A Time for Comfort
a short tag
for Unexpected
by Setcheti
Disclaimer:
Author’s Note: This is a rant
and a romp and not much else. And this story does NOT tie in to anything else I’ve
written in the
Lieutenant Reed was worried. No
one had seen the ship’s chief engineer since he’d come back from the Xyrillian ship, and even though no one else seemed too
concerned Reed was head of security and it was his job to let things like that
concern him. Of course, his job wasn’t
the only reason Malcolm was concerned, it was just the official one. His personal reasons he was keeping to
himself.
There was no answer at Tucker’s quarters when Reed buzzed him or when
he knocked, but the hand scanner he’d thought to bring with him said someone
was within. Now even more worried, the
armory officer used his security override to open the door and cautiously
slipped inside. The room was dark, but
not too dark for Reed’s sharp eyes to see that Tucker wasn’t on his bed or at
his desk. He finally spotted him sitting
on the floor in the corner, knees drawn up to his chest with his head down and
both arms wrapped around his midsection.
Malcolm was at his side in an instant, hearing the hitch in the other
man’s breathing and seeing the way his body was trembling. Tucker hadn’t acknowledged his presence, so
he very carefully rested one hand on the engineer’s shaking shoulder. “Commander…Trip, what’s wrong? Are you ill, do you need Phlox?”
“No.” The denial was practically
inaudible. “Been
already. I just…want to be alone
for a while.”
“I’m not certain that’s wise,” Malcolm said slowly. “This is about what the Xyrillians
did to you, isn’t it?” No nod, but
Tucker’s arms tightened around his midsection, an answer of sorts. “Would you like me to call Captain Archer for
you?”
“NO!” The engineer’s head shot
up, tear-streaked face full of horrible emotion. Malcolm had never seen Trip cry before – at
the movies, yes, but not like this. “Please
don’t call him, p-please. I…I can’t face
him again, not yet. Not after…”
“After…” Suspicion dawned,
followed closely by a roll of anger. “He
didn’t reprimand you for this, did he?”
Tucker shook his head, a little too hard. “He had…,” he swallowed hard, “T’Pol do it. He
didn’t want to s-see his careless, stupid, unp-professional
chief engineer. An’ Phlox s-said the cap’n wanted me to stay in my room an’ not c-come out for a
while.”
Malcolm was flushed with a sudden desire to assault a superior officer
– or three. From T’Pol
he’d expect such insensitivity, of course, but Phlox and Archer should have
known better than to handle the engineer so roughly after all he’d just been
through. Well, Archer should have; Phlox
could sometimes be a little dense when it came to the finer points of human
psychology. “Perhaps…perhaps he just
wanted you to get some rest?” Malcolm suggested, knowing it sounded flat but
wanting to offer whatever he could. He
took firm hold of his self control and brushed his fingers across the other
man’s cheek, the warm wetness he encountered there tingling on his skin. “You haven’t had much of that this past week,
you know.”
Another shake of the blond head and the engineer tried to swallow
another sob. “He just…just doesn’t want
to have to l-look at me. I let him down
so b-bad…”
“I’ve read your report, you did nothing inappropriate,” the armory
officer tried again to reassure him. “If
anything we did, sending you over there alone
like that among aliens no one had ever seen before, not sending help when you
became ill.” He himself had argued with
Archer on both those issues, pointing out that they had no idea what the Xyrillians might do to the helpless man and yet having his
concerns brushed off as paranoia and his suggestions as unworkable. Malcolm was still angry about that, even more
so in the face of the aftermath. “Trip, please
don’t cry.”
Trip actually flinched, and would have ducked his head away if
Malcolm’s hand hadn’t been there to stop him.
His blue eyes flickered up to the armory officer’s, filled with shame,
and then quickly looked away and fluttered closed, shutting him out. “I’m s-sorry.
Know this ain’t the way an officer ought to behave, know you’re all
disgusted with me already…”
“Disgusted! No, Trip I…” But Malcolm could see that the engineer
wasn’t actually hearing what he was saying even though the sick pain in his
face increased with every word. It was
too much; his control gave way and the feelings behind it burst over him in an
irresistible wave. If words weren’t
going to work…Malcolm took Trip’s face in his hands and ever so gently kissed
away one of the warm, salty droplets, tracing it back to its point of origin
and then kissing the closed eyelids and soft lashes before starting after
escaping tears again. He followed one
down to the engineer’s slightly parted lips and brushed his own over them, a
question, not a demand. Trip’s lips
parted hesitantly in answer, passively allowing him entrance, and Malcolm accepted
the invitation with a tender but thorough venture into the warm cavern, tasting
tears and an underlying tang of golden sweetness that was the engineer himself.
