---Leon’s Perspective---
“Alright… I’ve got one…” says Ziva, reclining (fully clothed) on my bed, a glass of my bourbon held idly in her hand “…Command contact you and tell you you’ve got to recruit one of the Terrans aboard to the Craft… who are you picking?”
My mouth twists as I stare into my glass of her arak, contemplatively “That’s… a tricky one… I would say the Monk, except that I really don’t think he’d go for it!”
She nods in agreement.
“…the Vietnamese Humanitarian definitely has the right look… so plain and indistinct that you could have a full conversation with him and be unable to recall anything but the broadest strokes of what he looked like, right after… but… I think, he’d have the same problem as the Monk… too conscientious… plus, unlike the Monk, he definitely can’t handle himself in a fight, which would make training him more difficult… the Gael’s devious and has the social intelligence for it… I think she might be a little too devious, though… too likely to go rogue when it suits her(!)”
Here she suggests “The Brit?”
I blow a fart noise with my tongue, coupled with a thumbs down “You reckon that Limey could ever walk into a room and not instantly draw every eye!? ‘Oh yeah, infiltrate the shindig, eavesdrop on the tycoon, then exfiltrate… never mind the fact that you’re 6’9’’ with flaming locks of auburn hair and eyes of emerald green… Never mind the fact that you’ve got the face of a Greek god and the muscles of a grizzly… just try not to attract attention, good luck!’(!)… The Starborn and Neanderthal are out for the same reason… too conspicuous, too obviously dangerous… the Tshwane for being 7’2’’!”
She rolls her eyes “For the millionth time, Leon, no one can understand you when you use imperial units!”
“You could if you wore your translator…” I shoot back “…plus, it’s easy enough to infer how tall 6’9’’ and 7’2’’ are, given the context that they’re the respective heights of the Brit and Tshwane we were talking about, isn’t it(?)”
“I don’t want to have to wear a translator to talk to you, when we share a dozen languages! You clearly know metric, so why don’t you get with the programme and speak in the units favoured by 99.7% of Terrans!?”
“I’m a traditionalist(!)… Plus, you make us sound like the last of a dying breed! Avoirdupois still has 7 billion people who favor it… that’s nearly twice as many people as were alive when the United States of America (the greatest country in history(!)) first landed on Luna!”
She cocks an eyebrow “You mean as part of the, 45 year long, dick measuring contest that they were having with the other contemporaneous empire? Olga’s one?”
I bristle “The States were not an empire!”
She smirks “Tell that to the Philippines, Cuba, Guatemala, Hawaii, Puerto Rico… I could go on… you want to get the Navajo in here? Ask him whether he thinks the States were an empire? Also, at the end of that century, didn’t the States literally lose one of the earliest objects ever to be sent to Mars (worth a third of a billion States dollars (which was a lot of money)), because they couldn’t agree, themselves, on whether to use imperial or metric? After which, they decided that science would be in metric because it wasn’t designed by drunk mathematicians rolling dice(!?)”
I raise a finger and open my mouth… quickly followed by lowering my finger and closing my mouth.
She adopts an insufferably smug grin which makes me resolve to use feet, inches, pounds and ounces twice as hard from now on(!)
“So… who?” she prompts “Who’s your pick?”
I think “The Russian’s out because being 4’1’’ tall makes her very conspicuously short and she demonstrates no inclination to combat (unless you count her Cossack dancing to me and the Monk playing ‘Rasputin’… which I don’t(!))… The Japanese is out, even though she’s definitely got the combat skill… the pragmatism too… just ’cause she’s… too proper, I think… she’d balk at some of the stuff required… she’s from a prestigious family so I think the seedier sides of the Craft would be a deal breaker, for her… plus, she’s got the problem of being glamorous and noticeable… the Navajo’s out for the same reasons as the Vietnamese… The Korean would be a very appealing pick because she clearly has bruiser strength, while looking like she’s out of shape to all but the most decerning eye… she has the social intelligence… and requisite integrity… but she’s out because I think she’d be too much of a softy… the Evenk’s out, even if he’d be great for missions in remote areas, because he just doesn’t know how to put people at ease… the Feline too, too grumpy… the Hindi’s too skinny to handle himself…the Boxer’s out… too much of a hothead, she’d blow her cover immediately! … I think it’s between her brother and the roughworlder…”
“You mean, the blue one? The four armed elf?!”
“Yeah… the other one’s not ‘Terran’ in any sense… unless you stretch it to include ‘choice of partner’. The Nova Fennoscandian one is brave and has integrity… but she’s also naïve enough to make her recruitable, not so principled that she couldn’t be convinced the Craft was right for her… sure she would catch any eye at a Terran gathering, being nearly 7’3’’ and of obviously extraTerran origin… but I think that’d be offset, in certain circumstances, by how much she’d be underestimated by everyone!… You heard how she killed four pirates, when they got boarded? You heard the Monk (the guy with more than a century of experience studying every martial art Earth and, later, the galaxy has to offer) saying she took him off guard and nearly landed a hit? Her species is so rare, off their cradleworld, that most people would underestimate them, thinking they were gardenworlders… but, even if you knew of her species, I think you’d still be inclined to underestimate her, because she was raised on a deathworld!”
She pouts, consideringly, and nods “I agree… but the Swahili? You don’t think he’d be a ‘softy’?”
I shake my head “I don’t!… Study him next time… I think the whole serene, tranquil ‘wiseman’ schtick is… not exactly ‘a front’ but… more like… a surface layer… I think there’s ferocity beneath… he clearly keeps himself in shape but I don’t think that would be at all obvious unless you either got him naked or had our eye for people’s physical presence!”
