Hikaru Sulu (parking_brake) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-06-02 19:06:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, hikaru sulu, james kirk |
"Hikaru? You might want to have a seat...."
Who: Kirk, Sulu
What: conversation about dreams and what they could mean. It was before I cashed points, so those new things will pop up soon. :)
When: Yesterday-ish
Where: Sulu's apartment
Rating: PG-ish, pretty tame-ish, just a convo.
Status: Complete!
Jim pulled up to Sulu's apartment and knocked on the door. Knock knock knock!
Sulu's sixth sense for trouble was at yellow alert. He had a vague sense of trepidation when he neared the door, and paused as he reached out for the lock. He was going to regret this, but...
"Who's there?"
"Jim."
Sulu steeled himself and opened the door. But before he let Jim enter, he held up one hand and smiled a little, and laid down a few ground rules.
"Hey, just getting this out of the way. No strippers. No porn. No parties. No liquor. No one gets Pavel drunk. The ferret. Pavel Chekov? That's all his call if he wants, because he can drink circles around me. You laugh, because a seventeen year old can drink me under the table? You're going to have to leave. Deal?"
"This isn't really a social call," Jim said, laughing. "But I'll tell the strippers to stay outside."
"We're good then. What's up?" Sulu held the door open with one hand and waved Jim in with the other.
"Scotty is almost finished with the ship. Once we work the fuel angle, we're good to go. I wanted to know if you still wanted to fly it."
"Yeah! I'll fly it." He smiled and nodded, looking pretty thrilled at the prospect. "Just let me know when and where. I'll keep my schedule clear."
"Soon as I have a firm date I'll give it to you," Jim replied, waggling his eyebrows.
"Sounds good. I've been kind of taking a break, since it's the end of the normal school year, it's more a time for last minute studying and exams, than giving a guest lecture." Or maybe it was time for spring cleaning, because there was some yellow rubber dish gloves on the counter, and some eco-friendly non-toxic enzyme cleaner right next to them. What? Can't go around hurting the plants or the ferret! Sulu looked around a little bit and lamely explained, "I was just cleaning."
Jim was really wondering if Sulu liked firm dates being given to him, at this point, but decided he'd done enough teasing, "Little late for spring cleaning?"
Oh ha ha, Kirk you so funny. Sulu shrugged made sure to catch the ferret before it tried to make a ferret escape, outdoors.
"I was gone, so yeah. It's a little late."
"How did all that go, anyway?"
"The shoot? It was pretty good. World war two type thing. Got to fly some classic planes. Reproductions, but they were still pretty exact."
"Crash anything? Live ammo?" Otherwise? Borning.
"Got to do a controlled low altitude water landing at the end, and there was some ammo, but it was all movie stuff. Blanks, they set some caps up, on the ground, you know how it goes. Movie magic. It sounded pretty real, though."
Sulu made his way into the kitchen and hid those gloves so fast, it was like watching a magician doing a slight-of-hand trick and making coins or cards disappear. "You want something to drink? I don't have any beer or anything. Water? Iced tea?"
"Water sounds good." He shrugged, scritching the top of the ferret's head.
"Okay. Catch." Sulu reached into the fridge and threw a bottle toward Kirk, with practiced aim and the greatest of ease. He poured himself some iced tea and leaned against the kitchen counter, looking a little troubled for a few seconds, before he said anything. "You know, how a lot of people were saying they were having dreams they couldn't explain? On the internet?"
He grabbed it mid air and twisted it open, "Yeah?" He looked at Sulu cautiously.
"Yeah." Sulu was staring back at him with the same amount of wariness and caution, even if the rest of him looked at ease. "You wouldn't know anything about weird dreams, would you?"
"Oh, I might know a thing or two about weird dreams," Jim replied, shifting his eyes.
"I feel a little better. Not much, but a little. I was trying to figure out what the hell a lungworm was, and why some guy named McKenna had them so I had to take the helm of something. Something big. That I apparently knew how to fly."
Sulu took a very long, very slow, drink of iced tea. All done while keeping a close eye on Kirk, to see if there was any sort of reaction to that. Or confirmation.
Jim grinned, "That explains so much. You and your parking brakes!"
He didn't know about that yet! Sulu suddenly smiled though, because that grin set him at ease, and - even if there were some pretty severe transgressions prior - some part of him really wanted to trust Kirk.
"I guess so? I always thought that was simply me having problems transitioning driving one thing after flying, or vice versa."
"No." Jim shook his head and just grinned, "Any other weird dreams, or was that it?"
