You Lose By Holding Back [1/3] - Primeval - Becker/Connor
Title: You Lose By Holding Back [1/3]
Pairing: Becker/Connor, Connor/Others (established Abby/Connor)
Word Count: 3901
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Dub-con by way of sex pollen, scientific nonsense.
A/N: I really love writing cracky concepts in a serious way. It's like an addiction.
Summary: Connor is bitten by a creature in heat, and the hormone in the bite leaves him needing sex every six hours. Trying to help a friend out, Becker has to fight his own feelings.
Becker keeps his distance, as he always has. He watches, as he always has. And he protects - faster than before, stronger than before, better.
Connor and Abby aren't how he remembers them. In his mind, they have been deified for the year; they have been perfect and clean and humble, taken from the world too soon. These days, when Connor chats back and teases him and gets them all into trouble, Becker thinks that maybe it wasn't soon enough.
Connor's face is bathed in the glowing light from the computer screen, a blue-green glow that captures Becker's attention. Matt's voice is nothing but a soothing trickle in the background. His arms are crossed over his chest and he can't help trying to deduce every missing second of the past year just by looking at Connor's glazed expression as he works - as if there might be secrets there, as if he might be able to detect them. A year ago, he could never have imagined Connor being able to survive in the past. He had been resourceful, but untrained and undisciplined, a walking disaster.
Now, he's more than that. He's a survivor. A hero.
And Becker can't stop staring.
"I'm starting to get the impression that I don't have your full attention," Matt says, nudging Becker's arm to bring him out of his thoughts. "Am I boring you?"
"Were you going on again about the new toy guns you want to design? If so, you probably were."
"We were talking about your up-coming pay review," Matt says - but the smirk on his face at the widening of Becker's eyes reveals the truth. Matt isn't as good at lying as he thinks he is. "Training with the lads. Pay attention."
Becker nods, expels the air from his lungs, and frowns with concentration. There is more to focus on now. Abby and Connor are back; life goes on.
If he wants to keep said life going on, he needs to pay attention. Lots of it.
*
And then there's an accident.
There is blood and pain and a rush to the hospital. Connor's arm is slashed and bitten, blood leaking out of it faster than they can stop. "Just hold on," Becker instructs, racing through the streets in their car while Abby and Connor are slumped in the back, trying their hardest to keep Connor alive. "It won't be much longer."
All the traffic works against him, red lights and lines of slow-moving cars. Becker clings to the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turn white, the muscles of his arms hard and tense in worry.
"There isn't enough time," Abby says. "The bleeding won't stop."
"I'm fine," Connor says. Slurred and slow, his voice doesn't sound right. He sounds as if he has fallen just out of bed. "It's nothing."
"I know," Abby confirms, soft and gentle even if the thread of panic won't vanish from her voice. "I know, you're fine."
Becker should have been faster. As he's driving, it still plays through his mind: it had all happened too quickly, speeding through in slow motion. They hadn't even known what those creatures were; something from the future, Connor had guessed. Something unknown - and something far more dangerous than they had looked.
They're dead now.
Becker knows that they are supposed to return or capture the creatures, but they had hurt Connor. He hadn't been able to stop firing.
"We're close," he promises. "Just hang on."
Abby relays every promise that she can, all that and more, but Connor is fading out of consciousness by the time they reach the hospital. They're losing him - again - and Becker doesn't know whether he can survive it this time. He's not ready to find out.
*
Despite the blood and the fainting (passing out, Connor insists, which is perfectly acceptable when a future-dinosaur's taken a chunk out of your arm) the doctors only keep him in overnight. He emerges pieced together like Frankenstein's monster, stitches holding his arm together and covered in clean white bandages.
He's put on medical leave, and for once Becker is glad that Lester knows how to be impossibly stubborn; he digs his heels in and doesn't listen to Connor as he pleads to be allowed to come back. Abby takes him home and they don't hear from them for a couple of days - life goes back to normal, almost. It returns to the previous year, a quick reversion, where the guilt had plagued Becker so heavily he couldn't sleep but where he had at least been able to think in a straight line. The pair of them confuse everything. Having them gone, even for a few days, it helps to clear his mind.
Becker goes to work. He goes home. He sleeps. He goes to work.
He doesn't call to check in with their recovering couple. It's for his own sanity as much as theirs.
Yet his eyes snap open at 3AM on the third night of Connor's leave, dreams shattered by the piercing ring of his telephone. His body is in action, getting up and leaping for it while he calculates how long it will take him to get dressed and get to the ARC. They wouldn't be calling if it wasn't an emergency.
When he answers, however, he doesn't have Jess on the other line to give him instructions. It's Abby.
