She awoke to the sound of a crackling fire, almost forgetting she wasn’t really camping, as she opened the tent and noticed the cave illuminated via strings of industrial lights leading to an unfinished kitchen where Vinn was making breakfast. God only knew what that was.
“Chicken?” he asked, holding up a whole raw chicken, feet and all ready for the skillet.
“No I’m not hungry, I brought something to drink instead.” She said hungover and numb.
“Damn, heated up the skillet for nothing I guess.” He said plopping it on a plate for himself and pouring some orange colored sauce over it, completely raw. “Sleep okay?”
“Enough.”
“You know you could have had the bed, or at least a carpeted floor inside the cube. You didn’t have to sleep in the actual unfinished home in a little people bag.”
“Just wanted to get a feel for living in the dark I guess.” She said darkly.
“You really need some food. I can throw this in a skillet and burn it for you at any point but it’s still gonna have the sauce. Want me to order anything? A vegan burger, one of those cereal boxes, some bananas?” They’ll bring it right to the cube.”
“No I just need some liquids right now.” She said shaking a bottle of Sport-power and opening a thermos of coffee to warm up on the burner.
So I looked up that “soap” thing last night after you went to bed. I had no idea humans had a separate cleaner for the hairy bits and the non hairy bits. Fascinating stuff. Who would have even thought of that?” he said shaking his head. “So what are you drinking?” he asked.
“It’s called coffee. It’s like an herbal brew full of stimulant drugs, you’d love it.
I know what coffee is, I work construction, half the guys run on coffee, I got coffee I’m drinking here but it’s very different. I just never saw this kind before.
“It’s an iced Moccachino. I have one every once in a while, and when I would go camping with my dad he always got me one. You wanna try some?” she asked. He took a swig, pondering a moment in turmoil as to his feelings.
“You don’t look impressed.” She smirked.
“Tastes nothing like the coffee. You’re sure this is coffee? Why is it so viscous and light…foamy?
“Well you probably drink black coffee, this has chocolate and milk a-”
“Milk.” He interrupted, looking mildly horrified.
“Oh my god you’re not allergic to dairy are you? I didn’t even think about that.”
“Allergic no. It’s just disturbing. You know where that comes from, right?”
“Yea.” She chuckled. Dairy farms…cows.
“And most humans are just fine with that?” he pondered.
“Yea most. It’s just milk.”
“It’s alien tit liquid.” He protested. “You ring out another species tit in your coffee? This looks mostly tit. It’s more tit than coffee.”
“Okay firstly, Humans are mammals. It’s perfectly natural to produce milk, and it’s made specifically for nutrients and consumption. All mammals lactate, get over it.”
“So humans produce milk too…” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And that is human milk in your beverage?”
“Ew, no. It’s cow’s milk. Nobody puts human breast milk in their coffee.”
“Wait…So it’s repulsive to consume the milk when it’s produced by your own kind as nature intended, but if it’s squeezed out of an alien’s titty it’s entirely normal.” He asked. She opened her mouth to argue a point and then froze, looking more like she had a revelation or some from of blood clot of the brain.
“I didn’t really think about that.” She admitted. “That’s not the point.”
“Human or cow, that’s still alien to me. Cow should still be alien to you. Is any milk fair game? How about sheep?”
“Acceptable.”
“Horse?”
“In some countries yes, not in all of them.”
“Cat milk.” He said raising an eyebrow.
“Ugh, what the fuck, Vinn?”
“How about Pandas, or ducks?”
“No, and also ducks aren’t mammals.” She noted.
“So everything with hooves is fair game, anything else including your own species is disturbing…and you think I’m the weird one here. The guy with hooves who doesn’t eat anything with hooves, or lactate.”
“All good points. BUT! So what to baby Delmarians drink?” she quizzed.
“The same thing we do, water mostly, plant juices, blood.”
“Oh so blood isn’t a troubling fluid but milk is taboo?”
“Blood is basically meat. We all eat meat, there’s blood in meat. I’ve seen you eat meat before. You’re not a Vegantarian, You ate bacon yesterday.”
“It’s cooked! The blood is gone.”
“It’s not gone, Blood doesn’t evaporate into the aether, it’s just hot and solid now, it’s essentially turned into more meat and less water, therefore blood is in the same family as meat. It’s liquid meat. Watery meat. Foofs can’t digest the solid meat until they are several days old, so they consume the liquid equivalent.”
