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“Goodnight, Commander.”
“’Night, Tanner.” With a weary smile Malcolm Reed stepped out of the turbolift at B deck, tactfully pretending not to notice his subordinate sagging against the wall in the last instant before the door closed. At least he wasn’t the only member of his department still trying to keep up appearances at twenty-whatever-hundred hours on Christmas Eve while the rest of the crew set about the serious work of getting royally rat-arsed.
His feet seemed to be sinking into quicksand, every step slower and more pained than the last, but the end was in sight and his second (or third, or possibly sixth after eighteen hours on duty) wind kicked in, carrying him the last few metres to the door. One hand already halfway to the keypad, he stopped.
Blinked. Rubbed his eyes.
He’d been gone a while, but he was fairly confident there hadn’t been an eight-foot high plastic figure glued to his door when he closed it in the morning.
“Hey Mal, I was beginnin’ to think you were avoidin’ the party!” The door opened from within, the ghastly image crinkling as it retracted and his partner bounded into the opening, hands overflowing with garish lengths of glinting rope. “Shower’s runnin’ hot, and if you’re quick we’ll make the mess in time for Travis’ annual Cap’n-kissin’ display.”
Limply allowing himself to be bustled into the cabin Reed scrubbed his gritty eyes again, his mouth tightened up into a barely-visible line. “Y’ know he might have competition this year,” the oblivious dickhead he called a fiancé burbled, glancing back from Malcolm’s desk which he appeared to be wrapping in endless streams of red and green foil. “Rostov says the new guy in mineralogy – you know, red hair an’ too many teeth – got a thing for Johnny.”
Belatedly the unresponsiveness of his beloved penetrated the notoriously numb skull of Enterprise’s highly intelligent Chief Engineer. “You with me, Malcolm?”
“There’s a giant Father Christmas on our door.”
Tucker beamed. “Sure is. Cool, isn’t he?”
“And there’s tinsel wrapped ‘round my computer.”
“Makes it look real festive.”
Much too late Trip noticed the slightest flaring of his lover’s nostrils; the Arctic glint that frosted his ever-changing eyes. “Ummm, I can take it off again if you like, but I thought…”
“You’d turn our quarters into a budget supermarket’s Christmas Grotto?”
Uh-oh. That’s his about-to-kill-you voice.
Shuffling backward behind the barrier of his own heavily-adorned desk Trip spread his hands and adopted his best Porthos-after-cheese expression. “Now, Malcolm, it ain’t nothin’ you’ve not seen before. I decorated my quarters last year.”
“Trip.” His arms crossed, Reed cocked his head at the taller man, irritation doing battle with awe at how perfectly panicked scrambling for excuses became his lover. “Last year, your quarters were not also mine. I do not have gigantic Santas stuck to my door. I have a tasteful, authentic wreath. Evergreen boughs. The holly and the ivy. All that jazz.”
Full lips turned down. “Wreaths are for funerals, Mal! It’s Christmas!”
“Call it a garland if it makes you feel better while you’re putting it up.” Absently swiping at the fluffy snowman perched precariously atop his monitor on his way to the bathroom, Malcolm awarded himself a silent bonus point at his fiancé’s stupefied look. “You’ll just have time to strip all that gaudy rubbish off my desk while I’m in the shower – always assuming you want to join the drunken revelry in the mess on our…”
His sarcastic tone trailed away. “Yeah, happy anniversary darlin’,” Trip volunteered brightly, lunging for the topic-change so fast he almost fell over. “I got you a present, it’s just buried under all the paper chains, but once we’ve got them hung I think you’ll like it.”
Narrowed eyes with all the warmth of Rura Penthe fixed on his face. “Are those lights?” Malcolm rapped out, jabbing a long finger toward the large viewport beside their bed.
“Yeah.” He had the satisfaction of seeing Trip’s hand waver, the engineer’s pride in his artistry at odds with concern for his delightful backside, which he angled away from Malcolm’s twitching toe with some alacrity. “They flash, see.”
At the touch of a button colour exploded around the window’s edge, patterns of green, pink and yellow reflected in the pane while the desperate whine of a half-throttled cat assaulted the Englishman’s ears. “What the bloody hell?” he howled.
“Aw, you recognise it!” Off-key but enthusiastic, Trip belted out the antique lyric. “You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m tellin’ you why… Malcolm, why’re you stickin’ your fingers down your ears? My singin’s not that bad!”
“Combined with that, it’s fucking atrocious!” Malcolm bawled back. “For Christ’s sake Trip, make it stop!”
Pouting, his lover obeyed. “It can play Silent Night instead,” he volunteered, not terribly hopefully. Thin lips tightened. “Okay, I get it. No Santa on the door and no musical lights.”
“Not while I’m in the room,” Malcolm tried to glare, but against his adorable partner’s downcast demeanour anger was impossible. “I’m beginning to remember why we always used my cabin over Christmas!”
“’Cause it was nearer the turbolift,” Tucker exclaimed triumphantly. His face fell. “Oh. Yeah, and because my flashin’ lights gave you one of those bilious headaches. Sorry, Mal. I forgot.”
“Strip that gaudy rubbish from my desk while I’m in the shower and I’ll forgive you.” Stretching to ruffle his partner’s hair, Malcolm sauntered into their tiny bathroom. “You can even put the lights back on while you’re at it!”