He pulled back when he felt the other man’s hands on him and smiled
when he realized Trip was trying to pull him closer. Malcolm kissed the still-closed eyelids
again, and the tip of the other man’s nose.
“Trip,” he asked softly, running his thumbs over high cheekbones. “What do you want right now?”
Wet lashes fluttered open, and Malcolm found himself lost in a sea of
blue. “You,” Trip whispered. “Just you.”
Malcolm’s smile widened. “Then
that’s what you shall have,” he said. He
darted in for another tender kiss and then pulled back again to trail tiny
kisses up the engineer’s cheek. “Off the
floor, luv,” he breathed in one pink ear, giving the
rim of it a lick while he was there.
“Into bed you go, we’ll do this properly if we’re going to do it at all. Come on, now.” He guided the unresisting man to his feet and
the few steps over to the bed, undressing him as they went so that once Tucker
was lying back on his pillow he was stripped to his underwear. Malcolm hastily pulled off his own uniform and
then lay down on top of the other man, chest to chest, and kissed him
again. This time those soft lips opened
for him eagerly and he took his time exploring, tasting every centimeter of
that intoxicating cavern while his hands kept up a gentle caress of all the
warm skin within reach.
He felt Tucker tense when his wandering hands brushed over the spot
where the Xyrillian fetus had been growing and pulled
back from their kiss, cupping his hand over the sensitive spot and looking
seriously down into blue eyes that were beginning to tear up again. “You did nothing wrong,” he murmured. “They tricked you, played with you, used
you…but that was not your fault, Trip, they most
likely would have done the same to anyone who’d been aboard their ship and in
their power the way you were.” Another
tear escaped; he licked it off with a flick of his tongue. “You were not careless, or stupid, or unprofessional. And your interaction with
Trip licked his lips, his watery blue eyes caught and held by the
armory officer’s intense gray ones. “It
wasn’t…my fault?” he all but whispered.
“No, it wasn’t,” Malcolm assured him.
This time the kiss was deep and searching again, a reward, and Malcolm
kept it up until Trip moaned into his mouth.
“You are so loved, so worthy to be loved, to be cherished,” he answered
the moan breathily. “May I, Trip? Will you let me love you, please?”
Trip’s eyes blinked open again, filled with astonishment. “You…love me?”
Malcolm caressed the side of his face, not breaking eye contact. “Yes, since almost the first day I saw you. May I make you feel it, Trip? Will you let me show you how much I love you?”
More tears, and then a nod. “P-please.”
Malcolm started to peel up the blue undershirt…and froze. He’d thought the spot was simply sensitive,
stretched skin and all, but this…his fingers traced the vicious, horribly livid
bruise without touching it; it was the size of an orange, bigger than his fist,
and he knew it had to be painful. “Phlox
has seen this?”
The engineer tensed again, not meeting his eyes. “He said might happen but it would g-go away
eventually.”
Well how bloody nice of him, Malcolm snarled mentally. ‘Oh, by the way,
Commander, this might leave you with a sodding awful
mark that hurts like hell, but I’m sure it will go away eventually. Nice little reminder of being violated for
you for the next few days – as if you could forget.’ He shifted and leaned down to
tenderly kiss the bruise at its center, feeling the heat of it against his lips
and the engineer’s small shudder as it was touched. Then he cupped his hand over it protectively
again and relocated the kiss to Tucker’s lips, tender, reassuring. “Bloody idiot Denobulan,” he murmured. “Where did he get his medical degree, out of a
ruddy Christmas cracker?”
Trip’s eyes widened…and then he laughed in spite of himself. “W-we’d say out of a box of Cracker Jacks.”
“Close enough,” Malcolm smiled down at him, tangling his fingers in the
blond hair, feeling its soft warmth tickle against his palm. “But enough about Dr.
Phlox. Let’s go back to talking
about you...and what you like…and what you’d like from me, shall we?” He punctuated each question with another
kiss, shifting his weight as he did so to avoid coming in contact with the ugly
bruise accidentally, and allowed his free hand to drift down farther until it
rested on the engineer’s blue-clad hip.
“Nothing too much right now, I think, but I’d like to make you happy if
I could. Would you like that, Trip?”
“Yesss.”
It came out as a groan against his lips.
“Oh please, Mal, make it go away.”
Malcolm didn’t have to ask what he meant. “You are not tainted,” the armory officer
assured him gently. “Not dirty, not
soiled, not any less than what you were before – not to me, not to the captain,
not to anybody whose opinion is worth noticing, luv. And I intend to prove it to you.”