“Okay I think we’ve reached a point where nobody is winning or making any really good points here, we’re just quoting culture and saying it’s normal. And I’ve heard “foofs” twice from you. Are Delmarian babies actually called foofs?”
“Yea.”
Okay that is too adorable. I can’t even argue while thinking about that, so
how about the non mammals do the gross blood thing, and those of us milk producers can have our lactose coffee? You wanna put blood in your coffee, be my guest. The rest of us with titties are gonna stay on team titty.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“You don’t really even have ti-” he stopped. “I’ve immediately noticed from your reaction that I’ve crossed a line and despite not understanding it, or why, I would like to apologize.” He backpedaled desperately.
“You’re lucky you’re foreign as fuck.”
“I very much am. So foreign and innocent. I will make efforts to research what just happened and how to avoid it.” He nervously braced.
“Don’t…don’t just go Google ‘titties’ and go down that rabbit hole. Sometimes women are simply not supposed to be understood.”
Jack sat on a metal chair, enjoying a sandwich as Vinn pulled one beside him and plopped down, stressing the welds.
“Jack, I need to understand women, and therefore need to ask you some awkward questions and despite being male you may still get mad. I don’t even know at this point. I’m not supposed to Google titties.”
“Vinn, I can already tell this is going to be about Nicole and I may not want to know this information. Is it about anything other than Nicole’s body and human anatomy.”
“No.”
“Please go talk to Silverback. He’s older and wiser than both of us combined, I’m sure he has better answers that I don’t have to discuss at 7AM on a work day.”
“An obvious dodge of discomfort, but with a valid point. He does tell significantly more sexual jokes at work. But I do need a favor. Unrelated to titties, I promise.”
“God help me.” Jack struggled.
“Can you get me some…black market gamer gear. I need to build Nicole a special custom gaming room, money is no object, I know you can get hard to find things. Please, I need this for her. Trust me.”
“I will get you whatever custom 3d virtual gamer shit you need and not ask why, if you promise to stop talking about tits and take that problem to Silverback. I’m the tech guy, he’s the tits guy. Go, now.”
Vinn plopped down and smiled with a weird unsure look on his face.
“Well this is about to get weird, isn’t it?” said the grey bearded man, casually adding something to his coffee that only a foreman would be allowed to do at 7:08 on a work day.
“Human females are far more complicated than I anticipated.”
“HA! No shit Sherlock.” Silverback snickered.
“I read many books on anatomy and history and none of them seem to have prepared me for this.”
“Son, you’re a young buck, maybe literally, and you just got married. You’re supposed to be scared shitless and confused. That’s the way of things. You get to your third marriage and it starts to become normal and obvious, but you crossed the species barrier by a wild-ass leap, and that is bound to make the problems even worse. Have you tried just being honest and blunt with her and saying exactly what you thought?”
“Yes. Repeatedly”
“Well that’s where you went wrong first, bucko. She’s what…28 years old?”
“I believe so.”
“Women don’t want full honesty and bluntness till they’re about 40. Young women her age want things sugar coated and finessed with poetry. They want fun and adventure, but also just the freedom to be themselves and prove they can be independent, while also being totally reliant on everyone, and wanting to feel powerful.”
“None of that makes sense.” Vinn sighed.
“Exactly. That’s the point. Young women are insane, and young men are stupid. When women mature, the insanity usually turns to enlightenment and when men become older, they just look older and take more vitamins.” Silverback explained.
“But you’re dating a younger human woman.”
“Right, and I know from experience how crazy that can be and when to just nod and sip your coffee. Dee is a spirited gal but she’s not ready to get married, and we’ve dated for a while now. Your little Nicole wasn’t ready either and she just tripped over a cultural barrier and fell headfirst into it, and frankly you’re just about as clueless as her. The fact that neither of you even has a college degree in biology, let alone Xenobiology, let alone in the other’s species, just guarantees that it all gets more complicated.”
“So you think we’re doomed?” Vinn asked.
“No, of course not. I think you’re fighting some stranger issues in more risky territory so the game has gotten tougher. Love finds a way, and if it’s not love then it will find a way to end. If both of you are willing to do everything to make it work, then you will. Probably. But if even one of you decides to half-ass it, THEN it’s doomed. So what exactly was your fight over?”
“I don’t believe the fight is truly over, but it was about tits.”
“Mother of god.” Silverback sighed, sipping his mug.
“There seems to be a lot of variation. Your mate appears to have significantly larger tits. What is the significance of this in a relationship?”
“You really don’t sugar coat anything do you? You just go right for the kill on everything?”