“Aw, really?” Like a little boy promised sweets Tucker bounced on the balls of his feet for glee. “I’ll turn ‘em off when the shower stops, I promise.”
With a roll of the eyes, Malcolm shut himself in the bathroom and tried not to hear the tuneless festive din outside. True to his word, Trip muted both the tacky lights and himself the moment the water shut off and, feeling fifty times better, the Englishman gave his head a vigorous rub and wrapped himself in a short grey satin robe before emerging to survey what further damage had been done.
His desk was pristine, without a fleck of tinsel in sight. The window lights glowed on a steady low setting and the strings of glitzy paper chains that looped from the ceiling were high enough for Travis, let alone himself, to pass under easily. “This okay?” Tucker asked plaintively.
The engineer’s desk groaned under the weight of more decorations than PADDs, and on Trip’s cabinet the fluffy snowman glowed with an eerie blue light. Letting himself sag bonelessly against the bathroom door Malcolm treated his betrothed to a slow, sexy smile.
“You’ll take Santa off the door?”
“I’ll go do it now.” He’d even, the brunet noticed, fossicked through their boxes to dig out Malcolm’s modest Christmas wreath.
“It can wait ‘til the morning.” Perspiration gleamed on the golden brow and in stretching to pin his chains high Trip’s shirt had come free of his waistband, exposing a delicious hint of toned abdomen with every move. Desire slammed Malcolm like a rogue shuttlepod, closing up his throat and tightening his balls as he surveyed his partner of four full years. “You don’t really want to go and join the drunkards in the mess, do you?”
Surprised, Trip half-turned and was instantly captured by the smouldering invitation in Malcolm’s smoky eyes. “You wanna miss the party?” he croaked.
An eyebrow lifted. “It’s twenty-three-forty-odd. They’ll all be so plastered they’ll be seeing three Phloxes each and breaking their noses on the floor as they fall flat-out from trying to snog the wrong one. Ask around Engineering tomorrow and I doubt anyone would be able to say with confidence that you hadn’t been there.”
“You callin’ my staff drunks?”
“I’m calling our whole crew temporary alcoholics, love.” His man was tempted so Malcolm upped the ante, pushing himself easily off the wall and slinking across the narrow strip of unoccupied floor space to link his hands at the taller man’s nape. “And suggesting I’d really rather spend my first shacked-up Christmas alone with my beautiful, sober fiancé.”
“Jeez, shacked-up? Make it sound romantic why dontcha?” With a shake of the head that made his dark gold hair stand on end Tucker folded the smaller man into his arms, his cheek dropping naturally to rest on Reed’s damp sable crown. “I guess – if you really don’t wanna share me…”
“Never, love.” His thin covering gaped, allowing his erection to thrust proudly against Trip’s solid thigh. When strong arms tugged him off-balanced toward the oversized bunk he didn’t resist, letting himself sprawl with the robe falling open, displaying him in wanton splendour to his lover’s gaze.
Trip, he noticed with dim satisfaction, couldn’t get out of his smart grey slacks fast enough.
*
It shifted, a whole tousled head of dark hair emerging above a pair of hazy grey eyes that blinked in drowsy confusion. “They’re tasteful. And lights belong on trees, not ‘round windows.”
“Tasteful like your wreath for the door?” He couldn’t help it. Those kiss-bruised lips just called to be traced with a thumb.
Malcolm’s tongue flicked out over the digit’s tip. “As opposed to your garish Father Christmas poster,” he replied, hitching himself up until his head could pillow on his partner’s shoulder. Trip huffed.
“I’ve promised t’ take it down, alright?” he groused, brightening as a thought hit him. “Hey, you reckon Johnny’ll let me stick it to the ready room door? Bring a lil’ Christmas cheer to the bridge?”
“Only if he wants to see the annual Vulcan hissy fit from his First Officer.” It might amount to a double-raise of eyebrows, but T’Pol’s expressions of displeasure were no less entertaining than Chef’s when they could be innocently provoked. A shiver of amusement passed Malcolm’s length, tantalising every sex-loosened muscle. “Of course, he didn’t react well to your bright idea of holographic reindeer projected forward of the ship last year…”
“Only because of the power drain,” Trip objected. “And Travis loved it.”
“Travis,” Malcolm pointed out solemnly, “spent the whole of Christmas Day in a red hat and cotton-wool beard leaping out at people in the corridors to yell Ho ho ho, wanna ride in my sleigh? The captain blamed that on you, as well.”
“I get the blame for everythin’ anyway.” Trip didn’t care. They could cancel all Christmas festivities for the rest of the mission and it wouldn’t matter, as long as he could share his bed and his life with this man. “Figure it’s Christmas mornin’ by now?”
“Easily.” He could hear the smile spreading over Malcolm’s face; sense the dawn of comprehension in the minimal tensing of his perfect body. “Time to unwrap the big presents?”
With a single fluid motion Trip rolled them to position himself snugly in the cradle of the Brit’s thighs, the brush of their cocks spreading liquid heat through the bellies of both men. “Feels like it to me,” he growled before claiming those luscious, parted lips in a devouring kiss. “Merry Christmas, Malcolm.”
It certainly, Reed reflected in the last moment of clarity before breakfast-time, was starting out that way.