"Becker? Is that you? I didn't know who else to call." Her voice wobbles. He's never heard her like this. "It's Connor. Something's wrong with him."
Becker's heart begins to race, even if his face remains impassive. His peaceful sleep already seems centuries ago. "What is it? Is he alright?"
"I don't - we don't know." In the background, he hears a cry of pain, badly muffled, and Abby's attention is distracted as she soothes Connor, her voice soft like a lullaby even if he can still hear the panic in it. "There was something in the bite."
Poison. The doctors had checked him out, had given him fresh tetnus shots, had given him a clean bill of health, yet here Becker is clinging to his phone and trying to work out what he can do to help. He pins his phone between his ear and his shoulder and rushes from place to place as he gets dressed while he listens.
"Are you taking him to the hospital?"
The silence stretches like solidified awkwardness. "I don't think a hospital could help," Abby admits.
She has a point. Modern medicine has little experience in fighting future poisons, but it's all that they have. The creature is dead. The anomaly is closed.
"The creature," Abby says, before she pauses. He can practically see her biting on her bottom lip. In the background, he can hear Connor cursing, the same words over and over and over. He tries to tie the laces of his boots too quickly and ends up in a confused knot around his fingers. "It was trying to mate when it bit Connor. We think there must have been something in the saliva. Something designed to get the female - you know."
Becker nearly drops the phone.
"What are you saying?" he asks cautiously.
"He's in pain, Becker," Abby says, her voice dropping low. "He needs help. I don't know who else to call."
Becker swallows hard and promises that he'll be there in five minutes. He tells himself that this won't be the weirdest thing that he's ever done for this job, and maybe that's true. The very definition of the word is starting to blur.
*
He barely takes a step into their apartment, let in by Abby still in her pyjamas, before he finds himself pinned against the wall. Connor drops out of view before Becker can catch his breath, kneeling on the floor in front of him with his hands scrambling to pull away Becker's trousers. His face is red and stained with tear-tracks, but it's hard to focus at all when Connor's mouth abruptly engulfs his traitorous cock, already stirring with interest.
He presses his hands against Connor's shoulders, ready to push him backwards, but the pained whine that erupts from Connor's chest is enough to make him stop. It sounds as if he just tried to kick him in the stomach. Uncertain, he stops pushing and tries to hold in the shivering moans that he feels when Connor sucks furiously at his cock.
Looking up, he finds Abby's eyes wide and gazed as she stares down at the top of Connor's head, her hands covering her mouth. "Abby," Becker pants. He's fully hard in Connor's mouth by now, and the violent bobbing of Connor's head makes it almost impossible to keep control - it's been a long time, such a long time, since he's had anything but his own hand on him. This is a practical joke, and a cruel one at that. Burying his fingers into Connor's thick hair, he can barely stop his hands from trembling.
"I don't know," Abby says. "He just - There's something wrong with him."
Connor answers with a long, winding groan around Becker's cock, the vibrations strong enough to steal Becker's breath. His hand tightens in Connor's hair, even though he doesn't mean to let it, even though he doesn't have the right. He doesn't know what's happening here, what he's doing, but there are boundaries: strong ones. Fooling himself into believing that he is here because they want him to be here would be a mistake.
Connor makes several gagging sounds as he swallows him deeper, but he won't pull back. Whatever is driving him now is stronger than his biological gag reflex, and even with tears stinging at his eyes he sucks on Becker with a desperation he usually reserves for battles for his life. Becker bends over, his body contracting as his climax rises - it's going to be over so quickly. Every nerve ignites, and he hunches over until his stomach muscles ache, pushing himself forward into Connor's wet mouth as he comes, spilling down Connor's mouth with a frustrated shout held in check by his clenched teeth.
Leaving Becker to catch his breath and tidy himself up, Connor gets to his feet in record time. His eyes look glazed, his face is flushed and his hair is messier than usual - he looks as if Becker has ruined him, utterly. Without a word he strides to the sink, filling a glass of water and gulping it down as quickly as he can, nearly choking himself in the process.
"What just happened?"
Abby stares at him, then turns her head to look at Connor. Neither of them seem inclined to answer him; there might not be an answer at all. Rubbing his hand across his face, Becker wonders if he's still asleep, if this is simply the most bizarre wet dream that his subconscious could conjure on short notice.
"I think you just got the blowjob of a lifetime, mate," Connor suggests, clinging onto his glass of water like it's a lifeline. There might be a smile on his face, dimples on show, but it doesn't look right, doesn't feel right. "Most blokes wouldn't be complaining right now."
"You were in pain," Becker says. "The bite has done something, hasn't it?"
He can remember Abby's panicked explanation over the phone, but he needs to believe that it is something more realistic than that, more plausible.
