Chapter 6

“You’re all I have left…”

Kipexo slowly blinked his eyes open. The words were familiar, but at first, he didn’t understand why they made his heart beat so hard.

“Erin… please.”

Kipexo sat up abruptly, ripped back his blankets—which earned him a disgruntled hiss from Dex—and hopped down out of his bunk just as Ethan began to sob.

“Ethan,” Kipexo called as he took a knee at his Earthling’s bedside.

Ethan tossed his head and kicked at his blankets as if they meant to suffocate him. “Erin?” He woke with a gasp, and his eyes focused on Kipexo’s face.

“Everything is alright,” Kipexo assured. The boy had already stopped crying, though his cheeks were still wet with the tears he’d shed in his sleep.

“I know,” Ethan replied, groggy and a little breathless but much calmer than he’d ever been after one of his nightmares. “I know. I’m ok.”

Kipexo held him anyway until his breathing was even and he’d stopped shaking. “Do you want me to stay down here for the rest of the night?”

“If you did, you’d wake up stiff and grumpy tomorrow,” Ethan said with a hint of humor in his voice.

“I’m not grumpy,” Kipexo replied, but his tone made Ethan laugh at the irony.

Ethan leaned near Kipexo’s ear. “Can Sam sleep with me again?” he asked in a whisper.

Kipexo smiled through the ache in his gut. “Of course.”

Grolpre was obviously eavesdropping, for no sooner did Kipexo agree to the arrangement than she slid from her bunk and gently peeled back Sam’s blankets.

“Wha…s wrong?” Sam asked sleepily as Grolpre detangled them from their bedding.

“Ethan needs you, dear,” Grolpre said softly.

“Ok,” Sam said dreamily as Grolpre lifted them into her arms.

She brought Sam to Ethan’s bed and tucked them under the blankets Kipexo had already flipped back. Sam immediately rolled over and threw an arm over Ethan’s middle with a deep sigh as they fell right back to sleep.

Ethan looked up at Kipexo with worried eyes. “I wish there was room for you too.”

Kipexo smiled. “We’ll figure something out. Go back to sleep.”

Dex clicked his beak in annoyance at Kipexo when he climbed back into his bunk with the hebin.

“If you don’t like it, find another bed,” Kipexo said moodily.

The hebin snorted, stood, fluffed his feathers and fur at Kipexo, and jumped down to the floor. A moment later, Ethan cooed softly as Dex did just as his master suggested and found a more pleasant bed to sleep in for the night. Kipexo snorted up at the ceiling as he tried not to dwell on how badly he wished he could do the same.

*****

The next morning, the common area was the liveliest it’d been since they boarded the Anamafrid. Apparently, the evening spent chasing each other with lights in the dark had done the humans good. As soon as Kipexo and Ethan walked in, Sara bounded up and handed Ethan a cup of steaming coffee.

“Good morning!” she said cheerfully.

Ethan sipped his drink then raised a brow at her. “You’re in a good mood.”

“We have a hot breakfast this morning.”

“I thought Reethis asked us to only cook for dinner.”

“He and Natalie got us some more power. We can cook two meals a day now. And the best part? Reethis says we’ll almost definitely make it to Fra… Fron…”

“Frohmire,” Kipexo said with a chuckle.

“Yeah, that.”

Ethan blinked in surprise at her over his cup then looked up at Kipexo. “Did you know about this?”

“I knew they were trying,” Kipexo replied. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up in case it didn’t work.”

“Natalie came and announced it to us all first thing this morning,” Sara said. “Everyone cheered. A few of us cried. I’m sorry you missed it.”

Ethan smirked. “I’m not.”

After Grolpre and Sam were off to the showers that morning, Ethan and Kipexo started their day in a much more carnal way. The image of Ethan kneeling between his legs as Kipexo laid in bed that morning, one hand fisted in the Earthling’s hair while he sucked his master’s cock down his throat would no doubt keep Kipexo in a state of semi-arousal all day. He could still taste Ethan’s seed on his tongue from when he’d returned the favor…

“…as soon as we saw you.” Sara was saying something, and she was looking at Kipexo, but he’d been too lost in memories of that morning to hear what she’d said.

“What was that?” Kipexo asked.

“Reethis wants to talk to you,” Ethan said, and the look on his face said he knew exactly where Kipexo’s mind had just wandered.