“That’s… very interesting, Leon. I have to say, I’m surprised by your picks… but I can’t fault them…” she says, squinting thoughtfully “I think I have to agree… Go on, your turn!”
I think for a moment, about a question to pose.
“How about… what do you think the new species is going to be like?”
She holds up a finger and shakes her head “It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts(!)”
I perform a jerk-off motion with my hand, while blowing another fart sound from my mouth “Thanks, Mr Holmes(!)”
She smiles and shakes her head “I’ve never understood what your problem with Doyle is! Reading Sherlock Holmes is what made me want to be a detective and, from there, get recruited into the UTCIS! It’s no exaggeration to say that, without those books, I wouldn’t be a Craftswoman and you wouldn’t have a partner… well, you probably would but… your partner wouldn’t be me, at least(!)”
I chuckle “I’ll have to hop in a time machine, and write him a thank you note…(!) It was Fleming, for me.”
“Of fucking course it was!” she smirks, wryly “You thought it would all be vodka martinis, Armani suits and bedding beautiful people, didn’t you(!) Pop a few bullets into the bad guy, crack a one liner, take a sip of your drink, slide off your stylish jacket and slip into bed with a pretty girl or boy (maybe both)(!)”
I laugh “Yeah… reality is often disappointing(!) The prettiest person I’ve ever bedded in the course of duty was you and… no offense…(!)”
She playfully throws a pillow at me, laughing.
A moment passes before she says “I actually heard something really interesting about Fleming, recently…”
“Oh…?”
“Yeah… you know the evil wizard in The Lord of the Rings? That actor was Ian Fleming’s step-cousin… and was a spy for Britain during and after the Second Great War! Apparently Fleming admitted to basing Bond on him…! The reason it sounded so realistic when he got stabbed in the back, in the third movie, is because he actually knew what it sounds like when a man gets stabbed in the back! The director apparently asked him to scream… he answered ‘have you any idea what it actually sounds like when a man is stabbed in the back… because I do!’”
“No shit! Christopher Lee? Christopher Lee was the real James Bond?!”
She nods “Yup!”
“Well… I’ll have to look into that!”
“Please do!… What is your problem with Doyle, by the way?”
I sigh “My problem with Doyle is that Holmes only looks like a genius… because he’s always right!… All his ‘deductions’ are actually abductions and it just happens to always work out for him! If I said ‘The killer left the pen on the left side of the desk, therefore the killer must have been left handed’ to you, during a mission where someone had been killed by an unknown quantity, what would you do?! You’d laugh at me! You’d laugh because I’d be ignoring a dozen other possibilities like, maybe the killer reached across themselves, with their right, to put the pen down, maybe they put the pen down, with their right, while rounding the desk, maybe they left it on the right and it rolled to the left, perhaps the killer wrote from the other side of the desk, perhaps the killer is ambidextrous, perhaps the pen wasn’t even left there by the killer! But, when Holmes does it, you think ‘wow, what a genius!’ because Doyle makes it so that he’s right! It’s the hand of the author… when I can feel the author’s hand it pulls me out of the story…”
She throws up her hands in concession “Fair enough… I still like them, though.”
“I can’t really argue with that now, can I(?)… Would you care to elaborate on what you meant with your, oh so pretentious, Doyle quote?”
“I just meant that we know nothing about these people… including whether they actually exist at all! We have some blurry, out of focus video of things that may have been animals or vehicles and the fact that the probe got destroyed… If we start speculating and develop an idea of what we think they’ll be like, from that, we’re likely to make fools of ourselves!… I mean… we aren’t… it’s not our job to identify this species… but say Miyazaki came to the conclusion that they were a species of arboreal, squirrel like mammaloids… then had us only look for species that matched that description while, in fact, they were volant avians… they’d be watching us, shouting at squirrels, and thinking ‘what the fuck are these idiots doing?!’… for that reason, I refuse to speculate, even idly!… Though… the one thing I will say… is that I think it’s a fairly safe bet that they won’t look enough like us that we’ll be able to pass for them with a tube of rubber cement and a palette of green face paint(!)”
I consider that…
She’s probably right about the whole ‘not enough data to speculate, even idly’ thing… She’s also right about the fact that we’ll almost certainly not be called on to infiltrate them!
While a surprising amount of the galaxy’s species are humanoid (roughly 5% to 20%, depending on how strict or loose you want to be about the definition of ‘humanoid’) effectively none are a close enough match in height, build, arrangement of limbs, arrangement of digits and arrangement of facial features that they can be practically mimicked by Humans, without falling into the uncanny valley!… It would take a professional make up artist to even pass me off as a Neanderthal… and it wouldn’t stand up to much scrutiny(!)
We’re probably going to be doing mostly hands off Tradecraft… I really hope we aren’t called on for any total-stealth missions… ones where even being spotted would be a failure!
“Alright… fair enough… but I think that makes it your turn…”
She thinks a moment before smirking “What do you think the chances that the hybrids have a Femdom relationship are?”
I chuckle “You say ‘the hybrids’ like you’re not a hybrid yourself(!)”
She wags a finger “I don’t think great-grandparents should count!”
I smirk back… time for payback for her States-bashing earlier “So… the Evenk’s a hybrid… your mom’s a hybrid… and you’re not? Doesn’t that seem a little arbitrary?”
“No, because… well, all Out-of-Africans have some Neanderthal DNA, but you’d never claim that you were a Neanderthal hybrid because of your 3.1%, would you!? That would be ridiculous!”
“Yes, but… 12.5% is a larger number than 3.1%... plus, you’ll have a percentage, on top of that, that you’ve inherited from your Sapiens great-grandparents, same as me… so you’re probably, like, 15-16%?”
