Archive of Our Own ^beta

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's 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.

*

Sulu sneaks Chekov back to the sick bay and sits with him for awhile longer, answering his questions about the ship and the mission and the past five years in the history of the universe. McCoy gives them suspicious looks but doesn't try to chase Sulu away until Chekov has dropped to sleep in the midst of Sulu's story about how Kirk came to be the Captain of the Enterprise. Sulu lingers for as long as he can, watching Chekov sleep, his head thrown back onto his stacked pillows and his mouth hanging open. Sulu knows that in fifteen minutes Chekov will moan and shift and grab one of the pillows, hug it to his chest and curl around it. He knows that when Chekov wakes up he'll arch off the mattress, stretching from his shoulders to his toes, and then he'll go limp with a groan. He knows, and it doesn't matter, because Chekov doesn't know him, not anymore, and maybe he never knew that Sulu committed the things Chekov did in bed to memory.

"What's going to happen to him?" Sulu asks when he and McCoy are on the other side of the sick bay.

"I don't know," McCoy says. "He could wake up in the morning and remember everything. And he could never remember, Hikaru. The mind is --" He stops himself from giving Sulu a speech about the vulnerability of the brain, probably because Sulu is staring at the floor, the words He could never remember pasted over his eyes and ringing in his ears, thick in the back of his throat. Everything that happened to the two of them in the past year, and everything Chekov learned in the four years before that, could all be gone forever. Of course, Chekov can relearn his physics. He'll never relearn Sulu if he's left behind on Bahal. If they ever met again they'd be strangers.

Sulu returns to his room and falls asleep holding Chekov's pillow, breathing in the scent of it and wrapping around it almost entirely. He dreams that Chekov comes to his room and sits on his bed and tells him he's remembered everything, but something is still off. Chekov's shoulders don't feel right under Sulu's arms, and Sulu sobs in the dream when he realizes that it's not real.

The next day, he checks the sick bay before reporting to the bridge. Chekov is being examined by McCoy, and he brightens a little when he sees Sulu, sitting up straighter. Sulu's heart bounds forward, wanting to think that this means Chekov has remembered, but Chekov doesn't shove McCoy away and reach for Sulu, he only gives him a faint smile.

"How're you feeling?" Sulu asks.

"Feeling okay," Chekov says, wincing when McCoy puts a cold stethoscope against his chest.

"Of course you're feeling okay, I just gave you a painkiller cocktail," McCoy mutters, and Chekov grins stupidly. Sulu laughs, worrying that Chekov only looks happy to see him because he's drugged.

"Do you want me to bring you anything?" Sulu asks Chekov. He's already late for his shift but he doesn't want to leave Chekov, will now always be afraid that more and more of Chekov will disappear while Sulu's back is turned. "A magazine or a book from your room? You've got some Russian stuff in there, I could --"

"Is okay, Uhura will come today for English lesson," Chekov says, as if he's looking forward to this. Sulu nods, feeling envious and foolish.

"Well, I'll, uh, see you later then," he says, mumbling as he turns to go.

"Wait, sir, please," Chekov calls, and Sulu turns back eagerly.

"What is your name?" Chekov asks, all cheer and sunlight, as if he's proud of himself for constructing the question properly. Sulu feels like he's been torn in half, and he knows that McCoy can see it on his face.

"Hikaru," he says, struggling over the syllables. Chekov nods once and grins, and Sulu hurries away before his eyes can cloud up. He hears McCoy following him and wishes he would leave him the fuck alone.

"Hey, Sulu," McCoy says, catching his arm. Sulu gives him a dark look, and McCoy makes a pitying face that Sulu hates more than anything.

"Try not to get so damn discouraged," McCoy says. "He could have lost more years. He could have lost more than just time."

"I know that," Sulu says, pulling free of McCoy's grip. "That doesn't mean I'm going to put on a fucking happy face when we dump him on Bahal so he can go home and start his life over without me."

He didn't mean to admit so much, and to McCoy of all people. McCoy sighs and Sulu walks away again, not really wanting to discuss it further. He heads for the bridge and ignores the looks from Kirk and Uhura when he arrives. They're smart enough to know not to say anything. A third-stringer named Travis is sitting in Chekov's chair, and Sulu hopes the guy will forgive him if he avoids looking at him throughout the entire shift.

"Have we received any more threats from the Klingons?" Sulu asks Kirk when he comes to stand between Sulu and Travis, frowning out at space.

"No," Kirk says. "Not directly. But they've been communicating with the Federation. They're upset about losing control of Yrunbi --"

"Yoo-run-bye," Uhura calls across the bridge, correcting Kirk's pronunciation. He briefly glowers in her direction.

"Yeah, that's what I said," Kirk mutters, lowering his voice. "Anyway, they're asking for the surrender of the colonies there and the Federation isn't budging, of course, so we can expect more attacks if they lock onto us again before we reach Bahal. Spock is still trying to work out what sort of weapons they fired at us yesterday."

"God, that was just yesterday," Sulu says in disbelief. Kirk pats Sulu's shoulder before walking back to his chair.

A few hours later, Uhura leaves the bridge, and Sulu knows she's going to give Chekov his English lesson. Sulu tries to focus on flying and staying alert, but all he can think about is Uhura sitting on Chekov's cot, showing him flashcards or giving him sentences to translate. When his lunch break finally comes he hurries to the sick bay, not sure what his excuse for intervening will be when he gets there, but Chekov's bed is empty. The sight of the sheets tucked in neatly as if they've never been touched is enough to make Sulu moan with indignant shock. Maybe he imagined the whole thing, maybe Chekov was never here at all. It's occurred to him, even before part of Chekov was sliced away by amnesia. Tracy appears at Sulu's shoulder and his mouth hangs open around his question.