"Some weird thing about something called Starfleet. It wasn't too clear though. Is this stuff really sounding familiar to you?"
Jim sounded more relieved than anything else, "Was there a Captain Pike? Enterprise?"
"I don't know about him." He shook his head, since that was a big fat negative. "The dreams were choppy and disjointed, but when I woke up, they seemed to fit and make sense. Any idea why this is happening? It's not that stuff they're talking about, with Mayan calendars or anything. I hope."
"Hikaru? You might want to have a seat, because what I'm about to tell you might blow your mind." He paused, and added, "Email Spock about those, when we're done here."
"Spock knows too?" With a groan, Sulu dragged himself over to the couch and somehow managed to sit down without spilling any tea, anywhere. Even if he'd landed heavily, because the knowledge that he was late to the party weighed heavily upon him. "Okay. Shoot. I'm listening."
"Me, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, Christine, and you. We're all sharing similar dreams. In some cases the exact same dream."
The other man simply stared up at Kirk with one eye scrunched closed slightly more than the other, like he wasn't sure where or how that would even make sense. But, even so, he nodded to let him know it was okay to go on. He had a audience who was listening to him, but wasn't about to say much until he knew what he was dealing with.
"We're pretty sure McCoy is involved but he hasn't spoken up about any dreams yet," Jim added. "We're all members of this starfleet. I become acting captain after Spock loses his ability to command. We have to save earth."
"...from what?" he asked, after a long and quiet moment of deliberation. It somehow sounded right, but Kirk could probably convince a bus full of nuns to have an orgy.
"The thing that destroyed Vulcan is headed for Earth. Or was. We stop it, barely. You do some fucking awesome flying, man!"
"Thanks. I think?"
Jim picked up something from the counter, he wasn't sure what it was, and demonstrated some of the maneuvers, "It was a fantastic plan. We warped into Saturn's atmosphere to conceal ourselves."
Well, Kirk was certainly...pretty exuberant about the whole thing. Sulu watched with interest, but then had to point out in mid-maneuvering of his salt and pepper shakers around a sugar bowl, "You know this sounds kinda crazy, Jim."
"That's what Spock tells me. I accepted the crazy a month ago, Hikaru. I'm already past that and ready to go into space." He grinned, setting the salt and pepper shakers down. Which were adorable salt and pepper shakers.
They were shaped like the Japanese beckoning cats. A present from his mom. Completely kitchen appropriate. And perhaps the only eclectic thing in an otherwise zen-like clean kitchen...apartment...entire area. That settles that and covers everything.
"Maybe it's just a mass hallucination," he suggested as a possible explanation, even if he didn't like the idea of his mind being messed with like that.
"A sustained two month long mass hallucination?"
"Just one way of looking at it. Maybe it's in the water." Sulu was very calm about the whole thing. He was thoughtful and collected, and didn't seem too ruffled by it, even if the thought was disturbing. "Never know. Because I'm going to tell you, that without some sort of distortion in space-time happening? There's no way we could have the same sort of dreams, unless we were there, or there's some sort of bleed over from...somewhere."
Jim folded his arms, his expression very much stating that he believes they were really there. Or at least there was some bleed over. There were SPACESHIPS and lasers and aliens oh my. So he set the water bottle on the counter, pulled out the phaser and vaporized it. All without a word.
Sulu stared, fixedly, sitting straight up, glass of tea clenched in one hand. He didn't flinch or jump, but did see fit to say, "Whoa. Where'd you get that from?"
"It showed up one day. Just like my car did. And a model spaceship," Which he placed on the counter. "And a chair, the one on the center of the bridge. But I haven't told anyone else about the chair."
"Okaaaay. Well, has Spock figured out what could have caused this?" Because Spock was first on the list of people who might figure it out. Or so Sulu believed.
"I don't think he's ready to quite embrace it, just yet. Though he finally offered to help with the ship."
"That's good. Well, I think it's probably not good to rush to conclusions. What did Scotty think about the possible cause?" Because if the scotsman could build a spaceship, and seemed to know a lot about physics anyway, then he had to have some guess as to a cause.
"He thinks we're stranded in an alternate timeline." Which sounded somewhat crazy to Kirk, if he wasn't sure about there being alternate timelines.