"It's fine now. I feel fine. No pain at all." Connor waggles the fingers of one hand at them as if that ought to prove anything at all. "Seriously."
Becker looks towards Abby. She's been silent, but she seems more likely than Connor to be rational about this, to actually give it a second thought. She swallows, and meets Becker's gaze. "Can you stay the night?" she asks. "We can make up the couch."
It's difficult to process that she is asking him to stay in case Connor once more lapses into such uncontrollable pain that only giving head can cure it. Becker decides against trying to process it at all, and instead opts for following orders. He sleeps on the couch with a crick in his neck while Abby and Connor retreat to their bedroom, Abby's hand nervously lingering on Connor's shoulder.
Becker doesn't expect to sleep, his mind too filled with questions and worries, but within an hour his eyes have closed and his breathing has evened out, his thoughts fading to dreams.
Within four hours, however, he is woken up again, wrenched from sleep for the second time that night as Abby shakes him brutally. "Becker. Becker, wake up. It's happening again."
It's difficult to process what she is saying, straight out of sleep, but she yanks him to his feet and he walks with her through the darkened flat as his mind starts to wake up like his body. The sun is starting to rise outside, glowing through the drawn blinds, and he needs to be at the ARC in just a couple of hours.
"Connor?" he says as he enters the room. Abby doesn't follow him inside, lingering in the doorway instead. He wishes she would accompany him; he would feel like less of an invader. Connor is a curled lump on the bed, clutching his stomach while he groans quietly. The duvet is a tangled mound on the ground, kicked brutally away from him. Becker gingerly sits down on the edge of the bed. "Connor, can you hear me?"
"I'm not deaf," Connor sniffs, as petulant as a sick child. It makes Becker swallow an indulgent smile. "Let's just get this over with, alright?"
Becker isn't hard, not at all, but that doesn't stop Connor from crawling over the mattress to reach for his trousers, pulling them open for the second time that night. He leans over, careful with his wounded arm, and takes Becker's limp cock into his mouth with no hesitation, sucking on it sharply with a loud slurping sound. Breath hisses between Becker's teeth in wounded surprise, and he closes his eyes, urges himself to get hard, to get this over with. Connor had felt fine afterwards, last time.
He tries to let his mind transport him elsewhere, tries to picture them like this in another situation: Connor sucking him desperately because he wants to, because he wants him hard enough to be able to take him against the bed and fuck him in abandon. Thinking of how Connor might look if he was doing this willingly, the blood starts to rush where he needs it, responding to a mixture of blind fantasies and the insistent, desperate sucking of Connor's mouth.
If he opens his eyes, he'll find nothing appealing. Like a patient faced with a needle, this is nothing more than an unpleasant medical necessity - and this isn't what Becker had wanted, not ever. He's watched Connor, wanted him, felt those pangs of jealousy when he saw him with Abby, but this isn't right. It feels disgusting.
He tries to push it away, because he has to focus on the wickeder thoughts if he wants this to be over quickly for Connor, but he feels unclean.
By the time they're done, he needs a shower, leaving Abby and Connor in uncomfortable silence as he aims directly for their bathroom.
*
He goes to work and keeps his phone on him at all times, just in case. Abby and Connor are still on medical leave, and he has to admit to being nervous about leaving them alone - and he doesn't get nervous. Not at war, not facing down dinosaurs, and certainly not while waiting to find out if Connor is still infected with a prehistoric poison.
He's called back before lunchtime, so he dashes off with an excuse about sandwiches. He makes it back within half an hour.
"Thanks for bringing food back for the rest of us," Matt mutters sarcastically, with a shove to Becker's arm.
Becker doesn't retort, just apologises and promises that he'll remember next time. His cock, limp in his pants, is distracting and over-worked.
There's another frantic call by mid-afternoon, and this time it's harder to slip away - but he manages it, claiming a stomach ache. "We can't carry on like this," Becker says when they're done, all three of them standing at alternate sides of the room. "It's every four hours now."
"It might calm down soon," Connor says, picking at the corner of his dressing. "We don't know."
"Exactly. We don't know. It's time we got some help."
"What? Shall I just pop down to the Dinosaur Doctor and get him to fix me up? No one's gonna know what to do with this."
Becker shakes his head. "Then we'll find someone who can work it out. Calling me home from work isn't a long-term option. What are we going to do when there's a creature breathing down our necks and you suddenly have to..."
He can't say it. Won't say it. He doesn't think he even knows how to put it into words.
Connor's cheeks are scarlet and he is staring down at his scuffed shoes. "Maybe we're not doing it right," Connor says.
Abby straightens from where she had been slouched against the wall. "What d'you mean?" she asks.
