Chapter 10

Sol woke from a doze when the door to his room opened. It was either food or Remma, always, and this time it was Remma—more welcome even than food, although Sol hated to think that, because he was still mad at Remma. Remma who had landed him here, trapped in this room to contemplate his eventual demise, which seemed inevitable. Remma who was his only connection to home.

Remma looked wild-eyed. "Is everything okay?" Sol asked.

"Fine. Have you ever been in space in a hardsuit? There's nothing like it to make you confront your own mortality."

"I've never left the moon," Sol said. "So no."

"Count yourself lucky. Anyway, that's over now." Remma sat on the edge of the bed and set his hand on Sol's hip through the blanket. "Sorry to wake you."

"It's not like I need the sleep. I just don't have anything better to do." Sol sat up and rubbed at his eyes. "Was that the job you mentioned?"

"Yeah. It's done now. Successfully. We're off to a nearby system to sell what we got. And then—" Remma hesitated. "Well, I'm hoping back to Mirolasor after that."

"You're hoping," Sol repeated. "Okay. So have you talked to Denna about it or not?"

Remma winced. "Not—precisely. I will. I'm just—afraid, I guess, that I'll say the wrong thing and put him off the idea altogether. This kind of scheming isn't in my skillset."

"Well, if you don't try, then he's definitely going to get sick of feeding me and put me out an airlock. So those are your choices." Sol knew he was being blunt, but he didn't have a lot of sympathy for Remma's equivocating. This whole situation was Remma's fault, and Remma was the only person who could fix it. That was just the way it was.

Remma winced harder. "I know. Okay, I know." He rubbed his big hands over his face. "I'll talk to him tomorrow. Today he's too busy gloating about his success."

"I feel sorry for whoever you robbed," Sol said. "Unless they're also bad people. But I think that's probably not the case."

"You're classifying us as ‘bad people'? Isn't that a little juvenile? It's not like scavenging is morally pure. After all, the owners could always come looking for what they've lost."

Sol glared at him, annoyed to be having this debate again. "It isn't the same at all, and you know it. We aren't robbing people. How many of them did you kill?"

"Zero, thank you. They're all fine and on their way to the nearest station now to cry to system security about the mean Tozren who robbed them."

"You don't have any remorse, do you." Sol drew away from Remma, feeling disgusted and annoyed. "They're just targets to you. Suckers with goods you can steal."

Remma heaved a sigh. "I'm being flippant about it because I'm done with it, okay? When I get you off the ship, I'm leaving, too. Because you're right. It's terrible work, and I'm done with it."

"Oh." Sol eyed him. "So what are you going to do next? Go back to Tozra?"

"I don't know yet. Maybe. I haven't been home in a long time. It would be good to see my family again. Visit my mother."

"Your mother," Sol said. "Are all the—I thought every Tozren I've seen on this ship is male, but maybe I'm wrong about that."

"No, you aren't wrong. You've only seen Tozren males. Our females are aquatic. They're much larger and they never leave the ocean."

"Wow, okay." Sol tried to imagine this. "So they're like—just like you, but bigger? Then why don't they leave the water?"

Remma smiled. "No, they're nothing like males at all. Think of—what are they called, those animals from your Earth, the really big ones that live in the seas?—"

"Whales?" Sol guessed. Earth was far away and largely uninhabited these days, but every human child still learned about their ancestral home. He was pretty sure Remma was talking about whales.

"I think so. That sounds right. Anyway, that's what our females are like."

"That's—okay." Sol had so many questions he didn't know where to start. "So what happens when males are born? Do you just swim to the shore and take care of yourselves from the start?"

"Oh, well." Remma flopped down beside Sol and folded his arms beneath his head, the universal body language of settling in for a story. "No, we're the same as females at birth. We go through a change later on. I guess the human equivalent would be puberty. And at that point we leave the water and join the other males on land." He paused for a moment. "It's hard for us. Leaving. We have to leave our mothers and aunts behind, and all the children. Everything's different on the land."

"Can't you go back and visit them?"

"We can't speak to them anymore. We aren't able to make the sounds. There's technology now that lets us communicate with them, but for most of our past, there wasn't any way. You said goodbye to your mother and that was the last time you ever spoke to her."

"Oh." Sol turned his head to look at Remma's face in profile, somber as he stared up at the ceiling. "That sounds really—sad."

"It was. There's a lot of literature about it. Songs, poems. You can imagine. Even now it's hard. They spend most of the year roaming the oceans and you're never sure where they are. Leaving the water means leaving that life for good."

"No offense, but this sounds like a really strange way to run a society."

