Work Text:
The U.S.S. Detroit ’s Chief Security Officer, Lieutenant Hank Anderson, did not like to be backed into a corner. Thankfully, he was a big man, imposing, intimidating even, and he seldom found himself rendered powerless.
So he couldn’t explain how a man half his size -- a proper, prissy Vulcan, no less -- had managed to so disarm him. The Vulcan had Hank pressed against the closed door of his quarters, and Hank didn’t even mind .
In fact, he liked it a little too much.
"I need you," Con whispered, rough and low, and it was a little funny that those three words could mean so much to the hardened Lieutenant. Hank had not felt needed in a very, very long time, but he saw the truth of it in his friend's clouded eyes. Blood fever, Con had called it. Pon Farr. The Vulcan time of mating. He needed someone to ease the urge, he had said -- he needed Hank.
Hank laid his hands on either side of the Vulcan's face, thumbs caressing his flushed-green cheeks, staring into those deep brown eyes. The most self-sufficient person Hank had ever met needed him. What could he do but give him everything he had and more?
"You’ve got me," Hank whispered. He leaned in, breath ghosting over Con’s lips, and kissed him.
The first time Hank laid eyes on the Vulcan, Lieutenant S’Konor was standing at the front of the briefing room with his hands tucked behind his back, his shiny new rank stripes gleaming so bright they irritated Hank’s hangover headache. The rest of the Detroit ’s department heads were seated around the table, staring in mild awe at their newest chief engineer while Captain Fowler spoke highly of the Vulcan’s credentials, experience and reliability. Hank took in S’Konor’s pristine uniform and serious near-scowl, and hated him immediately.
"A Vulcan?" He asked Fowler later, pacing back and forth in Fowler's quarters, practically wearing a hole in the carpet. "I thought all the Vulcans in Starfleet were serving on the Jericho -- no one told me I had to work with a fucking Vulcan ."
Fowler glared at him over his desk, his fingers steepled. "You're heading up two completely separate departments, Hank," he snapped. "You'll barely even see him. You worry about security, and he'll worry about engineering. If you can just stop yourself from antagonizing him in department briefings, I’ll call it a success."
It had been cold comfort to Hank, but he knew he was in no place to make requests of his captain. Half the time, Hank was pretty sure the only reason he hadn't been thrown out an airlock -- or at least demoted -- was Fowler's goodwill, and the last vestiges of their friendship. Hank hadn't been himself these last few years. Or, rather, he was exactly himself: an ornery drunk, a piece of shit. And Fowler knew it. The new guy would find out soon enough too.
"You'd better be right," Hank grumbled. And that had been that.
Except Fowler had been very wrong. S'Konor didn't just worry about engineering. He had his fingers in every pie on the fucking ship. He'd bring suggestions to every briefing, not just about how to increase efficiency in his own department, but everywhere from the structure of landing parties to the security shift rotation. "On the Jericho ," he would say, "we did it like this."
Well, Hank didn't fucking care what they did on the Jericho . And he told Lieutenant S'Konor as much. Maybe a little too viciously from time to time, because every time Hank shot down his ideas, those eyebrows would draw together and those perfect, pert lips would pout just slightly, and Hank would almost feel bad. Until the next time S’Konor stepped on his toes, at least.
Their quiet -- or not-so-quiet -- animosity continued for months, S’Konor sniffing in disapproval at everything Hank did, Hank calling him on it every time because he had been doing this job for decades, and some Vulcan kid wasn’t going to tell him how to change.
But it only sucked, really sucked, when they got assigned to the same landing party -- important enough to get the department heads involved. A Klingon ambush of a peaceful planet, whose generally state-of-the-art defenses had been compromised.
They rode the turbolift down to the transporter room together in icy silence for only a few moments before S’Konor finally asked: “Do you have a problem with me personally, Lieutenant?” His tone was measured and controlled, like everything he did. “If we are to rely on each other during this mission, I should know.”
“Maybe I do,” Hank said, arms crossed over his chest. “You can’t just come in here brand new and try to fix everything when it’s not even broken.”