“Right. I’ll go see him. Are you alright here?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna get some breakfast.”

As soon as he walked into the cockpit, Kipexo noticed the number of red blinking lights across the monitors had dwindled significantly, and it was a shock to see a lopsided smile on Reethis’ scarred face when the captain turned around from his console.

“You got the power supply fixed, I see,” Kipexo said.

“Eh, well enough,” said Reethis. “It’s held together with spit and shit. Walk softly, or it might just up an’ blow on us again.”

“Noted,” Kipexo said with a grin. “The others said you wanted to see me.”

Reethis peered over his shoulder toward the front of the room and called, “Natalie!”

“What?” came a disgruntled reply.

“Go eat,” Reethis barked.

Natalie grunted as she crawled out from under a console across the room. She wiped her hands on a rag as she wandered over, her eyes flicking between the two Raugon.

“Aren’t you coming?” she asked.

“I’ll be along,” Reethis said vaguely.

Natalie narrowed her eyes. “What are you up to, old timer?”

Reethis nodded his head toward the door. “Git.”

Natalie rolled her eyes, tossed her rag aside, and walked out.

Kipexo waited until the door shut behind her before asking, “What’s going on?”

Reethis limped over to a console to his right and called up a hologram. It showed a few star systems and a small blue blinking dot in the deep space between them.

“That’s us,” Reethis said, pointing to the dot. He pressed a button and a sweeping white light shot through the hologram. Another dot lit up, red this time, between the Anamafrid and one of the star systems. “And that’s not.”

Kipexo leaned closer to the hologram. “Is it one of ours?”

Reethis gave him a pointed look then shook his head. “Scans show no identification markers of any kind.”

Kipexo swore, stared at the little dot for a moment, then swore some more. “It’s the Lifreet.”

“That was my guess.”

“What are they doing this far inside our borders?”

“Ya see where they’re at? Ain’t nobody out here to shoo ‘em off.”

“Can they see us?”

“I got us enough power to switch on our cloakin’ shield, but it takes a lot of juice. If we lose any of the supplies, it’ll be the first thing to go.”

“How long until we’re out of their sight?”

“Three days.”

Kipexo stood up straight. “Then we’d better pray your repairs hold that long.”

“Spit and shit, son, remember? Better start your prayin’ now.”

They both went on staring at the little red and blue blinking dots in brooding silence.

*****

In order to keep himself busy and not let on to Ethan that anything was amiss, Kipexo set himself to fixing a different problem altogether: their sleeping arrangements. He’d had enough of lying in the top bunk at night wishing he had Ethan in his arms, so he borrowed a few tools from Reethis, grabbed some rope from the cargo hold, checked that Ethan was engrossed in conversation and games with his friends, and locked himself in their quarters for a few hours.

He stripped the blankets and mattresses off the two top bunks then unscrewed the bolts holding them to the wall, being careful not to damage the hardware so he could return the room to its original state once they had no more use of it. Reethis would never let him hear the end of it if he didn’t. The room was built to the perfect size to allow the two extra beds to squeeze into the space on the floor between the remaining two beds with little more than an inch of play, but since the top bunks had no legs, they sat on the floor, almost two feet lower than the other two beds. To rectify this, Kipexo cut the rope into a half dozen equal lengths and tied one end of each of them to the thick metal frame of Sam’s bed. He ran all three ropes under the two extra beds, twisting them around their frames to keep them secure before tying the other ends of the ropes to Ethan’s bed in the same fashion, creating a makeshift hammock out of the four bedframes.

Kipexo tested his design by flopping down on the middle beds. He even stood up and bounced up and down to be sure the bolts on Sam and Ethan’s beds would hold the extra weight. It all stayed nice and secure. He tossed the mattresses back on the frames to create one long, singular sleeping space. He was just finishing up putting the bedding back on when there was a knock on the door, and at first, he was disappointed that Ethan had found him and ruined the surprise he’d meant to give him that night. When he opened the door, however, it was Grolpre who walked in.

She blinked in surprise as she surveyed the room. “Well, you’ve been busy.”

“What do you think?” Kipexo asked, stepping over and around the tools scattered across the floor.

“Is this to help Ethan or you?”

“Both?”