“I think you’re not a hybrid when you can’t be readily identified as one… otherwise we’re all hybrids!… Anyway…!” she says, changing the subject “…Femdom, yay or nay? You see the way he clings to her, almost literally?! The way she dotes on him? Him dressed in that outfit she made for him? The way he had his wildman hair tamed with a comb and obviously hadn’t done it himself? I think they’ve got a Dommy-Mummy/little boy thing going on!”
I consider that. It’s all true; when they announced themselves, he was dressed in a shirt and pants that, when asked, the Korean explained that she had made for him, to demonstrate use of the nanoforge… he elaborated that it was the first set of clothing he’d ever had that hadn’t been made either by him or his mom… it all lines up…
“I think you’re right… good spot!”
She frowns, wryly “Well that’s boring! I assumed we’d have a debate!… I’m not sure I like it when you just agree with me(!)”
I laugh “Tell you what… I’ll give you a bonus question, how does that sound?”
She pouts, thoughtfully… then smiles, evilly…
“…Have you decided what to do about your little admirer, yet?”
---the next day---
I pick up my violin case and step into the corridor.
I pass the open door to the Commonroom and see the diminutive Russian sat in there… along with my little ‘admirer’.
“Hey, Olga, you doing OK?” I ask, with concern.
She turns her joyless face to me “I’m fine, why do you ask?”
“You… erm… you just had a bit of a Vladimir Putin scowl going on there…”
I’m instantly proven wrong as she shows me what her face actually looks like scowling!
She mimics the act of spitting in disgust, before saying “Kindly do not compare me to that war criminal!… Seven hundred years and that man’s stink still clings to my people! May history yet forget his name!… The ‘Vladimir Putin scowl’, as you put it, is my thinking face… I apologise for concerning you.”
“I apologize for offending you… I won’t mention him, again!”
She nods “It’s alright… and thank you… You’re going somewhere to practice?”
“Yeah, I think the Loading Bay should have great acoustics!” I lie.
Not that the Loading Bay won’t have great acoustics… but that’s not why I’m going and not why I’m mentioning it.
“Should be pretty empty… if anyone wants to tag along?”
“I’ll pass… I hope this does not offend you… it’s no reflection on your playing…” says Olga, predictably.
The one I actually want to follow me says nothing.
“Alright… see you guys later then…” I smile and leave.
I step back into the corridor and begin making my way sternward…
I’m not even 20ft from the base of the stairs on the bottom deck before I hear Plus Ultra’s Dorm door open again… she probably doesn’t realize my hearing’s that good(!)
I keep walking, giving no indication that I know she’s following me.
Rather than coming down the stairs, she elects to follow on the Deck 4 walkway… clever… for a gardenworlder. She recognizes that there’s no cover down here so she’d be entirely exposed if I turned around! Good situational analysis… even if she is letting herself down by not considering the noise of her footsteps… 65ft up 25ft behind me… and I can still hear the *pat**pat**pat* of her bare feet and hands on the floor.
I can also feel her gaze on the back of my neck…
I get to the door to the Loading Bay and wave it open…
Oh! Clever girl! She’s timed opening the door on her floor to coincide with me opening this one! She probably reckoned it would cover the sound!
I step into the Loading Bay.
This is actually a great performance space!… Or… would be if it weren’t crowded with cargo!
35ft wide, 120ft long, 300ft tall, row after row of walkways stacked on top of eachother, on three sides, at 16ft intervals, the fourth wall a psychedelic backdrop of open space, with stars steadily receding into it… I couldn’t ask for a more perfect concert hall… and it’s completely empty, but for me and my little stalker(!)
I open my case and begin tuning my strings and rosining up my bow.
I wonder what I should play…?
Tam Lin? Battle for Camelot? The God of Thunder? All a bit… intense… Tír na nÓg? Kid ar an Sliabh? Those are a bit more cheerful… bouncier…
I’ve got it.
I place my bow on the strings and, in a flurry, play a lower C, lower E, upper A, upper C, then hold a moment on an upper D, then hold a long chord of upper B and upper E… she’s in for a treat!
---Enas’ Perspective, 4 minutes earlier---
I watch the being that I should find hideous come into the room and address Olga… I should find him hideous… but I don’t!
He’s got one too many eyes, with light blue irides instead of light pink, four too many fingers, he doesn’t have tusks like a man should, he doesn’t even have vestigial fangs like a woman, his nose travels all the way to his brow, through what should be the middle of his eye, his brow hair is weirdly cleft into two parts to match his two eyes, his torso is too short, his legs are too long, his arms are too short, his ears are rounded with no point on them, his feet are flat, with no thumb, and wrapped in lab grown leather (a habit common to most Humans), his skin is a pale colour that ought to make him look anaemic, not even the slightest tinge of the orange that my brain is telling me should be vibrant, his hair is a yellowy-brown not the proper vivid purple, he’s too gracile to be a man and too bulky to be a woman, too short to be a man too tall to be a woman…
Regardless… my hearts are racing just from him entering the room!
He compares Olga to a man who’s name I don’t know… she bares her teeth in what my translator is telling me is disgust… [Fuck] that’s terrifying! She’s a head shorter than me and has no fangs… How is she making a fangless mouth so [fucking] terrifying!?
The object of my, oh so selfish, desire reveals that he’s going to be playing his instrument in the Loading Bay… he invites us to come!
I desperately want to say ‘yes’, go with him openly… but the words catch in my throat… stifled by my godsdamned useless courtship instincts!
Androgynous as he may look, I know he’s a man… Much as I want to stride up to him and confidently declare myself, the way I would with a woman… my instincts are forcing me to follow him at a distance and wait for him to notice… wait for him to pull me into his harem.
Not that he’s likely to want me in his harem(!) (He probably finds me as hideous as I ought to find him)… and not that I want to be the second woman in his harem… and I certainly don’t want to have to put my desire for him to his partner!
