Chapter 4

4

“It looks like a planet.”

It even has rings. The “planet” part is clearly metallic, and for some reason lit up on the outside. I mean, we’re in space—why would they put lights on the outside?

“Well, maybe a moon is more accurate.”

We pass through the wall of the space station and come to a stop in what looks like a commons or a promenade. There's something like a street fair going on—I bet it’s like a farmer’s market but for space travelers.

“You talk to yourself more than anyone I know.” Darcy’s voice doesn’t stop me from examining as many of the stalls as I can.

“Yeah, my inside thoughts become outside thoughts more than I want,” I admit. “Where is this place? It feels like it would be hard to hide a whole space station from people who look at the solar system as much as we do.”

Darcy chuckles, and the deep, resonant sound hits me in the dick. I really need to get away from him, or possibly get laid by him. No. I have terrible taste in men. “Resist, Elijah.”

Darcy cocks his head to the side, thinking for a moment before replying. “We’re orbiting the sun in the space between the asteroid belt and Jupiter, and the space station is cloaked from humans by magical interference.”

Good to know. There are a lot of aliens here, and I think me and Darcy might be the only ones who look/are human. I don’t know if Darcy’s human or other. That’s a good question to ask, though.

“Are you human?”

Darcy scrunches up his face in disgust. “I look human, and I might have some relationship to humans, but I definitely ain’t the same species as you.”

I nod a couple times. “Yeah, I didn’t think you were, what with all the magic.”

Darcy gives me a strange look accompanied by a weird half smile. Then that fucker steps off the light-platform, and it immediately disappears from beneath me. I drop, stumbling at the sudden change in elevation, but his quick reflexes save me from falling on my ass as he grabs me around the waist and steadies me so I can get my legs back under me.

“A little warning next time, dude.” It’s just polite.

Darcy snorts. “Sure. C’mon, punkin. Let’s take this baby back to their parents.”

I can’t argue with that, but hopefully the baby isn’t so attached that they won’t go to their parents and keep me like Darcy seems to think might happen.

“Look at you!” a yellow alien with orange stripes says, jumping in front of me. They have a tail and what looks like several sets of breasts under a tan shirt. Their pants are high waters, showing off clawed feet that are probably useful for gripping tree branches (they look like bird feet with the foreclaws and hind claws but more mammalian). “You’re a human! You even smell human!”

“Is it polite to go around sniffing people?” I ask curiously. “I don’t mind; I’m just asking.”

“We estari rely on our sense of smell, and it’s impossible not to smell everyone anyway, so yes. It’s totally polite to scent your neighbors,” the alien replies easily.

“Nice. I don’t have that kind of sense. In human culture, it’s rude to stink things up with body odor or with cologne. There’s a happy medium in there, but people who smell strongly enough to be scented from more than a foot away are considered problematic. Or old. A lot of old people use too much perfume.”

The alien opens their mouth to reply, but Darcy interrupts. “This is my human, and he has a baby flink in his hair whose parents are anxiously awaiting their return. Get out of my way.”

The alien sniffs at Darcy, announcing as they walk back to their stall, “Come see me when you’ve ditched the blood witch.”

“Since he’s my ride home, I’m not sure I’m going to see you again,” I reply, following Darcy along again.

Darcy glances at me over his shoulder. “Anyone here could get you back to Earth. I ain’t yer nothing.”

“Well, you brought me here; that sort of makes you responsible for my return.”

“I ain’t taking responsibility for anyone but myself and the people I’m paid to be responsible for.”

I don’t have much in the way of cash, but I reach into my pocket and pull out the quarter I keep there just in case I need one. I hold it out in front of him. “Here.”

His face does a lot of speaking as he takes the quarter, and most of what it’s saying is not at all polite. “What’s this for?”

“I’m paying you all the money I have on me to get me back to my apartment. Well, as close as possible, anyway. I’ll be happy if you get me in the same city.” I have my wallet in my pocket since I hadn’t had time to really do much before the flink jumped me, so at least I have my MetroCard.

Darcy looks at the quarter, raises his brow at me, and then pockets it. “Usually I charge more than this.”

I smile at the way the corners of his lips turn up. “That's all I have. I have a little cookie jar with some cash saved up if you want that when we get back to my apartment.”

The space station's lights go out and the next thing I know, a clap of thunder brings me to a beach overlooking a gorgeous orange ocean or very large lake, while the wind breezes through my hair and smells like ozone.

“ Chirrup! ”

“Oh sweet baby, did you not like the space station? We were almost to your parents.”

“ Chirrup! ”

I glance around as the baby’s arms strangle me a bit. There are other people on the beach. Not human people, but they’re wearing clothing and have umbrellas, so they’re people of an alien species. They’re all varying shades of blue—not blue -blue, but gemstone blue. They even shine a bit, like they all have little sapphires in their skin. Well, some of them have aquamarine and tourmaline skin sparkles. Their eyes vary as much as human eye color does—brown, black, pink, orange—and they’re all about human size with stubbier arms than we have but extremely strong and thick legs. Their toes are all as long as fingers, and they use them as much as they use their hands (which have three fingers and a thumb, same as their feet).

