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Damar blinked as the transporter room stabilised into view, but didn’t relax his stiff posture as he stepped down from the platform and looked at the faces welcoming him.
“Welcome onboard the USS Moreau, Damar,” Captain Ver said in a formal tone but with a small smile all the same.
Damar nodded at her. “Thank you.”
Only the Trill with platinum blonde hair was familiar looking to him – he hadn’t bothered to look up the entire crew apart from the captain, and therefore wasn’t sure what to make of the Vorta standing behind the captain and enthusiastically peering at Damar. The first officer, maybe?
“Commander Richardson will officially hand over engineering to you tomorrow. Until then, feel free to get acquainted with our lovely ship. Weyoun here will show you your quarters,” the captain said.
At that, the Vorta stepped forward and Damar noticed that his uniform was the same yellow as his, and that he had two pips on his neck. The yellow clashed almost violently with his vividly violet eyes and pasty skin, making him look chaotically mismatched.
“Hello,” Weyoun said politely as the captain returned briskly to the bridge. “I can’t tell you how exciting it is to have a Cardassian as our new chief of engineering. The only Cardassian in Starfleet. So delightful. I, myself, am somewhat of an anomaly too; you probably haven’t met many Vorta?”
“No, I haven’t,” Damar replied begrudgingly. He wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of being an unusual sensation on the ship, and he hoped that the other crewmembers would be less… forward about it.
“I’m the communications officer,” Weyoun explained unprompted. “I try to know everyone on the crew, although that can be sometimes challenging, what with the constant rotation. But it’s not every day that the chief of engineering departs for paternity leave – which, by the way, was very unexpected, I’ll tell you about it later – and I think it’s so important to show you around, a fish out of water, as you are.”
Damar already felt a budding headache as Weyoun started walking with him out of the transporter room. He didn’t want to be difficult to work with, but he also didn’t care for these fake pleasantries. He wasn’t here to make friends.
“I’m not.”
“Hmm?” Weyoun blinked up at him.
“A fish. I don’t need a tour of the ship, I already studied the schematics before I arrived.”
“Ah, yes,” Weyoun smiled. “Cardassians and their good memory.”
Damar felt a spike of annoyance go through him.
“What do you know about Cardassians?”
“I took anthropology at Starfleet Academy in addition to xenolinguistics,” Weyoun replied pleasantly. Then, noticing Damar’s unimpressed look, schooled his features into neutral politeness. “But if you’re sure, I’ll leave you to it.”
Damar nodded and as he started walking away, he felt grateful that he’d be working away from the bridge most of the time.
That is, until Weyoun quipped over his shoulder: “Meet you for lunch tomorrow!”
It turned out that Weyoun had decided to be some sort of protégé for Damar, much to his chagrin. Over the next days, he had explained everything about the ship to him and how the shifts rotated as if he didn’t already know, as if he’d never been enlisted anywhere before, and told him all sorts of tips about which replicators were slightly wonky, when the rec room was quieter, and so on.
After his initial confusion about why Weyoun would want to pester him when Damar was clearly uninterested, it soon became clear that he was an ardent gossiper and wanted to know absolutely everything that went on in the ship. Damar supposed that the other crewmembers had become less fascinating to him over time, and now that somebody new was around his attention was sparked by it. According to Weyoun, there was usually much less drama on a science vessel.
“Whereas warships, whoah. Makes me grateful that I didn’t end up studying to become a counsellor. A lot to unpack there,” Weyoun let out a breathy laugh. “I was commissioned to one briefly, and yes, there were more interesting arguments and feelings flying around compared to here, where,” he lowered his voice, “scientists tend to be… more repressed and focused on their work. Still, it’s less volatile here, which I overall prefer. But commander Richardson’s unexpected off-world affair and consequent paternity leave took us all by surprise, although I knew of course that he was seeing somebody. I just never expected for him to knock his paramour up and leave.”
Damar poked at the poorly replicated Neemuk coated in an even more poorly replicated Yamok sauce and thought about the engineering duty roster. Previously, he’d enlisted for far less significant jobs and on far more disagreeable ships, and as disorientating as becoming a chief of engineering on such short notice was, he enjoyed getting to be in charge for once. Captain Ver also knew his background and was open to his unique Cardassian perspective in improving the ship. Overall, he didn’t feel too bad about his post, but it would take some time for him to get used to his engineering crew, and for them to him. There were a couple of Vulcans, and Andorians - luckily no Bajorans - but most of the crew were humans, and he couldn’t really tell them apart yet. Despite mingling with humans for several years already, they all looked the same to him. He bet Weyoun would know all kinds of things about them, but he didn’t want the Vorta to influence how he saw his crew.
Speaking of the Vorta… He looked up when he noticed that Weyoun had fallen silent and was regarding him steadily. He stabbed at the Neemuk, feeling uncomfortable under his purple gaze, and let out a small grunt.
“Are all the Vorta so…,” he didn’t dare say annoying, “talkative?”
“Oh, no,” Weyoun replied thoughtfully. “Not all, the Vorta come in a range of personalities and interests. Just like all Cardassians aren’t talkative, I presume.”
“Did you fail your anthropology class?” Damar snorted.
Weyoun bristled and frowned. “Really? You aren’t very talkative.”
“Maybe I haven’t found worthy conversation partners yet,” Damar suggested.
“Ohh,” Weyoun breathed, clearly taken aback by his audacity. “Show some gratitude.”
Damar scoffed. For what? For Weyoun insinuating himself into Damar’s company when he’d barely served on the ship for a week?
But he thought he might as well acknowledge Weyoun’s earlier attempt at conversation in some way, to avoid causing an unnecessary scene. He wanted to get back to work as soon as he was done with his lacklustre meal.
“I prefer science vessels too,” he admitted.
Weyoun narrowed his eyes at him, clearly not forgetting his impertinence, but looked too curious to resist. “Why?”
“More to-the-point research, less holier-than-thou idealism,” Damar admitted.
Weyoun huffed with surprise. “If you don’t like Starfleet, why are you working for us?”
Damar sighed and ate quietly for a moment.
“It’s not that I dislike Starfleet,” Damar started, realised that his voice was dripping with poorly hidden distaste anyway, and shook his head to himself, “I just don’t exactly enjoy being on warships and encountering other Cardassians in skirmishes.”
Weyoun straightened in his chair with interest written all over his posture.
Damar instantly regretted talking to him and before Weyoun could open his mouth to ask further questions, he stood up with his plate.
“I have to get back to work,” he said, shovelling the remnants into his mouth.