I don’t know how seriously she’d take challenges to their monogamy… especially from someone like me… but I certainly don’t want to discover the hard way that Pereira considers them a mortal matter!!!
He leaves the room and I sit, restlessly, for [73 seconds].
“I have something to do…!” I blurt.
Olga looks up from her holopad and answers “You go do your ‘something’(!)” with… mirth?
Not able to spend any mental energy on that, I hurry from the room, out of the Dorm.
The door opens quietly… it shouldn’t have alerted him.
I peek over the balcony… good, he hasn’t noticed!
Moving quadrupedally, on the tips of my fingers and toes, for stealth, I follow him to the back of the ship, stealing the occasional glance at him, over the railing.
As he draws close to the Loading Bay door, on Deck 0, I pick up the pace to get to the one on Deck 4… he probably wouldn’t hear it anyway (with those useless looking, round ears of his(!)) but I can increase the chances of remaining hidden if I cover the sound by opening it at the same time as he opens his.
I wait until I hear the *fw…* of his door and then wave mine open, disguising its *fwoosh* with the one on Deck 0.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
After a few moments, I steal a peak over the railing and see that he’s taken a seat on a small crate, his back facing me, and is performing the light maintenance on his instrument, apparently, required to play it!
So fascinating that this species managed to even conceive of an instrument that (seemingly) has to be tuned and have a waxy substance applied to it, every time you want to play it!
He stands, briefly scaring me into ducking back behind the railing, but it doesn’t sound like he’s turned around, so I pop back up.
With a *swish*, he brings his [bow] to the strings and begins with the most graceful flurry of notes that I can imagine!
He sways and dances, as he plays, the [90m] boarding ramp, behind him, showing the stars… by the Gods, the stars! How had I never noticed how beautiful the stars are!?
His playing is enthralling! The same way it was the night we met…
Gods, I’m a pervert! To think that my [fetish] for talent could make me attracted to… such a strange looking creature! I don’t even know if he’s attractive by his own species standards… it doesn’t matter… he’s made a slave of me, with that [violin]…
I want him all to myself… and I know it’s impossible!
Why is it so much worse that he comes from a species where wanting a man to yourself is not considered perversely selfish! A species where that’s normal! A species where I could expect… nay, demand that I be enough woman for my partner… me and me alone! A species where he’d be the one, considered a selfish pervert for wanting more than one woman!
It’s probably… the fact that coming so close to fulfilling my fantasy, but still missing, makes me aware of the counterfactual reality… the one where he isn’t partnered, the one where he would find me beautiful… the one where I’d be his and his alone and he would be mine and mine alone… If this fantasy weren’t so close to possible, it would be easier to let it go… As it stands, I’m up here spying on him… a sensual tingling in my groin… a swooping in my stomach… a boulder on my hearts and tears in my eye.
At this point the breath-taking song ends and his playing falls quiet.
His back still turned to me he brings the instrument and [bow] down to hang, loosely, at his sides, at the end of those, slightly too short, arms.
“I know you’re there, Enas…”
My eye widens and I duck behind the railing… [FUCK]! HOW?!?!?!
He can’t have seen me… unless he has a third eye, on the back of his head!
Did he hear me?! With those puny little ears?!?!?!
“Come out. I want to talk.”
Much as I, logically, want to run, to hide… to do anything but what he’s telling me… I can’t… I feel my courting instincts seize me and drag me to a bipedal stance, looking over the railing.
I see him, not moved from where he stood but twisted to look behind himself, at me.
He’s smiling… is he amused by the prospect of breaking my hearts!?
“Come down here…” he smirks and I feel my feet move before I have a chance to have any input into the decision.
I walk to the stairs and begin my descent down to the third floor, then the second, then the first… at which point I discover a minor roadblock.
“Oh yeah, no more stairs… Terran design philosophy… turns this deck into a chokepoint for groundbased assaults… Honestly, I’m surprised that feature managed to survive the gardenworld adap-JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH!!!” he says in response to me circumnavigating the roadblock by means of jumping the last [5m] to the bottom deck, landing on all fours and straightening back up into an upright posture.
My translator informs me his expression is one of strong concern, as he says “You alright?”
“I’m fine… Kyklos’ gravity is 1.45 times Galactic Standard… so I’m quite light here… I’m not hurt.”
“Why didn’t you just go around?”
“It would have taken too long… you told me to come to you…”
His two eyebrows flair upward “There’s a Terran expression; ‘if they’d told you to jump off a bridge…’. Please don’t do dangerous things just because you’ve been told to!”
“Al…alright… I won’t… I knew it wasn’t dangerous, though…” why is he acting concerned for me? He’s about to crack my hearts in four!
“Never mind…” he sits back on the crate where he tuned his instrument “…take a seat.”
I sit.
“I mean on a crate, not on the floor! Jesus!”
I stand and look for a crate… there are none near his…
I walk to him and sit on his crate, [20cm] between us.
“Oh… erm… hey…” he smiles, showing his fangless teeth.
“Your playing is beautiful…” I say, turning my eye downward.
“Thank you… that song’s one of my favorites… it’s called ‘Rather Be’… I’m glad you like my playing. Now…” he pulls one leg onto the crate, allowing himself to face me more directly “…you have a crush on me, don’t you…?”
I look back up at him “How did you know?”
He chuckles “Same way I know you’ve been following me every chance you got since the night we met… It’s my job to read people, Enas.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What’re you apologizing for?”
“I didn’t mean to challenge Ms Pereira’s claim on you. I’m sure you’re also grossed out by me… you must think I look horrible…” I answer, feeling the tears fighting to be free of my bottom eyelid.
“Now, what makes you say that?” he answers, wryly.