They all look very surprised and a little freaked out to see me. I don’t blame them for that; I’d freak out if some random alien just popped in for a visit during my beach day.

“What is it?” one of the closer ones asks their neighbor.

“I don’t usually get mis-gendered, because I’m pretty clearly a cis dude, but if you’re looking for pronouns, I use he/them. Also, my name’s Elijah. Some people call me Eli. It’s not my favorite, though.”

“It talks!” another one exclaims.

“No, no, my pronouns are he/they . Do you know pronouns?”

“Excuse me, we know what pronouns are—I, you, it, we, them—but we don’t know what you mean when you say he/they—those words are foreign to us.”

“Oh, so it’s like a language translation thing—huh. I guess you’re not actually speaking my language.”

“You’re speaking ours,” the person replies. “Well, an antiquated version of it, anyway.”

“Cool. Must be a magic translation, then. Sorry about that. I’m just here as a place for the baby to cling,” I explain, indicating the flink.

“What is it?” The brave alien asks, taking a curious step forward.

“Don’t approach it! It could have disease!” That comes from one of its companions.

I shrug, “Yeah, I could totally be contaminating your world with Earth germs. Sorry about that. It’s my first time—”

I, along with all the people around me, suddenly jump out of my skin at the appearance of Darcy holding hands with a giant stone gray person with wings like that 90’s cartoon Gargoyles . (I streamed it once when I was in my classic cartoon phase.)

“Baby Chirrup ! You will take him back to the space station and back to your parents right now!” Darcy sounds a tiny bit miffed (pissed to hell). “Or I'm going to bleed your parents dry.”

I don’t think he means that literally, but the next thing I know, I’m in a room with a bunch of potted trees and two very anxious-looking flinks about the size of large housecats. One has burnt orange fur the same color as the University of Texas’s orange and huge blue eyes the color of a winter sky. The other one has yellow fur like a dandelion and eyes so gold I’d swear they were made from the precious metal. Their prehensile tails are wrapped around each other, and they’re doing the villain rub thing with their hands.

“Hi,” I say, waving weirdly.

It’s my first time planet hopping and meeting aliens, so I give myself some cool points even if I’m good at awkward first impressions. I probably shouldn’t be the first contact person for the human race, but hopefully this being a space station in the same solar system as Earth means that I’m not everyone’s first human.

The flinks start chirping very quickly, and then the baby flink chirps back. The adults decide they aren’t going to take back talk and start going at it faster and louder, but the baby is a baby and doesn’t mind screaming in my ear.

Darcy appears with the gargoyle person again during this heated conversation and joins the fray. Instead of speaking English, he also starts chirping, which is pretty cool. I don’t think I can do that with my vocal cords, but he isn’t human so I guess his vocal range is more diverse. That’s nice, and even when he’s chirping like that, his voice is still sexy as hell. I’ve really got to get away from him before sexy as hell turns into oops I fell on his cock.

I look away and pretend to be a couch, which is basically my function until this baby flink gets off me. Maybe the better term is one of those things you can put pre-walking kids into. They sit in a fabric diaper-looking seat thing that’s held in a frame that has wheels so they can roll around in it. I don’t have kids so I don’t know what those things are called, but I can’t imagine them being called anything but a walker. A baby walker. Or maybe a baby buggy. Stroller? When I was a baby I had one of those jumpy-swing things that hangs in the doorway. It—well, let's just say if I ever have kids, I won’t be getting them one of those.

The gargoyle person and I catch each other’s eyes. They’re oddly dressed, wearing furry pants with a pan flute hanging off their belt. They shoot me a saucy little wink. “Well, aren’t you cute as a button,” they murmur, stepping in close so we don’t interrupt the argument happening around us.

Oh, I heard them, which means the baby stopped screaming in my ear.

The whole argument stops, and the baby flink jumps off me to one of their parents, who catches them and holds them close, rubbing their cheeks together. It’s adorable.

“Out, now. Hurry,” Darcy barks, grabbing my wrist and pulling me to the door. We exit quickly, leaving the gargoyle person behind, and Darcy shuts the door, then he points to the next door. We’re in an antechamber type of place, and through the next door is the main corridor. I step out, trying to keep my stares at all the unique aliens walking past as surreptitious as possible. It’s like being on a Star Trek space station but better, because the aliens aren’t all humans dressed up like aliens. There’s a lot more variety than that.

Darcy grabs my wrist again and starts walking me down the corridor. “I’ve got to get paid, and then I’ll return you to your apartment,” he explains.

I sigh. The most interesting thing to ever happen to me is almost over. “Sounds good.”

He side-eyes me. “I’m good at reading people. I have more charisma in my pinky on any given day than most people have over the course of their entire lives. I have talked a harpy out of her britches, and you don’t even know what an accomplishment that is—harpy’s are notorious misandrists.”