S’Konor seemed to consider this as he stared straight ahead at the doors. “I am an engineer,” he said, as if he wasn’t sure Hank actually knew that. “I like to fix things.”
In spite of himself, Hank barked out a laugh -- it even managed to surprise him. “Didn’t think you Vulcans ‘liked’ much of anything, S’Konor.”
Hank glanced to his side only to find that S’Konor’s eyes were on him, pinning him in place like a butterfly, wings spread. Under that gaze, Hank felt stretched out and exposed. “We Vulcans have preferences like anyone,” S’Konor said. Something green began to rise on his cheeks, almost a blush if that were possible. It clashed terribly with the red of his uniform tunic. “And as it happens, I prefer to be called Con.”
Something stuck in Hank’s chest and he swallowed. “Right. Sure. Con. Why?”
“I find it easier to tolerate than the clumsy way humans pronounce my given name,” Con said.
Hank laughed, rolling his eyes. “Little shit,” he muttered. But it was the first time there wasn’t much venom in the insult. Those lips ticked in a slight smile and the Vulcan turned back to the door as it slid open. They stepped through, perfectly in-sync, and Hank felt somehow wrongfooted.
He hated the guy, right? So why did something as simple and silly as a nickname -- something Con probably asked of everyone -- feel so monumental? Hank decided he might continue calling him by his given name, just to get a rise out of the guy, just to see him squirm. Con might like fixing things, but Hank would be damned if he’d let the prissy Vulcan fix Hank’s attitude.
Well, Hank’s resolve to hate Con forever crumbled only hours later, but in his defense, no one could have anticipated how fucked the landing party’s situation became. Hank and his fellow security officers had managed to lock down part of the natives’ compound to keep their landing party safe, but it wouldn’t do to protect the rest of the colony. From orbit and from the ground, Klingon forces fired their disruptors, shot torpedoes into city centers.
And Hank had to come to terms with the fact that maybe Con felt more compassion, more empathy -- maybe more everything than he let on. Because Con had run straight into a barrage of disruptor fire to the mechanism that powered the planet’s defenses, ready to risk his life to get it back online. And damn it, Hank had followed him, laid covering fire, kept watch as Con tinkered and toiled to turn this battle around.
He’d fucking done it after a nerve-wracking few minutes, and gotten a phaser shot to the shoulder for it. Hank, too, had been hit in the knee, and they’d hobbled back to the landing party together, leaning on each other for support. “You okay, Con?” Hank had asked, eyes on the green blood spilling hot and soaking into Con’s red shirt.
Con nodded, steely. “Thanks to you.”
“Don’t pull anything like that again,” Hank muttered. “Scared the shit out of me.” And if it looked like Con smiled then -- legitimately smiled -- Hank must have been hallucinating from the blood loss. But he wasn’t hallucinating Con’s strong arm wrapped around his waist, fingers clutching the squish of fat along his side; he wasn’t hallucinating the feeling of Con’s heartbeat against his abdomen, fast and loud.
Maybe Hank had scared Con , too.
Tina Chen, their chief medical officer, often joked after that that Hank and Con had bonded while they’d healed from the fiasco in Sick Bay, because she was laboring under the misconception that half the crew seemed to have -- that he and Con were friends now.
Of course the idea of it was ridiculous. Hank didn’t even have human friends. Making friends with a Vulcan who might as well have been his exact, mirror-universe opposite was an insulting notion.
Except he rather liked when people approached him to ask what Con might think about a proposal they were considering, when people tracked him down to ask if he’d seen their Vulcan chief engineer, when people assumed that Hank would know any of these things because they assumed that the two of them were close.
Well, they weren’t ‘close,’ but Hank didn’t hate him anymore. Briefing after briefing, landing party after landing party, shore leave after shore leave, Hank found, in fact, that he even liked Connor a little. Maybe it was his petulant humor, his dedication to Starfleet and their goals, his commitment to making the U.S.S. Detroit more successful. Maybe (Hank could admit in the deep privacy of his own thoughts) it was the way that red uniform tunic clung to Con's shoulders -- lean but undeniably strong -- or the way his every expression hid itself in the line of his lips. Hank spent a lot of time watching Con’s lips.