“W-well, you look… strange, to me… I’m sure that must go both ways!”
He laughs “If I look so ‘strange’ and ‘horrible’, why are you crushing on me?”
“You… your talent… with the [violin]… that’s why I’m [crushing] on you.”
“Well… you aren’t the first person I’ve wooed with this thing… though you are the first one to call me ‘strange’ and ‘horrible’ looking!”
“I didn’t say that! I didn’t say you look horrible! I said I thought you must think I look horrible!”
He cocks half of his brow in an expression of quizzicality “You do think I look strange, though?”
“…Yes.” I’m unable to lie “You have two eyes, ten fingers, your limbs are the wrong length, you’re androgynous…”
He bursts out laughing “That’s the first time anyone’s called me ‘androgynous’!… I suppose, with your species’ sexual dimorphism, it would look that way, wouldn’t it! If I’m being asked to stack up against 10ft guys who look like the product of a hippopotamus, a silverback gorilla and a sumō wrestler hatefucking eachother, then yeah… I would look pretty androgynous!… They might even scare me, if I hadn’t seen Wartime footage of a 100lb woman, on Nova Ukrayina, taking out a squad of 6 of them, armed with nothing more than a length of rebar and a baby on her other hip(!)… Apparently no one ever called her ‘Oksana “Sunflower” Melnyk’ after that… she was ‘Nobody’ from that day forward…”
I answer, horrified “I’ve seen that footage, too… They unnamed that woman?! For defending herself and her child!?”
“Oh, sorry! No, it was an honor!”
I narrow my eye “How can being called ‘Nobody’ possibly be an honour?”
“Erm… well there’s an ancient Terran story that involves a monster, that resembles a Kyklo, holding a bunch of sailors prisoner in his cave… the leader of the sailors tells the monster that his name is ‘Nobody’ which, in the language it was written in, sounds a little like his actual name, then when the sailors blind the monster he runs to his friends saying ‘Nobody has blinded me!’ and they’re all like ‘Then why are you shouting at us?!’”
“Your ancients literally wrote stories with Kykloid monsters and you claim to be unbothered by my appearance?”
“Yep… you’re cute… I won’t lie, you fall a little bit into the uncanny valley, especially when you walk on all fours or hold your holo with a foot while using both hands and the other foot to do stuff on it… but I’m a sucker for cute guys and gals and, being a hair under 5ft, I’d guess, 50lb (soaking wet) and with that big old soulful eye, you, sweetie, are cute!”
I’m dumbstruck a moment…
“…b…but Mr Byrne…”
“‘Leon’!”
“I’m sorry?”
“‘Leon’ to you, darling!”
I take a moment before hesitantly saying “…what about Ms Pereira, Leon?”
“Ah! That…” he says, mirthfully “That’s a misapprehension… we are professional ‘partners’ not romantic ones!… We used to be romantically involved… early in our partnership, we took our personal and professional chemistry for romantic chemistry but, after a little while, we realized we didn’t actually like eachother that way… we agreed to go back to being friends and our relationship has been strictly platonic, ever since…”
My mind is wheeling… but I’m still not allowing myself to hope.
He continues “…though… I have to say… I’m surprised you’d be concerned about that! I thought your species were harem breeders? Wouldn’t already having one partner make me more attractive?”
“I’m…” I hang my head “…I’m a pervert, Mr Byr…” he narrows his eyes “…Leon. I’m a pervert, because I want a man, all to myself.”
He frowns “I know your species has a 6:1 sex imbalance but isn’t the mean harem size like 15 women? Doesn’t that leave a lot of single guys for you to pursue? Not that I’m not happy you’re pursuing me(!)”
I wag my ears in agreement “You’re right Mr B… Leon. I had the same thought when I was younger… I thought it would be easy to find a talented single guy and indulge my [fetishes] for monogamy and talent, with him… Talent is generally not considered a masculine trait among Kyklo… and size and bulk didn’t matter to me… but every time I found a guy who matched what I was looking for, every time I told them what I wanted… they’d agree, we’d start dating… then [a month] or so would go by and they’d bring home another woman that they’d managed to entice back by telling her that they already had a harem of one… Eventually, I started dating women… it’s not uncommon for women to engage in sexual relationships with eachother, among my people, and the dating pool is much wider when you’re [bi]… it is however uncommon for them to engage in emotional relationships or to be exclusive. Just like my boyfriends, to my girlfriends, I was just a stepping stone. They effectively saw our relationship as a protoharem, waiting for a man. I got sick of it and swore off relationships altogether… Then you came along… reawoke my selfish desire for monogamy, my unfeminine [fetish] for talent(!)”
He smiles “I… I’m extremely flattered!… I am curious though, why me and why not Yuán? I know he’s a monk but it doesn’t sound like that would have been a barrier to your crush, if my being partnered wasn’t?”
I look between his two eyes… is he just [fishing for compliments]?
“He wasn’t as good as you, Leon. His playing was excellent… yours is… transcendent!”
He laughs “Get out of town! You’re telling me I’m better than a guy who’s been practicing more than a hundred years!?”
“Hasn’t he been mainly dedicated to learning every way to fight, during that time? His playing is… too technical for my tastes… he plays like a Kyklo… all a bit too perfect, too fastidious… you play with passion… I suppose, your playing is more Terran… Oh, great(!) Another [fetish], to add to my list of perversions, just what I need(!) A [bi], monogamy [fetishist], talent [fetishist], Terran [fetishist]! What you must think of me!”
He smiles and lifts his polydactyl hand and places it on my cheek causing me to quiver, nervously.
“I can tell you what I think of you, if you want…?”
With baited breath, I wag my ears.