"Well. When it - when it happens, I just..." Connor clears his throat. "It's hard to explain. It's like I need- it inside me. Like that's all I can think about and I know that's what's going to make the pain stop. Nothing else'll do it."
Abby glances towards Becker for a second, and then back to Connor - Becker takes care to leave his face extraordinarily blank. He can already feel his stomach churning.
"So what're you saying?" Abby asks.
The pause that follows is uncomfortable enough to burn his ears, to leave him longing to run somewhere far, far away from this nonsense. Eventually, though, Connor speaks, and Becker's jaw clenches hard. "Maybe it's not, y'know, my mouth I should be using. I mean, you know, maybe it's - maybe I'm supposed to be going further than that. It might last longer if it did."
Becker breathes through his nose as calmly as he is capable of doing, counting every breath and trying to distance his thoughts from his body. If he doesn't do that, he might go mad. He might shout at the pair of them and that isn't fair - this isn't their fault. Connor is the victim here and Becker isn't sure what that makes him, but it definitely doesn't make him the good guy. He isn't the knight in shining armour or the sharp-shooting soldier in this scenario.
"Becker," Abby says, and her voice is drawing him back down to earth even if he needs to stay away. "What do you think?"
"No," he answers, the word spilling out before he can think it through. What is there to think about?
It's no different from what you've already done, one part of his mind whispers, the part that would do anything that it took to protect these two people, the part that would willingly leap into a pit of future predators if that was what was required to keep them safe.
There's another part, a strong part, that revolts at the idea, stomach clenching - because it's not fair, and he's not a toy soldier, and he has feelings even when he wishes he didn't, even when he would be better at his job if he could turn them off.
"Becker - " Connor starts, but Becker shakes his head before he has to listen.
If he listens, he will change his mind; he will break.
He can't do that.
"Please, mate, I'm - I'm actually literally begging you, here." Connor gives a humourless laugh, bitter in a way that Becker has never heard him before. "I know it's not the kind of thing we'd normally do, but this isn't normal. It won't be forever."
Becker thinks that maybe he could laugh too, struck by the sheer, empty oddity of their situation - but his face stays blank. His hands are tucked neatly behind his back, ever the soldier, and he shakes his head. "I won't do it. I'm sorry."
And he is. He is sorry to see the desperation in Connor's eyes and the flickers of betrayal on Abby's face, and he is sorry to be letting them down - but that doesn't stop him from leaving.
He should stay, and he can feel a cowardly tug on his conscience as he keeps his head low and aims for the door, unable to stay and face it. Tactical retreat, he tells himself as he leaves the apartment behind and takes the stairs when the elevator won't come quickly enough. His feet hammer on concrete, and he feels as if he is running from something with sharp teeth and poisonous venom himself.
Coward coward coward.
He makes it half way down the long flights of stairs, to a concrete and bland stairwell, before Connor catches up with him, crashing down the stairs. Becker's muscles strain to run, but he reins himself in - that's one last humiliation that he can try to avoid.
"Becker, mate," Connor says, out of breath from the dash to catch up with him. "Please. I know this sucks, but..."
"Don't," Becker warns him. He holds his hand up between them, because he can't have Connor near him right now.
This is all messing with his head.
"No. I'm sorry, but no," Connor insists. "I'm not leaving. I don't - Becker, I don't have anywhere else to turn. No one else."
They both know that that isn't true. Connor has many directions in which he could turn; friends and colleague and, if it came to that, he could find or hire a stranger. There are a lot of options open here - and every single one of them makes Becker feel ill. He closes his eyes and breathes through his nose. "I can't help," he forces himself to say. He's making this about himself when he knows that it's supposed to be about Connor; Connor is the one suffering from the effects, the one violated. Becker is nothing but a skulking predator. "I can't."
"It's just sex," Connor snaps, voice raising in a way that Becker has never heard from him before. If their positions were reversed, he would guarantee that Connor wouldn't view it this way. "It's nothing, just - just a favour. Why can't you help me out?"
Fine, Becker thinks, Let him see.
He surges forward, hands cupping either side of Connor's face, holding him in place when he flinches backwards, until he can smash their lips together, ugly and violent. He's imagined kissing Connor a thousand times, and it's never been like this, never been bitter enough to make him feel sick. Connor's teeth grit together and Becker releases him after barely a second. "That's why," he pants, stepping backwards and running the back of his hand over his mouth. "Because it's not 'just sex'. Not for me, not with you."
Connor doesn't speak. That in itself is almost enough. Stealing the words from Connor's mouth is an almost impossible task; silence doesn't suit him. It makes him look broken.
Now his eyes are wide with shock and Becker is happy to turn his back on him, scurrying down the rest of the stairs undeterred - like a rat running back to its hole, ashamed, embarrassed and horrified.