"Huh. They say that it's possible to get caught in a time loop," he was musing aloud, choosing his words very carefully. "Where things move circular and in patterns, that you'd have to bust out of. Sort of like that Groundhog Day movie, if you've ever seen that. So there's no reason things can't run parallel to one another. Or split off. Maybe something went wrong and we had to come back to this point, to save ourselves. I'm only guessing. But maybe there's something to that, and just waiting it out and seeing, which is probably what Spock's doing. No need to pitch a fit."
"I'm not pitching a fit." He replied, looking at Sulu quizzically. "I don't really know what exactly is going on. I just know what I'm remembering, and where I want to be. What I was born to be."
"I mean in general," Sulu clarified with a easy smile. "Not that you or anyone else seems to be. Just a turn of phrase, like...huh...like how everyone else kind of flocked onto the internet and was all 'wow guess what happened to me' and flapped around a little. I guess. No reason to mention it much, because it makes someone seem pretty insane. No, you're not insane..." He paused and downed the rest of his iced tea in one go. "...well, fine. You're kinda insane, man. But not in a bad, eat someone's face off, kind of way. Question is, if these are real things that we're remembering? How are you going to get back to where you want to be, or were born to do?"
Flapped around a little? Jim started laughing at the mental image, mostly consisting of the crew flapping around like hens with their heads cut off. Scotty and Spock were particularly hilarious mental images, "I'm still working on that one."
Sulu gave him a wide grin, seeming to be...a bit more sure of himself. Or at ease. Or...something. Asian cool. Yeah. That was it. "Let me know if you get that figured out. Sounds like you'd need the combined mental powers of...all of us...to figure out how."
"Like Voltron."
"Yeah. Like Voltron. The one with all of the little cars and stuff, because there's not enough lions for all of us. I'm not sharing a lion. Sorry. I'd want my own."
"Lion is the best. I call black!"
"I want the yellow one."
"At least you didn't pick the blue one," Jim commented with a grin. "I always had those two humping each other."
"That...explains so much."
"Thank you."
"You're...welcome?"
Now Jim was making the salt and pepper shakers hump.
"Don't do that. They're supposed to bring good luck. C'mon." Sulu moved, finally, to save his salt and pepper shakers from McSkeezy, there. He put them back precisely where they were supposed to go. "My mom got me these."
Jim chuckled, "Okay, fine. I'll leave Jack and Jill Kitty alone."
"Yeah, you do that. I'm sure you've got some action figures at home you can still hump on each other. Don't do it with other people’s...good luck charms." Sulu just grinned and shook his head at Kirk. Because that would figure, with those action figures.
"Sex IS good luck, Sulu!"
"You are obsessed with it, so...maybe that's your good luck charm. To each their own. I'm pretty sure even Spock would be staring at you funny right now, based off that statement you just made. And he'd be right to do that, too."
Jim gave a little shrug, "I have to exert my energy somehow, right?"
"Probably. So, I guess keeping quiet about all this is a safe bet. You sat through that whole long-winded seminar about what to do if you've accidently time traveled. Didn't you? Or did you sleep through it and ask for a run down, later?"
It was a safe bet that - by the look Sulu was giving Kirk - he knew the answer to that, already.
Jim gave him an incredulous look, "How come I haven't remembered this seminar yet?"
"I thought it was standard and general assembly. They made me sit through it, really early in the morning. Four hours long. Got out in time for lunch. The Department of Temporal Investigations gave it, in a crash course." He gave him an incredulous stare right back at him. "Did you sleep in or something?"
Sulu thought it was pretty rudimentary, so he only half listened. Do not mess with the timeline. Blah blah. Don't kill anyone, or keep anyone from being killed. Blaaaah. Don't mention any technology or offer schematics. Blah blah blaaaaaah. The rest of the time, after he took notes now and then on a pad device, was spent turning some little squares of paper into origami animals. He listened and kept his hands busy at the same time. Good thing that he was a good listener.
"Maybe I just haven't remembered yet," Jim replied, shrugging a shoulder. "There are still things missing."
"It was the academy part, so maybe. Or maybe you didn't pay attention," Sulu said, good naturedly joking around. "Whatever, it was pretty boring. Informative, but boring."
"That's assuming we time traveled, which I'm doubting. Too many real memories of childhood for that. So the rules don't really apply. Especially since this timeline is already fucked up the ass sideways like I think it is."
"Maybe the timeline tried to repair itself or accommodate all of our memories. No way to tell, really. But that might turn it from a time traveling situation, into something like a nexus one. Which, hate to say it? Might be a better way to explain it. What if we hit the wrong path through a space anomaly? Bam. We're trapped, indefinitely, and might not even be aware of it. Until we notice the weird things happening around us, that don't seem right."