"They went to the cafeteria for lunch," Tracy says, and Sulu is getting really tired of having everyone look at him like he's the most pitiable figure in the universe.

Sulu walks into the cafeteria, trying to play it cool now, for whose benefit he's not sure. Uhura and Chekov are sitting together at the far end of the room, and Spock is sitting beside Uhura, staring at Chekov as if he's a fascinating specimen. Sulu picks up a banana from a basket of them near the hot dish counter and heads over to join them.

"I am curious to know if you had any dreams last night," Spock is saying to Chekov when Sulu sits down beside him. "Perhaps your unconscious might unlock more easily than your conscious mind."

Uhura gives Spock a look and then translates this for Chekov, who looks a bit confused. He nods and says something in Russian.

"He says he can't remember if he had any dreams or not," Uhura says. "Hello, Hikaru," she adds, and Chekov turns to smile at Sulu.

"How are the lessons going?" Sulu asks.

"Lessons are going very good," Chekov says.

"Very well," Uhura corrects, but Chekov isn't listening. He's staring at Sulu, cocking his head a bit. Sulu is probably imagining it, but Chekov looks happy to see him. It's like he wants to recognize Sulu; maybe it's muscle memory more than anything. He and Chekov usually sit with their shoulders pressed almost together while they eat, and Chekov has already moved closer to Sulu than a stranger would dare to.

"Your name is like a Japanese, yes?" Chekov asks, and Sulu grins at the thought that Chekov has been considering the origins of his name during his English lesson.

"Um, yeah, my grandparents were Japanese. I'm, you know. American."

"I have been to that place, Japan," Chekov says, nodding rapidly. "When I was little boy. I remember noodles only." He shrugs apologetically, and Sulu grins.

"Yeah, I've been a couple times," Sulu says. He's actually had this conversation with Chekov before, and he remembers it well. It was just a few nights after they returned to Earth following the conflict with Nero. Chekov had shown up at Sulu's apartment and they talked for a long time about what had happened in space, then about other things. By midnight their stomachs were growling and everything was closed, so Sulu made Chekov a frozen pizza, the only thing he had in his fridge. Chekov picked off the black olives and hid them in his napkin, and Sulu was so in love with him that he couldn't see straight.

"Never been to Russia, though," Sulu says, aware of the fact that Uhura and Spock are staring at him as if they can't imagine why he's bothering with this irrelevant conversation. Sulu doesn't know what else to do. He misses talking to Chekov so much already, even more intensely than he does when he's away on missions, because Chekov is here with him, almost.

"Russia, ah, okay, best country for eating, drinking, living," Chekov says, and Sulu almost expects him to slap the surface of the table for emphasis. "You should visit."

"If I may, Ensign Chekov," Spock says, and Chekov turns quickly, as if he's been caught passing notes in class. "Do you find that your English is coming back to you more easily as the hours pass, or is the degree of difficulty constant?"

Chekov looks at Uhura, clearly lost on this. She repeats the question and Chekov still seems as if he doesn't know how to answer it. He looks at Spock warily, and Sulu smiles to himself, wondering if fourteen-year-old Chekov has ever met a Vulcan. Probably not.

After lunch, Sulu returns to the bridge, his head full of the possibility of seeing Chekov later, just as it was in the old days. It's not a guarantee anymore, those precious hours alone to look forward to at the end of the day, but a nervous hope that sits sharply at the bottom of his stomach. He feels like he's gone back in time, too, and that he's going to have to make Chekov fall in love with him all over again. Clouding the novelty of this opportunity is the fact that Sulu can't simultaneously help Chekov relearn how to navigate, at least not in the space of one and a half days, which is all they have left until they reach Bahal and Chekov gets left behind.

"Can I talk to you?" Sulu asks Kirk when his shift has ended and he's been replaced at the console. Kirk is slumped in his chair, and he glances up at Sulu without moving.

"What's up?" he asks.

"Uhura told me yesterday that you guys are planning on leaving Pavel on Bahal if -- if he hasn't recovered his memories by then."

Kirk sighs and sits up a little, arching back to stretch. He looks up at Sulu like he knows Sulu isn't going to like what he's about to say.

"Of course we will," Kirk says. "Who knows when our next chance to go planet-side will come? Things are getting pretty fucking serious, Hikaru. We can't -- it's not fair to subject him to what might happen if he's not even well enough to do his job."

"But what if he remembers a week later, and a week later we're in a situation like the one you and I were in on Vulcan? You know, falling to our fucking deaths?" Sulu is aware that he's approaching insubordination, but he once got mooned by Kirk at a bar and things between them aren't exactly formal. "We'd both be dead if it weren't for Chekov, and what if --"

"You think he could do that again, with his memory all messed up?" Kirk asks, standing. "He can't even remember how to speak English right."

Sulu rolls his eyes, letting that slide. "How do we know he couldn't do it?" Sulu asks. "Maybe if he had the chance --"

"I don't have time to retrain a cadet in the middle of a war," Kirk says.

"That's what we're calling this now?" Sulu asks, as if it's really up to Kirk.

"I don't know what the fuck else to call it," Kirk says.

Sulu leaves the bridge in a huff, feeling as if everyone is staring at him, watching him fall apart. One and a half days, and if Chekov doesn't remember how to do his job before then, he's out of Sulu's life for good. There's no question about it; without this ship they really have nothing in common. Finally acknowledging this hurts worse than the thought of leaving Chekov on Bahal.