He continues “…I think, you’re just about the sweetest little thing I ever set my eyes on! No man or woman I’ve been with has been as cute as you… I think I might just be crushing right back on you… I think you’d be more than enough for me… you yourself and no one else… I think… I’d… I’d like to take you back to your room, right now… what do you say?”
My mouth hangs open but no words come out…
Did he say he’s been with men?!
Not the time to be thinking about that! That doesn’t matter, right now… even if it does… make my imagination run wild!
My mouth suddenly feels very dry!
I waggle my ears and, for good measure, nod my head, as well, before I can choke out a “Yes… Leon… yes, please…”
---Leon’s Perspective---
As we cross back into Plus Ultra, I see that the Commonroom door is still wide open… meaning that Olga is probably still in there…
Alright, no problem. Just be nonchalant… I don’t care if everyone in the galaxy knows what I’m about to do with this sweet little thing… but she clearly has a lot of cultural hangups about sex… best to keep this private until I know it’s OK to broadcast it.
As we walk past the open doorway, I look, for all the world, like a man who’s just accompanying a crewmate somewhere, for entirely innocent reasons… she, on the other hand, looks like a nervous schoolgirl in the middle of doing something she knows is wrong(!)
Her, usually, pumpkin cheeks are a deep sienna, right now.
“Hello, Enas… Hello ‘something’(!)” chuckles Olga, not looking up from her holopad.
Fuck! We’ve been made… instantly! It doesn’t take a spy to recognize that… even if I wasn’t there for whatever Enas said to tee up that joke!
“Hey, Olga!” I answer, not acknowledging her referring to me as ‘something’.
The cutey at my side looks mortified, but we hurry past without getting pulled into further discussion.
As I walk through Enas’ door, I’m hit by a wall of humidity!
It lacks the algal smell I associate with environments this humid… presumably because it’s both decontaminated regularly and only ever been inhabited by a gardenworlder, since being remodelled…
I suppose it makes sense that she’d have humidity so high… I’m guessing an eye that big get’s pretty dry in the rest of our preferred humidity! Actually… I say the ‘rest’ of us… we do have an Umbouapa in the dorm… being an amphibian… he would probably like higher humidity, too? Perhaps I should float raising the humidity setting to a compromise, next time we’re all together. Baorbo’s practically mute and Enas is adorably shy, so I don’t think either of them would bring it up… it would be nice for both of them to be more comfortable in the common areas!
I drop my violin case and turn to the adorable, little thing who looks up at me with that single, pale pink iris…
“So, darling… You’ve got me… all to yourself… what now?” I say, hitting the door lock and privacy switches.
She jitters out “W-w-w-we… could k-kiss?”
I affect my most debonair smile and close the distance between us.
Rather than bending almost double, I elect to scoop her up and bring her to my eye level (not hard with how light she is!).
Her feet dangling 14 inches off the floor, her lips quiver as I hold them an inch from mine.
I give her a few moments to take the initiative… then take it myself.
Wrapping my arms around her back, I bring my hand to the base of her skull and thread it into her vivid purple hair before I kiss her.
She melts… her enormous eye closing, soporifically.
God damn, she’s cute!
Everything about her is, just slightly, off… the same way I could never convincingly pass for another species that someone is familiar with, she could never pass for Human to anyone who knew what a Human was supposed to look like!
She could have a prosthetic nose and two eyes applied professionally over her one… her ears flattened down and prosthetic, elastomer ones attached over the top, prosthetic fingers… short stilts, ending in Human shaped shoes, to correct for the slightly too short legs and slightly too long arms, a properly colored wig… all that… and she’d still only look Human if she sat still… the way she’d move would give her away, immediately!
Regardless… she’s so cute… this pretty little slip of nothing, I’m gently embracing…
I pull from the kiss…
“There… we kissed… what now?”
She almost whispers “What if we kissed…on my bed?”
I puff, mirthfully, through my nose “I think we can manage that(!)” before I start walking in the direction of her bed.
Bringing my knees onto the bed top, I pitch slowly forward, taking one arm off her back to brace our descent.
I lay the gorgeous little thing out on the bed beneath me.
Her amethyst hair spreads from her head in a holy corona that almost makes me revert to my Catholicism(!)… My little, one eyed Saint!
I bring my lips to hers and, in the first initiative she’s taken so far, she wraps those long arms around the back of my neck.
I notice how close the lens of her eye comes to the bridge of my nose… I wonder what the view is like(!)
I begin exploring the inside of her mouth with my tongue… so weird that she has fangs when she’s a leaf eater! I get that tusks were useful to males, as a display structure, in her evolutionary past but why would she need fangs?… I guess, I have nipples… so I can’t really talk(!)
I feel her cute little nose (consisting of nothing more than alae and tip, there not really being space on her face for a bridge) squash beneath mine.
I straighten up, breaking from the kiss, and say “I’m going to take off my jacket and shirt… you get your head on the pillows and… if you want to… take off your top.”
She does that adorable little ear wiggle of agreement… Mother Mary! She so fucking cute!
I shed my jacket as she pulls herself to the position I indicated.
In unison, we start taking our tops off.
As my shirt passes over my head and clears my vision, I see her fully exposed chest…
Her tits, like the rest of her, are very cute!
Definitely not winning any awards for size… but perky and shapely… there’s no mistaking that that’s a woman’s chest!
I smile and look at her face… she’s gawping at my exposed chest.
“How!?” she asks, incredulously “You’re so muscular! How are you so much more muscular than you seem with your clothes on?”
I chuckle “Standard practice in my line of work… I want people to underestimate me… I don’t want to advertize my physical presence… I choose clothes, very carefully, to deemphasize my physique… You still think I look ‘androgynous’?”