Sulu poured himself another glass of iced tea.
Jim shook his head. He didn't think that was it either, "Too many variables. Talked to a man coming from a sword and sorcery timeline. Something else is going on."
"Maybe some sort of interdimensional...super hub, between timelines. I don't know. I'm only trying to figure it out, myself. It's probably not helping."
Sulu stared into his glass of tea, pensively, before saying, "Maybe we're really not...real. At all, either. Got to take that into account, too."
"Like some sort of ..holodeck malfunction?" He did have 'captain picard of the uss enterprise' as his ringtone after all.
"I don't think there were holodecks yet, were there? I mean, I was only guessing at the nexus thing, because...hey, I saw the movie too. But theoretically, there's all sorts of things that can go wrong, if you even skirt too close or the wrong way, while moving through space at warp." Sulu shrugged one shoulder, taking another drink of tea, and staring at it again. "But yeah, sort of like that. I guess. Only we'd be the holograms. And not realize it."
"If it was a Nexus," Kirk replied. "I'd be a lot happier with my lot in life...."
"I'm happy with what I'm doing. Comfortably. I have everything I need. A nice apartment. Parents are just like I remembered them to be. Nice job opportunities. Things are calm when you're not stirring up trouble. I can't ask for much more. I think...we've gotten what we wanted. At least enough to get by. And, hey," Sulu pointed out, calmly, "it's not like we're dead or anything?"
Jim shrugged a shoulder. He couldn't agree. He'd been dissatisfied with his life since he was twelve. He knew why now. This wasn't his life. If they were in a Nexus, it was a really shitty Nexus, "sometimes I'd rather be."
"You can't mean that. You have girls wherever you go. It's not like you're living on the street or anything." Sulu reached out and patted a hand on Jim's shoulder, the one he'd just shrugged with. "It might not have been great, but there's still stuff you should be thankful for. I mean, you found the rest of us, didn't you? That's a happy accident."
Jim just shrugged his other shoulder.
Sulu let his hand fall away and shook his head slowly at him. He didn't remember anything about Kirk being Captain, so he was just hoping that it was enough to keep the other man from losing some confidence. "I can't put myself in your shoes. It's hard for other people to truly do that. All I can do is try to point out some good. If that's all some of us have to cling onto while we figure out this mess? Then...I guess that's what you have to cling onto."
He supposed someone comfortable enough in their place in life and their own skin wouldn't understand, but he didn't want to press it any more, "You're probably right."
"I'm probably wrong," Sulu admitted, "but it seemed like the right thing to say at the time. It probably doesn't cut it, because I suck at pep talks."
At least he admits it.
"You're better than you think you are." He clapped Sulu on the shoulder, "Worth jumping off a platform several miles up to save, anyway."
"Wha...what?" Sulu's eyes actually went a little round. "You saved me? I hope you brought a chute."
"It broke."
"..." That stood in for the 'FML' that Sulu would've typed on the valar net. Instead, he simply said, "Great."
"I know we lived, at least? There've been more dreams that seem to be chronologically later."
"Transporter?" he guessed, even if it was a wild guess. He supposed that he'd remember. Eventually. "How'd they get a lock, if we were falling?"
"Probably that russian kid. He's a mad genius!"
"He is. Really good with number crunching. How else do you think I can keep my schedule clear? I supplied the money for the bets, he supplied the numbers. We won a ton of money in Vegas and split it between us." Sulu grinned with pride.
Jim grinned, "Vegas seemed like it worked out for most anyone." If only he knew.
"Seems that way. I was surprised about that ring on Gaila's finger though. Seems like she's got Scotty whipped."
"You could say that," Jim intoned, chuckling. "I'm glad it worked out. They fight like they're already married. Never gonna happen with me."
"That's obvious." Sulu even laughed like the thought was too funny. "You'd never survive. But you're right, they do fight that way. I swear I heard some bickering or something through the wall, with those two. The rest of the time we were hoping that the hotel would kick you and that Janice girl out so we could sleep. But I had a raging hangover."
Jim grinned dumbly at the memory, like he always did, "So..fucking..wild.."
"Too much information. Thanks." Sulu does not want to know.
Jim? Was more than willing to tell. Best pull up a chair. This could take awhile.
Sulu did not want to hear about this sort of conquest. So Kirk got a pat on the back and shown to the door, but he got to take another bottle of water with him. Consolation prize! Enjoy your night and thanks for saving him from falling off a platform. Bye!