Damar managed to avoid bumping into Weyoun for several shifts, being buried in work and upgrades now that he was becoming more familiar with the ship’s systems. Until one day, when they were mapping a hitherto undiscovered small solar system.
The solar system was located on the far reaches of Federation space, hidden by an ion storm wrapped around a nebula. The storm warped the sensors, causing the readings to indicate that the area consisted of asteroids only. But one of the Vulcan scientists onboard, proficient in ion storms, had argued that they were instead planets. Most of the expedition had already been planned before Damar enlisted; it had taken a vast amount of calculations to plan the journey and to make modifications to the engine and navigation. Despite all of this, they were still somewhat in the dark about the execution: even a Vulcan couldn’t account for every possibility they would encounter once inside the solar system.
Still, Damar was surprised to be summoned to the bridge as they entered the storm – nothing in engineering suggested any problems.
It was Weyoun who addressed him as he walked out of the turbolift.
“Have a look at this, Damar,” he said and gestured at his station.
Damar looked sharply at him. Everyone called him Chief or Chief Damar while on duty, what was this little rat’s problem? Was it petty revenge for Damar leaving mid-discussion last time?
He looked at the screen wordlessly.
“I sent out a general subspace signal, just to see if there is any life or response nearby, but the call has… duplicated and bounced back to us, and not just that, it’s scrambling the readings,” Weyoun pointed at the screen, just as a screech of static sounded around the ship.
Weyoun winced and cupped his hands over his large ears.
“And it looks as if it locked me out of the controls,” Weyoun shouted over the noise.
“Command overrides aren’t working,” Captain Ver explained from her chair. “It appears to be frying the system. Any way to fix it manually, Chief?”
Damar crouched down and unscrewed the panel near Weyoun’s feet. He removed the cover and peeked inside. Several wires had overheated, and just as he was reaching his hand in, one of the circuits emitted a small spark, the communications station went completely quiet and dark above him, and the static ceased.
“Uh oh… that’s not good,” Weyoun commented, eyes wide with surprise.
“All stop. Yellow alert,” Captain Ver said firmly. “We can’t proceed to unknown territory with one of our systems dead, and if that was a hostile response, we cannot proceed out of the cover of the storm before we know more.”
Damar hesitated, but the Vulcan scientist on the bridge, Sakath, opened his mouth first.
“Sir, prolonged stay in one place within the nebula will do further damage to the hull, as well as the engines. I suggest we find a stable pocket within the storm.”
“With impulse engines,” Captain Ver agreed. She turned back to Damar. “Chief, this means that you have a limited time in which to restore the system.”
“I can do it, sir,” Damar promised. “The panel on the bridge needs to be rewired completely and the circuits replaced, but it should be simple enough, we have some parts in engineering. And the secondary communications system can be accessed from engineering, but we will need to check whether the damage reached there and figure out what caused the overdrive in the first place – otherwise, simply replacing the parts might not fix the issue.”
“Yes, have someone come up to the bridge to replace the parts, and take Lieutenant Weyoun with you to engineering.”
“Yes, sir,” Damar said, biting back a grimace.
In the turbolift, Weyoun let out a full-body shudder.
“What’s up with you?” Damar grumbled.
“Such a horrible noise… the feedback. As if it was… reverberating in my skull,” Weyoun complained.
Damar eyed his large ears with mild interest. He had never seen ribbed ears like his before, and he had no idea how they would affect hearing. “A Vorta thing?”
Weyoun looked up at him with a frown, as if Damar was being an idiot. “Obviously.”
Damar shrugged. He didn’t really know anything about his species.
“Well, any ideas so far? Could your special ears detect any undercurrents, a scrambled message or something?”
“No,” Weyoun said slowly, in thought.
“Do you think it was some kind of message or a reaction of the ion storm?” Damar asked.
“Well, the preparatory calculations did take into account what effects the storm might have on subspace and nothing should have gone wrong…,” Weyoun pondered, “which would imply that there is an unexpected element that might have been… amplified because of the storm.”
“You couldn’t have waited until after we’d passed the storm to send your signals?” Damar complained.
Weyoun shot him a glare as the turbolift stopped and opened. “It was a precaution. In case of immediate danger outside the storm,” he said defensively. “Besides, the captain agreed to it.”
The captain agreed to it, Damar repeated mockingly in his mind. What a childishly frustrating defense: anything that Damar would try to say to that would sound mutinous, making the whole thing impossible to criticise. He didn’t feel very good about the idea of losing so easily to Weyoun, so he strode impatiently to engineering, letting Weyoun run slightly behind him with his shorter legs.
After dispatching someone to the bridge, Damar checked the secondary communications unit. That, at least, seemed to be working – but with a notable dip in power caused by the overdrive at the other end.
Weyoun caught up to him and started checking the comm logs with a frown as Damar opened the panels around the unit.
“Whatever the… thing we received was, it doesn’t show up here as a distinct reply or as a signal with modified wavelengths… It’s just the same thing I sent, but amplified and… distorted at the same time,” Weyoun said, too busy with his screen to move his legs out of the way, making Damar bump them with his tools pointedly.
Weyoun looked down at him like he was some kind of bothersome insect. Damar ignored his look.
“I don’t think it was a communication. It could be a defense mechanism, or virus. The damage it did was extensive,” Damar said, sighed at the mess inside the panels, and started repairing the wires and circuits at once before the remaining functional ones got overloaded too.
“Well, I have a theory,” Weyoun said. “If this solar system is unexplored, that would mean that if there is life within it, the inhabitants might not communicate in any way that our universal translator would cover. And they can’t understand us because they haven’t encountered our signals. So, what if we sent a smaller signal again–“
Damar lifted his head. “Bad idea.”
“Will you listen?” Weyoun sighed. “The one I sent earlier was more wide-reaching and therefore had stronger wavelengths, so if the system can handle it, we could send one to the immediate area only, and pack it with data from the universal translator so they would have a variety of code to interpret and pick from. So, if they receive and interpret it, they might not send a similar shock to our systems.”
“But like you said, it’s just a theory.”
“Well, what’s the extent of the damage here? Can you do something to ensure the unit wouldn’t overload?”
“Well, yes, but…,” Damar said indignantly, “I’d need some time to fix the worst damage before you start sending more idiotic signals, and besides-“
“Then do it,” Weyoun said with an artificial looking smile. Then he called over to one of Damar’s engineering crewmembers. “Lieutenant Belmont, assist with the repairs here.”
Damar stopped fixing the wires, stood up, and towered over Weyoun.
“Don’t you give orders in engineering,” he seethed, and, seeing that Lieutenant Belmont was already making his way over, grabbed Weyoun by the arm and dragged him with him to the other end of the room.