Remma laughed. "No stranger than how humans operate. At least we don't eat our mothers the way the !Kerli? do."

"I guess that's true." Sol lay there beside him, thinking about what it would have been like to leave Loden behind at puberty and never speak to her again. "How does your, like—how does your society work when half the population lives in the ocean all the time? Sorry, I'm just trying to wrap my head around what that's like."

"It's really two societies, I suppose. Mothers with aunts and daughters in the seas, and uncles and brothers on land. We don't interact much. The males try to avoid doing anything that will hurt or upset the females, and they don't seem displeased with us. But we don't really consult with them about what we do."

"You don't know who your fathers are?"

"Rarely. When a female wants a baby, she comes near the shore and waits for willing males to wade in and fertilize her. They don't have much use for us otherwise."

"Is that why your cock is so big?" Sol asked, realizing. "So it will fit."

Remma turned his head to smirk at Sol. "Yes. Although I think mine specifically is so big to make you wail."

"I don't wail," Sol said, which only made Remma smirk harder. "Not lately! You still haven't found any lube?—"

"I've been looking! I guess I could try the medical supplies, although that would be embarrassing to explain if anyone caught me."

"Oh no, embarrassment. What could be worse," Sol said dryly. "Although I suppose you don't want to advertise that you're fucking the prisoner."

"Exactly." Remma's smirk had faded. He was just looking at Sol now, serious and searching. "Sol—I'll talk to Denna. I'll do everything I can to get you home."

"I know you will. Let's not talk about it anymore." Sol pushed up onto one elbow and looked down at Remma's strange, familiar face. "I don't want to worry about anything."

"Sorry." Remma reached up to touch Sol's cheek. "Tell me more about how you don't wail."

Sol ignored him. He pulled at Remma's shirt, tugging the hem upward to expose his belly. Only the very top of his slit was visible above the waistband of his pants. Sol touched it, carefully with just his fingertips because he wasn't sure how sensitive it was. He had seen it before, but Remma was always a little cagey about it, and he'd never touched it except incidentally.

Remma watched him in silence as Sol untied the drawstring of his pants and pushed the waistband down, further baring his slit. It was darker than the surrounding skin and the rim was frilled and slightly raised. The skin looked tender to the touch. Sol stroked along it, trying to be gentle, but Remma hissed anyway.

Sol snatched his hand back. "Sorry."

"It's fine. It doesn't hurt. Just sensitive." Remma was still watching him in that heavy, thoughtful way. "You know that's an erogenous zone, right?"

"Erogenous zone. Listen to you. I mean, I figured it probably was. Seeing as how your dick comes out of it. Is it tucked away so it doesn't get nibbled off by a fish?"

Remma laughed. "Probably. Just seems more practical. I've never understood how humans feel okay walking around with all the sensitive bits just dangling there. Aren't you worried you'll sit on it?"

"I've sat on it a few times," Sol admitted. "Never fun."

"See? Just makes a lot more sense to keep everything safely hidden." Remma reached down, not knocking Sol's hand away but directing it, moving his fingers in a slow stroke along the full length of the slit, firmer than Sol might have expected. "Like that. Or whatever you want to do. You can't hurt it."

Sol stroked gently, watching Remma's face for his reaction. The ruffled skin around the slit felt plump and silky. Remma flexed his hips upward into Sol's touch, just the barest bit but an unmistakable lifting beneath Sol's hand. That was good, then, right? Sol touched him again in the same way and Remma sighed a little.

Sol was more curious than aroused, but Remma was obviously enjoying it, and that started getting Sol going, too. He liked watching Remma's face slack with pleasure, and feeling Remma shift beneath his hand.

As he kept going, the slit swelled and darkened, and began to spread apart. Sol dipped his fingers inside and was surprised to find it was slick. He drew his fingers out and sniffed them. The scent was salty and a little piney, a lot like Remma's body odor. There was nothing repellent about it.

Remma was watching him, arms still folded beneath his head.

Hesitantly, Sol licked his fingers. They tasted how they smelled, a little bitter but not bad.

"You don't have to do that," Remma said, reaching up for him.

"I know I don't." Sol pulled his hand out of Remma's reach. "I'm curious. I didn't know it got wet."

"Easier for my dick to slide out that way, I guess. It wouldn't be too comfortable if it were dry." Remma lay back again in the same position. His eyes were lidded in a way that Sol recognized as indicating mild embarrassment. How could he possibly be bashful after all the things they'd done together? It was sweet that he was, a thought Sol pulled away from. He and Remma had fun together, but it wouldn't ever be more than that.