*

That evening, Sulu waits as long as he can, puttering around his room and attending to his plants, shaving, rereading a letter from his sister and generally doing anything to distract himself from the fact that he's only waiting until he knows that Uhura has left Chekov alone for the night. Around 20:00 he can't wait any longer, and he goes to the sick bay, entering quietly and breathing out in relief when he sees that the coast is clear. Chekov is lying on his back in bed, a book propped against his bent knees. When Sulu draws closer he sees that it's the operating manual for the navigation equipment on the Enterprise.

"Any of that making sense?" Sulu asks as he pulls up a chair. Chekov looks over at him, and the drowsy set of his eyes burns through Sulu in the best, worst, most familiar way. For a moment Sulu thinks that this must be his Chekov, the one who remembers the first night he spent in Sulu's arms and every night after.

"Some sense," Chekov says, closing the book. His accent is still thick and his eyes are kind but not loving. "But it is in English. Still hard for me."

"We could find a Russian manual, I bet," Sulu says, excited by the prospect. "On the computer -- or in your room, maybe!" This has been his plan all along, to bring Chekov back to his room, just down the hall from Sulu's. Maybe if he's surrounded by his things he'll have an epiphany.

"My room?" Chekov says.

"Yeah, your quarters, here on the ship. It has all your stuff, your personal stuff, you might even recognize some of it. Do you want to see?"

Chekov nods, enthusiastic as a puppy, already leaning up from the bed. Sulu imagines that for someone who has only known life in his parents' house the prospect of having his own apartment-type space must be exciting indeed. He takes Chekov's hand instinctively to help him up from the bed. Chekov's palm is hot against Sulu's, and he's slow to pull away, three steps from the bed before he does.

They get to Chekov's room, and Sulu's face gets hot when he punches in the access code, embarrassed for knowing it, because this Chekov hasn't given it to him. He remembers the day when his Chekov did, when they were at the console together and Chekov asked Sulu if he could please fetch his eye drops for him while he was on break. Chekov had asked him to do this without bothering to give Sulu his access code, as if Sulu already knew it, and when Sulu reminded Chekov that he would need it Chekov took Sulu's hand and wrote the code on the fattest part of Sulu's palm, with the pen he used in his notebook. It was the first time they touched, and Chekov's cheeks were pink when Sulu pulled away; he wouldn't meet Sulu's eyes. Sulu had taken his time in Chekov's room after finding the eye drops, not snooping exactly, but absorbing as much as he could without touching anything.

Chekov's room looks more or less the same as it did that day, which is to say, like a complete disaster. Sulu remembers being surprised to learn that Chekov was an unrepentant slob, and also charmed by it, because on Chekov it was fucking endearing, like everything else. His mess wasn't so much dirty as distracted: there were equations scribbled on notebook paper and taped to the wall over his desk, his bedsheets were tangled because he didn't see the point in making the bed if it was only going to be unmade again the following evening, and his books were all over the place, in stacks and opened to random pages, all of them littered with sticky notes as place keepers, all of the sticky notes covered in Chekov's barely legible handwriting.

Chekov smiles around at the wreck as if it's quite familiar, and Sulu imagines that his room back home must have looked very similar. Chekov walks over to the desk and bends over it to read the notes that have been strewn around everywhere and taped to the wall. He lingers over a cartoon drawing on notebook paper that is taped up beside a derivation of Torricelli's equation.

"I draw this?" Chekov says, and he shakes head. "Drew, I mean to say, drew?"

"Uh, no, I did, actually," Sulu says, laughing at himself. "It's supposed to be a picture of Spock and Kirk if they switched brains."

"Switched -- brains?" Chekov says, squinting at the picture.

"Yeah, see, Spock is like, freaking out and yelling about something, and Kirk is all stoic and raising his eyebrows -- I don't know, it's dumb, you just thought it was funny so you taped it up there, and I was like, 'Hey, if they see that I'm going to be in deep shit,' and you were like, 'I'll tell them I drew it,' and --" Sulu drops off there, because Chekov is staring at him as if he's crazy, and suddenly Sulu feels like he's making all of this up. But it happened. It did. It was only a few months ago, the two of them squeezed together in Chekov's bed while Chekov frowned down at a problem he was working out for Scotty, something that involved a web of complex calculations. When he was finished, he looked over to see what Sulu had been writing on the piece of paper he'd snatched from Chekov's notebook, and his smile broke out over Sulu's stupid drawing like floodlights, like Sulu had done something more impressive than solving Scotty's problem.

"Oh, I know this thing!" Chekov says, spotting something across the room and rushing to retrieve it. It's a little glass bird, a crane that sits on his bed stand, encroached upon by empty coffee cups and crumpled pieces of notebook paper. Chekov picks up the bird and smiles at it fondly, then looks down at something that Sulu has never seen before. It's a picture of him and Chekov in a cheap little black frame. Their faces are smashed together, Sulu laughing while Chekov stares at the camera, his mouth open as if he's asking a question. Sulu remembers that day. Eelyia, a desert planet he and Chekov visited during shore leave. They're both half-naked in the picture, because they were at the pool at their hotel. Chekov had held his PADD out in front of them to take a picture with its built-in camera. They'd tried three times before they'd aimed well enough to fit both their faces in the picture.

Chekov holds the picture in both hands, staring down at it for a long time. He and Sulu are so close in the picture, their cheeks pressed together, and there's no mistaking them for anything but two people who have mapped every inch of each other's skin. Sulu thinks about what Uhura said, that seeing pictures like this might only upset Chekov.

"I love you," Chekov says suddenly. It's a question. Sulu doesn't know what to say when Chekov looks up at him for an answer.

