Nobis ✴︎ Pavel Chekov

Chapter Four - Sparks

Alec is a little surprised to see Pavel home later than usual. The Russian is normally a man of routine and being home two hours late is a little out of character. Alec asks him where's he's been and the last answer he expected was 'with a girl.'

"A girl? You never told me there was a girl? Who's the girl."

"No, not like that. Just a friend. Remember that night where I got smashed?"

"No. You're kidding. The one night stand girl? You do realise that's not how one night stands work right? The idea is to not see them again."

Pavel rolls his eyes. "She's nice and we're just friends, okay. I was helping her with navigating."

Alec frowns at him and goes back to the kitchen. He's trying to do a stir fry kind of thing and it's only half working. He's half tempted to just replicate a stir fry and forget about cooking. Pavel wishes he had a replicator back in Russia, he could have eaten steak and all the other things he could never cook.

Scotty calls Pavel down to engineering about half an hour before Pavel plans to go to sleep. He throws some jeans on and treks down there. It's pretty cold and he figures he probably should have brought a jacket or coat of sorts but continues anyway. Engineering is generally warm and he figures he should be fine.

Engineering is warm, and it smells vaguely of coolant. Pavel kind of hates the smell but ignores it and looks around for Scotty. The lab is reasonably quiet but there is still a fair amount of noise. Drilling, hammering and a few other sounds Pavel can't identify. He finds Scotty amongst the noise and tries to get his attention from across the room.

"Chekov? Aye lad, over here."

Pavel asks him what happened and Scotty holds up his arm. His sleeves are burnt and covered in something black.

"One of the panels short-circuited. Badly. I need you to help us rewire it without blowing the whole thing up."

Pavel nods, a little concerned. He crawls under the panel, something he's only just small enough to do. He's one of the smallest in engineering so Scotty basically uses him as his Guinea pig. Pavel doesn't mind, as long as he's helping somehow. He finishes rewiring (or at least he thinks he has) and he wriggles himself back from under the panel. Scotty carefully turns it on once the Russian is safely behind him and the panel starts up quietly. Sparks suddenly spit from the top of the panel like tiny fireworks and Pavel and Scotty raise their arms up to cover their face from the bright orange lights. The spark turn into flames and another engineering student quickly extinguishes it. Pavel blows the pressurised nitrogen away from his face and runs his arm under the emergency tap. Scotty comes over and inspects his arm turning it over in the cold water and frowning.

"I don't think it's meant to be that red, laddie. You should call into med bay."

Scotty's sleeves protected him but a lot of bad sparks hit Pavel's arm. He knows he should and thinks about protesting but he doesn't.

"Scotty, I'm really sorry about the panel. I mustn't have wired it properly... I checked them before I came out and-"

He gets cut off by Scotty, who completely dismisses it, saying the same thing would have happened to anyone else. He sends Pavel off to medbay but the Russian still feels mildly shitty. There's something about failure that gets him into a solid spiral of self-hate; he blames the Romulan incident. He trudges towards medbay and sighs, watching his breath make a small smoke like puffs.

Medbay is reasonably quiet and Pavel is taken straight in. He gets a female doctor, a species and he doesn't recognise and she sprays some burn spray on his arm. It clears up in a few minutes and he thanks her quietly as she lets him leave. She reckons he had first degree burns and he's kind of glad they treated it so quickly. Alec is already asleep by the time he returns and he takes the opportunity to have a long cold shower. The med staff told him not to get his arm wet as it would wash the spray off so he pulls a waterproof sleeve over it and lets the water run through his hair. He's still irritated about the panel. He failed himself again. He turns the shower off and wraps a towel around himself. He's tired and figures he'll fall asleep quickly but it's hard when he has so much on his mind.

Pavel wants to try and find some kind of excuse to see Emory again but he realises he doesn't actually know a huge amount about her. He thinks she likes purple, her pencil case and bag were both purple and he thinks she had purple sneakers on. He takes a while to think about a way he can see her again without seeming weird and or desperate but for a while, nothing creative comes to mind. He goes into the city to get himself some kind of waterproof sleeve for his arm and walks past a curry house and an Italian place that smells really nice and it kind of gives him an idea. He sends Emory a message asking if she likes Italian food and he puts his phone back in his bag, hoping for the best.

(A/N)

I need to stop starting new fan fictions and finish the ones that I've started. I've written about 9k for this one but instead I've been working on a new one that's turned out at 14k. Regardless, hope you enjoy. Please vote or comment or whatever.
Happy new year and thank you
-Lucky