You Lose By Holding Back - Part Two
Pairing: Becker/Connor, Connor/Others (established Abby/Connor)
Word Count: 3901
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Dub-con by way of sex pollen, scientific nonsense.
A/N: I really love writing cracky concepts in a serious way. It's like an addiction.
Summary: Connor is bitten by a creature in heat, and the hormone in the bite leaves him needing sex every six hours. Trying to help a friend out, Becker has to fight his own feelings.
Becker keeps his distance, as he always has. He watches, as he always has. And he protects - faster than before, stronger than before, better.
Connor and Abby aren't how he remembers them. In his mind, they have been deified for the year; they have been perfect and clean and humble, taken from the world too soon. These days, when Connor chats back and teases him and gets them all into trouble, Becker thinks that maybe it wasn't soon enough.
Connor's face is bathed in the glowing light from the computer screen, a blue-green glow that captures Becker's attention. Matt's voice is nothing but a soothing trickle in the background. His arms are crossed over his chest and he can't help trying to deduce every missing second of the past year just by looking at Connor's glazed expression as he works - as if there might be secrets there, as if he might be able to detect them. A year ago, he could never have imagined Connor being able to survive in the past. He had been resourceful, but untrained and undisciplined, a walking disaster.
Now, he's more than that. He's a survivor. A hero.
And Becker can't stop staring.
"I'm starting to get the impression that I don't have your full attention," Matt says, nudging Becker's arm to bring him out of his thoughts. "Am I boring you?"
"Were you going on again about the new toy guns you want to design? If so, you probably were."
"We were talking about your up-coming pay review," Matt says - but the smirk on his face at the widening of Becker's eyes reveals the truth. Matt isn't as good at lying as he thinks he is. "Training with the lads. Pay attention."
Becker nods, expels the air from his lungs, and frowns with concentration. There is more to focus on now. Abby and Connor are back; life goes on.
If he wants to keep said life going on, he needs to pay attention. Lots of it.
*
And then there's an accident.
There is blood and pain and a rush to the hospital. Connor's arm is slashed and bitten, blood leaking out of it faster than they can stop. "Just hold on," Becker instructs, racing through the streets in their car while Abby and Connor are slumped in the back, trying their hardest to keep Connor alive. "It won't be much longer."
All the traffic works against him, red lights and lines of slow-moving cars. Becker clings to the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turn white, the muscles of his arms hard and tense in worry.
"There isn't enough time," Abby says. "The bleeding won't stop."
"I'm fine," Connor says. Slurred and slow, his voice doesn't sound right. He sounds as if he has fallen just out of bed. "It's nothing."
"I know," Abby confirms, soft and gentle even if the thread of panic won't vanish from her voice. "I know, you're fine."
Becker should have been faster. As he's driving, it still plays through his mind: it had all happened too quickly, speeding through in slow motion. They hadn't even known what those creatures were; something from the future, Connor had guessed. Something unknown - and something far more dangerous than they had looked.
They're dead now.
Becker knows that they are supposed to return or capture the creatures, but they had hurt Connor. He hadn't been able to stop firing.
"We're close," he promises. "Just hang on."
Abby relays every promise that she can, all that and more, but Connor is fading out of consciousness by the time they reach the hospital. They're losing him - again - and Becker doesn't know whether he can survive it this time. He's not ready to find out.
*
Despite the blood and the fainting (passing out, Connor insists, which is perfectly acceptable when a future-dinosaur's taken a chunk out of your arm) the doctors only keep him in overnight. He emerges pieced together like Frankenstein's monster, stitches holding his arm together and covered in clean white bandages.
He's put on medical leave, and for once Becker is glad that Lester knows how to be impossibly stubborn; he digs his heels in and doesn't listen to Connor as he pleads to be allowed to come back. Abby takes him home and they don't hear from them for a couple of days - life goes back to normal, almost. It returns to the previous year, a quick reversion, where the guilt had plagued Becker so heavily he couldn't sleep but where he had at least been able to think in a straight line. The pair of them confuse everything. Having them gone, even for a few days, it helps to clear his mind.
Becker goes to work. He goes home. He sleeps. He goes to work.
He doesn't call to check in with their recovering couple. It's for his own sanity as much as theirs.
Yet his eyes snap open at 3AM on the third night of Connor's leave, dreams shattered by the piercing ring of his telephone. His body is in action, getting up and leaping for it while he calculates how long it will take him to get dressed and get to the ARC. They wouldn't be calling if it wasn't an emergency.
When he answers, however, he doesn't have Jess on the other line to give him instructions. It's Abby.
"Becker? Is that you? I didn't know who else to call." Her voice wobbles. He's never heard her like this. "It's Connor. Something's wrong with him."