She smiles, consideringly up into my face “I… I don’t know that there’s a word, in Kyklan, for what you are, Leon… neither women, nor men could ever look like that! But… well, whether I have a word for it or not… I certainly like it!”
I smile back “Thanks(!) You look mighty fine yourself(!) Now…” I move, over the bed, towards her until I loom over her, again.
She bites her lip, nervously… and adorably.
I come down, careful not to put too much weight on her at any point… I do weigh nearly four times as much as her!
I place my left hand on her right breast and massage, gently, as I come in for another kiss.
She gives a little moan.
I stroke up and down her stomach, with my fingertips.
She’s getting into the kiss, more than before… Before, she was effectively just letting me kiss her, now she’s participating…
The tips of her fingers come to my chest and trace along my sternum, down to my abdominal cleft.
She opens her eye, withdraws from the kiss and places a hand on my pectoral… an unmistakeable indicator that she wishes me to stop.
I stop, pull away an wait for what she has to say.
“Is… is it… is it true you’ve been with… men?”
Confused, I answer “Err… yeah… why?”
Her eye widens “It’s just… that feels so… debauched! That’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t find in the dirtiest of dirty mating sims, on Kyklos! Is it… is it normal, for your people?”
I laugh “Pretty… *hahahaha*… pretty normal, yeah!… Didn’t used to be. Hundreds of years ago there was a similar social constructed stigma around it as you seem to have…”
“It changed?!” she asks, agog.
“Sure did!” I answer, cheerily.
“How…?”
“That’s… a very long history lesson that you’ve just asked for but the CliffsNotes version is that we stopped being assholes(!) Is it a dealbreaker, that I’m so ‘debauched’?”
“No!” she answers, desperately “I’m sorry… I just couldn’t think of another word for it… ‘taboo’ maybe? If anything… it makes me wonder if my people will ever ‘stop being [assholes]’ about that kind of thing… It’s actually… it’s a little exciting! Again… that’s something that I shouldn’t be excited by!”
I smirk “Just in case you’re getting any ideas; I’m not poly! As exciting as it might be, in concept, to bring another boy in on things… that’s a hard ‘no’ from me!”
She gives a forlorn chuckle “Even I’m not so selfish as to want two men! Monogamy is my [kink]… I don’t need a harem of men like some ancient [untranslatable concept. Closest approx.: Empress](!)”
At this I frown, form a roll cage of my arms and roll onto my back, her being pulled on top of me. She yelps in surprise.
I look up, sternly, into her worried eye.
“Enas…”
“Yes…Leon?”
“You keep calling yourself ‘selfish’… that’s no good!”
“But…”
“No ‘ifs’, no ‘buts’, no ‘coconuts’! Let me finish! It’s not selfish to know what you want in a partner… it’s not selfish to be attracted to a certain kind of person… or to want sex, love or affection in a certain kind of way… so long as you’re open about it, so long as you don’t try to deceive your partner into getting it! From what you’ve told me, Enas, it sounds like you’ve had a string of very selfish partners, that you’ve been very open with and who’ve all let you down! I’m also pretty sure that you’ve been mildly gaslit into thinking that you’re the problem… you’re not! You’ve set boundaries, you’ve been clear about what you want, they’ve agreed!… Maybe they believed the promises they made, when they made them… but, then, when they found they couldn’t give you what you wanted, what they’d promised, rather than telling you and trying to negotiate or, if that weren’t possible, just ending the relationship, they’ve snuck around, behind your back!… I’m a spy! Sneaking around, behind people’s backs, is what I do, professionally… and I think that’s a shitty way to treat a partner!!!… What I’m saying, darling, is that you’re not selfish… or, perhaps, it’s OK to be that kind of selfish! Now, I’ll tell you what would be selfish, now that I’ve told you that I’m not interested in being shared… if you went behind my back and got another boy in here, to share me with, without telling me, that would be bad-selfish! Your kind of selfish isn’t selfish at all!”
She pants and her eye wheels over my face, slightly unnervingly.
“You… you mean that?” she asks, quivering.
“Every word!” I answer, firmly.
A massive tear forms in her eye and splatters onto my chest.
She sobs and I pull her close to me in a reassuring cuddle.
“Everyone… everyone always told me that I was the problem! That I was crazy to expect a man not to try to build his harem… to expect a woman not to want to join a harem… You’re the first… you’re the first person ever to tell me that what I want is reasonable! That I’m not crazy! That I’m enough!!! I feel like I’ve had a vice around my hearts and I didn’t even know it was there until you removed it!”
I smile “It’s what I do… read people… Look we don’t need to have sex, we can just cudd…”
“I want to have sex!!!” she interrupts with some ferocity.
“Alright, darling, I know I said 'be clear about what you want’ and you’ve done that brilliantly, right there, but you don’t need to yell…(!)” I respond, with slight mirth.
She hangs her head “I’m sorry…”
“I’m not mad about it… I’m happy you sill feel up to things with me, tonight…”
“I do!” she responds, with the slight desperation that suggests she thinks I might be about to walk out.
“Alright then… would you like me to unbuckle my pants… or would you like to?”
She hesitates, clearly still getting used to having decisions to make.
“…I want to do it.”
I smile “Alright then, I’m all yours, darling…”
Excitedly, she shimmies down my trunk and brings her hands to my belt.
She unfastens it and, as she does, brings her eye to my bulge… and frowns quizzically… *hmmm*
She pulls my pants all the way off and then brings her hands to my underwear…
She yanks them down and my erect cock lunges forward…
A cavalcade of emotions play across her face… awe, bashfulness, excitement, confusion, consternation…
Eventually she rights herself and asks “You only have one?!”
“Whozawhatnow?”
---Enas Perspective---
One… he only has… one!
