#hes not a heartless bastard he cant kick him out while hes excited

[doctornota]

"OF COURSE YOU HAVE." He shouldn't be surprised - those two have probably got everybody else on the ship beat when it comes to vacation planning. It's a far cry from Leonard and Jim's usual routine of Jim planning everything and then dragging him along, something McCoy tends to attribute at least in part to the fact that Chekov and Sulu are a two-headed man at the helm. Flight and navigation are the type of work that can't be done if both officers aren't at least occasionally living in each other's brains.

That and the whole crew has been itching to get their feet on solid ground again. He's only had to hear about it for two weeks now.

It's Pavel's ( surprising ) compliance with the vaccine that earns him the chance to yap without being ushered out of sickbay immediately at all, coupled with the fact that McCoy is preoccupied with getting things prepared for the next crewman on his list. The navigator is spared only the occasional brief glance out of the corner of his eye as he does so, pulling up charts, wiping down the space, discarding one cartridge and preparing the next. That, too, sounds like Jim ( though he's gotten better as of late - responsibility has changed him ) - throwing things together last second, over-preparing just in case.

( Leonard's guilty of the latter, but only the stuff that matters. First aid kits and the like. Not eighty different pairs of swim trunks. )

"I think I'm the final authority on what is and isn't a part of me, thank you," and it might not be half as infuriating if he wasn't so damn factual about it. McCoy's always thought that Pavel is too much like Spock for his own good sometimes. Makes it feel like you can't argue with whatever point it is they're trying to prove - not that it stops him. He mouths "purposefully trying to get a reaction?" under his breath, a little affronted at the accusation, but then thinks back on Spock again and realizes he has no counterargument.

Well, damn.

"Listen, Chekov," boy, he's like a walking travel brochure, isn't he? "I don't even plan this sort of trip. I just go wherever Jim drags me." It's a habit formed in their Academy days and one he should probably break, but on the other hand he can't imagine spending time with anyone else and it makes him feel better seeing Jim happy and relaxed for once in his life. He pinches the bridge of his nose as he turns back around. "And that all sounds - that's great. It's fine. It's not exactly about shore leave, alright? Is it not enough for a man to just be preemptively stressed? I mean, I've got to think about the stupid crap that everybody's gonna get up to while I'm not around to fix them." He gestures broadly.

To his credit, the moment the doctor approaches, hypo in hand, Pavel complies without retort, unwilling to subject himself to the more potentially uncomfortable outcomes of this otherwise routine visit to sickbay he'd only tried to put off twice.

It's a record for him.

"Hikaru and I have already planned out our shore leave," he says as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. As if they haven't been delighting over this since the moment the first whispers of leave left the captain's lips, excitement making its rounds at warp ten.

With nearly seven-and-a-half-months between their last proper shore leave and their upcoming, well-earned holiday scheduled to commence in thirty-two hours' time, they have not wasted a minute drawing up their itinerary. And with no guarantee of another shore leave, much less when it would be, they could not afford to waste even a single moment.

"And I am packed. Hikaru will still be throwing things into his bag while everyone is racing to the transporters; I would bet credits on that." He can't help the fondness that creeps into his tone when he imagines the sight, a half-dishevelled Hikaru promising he'll be done in five minutes—just five minutes, Pav, I swear—while he hovers in the doorway, trying and failing to look annoyed when Hikaru's hair sticks up every which way, making him l—

If Pavel feels heat colouring his cheeks, he never speaks of it.

Instead, Pavel offers the doctor that very same grin that is the reason that both Hikaru and Nyota have affectionately branded him a little shit. The one that says he can and will weaponise all the knowledge he has gathered about the crew through proximity and observation and thoroughly enjoy doing so when the time comes.

Hyper-vigilant and ever-aware, cataloguing, processing, and storing even the smallest, most seemingly inconsequential things, there is very little that he misses.

"You do," he says in that matter-of-fact tone, the same way he has read off data to the captain countless times. "Not that there is anything wrong with that, Doctor. It is just part of you." The doctor can no more help that than he can turn off his own mind or forget the things that still torture him in the dark, as much as he wishes he could.

"And you can tell what kind of annoyed you are by listening. There is your usual, there is you when you are purposefully trying to get a reaction out of somebody, and there's when something is really bothering you. But, this"—Pavel makes a sweeping gesture with his hand to indicate the job—"aside, are you not also looking forward to leave? They have this huge museum dedicated to their technology—it is supposed to be incredible! And then the waterfront—some people say that the water there, if you go at sunset, it looks like it glows, but I will believe this when I see it. That is what they modelled their signature drink off of, supposedly, and I want to try that, too."