Notes:

1. Written for a prompt at the Awesome Ladies Ficathon on lj asking for Pavel/Joanna to the lyrics of
I'll give you stars and the moon and a soul to guide you, and a promise I'll never go.

2. Also based on The Decemberists song "On the Bus Mall."

The Specifics Might Be Vague

(Pavel Chekov/Joanna McCoy, PG-13 for language and sexual references)

Joanna liked to tell him that she saw him first, as if that was anything worth claiming. But even if it really didn't matter, it was the one memory she clung to when some of the others faded, regardless of the different versions Pavel created of their first meeting. She rolled her eyes every time he shook his head at her and said, "wait, wait—that's not how it happened. It happened like this—"

He also claimed that everything was invented in Russia, so anyone who hung around him for long enough realized that he was full of shit.

Not that she minded the stories he told, hands gesturing in the air and a grin on his face that said, "have fun with me here. You know you want to."

But his version was wrong. This was what actually happened.

It was a bitterly cold night, but that was to be expected on the East coast, even though it was April. She was young and stupid, but thought herself independent and brave enough to leave home a few weeks before her high school graduation to try to find herself, whatever that meant.

Her money had run out after a week and she was too stubborn to call her mother or, god forbid, her father and ask for help.

They knew where she was, generally, but had still sent out a missing person report, using her father's well-known connections (i.e. Jim, the hero, Kirk) to plaster her picture on practically every light post in the city.

So she'd spent some of her precious money to cut and dye her hair, worn a hat, and blended in with the large masses of young runaways doing the same thing she was—shivering their asses off and trying to find shelter for the night.

Which is how she found him, settling into the bench across from him in the bus station, noticing that he had a proper coat on and wasn't shivering. He also had a death grip on the backpack in his arms and had to be asleep from his closed eyes and even breathing.

He didn't look dangerous, at least from what she could tell, although appearances could be deceiving. She felt a chill run up her spine remembering her first night and the man who'd trapped her against the alley wall, his hands hard and unyielding, his breath sour. A well-placed kick and her speed in getting away was all that saved her. She had tried to find places to sleep before dark after that, not willing to try her luck again.

Sleeping was always a tricky thing—a trust issue. She'd slept with boys before, sure, but never actually slept with them, mostly because they were either fooling around in cars or their parents' houses—not places you want to be caught entwined together come morning.

So when she decided to take a chance and fall asleep across from the boy with the mass of curly hair peeking out from underneath his oh-so-warm-looking knit hat, she felt like she was sharing something special with him.

Or maybe she was a romantic after all, regardless of what her mother said.

When she woke, he was staring at her. Even though she had been doing the same a few hours before, this irritated her and she let it show on her face. "See something you like?"

"Just wondering why you chose, of all places, the bench closest to me."

He had a point, but it was late and she was tired enough to not comment on his thick accent. "You seemed least likely to rob me. Besides, it's not like there were that many choices."

The distant light of the ticket booth cast his face in pale shadows, but she could still see him looking around the station to see if what she said was true. He opened his mouth to say something and she braced herself for the usual, "you're not cut out for this, sweetie" speech she usually got from the people in her life. Instead he glared at her and said, "You're cold."

"No."

He muttered under his breath at that, words she wasn't sure she understood, but as she strained to hear him, she was hit in the face by a blanket.

"Go to sleep," he said and turned his back on her. That seemed foolish, but who was she to judge? Instead, she wrapped the blanket around herself and laid back down on the hard wood of the bench, yawning.

"You forgot the part about playing your guitar in the subway and getting caught by the police," he said, brushing aside her hair to kiss her neck.

"That was later," she reminded him, leaning into this touch. "This was just the first time we met."

He was right on that account (even though he liked to say they met when he spotted her from across the street and chased her two blocks to find out her name—claiming that was way more romantic)—her parents' campaign to bring her home was successful and she was dragged back to Georgia within a month of leaving it; bringing her little dash of independence to a close because she was still a minor.

"Seventeen, mama. I'm seventeen," she spat.

Before that, she followed Pavel around the city, learning how he made money by tricking people to give up theirs, or working the pool halls pretending to be young and inexperienced and hustling tourists in the process.

"It is all angles and math, Jo," he explained.

They made love for the first time in a cheap hotel near the bus station, because he wanted it to be special. She didn't tell him that waking up with her legs tangled with his and her head on his chest was the special part, the intimate part.

That night, he took her to the roof of a building in a dimly lit part of town and pointed out the few constellations that were visible in the bright glow of the city. She watched him instead of the stars and wondered how she could go back to a life so ordinary.

When they took her, he held onto her hand for as long as could and told her he would find her.

"And I did," he said, heading into the kitchen to refill their drinks.

She rested her head against the back of the couch and closed her eyes. "You did."

She was accepted to NYU in spite of her mother's declaration that her "little stunt" would affect her chances.

"I finished all my classwork—there was no way they couldn't graduate me," Joanna told her wearily. Besides, her personal essay had been killer.

The day after she moved into the dorms, she went down to the bus station and waited there all day to see if Pavel would show up. He didn't.
She didn't see him the rest of the week either and she headed back to her room disappointed each night.

Later, she would say that he was cheesy, that it was too romantic of a reunion and he would grin and say, "It won me you, though. And you still met me there."

So yeah, he was right when he told his version of the story, at least the ending—leaving a note at the bus station ticket booth to meet him on the roof of the building they'd watched the stars together that last night. But he was wrong on one account.

"I did not 'beg for it' as you like to say."

And then the argument would start all over again.