The Favor

Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Star Trek (plus all its intellectual property) is owned by Paramount.  No infringement intended. 

Summary: MU.  T’Pol finds herself in a dilemma.  Commander Tucker has the solution.

A/N: Beta’d by Distracted, to whom many thanks as always.

__________________________________________________________________________________

 No.  This cannot be happening.  She sat back and passed a trembling hand across her forehead.  The gloss of perspiration there left its sheen on her fingers.

She’d tried to ignore the symptoms: slowly rising temperature, slowly decreasing mental control, and a dull ache in the pit of her stomach that was growing daily into a savage need she could neither control nor slake alone.

She could no longer ignore it now. 

With the utmost reluctance she began to explore the options available to her.

There were no Vulcan males on board.  The Empire was wary of entrusting positions on board its warships to non-human individuals at all; perhaps it was wise to feel that multiples would definitely be asking for trouble.  So ... a human.  (She thought briefly of Phlox, and dismissed the idea with a shudder.)

The captain.  The idea was dismissed almost as soon as the idea entered her head.  He took Lieutenant Sato to his bed on a regular basis, and Sato would not entertain the presence of a rival.  Although not nearly as strong as a Vulcan, the lieutenant was cunning and unscrupulous; she would be quite capable of arranging for any ... accident ... she required to befall a lowly alien who trespassed on her province.

Commander Archer.  She could imagine him sneering openly at the mere idea.  Share his bed with a Vulcan?  In your dreams.

Major Reed.  Cold fear squirmed in her guts at a memory she’d tried hard to forget.  He wouldn’t refuse, but the thought of being effectively trapped in a bed with all that twisted cruelty for however long her pon farr lasted was simply spine-chilling.

Commander Tucker? 

As prospective mates went, he was hardly the automatic choice – the delta radiation he’d been exposed to had seen to that.  Once he might even have been quite handsome, by human standards, but the side of his face was burned and misshapen.  His temper was short, his tongue sharp.  Nevertheless, apart from his facial disfigurement he was physically attractive enough.  She considered his body, and was conscious of a spike in her physiological responses.  He might be amenable, although her pride revolted at the thought of having to reveal something that was usually kept private among her people, to humble herself to ask for his assistance in the matter.

There was no help for it.  Shakily she rose to her feet and left her cabin.

He was in Engineering as usual.  She heard him before she saw him, yelling at some hapless crewman for some infringement or other. 

Her heart sank.  He did not appear to be in the best of moods, and that would not make him any easier to approach.  Still, she had noticed him summing up her body on previous occasions.  He might not be all that difficult to persuade.  After all, the experience would be pleasurable for him too.

She came to a halt beside him and waited for his diatribe to exhaust itself; it would hardly be diplomatic to interrupt him.  His hard glance acknowledged her arrival, but he evidently didn’t feel it warranted interrupting his flow of abuse.  Eventually he had vented all his ire and dismissed the recipient of it to put right whatever damage had been done, with a hefty punishment on top of it.

“Commander.”  She kept her eyes down subserviently as his still smoldering gaze transferred itself to her.

“T’Pol.”  He waited, not pretending to be sufficiently interested in her to engage in polite small talk.

She licked her lips and summoned her courage.  “Please … may I speak with you in private?”  It would be difficult enough to broach the subject between just the two of them.  To have others eavesdrop and learn of her plight would be unbearable.

His eyebrows lifted, but after a moment he gestured silently towards his office.  She followed him in.  The shelves were covered in spare parts.  His desk was a clutter of PADDS and half-finished cups of coffee.

As soon as the door had hissed shut behind the two of them he turned and leaned against it, his arms folded in what she interpreted as a slightly defensive attitude.  His voice, when he spoke again, had an undercurrent of understandable suspicion under the sarcasm.

“So what do I owe this honor to?” 

A deep breath.  “I … I require a favor of you.”

His eyebrows rose even further; a faint, unpleasant smile twisted his mouth.  “I’m all ears.”  His glance and quick snicker said it was yet another of those jokes that humans found so inexplicably amusing. 

She ignored it.

“It is … something to do with Vulcan physiology.”  She swallowed, and went on arduously.  “We … every seven years, we … have to mate.”  Almost without will, her eyes went to the portion of his anatomy that would be concerned, and she finished with a rush, desperate to get the facts out in the open between them.  “This is happening to me.  I must mate, or I will die.”

He leaned forward slightly.  His blue eyes had narrowed.  “Are you askin’ what I think you’re askin’?”

“Yes,” she said hopelessly.