Becker's heart begins to race, even if his face remains impassive. His peaceful sleep already seems centuries ago. "What is it? Is he alright?"
"I don't - we don't know." In the background, he hears a cry of pain, badly muffled, and Abby's attention is distracted as she soothes Connor, her voice soft like a lullaby even if he can still hear the panic in it. "There was something in the bite."
Poison. The doctors had checked him out, had given him fresh tetnus shots, had given him a clean bill of health, yet here Becker is clinging to his phone and trying to work out what he can do to help. He pins his phone between his ear and his shoulder and rushes from place to place as he gets dressed while he listens.
"Are you taking him to the hospital?"
The silence stretches like solidified awkwardness. "I don't think a hospital could help," Abby admits.
She has a point. Modern medicine has little experience in fighting future poisons, but it's all that they have. The creature is dead. The anomaly is closed.
"The creature," Abby says, before she pauses. He can practically see her biting on her bottom lip. In the background, he can hear Connor cursing, the same words over and over and over. He tries to tie the laces of his boots too quickly and ends up in a confused knot around his fingers. "It was trying to mate when it bit Connor. We think there must have been something in the saliva. Something designed to get the female - you know."
Becker nearly drops the phone.
"What are you saying?" he asks cautiously.
"He's in pain, Becker," Abby says, her voice dropping low. "He needs help. I don't know who else to call."
Becker swallows hard and promises that he'll be there in five minutes. He tells himself that this won't be the weirdest thing that he's ever done for this job, and maybe that's true. The very definition of the word is starting to blur.
*
He barely takes a step into their apartment, let in by Abby still in her pyjamas, before he finds himself pinned against the wall. Connor drops out of view before Becker can catch his breath, kneeling on the floor in front of him with his hands scrambling to pull away Becker's trousers. His face is red and stained with tear-tracks, but it's hard to focus at all when Connor's mouth abruptly engulfs his traitorous cock, already stirring with interest.
He presses his hands against Connor's shoulders, ready to push him backwards, but the pained whine that erupts from Connor's chest is enough to make him stop. It sounds as if he just tried to kick him in the stomach. Uncertain, he stops pushing and tries to hold in the shivering moans that he feels when Connor sucks furiously at his cock.
Looking up, he finds Abby's eyes wide and gazed as she stares down at the top of Connor's head, her hands covering her mouth. "Abby," Becker pants. He's fully hard in Connor's mouth by now, and the violent bobbing of Connor's head makes it almost impossible to keep control - it's been a long time, such a long time, since he's had anything but his own hand on him. This is a practical joke, and a cruel one at that. Burying his fingers into Connor's thick hair, he can barely stop his hands from trembling.
"I don't know," Abby says. "He just - There's something wrong with him."
Connor answers with a long, winding groan around Becker's cock, the vibrations strong enough to steal Becker's breath. His hand tightens in Connor's hair, even though he doesn't mean to let it, even though he doesn't have the right. He doesn't know what's happening here, what he's doing, but there are boundaries: strong ones. Fooling himself into believing that he is here because they want him to be here would be a mistake.
Connor makes several gagging sounds as he swallows him deeper, but he won't pull back. Whatever is driving him now is stronger than his biological gag reflex, and even with tears stinging at his eyes he sucks on Becker with a desperation he usually reserves for battles for his life. Becker bends over, his body contracting as his climax rises - it's going to be over so quickly. Every nerve ignites, and he hunches over until his stomach muscles ache, pushing himself forward into Connor's wet mouth as he comes, spilling down Connor's mouth with a frustrated shout held in check by his clenched teeth.
Leaving Becker to catch his breath and tidy himself up, Connor gets to his feet in record time. His eyes look glazed, his face is flushed and his hair is messier than usual - he looks as if Becker has ruined him, utterly. Without a word he strides to the sink, filling a glass of water and gulping it down as quickly as he can, nearly choking himself in the process.
"What just happened?"
Abby stares at him, then turns her head to look at Connor. Neither of them seem inclined to answer him; there might not be an answer at all. Rubbing his hand across his face, Becker wonders if he's still asleep, if this is simply the most bizarre wet dream that his subconscious could conjure on short notice.
"I think you just got the blowjob of a lifetime, mate," Connor suggests, clinging onto his glass of water like it's a lifeline. There might be a smile on his face, dimples on show, but it doesn't look right, doesn't feel right. "Most blokes wouldn't be complaining right now."
"You were in pain," Becker says. "The bite has done something, hasn't it?"
He can remember Abby's panicked explanation over the phone, but he needs to believe that it is something more realistic than that, more plausible.
"It's fine now. I feel fine. No pain at all." Connor waggles the fingers of one hand at them as if that ought to prove anything at all. "Seriously."
