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The night that Victor graduates from Starfleet Academy is meant to be the best day of his life.
It’s the end of one long journey - a path he first started on at the age of eight, when he was certified in his first alien language - and the beginning of another. Soon, he’ll have his first assignment, his first ship, his first five-year mission. Soon, he’ll be touching the stars.
But right now, he’s in a bar, packed wall to wall with other drunk cadets celebrating their own graduation.
“Victor!” Chris yells into his ear, listing against him. “Victor, we did it! Can you believe?”
“I can’t,” Yuri drawls before Victor can answer. Starfleet’s prodigy flight controller is leaning back against the steel bar, sipping tonic and lime through a straw and fooling no one into believing he’s gotten hard liquor. “I didn’t know they’d still let you sign up for Starfleet if you took ten years to graduate.”
“You’re just jealous,” Mila grins, slinging her arm around the boy’s neck. “Because Victor decided to graduate now and stole all the class awards from you.”
Yuri sputters and attempts to shake her off. He looks like a kitten, puffed up and spitting in the face of an imaginary challenger, and Mila doesn’t flinch. Instead, she grabs his arm, hauling him away to the center of the room and the writhing mass of newly-minted officers attempting to dance.
Chris leans more heavily into Victor’s side, resting his head on Victor’s shoulder. Alcohol has always made him affectionate, and it squeezes Victor’s heart. Once upon a time- well, it didn’t matter much anymore what might have happened then. Now, Chris would be going home with his gorgeous nurse boyfriend, and Victor would be going back to their room alone.
“You never did tell me,” Chris murmurs against his collarbone. “You never did say why you finally decided to graduate. Did you just get tired of breaking the academy records?”
“Something like that,” Victor says. There’s no point in expanding further. Chris is too drunk to be any help, and it would only bring the celebration down. He can see Masumi winding his way toward them now, and nudges Chris to straighten up, shoving him gently into the arms of his smiling boyfriend.
And then, Victor is alone.
It happened sooner than he expected.
Someone collides with his arm, and Victor turns, ready to steer another stumbling young thing back into the party. Instead, the boy grabs his hand, and Victor finds himself meeting a pair of alert amber eyes.
“Victor!” The boy shouts, a flush spilling over his cheeks from the heat, or maybe the alcohol, or maybe just the way their fingers are already intertwined. “Come dance with me!”
And Victor doesn’t recognize the boy with the tousled black hair, his uniform unzipped to mid-chest, but that doesn’t seem to matter as Victor lets himself be towed out to the dance floor. Soon, they’ll both be leaving on missions. Most people at this party, Victor will probably never see again.
He catches the mystery man up in his arms, and they fall into the beat together.
Victor only had a couple drinks, but the bartenders must be pouring them strong tonight. He can feel the bubbles pumping through his veins as his partner spins him, then catches his hands again to pull him close. Somewhere between the second song and the moment his partner dips him - blood rushing to Victor’s head as he gasps, laughing - the mission falls to the side.
Five years is a long way away. Something important is happening now.
Victor staggers back to his feet as the song ends, and his partner never lets go of his hands. He turns, pulling Victor along behind him, and Victor goes. Wherever tonight wants to take him, he’s game for it.
Through the double doors of the bar and out into the night air, around the building, Victor trails his mystery man up to the top of a grass-covered hill. There’s a warm breeze blowing, and they’re close enough to campus still to hear the music from the bar drifting in their wake.
“Where are we going?” Victor gasps, out of breath from the roiling mixture of dancing, climbing, and laughter.
The mystery man turns back, grinning at Victor. “Come see the stars with me,” he says.
There isn’t much to see. The light pollution from the academy blots out all but the strongest starlight, but Victor’s mind fills in the rest. They stand at the crest of the hill, hands still joined, heads tilted back to stare into the darkness above.
It’s so wide, this sky; so impossibly large, stretching out far beyond what anyone standing on earth can see, and that cold, familiar fear surges through his limbs and chills his bones.
He’s been drinking, and he’s on a hill with a stranger, and they’ll both leave soon and never meet again, so Victor lets the words spill from his lips. “What if I’m not ready?” he asks. “What if I can’t cut it? Books and tests, academics, simulations - none of it is like what’s really out there, is it?”
The other boy doesn’t reply, but when Victor turns, he’s staring, and the stars are burning embers in his eyes. “Of course you’re ready,” he scoffs. “You’re Victor Nikiforov.”