Grolpre nodded then crossed the room to peek under the beds. “You’ve done this with nothing but ropes?”

“Yes, why?”

“It’s going to sag. We’ll all be constantly rolling toward the middle.”

“I pulled them as tight as I could.”

Grolpre climbed up to stand right in the middle of his creation, and the two middle beds did in fact bow down, almost touching the floor.

Kipexo huffed. “You’re heavier than me.”

“Such a charmer,” Grolpre said with a roll of her eyes. She climbed back down. “Stay here.” She disappeared out the door, and, a few minutes later, he heard her grunting in the hall outside. When he opened the door, he found her lugging one of the long tables from the laundry room. “Here, take this end.”

They managed to maneuver the table into the room, but it took up all of the extra space, and they dented the side of one of the lockers in the process.

“Alright, now what?” Kipexo asked. “It’s too tall to go underneath if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You have a laser cutter, don’t you?”

“You want me to hack up something in Reethis’ ship?”

“Kipexo… it’s a table. You can buy him another one.”

Kipexo chuckled and retrieved the laser cutter. Together, they measured and marked off each leg of the table and cut them so that it fit perfectly under the two middle beds, propping them up from sagging and creating one solid flat bed across the entire room.

Grolpre climbed back up on the beds, which didn’t droop a bit under her weight this time. “There, see? Much better.” She got back down. “Just one last adjustment…” She stripped the colorful bedding from Sam’s mattress and swapped it with the plain ones on the bed that was originally hers. “There. Now the boys can sleep next to each other in the middle while we snuggle with them from the outside.”

Kipexo reached down and picked up the stuffed hebin she dropped as she was swapping the bedding and held it out to her. “Ethan has tried to explain you and Sam’s dynamic to me. I understand the purpose of it, but there’s something he couldn’t answer, if you don’t mind a personal question.”

“If it’s about mating, no, we don’t do that.” She took the hebin and tucked it lovingly into Sam’s bed.

“I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You didn’t. It’s just that… Sam had a rough childhood. This is their way of dealing with that trauma. From what research I was able to do before we left Raug, this isn’t an unheard-of coping mechanism on Earth. Sometimes it includes mating, but Sam doesn’t need that from me as his caregiver. In fact, they are vehemently against it.”

“Because of the trauma?” Kipexo guessed.

“No. They just don’t have any interest in the act. With anyone, not just me.”

“Ever?”

“No. Apparently, there are humans who just… don’t enjoy any form of mating. It’s uncommon, but it happens.”

“I don’t know if I could handle never mating with Ethan.”

“Sam and I don’t see each other that way, so it isn’t an issue. I do love them though, so much.”

“I couldn’t tell,” Kipexo teased.

Grolpre clicked her tongue at him. “Like you aren’t entirely bent to your Earthling’s every will yourself.” She checked the time on her databand. “Speaking of which, Ethan was starting to worry about you before I left. If you don’t want him to come looking for you, we’d better get back.”

They started gathering the tools from the floor.

“Do you plan to stay on Earth with Sam once this is over?” Kipexo asked.

“I don’t know. It will depend on what we find when we get there, I suppose. I worry for Sam’s happiness if they want to stay on Earth and their people tell me I have to go. I don’t want them to have to make that choice between staying without me or being exiled with me.”

“Ethan and I will stay together no matter what. We’ve discussed it at length.”

“I also worry about our Earthlings’ happiness if they’re forced to separate.”

Kipexo nodded. “Me too.”

“Let’s try our best to keep that from happening. Deal?”

Kipexo offered her his hand, and they shook on it.

Grolpre tossed the last few tools into Kipexo’s arms. “Let’s go see what trouble they’ve gotten into while we were away.”

As Kipexo and Grolpre rounded the corner and started down the corridor toward the common area, there came a faint thumping sound that made both Raugon look at each other with a curiously raised brow. They entered the common area and stopped just inside the door at the sight of the humans all on their feet, cheering and laughing and… dancing. Not a body in the room stood still as they moved together in an undulating crowd. Earthen music was playing at an impressive volume throughout the room, and this was obviously a favorite tune amongst the species because, every once in a while, the whole room would collectively belt out the lyrics in sync with the music as if this was some unspoken requirement for just those certain sections of the song.

Kipexo was utterly floored by this behavior.

Beside him, Grolpre laughed.