"I – I think you might," Sulu says, feeling pathetic. Chekov looks down at the picture again.

"You make me look happy," he says, and Sulu doesn't know how to respond to that, either.

"Pavel," Sulu says, trembling with uncertainty, because he can't really continue. Chekov stares at him, waiting for more.

"I miss you so much," Sulu says, and when his voice breaks he realizes that he hasn't cried yet, not since this happened to Chekov; only in his dream did he break down, and his eyes were dry when he woke. He's sort of proud of himself for holding out for so long even as he covers his face with his hands, sobbing into them, only once before he catches his bottom lip between his teeth and swallows the rest down. He gasps when Chekov's hands are suddenly on his shoulders, because he forgot for a moment that this Chekov can touch him just like the Chekov who maybe loved him did, that he isn't only a ghost. When he takes his hands from his face Chekov is looking at him the way he did when Sulu came back from Vulcan, back from almost dying.

"I am sorry," Chekov says very slowly, as if he wants to get this right. "I want to – not –" He curses and shuts his eyes, saying something in Russian. "I do not know how to say."

"It's okay," Sulu says, shaking his head. "You don't have to be sorry, God. I'm the reason you can't remember. You hit your head on the console because I swung the ship around too hard, and I just – I'm so afraid that they'll leave you on Bahal and you'll remember everything later and we won't be able to come back for you." He's more afraid that Chekov will never remember, or that he will and that it won't matter, that Sulu's one chance to be with him for at least five years will have been blown.

"I don't – fit – here," Chekov says, and Sulu nods somberly. "Not anywhere, now, I think."

"You fit here," Sulu says, putting his hands on Chekov's waist. Chekov looks stunned for a moment, and Sulu starts to take his hands away, but Chekov steps closer, staring up at Sulu with his eyes so wide.

"I know why, I think," Chekov says, his voice softer than Sulu has ever heard it outside of his bed.

"Why?"

"Why I love you in that picture."

Sulu is so close to falling forward to kiss Chekov, but if he does he won't be able to stop himself. He'll topple him to the bed and tear at his clothes and want him to be his Chekov again, but he isn't, even while he feels so real and warm and under Sulu's hands.

"Why, then?" Sulu asks, his fingers flexing on Chekov's sides. "Why do you – did you – why?"

"Because, this," Chekov says, and he lays his head against Sulu's chest, sweet and soft and easy, unafraid. He shuts his eyes. "I feel it, this. I do not remember, but I feel it, here."

Sulu is very conscious of his own wild heartbeat, pumping just under Chekov's ear. Chekov is smiling faintly, as if he could fall asleep standing up, his arms around Sulu's back and his head on his chest. Sulu lifts a shaking hand to touch Chekov's hair, and lets it slip down to the back of his neck. Chekov shudders and moans happily.

"Pavel," Sulu says, like a warning, because he's getting hot around his collar and he doesn't know how to do anything but want Chekov. He forgot everything else when he lost him, and if this Chekov thinks he's fourteen, he's nowhere near ready for the things that Sulu needs from him. Sulu puts his hands on Chekov's face anyway, trying to look deeply enough into his eyes to draw him out. Chekov makes the sort of buried sound of happy surprise that Sulu's has heard so many times, and he's got his lips halfway lowered over Chekov's before he stops himself.

"You should get back to the sick bay," Sulu says. He's still holding Chekov's face. He's not sure how he's going to make himself let go; it might be impossible.

"The sick place," Chekov says, wilting in Sulu's hands like a boy who wants his first kiss. "I hate that place."

"What do you want, Pavel?" Sulu asks, his fingers sliding up into Chekov's hair. Chekov's eyelids flutter and his mouth drops open. "To go home, to Earth?" Sulu asks. "I know you don't want to stay here. How could you? You didn't even know my name."

"Hikaru," Chekov says, leaning closer, pressing his stomach against Sulu's. "I know it now."

"So what does that mean, what do you want?" Sulu asks, his eyes watering as he begins to crack apart again. He wants any Chekov he can get, but he wants the Chekov he fell in love with more than anything. "Who are you?" Sulu asks, trying to get angry, his fingers tightening through Chekov's curls.

"Pavel," Chekov says, frowning a little, as if he's hurt. "You call me Pavel, and. No one but you says my name this way."

"You're going to leave me," Sulu says, and he's not sure which Chekov he's talking to now. Maybe they'll both hear him.

This Chekov doesn't deny it, just stares up at Sulu like he's still waiting for him to do something he'll regret. Sulu steps away from Chekov and walks across the room, letting out his breath in an angry rush.

"I want to stay here," Chekov says weakly.

"Well, you can't. C'mon, I'm taking you back to the sick bay. If McCoy notices you're gone he'll kill me. It's dangerous, anyway, I shouldn't have let you leave."

Sulu walks from the room and Chekov follows, his eyes on the ground like a scolded child. He is a child, for all intents and purposes, and Sulu hates everything everywhere for the cruel way the universe has taken Chekov from him. It would have been better to be left behind in a more traditional way, so that he didn't have to watch every inch of Chekov disappear, excruciatingly slow and still too fast.

*

The following morning, Sulu doesn't visit the sick bay on his way to the bridge. He doesn't want to hear the bad news, that Chekov still hasn't remembered, and he knows that he hasn't, because Chekov would have come to Sulu's bedroom and fallen onto him if he had. Unless the theory Sulu came up with during his sleepless night is correct, and Chekov was only jarred by the attack on the Enterprise and has become so tired of Sulu's attentions that he's faking the whole thing just for an excuse to leave.