For all that Hank fantasized (however shamefully) in the year and a bit since Con had joined their crew, he never imagined he’d end up here. He had come to Con’s quarters to check on him. The Vulcan had been behaving strangely, Tina said. She was worried about him. “You’re friends, aren’t you?” She had asked. And yeah, it had been long enough now that Hank could admit it.
So Hank had done what any friend would do, and he’d paid a visit -- only to find Con writhing naked on the bed, rutting against the mattress, panting and groaning, and when Hank had stepped through the door Con had met his eyes and come with a surprised cry that sounded like Hank’s name, that nearly knocked the breath from Hank’s lungs.
Somehow they’d gone from there to here, to Con plastered against him, kissing him like he’d never kissed anyone in his life but was damn determined to do it well -- or at least enthusiastically.
Con breathed into Hank’s mouth, tiny hitched gasps and low rumbles of pleasure that hadn’t quite yet formed the shape of a moan. Every line of his body pressed up against Hank’s, and Hank had to rewrite a few of his assumptions about Vulcans as Con practically dry-humped Hank’s thigh where he held him up against the door to his quarters.
Though he’d been rather certain Vulcans -- especially perfect, put-together Con -- didn’t even have sex drives, the evidence that he was grossly mistaken was currently swelling hard and hot and wet against Hank’s leg. Con held Hank against the door with surprising strength, fingers tightened into Hank’s biceps.
I need you. Hank was drunk on the words, kissing Con like he needed this too -- and maybe he did. Maybe everything between them had built up to this moment. His hands caressed the smooth curve of Con’s back, down to the swell of his ass, his naked skin so hot to the touch it almost burned.
"We should go slow--" Hank started, but Con cut him off with a harsh nip to his lower lip, and a growl .
"We have been going slow, Hank," Con rumbled. His grip tightened. "I have thought of this -- thought of you ..."
Hank shivered at the tone of Con's voice, leaning back against the door to give Con access to his neck. Con licked a stripe up the skin with a sandpaper-rough tongue, nipped a bit between his surprisingly sharp teeth, and Hank melted.
Con's hand was in his hair, then, holding him in place, and Hank was bent to the Vulcan's will. The thrill of it buzzed through him. He'd never had a lover who could maneuver him, press him, push him, command him -- but here they were.
"Bed," Con croaked, and when he pulled back his eyes were glazed, dark. Hank only knew what Con had managed to choke out about Pon Farr before he'd shoved Hank against the door, and he had to be sure before this went any further. Apparently Vulcan mating urges were strong, drug like. Hank couldn't let Con make this mistake.
"You won't regret this in the morning, will you?"
Even through the haze of his blood fever, Con managed to look annoyed. "If I do not achieve sexual release, I will be dead in the morning," he said with remarkable coherence. Hank's stomach dropped, but Con raised a hand to his cheek as if to soothe him, stroking down his beard, his neck, his chest. "I want you," he said, voice pitched lower, "It isn’t only the Pon Farr, it’s --”
He paused, seemingly overcome, and pulled back. At first, Hank worried he had ruined this, that he had offended Con or hurt him or that Con had mistaken Hank’s caution for rejection. But Con simply grabbed Hank’s hand and pulled him forward. “Let me … let me show you,” Con whispered.
How could Hank say no to that ? He let Con lead him toward the bed, let Con maneuver him onto his back, let Con crawl graceful and predatory into his lap like the embodiment of every wet dream Hank had ever had, and when Con began to grind once more against Hank’s groin, Hank forgot entirely why he’d asked to go slow.
He brought his hands to Con’s chest, caressing, stroking, his touch leading up to the back of Con’s neck to pull him down, and then they were kissing again, Con rutting gently against Hank’s clothed erection, pressing down against him. Con’s hand came to Hank’s face. “Let me show you,” he whispered again, breath hot in Hank’s mouth. And Hank didn’t know what he was agreeing to when he nodded -- only that he’d do anything Con wanted.