“It’s good you know your skills and value them. A lot of people don’t get how important self worth is. They get stuck on being humble and forget that they’re really cool and have awesome skills, ya know? Good on you.”

Confidence is sexy, isn’t it? I think I’m aware I’m losing the battle against my libido, but I can still deny it. Denial is a powerful tool for not doing foolish things you want to do, unless you’re like me and are really bad at denying yourself the little joys in life, like a romp in the sack with a sexy man.

He stops in the middle of the corridor to gape at me like I’ve said something weird. (I haven’t.) Surprisingly, no one runs into us. They’re all giving him a wide berth, which makes me suspicious that maybe he’s charismatic in the way evil villains are. Like everyone likes Doofenshmirtz even though he’s the CEO of Evil Incorporated—ugh, now I have that ditty stuck in my head. “Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated.” IFYKYK.

Darcy recovers from whatever stopped him in his tracks. (I was not being weird.) “I ain’t finished,” he informs me with a stern look.

I wave for him to go on, because I really shouldn’t open my mouth if his stern expression is going to make me think of kinks I didn’t think I had before now.

“All that charisma, all that intelligence, all that experience in reading people, and I ain’t never met no one who’d take the realm hopping you just did like it was a cool vacation from real life and then go back to their boring ass apartment like their entire paradigm ain’t shifted. You’re the strangest human I ever met, and I been forcibly adopted by Romily Butcher.”

I don’t know Romily so I don’t know if he’s strange or kooky or whatever, but “Taking things at face value and not getting worked up about it is my trauma response. I don’t need to put a bunch of energy into worrying about things I can’t control, ya know. I save that for things that I can control. Like whether I should buy a hamburger or if I should make my own at home. That’s the question. Should I take off my pants or should I go out again? Because once the pants come off, I’m not leaving the house again that day even if it's only ten a.m., ya know?”

Darcy doesn’t look like he knows.

“I once killed a banshee with a single drop of blood,” he says apropos of nothing. “I think that was the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

“So banshees exist.” Awesome. I’m down for that. Harpies too. I’m not surprised they don’t like men, and Darcy seducing one does seem like quite the accomplishment now that I’m thinking about it. “What exactly does it take to get in your pants?” They’re nice pants. I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but he prefers skinny jeans that don’t exactly hide his enormous cock and balls. His private parts aren’t exactly private, if you know what I mean. That’s probably why I’m struggling with the whole don’t-touch-the-guy-who-kills-people thing.

Honestly, that’s been a life-long struggle.

Darcy doesn’t answer the pants question and instead starts walking again. I follow, staring at his ass—it’s pretty safe to do that. Otherwise I’d be staring at his dick-print, and doing so for too long would make my dick start to chub up. My ass flinches at the thought of sex with Darcy like it might hate me if I try. Seriously, I’ve seen men’s forearms smaller than his dick. I’ve had men’s forearms in my ass that are smaller than his dick—

It was one time, and I almost regretted it afterward. I put this thing on a hookup app asking if anyone wanted to fist me because I was in my experimental phase, you know? All the responses were scary (forearms bigger than my bicep, and giant fucking hands) except this one guy, who came over and did me right. It was fun—until he came back the next day uninvited. Then I started seeing him all over the place, and it got weird. I moved after that and stopped seeing him, so that was good. I can remember the experience with fondness now that I don’t see him everywhere I go.

Anyway. Darcy’s ass—and I guess aliens too. It says a lot about Darcy’s ass that I stopped looking at the aliens for a minute.

“Do you ever have sex with men?” I don’t know why that popped out of my mouth.

“As often as I have sex with women—maybe more,” he answers with a glance behind him and a smirk.

Ok, I know exactly why it popped out of my mouth. “Maybe we should get naked together after this,” I suggest, because I clearly have no self-preservation. Darcy is still covered in blood from the people in Hell he probably killed, and I should probably take that into consideration. “No, nevermind. I have terrible taste in men, and I feel like having sex with you would be a mistake for my health and well-being.”

Darcy chuckles under his breath, shaking his head as he comes to a door that leads into what looks like a bank. Bank design must be a universal thing, or it’s possible that human architecture is in vogue with alien space stations.

“I’ll pass,” he says with another laugh.

That’s fine. I rejected the idea first anyway. It’d be stupid to get my underoos in a twist about him not wanting to sex me up when I changed my mind immediately after proposing it.

“Maybe when I’m in a healthier mental-emotional place.”

Darcy leaves me in the waiting area and walks right up to one of the bankers, getting straight to business. I can’t hear him, almost like there’s some kind of sound protection around the teller’s desk, which makes the bank eerily quiet.

Is it just me or do all banks, regardless of the decibel level in them, have this creepy air of mystery? When you go into a bank, do you wonder how much money is in the same building as you and if anyone has ever tried to steal it, and then you think about what would happen if there was a bank robbery while you’re in it? You know nothing is going to happen, but it's the one place you go where you think it could.

Banks are strange, creepy places. I bet a horror film set in a bank would be a blockbuster. I know I’m not the only one who thinks about these things when they’re in banks.