Archive of Our Own ^beta

In Pavel’s defense, he’d never used a machine quite like this before. Nothing in his experience could have warned him.

(Except maybe a fuzzy impression of his babushka folding towels while he bounced on his toes in the doorway, babbling about whatever he’d learned in his space book with its beautiful pictures. After a moment’s consideration, he decided that no, that didn’t really count.)

Pavel wasn’t an idiot. He could deduce exactly what had happened; he was already working on theories for how he might be able to fix it.

The problem was, while he was trying to figure out how to reverse his terrible mistake, he was stuck in his temporary quarters on Algol Prime in a two-day-old black undershirt and polka dot boxers. His mistake had been throwing in his two engineer red shirts with the load of command gold in Algol’s water-based washing machine. On a starship, water was a precious commodity, and all clothing was cleaned through a combination of sonic pulses and disinfecting mist. Even Starfleet’s space stations and Earth facilities, including the Academy, used this method to clean clothes. So how could Pavel have known that a water wash would suck the color from his red shirts and turn his golds to orange-ish pink?

Well, it was done. What remained was figuring out how to fix the problem. Which, he was quickly discovering, was much easier said than done.

Calculate the gravitational pull of a black hole/planet combo fast enough to catch his captain and best friend while they barreled toward the ground at terminal velocity? Done. Fix a warp core in a war zone? Fine. Plot a course through stars and systems no human had ever seen before? Easy. But getting dye out of light-colored fabric wasn’t an astrophysics problem, it was a chemistry problem, and one that required the use of machines and chemicals that couldn’t be accessed while one was in their boxers. Pavel needed help.

The logical (ha!) choice would have been Mr. Spock. Pavel imagined the tall Vulcan appearing in his doorway—utterly blank-faced but somehow still managing to radiate judgement as he took in Pavel’s polka dot boxers—and immediately decided against comming the commander. No, Mr. Spock couldn’t be the one to help him. Not only because of his severe Eyebrow Twitch Of Judgement, but also because Mr. Spock was one of the few members of the alpha bridge crew who didn’t seem to see Pavel’s age written out in neon numerals above his head. All his life, Pavel had been the smart one, the young one, the smart-enough-to-get-a-commission-so-young-one. People tended to react to him with a “go away, the adults are talking” handwave, or with the crushing weight of expectation. Spock did neither. Spock didn’t find Chekov’s intellect to be strange or novel at all, in a way that made the navigator wonder what exactly Vulcans were capable of at 17 years old.

So Spock wasn’t an option. One of his underlings in the science labs would probably know how to help him; maybe the ensigns in science division made clothes change colors all the time. Unfortunately, Pavel’s only connection to the science staff was through Mr. Spock and a Tellarite physicist who wouldn’t stop flirting with him no matter how many times he turned her down. It would be a cold day in hell before he commed her for help. Pavel shivered.

Of course, there was one person he knew wouldn’t make fun of him. Mr. Scott was more used to strange mishaps and unexpected failures than anyone on the Enterprise. Accidentally dyeing his shirts pink couldn’t possibly be as embarrassing as losing Admiral Archer’s dog. Or as dire as facing down an emotionally compromised Vulcan while dripping puddles across the bridge. Or as embarrassing and dire as illegally sending a tribble through the transporter and starting a tibbocalypse on the grounds of Starfleet Academy.

Pavel flipped open his communicator. “Meester Scott. Meester Scott. Please come in Meester Scott.”

No response. Pavel waited for a count of thirty before trying again. Still no response. Ok. That was… ok. Fine. Deep breaths, Pasha, deep breaths. He decided to give it one more try before conceding defeat and calling Mr. Spock instead. Or the flirty Tellarite.

“Meester Scott. Please respond. Scotty.”

This time, he heard the muted beep of the chief engineer’s communicator opening.

“Oh, thank goodness you picked up, sir. I had a, eh, an incident with some uniforms. It’s not exactly a mechanical problem, it’s more chemical in nature, but it does involve a machine, so I thought…” He trailed off. At no point had he been interrupted by a burl of distracted Scottish exclaiming. In fact, so far, Scotty hadn’t said anything at all.

“Umm, Scotty?”

The connection cut abruptly with a quiet crackle of static. Pavel gnawed on his lip and glared down at his comm. It was too out of character for Scotty to be totally silent and then hang up on him – there had to be something wrong with the commlink. Why was every machine he tried to use conspiring against him today?

Hopefully Scotty had heard his side of the message, or at least would be concerned enough by the odd call to come check Pavel’s quarters. In the meantime, he had a broken commlink and a bunch of pinkish clothes to deal with. At least he knew how to handle one of those things.

Fifteen minutes later, Pavel was sitting on the floor of his temporary quarters in a chaotic halo of comm parts and wires when a loud noise caught his attention. Right outside his door, a chorus of squeaking and rattling suddenly cut off with a dull thud. Then a knock came at the door.

“Enter?”

The door hissed open to reveal an outdated replicator trailing long tails of wire and hose sitting crookedly in the doorway, propped up on a hand trolly. The replicator inched into the room, seemingly on its own. Pavel scrambled to his feet, and as soon as he did, he saw Keenser pushing the hand trolly. Keenser was, as always, greenish, chitinous, and utterly unreadable. But when Pavel did a double-take he realized that something was off with the diminutive engineer: he was wearing what looked like Montgomery Scott’s black regulation undershirt, which hung down past his knees, and basically nothing else.

As Pavel absorbed this fact, Keenser set down the replicator and came around the side of it to make gestures at Pavel.

“Oh, yes, let me-” Pavel retrieved his bag from where he had tossed it near the end of the bed, rifled through it until he found his screwdriver, and began disconnecting the power from the washing machine. This big hunk of metal had been the source of his problem, and, apparently, Keenser’s similar one. It was only right that it be moved out of the way and its wall plugins used for the replicator.

Once he had heaved the washing machine out of the way, he and Keenser awkwardly maneuvered the bulky replicator apparatus into position and began plugging it in. When it came to life with a reassuring robotic trill, the pair wasted no time programing in the specs for new uniforms. The display showed Pavel’s selection of gold and red uniform shirts replicating first, Keenser’s pants, shirts, and undershirts later in the queue. A tiny blue bar on the screen showed the computer’s progress imputing their data, retrieving materials, and altering molecular structures into cotton, polyester, and clothes dye.

A grunt from behind Pavel drew his attention from the progress bar. Keenser had clambered up to sit on the edge of his bed and was patting the space next to him. He looked a bit ridiculous sitting on Pavel’s bed, rough plated knees sticking out from Scotty’s undershirt, hands hidden in the overlong sleeves. A good match for his old shirt and boxers, he supposed. He smiled at the little engineer and sat down beside him. Together, they watched the progress bar and listened to the gentle whir of replicator working.

“Thank you,” Pavel said eventually. Keenser didn’t reply and didn’t smile, but his beady eyes fixed on Pavel for a second, and he shifted ever so slightly closer.