He didn’t waste any more time with words – words weren’t what was
needed at this point. Malcolm captured
Trip’s mouth and took possession of it, not rough enough to bruise but enough
to leave no doubt that he was claiming territory and not just exploring anymore. And from there he branched out, licking,
nibbling, tasting every inch of skin he could reach, taking his time and
lingering over the spots that provoked a stronger response than others. Along the way he finished stripping off the
engineer’s undershirt and his own as well, leaving them both still clad in
their regulation underwear. Not too much
tonight, Malcolm reminded himself as he gently teethed an erect nipple, not
while Trip was still so upset; there was a fine line between providing the
necessary reassurance and taking advantage, and it was
a line he wasn’t going to cross. There
would be plenty of time for more…extensive contact later on.
With that in mind he slid his hand up one muscular thigh and underneath
the leg of the form-fitting blue underwear until he was teasing the other man’s
firm, soft testicles with his strong fingers.
Trip’s back arched when Malcolm squeezed gently, and he groaned with need
when the armory officer worked his straining shaft out through the fly of his
underwear and wrapped his hand around it before kissing away the bitter tear
leaking from the tip. “I’m going to
drain out ever bit of bad feeling you have,” he told the now gasping
engineer. “Let me have it all,
Trip. Let go for me.”
Trip’s back arched again when Malcolm’s hot mouth began to slowly envelop
him, the strong tongue and careful teeth torturing the sensitive flesh on the
way down, and when the armory officer pinned his hips and swallowed Trip let
loose a strangled cry and came. And
came, and came until there was no more left for that sinful suckling mouth to
draw out of him. And then Malcolm slid
up and captured his mouth again, tenderly plundering him, sharing his short,
panting breaths along with the bittersweet taste of his orgasm.
Trip had never felt so loved, so cherished, so comforted.
Once he had recovered a little, he noticed a cloth-covered bulge lying
hard against his hip, and he reached one still-shaking hand down to caress
it. Malcolm’s hand immediately covered
his, gently pushing it away. “No, luv, there’s no need for that. This is all about you…”
“Isn’t this about me too?” Trip asked, putting his hand back where it
had been. He blinked up at the worried
man leaning over him. “Please, Mal?”
The concerned lines on the armory officer’s face melted into a fond
smile. He kissed the end of Trip’s nose
and shook his head. “One touch and I’m
going to explode like a bomb, you know.”
He could have cried when he saw a twinkle, faint but real, sparkle in
the depths of those beloved blue eyes. “Really?” Trip all but whispered, and then his hand slipped
inside Malcolm’s fly and the armory officer came so hard he saw stars just from
the feel of those lightly calloused fingers on his aching flesh. Dimly he heard a wondering Southern voice
say, “Oh Mal, that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Malcolm let himself drop back down against the engineer’s unbruised side with a sigh and patted the broad chest with
one hand. “Oh luv,
I hadn’t intended for that to happen.
This was supposed to be all about you.”
Trip, inexplicably, stiffened and then shifted so his blue eyes could
search Malcolm’s gray ones, worried and even a little frightened. “You didn’t just do this…I mean,
it wasn’t just because of…”
“No, it wasn’t,” Malcolm reassured, kissing him again ever so
tenderly. “I would never do that to you,
never. What I feel for you doesn’t have
anything to do with what happened, other than that I saw you were hurting and
realized now was the time you needed what I’d been wanting to offer you.” He settled himself more comfortably on the
bed and drew Trip’s head down onto his shoulder. “And I am ever so glad you accepted, luv, ever so glad.
Now go to sleep, things will be better in the morning.”
Trip sighed contentedly and snuggled close, his arm going around
Malcolm’s waist possessively. “Things
are pretty damn good right now.” He
kissed the smaller man’s collarbone.
“But if you’re still here in the mornin’ and
this wasn’t all a dream then yeah, things will be even better.”
“If you’re dreaming, I am too,” Malcolm assured him. “Sleep now, I won’t be going anywhere.” He went back to carding his fingers through the
engineer’s hair, and in no time the soothing stroking had lulled the
emotionally and physically exhausted man into a sound, peaceful sleep.
Not quite two hours later, the door buzzed. Malcolm had been expecting it to, and he
rolled up out of the bed without waking his sleeping lover to answer it,
already knowing who was on the other side.
“Captain,” he greeted the older man coolly, glad that the pair of Trip’s
sweatpants he’d ‘borrowed’ earlier with just this encounter in mind weren’t
noticeably too big. “He’s asleep.”
Archer looked worried. “Is he…”
“All right? No, but he’s better – he was crying in a corner when I found him.” Malcolm had expected his captain’s flinch at
that little detail as well; once he’d had time to calm down and think about it,
he’d realized that he knew Archer well enough to know the man wouldn’t have
delegated the issuing of that sort of reprimand to a subordinate. “Are you going to discipline her, sir?”