"Are you okay?" Kirk asks Sulu halfway through his shift. Sulu has barely taken his eyes from the empty road of space ahead, imagining that he can already see Bahal appearing slowly in the distance.

"I'm fine," Sulu says, though Kirk will of course know he's lying.

"You didn't take your lunch break."

"Yeah, well. Maybe I'm not hungry. Do you need something, Captain?"

"Sulu. We'll reach Bahal in ten hours –"

"That's correct," Sulu says tightly, his stomach clenching up. Part of him still feels like it can't be real, that it can't ever actually happen.

"Hey," Kirk says, and the friendly pressure of his hand on Sulu's shoulder is almost enough to break through Sulu's stoic resolve. "Why don't you go spend some time with him?" Kirk says, keeping his voice soft and low. "I don't want to lose him, either."

"Being with me isn't going to help him remember," Sulu says.

"I don't know about that," Kirk says. "Uhura told me he's been asking for you all day."

"Doesn't mean he remembers anything." Sulu's hands are shaking now, and the thought of Chekov asking for him, wanting him and watching the sick bay door hopefully, makes him wonder if he shouldn't just stay on Bahal, too.

"I don't know," Kirk says. "Even if he doesn't remember. Hikaru. You could at least say goodbye."

Sulu stands, not sure if he's going to punch Kirk in the face for reminding him about what he's facing here today – the end of Chekov's tenure on the Enterprise, the last ten hours – or if he'll just walk to the sick bay without a word. For a moment he stares at Kirk, trying to decide.

"We could all die tomorrow," Kirk says, with a tone of sincere bewilderment, and somehow that is the only thing he could have said that wouldn't enrage Sulu further, so he doesn't hit him, just heads for the sick bay.

When Sulu arrives at the sick bay, Uhura is sitting with Chekov, who looks distraught. She's not showing him flashcards or having him conjugate verbs, just talking with him quietly, Chekov's legs folded under his blanket, that bandage still wrapped tightly around his forehead. They look up when they see Sulu, Uhura with sadness and Chekov with trepidation, as if he's afraid Sulu has come to yell at him again.

"I'd – better get back to the bridge," Uhura says, standing. She stares down at Chekov for a long time. Sulu has been so wrapped up in his own grief that he hasn't even stopped to consider that Chekov's friends are going to miss him, too, that everything on the bridge will feel a little darker and slower without Chekov humming over his monitor and asking Kirk to explain every stupid American pop culture reference he makes.

"Hikaru," Uhura says quietly, drawing him away from Chekov's bed. The way she's looking at him makes Sulu afraid that she's going to tell him that Chekov has regressed further, that he only remembers the first ten years of his life now.

"He still loves you," Uhura says. "He didn't forget. He just doesn't remember how he – fell."

"He doesn't love me," Sulu says. "He's just lonely."

Uhura frowns. "Is that what you –" she starts to ask, but stops herself. She shakes her head. "Well, you were always determined to be dense. I knew he loved you the day he saved you and Kirk. God, Hikaru. You should have seen him run for you. Like he was going to hold his arms out and catch you himself. That's not loneliness or infatuation. I wish you could have seen it."

"Well, I guess it doesn't matter now." Sulu looks over Uhura's shoulder at Chekov. He's staring at them, his hands around his elbows. "Unless he remembers how to navigate in the next ten hours, he's gone."

"Not gone, Hikaru," Uhura says, frowning. "How can you be so eager to throw away what you have? You should have heard him asking me about you, even now, when he doesn't even know what year it is. 'Where does Hikaru live on Earth, how long will he be here on this ship, will he be in very much danger?' This isn't going to go away as soon as you two are apart."

Uhura walks away, exasperated with Sulu, who is still staring at Chekov. Chekov sneaks glances at Sulu periodically, looking away with a blush when he sees Sulu watching him. Sulu walks to the bed and sits down, not on the chair but in the spot where Uhura was sitting, on the mattress. Chekov is still hugging his elbows, and he looks up at Sulu timidly.

"They will be at this place soon," Chekov says. "Where they will leave me."

"Your English is improving fast," Sulu says. He puts a hand over Chekov's folded arms. "Maybe if we brought you to the navigation console, some things would come back to you."

"I – I don't know," Chekov says. "Is big, um. Job."

"Responsibility," Sulu corrects, and this is the Chekov he knows, the beginnings of him at least. He was always extremely conscious of the fact that the lives of everyone on the Enterprise were in his hands. It was the burden he and Sulu shared, and one that they both wanted, because they knew they could fly the Enterprise better than any two people in the universe could.

"Let me show you something else, then," Sulu says, and he helps Chekov up from the bed.

Sulu takes Chekov to his room, to the room that they gravitated to at the end of every work day before this ordeal. Sulu couldn't handle the chaos of Chekov's room, and Chekov appreciated the fact that Sulu had his own en suite bathroom and a tiny window to space up above his bed. After work they would have a drink together, sometimes with Chekov soaking in the bathtub and Sulu sitting on the floor beside it, complaining about something Kirk did that pissed him off, Chekov telling him he should be more patient. They would go to dinner in the cafeteria or one of the restaurants for officers, eat with their friends and try not to drink too much if Spock was present. After eating Chekov would work on something that had troubled him during the day, some equation or observation about an alien moon. Sulu would play video games until he'd successfully distracted Chekov from his work, and Chekov would completely school Sulu at whatever he was playing unless it was a racing game, so Sulu almost always played racing games. They would get into a fake fight over accusations of cheating and it would dissolve easily into pulling each other's clothes off. They almost always fucked hard and with complete, unashamed abandon, because every time could be the last. When they were on shore leave, it was different. Sulu would lie inside Chekov, not moving for a long time, just matching his breath and touching his face. But even when they would fall asleep together after a long, leisurely shore leave fuck, nothing could compare to the nights together on the Enterprise, under the light of those alien moons that confounded Chekov. Even with all of the anxiety they lived with since the events of their first mission together, it was where they belonged, together in Sulu's bed, on their ship, which was always waiting for them to reappear on the bridge and reclaim its controls.

