Jason pressed a hand against the shower wall while hot water cascaded over him.

If he were someone else, he imagined this might have been the moment where he asked what the hell he was doing here? How he had messed up so bad? If he was going to make it.

Spending a good half hour being lambasted by a giant overbearing purple alien could do that to a person.

Fortunately, he wasn’t just anyone else. He was Jason Linford. He’d survived his dad’s bullshit for sixteen years. He could survive this. Had he fucked up? Definitely. All was not lost though. His engineering degree was on hold, certainly, but he just had to make it through his mandatory five year term of service and he’d be back on track. It was just like his professor used to say: You find one problem. You find a solution. Then you move onto the next. Rinse and repeat until you get the solution you want.

Sure, the woman had been talking about designing plasma manifolds at the time – and been a Shil’vati herself, one of the few civilians on the planet – but the advice was just as applicable to his current situation as it was plasma manifolds.

So right now all he had to do was get showered, unpack his kit, and get into his bunk. One task at a time. That was all it was.

Shutting off the shower, he wrapped himself in a towel and stepped out. Now he just needed to-

“Is that a guy?”

Jason froze in the act of slinging his new duffle bag over his shoulder.

Boobs. Big purple boobs. And aliens. A good dozen aliens. Sweaty aliens with shiny purple skin. All in the middle of getting changed.

Shit.

“He’s a human!” another called. “I didn’t know they were even letting them off Earth yet.”

“Earth?”

“It’s that planet full of hot guys.” One of them laughed. “Have you been living under a rock?”

“She’s from the Reaches, so she might as well have been.”

They all laughed, which finally prompted Jason into motion as he jerkily started walking towards his bunk, head high, with a feigned calm he very much didn’t feel. He couldn’t afford to show weakness. Not now. He could feel a room full of gazes burning into him.

Voice three protested as he walked. “I just don’t watch the news much.”

“Or browse the data-net apparently.”

Jason had never imagined what it would be like for a cheerleader to walk out of the showers into a locker room full of football jocks. It wasn’t really a hypothetical that came up much in his day to day.

“Hmmm, he could lose that towel. I wouldn’t mind licking him dry.”

He could well imagine it now though as he slung his duffel onto his assigned bunk.

It was kind of funny. Thus far he hadn’t been bothered by the constant leering of the aliens. He hadn’t really even thought of it as such. A human woman might have, but for most guys it was just so…odd for them that it was more novel or exciting than uncomfortable.

He felt uncomfortable now though. Boy, did he ever. Especially as he realized he was going to have to strip off the towel to get changed into his recently issued night clothes. It was like that classic dream where you went to school in your underwear, only cranked up to eleven.

Nothing for it, he thought, hands reaching for the towel around his waist, ignoring the excited jeering coming from behind him. It was just a little nudity. He could deal.

He was just about to go for the final tug when he felt as much as heard someone shuffle into place behind him.

“Oh, come on, Tarcil!”

A Shil’vati, a male, had moved into place behind him, holding up a towel to cover him from the gazes of the rest of the room. The fabric wasn’t quite large enough to provide him with full cover, but it at least provided Jason with some semblance of modesty.

“You can’t do that!” one of the females, with quite striking white hair, cried. “We’re all going to be living together. He’s going to have to get used to it!”

Jason couldn’t see the other male’s expression, but the alien’s disdain practically radiated from his back.

“He will, Freyxh,” the male said in a surprisingly soft voice, “but hopefully the next time either of us feels the need to change, it will be in a situation where the rest of you can show even the barest hint of professionalism and civility. Honestly, what would your fathers think?”

To be honest, Jason wasn’t entirely sure if the alien’s defense of his modesty was any less embarrassing than if he’d just exposed all. He wasn’t some shrinking violet. Still, he couldn’t deny a blossoming sense of gratitude to the male who continued to hold the towel in place as he quickly slipped into his night clothes.

Especially as the catcalling died down and the other aliens returned to their own wardrobe swaps, slightly chagrined. Sure, plenty of them were still looking, but they were at least being surreptitious about it now, which he could easily live with.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said as he finally slipped a shirt over his head.

“We’re guys,” the Shil’vati said simply, turning around with a tiny smirk. “We’ve got to stick together or these animals will eat us alive.” The alien’s eyes roamed up and down Jason’s form. “Even if I’m purple and you’re pink.”

Jason couldn’t help but smile. “I’m Jason.”