“Need I remind you that I outrank you?” Weyoun whispered poisonously and shook Damar’s hand off him.
“But you don’t. Not in engineering,” Damar gritted through his teeth.
Weyoun laughed. “You think you’re above me here because you went to the Starfleet Technical Services Academy on Mars? Yes, I read your file,” Weyoun added when Damar squinted at him. “You may be skilled in your field, but you didn’t go to the Starfleet Academy, and that’s your own fault.”
“And I’ve read yours,” Damar said, struggling to keep his voice down. “You’re barely above an ensign.”
“What does it matter when I got promoted to a Lieutenant? You still owe me your respect,” Weyoun said, and gave him a derisive look-over. “And even an ensign would be above you in rank, chief petty officer.”
“You know fully well that the chief of engineering has enough qualifications and experience for the job, and I bet I’ve done more work than you ever-“
“Captain to Chief Damar,” Captain Ver’s voice interrupted them over the combadge. “How’s it going over there?”
Damar and Weyoun glowered at each other.
“We have initiated the repairs and-“
“And we have an idea we’re going to try,” Weyoun finished for him. “We’ll figure out the details first.”
“All right. Keep me posted once you know more,” she said. “Ver out.”
“Now,” Weyoun smiled sweetly, although his eyes were narrowed. “Are you questioning my orders, or do you have any better ideas because we’re wasting precious time.”
“No,” Damar grumbled. He thought it was a risky and stupid idea and he hated obeying Weyoun’s whims but, seeing as the captain didn’t want to proceed out of the storm without a surer response, he didn’t know what else to do. He would have enough time to fix all the circuits and wires, but he knew it would be in vain if the hypothetical aliens initiated another response without them being prepared for it.
But he didn’t like it. Something about the whole incident made Damar feel like there must be an explanation to it, but a feeling wasn’t enough to go on.
“No, sir,” Weyoun reminded him with another smile, and gave a patronising pat to Damar’s shoulder.
Damar felt his blood burning hot from indignation, as hot as a dry Cardassian afternoon sun at Weyoun’s insufferable self-importance. But he had to reign his reaction in; he wasn’t going to show the extent of his frustration to this smug little smartass, especially not around Lieutenant Belmont who was awkwardly replacing the circuits near them.
They focused on the task at hand, Damar and Lieutenant Belmont running repairs and preparations to the system while Weyoun prepared the data he would send with the signal. Captain Ver approved of their – well, Weyoun’s – plan, even though she acknowledged its riskiness too.
So, triumphantly, with his plan endorsed, Weyoun finally pressed a button and sent the signal out.
They stared at the screen and waited in silence for something to happen. Damar looked at Lieutenant Belmont, who was keeping an eye on the panels and shrugged.
Minutes trickled by in silence.
And when the captain spoke to them over the combadge, they realised they’d messed up.
Because her voice was in what Damar presumed to be Trill, which neither he nor Lieutenant Belmont understood.
Weyoun replied something to her sheepishly, apparently in Trill as well.
“You arrogant shitstick,” Damar hissed in Cardassian.
They’d disabled the universal translator.
Weyoun turned to look at him sourly. Damar thought he could see a tint of darker purple spread on his face, probably out of embarrassment. “Dungthroat,” Weyoun replied.
Damar momentarily forgot the situation at hand. “You speak Cardassian?”
“Xenolinguistics degree,” Weyoun reminded him cheerily. “I don’t speak it fluently, but enough to tell you that you’re a stinky vole.”
“You’re a vole!” Damar protested.
“Uh,” Lieutenant Belmont said, which was universal enough for both of them to understand his confusion.
“It’s quite alright. We only broke the translator. Damar knows how to fix it, don’t you?” Weyoun said fluently in Federation Standard.
Damar understood him – most people working for Starfleet had to at least a little bit to be able to read the screens that were in common use around the ship – but with effort, since he wasn’t used to hearing it spoken.
Damar nodded and spoke haltingly. ”Translator is… linked with computer, so I need to re-program. But you do understand what this means,” he continued in Cardassian to Weyoun. “It can’t have been an act of communication, it must have been another case of the signal bouncing back.”
“But a signal bouncing back shouldn’t overload systems normally,” Weyoun replied.
“No,” Damar said. An idea had struck him. “It’s bouncing back, but in a distorted way. So it’s not replicating it exactly as it was, but echoing it. It has to be some form of echolocation.”
“Oh! But of course,” Weyoun said, slipping to Federation Standard as he thought it over.
“I’ve heard of the Bajoran Resistance using it. They used it to locate Cardassian ships.”
“Is that so?” Weyoun asked with a spark of interest in his eyes.
Damar ignored the look. ”But that kind of technology shouldn’t affect communications. It’s something we should be able to detect, not something that would overload systems.”
“Well, this isn’t Bajor. Maybe the echolocation here is interlaced with pulses we don’t know of. That our ship isn’t accustomed to.”
Lieutenant Belmont gaped at them and tried to gauge their conversation from the snippets of Federation Standard that Weyoun spoke.
“Echolocation?” he asked.
“Yes. Give us a second,” Weyoun said dismissively. “Doesn’t he look like a confused marsupial?”
Damar let out a surprised huff. “Weyoun!” he scolded. He thought Weyoun looked more like a marsupial out of the two. “A Chin’tokan Keres, more like it.”
“Not familiar with them. Anyway, do you know what this means? There must be life here! In this solar system! Or has been at some point. Could the signal be old?”
“Could be, it could be stuck in the ion storm and is just reacting to everything we’ve been sending automatically. No way to know until we’re out of it. I’ll get more crew to work on the repairs, and I’ll handle the translator programming.”
Weyoun debriefed the captain quickly in Trill, who in turn sent a ship-wide announcement in heavily accented Federation Standard about what was happening to bewildered crewmembers.
Overall, it wasn’t a disaster – the captain wasn’t frustrated with them about the blunder because all over the ship the prospect of new life was causing a buzzing excitement. The repairs were simple enough but the programming more headache-inducing: the screen display kept flickering between different languages, so Damar had to work with Weyoun at his side in case he needed translations. The Vorta seemed to enjoy the situation; he kept gossiping with Damar in Cardassian about the engineering crew, and although the mistake had been his fault, he seemed to feel a sense of superiority about being able to guide the crew with his linguistics skills. It was infuriating.
It was a long shift; it turned out that the echolocation was an old remnant stuck inside the storm, ending once they exited the storm. There was a senior staff meeting, plans to harness the data they collected about the echolocation, and upgrades to the ship to withstand any future echolocation pulses. Damar was significantly less excited about the prospect of new life if it meant more complications to the ship, although he had to admit that that provided more learning opportunities.