The smile transmuted into a leer.  “My, my.  Isn’t this my lucky day.”  He leaned back against the door, and shifted to draw her attention to the fact that he was definitely interested.  It would have been rather hard to miss, even if she had not already been looking.  “Well, I always oblige a lady.  Just get your kit off and clear a space on the desk for your ass.”

Heat swept over her, and not all of it was embarrassment.  “It … lasts for a time.  I will need … repeated … assistance.”

Tucker laughed aloud at that.   “If you Vulcans only screw every seven years, I damn well guess you would need it more than once when you get goin’!”

He crossed the room towards her, his eyes on her breasts.  “Lucky Phlox owes me, isn’t it?  He can get me signed off sick for a coupl’a days.  And I guess he might do the same for you if I ask him real nicely.  Or I could threaten to give that bastard Reed an excuse to try that damned booth they’re workin’ on on him.”

“Our … proximity would be noticed.”  She could smell him now.  Under the surface taint of engine oil from his clothes, his body had a smell that was surprisingly attractive: she identified the oil from the Earth tree Santalum Album as being the primary element of his shower gel, but it merely served to accentuate the clean, faintly musky odor of his skin. 

A laugh.  “You’re worried about that?  As long as we’re not spreadin’ our germs round the ship nobody’ll give a damn what we get up to.  We can say we’re workin’ the fever off if anyone asks.”

Security cameras were part of life on an Imperial warship.  For a moment she cringed at the thought that there would undoubtedly be one in Commander Tucker’s quarters as well.  It was unthinkable that he wouldn’t know exactly where it was, but leaving it alone would be far less dangerous than tinkering with it; even if it wasn’t booby-trapped to discourage exactly such meddling, to do so would be to invite questions of exactly what he was getting up to that he needed to hide.  Sex might come under the heading of ‘entertainment’, but at least it wouldn’t come under the heading of ‘potentially treasonable activities’.

His hands came to rest on her waist.  Even though she’d been expecting it, she fairly jumped as the contact sparked off nerve endings in her bare skin.

“It’ll probably be best if I go down to Sickbay at the end of my shift,” he whispered in her ear.  The warmth of his breath on her neck made her shiver.  “Come along to my cabin at twenty hundred hours.”

She glanced around, trying to ascertain where the camera was in here.  It was unthinkable that there wouldn’t be one.  Almost as unthinkable as the idea that she would be able to see it, however hard she looked.

He observed her anxiety and grinned.  “You think I haven’t got that covered?  I can feed a loop into it whenever I want.  As far as that’s concerned I’m just sittin’ at the desk here workin’ on an upgrade schematic like a good little boy.”

It was a risk, and he must know it, but here in the heart of his kingdom he had the skill and the tools to access and modify anything he chose to.  At a guess he seldom used his office anyway, and the tapes from it would be viewed only negligently, if at all.  His bedroom was a different matter, particularly if he had company.

His closeness and his touch were accelerating her heart and breathing rate.  Unsurprisingly, he noticed the effect this had on her chest.

“I get the feelin’ you don’t really want to wait that long,” he said softly. “Want me to give you somethin’ to think about in the meantime?”

Her mouth was dry.  “Yes,” she croaked.

The blue eyes seemed to go a shade darker.  “Yes, what?”

It was illogical to baulk at what she had already admitted.  “Yes, please.”  The plak tow was making her irrational, for she was angry, with him and with herself.  She went on, feeling that she wanted to salvage at least a little dignity, “But I … I would like this kept between ourselves.  And when it is over, it is over.”

“No teasin’, eh?  No sendin’ me notes in class, askin’ for a date?”  His hands were slipping upwards, firing off insane salvos of neuron activity.  “I take it there’s no chance of you havin’ a little problem in nine months’ time because of this?”

“No.”  Her voice quavered, however hard she tried to keep it level.  Human and Vulcan DNA were probably incompatible, even if his genetic material hadn’t been damaged by the delta radiation.  At any rate, she would make absolutely sure that there would not be any ‘problem’.  Women on board a warship were given contraceptive injections as a matter of course.

“How about givin’ me somethin’ to think about?” he breathed in her ear, as his fingers brushed lightly across her collar bones.  “Just a quick peek.”  His eyes traveled to where the shadowy V of her cleavage was visible where the neckline of her uniform plunged.  “And in case you hadn’t noticed, I didn’t say ‘please’.”

Silently she slid the zip down.  Her fingers were so unsteady that she could hardly unfasten the three small buttons on the shirt beneath it.  She was conscious of his gaze as being an almost palpable thing as the material fell loose.

His hands slid underneath the fabric, and on to her breasts.  The air rushed into her lungs in a gasp.