Con’s chest hollowed of breath, almost a sob, and he arranged his fingers along Hank’s face. “My mind to your mind,” he whispered, choked, “my thoughts to … to your thoughts.”
The sensation that sped through Hank’s veins felt like fire -- an accelerated burn, an explosion of pleasure and desire and need that made him gasp with lungs he couldn’t feel. An iron grip closed around the very core of him and pulled, wind rushing through Hank’s body, his mind, until he was speeding along a river of sensation so strong it blacked out everything else. Everything but the grip, which felt so much like Con’s hand in his own, their fingers threading as they leaned on each other, hobbling back to their landing party after they were injured.
The memory sparked an image, floating unbidden into Hank’s mind -- his own face in profile, dirty and sweat-stained and splattered with blood -- Con’s and his own. And Con’s voice echoed in his skull. Strong, handsome, not so bad, so good, so good to me, want him, want him, want him.
Such a simple desire, such a simple thought as ‘want,’ summoned images that flashed like a strobe light over their strange mental connection -- Hank smiling, laughing at something Con had said; Hank scowling, arms crossed; Hank’s face at the bottom of the jeffries tube where he handed Con tools, his brows knit in concern. Memories from months ago. But it all settled on one memory: Hank sitting in the briefing room that first day (he knew it was the first day, how did he know?), arms crossed over his chest. Con’s voice reached Hank through a haze: Want him want him want him --
Hank gasped, trying to fill his empty lungs as something pulled and snapped like a rubber band in his mind and he returned like a lead weight to his own body, returned to the weight of Con pressing him into the bed, the pillow cradling his head, Con’s trembling fingers against his face.
“I have wanted you,” Con whispered against Hank’s lips. There was no doubt anymore -- Hank knew. He had felt that want so fiercely he couldn’t believe it wasn’t his own. He surged up, hands coming to the back of Con’s head to hold him in place as Hank kissed the words from his lips, as he rose up into the body against him and granted him permission.
Take what you want , he wanted to say, I’m yours, I’m all yours.
The words never made it to his mouth, but Con must have felt them anyway. His hands came to Hank’s belly, rucked up Hank’s uniform shirt, and they managed to part just long enough for Con to pull the shirt over Hank’s head. He threw it somewhere to the side before he dove back in, caressing Hank’s body with reverent, heated touches.
He shoved Hank back against the bed and began to lick and suck down Hank's body, worshiping every scar and wrinkle and roll of fat, and Hank flushed red down to his chest.
Even as embarrassment flooded him, he couldn't deny it took a backseat to every other feeling churning inside him right now, Con's exploring tongue, and those hands with their slender fingers finding the fastening of Hank's slacks.
Hank bucked up his hips, and Con didn't waste a moment, tearing the fabric open and over the curve of Hank's buttocks. Hank suppressed a shiver at the cool air against the wet tip of his cock, already hard and straining and ready.
When he looked down to meet Con's eyes, they were dark as an eclipse. Grabbing handfuls of Hank’s slacks in both his fists, Con held Hank's eyes -- and rent the fabric in two with one hard tug and a startlingly loud tear.
"Con!"
But if the Vulcan had seemed coherent before, he had apparently lost all control now. He ran his hands hard up Hank’s bare thighs, digging divots into Hank’s skin, and just as Hank squirmed (to get closer or farther from the touch, he couldn’t tell), Con leaned forward and took the head of Hank's cock between his lips. "Fuck, Con," Hank grunted, getting his hand in Con's hair and tugging.
There wasn’t much he could do to restrain a Vulcan, though. Even a scrawny one. Con ignored the grip in his hair and sank down, swallowing Hank to his root. Hank bucked up, letting out a groan that made Con grasp his hips with such force he was sure his fingertips would leave bruises.