Granted it is the single most impressive cock I’ve ever seen… the problem is that it’s the single most impressive cock I’ve ever seen!
How did I not see this coming!? He has the wrong number of eyes, the wrong number of fingers, the wrong number of toes… how did I not consider that he might have the wrong number of cocks!?
“How many… should I have?” he asks, half his brow hair raised in quizzicality.
“Two! That’s normal!... I have two openings… with one cock, you can only satisfy one at a time…”
He thinks a moment, pulling himself into a seated position against the headboard…
“That’s… true… if I use my cock…”
“Oh great, let me guess, you have a secret, hidden tentacle(?)”
He puffs, mirthfully “Nothing you haven’t seen already… I think I know how to do this… are you happy to let me try?”
I think about asking him to elaborate before I agree… but… thus far… he’s proven himself to be more trustworthy than any of my previous partners…
“*sigh*…What do I need to do?”
He smiles “OK… first, drop your pants and panties… give me a little anatomy lesson…”
I do so, spending the next [2 minutes] or so giving him a rundown of Kyklo female reproductive anatomy.
“Great… I think I’ve got it… now…” he pats the crook of his body, where his torso and legs join and fold “…if you would kindly plant that gorgeous ass of yours, right here, we can begin…”
Still uncertain, I comply turning my back to him and sit on the top of his upper legs, my back resting on that chest, of living marble.
He adjusts my position to nestle his single enormous cock between my arsecheeks… that’s odd… but pleasant…
He leans in to whisper in my ear “I’m sorry I don’t have enough cock for you, darling…”
I close my eye to hear his sensuous voice “You actually have more than enough… it’s the number more than the quantity… if one of your hidden abilities were dividing your cock in two, there’d be no issue…”
He kisses my neck, strokes those talented fingers up my front and fondles my breasts, causing a moan of pleasure from me.
Almost unconsciously, I begin grinding my arse into his crook.
His right hand moves down, to my crotch.
Teasing the lips of my pussies with his fingers he says “Oh, no! Looks like I was wrong!”
My eye shoots open and I wheel my head to him “You were wrong?!” I say in horror.
“Yep… you see…” he gives a smug smile and holds up his hand to show me it covered in my own lubrication “You’re soaking wet right now but… I’d say… you’re only about 46lb… 47? I guessed you be 50!”
“Don’t scare me like that! I thought there was a problem!”
“Sorry…” he says, not sounding it!
Bringing his hand back to my groin he resumes his teasing and I resume my grinding against his cock.
Is he planning to do what… it seems like he’s planning to do? He has too many fingers, surel…eee…eee…eee!
I gasp and shudder.
He did it! The son of a bitch actually did it!
His right fore and middle fingers are in my left pussy and his ring and little are in my right!
Somehow, he’s managing to spread those fingers of his, in the middle, far enough apart to get all his fingers all the way inside me!
He begins pulling them out, then slides them back in… the sensation is incredible!
If this were penetrative sex with a Kyklo man, each cock would be whole rather than segmented in two!
If a woman were pleasuring me this way she’d use one hand and each finger would take one of my pussies! She wouldn’t be able to coordinate two hands at once!
This feels like I’m being pleasured by two women at the same time!
He brings his thumb to my clit (thankfully, I only have one of those) and starts stimulating.
He has processing power to spare, in his motor cortex, for his thumb, after what he’s doing with his fingers!? Surely that’s it, right?
He proves me wrong by getting his left hand in on things, stroking my stomach, teasing my breasts, cupping my throat.
I redouble my efforts, working up and down the length of his shaft with my arsecheeks.
He raises his voice.
“Holo… play favorite 00005 over the room speakers…”
I hear the familiar notes of sublime [violin] start to play… only this time… they’re joined by other instruments…
Then I hear a Godly singing voice.
mp♫We're a thousand miles from comfort, we have traveled land and sea
But as long as you are with me, there's no place I'd rather be
I would wait forever, exalted in the scene
As long as I am with you, my heart continues to beat ♫ mp
My eye wide… I turn over my shoulder to look at him, he doesn’t break from pleasuring me with his hands so I try not to break from wiggling my arse against his cock, as I ask “You sang this?!”
He puffs, playfully and answers “Not originally… this is my singing you’re hearing now though… the instruments are all me, too… I hope you don’t think it’s too vain of me to fuck you to my own music…”
Agog, I’m dumbstruck a few seconds… then a smile breaks over my face.
“It is vain… but it’s the good kind of vain… the kind where you’re exactly as amazing as you think you are(!) Your kind of vanity isn’t vanity at all(!)”
He smiles and proceeds to give me the most satisfying [fuck] of my life… with only his hands… and his music.
There’s no place I’d rather be…
---Leon’s Perspective, the following morning---
I wake with my cutey nestled into me…
Jesus! It’s really too early to be having these kinds of feelings… The kind of feelings where I’m wondering how feasible it would be to get a second cock from a gene therapy clinic, for her!
Let’s maybe cool our jets and not start wondering how to bring up the question of what the correct number of tusks, for any sons we might commission, is(!)
We’ll just… play it cool, see how things go… not make any impulsive, difficult to reverse decisions!
…Maybe… though… I should talk to Ziva about the possibility of us retiring from field work… at some point…
Enas’, face dominating, eye opens, slowly.
“Morning, darling.”
“Good morning…” she says, blearily but happily.
“You want to get breakfast together?”
She smiles “Sounds good.”
We dress and make our way to the Commonroom, only to find the kitchen in use.
Olga is sat at the table, a rare expression, that isn't dour seeming, on her face, Ziva is at the hob.
“Ah! There they are(!)” smirks Ziva, over her shoulder “Odysseus and his vanquished foe(!)… Hope you guys are hungry, I’ve made pancakes!”