Breach of Conduct

His knees buckled and they slid to the floor without ceremony, sexes parting with a sucking noise. Thick strands of their mixed fluids dripped away in sticky ropes, both origins still twitching with mutual overload. The human and rilo molded to each other's shape in an exhausted heap.

Neither of them spoke; they couldn't. With senses heightened to the point of painful acuity, there was enough excess stimulation to put them both on the floor. Enn managed to uncross his eyes with some effort, coming back to himself out of force of habit. He turned over ont his back and lay on Taga's stomach, head in its usual cradle between her ribs.

One lazy arm slid up to hold him and he grasped Taga's hand to keep it there. The human felt his consciousness fade in and out for what felt like hours. Even with the stimulants, he'd worked every muscle and nerve in his body raw. Everything in him was completely and utterly exhausted.

Enn just waved when the spec-ops team showed up to investigate.

------------ One Standard Day Later, Present Day ------------

------------ Taga, on Destrec, in orbit around Mi Kho ------------

Taga adjusted her uniform for what felt like the hundredth time. Without the stagnant, odorous air in the fueling station, she was starting to come down from the sex-crazed high of nearly six entire days. Clothing felt like an unwelcome addition to her list of things that didn't need to be felt by over half her skin at the moment. It kept rubbing her in all the wrong ways.

"Private Anahu," the inquiry head said, drawing her back into focus. "Is there anything you want to add to your report?"

She shrugged, feeling her shirt pull against the numerous bite wounds Enn had given her from the top of her neck to her first rib. "No, that's pretty much everything. Unless you want me to talk about him slingin' dick more. I got plenty more on that."

The woman in front of her looked less than amused. "No, that won't be necessary. We'll be back momentarily."

All four of the board members left without so much as a nod to her. Taga relaxed a little when they left. She fully expected to get court-marshaled for effectively stealing a lot of expensive military equipment. And, there was the dereliction of duties to get her brains fucked out by the galaxy's most courageous human.

She felt the cool office air against her teeth. Yeah, he probably takes that title after the whole teeth-on-throat thing. Soft little fucker's got a smolder-heart in there somewhere. She gave an imaginary bite to an Enn that wasn't there. She missed seeing his face. He always looked so enraptured with the idea of climbing on top of her just to say hello.

Her head was still fucked up from being trapped in a poorly-ventilated cauldron of primordial hormone secretions, stale jizz, and sweat. She thought it would be about day forty when she'd break, after he started masturbating every night to stave off his own irrefutable attraction to her. Somehow, they'd made it all the way through to the part where they were forced into arms-length gunfights and close quarters combat with a bunch of amateur pirates and a Galactic Unity commando.

That's the natural progression of these things, right? You wanna fuck so bad you're about to tranq your squadmate and fuck him while he's asleep? Here's your one-off excuse to say you can just go for it instead.

The door opened and the board head came in, folder in hand. She sat down across from Taga and handed her two sheets of paper. Reading them, the rilo ended up quite surprised. She looked back up at the woman who was to lynch her career with a few penstrokes and made a curious face.

"That's correct. You're not being discharged."

"Why? I thought for sure I'd be getting blindfolded by this point."

The board head offered an open hand and Taga looked back at the papers. She still didn't understand. A lot of it was just plain speech jargon about extenuating circumstances and psychological profiles. There wasn't much on why the decision to slam the hammer of decidedly deserving justice had been left unmade.

"Despite breaking several codes of conduct while on duty, your actions in the face of the enemy have merited you a stay of legal reprisal. You have prevented a military catastrophe of unparalleled magnitude, but your breaches in conduct cannot be overlooked. Therefore, you are suspended for one hundred and four days without pay, during which time you may not leave Rocanto Base."

Taga didn't question it any further. She just signed, handed the papers back, and left when she was told. She couldn't believe her luck. She had unwittingly ripped the face off one of the galaxy's leading covert codebreakers and prevented most of the Kalasian Outer Worlds' military encryptions from becoming public knowledge.

Well, she and Enn had managed that.