“I already have.” Archer didn’t
seem to think the armory officer was overstepping himself by asking; if
anything, he looked relieved. “You
were…here for him, Malcolm?”
“I’ll always be here for him,” Malcolm answered quietly but
firmly. It was a declaration, and a
promise. “You don’t have to worry about
that.”
“Good.” Archer sighed and rubbed
his forehead, obviously trying to press away a growing headache. “I didn’t realize until T’Pol
mentioned at dinner what she…and then I talked to Phlox and that was even
worse. I didn’t mean for him to…”
“Send Commander Tucker to his room?” Malcolm finished dryly. Another flinch. Good, he thought,
maybe next time you’ll pay more attention to what’s
sort of message you ask someone else to relay for you. “I told him I doubted you’d meant it that
way, that you most likely had just wanted him to get some rest.”
“That was what I meant, yeah.” Archer
sighed again. “But he’s okay now?”
“He will be,” Malcolm repeated.
“Right now I think what he needs most is rest. It’s going to take time for him to sort it
all through, Captain.”
“Yeah, I can just imagine.”
Archer rubbed at his headache again.
“Phlox said those Xyrillian hormones will take
a while to cycle out of Trip’s system.
And he also said…” He looked
suddenly ashamed and angry in one. “He
said he’d run some more detailed tests and…and he found that not all the
hormones came from the fetus. He thinks
they were…deliberately introduced, most likely in order to facilitate
conception.”
Malcolm was unsurprised; he’d suspected that all along and hadn’t
understood why Archer – and most of all T’Pol and
Phlox – hadn’t immediately come to that conclusion on finding out their very
male engineer was pregnant. This
probably wasn’t the best time to go into that, though – he doubted very
seriously that there was a time right for such a rank-defying conversation at
all. “Did he find anything else?”
“Yeah, he did.” Even more guilt,
but this time the anger was all self-directed.
“The hormones apparently weren’t the only thing. He thinks Trip passed out in the first place
because of something the Xyrillians did too, because
when he went back he had no problems at all and his…his blood chemistry was
different when Phlox compared the samples.”
Archer squared his shoulders.
“You were right.”
Malcolm just nodded, not trusting himself to speak. They had all behaved in a distressingly naïve
fashion with this encounter, and the price Commander Tucker had paid for it was
only now being fully tallied. He cleared
his throat. “Do you want to tell him or
shall I? Or would Dr. Phlox prefer to
explain it?”
The captain shifted his feet uncomfortably. “Well, T’Pol
doesn’t feel that’s necessary…”
“The sub-commander by her own admission doesn’t feel
at all,” Malcolm interrupted. “And she
openly disapproves of Commander Tucker, so I have no doubt she sees nothing
wrong with allowing him to go on believing he was at fault in this. Is she also of the opinion that Starfleet and
the Vulcan High Command should not be notified of the full facts?”
“She has a point, whether I like it or not,” Archer replied. “I don’t expect you to understand the full
diplomatic impact an incident like this could have, Lieutenant…”
“I understand the impact it will have on the commander’s record, not to
mention on him personally,” was Malcolm’s flat reply. He stiffened to attention. “Are you ordering me not to tell him the
truth, Captain?”
“Would you take it if I did?” Archer rebutted, just as evenly. He silenced any reply Malcolm would have
made with a wave of his hand. “No, don’t
answer that – it’s an order I wouldn’t give and even if I did I’d be pretty
disappointed if you followed it.” He
cocked his head at his armory officer.
“Do you think he can handle hearing it?”
The armory officer nodded. “I
think he would handle not hearing it much less well, sir.”
Archer smiled. “I agree. Take Trip down to Phlox in the morning and
stay with him while the good doctor explains what happened. I intend to have a little…discussion with the
admiral about the incident myself, and not just about the Xyrillians. Now I’ll let you go back to bed, Lieutenant,
you have a full day ahead of you tomorrow.”
Malcolm smiled back at him.
“That I do, sir. Thank you.”
Archer shook his head and turned away.
“No, Malcolm, thank you.”
The armory officer watched until he was out of sight before retreating
back inside Tucker’s room and sealing the door behind him. The engineer was still asleep, oblivious to
the exchange, looking very young and vulnerable in the blue puddle of starlight
that leaked in around the shade covering his window. One bare arm had been flung out, searching
for him most likely, and Malcolm slid back into the bed and tucked himself up
against his lover with a sigh; he had to smile when Trip echoed the sigh with
one of his own and shifted in his sleep to draw Malcolm even closer. Tomorrow would indeed be a long day, for both
of them…but tonight was all about comfort.