“I’m literally bred and enhanced to be a special operations soldier. We don’t get training on sugar coating; we get encouraged to follow orders, get things done and report results.”
“Well soldier, listen up. First rule of tit club is you do not talk about another man’s partner’s tits during tit club. That’s also the second rule. It was important enough to repeat. Breaking those rules will get you directly into fight club, and the only reason I’m handling it calmly is because I know you don’t know any different, and you’d kill me in about 5 seconds if I officially challenged you.”
“That seems accurate.”
“Frankly you don’t need to know anything about another mans partner because no two are the same so it doesn’t help you a bit, and it will only get you into trouble unless they’re one of those swingers, and then they wouldn’t want you playing along either because I’m guessing just from your build and weight that there would be problems there too. Your problem is that you want the rulebook on human females and how to understand them, and the reason that book doesn’t exist is because every one of them comes with their own unique book and even they haven’t read it. You need to write your own book, and just for the model you have. Listen, learn, expect miscommunications, expect her to go apeshit for absolutely no reason and understand it’s probably not your fault, you’re just in the crosshairs.”
“That’s troubling.” Vinn nodded, taking notes.
“It gets easier with time. Don’t try and figure out what you did wrong, she may just be having a bad day. Just be comforting and be yourself. If it’s not something you did, she’ll appreciate the support. If it’s something you did, she’ll tell you and it will be obvious. If it’s your fault and obvious and she still denies it but still lashes out at you for it, then she’s one of the psychos and you can’t win, the war is over, you’ve lost, get out while you can, private. Nicole doesn’t seem like the manipulative bitch type. She’s just scared and too afraid to admit it because showing weakness is a weakness you cant afford when you’re a fifth the size of the person you’re up against. You’re intimidating Vinn. Hell I’m intimidated and we’re not even married.
Most humans look at your kind like monsters, big scary ones they can’t trust. The only reason that girl is with you is because she can see you aren’t really a threat, or she just has a thing for monsters…probably both. That’s a balance you need to figure out between you two. Just keep being honest about your feelings, but remember when you do, she is the size of a prey animal and she just moved from a house full of humans she trusts and feels safe with, to a dungeon with a guy she just met who could literally take her head off in one bite and nobody would hear the scream 60 feet underground.”
“Then why did she wanna move in with me? She suggested it, I wasn’t even thinking about it.”
“For one, she underestimated the hell out of the cultural differences, that’s on her, they have the damn free hologram videos. She also didn’t realize you bought a cave. Secondly, in human culture, people move in sometimes just to see if they work as a couple. It’s not marriage, it’s just dating. She wanted to take things to the next level, she tried to skip a level and she skipped about 12 levels and ended up unprepared at the boss fight. Now there is still hope for you, and this is where you need to pay attention soldier.”
“Yes sir.”
“Not that literally.”
“Yes, Foreman.”
“Close enough. Now that little gal is no child, she’s pushing 30. She’s still rocking a goth phase well past the point where it’s just for attention, and she has several well done tattoos. Those weren’t mistakes. You know what those tattoos mean?”
“On my world it’s a status usually reserved for soldiers or athletes and their achievements and/or kills in the ring but since that makes no sense, I assume it’s for decoration.”
“Mindless tribal and tramp-stamps are for decoration. Hers are thought out and planned statements on things she finds interesting enough to display permanently either for herself or others. She has at least 3 classic horror movie tattoos and one modern one. That’s the kinda girl that likes scary things until it gets too real too fast. She likes you, she likes that you kinda scare her, but she still wants the comfort of knowing you’re safe. Like a horror movie. The thrill in the fear and excitement of something dark and menacing but deep down knowing it’s just a movie and it can’t hurt her. Don’t try and act human, or try to water down the fact that you’re a monster, just remind her that you’re a monster that she’s safe with. That’s the monster she wants. You play that card right, and you may be the next tattoo.”
“Interesting.”
“Remember, she didn’t know she signed up to be a wife, that’s the part that scares her more then anything. She volunteered to date you though. It’s not you. It’s the cultural shock. She was completely onboard with you and a familiar setting; the foreign setting is what made her think she made a mistake. If she accidentally married a human guy she just met and got taken into a cave to live like a native she’d be just as freaked out. You didn’t marry a Delmarian girl, you married a human girl. Be a Delmarian, let her be a human. Look for the overlap and things you have in common, don’t try and force them or you’ll just trade compromises all the time.”
“Your elderly wisdom is appreciated.” He nodded, standing up and returning to work.