Chekov walks into Sulu's room as if he's cautiously approaching a shrine. Sulu stays near the door, watching him for anything like recognition. Chekov runs his fingers over the top of Sulu's desk, peeks into the bathroom, and picks up a picture of himself that is stuck into the corner of the mirror over Sulu's bureau. Chekov is giving the camera his best crooked smile, his eyes half-closed, caught in mid-blink. Sulu had teased him when the picture developed, because he looks like he's trying to seem cool.

"I've got some more pictures if you want to see them," Sulu says, speaking to keep his throat from closing up entirely. Chekov looks up with interest, and nods.

They sit together on Sulu's bed and sift through the pictures from the box. Sulu explains things – where they were, what was going on, who the others Chekov hasn't 'met' yet are – and Chekov listens in silence, taking a long time with each picture and studying all of them closely. He lingers longest over one that Scotty took at a party and gave to them. It's a group shot, Uhura laughing at Kirk while McCoy holds him up, a crowd of people around them with drinks in their hands. Scotty gave the picture to Sulu and Chekov because they are visible in the background, slumped into an armchair in whoever's room this party unfolded in, Chekov probably pretty drunk, because he's curled in Sulu's lap and looking at him with such open adoration that it still embarrasses Sulu to look at this picture, also because Sulu is leaning in to kiss Chekov, just a half inch from doing it, and he's staring at Chekov's mouth, his own lips hungrily parted.

"This is us," Chekov says, and he sounds more confident about it than Sulu has ever felt. He'll stare at this picture when he's sleeping in a cave on an alien planet with only Spock and Kirk's bickering to distract him from whatever imminent danger they're in, and wonder who these people are, if it's really he and Chekov he's looking at, or just some drunken, compromised version of the two of them, willing to settle for what they've been able to find while they're marooned together in space.

"Yeah," Sulu says, because he knows now. It was them, it really was. "That's us."

Chekov puts the picture back in the box and returns it to Sulu, who covers it with its lid. He slides it back under the bed.

"My head," Chekov says. "Hurting, a little."

"Oh, fuck, we'll take you back to the –"

"No," Chekov says sharply. He turns to Sulu and grabs his arms. "You kiss me first," Chekov says. "Like the picture. Please, Hikaru."

Please, Hikaru, and that breaks everything else away. Sulu kisses him so hard. Chekov gasps and whimpers as Sulu licks his lips apart and sucks on the tip of tongue, and Sulu makes himself pull back, bending his head down to Chekov's heaving chest.

"Oh," Chekov breathes out in surprise. He takes two handfuls of Sulu's hair and pulls him up again, his face bright with embarrassment and his eyes shadowed with confused lust that makes Sulu so weak for him he can barely stay upright. Chekov moves in to kiss him again, and Sulu doesn't pull away, though he feels like this is wrong somehow, like he's imposing himself upon Chekov, the first kiss he'll remember.

Chekov tastes so good, familiar and somehow new at the same time, and Sulu feels like things are going to work out, somehow, when they fall back onto the pillows to wrap around each other and kiss more deeply, Chekov's moans vibrating across Sulu's lips. Sulu waits for Chekov's hand to snake down and find his erection, so he can squeeze and rub and drive him crazy before finally grinning and sinking down to take him in his mouth, but of course it doesn't happen, because this Chekov is still fascinated by the novelty of kissing, and of pressing his face mindlessly to Sulu's, reveling in the heat of him.

"I feel it," Chekov whispers against Sulu's mouth. "I know this, I do."

"You remember?" Sulu asks, shooting up onto an elbow to peer down at Chekov with breathless relief that fades away when Chekov looks up at him timidly.

"Not remember," Chekov says. "But I know, I know." He presses his hand against Sulu's face to demonstrate, rubbing at the stubble there. His body remembers. His mind still doesn't.

"Show me what we do," Chekov says. He sneaks a hand under Sulu's shirt, tickling his fingers lightly over his skin. "Show me and I'll know."

"I can't," Sulu breathes. "You think you're fourteen, I can't –"

"I think, but not feel," Chekov says, shaking his head. "I never feel this before."

"Feel – like what?" Sulu's heart is pounding at the hollow of his throat, hard enough to almost choke him. This could really be the last time. It almost definitely will be.

"Not afraid," Chekov says. "I want – to do – what I think of when –" He bites his lip, and Sulu holds back a groan that might have come up so strong that Chekov would have been afraid after all. "I do not know word," Chekov says, so he reaches down to demonstrate, touching the shape of his erection through his pants.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Sulu says, the words shuddering out of him; he can't breathe, he's losing his air, losing Chekov with every second that passes, the ship moving them traitorously toward Bahal while they are away from its controls. Sulu has thought of everything – sabotage, piloting the ship elsewhere secretly, marrying Chekov once they reach Bahal so he can stay on board as a family member of an officer – but finally, this is all he has left. Taking Chekov's pretend virginity. Giving him what he wants before he goes.