Her knees buckled.  She was obliged to lean against the desk as his working fingers disassembled her nervous system.

Moments later his mouth became involved.  The sensations became so overwhelming that she had to press her fist against her lips to keep herself from screaming.

She couldn’t wait.  And it soon became apparent that neither could he.

PADDs and coffee cups went flying.

He scooped her up as though she weighed nothing.  If there had been any breath left in her lungs the impact with the desk would have slammed it out of her.

The short squeal of her pants zip was followed almost immediately by the longer one of his uniform.  He couldn’t have got out of his coveralls quicker if they’d been on fire.  Hard hands pulled at her waistband, and she twisted willingly, helping him.

The coveralls had gone some way towards disguising how strongly built the Chief Engineer was.  His broad shoulders and narrow waist presented a powerfully masculine combination that stoked her arousal.  His pectoral muscles were solid, partially covered by a light fuzz of coarse hair; his flat stomach was equally toned, its surface broken only by the small indentation of his navel.  His skin was smooth and fair, and was now displaying the faint flush of sexual excitement.

Her eyes were drawn inevitably downwards.  Excitement and apprehension warred equally in her mind, as well as in the regions that were going to be most immediately concerned.  Over the course of her ‘service’ on board Imperial ships she’d unfortunately become acquainted with human male genitalia, and she immediately realized that what had been a choice born of little more than logic and necessity was a very fortunate one.

He moved suddenly, grasping her by the shoulders and pulling her upper body towards him.  Almost before she knew what was happening his mouth was on hers, his tongue plunging into it.   For some inexplicable reason, this was so thrilling she didn’t even think about how unbelievably unhygienic kissing was known to be.  The symbolism was so obvious she found herself whimpering with excitement. 

She clung to him, imprisoned within one strong left arm while his right hand slipped down her body and delved between her legs.  The wetness he found there fetched a hard exhalation out of him.

There was no need for either of them to wait.

He hoisted her back on to the desk.  Hands that were sure and purposeful positioned her before taking hold of her hips, bracing her for the onslaught to come.

The slight pressure at her entrance lasted only a split second before he lunged.  The wave of sensation as his hardness surged into her almost stopped her breathing.

Yes, yes… YES!

She gasped and writhed, impaled on him.  The heat that had been burning in her groin roared into a furnace, consuming her.  Every slam of his body stoked it higher, until it was a terrifying thing that crumbled logic and thought and everything that was not centered on the place where his need met hers, feeding and destroying one another.

The wave crested.  She clung to the top of it, terrified by the fall.

His shout dislodged her.  They fell together, blind and frenzied, shattering each other.  His insanity broke into her mind, merged with hers and became indistinguishable from it.

They emerged eventually into the blankness of exhaustion.  She discovered that the desk was extremely uncomfortable, though its discomfort was partially compensated for by the sensation of having his body lying partially on top of her.

“Sonofabitch,” he mumbled.  His head was buried between her breasts.  “That was amazin’.”

“It was certainly most … agreeable.”

A laugh quaked through him.  “I suppose for a Vulcan, that’s equivalent to a round of applause.”

“It was the appropriate acknowledgement,” she said a little stiffly.

“Right.”  He lifted his face and peered rather darkly at her. “I’m takin’ that as a challenge.  By the end of this ‘pon far’ thing of yours, you’re goin’ to be tellin’ me it’s a lot damn better than ‘agreeable’.” 

Moving with something less than his usual grace, he straightened up and began pulling his uniform back on.  “Better get yourself lookin’ decent again too,” he advised.  “You never know who might forget to knock.”

Shakily she sat up.  She missed the top button and had to undo them and start again.  Sexual satiation – however temporary – apparently had unforeseen side-effects.

He was picking up the PADDs again, tossing them casually back on to the desk.  The cups went on to a shelf; at a guess, one of his subordinates would presently be ordered to return them to the Mess.

“Better get back on to duty.”  He paused in front of her, lifting her chin with a careless, calloused finger.  “And don’t forget: my quarters, twenty-hundred hours this evening.  If you want more of the same, of course.”

His smile both mocked and excited her.  He was so sure of himself.  So sure that she’d be there. 

Which she would.  The needing had been assuaged for now, but she knew it would return, hotter and fiercer.  She couldn’t fight it, and as she watched him walk out of the office she didn’t want to.  She wanted to feel that again, wanted to lose herself in the sensations he so skillfully and energetically provided.  What she’d felt and seen of his body had only fed her desire, not quenched it.

“I shall be there,” she whispered.

She had no choice.

She didn’t want one.