Discovering new solar systems could be boring at times. Currently, they were circling around an uninhabited planet doing in-depth surface surveys of it. No trace of life or usage of echolocation there, but according to Weyoun, the geologists were besides themselves with excitement.
Damar didn’t mind. With the focus on the current planet, he’d had more time to inspect the new data and make the upgrades in peace. Well, relative peace – unfortunately Weyoun was interested in the echolocation mechanics too, which meant seeing more of him.
And it looked like he would never get rid of him, Damar thought with a dull buzz of annoyance, as he walked into the ship’s bar on his night off and saw Weyoun sitting alone at one of the corner tables next to the huge window. For a few seconds, he tried to decide whether synthehol was worth it or whether he should just turn around and leave but realised too late that actually synthehol was worth nothing and he should have left before Weyoun spotted him and eagerly waved to him to join him.
He ordered a sad excuse of kanar and made his way wearily to Weyoun. Who knows, with the Vorta’s connections, maybe he knew the bartender and would be able to wheedle some real alcohol out of him. That is, if the bartender wasn’t sick of the wompat.
Weyoun was frowning at a three-dimensional chess board as Damar sat down.
“My chess partner abandoned me mid-game,” Weyoun said, absentmindedly fiddling with one of the pawns. “Due to personal matters, but I think it’s because he was losing to me.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
Weyoun rolled his eyes. “I’m an excellent strategist. But truth to be told, I don’t really care for chess. Despite its name I find it quite one-dimensional.”
“Nothing compared to kotra,” Damar agreed.
Weyoun lifted his large, purple eyes to his.
Oh no. Damar realised his mistake.
“What’s kotra?”
Damar suppressed a sigh. “A Cardassian game. It combines tactical moves with more destructive consequences. It has more action in it.”
“It’s a battle game?” Weyoun asked and clapped his hands together, accidentally dropping the pawn he’d been holding. “When do we play?”
“Never.”
“Why? Are you tired of war games? Sick of your home planet, perhaps?” Weyoun poked.
“I’m not sick of Cardassia,” Damar said, voice dripping with poison. “Don’t you dare say that.”
But Weyoun was immune to his anger. “Well, why else are you working for us? You’re here out of your free will, aren’t you? According to your file, you left Cardassia during the occupation of Bajor? Why?”
Damar stared out of the window to avoid answering. One of the things that he liked about Federation ships was how indulgently large their observation windows are. Seeing all those stars glittering by made him feel surer of where he was, grounded him despite the paradox of being far away from solid ground. And yet the cold vastness of space also made him miss the heat of Cardassia, made him zip up his Federation issued grey thermal fleece jacket as far as it could go up his neck in a pathetic attempt at compensation.
What Weyoun was asking was nothing that hadn’t already been asked of him countless times by previous captains, by the admissions team in the Technical Services Academy… and which he knew his crewmates were mulling over their minds.
And he understood the validity of those questions. As much as he didn’t like the idea of telling Weyoun, he was also tired of avoiding the conversation. Tempted, too, to let Weyoun do what he wanted with the information, let him gossip about him to others so that nobody else on the ship would need to ask him any questions. But he wasn’t going to give personal information away for free.
“How well do you know the bartender?”
Weyoun frowned for a moment but caught on eventually, glancing at Damar’s synthehol. “Not well enough to make any promises. Besides, I doubt he’d have any kanar.”
Damar shrugged.
“I’ll tell you about my background,” Weyoun offered. “As a trade.”
Damar scoffed. It wasn’t an enticing enough offer for him, but he was was growing tired of Weyoun’s wheedling. “Fine.” He wondered how to start for a moment while Weyoun stared steadily at him. “Well. You already know I left during the Occupation. The Bajoran terrorists murdered my fiancé,” Damar plunged in bluntly, but faltered after the admission.
“And did that not make you want revenge?” Weyoun prompted.
“Of course it did,” Damar grumbled quietly. “But I could see that it would be a futile cycle of revenge that would only have weakened Cardassia. Either the Bajorans would have resisted forever – I knew they would have – or the Federation would have stepped in eventually. There were no opportunities… I don’t oppose the Cardassian military as a concept but the options on Cardassia are either to lead the whole show, dutifully follow everything your superiors do – everything - or backstab everyone to get to the top or to whichever end.”
He paused to gulp at his pathetic drink and laid the glass down with a slam.
“I wanted to pursue engineering, but there aren’t good opportunities for male Cardassians to do so. And I love Cardassia, but we have a lot to learn still. We could be innovators. Impress civilisations with our tactical skills, military, and technology. But we’re too obstinate to do anything but pursue power to any means, even when it isn’t beneficial.”
“And are you… exiled for leaving?” Weyoun asked curiously.
“Not officially. Too shameful for them to publicly acknowledge the Cardassian who wanted to become a Federation lapdog. But would they execute me if I dared to step my foot on Cardassia? Yes, if they could get away with it. I can only hope that Cardassia will change enough some day while I learn more here. Although that isn’t too likely.”
Damar slumped in his chair bitterly, feeling traitorously unpatriotic and completely alien in his Starfleet outfit despite having worn it for years now. He knew he’d done the right thing, but felt a familiar, deep sense of shame creeping across his spine as he sat there with his shitty Kanar and vague dreams of long-lost Cardassian sunsets.
“What about you?” Damar demanded gruffly to both take the attention off him and to prevent Weyoun from saying anything. He didn’t want his derision or his sympathy, didn’t know which would be worse. “I don’t know much about the Dominion.”
“No, I suspect you wouldn’t, in this quadrant,” Weyoun mused. “Didn’t really affect you. Well,” Weyoun thought about something for a moment. “If the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar hadn’t unionised and turned against the Founders 72 years ago, we would very likely have been part of an invasion of this quadrant. That’s what they were planning, so, lucky for you,” Weyoun said with a smile, although the corners of his mouth were uncomfortably stretched.
“Did you… are you still,” Damar gestured at Weyoun. “Clones?”
“Yes. We took over our clone production. There have been attempts by our best scientists to start a process of artificial insemination instead of cloning, to return us to a more… organic physiology, but the science isn’t quite there yet. We’re an intricate species, you see. So far one of the only improvements we’ve achieved is somewhat improving our sense of taste. But we do have Federation backing in our research, and although we aren’t Federation members – we don’t have an official planet, only scattered colonies – we are allowed to get Federation citizenships and become part of Starfleet, although most Vorta prefer to cultivate their own science and live communally instead.” Weyoun explained. “I used to be a diplomat, you know.”
“Really?” The idea made both complete sense and yet was somewhat ridiculous.