“Kipexo!” Ethan cried as he spotted his master and detangled himself from Sara, Sam, and Natalie to come to him. “Where have you been? I was starting to worry.”

Kipexo petted Ethan’s hair. “I was just helping Reethis with a project, but we’re done now.” He waved a hand at the room behind Ethan. “What’s all this?”

“Sara and Andrew found a way to charge her cellphone. She has a ton of music on it, and Natalie convinced Reethis to let her hook it up to the loud system. The dancing just sort of happened.”

“Reethis is ok with this?” Kipexo asked in awe.

“Yeah. He’s right over there.”

Ethan pointed to the left side of the room where the captain himself was leaning against the wall with two arms crossed and the third holding his pipe as he smoked and watched the humans around him with none of the disdain Kipexo would’ve expected to see on his face at such frivolity.

“I’ll be damned,” Kipexo muttered to himself.

Ethan took Kipexo’s hand. “Come dance with us!”

“I don’t know how.”

“We’ll show you.”

“Um… I…”

Ethan tugged, refusing to take no for an answer. “Come on!”

Grolpre laughed again. “I have got to see this.”

Kipexo gave her a wicked grin and grabbed her hand. “You’re coming too.”

Grolpre’s eyes widened. “Me?”

Sam must’ve been watching this exchange from across the room because they immediately ran over and took one of Grolpre’s other hands. “Come on, Mistress!”

Reluctantly, both Raugon let their Earthlings tug them across the room to the crowd of dancing humans, who all cheered when they joined them.

Kipexo didn’t have the first clue how to dance like the humans did. It didn’t even seem to make sense. There was no pattern to any of it, though some of them were dancing as couples and were moving in a far more… intimate way. He focused on Ethan as he started to dance again beside Sara, who gave Kipexo a little wave.

“Relax, Commander,” she called above the music. “This is supposed to be fun.”

“This is one way humans deal with tension,” Ethan said, and he put his hands on Kipexo’s hips as he moved his to the beat of the music. “Just follow my lead.”

With gentle pressure, Ethan showed Kipexo how to move under his hands, and though Kipexo felt foolish at first, the music soon changed to something with a slower beat he was able to keep up with better. Ethan laughed happily as they started moving together, and the sound pushed Kipexo to be a little bolder, to sway his hips a little harder and grind them against his Earthling the way the humans around him were doing. Sara and Natalie tugged Grolpre between them and were teaching her their moves in the same fashion. The look of absolute delight on Sam’s face as they watched their mistress made Kipexo smile.

This type of dancing wasn’t anything Kipexo had seen before, and it was far more erotic than he’d anticipated. All the thrusting and rubbing together was making him want to whisk Ethan away to a dark corner, and he had to fight an endless battle in his head to keep his cock in check. It didn’t help that Ethan kept touching him, running his hands across Kipexo’s lower back and ass with zero shame. Kipexo wasn’t about to stop him either. It went on this way for about three songs until one finally came on that was much slower. It sounded familiar.

“Is this that tune you played in the kitchen?” Kipexo asked.

“You remember it?” Ethan asked in surprise.

“Yes. The singer’s voice sounds like an angel.”

“It’s a popular wedding song,” Sara said. She glanced around the room and pouted as the other humans started pairing up. “Of course Andrew isn’t here for a slow dance.”

“I’ll dance with you,” Natalie chimed.

Sara laughed. “Thank you very much, madam.” She bowed and offered Natalie her hand, and they started swaying together like Ethan showed Kipexo the day he first heard human music.

Speaking of which.

Kipexo reached down and hauled Ethan up on his hips, wrapping his two lower arms under the Earthling’s backside and his top two around his back before starting to sway to the music.

Ethan’s beaming smile as he wrapped his arms around his master’s neck made Kipexo’s heart soar. In that smile, there was hope and love and a future Kipexo couldn’t wait to start living, no matter where it took them.

Sam reached up for Grolpre, their hands opening and closing pleadingly until she hauled them up into her arms in the same fashion, holding them tight as they too began to dance. Sam laid their head on Grolpre’s shoulder, and she rocked them softly as she slowly twirled in a circle, completely content with them in her arms. She caught Kipexo’s eye and winked at him. He couldn’t help but smile back.

Maybe dancing was indeed a good way to deal with tension.