He went to extend a hand, only to pause when he realized that the alien would have no clue what that meant. Instead, he extended a fist, to make the fist-bump equivalent the Shil’vati did. Which the male promptly bumped with a small smile.

“Tarcil.”

-----------------

“Loop again, human.”

Jason could well appreciate that he presented something of a logistical problem for the drill instructors in charge of their fitness.

The training cadre ran as a single unit, after all. Essentially a large blob of runners with a sergeant at the front making sure the fitter specimens didn’t get too far ahead and a DI at the back to harangue the slackers.

“And again, human.”

The issue lay in the fact that said approach involved the DIs running with them. Usually not a problem, given that they were the drill instructors involved in physical education and thus very fit.

“And again, human.”

…Just not human fit. Which was why Jason was reasonably sure he might die in the next few minutes.

“Hang in there, Jason,” Tarcil called from within the pack of runners.

A kind gesture given that the alien looked about to collapse himself, which made him little different from anyone else within their training cadre. None of the sergeants censured him for his words either, which made sense given that they were trying to foster a sense of teamwork and camaraderie within the recruits. Encouraging each other was a part of that.

“You can do it, human!” one of the females called out. Raisha, if he remembered correctly.

“Go, human!” called another whose name he completely spaced on. The older one.

“Again, human,” the drill sergeant said, her voice cutting through the others.

The drill instructors tore people down and the recruits built each other back up, forming bonds between themselves in the process. Simple and surprisingly effective, given that Jason felt like hugging the small alien for just a few words of encouragement.

…Insidiously effective.

Of course, his current situation meant that, for his part, he could barely wave a hand in acknowledgement of his friend’s words, all the while cursing the sergeants within the safety of his mind.

Their solution to the ‘human problem’ was as simple as it was elegant. Every time he reached the front of the group, he was to move to the back again and work his way up. He also couldn’t feign fatigue either, because the aliens were watching him just as much as any other recruit. And while they might not have been familiar with his species, they were intimately familiar with sniffing out recruits who were ‘phoning it in.’

Jason needed to have only attempted it once to have learnt that lesson. Trying to get out of work just resulted in you doing it anyway, in addition to whatever punishment you received for trying to avoid it.

“Recruits, halt!” the DI at the lead of the formation called out, prompting everyone to stop.

In the first few days a lot of them had collapsed at that point before the habit was lambasted out of them. Apparently, if they were to be Imperial Marines, they needed to present themselves with poise and decorum at all moments, not go to pieces after a ‘little jog.’

Which was why everyone remained standing as straight backed as they could be while simultaneously trying not to cough up a lung.

“Get down and give me thirty,” the sergeant called. “Males have twenty.”

Immediately everyone got down onto their fronts and began performing pushups, heedless of the way the mud stuck to the front of their exercise clothes. The sensation was decidedly unpleasant, but paled in comparison to the punishment they might receive if they weren’t quite fast enough to do as they were told.

Imperial Marines moved with purpose, after all.

The fact that the Shil’vati had pushups had initially bemused Jason given that humans did them, too. Of course, just like he had back in that Shil’vati gym on Earth – which felt like an eternity ago – he realized that similar body shapes naturally gave rise to similar exercises. There was only so much you could do with two arms, two legs and a head after all.

“Come on recruits, I know your arms aren’t tired! You’ve been running all morning. That means your arms are still fresh!” the DI growled as she went up and down the line, keeping a wary eye out for anyone’s whose form wasn’t proper, or worse, wasn’t giving every effort. Something she’d invariably find, so it paid to be the recruit not giving the least amount of effort.

“Move it, human! If that’s the extent of human fighting spirit, it’s no wonder conquering your dreary little mudball was so laughably easy.”

Jason might have taken the DI’s taunts a little more personally if her compatriot wasn’t a few meters away lambasting Adrilla for being a ‘worthless colonial bumpkin.’ They said what they had to in order to get a rise of people. Whether it was an attempt to instill self-control or just a means to coax some extra effort out of recruits, he didn’t know.

What he did know was that it worked.

Spite, as it turned out, was a powerful motivator.

“That’s more like it,” the DI shouted from right next to him. “Move those weedy little arms a little more and you might be good for something other than shaking your ass in a dingy bar.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The whole gender reversal thing was still a real mindfuck though. It seemed to piss off Tarcil when the sergeants brought up his gender – or at least, got the alien as close to riled as he got - but for Jason it was more…amusing than anything else, which the instructors seemed to have realized given that they’d started focusing more on his race than his gender, but occasionally a comment slipped through.