“A good one!” Weyoun protested. “But I didn’t want to pursue command after… everything... But I always liked talking to different people from different corners of the galaxy. So, communications. It made sense; it was something that interested me. So, we’re not too different, you and I”, Weyoun smiled again. “Except we, the Vorta, weren’t too cowardly to improve our lives together.”
Damar glared at him but refused to be visibly baited by his remark. He saw Weyoun’s smile falter, and he picked up another chess piece to turn around in his hands instead of returning Damar’s gaze.
“Right. Which number are you?”
“Hmm?” Weyoun asked quizzically.
“Which Weyoun?”
“That’s quite a rude question to ask, actually,” Weyoun huffed, but he looked more distracted than offended. “2.3,” he added anyway. “We number ourselves differently now. The ‘two’ referring to post-Dominion… free clones...”
Weyoun drifted off and stared at the chess piece with a surprising amount of intensity without elaborating on the topic. Damar frowned and looked around the bar, confused by Weyoun’s sudden disinterest. He noticed that the bar was getting emptier by now, and accidentally made eye contact with the bartender who bustled over with an empty tray.
“Anything I can get you?” he asked, picking up Damar’s glass.
Before Damar could answer, Weyoun stood up hastily. “I should go, actually. Good night,” he said quietly, and accidentally stumbled a little against the bartender’s shoulder in his sudden hurry to leave. There was a small clink as he jostled the drink tray. He apologised and walked away quickly.
Damar dismissed the bartender – he could only endure one glass of synthehol in one night – and sat in the mostly deserted bar, confused and unsure if he should leave too. He stared outside at the stars for a good while and stretched his legs under the table, accidentally kicking at something with his boot. He assumed it to be a chess piece, but after a moment looked down and saw that it was Weyoun’s combadge. It had apparently fallen with the impact.
Damar got up wearily.
“Computer, locate Lieutenant Weyoun.”
Weyoun hadn’t made it far outside the bar until his eyes had started welling with tears. Hot, pitiful, shameful tears that made his vision even blurrier than usual, and in his distress he knew he wouldn’t make the long journey across the ship to his quarters.
So, he slipped into an empty conference room and collapsed to his knees, facing the large windows. He opened his palms, dropped the clammy chess piece he hadn’t realised he’d still been holding, and laid his arms at his sides at an angle.
“Oh, my dear Founders… we were cowards… for abandoning you… forgive me,” Weyoun prayed abstractly in Dominionese. He didn’t know what he wanted to say or what he should say. There weren’t any rules anymore, but the need to speak to Them was overwhelming. Even if he didn’t know how to express his guilt, it helped to at least be on his knees, to acknowledge his need.
He was babbling about old promises, repeating old words of love and obedience quietly, when the door swished open.
“You dropped your- what are you doing?”
Weyoun froze. He lifted his hands up to wipe his tears away without turning to look at Damar or getting up.
“Are you… praying?” Damar asked from the doorway.
Weyoun closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“But why?” Damar asked in a judgemental tone.
“Humans pray to absent gods, do they not?” Weyoun said. “The Founders may have been unjust Gods…,” he said, and even though he had conviction in what he was saying, he still felt guilt at the words. “But they created us. They gave us life as we know it.”
Damar was quiet for a while, and when he spoke, he had softened his tone somewhat. “Would you do it all over again?”
Weyoun sighed, allowed himself to sit down on the floor, and turned around to look at Damar. His tall figure was hovering awkwardly at the door, holding a combadge in his hand. Weyoun looked down at his shirt and noticed its absence.
“Yes. I hate myself for it, but yes, I would,” Weyoun replied tiredly. His eyes roved over Damar, and he thought about their conversation in the bar. He hadn’t expected to feel so awful about talking about the Founders, and the burning guilt of it had overshadowed his triumph of finally hearing Damar speak about himself. Obviously, he’d known that Damar was an outsider, but his curiosity and need to know the details had bothered him day and night ever since Damar had enlisted. Now, through his pain, he felt a spark of satisfaction at possessing Damar’s secrets.
“Would you?” he asked in return.
“Yes,” Damar replied without hesitation. He tossed the combadge to Weyoun, who caught it clumsily.
And something else… He felt something else, too.
“Did you knock your head into a wall on your way here? That’s a ridiculous move.” Damar stared at the pieces in disbelief.
“You’ll see,” Weyoun promised with a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
Damar shook his head. He already knew he was going to win in less than five moves.
They had ended up playing kotra two more weeks into the geological survey missions. Damar told himself that he’d agreed to it out of boredom or maybe even pity, but a part of him enjoyed finally having someone to play it with, someone who understood a guilty kind of homesickness just as well as he did. Someone who understood the point of the game.
Of course, their games weren’t the same as they had been with an opponent like Dukat. Weyoun made some wildly diabolical moves sometimes, ambitious ones, but he always underestimated Damar. So far, Weyoun hadn’t won a single game, but sometimes Damar genuinely worried that Weyoun’s ideas would turn out to be effective. He was calculating, but unexpected. And it intrigued Damar in the intellectual sense, even if having Weyoun over in his quarters – the rec room was uncomfortably cold and distractingly noisy to play in – was often tiring: he tended to overstay his welcome and poke at every possession Damar had.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on the bridge?” Damar asked as, for what seemed like the thousandth time, Weyoun breezed into engineering.
“I came to see if you’re getting anything done here, knowing how incompetent you can be,” Weyoun replied smugly.
Damar paused his work on the subatomic emitters, looked at the wrench in his hand pointedly, and considered throwing it at Weyoun.
Weyoun held up his hands placatingly. “No need to get so fussed, I’m sure you’re trying,” he said patronisingly. Then he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and stepped closer, showing his true intention in coming to engineering. “You know what I think? I think there’s something going on between the captain and the first officer. Oh, they’re being very professional on the bridge, and I can’t see well enough to spot minute expressions and looks from my station, but I just know it. The very tone the speak to each other with is vastly different than, let’s say, if the first officer speaks to me. She just doesn’t act the same.”
“You think it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re…,” Damar gestured to Weyoun. “You?”
Weyoun rolled his eyes. “Shut up, Damar. No, I’m sure of it. But I don’t think either of them acknowledge it. How fascinating. It certainly livens up the quiet shifts... Do you want to make a bet out of it?”
“No. But tell me something.”
“Hmm?” Weyoun stepped closer curiously.
Damar glanced around the room, waiting until there were no crewmembers in sight.
“Some of my crew throw me weirdly nervous looks when they think I don’t notice. Did you have something to do with that?” Damar demanded quietly. He had expected Weyoun to gossip to everyone about his background, but he didn’t like the idea of him spinning any unnecessarily dramatic arcs about it and hoped that Weyoun left Damar’s ex-fiancé out of his stories.