But oh god it was worth it, that rough tongue curling and flattening against his length, teasing his tip; the wet heat of Con’s mouth and the way he hummed and moaned and squirmed around Hank’s girth like he was loving this at least half as much as Hank was.
He’d never seen Con express anything so outwardly, so unashamedly, as he was expressing his lust right now. Con knew what he wanted, and he wanted Hank , and damn if that wasn’t the sexiest thing Hank had ever seen.
So sexy, in fact, that Hank doubted he’d last long enough to give Con what he needed if this kept up. He tugged more insistently on Con’s hair, though it took all his self control to do it, and somewhere in his chest a warning rumbled out.
Thankfully, whatever Con had done to their minds may have still connected them, as Hank could almost feel the moment that Con realized he was pushing him too close to the edge. He pulled off Hank’s cock with a last, longing lick, and Hank gasped a sigh of relief and frustration. God, but he was close.
Con reared up on his knees, his green-flushed chest heaving, his hair a messy tousle so unlike his usual picture of prim perfection, and his cock -- his cock standing verdant and slick, laid against his stomach. Two swollen ridges at its head recalled Hank of some of the more ambitious sex toys he’d tried as a younger man, and suddenly Hank’s mouth was watering.
Hank reached for him, and Con took Hank’s hand, fitting Hank’s fingers into his mouth and laving upon them the same obscene attention he’d just gifted Hank’s cock. Hank took in a harsh breath, meeting Con’s eyes. Was it was possible to come from finger-sucking? Con scraped his teeth against the pad of Hank’s middle finger and pulled back, tossing Hank’s hand to the bed.
“How we doing this, sweetheart?” Hank asked, his voice rough as Vulcan sand. In answer, Con’s hands trailed down Hank’s thighs, one coming to slip under Hank’s knee and hike it up.
Hank swallowed, nervous, but only a little. It had been a long time since he’d done this, especially since he’d been on the receiving end. But Con’s cock was thin, if long, and already coated in a slick substance that made Hank realize the slide might not be as hard as it seemed.
And in any case, it didn’t look like Con was going to reach for the lube anytime soon. Vulcans didn’t sweat, but Hank could see the strain of holding back in every line of Con’s taut muscles. He was trying to go slow -- and how ridiculous that he’d think he needed to do so for Hank’s benefit.
“I told you, Con,” Hank said, wrapping his leg around Con’s hips and bringing him close, pressing their cocks together between them. “I’m all yours.”
Whether it was the friction between them or the words themselves, Hank couldn’t say, but Con laid over Hank’s body and rutted up against him, kissing him so fiercely it felt like he’d drawn blood. Hank hitched his hips in suggestion, rubbing his balls against Con’s length -- god he was wet -- and trying to prove to his lover that he was ready. More than ready. Hank might not be going through Pon Farr or whatever, but he was pretty sure he’d die if he didn’t have this by morning, too.
Con gave Hank’s lip a parting bite before drawing back, reaching between them and lining the head of his cock with Hank’s entrance. It would hurt a little without prep, and Hank steeled himself for it, screwing his eyes shut.
Then Con’s fingers came back to his face, a cool, soothing energy slipping from the contact, and when Con bucked forward with a grunt, burying himself fully inside Hank on one hard thrust, all Hank felt was the slick slide of Con inside him, the friction of his ridges pressing against his sensitive walls, the feeling of Con’s pelvis flush against Hank’s hips. There wasn’t a hint of pain or discomfort, just pleasure, need, want -- Con’s and his own. Hank gasped, reaching up and holding Con’s hand against his face.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispered, which earned a low, primal growl from the Vulcan. Con drew back and drove forward once more, this time hitting an angle that had Hank panting for breath that wouldn’t come. His cock laid wet and heavy against his stomach, and he reached down to grab his balls, to try to hold off his orgasm for just a little longer.
Con folded over Hank then, tucking his face against Hank’s chest while he began to set up a rhythm, pounding into him hard and fast enough that it should have hurt -- all of this should have hurt -- but Hank’s mind and body were alight with sparks of pleasure like firecrackers, going off where Con’s cock dragged against his prostate, where Con’s fingertips exuded a pleasurable heat and numbing coolness against his face, where Con’s mouth found one of his nipples and bit hard .