He returned his hand to Remma's slit, thrilled by how it continued to soften at his touch. The interior was dark and gleaming with slick. Sol slid his fingers inside, down to the second joint, and at the bottom he felt something blunt and smooth, the head of Remma's cock.

"Is that it?" he asked, rubbing his fingers against it, and Remma nodded. "Will it come out on its own?"

"Yeah. Just keep—doing that, it'll. Soon." Remma sounded out of breath.

"It doesn't usually take this long," Sol said. "Am I doing something wrong?"

"No. I usually, uh. Push it out before it's really ready."

Sol frowned at him. "Why would you do that?"

"I don't want you to get impatient while you're waiting. Plus I thought—" Remma made a vague gesture with one hand. "I guess I didn't think you'd be very interested in my slit."

"You were trying to keep me from noticing it too much, you mean. You thought I'd be weirded out?"

"Humans don't have one. So I didn't know." Remma grinned, a flash of teeth. "But I'm glad to have been wrong. It feels really good when it comes out on its own."

"So you've been depriving yourself. We can't have that." Sol pulled his fingers out and stroked at Remma's slit, top to bottom, letting his fingers press inside as he went. He wasn't playing around anymore; he wanted to watch Remma's face as his cock slid out, to see Remma's face go loose and open with pleasure.

Remma's slit parted further as Sol teased at it. Inside, Sol could see Remma's cock emerging. Remma grunted, then drew in a sharp breath, and in one smooth glide his cock slid all the way out to rest hard and heavy on his stomach.

Sol drew in a breath of his own. Looking at Remma's cock always made him think of being fucked by it: how big it was, how deep it went in his body. That was off the table now, with no lube on hand, but he was tingling anyway, hard in his own pants and eager for whatever he could get.

He sat up and straddled Remma's hips. Remma's cock looked obscene, the root framed by the dark opening of his slit, the head dragging against the bottom of his ribs.

"You're hard," Remma said. He fumbled with the tie of Sol's pants, picking at the knot with the tips of his claws.

Sol pushed his hands away and did it himself. "Of course I'm hard. Are you kidding? You're just really—" He couldn't think of the right word. He liked Remma more than he wanted to. It would be hard saying goodbye to him if he ever got off this ship and went home.

He didn't want to think about any of that.

He pushed his pants down far enough to get his dick out. Remma was watching him with a hungry look, gaze focused on Sol's crotch like his puny human cock was anything worth getting excited about. Maybe it was just the novelty.

"Find some lube," Sol said. "Or oil. We can get creative."

"You aren't food," Remma said. "My delicious roasted fish. My crispy potato."

"You aren't funny," Sol said, even though he was grinning, because he loved it when Remma was playful with him. He couldn't help it.

"Then come here and shut me up," Remma said, reaching for him.

Sol went.

Pressing their cocks together was enough to make him moan. The feeling of Remma's body against him, so warm and so much bigger, had his toes curling against the sheets. He reached down to feel the shape of Remma's cock beneath his own—how small his own was in comparison, almost embarrassing but in a way that always turned him on. He liked feeling small next to Remma and didn't want to think too hard about what that meant.

Remma's hands settled on his hips. "You doing the work?"

"Someone has to," Sol said, and began to move.

As slick as Remma was, it was a sweet, easy slide. Sol was shocked by how good it felt to rub their cocks together. He was more aroused than he had realized, maybe, or maybe he had just been missing out all this time, so focused on getting Remma inside him. Other things were good, too, and this was great: rolling his hips to rub himself off on the rigid length of Remma beneath him, feeling Remma's body shift and flex against his own, both of them breathing hard.

"You're incredible," Remma said. His hands slid over Sol's ass, claw tips gently teasing at the crease. Sol knew Remma would never hurt him, but the implied threat of violence never failed to make him shiver. He pressed back into the touch, wanting more even though he couldn't have more; more would hurt him. He wanted it anyway.

He rubbed off against Remma in a slow, heated glide. He didn't remember Remma being wet like this in the past, and maybe that was because Remma had forced himself out early, before he was completely ready. Sol liked how slick he was—like he was wet because Sol had been patient and gotten him ready.

"I could come right now," Remma said, eyes closed. "At this exact moment."

Sol grinned down at him, feeling soft and foolish. "Already? Poor stamina."

"It's not—that quick. And besides—" Remma dragged his eyes open. They looked very dark. "How can I hold out when I've got you on top of me and doing that?"

"Good point," Sol said, feeling pretty breathless himself. "Well. Go on and do it, then," and he watched every flicker of Remma's expressions as Remma rolled his hips up and up and came with a heartfelt groan.

No need to draw things out. Sol let go, too, and it was so good; it was the best he'd ever had.