“Oh, that,” Weyoun said sheepishly. “I let it slip that you’re an operative of a highly secretive project between Starfleet and Cardassia. I meant it as a joke, but I think it caught on.”
“Weyoun!” Damar barked. “You rat!”
But as soon as he’d admonished him, he started laughing.
He was still chuckling to himself after Weyoun had left.
It wasn’t hard to guess that Weyoun liked all sorts of games. The more interactive and intense and unpredictable they were, the better. An intricate puzzle could mesmerise him for days.
Which was useful, because it meant that he would hang around engineering much less on his free time, giving Damar some blissful peace of mind.
And so, whenever shifts were uneventful, Damar had started designing little puzzles for him out of leftover engineering equipment: expired wire models that weren’t good enough for the ship, mis-matched bolts, circuits, and so on. The rest of the parts he replicated.
The detailed tinkering took his mind off things while allowing him to do something different with his hands, and so he didn’t mind the extra work.
But when Weyoun clapped his hands and grinned upon receiving his new shiny puzzles, Damar realised too late that he was accidentally making gestures that could be interpreted as considerate.
Having mapped and inspected absolutely every surface area of the new planet, the USS Moreau had moved on to the next planet in the system. However, that expedition was cut much shorter by the unpredictably violent asteroid storms that battered the hull of the ship so badly that they had to retreat, leave the system momentarily, and fly to the nearest supply depot to fix all the damage.
It meant that the engineering crew, Damar included, were working constantly with endless repairs.
Damar barely saw anyone else apart from his crew and his tools for several days, and at the end of his shifts went to his quarters for a long shower until collapsing in bed with a big bowl of replicated soup, having been too busy to eat properly during the day.
Weyoun’s whereabouts and doings had escaped his notice so completely that he was surprised when one evening, dragging his tired feet towards his quarters, he was stopped by Weyoun who accosted him in the hallway and pressed a bottle to his hand.
“I had some spare time to hang around the depot and make orders. So, here. To stop you complaining about replicated kanar,” Weyoun said.
Damar stared at the bottle, opened the cork, and sniffed at it.
He looked back at Weyoun.
“The ‘27, so they told me. Is that good? I can’t tell,” Weyoun hesitated.
“Yes,” Damar said, so taken aback that he didn’t know what to say. Memories of Cardassia swirled in his head at the olfactory association. “Thank you,” he said gruffly.
Weyoun beamed.
“You want some?” Damar offered.
“No, I couldn’t. It’s vile,” Weyoun said, scrunching his nose in disgust.
“Well, did you get yourself anything?” Damar asked, thinking it would be decent to share at least some kind of drink.
“Yes,” Weyoun said, and drew his other hand from behind his back, presenting a green bottle of Slug-o-Cola.
Damar let out a horrified noise. “You drink that swill?”
“I could say the same to you. I like the texture… it’s less cloyingly sticky than kanar, but still interestingly slimy.”
“There are better drinks in the galaxy, by far, if it’s interesting textures you’re looking for,” Damar complained.
“Well, I haven’t refined my tastes yet, there’s so much to try out there,” Weyoun protested with a touch of annoyance. “After eating the same things over and over again for centuries, the selections are overwhelming to say the least.”
Damar made a mental note to introduce Weyoun to some decent drinks in the future.
They ended up sitting around in Damar’s quarters, doing nothing but drinking and talking for an hour or two – Damar being too tired to play kotra. Damar was lying on his stomach on his bed and Weyoun was leaning against his hands on the floor, and at one point, several glasses into the kanar, Damar realised that he was staring at Weyoun’s stretched out form on the floor and following the minute expressions on Weyoun’s face as he talked about this and that.
He was pretty sure it was the comfortably burning effect of the kanar. Or the fact that he hadn’t gotten any action in forever; the ladies on the USS Moreau didn’t really appeal to him, and humans look too similar to Bajorans anyway, giving him distasteful associations. Or maybe it was both of those facts together. Certainly, the sudden aching need within him had nothing to do with Weyoun’s low, smooth voice that rose and fell in interesting patterns depending on his words, and his expressive, purple eyes that were like nothing Damar had seen before.
Damar stopped his train of thought before it strayed into the topic of anatomy and decided he should stop drinking before he guzzled all of the precious kanar at once.
Weyoun made his way to engineering with a bounce in his step. He took a steadying breath at the doors but didn’t bother hiding his grin.
As the doors opened, the steady hum of the warp core became louder. Weyoun didn’t particularly like the noise: it was too intense, like a heartbeat thudding in his head. His own heartbeat already thudded louder whenever he visited engineering, so the double beat was almost too much to bear sometimes.
But Damar spent most of his time near the warp core, even when he could be working on his upgrades on some other part of the ship. Weyoun knew that it was because the warp core was the warmest part of the ship. Therefore, Weyoun would endure it too.
“Guess what!” he said.
“What?” Damar asked, pausing his work on some gadget. Weyoun let himself look at him appreciatively before revealing his news. The dark grey of the Starfleet jacket that Damar always wore zipped up suited him so well, together with the black of the rest of the uniform. Of course, Weyoun hadn’t been able to resist reminding Damar that hiding his uniform colour was a breach of regulation, so Damar had had yellow stripes added to his sleeves, as well as the yellow polo undershirt. Still, the overall look was mostly dark and accentuated his tallness and broadness. And the jacket looked rather… cute on him, if Weyoun understood the meaning correctly.
Even though the Vorta had struggled to develop their sense of aesthetics over time by trying to engage with art more, and even though Weyoun still didn’t quite see things the way other species did, he knew how to appreciate Damar. Damar and his sharp black nails that handled equipment so intricately… The way he huffed whenever Weyoun pushed his buttons. It was delightful.
Weyoun wasn’t sure when his initial curiosity about Damar as an interesting new person to learn about and to boss around had changed into a different kind of curiosity: he wondered what his hands would feel like on him, what would happen if Weyoun were to touch those fascinating ridges on his neck, what other things besides kotra he could teach Weyoun?
He noticed that Damar was giving him an unimpressed look, not willing to guess what Weyoun’s news were.
“I get to go on an away mission!” Weyoun announced, waving his hands excitedly.
The captain had decided they ought to move on from the asteroid-stricken planet for now and explore other planets, and oh, the new planet was interesting indeed! Its orbit had traces of echolocation signals, therefore confirming it as the source of them. But because they suspected that the inhabitants used echolocation as a kind of a probe, the Moreau crew had had to be careful in sending their own probe to gather preliminary data: they’d had to harness the echolocation technique and send their probe hidden within a pulse and hope it was discreet enough.
