NAVAL STATION CHARON, CHARON
POV: Bethan Woods, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Lieutenant)
“I love your hair,” Beth declared, concentrating on carefully pronouncing her yips in the unfamiliar language she was practicing with Uintrei.
Uintrei took one look at her serious expression and giggled. “My hair? You can’t see my hair! We have fur, Beth!”
“That’s what I said!” Beth said frustratingly. “Fur! Hair! And why do you have six different names for the types of hair?”
“It’s important to take care of our fur, or they’ll tangle up in little knots,” Uintrei said primly, running her claw through her fur. “And pretty soon, it becomes matted. Gross.”
“Ever considered shaving it all off?” Beth asked mischievously. “I’m sure we can find you an industrial strength razor at the base exchange.”
“No!” Uintrei laughed. “When I was a young cub, about fifteen years old, one of my littermates played a prank on me and shaved the fur on my back when I was sleeping. I woke up before he could finish, but the damage was done. It looked terribly uneven, so I had to get it all trimmed shorter to match. Ugh… it took two full seasons to grow back, and it itched the entire time.”
“That’s terrible!” Beth exclaimed. “I was just joking. Who would actually want to shave that beautiful brown coat of yours?!”
Uintrei blushed at the compliment. “Thanks, Beth, you have quite good-looking hair yourself. Its color reminds me of my favorite ice cream flavor they have in the mess—”
Beth gave her a playful shove, giggling. “My hair is not strawberry blonde, you colorblind Pupper.”
Uintrei fell back into Beth’s bed, lazily enjoying the feel of her luxurious, silk-smooth blankets in her back fur. “Your people make good textiles,” she sighed in contentment as she closed her eyes.
Beth laid down on the small bed next to her, splaying her limbs out as Uintrei did with hers. Their bodies pressed against each other, and Uintrei could feel the heat radiating off her like a campfire. “You’re too hot,” Uintrei mumbled sleepily.
“I know,” Beth replied smugly. “It’s a real problem—”
Uintrei opened an eye. “No… I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” Beth said, smiling back at her. “I’m fit. I have the face of an angel. And my body, my curves, oh my God—”
“Still not what I meant.”
“Oh yeah?” Beth said, rolling over on top of Uintrei playfully, smothering her face with her chest. “What did you mean?”
The shorter Malgeir lifted Beth off her face, panting not at the effort but her temperature. “Two things: one, you might have a fever with how hot you are. And two, you smell like your dinner.”
“What?! I do not!” Beth contested hotly.
“Tomato sauce spaghetti,” she said simply.
“But I brushed my teeth!”
Uintrei rolled over again and closed her eyes. “If you want to have some fun after you take a shower, I’ll be right here.”
“No, that’s not fair! It’s always me taking a shower! You have a smell too!” Beth pouted.
“I have a scent. A pleasant scent. You have a smell,” Uintrei said matter-of-factly. A moment later, she felt something wet on her belly.
“Slurp… slurp… slurp…”
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Confused, Uintrei opened her eyes again and looked down. Beth was licking her belly with her stretched tongue. “What… are you doing?”
Beth sat up, spitting out a mouthful of brown fur. “Now, you have a smell too.” She dramatically bent down to Uintrei’s belly and sniffed twice with her nose. “Smells like… tomato sauce.”
“You!” Uintrei sat up as Beth ran for her bathroom. “So gross! You’re going to pay for that!”
“Smells like someone else needs a shower too!”
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Uintrei stood stoically in the running shower as the taller Beth dumped a good palmful of her shampoo on her back. “This is going to take a whole day to dry,” Uintrei complained.
Beth didn’t say anything, just carefully worked the soapy liquid throughout her long, brown fur from head to paw.
Uintrei let off a small sigh as Beth reached the back of her ears. Despite her relatively poor hearing, Beth must have heard it, because she moved her dexterous hand back to the same spot, rubbing as she went. This time, Uintrei released an involuntary whimper.
“I knew you had a spot there,” Beth said excitedly, putting all of her fingers to good use.
“Just don’t get too much soap into my ears.”
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Uintrei gently grasped Beth’s hand in her paw. They laid there for a few minutes, hand in paw, savoring their afterglows together in the silence.