No matter how tightly Hank gripped himself, he couldn’t hold off the impending orgasm for long. “Con,” he choked, leaning into Con’s touch. “Con, I can’t --”
“You can,” Con growled, the first words he’d said in many long minutes, clouded by lust and tinged with an accent that betrayed the instinct of the Vulcan language on his tongue. “You are my mate, my chosen, and you can take me .”
The possessive fire in those words lit something akin in Hank, who tossed his head back against the pillow and bit his lip to stop from crying out. “Mate,” he whispered. “Fuck, Con, fuck.” He wanted to be good for Con, wanted to prove that he could take him, that he could last, but Con’s rhythm was beginning to stutter, his thrusts becoming more erratic, his panting breath hot and uneven against Hank’s chest.
And he was close. “Sweetheart, come for me,” Hank said. He lifted his other leg, wrapped them both around Con’s back, changed the angle just enough to have him seeing stars. Giving up on restraint, Hank began to pump his own cock between their stomachs, the flare of pleasure lighting a bonfire in him. Con knew what he wanted, and he took it. Hank could only do the same. “Come in me,” he demanded.
He would never have expected Con to comply with any order of Hank’s , but it took only one, two, three more messy thrusts before Con cried out, took Hank’s skin between his teeth, bucked his hips and buried himself in Hank as he came. The flood of feeling was enough. It pushed Hank over the edge so fast it was almost terrifying, so hard and overwhelming it whited out the world. Con’s hand against his face curled, and Hank could still feel Con’s pleasure shooting through him, lighting his limbs with energy, tingling in his fingertips. He shouted as he spilled himself over his hand, clenching around the cock still buried inside him, tightening his legs around Con’s back to keep him there because goddamnit Con had called him his mate and that meant for life and it meant forever and it meant he was going to keep this man inside him as long as he could.
After a few more agonizing thrusts, Con fell limp against Hank’s body, his hands dropping to Hank’s chest and groping his sizable chest like a stress ball as he ducked his nose into Hank’s belly.
Regaining his breath, Hank managed to free his hand from between their bodies, leaving his poor, sensitive cock to the pressure of Con on top of him -- not that he minded. Careless of the mess, the spend dripping down his fingers, he reached up to soothe Con’s back, rubbing his shoulder blade lazily. It was about all he was capable of doing.
Con seemed even more lethargic, a complete limp weight on top of Hank that was… surprisingly heavy. However, one part of him was notably not limp. Sometimes it took guys a while to soften up, but…
"How are you still so hard?" Hank asked, wriggling a little under Con's body weight. The Vulcan chuckled, actually laughed , and Hank blushed.
"I will need to achieve orgasm many more times before the Pon Farr has ended," Con said softly. He tweaked one of Hank's nipples in an absent sort of way as he raised his head to meet Hank's eyes. "But you have eased the worst of the blood fever. I am grateful." He rocked his hips as if to emphasize his ‘gratitude,’ and Hank was the one laughing now.
"’Grateful,’ he says. Fuck, after what you just did to me I should be thanking you ."
Con huffed, a warm smile on his face as he leaned up on his hands. With a hitched breath, he pulled out, and Hank tried not to groan at the sensitivity. He wasn't entirely successful. A choked off sound made it past his kiss-bitten lips.
"Are you in pain, ashayam*?" Con asked, the Vulcan word rolling off his tongue. Hank dipped his head, almost shy.
"Naw," he said, "but you're damn well giving me time to rest before we do that again."
Con flopped over onto his side, curling up against Hank and burrowing his face into the hollow of Hank's neck. "I may wait a moment longer," he said calmly, though the hard length of his wet cock against Hank's thigh suggested it would only be a moment.
And, while the opening presented itself, Hank wasn’t about to waste the one opportunity they’d had to talk since he walked in on Con in the first place.