Outside, she spotted him hobbling across the atrium with a cane strapped to his forearm.

Go get him, Taga. She caught up to the human at a leisurely pace, falling in next to him in a suspiciously seamless way. He turned his head and smiled as he recognized it was her.

"They spare you a court-marshal too? Services rendered?" he asked.

She nodded. "Something about a psychological profile or some shit like that. How's the leg?"

He chuckled. "Feels shitty as the rest of me, but it'll heal. I took enough metabolic injections to give me eyesight if I were blind, so there's that. Doctor said the only reason I was even alive after all the stims was because they put a new heart in me after Indica."

Taga rubbed his red hair with one hand. "They know the lab guts work now, right? I mean, no better test than a six-day rilo rodeo, right?"

Enn actually laughed at that. He smiled a lot at her jokes, but he only laughed when something hit right. She felt something bubble up inside her that made her think of the feeling she got when he'd fall asleep holding her hand, still absolutely throbbing with desire for a third or fourth round of desperate humping and new bruises.

"Yeah," he said after some thought. "I guess it'd make a good study or something down the road."

Taga picked right up from there. "Well, anyway, I guess you're stuck on base too then. Suspended without pay?"

A nod. "Better than getting discharged. At least I don't have to live on ration packs anymore." He grimaced in an exaggerated way. "If I have to eat another H2Oven meal I'm gonna shove a gun in my mouth."

"You think the mess's still open? I could go for some food if you're up for it," Taga offered.

"Probably. Depends on who's working."

"What time even is it, anyway? I feel like it's night already."

Enn looked at his notepad and showed her. DDay: 19:31:04/29:14. It was approaching night, but the storm still holding sway overhead continued to block out about eighty percent of all Mi Kho's visible light to the surface. Given that Enn hadn't slowed his pace yet, the mess was probably going to be closed sooner rather than later.

"You got any plans after food?" she asked casually, keeping an eye on his face.

He picked up his pace a little, grunting with exertion. "Not in particular. Why, what you thinking?" His expression was still unreadable to her. She wanted to ask what he was thinking, but there was no tactful way for her to do it. He was trying to get food. Well, both of them were, but he had purpose in his three-legged gait that didn't seem to include her if she were to fall behind.

Come on, Taga. Just ask.

"Oh, I dunno..." She tried to be casual. "We go back to my place and watch something?"

His pace slowed. She watched his expression change: another one unfamiliar to her. Even with decades of experience with humans, they still threw her for a loop with hundreds of unique expressions that included more than their mouth and scalp. This one was especially good at keeping her guessing. In a lot of ways.

"That sounds dangerously close to asking me out on a date, Taga" he said with a mouthful of self-assured hubris. It practically oozed from the shit-eating grin riveted to his face.

The rilo kicked his cane and made him stumble to one knee.

"Does it?"

He got back to his feet with a substantial amount of effort and leaned heavily on his cane. Gone was the grin, replaced now by a mix annoyance and begrudging amusement. "Yeah, actually. It did until you kicked my cripple stick. Can't a man be wrong without reprisal?"

"Not when he's wrong and a thief," she joked.

Enn gave her an incredulous stare. "You have to be joking. You gave me every single injection. How can I be the thief here?"

Just say it. Say you like him.

"I was talking about this," she reiterated, pointing to her last rib where her second heart was beating wildly. "You went on about someone taking things that didn't belong to him and things never being the same. But you didn't stop to think maybe you were doing that to someone else."

Enn's confusion amused her to no end. "I am so fucking lost, Taga. What the fuck does this-" He pulled up his shirt and pointed at his bruised sternum, pantomiming her. "-even mean?!"

She bent down, putting a hand on his shoulder and leaning across his chest to speak into the ear opposite, encircling him in a way that called back to what she'd done several times over the past few days. Her teeth brushed his ear as she spoke, making him shiver.

"It means you stole my heart, Enn."

There was a pause. Then she felt his hand on the back of her neck.

"Makes us even then, doesn't it?"

Taga felt an unquenchable smile form on her face.

Make that both.