Chapter Text
Shuffling after his commanding officer through an auditorium crowded with chattering mahogany-skinned aliens, Commander Charles Tucker the Third indulged himself with a long, unashamedly curious stare through three hundred and sixty degrees. It had been a long time since a new species had been as enthusiastically welcoming as the garrulous, gesticulating occupants of this small minshara class planet called Heema Librat.
Last night his harmonica recital had received two standing ovations. Chef had been inundated with eager requests for recipes. Even T'Pol's dissertation on Vulcan philosophy had ended in a storm of enthusiastic applause which had woken the slackers at the back of the hall. When Minister Werran had invited the senior staff to attend a cultural evening planetside after a sacrifice like that, even Lieutenant Reed couldn't raise a reasonable objection.
So Malcolm, like the rest of the staff, was inching forward through the throng toward a narrow staircase swathed in red velvet and smelling of cobwebs and fifteen years' accumulated dust. As inconspicuously as he could Tucker drew in a deep breath that tightened his firm abs and stung his chest. If the seats were designed with the average Heeman in mind, he'd be holding things in a lot for the next few hours.
"Please, Captain, the Guests' Box is to your right." Minister Werran's twig-sharp hands waved in the musty gloom, their pointed nails glittering. A curtain was drawn aside, offering access to a steeply banked block of seating; four short rows, Tucker noticed, of bucket seats lined with black satin and no cushions. The smile he was halfway offering to their host stuck at a painfully twisted grimace.
"Please, Doctor - Ensigns Hoshi and Travis - if you would be seated in the second row." The topmost seats were already occupied by beaming Heemans, whispering and rubbing their hands while they fidgeted in childlike anticipation of the show. Obediently Tucker squeezed himself into place between Archer and T'Pol, cursing the bad luck that put his likeliest source of humour on the Vulcan officer's other side.
Malcolm Reed caught his glance and arched a well marked eyebrow in mute reply before shuffling into the most comfortable position available and turning his stoic attention to the circular stage around which terraces of seating rose at a perilous angle. But for a few flower petals the platform was bare; a wooden board hardly big enough to stage a one-man band show.
If this was the Heeman idea of a wild night out, Tucker suspected those ovations for his musical talents hadn't been such a big deal after all.
He opened his mouth to pass that witticism on to a friend who'd be sure to appreciate it, but before he could catch Jonathan Archer's eye the few dim lights set in the ceiling cut out and the full-throated boom of a single drum beat out.
The truncated squeak of a startled linguist struck the side of Tucker's cheek with the force of a princess's palm but he was grateful for its sting. In total darkness the silence which engulfed the rest of the auditorium was unnerving. He felt like a small boy on the edge of a sheer cliff.
Stupidly he gripped the sides of his seat until his knuckles cracked, as if he could stop himself toppling over. Just the sound of someone breathing; that was all he needed. A thread of connection to hold onto in the dark.
Directly over the stage a large spotlight hummed into life, dust particles dancing through the beam on their descent to caress a statuesque male, his modesty just about protected by a loose pouch of gold silk. Every muscle and nerve ending in Trip Tucker's body went into instantaneous spasm.
Large and powerfully built, warm-skinned with shaggy sandy hair, the man might have been Jon Archer's double and when his splayed palms swept over the hairy expanse of a broad chest the incestuous frisson of the thought sent a spike deep down into Tucker's balls. He'd never thought of Johnny that way - well, not sober, anyway - and now he knew why.
Part turned-on, part mortified, he squeezed his eyes shut but still saw the taunting vision with the same painful clarity. Beneath the repetitive beat of a single drum a second skein of music began to swirl: the low, breathy whistle of the snake-charmer's call.
Somebody gasped. Tucker's eyes flew open.
Guilt dissolved, swamped by excitement's heady rush. His mouth dried up despite his throat's convulsion. Captivated, he watched as a lithe younger man rolled through the petals to writhe around the double's bare feet.
Pa-doom. Pa-dooom. Like the thump of a heartbeat the drumming echoed around the small hall. Tucker could feel his own vital signs slowing down to match its insistent rhythm while the sinuous swirl of the wind instrument prickled all the fine hairs on his skin. When the newcomer began to rise, swaying like a cobra from his basket around Jon-a-like's calves, tongue flicking out to feather where it would, he swore he could feel the contact through to his own marrow.
Close by his fellow officers were shifting, soft hisses of exhaled breath reverberating through the dark. Trip Tucker was conscious of none of them, trapped in a glinting vortex of sexual awareness so bright it hurt. The bigger man was visibly moaning now, rocking to every move of his tormentor's mouth and hands. How long had it been since someone had focussed so much on making him feel that good?
Too long.