“Aren’t you scared?” Victor asks, and the hand on his tightens as the boy looks back up at the night sky.
“No,” he says. He closes his eyes, his dark lashes gilded by the moonlight. “All that up there? That’s just… home.”
Victor sucks in a breath, preparing to dive in before he falls completely. The boy presses warm against his side, and Victor needs to know his name. Even if they don’t see each other again tomorrow, then maybe in five years, or ten, or fifteen-
“There you are!” Someone yells, running up the hill toward them to catch Victor’s mystery date by the waist. The person smirks at Victor before pulling away his prize. “Come on,” they urge. “It’s bedtime, and water time too. You’ll thank me in the morning.”
The boy looks back - eyes full of stars - and then he’s gone. Victor sits on the hill alone, watching his transport leave, and then he lies back in the grass, staring up at the universe unfurling ahead of him.
-
It takes weeks for the ship assignments to arrive - weeks of lying around his dormitory, listening to Chris and his boyfriend fuck like bunnies on the other side of a very deficient privacy curtain. Victor understands their eagerness, knows that they both dread assignments, with the chance they’ll be placed on separate ships, but still.
It’s not considerate.
Their cadet class is spoiled for choice. Because of their size and the timing, there are three starships currently being refitted to take on new crew, and while that means plenty of posts and options to go around, it also makes it much more likely that Victor’s tiny social circle will be divided again and again, down to zero.
In the end, Chris and Masumi get their wish, both assigned to the Eagle, where they can hopefully get a private room. Mila gets posted to the Akira, while Yuri’s communique sends him to the Valdemar, with only Victor for companionship.
The Valdemar is nice enough, and Victor makes good use of the first few days stuck in port, learning his way around the warren that is a starship’s interior. He gets lost each day, then challenges himself to find his way back to quarters alone.
Victor’s one deficiency is that he still doesn’t know any of the other crew members, aside from Yuri. Hell, even Yuri has managed to make a new friend already, and Victor struggles to push aside his resentment when Otabek Altin begins joining them in the mess lounge for meals. Navigators and Conn are a matched set. It makes sense that Yuri would bond with the navigator closest to his own age, and yet-
Victor pries himself from his thoughts and looks up from where his fork was massacring the replicator’s poor attempt at pirozhki, sensing a change in the air. The mess hall is unnaturally quiet.
“What’s the fuss?” he murmurs to Yuri.
“Yuuri Katsuki,” Yuri replies, leveling his fork to point to the doorway, where a dark-haired man in science blue is scanning the room, looking for a seat. “The imposter Yuuri.”
“Who?” Victor asks, feeling as if he should know the name.
Yuri sneers at him, so probably yes. “Are you serious? Katsuki, who was ranked third in overall scores? Katsuki, the adopted Vulcan?”
Victor stares at him, expression blank, and even Otabek is shaking his head now. Irritation stabs through Victor. Altin doesn’t even know him him. “He’s Vulcan?” Victor asks.
“Raised by Vulcans,” Yuuri repeats. “So he’s got the whole,” he makes a hand-gesture that’s presumably meant to signify some indescribable Vulcan quality.
“But,” Otabek adds, already finishing Yuri’s sentences. “He’s still too human for the Vulcans’ taste, apparently.”
Which explains why the man is still lingering in the door, looking for a place to sit. Victor starts to rise, intending to wave him over, when the man turns, walking over to take a chair in the corner by himself. Oh.
At that moment, the announcement system overhead springs to life, the flat voice of the computer issuing orders, All officers, report to bridge for Valdemar launch. Repeat: all officers, report to bridge. The Valdemar is preparing to launch.
Chairs screech as all around the lounge, crew members rise from their seats and head for the doorway. Yuri and Otabek push ahead, shouldering others to the side in their rush to see these first moments of the long journey ahead. Victor follows at a more sedate pace, and glances over as he passes by the solitary seat where Katsuki waits.
Dark hair, now combed, but too easily tousled, and those warm, amber eyes meet his ever so briefly. Oh. Victor’s heart warms with a surge of recognition. He’s not alone, then.
He stops and holds out his hand, this time aware of the significance of the gesture. Yuuri’s eyes move from his fingertips, up his arm, before finally lighting on his face once more, and Victor smiles, beckoning.
“Come see the stars with me,” he says, and watches the flush spread over Yuuri’s cheeks.