you as a kid. You were fucking adorable." He feels guilty for the curse, but Chekov is beaming.
"Fucking!" he says cheerfully. "This word, I know it."
"Well." Sulu is flooded with guilt, pretty sure that it's somehow amoral to want to grab Chekov and rut against him crazily, because he doesn't hate Sulu and he's not averse the idea of kissing a man and he knows the word fucking. "Kids always want to learn the bad words first, I guess. I made you teach me Russian curses." He leaves off the part about wanting to know those words because they're the ones that Chekov screams when he's being fucked.
They reach the bridge, the lights down low and the console unmanned, Chekov and Sulu's understudies on the other side of the room muttering through their coffee break. There's also a woman at one of the stations along the back of the room, but she seems absorbed in whatever is on her monitor, and Sulu hopes none of them will notice as he sneaks Chekov up toward the main console. He puts a finger over his lips to signal for Chekov to be quiet and Chekov nods in understanding. They creep over to the console and Sulu stands there watching Chekov look at it, not knowing what to do next.
"You sit there," Sulu says, pointing to Chekov's chair. "And I sit here." His whole world and the entirety of his happiness is finally that simple, and he realizes this as he points to their chairs. You sit there, I sit here. He would give Chekov a similar demonstration at the foot of their bed if he could, pointing out their separate pillows.
"I want to touch it," Chekov whispers, drawing close to Sulu, and Sulu flushes, holding down an embarrassed laugh.
"You'd better not," Sulu whispers back, but Chekov has already lost interest in the console. He's caught sight of the view through the front window of the bridge, and his eyes are getting wider and wider as he gazes out at the endless stretch of space.
"Oh," he breathes out, and Sulu feels like he could die from loving Chekov as much as he does, even while he's like this. Especially while he's like this.
"Yeah," Sulu says, standing beside him to take it in himself, trying to imagine not having seen what looks like the same empty quadrant of space ten thousand times already. "Pretty good view, huh?"
Chekov walks around the console and stands with his nose almost touching the glass, his breath fogging against it. Sulu follows him, enjoying the way Chekov's silhouette looks against the backdrop of space. When Chekov turns around he has tears in his eyes, and Sulu's stomach drops, because he might have hurt him further, or this might be the end of the amnesia.
"I thought I might never," Chekov says, wiping at his eyes. He smiles shakily, and Sulu walks over to put a hand on Chekov's shoulder. He doesn't flinch this time, and he feels like he always has, like the proper place for Sulu's hands.
"Me too," Sulu says. He's never confided in Chekov about this before, that he worried all throughout his time at the Academy that he wouldn't make it to active duty, that some essential flaw in him would show itself during his final evaluations, some weakness or cowardice or wicked truth.
"This makes me sad," Chekov says, turning back to the console. "To look here, sad." He glances up at Sulu shyly. "And you. To look at you."
"Are you remembering something?" Sulu asks. Chekov shakes his head and shrugs.
"I am wanting to," he says, wiping at his eyes again.
*
Part II