He was drooling. His pants might have been made from goats hair filled with fleas wherever they scraped his hyper-sensitive flesh. Damn, he wanted to be played with that way!
Something nudged his knee, wrenching him painfully from his erotic daze. "'scuse me," Malcolm Reed grated as he barged by, his humiliation obvious despite the concealing dark and the pair of slim white hands that clasped uselessly below the waist. Briefly, compassion for the Englishman overrode Tucker's personal half-savoured shame. He was out of his restrictive seat before he realised what he was doing.
"Sorry, Cap'n," he muttered while bumping by Archer's legs. His chest felt tight. He had to get out before his head - or something more important - exploded.
Without conscious consideration he staggered in Reed's wake, up a few ankle-breaking steps impossible to climb elegantly in the dark and out past stifling draperies onto a narrow landing barely lit by two brass lanterns covered in a fine grey film of grime and scorched cobweb. Rendered awkward by the protrusion between his thighs Tucker lurched along toward a dark wood door, several layers of varnish cracked and peeling around the handle, and shoved it inward.
"Whoops! Sorry, Mal!"
When the lieutenant started he realised the soft thud of door into shoulder had gone unnoticed. "Oh, er, not to worry, Commander," Reed stammered, flushing to the roots of his tousled dark hair. Angling his body away from the newcomer in an effort to hide his discomfort he only succeeded in highlighting it. Tucker raised both hands in the universal sign of surrender.
"Easy, buddy, you got no more to hide than I do." The briefest glimpse told the engineer his friend had every bit as much as himself, making concealment all the more difficult and his own erection pulse with renewed vigour. "Quite a show, isn't it?"
"God, yes!" Reed flattened his hands against the cold tiles, his head hanging down between hunched shoulders. "I'm sorry, I just..."
"Yeah. Likewise." As if watching two guys getting it on hadn't heated him up enough, now he was face to cock with the man he'd spent months imagining getting in just that position: the man he'd been sure would heave him out the nearest airlock in horror at the very idea. "Been a while for you too, huh?"
The bowed head jerked. Then, slowly, it came up. Reed's whole body turned, the erection that refused to deflate rearing into plain sight and drying out Tucker's mouth however hard he swallowed. "But if you consider a week a long time, Commander...."
A week? Oh, fuck!
"Guess I kinda let everybody think I'd gotten lucky with the princess,"Trip conceded in the most casual tone possible - an octave too high thanks to the tight sensation in his pants, he decided. Reed snorted.
"Are you saying you didn't?"he challenged.
Only Malcolm Reed could start an interrogation while sporting a giant boner in an alien john. "I'm sayin'," Tucker confirmed, squaring his stance and exposing his seriousness in all its twitching splendour. "C'mon, Malcolm! Sure, Kaitaama's pretty, but please! The woman's a Grade A pain in the ass.
"Anyway, she got the wrong kind of tools, you know?"
He watched a single sable brow make a Vulcanesque climb to slash across a broad British brow. "A lot of ladies would be disappointed to hear that statement from you, Mister Tucker," Reed remarked, dangerously calm. Though his stomach dropped like he'd just hit Zero-G for the first time, Trip contrived a casual shrug.
"I like sex with a girl as much as the next bisexual man, Malcolm, but you know how it is. Ain't nothin' really comes close to the feel of a man pushin' through your asshole, right?"
"Christ, no!" It was barely more than a whimper, an admission Reed couldn't hold back. Past caring, he delved past the aggravating uniform fastenings, long lashes sweeping onto flushed cheeks at the first brush of fingers through the fine cotton of his boxers. Tucker's head began to swim.
"Dammit, Reed!" he moaned, following suit with an eagerness that almost bust his zipper. "I can't - I need..."
"Yes!"
Which of them made the first move, Trip Tucker would never recall. All he knew was that cold air was replaced by hot, slick flesh against his exposed front and he found himself staggering, clutching the man he'd come to call his best friend since Enterprise's launch had prised a chasm between Jon Archer and himself. Something touched his aching balls, fluttering fingers he knew dimly couldn't be his own - they were full of thick, throbbing, velvet-sheathed Malcolm - and then all understanding, all clinical recollection, was blown to the other end of the galaxy.
He came long and hard, deaf to his guttural groans, his ears filled with the smoky, sexy sound of Malcolm Reed's cut-glass English accent howling out his name. Wet warmth spread across his stomach and he gasped, writhing to get more out of the ebbing sensation that passed between them. "Holy shit!" somebody panted.
Tucker suspected that was probably him.
His hunch was confirmed when the perfectly-sculpted form against him swayed away, leaving his flaccid member to twitch in protest at the sudden chill that engulfed it. "I'm terribly sorry, Commander," Reed rapped out, hands behind his back and head held high as if he were fully uniformed and facing a phalanx of admirals rather than staggering across a bathroom with his clothes askew and his cock flopping out of his pants. "My actions were..."