"Please, Hikaru," Chekov says, sounding so much like himself that Sulu lets himself fall into the delusion. He covers Chekov's body with his, kissing him as sweetly and softly as he can manage, because he is still injured, still wrapped in that bandage that does make him look younger than nineteen. Sulu sobs silently against Chekov's neck when he finally accepts it: he will never know Chekov at twenty, thirty, forty, he will never look into his wrinkled face and still see someone who makes him feel guilty for wanting him with those big, innocent eyes. Even if Uhura is right that Chekov loves him and always will, Sulu feels it settle over him like an unshakable prophecy: he will die in space before he ever gets the chance to see Chekov again. Without Chekov beside him at the console, they're all as good as dead.

Sulu undresses Chekov very slowly, wanting everything to last as long as possible. He kisses every inch of Chekov's skin, Chekov's muscles trembling under the slow passes of Sulu's tongue. Chekov's hands are in Sulu's hair, squeezing it between his fingers possessively, and Sulu knows that Chekov's body doesn't want to lose his, either, whatever his mind has lost of what exists between them. When he kisses his way down the pale flat of Chekov's stomach toward his straining erection, Chekov's breath becomes an audible push.

"Does your head still hurt?" Sulu asks, settling his palm over the bulge of Chekov's cock. Chekov curses in Russian and shakes his head emphatically.

"No, no, nothing hurts, nothing," he says, and it's true, when Sulu takes Chekov's pants and underwear down and swallows his cock. Chekov's moan cleans away all the pain that Sulu has been carrying since Chekov's injury, and it's just the two of them again, alone in space, suspended like stars. He teases Chekov mercilessly, not wanting this to end, either, and Chekov whines and begs, cursing Sulu when the pads of his fingers just barely tickle over Chekov's balls.

"Please, please, please," Chekov cries, and Sulu gives in, because he sounds just like he did that first time, his eyes pinched up and his body tense under Sulu's hands. Sulu swallows him to the root and sucks him wetly, and Chekov sobs with gratitude when he comes down Sulu's throat.

He doesn't stop saying please, even after he's come, not when Sulu slicks his cock with the lube they've always kept by his bed, not even when Sulu is pressed inside him, afraid to move because Chekov is so newly tight with nerves.

"Are you sure you want this?" Sulu asks, panting, every frantic push of Chekov's stomach against his enough to make him worry that he'll come way too quick. He can't remember the last time they went two days without this.

"Please, yes, please," Chekov moans, his whole body arching up against Sulu's, hands tight on Sulu's shoulders. His cock is hard again, pressed between them and as hot as a branding iron. "Please, Hikaru, please."

Sulu falls into the sound of that constant stream of please, pumping himself into Chekov's body, which opens for him with ease after the first few thrusts, remembering him. He shuts his eyes and tries to commit it all to memory as deeply as he can: the way Chekov's fingers claw into his shoulders as if Sulu is trying to get away even as he's slamming himself forward, the way Chekov's legs feel around him, trembling but strong, like folded wings. And the way Chekov tastes, God, the way his please feels against Sulu's lips. He'll never stop missing this. He'll die with the smooth color of Chekov's skin behind his eyes and Chekov's begging still ringing between his ears, every breath a please.

"Oh!" Chekov shouts, as if he's stunned by his own orgasm, the hot mess of it spurting across Sulu's chest. The squeeze of his body around Sulu's cock breaks through the last of Sulu's resistance, and he cries out brokenly when he comes, because it hurts to let it go, the last time. He stays inside Chekov when they're through, and Chekov doesn't push him away, only wraps his arms around Sulu's shoulders, his legs around his back. Sulu sleeps thinly, waking to blink against Chekov's chest, the salt of Chekov's sweat and his own tears stinging in his eyes. He pulls out when he can see the purplish glow of Bahal's oddly colored oceans through the window above the bed. Chekov moans sadly, and Sulu crawls up to collapse onto the pillow beside him.

"Why did you say please?" Sulu asks, pushing his face against Chekov's neck. His skin is so hot, and Sulu can't lose this, he can't. He'll have to stay on Bahal. He'll have to give up everything he has. Maybe he always knew it was going to come down to this.

"Because I never wanted you to stop," Chekov says, and his voice is different. The accent is softer, the words less chopped apart by uncertainty. Sulu lifts his head from his pillow, and Chekov's eyes are full of tears.

"Hikaru," Chekov says, and when he hears his name on Chekov's lips, Sulu is sure. He remembers. "What's happened? I feel so strange, I don't remember, was I dreaming? Were we attacked? What is this on my head? I can't—"

"Pavel, God!" Sulu says, pulling him up from the pillows, his hands on Chekov's face. "You – you remember me – I – I –"

"Remember you? Ow, Hikaru, my head. I – hit it, yes, on the console, did I pass out? I woke up and we were having sex," he says, laughing a little.

"Pavel," Sulu sobs, pulling him into his arms. He cries against Chekov's shoulder, knowing he needs to take him to sick bay but unable to let go of him. It's too good to be true; he must be dreaming.

"What's wrong, Hikaru?" Chekov asks, peeling him back to look into his face. "What's happened?"

"You hit your head," Sulu says, wiping at his face, laughing and sobbing with relief because it can't be a dream, he's still too terrified that something worse will strike them next. "You couldn't remember – that was two days ago, Pavel. You thought you were fourteen and you forgot how to speak English –"

Chekov laughs as if this can't be true, but when he touches his bandage his face changes.

"Are you serious, Hikaru? I've been thinking – then why did I wake up with you inside me?" he asks, laughing harder, and Sulu can't do anything but laugh with him.

"You begged me to, and I – fuck, Pavel, I thought I was never going to – they were going to leave you on Bahal."

"Leave me –"

"Oh, c'mon, get dressed, I've got to get you to McCoy, I'll explain on the way. Oh Pavel, Pavel, God – I thought you'd never remember, I thought I'd lost you." Sulu's wild laughter dissolves easily back into tears, and Chekov hums with sympathy, taking him into his arms.