“That’s enough of a rest, recruits. Everyone up!” the sergeant bellowed, forcing Jason to clamber to his feet on aching arms. “I want everyone back at the dorms and changed into fatigues for drill practice in thirty minutes – and may the Empress have mercy on anyone who isn’t standing out front the dorm in formation within that time, for I shall not.”

Taking a fortifying breath, Jason started jogging with the rest of the recruits back to the dorm. Given that it had taken them twenty-five minutes to get out here, the thirty minute timer was more malicious than generous.

------

“You know you’re just going to rile them up, right?”

Jason rolled his eyes at his fellow male as he slipped into a pair of standard issue sleeping shorts and deliberately disdained the shirt.

“I’m hot,” he explained as he shut his locker. He wasn’t ignorant to the glances being sent his way, but so long as no one started hooting or outright leering, he could deal. “Shil’vati like it hotter than humans do and I’m sweating my ass off here.”

“Ok,” Tarcil conceded. “That’s your choice. Don’t say I didn’t warn you though.”

The alien had already explained that part of the initial excitement of his emergence from the shower had been that Shil’vati men typically wore a towel around the chest, like a woman covering her breasts. To not do so could be seen as an…invitation.

Which didn’t make much sense, as breasts on males weren’t a secondary sexual characteristic. More than that, Tarcil hadn’t been able to explain why it was lewd, only that it was.

Well Jason wasn’t a Shil’vati, and human men went bare chested all they wanted. It was humid as hell on this planet. He was going to go without a shirt within the dorm.

He didn’t know why that was so important to him, only that it was. Some psychologist might have said a few words about him asserting ownership of his sexuality, but as far as he was concerned, it was more a matter of not letting a bunch of horny aliens decide what did and didn’t make him feel comfortable.

Besides, there was nothing in the rulebook about it. They could walk around nude within the dorm if they wanted to, so long as they did so outside of duty hours.

Which it currently was, which might imply they currently had free time in the brief hour and a half between their evening meal and lights out.

That would be wrong. There were a hundred smaller tasks that a recruit had to do that weren’t ‘official’ activities throughout the day: cleaning clothes, cleaning bedding, cleaning the dorm, studying…the list went on and on.

“I’m going to go throw my laundry into the machines,” Jason said. “You got anything you want to throw in, too?”

The alien shook his head from his position on the top bunk, a Rules and Regulations handbook held in his hands. “I put mine in this morning before inspection. If you could pull it out, that would be helpful. It’s machine three.”

“Got it,” Jason said as he slung his washing bag over his shoulder. He turned to leave down the hall towards the dorm’s small laundry room when someone fell in beside him.

“Saw you were going to do some laundry and I figured I’d join you,” a Shil’vati said to him, hefting her own much larger bag of clothes.

“That’s fine,” Jason said as he continued down the hall. “Raisha, right?”

Truth be told, he hadn’t interacted much with the rest of the training cadre. Oh, they’d certainly all worked together, but exercising or performing drills while an angry sergeant yelled over all of them wasn’t exactly conversation. Those few conversations he had been able to have had been with Tarcil during the brief reprieve that was mealtimes.

“Yeah,” the alien said. “I’m surprised you remembered.”

“I try.”

He at least knew most everyone’s names now. The alternative was to say, ‘hey you’ during team exercises and that wasn’t just awkward, it was largely ineffective.

The two reached the laundry room and the pair started to stuff their respective clothes into different machines. The machines were both washers and dryers which, combined with the tight confines, made the room not just hot but humid as well. Which only vindicated Jason’s choice to stick to just a pair of pants. He’d be roasting otherwise.

“I’ve got to be honest, when I signed up to become a Marine, I didn’t expect one of the first things I’d learn would be how to wash clothes,” Raisha said as she shut the washing machine’s hatch. “Dad did it all when I was at home.”

Jason almost shuddered. A Shil’vati family unit had about eight females and one male. Assuming one child per female, that was seventeen people’s worth of laundry.

“Laundry wasn’t exactly high on my expectations list either,” he said as he shut the hatch to his own machine. “I lived alone though, so it wasn’t like I didn’t already know how to do it.”

Raisha cocked her head. “You lived alone?”

Jason wiped a stray band of sweat from his forehead. “That uncommon for Shil’vati?”