"Hold it right there, buddy." Frustration. It beat a splash of cold water as an afterglow cure any day. Pushing himself up to his full height Tucker glowered down at the younger man, pushing away the intrusive shimmer of purely physical appreciation that passed through him. "What about my actions? Now, you may have started all that -I don't know. I've not been thinkin' real clearly the last twenty minutes."
"If either of us had been thinking at all, that wouldn't have happened." All mixed up with guilt, embarrassment and confusion the stoic lieutenant was irresistible; defences down, rumpled, uncertain and sexy as all hell. Even the bitter twist to his words couldn't stop Tucker's emptied tanks begin the luscious process of refilling at the sight of him.
"Blame the Heemans," he suggested, exaggerating his action in gallantly averting his eyes while the Brit fumbled himself into a more respectable state of dress. "Sonofabitch! They applaud T'Pol's philosophy lecture when they're used t' entertainment like that?"
"I assume that is a highlight of the social calendar," Reed replied drily. "And thanks, but you can turn 'round now. I realise you're a gentleman but that is a bit extreme considering where your hands have just been."
That was the Malcolm he depended on, Tucker realised; the supremely competent tactician, able to handle just about whatever the universe threw at him, up to and including a sneaky grope with an overheated superior in an alien theatre. "Mah hands kinda liked it, Loo-tenant," he drawled, extending the rank to win a reluctant smile from its bearer. "And my cock did, too. Seriously, buddy. I think we both needed that."
That eyebrow did its thing again, creating a magnetic pull inside Tucker's pants. "No mention in the personnel records then?"
"Not unless you want a commendation."
Reed's bark of laughter rebounded off the polished tiles. "Unless you'd like to be responsible for mass cardiac failure at headquarters..." he retorted, and Tucker suspected he wasn't the only one adding relief to the heady cocktail of emotions that was keeping him pleasantly off-balance. "We're still friends, then?"
"You think I'd get my dick out for just anybody? Malcolm, I'm hurt!"
"Oh, stop being an arse!" The irritated exclamation was out before Reed's hand could shoot up to catch it. "I'm being serious, Trip. Yes, that was bloody marvellous if you're fishing for compliments, but I value you as my friend. I wouldn't want..."
"We're both adults, Malcolm." Sometimes he wasn't so sure about that, but Trip ploughed on regardless. "And what I'm tryin' to say is, releasin' a little tension together won't change our friendship - not from where I'm standin' anyway. Hell, we helped each other out, didn't we? Isn't that what friends do?"
"I'm not sure I've ever helped a friend like that before, Mister Tucker."
From anybody else that would've been a back-off formality. From Malcolm Reed, teamed with an irrepressible twinkle in the star-bright eyes, it was a positive verbal high-five.
"Me neither, but I wouldn't mind doin' it again sometime."
"With any friend in particular?"
"If you're willing, yeah." He hadn't meant to suggest it but now the words were coming out - verbal diarrhoea his mother called it - Tucker couldn't stop the flow. "Hell, it's been years since anybody's made me feel this good; and now...you liked it too, right?"
"I did." He could almost see the cogs turning; that cool analytical mind working through the question at hand and every one of its fifteen million, seven hundred thousand and three potential repercussions. "You're suggesting we become - is the term fuck-buddies?"
"I was thinkin' more of friends with benefits, but it's the same difference." He was actually considering it, and Tucker didn't know whether to jump for joy or run for the hills - whichever set of hills happened to be nearest. "We got stressful lives, Malcolm. What's wrong with blowin' a little steam together when we need it?"
The Englishman's lower lip disappeared behind a row of sharp white teeth. "I don't know," he said eventually. "I just - I'd hate to lose your friendship, Trip. It - it does mean a lot to me, even if I'm a grumpy tosser sometimes."
"You're my best friend, Mal." The large claim earned him a quizzical cock of the head. "Okay, I'd 've called the Cap'n that once, but things change. Him and me - it's not been the same since we launched. He's my boss. You're my equal."
"I think Starfleet might dispute that, but thank you. Now, d' you think we might sneak back into the theatre before anyone comes looking for us?"
"Or the Cap'n needs to pee?" He hadn't got an answer in words, Tucker realised, letting himself be ushered back into the unprepossessing corridor ahead of the subordinate officer, but sometimes words just complicated things. Malcolm had looked him right in the eye as he'd given that ambiguous thank you.
He'd gotten the message. And when he squeezed back into his place between Archer and the Vulcan he found he could take in the second half of the show, with the roles reversed and the slender guy receiving the attention of Jon Mark II, with complete composure.
Well, almost.
It was good to have a best buddy.