"Hikaru, I'm so sorry," Chekov says, threading his hands through Sulu's hair the way that he knows Sulu loves, he knows. "How horrible. Did I behave – as if I'd forgotten you?"

"More like you never knew me," Sulu says, retrieving Chekov's shirt from the floor with shaking hands. He helps him pull it on, careful not to disturb his bandage.

"Oh, Hikaru," Chekov says, touching his face. "Well. I must not have been very cruel to you. If I was begging you for sex." He grins, and Sulu falls onto him, wrapping him into his arms.

"Don't ever leave me again," Sulu says, as if that's a promise that either of them can make. Chekov closes his arms around Sulu, sighing against his shoulder.

"Am I going to be alright?" Chekov asks. "I don't have – damage to my brain, do I?"

"No," Sulu says firmly, as if it's up to him. He pinches his eyes shut against Chekov's neck, afraid to take him to McCoy and find out for sure. For all Sulu knows, Chekov will have forgotten everything again by the time they reach the sick bay.

"Well," Chekov says, sitting back. "Now you have taken my virginity twice."

"You were a virgin the first time?" Sulu asks, boggling, and Chekov snorts with laughter.

"It is amazing, Hikaru, the things you do not know," he says, shaking his head. "Obvious things."

*

There is much celebration and embracing of Chekov when the crew learns that he's regained his memory. Kirk leads him over to the console ceremonially and Chekov punches in the coordinates for a landing on Bahal without a blink of hesitation, Sulu beside him and beaming out at the sight of the planet that he would have rather died than landed on just a few hours before.

"How did this happen, Ensign?" Spock asks, frowning slightly in confusion. "What was the triggering event?"

Sulu and Chekov look at each other sheepishly, their mouths hanging open, and Kirk bursts into laughter.

"Shit," he says. "We should have tried that from the start." Uhura swats him and Spock looks very confused.

Sulu and Chekov are among the crew members who choose to take a shuttle to Bahal while Kirk and Spock meet with Federation officials about the situation with the Klingons. They get a hotel room at a resort that is as quiet as a ghost town; it's Bahal's offseason and the weather is just beginning to get cold. Sulu is still anxious and trembling as soon as he and Chekov are alone together, afraid that he'll do something wrong, touch the wrong spot on Chekov's body and send him backward again. Chekov is patient and reassuring, his voice so soft in Sulu's ear as he leans over him saying It's okay, you're okay, I'm here. He can barely escape Sulu's clinging long enough to prod him toward sex, but he manages after an hour or so of nuzzling at Sulu under the blankets.

Bahal's sky looks like a constant sunset, bleeding every beautiful color, and it matches the feeling that Sulu has as he spreads himself along Chekov's side in their hotel room bed, both of them turned toward the patio with the doors open to the cool scent of the breeze that is snaking softly across the grounds of the hotel. Sulu feels full of the promise and threat of the late evening, relaxed at the end of the trials of the day and tense about the oncoming night, the uncertainty of everything ahead.

"Things will be different now," Chekov says, clearly thinking about the same things, the war and the hard days ahead. Sulu will be sent on more missions. Chekov will be in just as much danger while he's on the ship.

"Things are already different," Sulu says, sitting up a little. He leans over Chekov, who turns back to him questioningly. "Now I know what it's like to lose you."

Chekov touches Sulu's face, brushing his fingers across his chin curiously. "You need to shave," he says, the words soft enough to sound like they mean something else.

"You never want to talk about anything serious," Sulu says. "That's okay. I mean, I understand why. But I. I need you to know that I'd die for you. Just in case you don't."

"I wouldn't want you dying for me," Chekov says, and he's probably not trying to hurt Sulu, almost definitely not, but it doesn't matter.

"Tough shit," Sulu says. "Because if I get the chance –"

"Hikaru, enough," Chekov says, sliding his finger up to cover Sulu's mouth. "Do you know what I thought when the ship was struck?"

"Of course I don't. I never know what you're thinking."

"I thought you would die because of me. Because I navigated poorly, somehow put us in enemy territory without realizing it. That was all I thought, Hikaru. And all I thought when you were falling on Vulcan. Hikaru might die. I think it's why I do most things, why I am good at this job. So that you will be safe."

Sulu bends down to kiss him, trying to believe this. He's afraid to go to sleep, afraid that Chekov will wake up and know nothing, that they'll have to start over again. McCoy has warned them that the complications could continue. But maybe that would make them lucky, in a fucked up way. Already they've been allowed to fall in love twice.

They get out of bed and go to the patio, Sulu in sweatpants and Chekov in boxers. They drink horribly sweet complimentary Bahalian wine from little plastic glasses and stare out at the peaceful landscape of the resort. It's one day of reprieve before what might be a long time in space; there's no shore leave during a war. Sulu is a little lonely for the ship already, and that window over his bed. He bumps his shoulder against Chekov's.

"You were fucking cute when you didn't speak much English," Sulu says. Chekov grins and shakes his head.

"You like me when I'm weak and stupid, is that it?"

"Yeah, that's it," Sulu says, pulling Chekov against him. "I was gonna ask you to marry me so you could stay on the ship." Chekov laughs hard, and Sulu buries his face in Chekov's hair, absorbing the happy shake of his body.

"Yes, I would have been a perfect Lieutenant's wife, confused and helpless and confined to quarters."

Sulu doesn't say that he kind of wants to get married anyway, before they leave Bahal and pitch themselves into the wind of the war, because Chekov is still laughing, and someday Sulu is going to ask again, when it doesn't sound so funny.