“Wow,” Damar said dryly.
“Oh, you’re just jealous that you don’t get to go.”
“Hardly,” Damar shuddered. “You can have the half-frozen planet all to yourself. But… congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Weyoun said, instead of the Now, was that so hard? that he wanted to say. He was too excited about the mission to argue and wanted to talk about it. “The probe, as you know, had insufficient data for the universal translator to work on the snippets of recorded speech we found, but their language appears to be an ancient form of Ax’oksian.”
“The extinct alien species?”
“Yes. Their civilization was ravaged by internal conflicts, but their culture was well recorded. So, we could be looking at their original home planet! Their myths did always say that their ancient home was somewhere else, that the Ax’oks civilisation we know of was a colony. So, I get to go, seeing as I know a bit about the topic,” Weyoun beamed.
Damar resumed working so Weyoun wasn’t completely sure if he was even listening, but he went on anyway, excited to talk about the topic.
“We studied their culture on one of our anthropology courses, and my, their recorded legends are so interesting. They used to have stories about these sacred festival rituals that took place in deep underground dwellings, where they would sing songs and feast for days…”
Something had gone horribly wrong and the whole away team was fucking missing.
It had all started well enough. They weren’t sure whether the planet’s inhabitants still practiced space travel, and they didn’t know how they would react to outsiders, so the captain had decided to send in the small away team consisting of the first officer, Weyoun, and a couple of others. A runabout would have been too visible, considering the aliens’ echolocation skill. Therefore, they kept the ship far away and beamed the team in directly from the ship, which was already tricky enough: the planet’s atmosphere was unstable, being quite close to the ion storm. The plan had been for the away team to observe the inhabitants from a distance and slowly introduce themselves, while keeping in touch with the USS Moreau.
Damar had built a special transmitter for this purpose. The combadges alone wouldn’t have worked over such a distance, and the signals would have had similarly disastrous effects as Weyoun’s initial subspace signals inside the ion storm had had. But by using the same idea as they had with the probe, Damar programmed a constantly running, unique echolocation signal to the transmitter with a matching one for the USS Moreau and connected them to the combadges’ subspace signatures. By creating a pulse with its own code, it would be separate from the planet’s echolocation pulses, and they would not interfere with each other.
So, as long as the away team’s transmitter was on, they were able to communicate.
Their first messages had been promising: they’d found a large city in a thermal bubble and had been able to go unobserved for days to collect data. They’d found out that the internal conflicts of the Ax’oks were present here too, but in a much more settled sense: the city consisted of factions, who nevertheless collaborated with each other. The population was very homogeneous in appearance and the culture very self-sustained.
But eventually they’d been discovered. Based on the away team’s messages, the aliens didn’t quite know what to do with them: they were willing to talk but were suspicious of the ‘travellers’. The away team had thought it best not to mention the Federation, because according to the aliens the colonies that had left the planet years ago had taken valuable resources with them, and it had taken them years of struggles to remedy the loss and to live in any kind of harmony. The remaining population had all agreed to stay, only using space travel to collect resources from their own solar system’s planets. And therefore, any external influence was seen as dangerous to the status quo; the civilisation was alive but teetering on a knife’s edge.
Still, they hadn’t been hostile. Which is why they were all surprised when the communications from the away team cut off entirely one day. No attempts to strengthen or refine the echolocation signal worked, and neither could they lock on to the away team to beam them out.
They were at an impasse: if they were to confront the civilisation directly, they would risk breaking the Prime Directive by plunging the aliens into an internal conflict. But they couldn’t wait for the communications to resume, either, for something must have happened to the away team.
After the initial ideas didn’t work and they were wracking their brains at the senior staff meeting, something occurred to Damar.
“The caves,” he said. “There are old Ax’oksian stories that talk about deep underground caves. They could still exist on this planet.”
“What was their significance?” The captain asked.
“I don’t know exactly… Weyoun told me about them. Some cultural purpose, for celebrations. But whatever the purpose, if the texts are accurate and the caves still exist, that could explain why the signal can’t penetrate. The away team could be underground, hiding or… maybe they were taken there?”
The captain nodded slowly. “That could be possible, but we don’t have confirmation about any underground dwellings based on the probe’s data and what the away team told us before they disappeared.”
Damar thought back to Weyoun’s commentary. “The caves were sacred to the civilisation back then, and the entrances were guarded and hidden. They were only entered during the festivals, with some priest or knowledge-keeper guiding the way to them. So, they could be hard to detect.”
“Well, those stories would be very old, but even if they don’t use them for such purposes anymore, they could still exist,” the captain assented. “Frankly, I’m open to any ideas at this point. Do you know how to test this theory?”
“We could make several small transmitter chips and try to beam them to different depths under the planet’s surface randomly. If the away team still has the transmitter they took with them, the chips will strengthen the signal even if they don’t find the chips. Their range will reach the transmitter if it lands within the same cave,” Damar said, but sighed in frustration. “But I’m not sure how we would be able to beam them in since the transporter can’t reach the away team. The interference in the atmosphere and the caves are blocking our efforts.”
One of the science officers raised her hand. “Suggestion, sir. The preliminary probe data suggested the planet’s crust to be somewhat similar to what we have encountered so far. As we have collected extensive rock samples from the previous planet, we could extract molecules from them and attach them to the transmitter chips. If the rock molecules match the rocks in the caves, the transporter could be able to penetrate the surface enough to beam the chips underground.”
“The rock molecules acting as a hidden messenger to fool the transporter signal?” the captain asked eagerly.
“Ideally, yes,” the science officer said.
“That could work,” Damar agreed.
“Let’s do it,” the captain said. “We will need to test all the samples and essentially comb through the entire surface with our eyes closed, so we have a lot of work ahead of us.”
And it did take a long time. Damar was building the chips around the clock with his engineers, the geologists were tirelessly going through the samples, and the whole crew felt tense with the mutual knowledge that what they were doing was based, at best, on a good theory. They didn’t even know if the chips got through, although they did beam somewhere off the ship. Damar felt a concoction of confusing feelings in his chest as he worked. Something he didn’t want to call worry, and something he knew to be hope. He wondered if the away team was hurt, and felt… annoyed… at the idea of it; stupid purple rat getting himself into trouble on an unknown planet, he probably hadn’t even realised to be vary of the aliens with his overt enthusiasm of the mission…
Damar wondered, too, what would happen if they got the team out of there. Would Weyoun be more annoying than ever? Cling to Damar gratefully?
After what felt like forever, the first officer and Weyoun’s voices came through the staticky communications.