She shook her head. “For girls, not at all. Most of us are desperate to get out of the house when we come of age to go anywhere. How do you think I ended up here?” She frowned a little. “Guys though? Not so much. It’s not, like, a rule or anything, but most of them stay in the family home until they get serious enough about some suitors to move in with them…or something.”

Jason could kind of see that. With how few males there were, the massive size and power disparity they had to females and the fact that traditionally the males were the gatekeepers when it came to sex, he could well imagine that one living alone might be seen as…vulnerable.

“So…uh, you want to…have sex?”

Jason almost got tonal whiplash from how quickly the conversation changed course.

“What?” he deadpanned.

“We don’t have to do it here, of course,” Raisha stammered, her purple hue taking on a slightly blue shade as she blushed. “We could probably sneak into the male bathrooms or something. Tarcil’s the only other guy in the dorms and he probably won’t wander in.”

“No, no,” Jason said as he held up his arms. “How did we go from a conversation about laundry to a quickie in the toilets?”

“Well…I thought….” she trailed off before gesturing vaguely at him. “You’re not wearing a shirt!”

“It’s hot!” he didn’t quite shout back.

“So!?”

“I want to be less hot.” Even as he said it, he could see Tarcil smirking at him within his mind.

“Turox shit,” Raisha said indignantly. “You can’t just…flounce around without a top on and not expect a girl to get the wrong idea.”

Jason crossed his arms over his chest, deliberately hiding his nipples – which was a ridiculous thing for him to have to cover up. “That sounds like a you problem, not a me problem.”

“That’s…that’s…you tease!”

“I ain’t teasing shit,” he responded. “I’m fucking hot. That’s all there is to it.”

He was aware he was being deliberately obtuse. He just didn’t fucking care. He’d put up with a lot of bullshit over the past few weeks. Him not wearing a shirt was his small act of defiance to this crazed alien race and he was not giving it up.

He almost felt like crying that this was the hill he was choosing to die on.

“You’re a human though,” Raisha said, grasping at figurative straws. “You guys love sex almost as much as we do.”

Jason scoffed. “Don’t believe everything you read online.”

Raisha almost looked like he’d just killed a puppy in front of her, her tusked maw hanging open in naked disbelief. The Shil’vati looked so devastated that he almost felt bad for lying. Instead, he turned away from her and began inputting instructions into the machine.

A few moments later, the sound of shuffling cloth told him that Raisha had continued loading her own clothes in. It was a reasonably awkward moment, but Jason felt glad that he’d stuck to his guns. With any luck, Raisha would convey their conversation back to the rest of the training cadre. He doubted the flirting and leering would stop, but at least he’d be able to go shirtless without apparently blaring an open invitation to all Shil’vati in the vicinity that he was down to fuck.

He turned around, ready to apologize for being perhaps a little harsher than he’d strictly intended.

“Look I-”

He froze as he found himself staring at Raisha, clad in an impish grin and little more.

It was then that he made a mistake. He stared. His eyes did the normal male thing and gave the attractive alien a once-over. Large purple breasts. A toned feminine stomach. Thighs that could crush a cantaloupe. Legs that seemed to go on for miles. She looked like some Greek war goddess come to life.

Of course, then his actual brain caught up with his brain downstairs and he determinedly switched his gaze to the black sclera of the alien’s gleaming golden eyes.

It was too late though, as evidenced by the wicked grin that took over his fellow recruit’s face.

“I knew it,” she whispered.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said quickly.

Raisha just laughed as she practically skipped from the room, which did all sorts of interesting things to her body as she flounced out.

“What about your clothes?” he called after her as he scooped up one of the massive garments.

“It’s too hot,” she laughed, not even looking back as she turned a corner.

Jason watched her go, before dropping what he now realized was an industrial strength bra.

“I think…I think I might have made a mistake.”

When he finally returned from the laundry room, Tarcil’s clothes in hand, he spotted Raisha animatedly chatting with a group of her compatriots. His heart sank when he saw that she was still as nude as the day she was born and it sank even further when the group looked over and giggled.

He walked over to his own bunk where Tarcil was still reading his book. The alien said a quick thanks as Jason lobbed his clothes bag onto his bed. Still, the human didn’t miss the tiny smirk that stole over his friend’s features as his eyes darted from Jason’s dejected expression to the giggling group of females.

“Shut up,” Jason grunted as he collapsed onto his bunk.