Angels (Pavel Chekov)

36 - Yeah Nah Mate

Time seems to pass a lot slower alone. Pavel's glad to finally be out of medbay but going back to a Vienna-less room is almost a completely foreign feeling. He feels better than he did before he went to medbay, he wants to work hard to keep it that way. He spends time reading and getting lost in study. He's spending tomorrow looking for a club to join and he hopes he'll make a few friends in the process.

Vienna spends her time drawing and listening to music. She draws a landscape of an alien planet that she remembers from a postcard when she was younger. Back in Delaware she used to be a dancer with Sydel. She's yet to mention it to Pavel, she knows he'd ask her to show him. There's a Starfleet dance club and she wonders if they'd take walk ins.

Club hunting goes well for Vienna. She dances for the first time in half a year and it feels amazing. She's partnered with an alien looking guy who speaks very little but dances as if it were second nature to him. She loves any kind of ballroom dancing and they cover a few different types in the hours they have. There's another meet up in a few days and she's looking forward to it before they've even finished.

Her dance partner asks softly if she'll join next time and she nods.

"You dance well," he says simply. "I look forward to next time."

"Thank you. You dance well too. I'll see you in a few days."

Pavel has a little less luck in joining a club. There's a mathematics club and he stands outside the front awkwardly for a solid five minutes before giving up and walking back to his room. David is there and asks why he's back so soon and Pavel just sighs.

"If you're not gonna join a club, you realise I'm gonna drag you to one, right?"

Pavel raises an eyebrow at him and David picks up his shirt off the bench and pulls it on. Before he can ask any more questions, Pavel is taken out to their room by David, who literally just picks him up and throws him over his shoulder.

"I can walk," Pavel grumbles. "I am not a baby."

"Dramatic effect," David mutters, checking that their door is locked. "Right. Off we go."

David doesn't bother telling Pavel what club they're joining, instead walking straight into engineering and throwing Pavel a pair of goggles.

"They're yours now," he says, pointing to the goggles. "You take them, and you use them whenever you're down here."

Pavel nods, tightening his grip on the goggles and wondering if David has cracked into something. Before David can continue someone calls out and asks for his help, Pavel follows closely behind. The person who called out is holding a large piece of metal that looks to have come from the side of a shuttle craft and they ask David what he thinks. Pavel watches as David examines the shuttle before making a verdict.

"Yeah, nah mate. She's fucked."

Pavel doesn't understand his use of a positive and a negative together in one go but decides to question that later as David passes Pavel the piece of metal. He inspects it and notices a faint powder coming off the side.

"It looks corroded," Pavel notes, showing the powder on his fingers to David, who nods. He climbs under the shuttle and mutters, Pavel watching eagerly. When he comes back out, he takes Pavel with him to find a spray to stop the progress of the corrosion.

For a long period of time, Pavel gets completely lost in focus. He learns how to rewire a circuit board in less than half an hour and David is amazed at how quickly the young Russian can wrap his head around things. Later in the afternoon David tells him to take a break, that they've been working for hours. Pavel goes back to his room and falls asleep instead of feeding himself like he should have.

He wakes up hungry but content and feels like he's finally found something he can get lost in for a little while. He finally eats and comes to the realisation that for a few hours, Vienna didn't even cross his mind once. He puts his fork down and feels a pang of guilt, not sure if being able to think about something else for so long is a good thing or not.

(Author's Note)

'Yeah nah mate, she's fucked' is an ancient Australian proverb

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