“I love your fur,” Beth said, this time in anatomically correct Malgeirish.
Uintrei surprised her in her native English. “I love your hands. Soft. Very soft.” That was about the extent of the words she learned in the several months she’d been in Sol.
Beth giggled as she switched her translator back on. “You know this means I’ll have to take another shower now, right?”
Uintrei rolled over, planting herself in the bed. “Yeah, that sounds like a you-problem. Have fun with that.”
“If I don’t, your Malgeir buddies are going to smell you on me. And if you don’t, they’ll smell me on you.”
Uintrei rolled her eyes. “Those two are oblivious as they can be, but I’m pretty sure they both know by now. Maybe even their Terran wingmates—”
“I don’t think so: Maurice and Kaja are pretty clueless too but without your noses,” Beth said confidently. Then after a few moments, she propped herself on her elbow to look at her lover and asked curiously, “Do you think Speinfoent and Kaja are… you know—”
Uintrei shook her ears. “No. No way. I’d be able to smell it if they were fucking.”
“It’s just— you know— they spend half their day together in their enclosed fighter trainer pods and then the other half in her room ‘debriefing’, if you know what I mean.”
“Just because you’re always thinking about sex doesn’t mean everyone else is,” Uintrei said, smirking.
“And how would you even smell the difference when they’re together all the time anyway?!”
“I just can,” Uintrei insisted. “You Terrans make a different smell on your skins when you cum— it’s just— it’s very different.”
“Alright, if you say so,” Beth said amusingly. “I still think there’s something else going on between those two—”
“Unlike us, they were smart enough not to get too deeply involved here,” Uintrei sighed. “Where things are unlikely to work out long term.”
“It’s working out just fine for us,” Beth pointed out. “We’re both getting assigned to the same assault carrier when that Red Zone campaign starts.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t know that when we started messing around,” Uintrei said, running her paw gently through Beth’s long red hair. “We got lucky; I suppose. I think Speinfoent is on the Crete too. Executive officer, right?”
Beth nodded. “Yup. Too bad Kaja got assigned to some mine warfare ship.”
“Waste of her talents if you ask me, but hey… I guess some things about the Navy don’t change across civilizational boundaries.”
Beth grinned. “She’ll probably be some hotshot sim analyst at Atlas Naval Command in a couple years with shiny stars on her collar.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Then, Uintrei stretched to take a quick glance at the digital clock on Beth’s tablet screens on her desk. “Mind if I sleep over tonight?”
“Not at all.” Beth comfortably snuggled her bare chest up against her friend’s furry back. She leaned in close to Uintrei’s ear, breathing hotly into it. “But I can’t promise you’ll get a whole lot of sleep.”
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POV: Speinfoent, Malgeir Federation Navy (Rank: Beta Leader)
“—and when the Grass Eater ships blinked in like this, kwoooosh kwoowsh kwooosh,” Durnio narrated with his well-practiced sound effects and paw gestures at the lunch table. “Kabooooom. Took them all out in a single volley. Didn’t even see it coming!”
“Nice!” Speinfoent said, licking up the last of his chocolate ice cream from the cone.
“Yeah, nice one, Durnio,” Kaja praised politely between mouthfuls of her own hot soup.
“All thanks to your idea, Kaja!” Durnio said excitedly. “I just thought back to that time when you said— wait a second.” Durnio turned to Speinfoent sitting next to him and sniffed twice. “Did you get coconut ice cream for breakfast this morning?”
“No. I hate coconut. It doesn’t taste like anything. I would rather have vanilla over—” Speinfoent raised an eyebrow at Durnio. “Wait, why?”
Durnio took another few sniffs in his direction. “Huh. That’s odd. I swear you smell like coconut— ah—” Ignoring Speinfoent’s red face, he reached a claw onto his surprised friend’s neck and plucked out a smidge of leftover ice cream cone crumbs embedded in his fur there. “I’ve got it for you.”
“Thanks,” Speinfoent mumbled. “Don’t know how that got there.”
“Anyway, what about scenario four, Durnio?” Kaja asked hurriedly. “How did you do there?”
“Oh, that one is a little harder. I’m still working on a solution…”