“So,” he began, tilting his head against Con’s to inhale the uniquely Vulcan scent of his hair -- spice and warm and sand. “Mind telling me why we waited ‘til you were about to die from horniness to finally fuck?”
Con squeezed Hank’s stomach in what Hank assumed was meant to be some kind of punishment or retaliation, but it only felt warm and sweet and intimate. “I wasn’t sure you would want me until I saw the way you looked at me,” Con said. “When you found me like -- like this.”
Hank snorted. “Bullshit. What would you have done if I’d said ‘thanks but no thanks’?”
Squeezing Hank again, lighter this time, Con let out a breath against Hank’s skin. “I would have let the blood fever consume me.”
“Bullshit,” Hank said again, more venomous. “There’s gotta be something you can do aside from fuck when this Pon Farr thing happens.”
“No, there is not,” Con said. He ran his hand up Hank’s stomach to his chest, curling harder against him. “We have elaborate rules and rituals in place to ensure that when the time comes, we each have a suitable mate to soothe the fires of Pon Farr. By the tradition of my people, I should be on Vulcan right now.”
Hank pulled back just enough to look Con in the eye. He didn’t think the Vulcan was so far gone that he’d started making jokes, but there was no way that was right.
“So, wait … you saying you had someone on Vulcan ready to go at it with you and you were still planning to die if I didn’t fuck you?”
“Yes. When my family learns that I have undergone Pon Farr without returning to Vulcan to claim a mate, they will be …” he paused. “Disappointed.” Hank figured that was Vulcan code for ‘pissed off beyond all reason.’
“Fuck, Con, then why --”
“In the solar year since I have been on this ship,” Con cut him off, “I have come to understand that I want only one person to be my mate. No other would do.” He cupped Hank’s cheek, holding his gaze. “I do not care to ponder the consequences of my actions, nor the possibility of my death had you refused me.”
Hank stared at him, his heart speeding up to match the rapid pace of Con’s heart against his side. Con took a breath and held up his hand with two fingers extended, a gesture that Hank had never seen before, like half of a Vulcan salute.
“What?” Hank asked. Con ducked his head to hide a small smile.
“Press your fingers to mine, Hank,” he said. Figuring this was another weird Vulcan mind thing, Hank did as he was told, resting two fingers against Con’s. A warm buzz vibrated through the contact, so subtle as to almost be Hank’s imagination.
“This is a Vulcan kiss,” Con explained. “As you are now a Vulcan’s mate, you may wish to become familiar with the gesture.”
A Vulcan’s mate . It all felt so fast -- breakneck fast -- but Con had been right before. They’d waited long enough, hadn’t they? Maybe they’d been going slow all this time. Lips curling in a smile, Hank stroked his fingers down Con’s, enjoying the little jolt of surprise Con gave. He seemed to like that.
“Guess I don’t have to show you how to kiss like a human,” Hank mused, hand falling back to his belly. "You're a quick learner."
With a warm half-smile, Con leaned up, and pressed his lips to Hank’s. The kiss was soft, but far from chaste, and Hank realized as Con tossed his leg over Hank’s that his erection hadn’t flagged in the least since they’d been talking. Hank gulped, and Con chuckled against his lips.
“I need you,” Con whispered, not as heated as the words had been before, but undeniably weighed with … something. Something vulnerable Con had never offered Hank before. “Will you be mine?”
Hank cupped Con’s jaw, met his eyes. “I’m already yours,” he said. “Been yours since you walked into that briefing room. I always did love a brat.”
Something in Con’s expression lit up. “Show me, then, ashayam,” he said. His hand wandered down Hank’s body, insistent, far from subtle. “Show me how you love me.”
Hank laughed something warm, choked, happy beyond words. Because this beautiful, prim, proper little shit loved him. Needed him.
What could he do but give him everything he had and more?
With a devilish smile, Hank took Con’s hand, threaded their fingers together, and rolled Con onto his back. That lithe body beneath him was the most beautiful thing Hank had ever seen -- and it was his .