Becker looks towards Abby. She's been silent, but she seems more likely than Connor to be rational about this, to actually give it a second thought. She swallows, and meets Becker's gaze. "Can you stay the night?" she asks. "We can make up the couch."
It's difficult to process that she is asking him to stay in case Connor once more lapses into such uncontrollable pain that only giving head can cure it. Becker decides against trying to process it at all, and instead opts for following orders. He sleeps on the couch with a crick in his neck while Abby and Connor retreat to their bedroom, Abby's hand nervously lingering on Connor's shoulder.
Becker doesn't expect to sleep, his mind too filled with questions and worries, but within an hour his eyes have closed and his breathing has evened out, his thoughts fading to dreams.
Within four hours, however, he is woken up again, wrenched from sleep for the second time that night as Abby shakes him brutally. "Becker. Becker, wake up. It's happening again."
It's difficult to process what she is saying, straight out of sleep, but she yanks him to his feet and he walks with her through the darkened flat as his mind starts to wake up like his body. The sun is starting to rise outside, glowing through the drawn blinds, and he needs to be at the ARC in just a couple of hours.
"Connor?" he says as he enters the room. Abby doesn't follow him inside, lingering in the doorway instead. He wishes she would accompany him; he would feel like less of an invader. Connor is a curled lump on the bed, clutching his stomach while he groans quietly. The duvet is a tangled mound on the ground, kicked brutally away from him. Becker gingerly sits down on the edge of the bed. "Connor, can you hear me?"
"I'm not deaf," Connor sniffs, as petulant as a sick child. It makes Becker swallow an indulgent smile. "Let's just get this over with, alright?"
Becker isn't hard, not at all, but that doesn't stop Connor from crawling over the mattress to reach for his trousers, pulling them open for the second time that night. He leans over, careful with his wounded arm, and takes Becker's limp cock into his mouth with no hesitation, sucking on it sharply with a loud slurping sound. Breath hisses between Becker's teeth in wounded surprise, and he closes his eyes, urges himself to get hard, to get this over with. Connor had felt fine afterwards, last time.
He tries to let his mind transport him elsewhere, tries to picture them like this in another situation: Connor sucking him desperately because he wants to, because he wants him hard enough to be able to take him against the bed and fuck him in abandon. Thinking of how Connor might look if he was doing this willingly, the blood starts to rush where he needs it, responding to a mixture of blind fantasies and the insistent, desperate sucking of Connor's mouth.
If he opens his eyes, he'll find nothing appealing. Like a patient faced with a needle, this is nothing more than an unpleasant medical necessity - and this isn't what Becker had wanted, not ever. He's watched Connor, wanted him, felt those pangs of jealousy when he saw him with Abby, but this isn't right. It feels disgusting.
He tries to push it away, because he has to focus on the wickeder thoughts if he wants this to be over quickly for Connor, but he feels unclean.
By the time they're done, he needs a shower, leaving Abby and Connor in uncomfortable silence as he aims directly for their bathroom.
*
He goes to work and keeps his phone on him at all times, just in case. Abby and Connor are still on medical leave, and he has to admit to being nervous about leaving them alone - and he doesn't get nervous. Not at war, not facing down dinosaurs, and certainly not while waiting to find out if Connor is still infected with a prehistoric poison.
He's called back before lunchtime, so he dashes off with an excuse about sandwiches. He makes it back within half an hour.
"Thanks for bringing food back for the rest of us," Matt mutters sarcastically, with a shove to Becker's arm.
Becker doesn't retort, just apologises and promises that he'll remember next time. His cock, limp in his pants, is distracting and over-worked.
There's another frantic call by mid-afternoon, and this time it's harder to slip away - but he manages it, claiming a stomach ache. "We can't carry on like this," Becker says when they're done, all three of them standing at alternate sides of the room. "It's every four hours now."
"It might calm down soon," Connor says, picking at the corner of his dressing. "We don't know."
"Exactly. We don't know. It's time we got some help."
"What? Shall I just pop down to the Dinosaur Doctor and get him to fix me up? No one's gonna know what to do with this."
Becker shakes his head. "Then we'll find someone who can work it out. Calling me home from work isn't a long-term option. What are we going to do when there's a creature breathing down our necks and you suddenly have to..."
He can't say it. Won't say it. He doesn't think he even knows how to put it into words.
Connor's cheeks are scarlet and he is staring down at his scuffed shoes. "Maybe we're not doing it right," Connor says.
Abby straightens from where she had been slouched against the wall. "What d'you mean?" she asks.
"Well. When it - when it happens, I just..." Connor clears his throat. "It's hard to explain. It's like I need- it inside me. Like that's all I can think about and I know that's what's going to make the pain stop. Nothing else'll do it."