They had been taken to the caves: the inhabitants hadn’t known what to do with them, arguments had broken out, and they had been disposed in the caves until further notice, although according to the away team some of the factions were possibly planning on murdering the whole team to get rid of the problem.
“Damar, if you’re listening, get us out of here,” Weyoun smooth voice demanded over the crackle.
Damar and the transporter technicians put their backs into it. Having pinpointed their location, they now had to lock onto them very carefully, using the same rock molecules to strengthen the beam.
As they worked, Damar couldn’t help letting his imagination run wild again. He pictured Weyoun materialising on the transporter platform with wide eyes twinkling with mirth and an even wider smile. Or Weyoun leaping at him from the platform and congratulating him on a job well done.
When the away team did materialise, Damar’s eyes roved over them, as did the captain’s and everyone else’s who were clustered in the transporter room, to see if the team was wounded. The first officer had a couple of bruises on her face, but otherwise the team was only slightly shivering from the cold, apparently having been able to keep warm enough against the icy climate.
Damar’s eyes found Weyoun’s while the captain recommended the team to get some rest and check in with the med bay some time during the day. Weyoun was clutching the large transmitter with both hands in front of him, but the look he gave Damar was unexpectedly cold. His eyes were narrowed as he stepped off the platform.
Weyoun spared a glance at the crew leaving the room – the captain had left with the first officer to debrief her, and the others were slowly filtering out of the room.
“Took you long enough. I thought you’d be more proficient than that,” Weyoun huffed once the room was empty.
“What?” Damar demanded. “You’d still be stuck there if I hadn’t been working around the clock to save you, you ungrateful, irresponsible-“
Weyoun interrupted him by gesturing at the transmitter in his hands and poking Damar’s chest with it, contempt written all over his face. “This thing nearly broke several times. Did you build this while drunk? Some ‘chief of engineering’ you are. I’m surprised the ship is still intact, with you lumbering here making a mess of things.”
Damar stared at him in disbelief and felt a hot rush of rage surge within his tired body.
“Well? Haven’t you anything to say for yourself?” Weyoun asked with a scoff.
“Fuck you,” Damar hissed.
Weyoun tsked at him. “Childish as well as inept. I think we should go to engineering straightaway to see the extent of the damage you’ve done while I’ve been away.”
Damar stomped indignantly with him towards engineering, half-shouting contemptuous words back at Weyoun, about how he was one to talk with absolutely no skills in engineering and that it was a wonder he’d passed Starfleet Academy.
But somewhere along the way, through his haze of anger, he noticed that Weyoun paused his insults whenever a crewmember walked past them and resumed them only when they weren’t overheard. And that Weyoun shot looks back at him over his shoulder as they walked, looks that flickered from Damar’s face to his neck, where his ridges had started to swell and darken.
Damar almost stopped dead in his tracks when he realised with sudden clarity that Weyoun was Cardassian flirting with him. The possibility hadn’t occurred to him even though it should have, considering that Weyoun was familiar with Cardassian culture, but it had been so long since he’d interacted with Cardassians that he’d just assumed and accepted that he would not experience that kind of courtship for years. Possibly ever.
Instead of feeling taken aback, Damar ran the months of interactions with Weyoun over in his mind, and with this new context, his anger ran entwined with pure desire in his veins.
Insolent Vorta bastard…
Damar was almost tempted to let Weyoun lead and see what he intended to do once they got to engineering, but this was a game that Damar loved to play.
“Well, maybe there was a malfunction,” he lied. “But it’s nothing you would understand. You pretend to be so professional, such a captain’s pet, but I bet you’ve never even been in a Jefferies tube. You wouldn’t know how to run this ship if you had to.”
“Yes, I have, and yes I could. What do you need to have fixed? Why don’t you show me what an ‘expert’ you are, maybe I can take some pointers,” Weyoun said derisively, but if Damar’s eyes weren’t deceiving him, Weyoun’s face had a slightly darker purple tint to it.
Engineering was blessedly empty. Damar gave a little shove to Weyoun’s back as he directed him towards one of the tube openings.
“Go on,” Damar challenged. “Climb in and show me where you think the central electromagnetic transition bypass is.”
Weyoun’s chest rose and fell ever so slightly as he glared at Damar, but Damar, being on the lookout for signs of reciprocating, noted it and chuckled.
“Fine,” Weyoun said and started climbing with surprising dexterity, the hard heels of his Starfleet uniform shoes clanging on the ladders.
Damar was almost too distracted by trading insults with him and staring at his behind as he climbed behind him, that he nearly let them go the wrong way.
“To your left,” he instructed.
“I knew that.”
Once they reached the landing, they made their way forward on the crawlway until Damar told him to stop. Weyoun’s eyes looked darker as he made a full stop and turned around, making Damar almost bump right into him and stare at him. Damar noted the widened pupils and stifled a laugh.
“Here,” Damar handed a tool to Weyoun from his pocket. “Open that panel. The circuits within are blown, which is causing the wires to overcompensate for the energy loss. They’re about to overheat.”
“Pathetic, making me do easy work for you,” Weyoun whispered.
Damar tracked the movement of his lips as he spoke and scooted closer in the cramped space. But Weyoun started unscrewing the panel with inexperienced hands. Damar supervised his work and made sure to breathe over Weyoun’s shoulder.
Weyoun paused. “I can’t hear any signs of overheating. Do you even know what you’re doing? Or is this how you always work, pretending to be doing something important as you stumble through the day?”
Damar let the laugh out. “What good are those Vorta ears if you can’t hear it?”
And as he said it, he grabbed Weyoun’s right ear and ran his thumb slowly but roughly along the ribbed texture there.
Weyoun dropped the wrench with a loud clank and gasped, his eyes closing in obvious surprise and pleasure. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, giving Damar a heated stare before both lunged at each other at the same time.
Weyoun’s hands went directly to Damar’s neck as their lips collided urgently, again and again, the smacks echoing in the crawlway.
Weyoun’s mouth was inexperienced but insistent as it moved against Damar’s; what he lacked in skill he made up for in greediness, which suited Damar just fine. More than fine: Damar guided the tip of his tongue against Weyoun’s as their lips parted against each other while Weyoun dug his nails into Damar’s neck ridge so hard that Damar swore and accidentally kicked at the half-opened panel with his foot.
Noting how cramped the space was and barely sparing a glance to see whether they broke the panel, Weyoun pushed at Damar’s chest until he toppled on his back, Weyoun following suit and falling on top of him.
Damage control could wait until later, Damar decided, as Weyoun pressed his warm body tightly to his and attacked his mouth fervently with kiss after kiss.