something to do (Pavel Chekov)

14

Eadie gets Pavel into a conversation about drinking and she encourages him to only use Romanian and he manages quite well. He tells her about getting into scotch when he was around 14 after his roommate at the academy suggested he took his edge off before finals. Pavel can still feel the hangover he had if he thinks about it too much. He tells her about trying a few alien drinks for the first time and she rolls her eyes at him, telling him about throwing up on her first boyfriend's shoes after getting too wild one night. He laughs at the thought. He finds himself wanting to ask a few more questions about her previous relationships but a noise in the corridor stops him.

Three visitors appear and Pavel takes Eadie's hand and gives it a firm squeeze. Eadie wonders if the tricorder would show just how constricted her chest feels.

Like that, Pavel's being held back by one of the visitors. They're seven and a half feet of dark green muscle and the have very little issue holding back someone as scrawny as Pavel. He kicks and squirms anyway, his flight or fight responses both going off simultaneously and making his eyes widen more than Eadie would like them to.

They puts something over his ear and there's a soft click. Pavel screams and he can feel blood dripping down the side of his neck. He gasps in pain and clenches his eyes shut. He wonders if the visitor can feel his hands shaking as his arms and held firmly behind his back.

They pull up his shirt next and Eadie can still see the hints of bruises they've already left behind. They spray something onto his abdomen and stick a huge needle into his side. He lets out a squeal and Eadie cries his name. They pull it out and he drops to the ground, clutching his side. They let Eadie go and she makes her way over to Pavel. He lets out a low groan and rolls onto his back. Eadie pulls his shirt up and looks at the puncture wound, not sure what to do with it. It isn't bleeding. She figures she might just have to leave it. Pavel mutters something and Eadie leans down, asking him to repeat himself.

"My ear," he says, switching from his Russian mutterings to Standard. "What did they do to my ear?"

She's honestly a little scared to even look, but she does, frowning at him.

"The... the cartilage. There's like a V shaped chunk missing from the top... It's bleeding a lot."

Pavel sits up with a grunt and takes his jacket and shirt off. He removes his undershirt and puts everything else back on, washing the shirt before holding it to his ear.

"Here, let me," Eadie says, taking the shirt and holding it against the wound. There's blood all over the side of his face and he tries not to wince as Eadie applies a little more pressure. It stings and he feels like he just has another factory contributing to his misery. He leans into Eadie's chest and she embraces him, holding him tightly. He squeezes her a little tighter and stays quiet, his mind on Earth and starting over selling ice cream from an ice cream van.

Life gets miserable again.

Eadie sings less and less and complains of stomach pains, though she's yet to bleed again. Pavel wakes up with a stabbing in his sides but he doesn't tell Eadie about it, frightened that it might just be him dying, his end. He thinks of leaving Eadie alone and feels physically sick at the thought, imagining her trying to shake his lifeless body awake and weeping onto his cold chest. He gets a little breathless and Eadie wakes up, asking what's wrong.

"Eadie," he says breathlessly, wrapping his arms around her waist and starting to cry. She doesn't know what's going on his head. She kisses his forehead and rubs his back, saying sweet nothings into his ear and trying to calm him down.

"We've got each other," she keeps saying. He fights back the urge to blurt out that they won't if he dies right there in her arms. He swallows and lets out another sob. He hasn't let himself think to much about dying but he's scared and vulnerable now.

"I love you," he says weakly, just in case he doesn't get to say it again. He asks himself if he's delusional, if he's not dying at all, if he's just scared of nothing. They could have injected him with vitamins for all he knows. "I love you," he says again, bringing his focus back to Eadie. "I'm sorry. I'm just... Just..." He looks for a word that never comes but Eadie has an innate understanding of what he's feeling.

"You're my world," she mutters. "You mean so much to me. I need to say these things to you more."

"I love you," he says, in Russian this time. She understands, placing a kiss gently on his cheek and encouraging him to lay down. He does, careful not to lie on his bad ear.