Abby glances towards Becker for a second, and then back to Connor - Becker takes care to leave his face extraordinarily blank. He can already feel his stomach churning.
"So what're you saying?" Abby asks.
The pause that follows is uncomfortable enough to burn his ears, to leave him longing to run somewhere far, far away from this nonsense. Eventually, though, Connor speaks, and Becker's jaw clenches hard. "Maybe it's not, y'know, my mouth I should be using. I mean, you know, maybe it's - maybe I'm supposed to be going further than that. It might last longer if it did."
Becker breathes through his nose as calmly as he is capable of doing, counting every breath and trying to distance his thoughts from his body. If he doesn't do that, he might go mad. He might shout at the pair of them and that isn't fair - this isn't their fault. Connor is the victim here and Becker isn't sure what that makes him, but it definitely doesn't make him the good guy. He isn't the knight in shining armour or the sharp-shooting soldier in this scenario.
"Becker," Abby says, and her voice is drawing him back down to earth even if he needs to stay away. "What do you think?"
"No," he answers, the word spilling out before he can think it through. What is there to think about?
It's no different from what you've already done, one part of his mind whispers, the part that would do anything that it took to protect these two people, the part that would willingly leap into a pit of future predators if that was what was required to keep them safe.
There's another part, a strong part, that revolts at the idea, stomach clenching - because it's not fair, and he's not a toy soldier, and he has feelings even when he wishes he didn't, even when he would be better at his job if he could turn them off.
"Becker - " Connor starts, but Becker shakes his head before he has to listen.
If he listens, he will change his mind; he will break.
He can't do that.
"Please, mate, I'm - I'm actually literally begging you, here." Connor gives a humourless laugh, bitter in a way that Becker has never heard him before. "I know it's not the kind of thing we'd normally do, but this isn't normal. It won't be forever."
Becker thinks that maybe he could laugh too, struck by the sheer, empty oddity of their situation - but his face stays blank. His hands are tucked neatly behind his back, ever the soldier, and he shakes his head. "I won't do it. I'm sorry."
And he is. He is sorry to see the desperation in Connor's eyes and the flickers of betrayal on Abby's face, and he is sorry to be letting them down - but that doesn't stop him from leaving.
He should stay, and he can feel a cowardly tug on his conscience as he keeps his head low and aims for the door, unable to stay and face it. Tactical retreat, he tells himself as he leaves the apartment behind and takes the stairs when the elevator won't come quickly enough. His feet hammer on concrete, and he feels as if he is running from something with sharp teeth and poisonous venom himself.
Coward coward coward.
He makes it half way down the long flights of stairs, to a concrete and bland stairwell, before Connor catches up with him, crashing down the stairs. Becker's muscles strain to run, but he reins himself in - that's one last humiliation that he can try to avoid.
"Becker, mate," Connor says, out of breath from the dash to catch up with him. "Please. I know this sucks, but..."
"Don't," Becker warns him. He holds his hand up between them, because he can't have Connor near him right now.
This is all messing with his head.
"No. I'm sorry, but no," Connor insists. "I'm not leaving. I don't - Becker, I don't have anywhere else to turn. No one else."
They both know that that isn't true. Connor has many directions in which he could turn; friends and colleague and, if it came to that, he could find or hire a stranger. There are a lot of options open here - and every single one of them makes Becker feel ill. He closes his eyes and breathes through his nose. "I can't help," he forces himself to say. He's making this about himself when he knows that it's supposed to be about Connor; Connor is the one suffering from the effects, the one violated. Becker is nothing but a skulking predator. "I can't."
"It's just sex," Connor snaps, voice raising in a way that Becker has never heard from him before. If their positions were reversed, he would guarantee that Connor wouldn't view it this way. "It's nothing, just - just a favour. Why can't you help me out?"
Fine, Becker thinks, Let him see.
He surges forward, hands cupping either side of Connor's face, holding him in place when he flinches backwards, until he can smash their lips together, ugly and violent. He's imagined kissing Connor a thousand times, and it's never been like this, never been bitter enough to make him feel sick. Connor's teeth grit together and Becker releases him after barely a second. "That's why," he pants, stepping backwards and running the back of his hand over his mouth. "Because it's not 'just sex'. Not for me, not with you."
Connor doesn't speak. That in itself is almost enough. Stealing the words from Connor's mouth is an almost impossible task; silence doesn't suit him. It makes him look broken.
Now his eyes are wide with shock and Becker is happy to turn his back on him, scurrying down the rest of the stairs undeterred - like a rat running back to its hole, ashamed, embarrassed and horrified.
You Lose By Holding Back - Part Two