Close Encounters 03: of the Sixth Kind

He hasn't moved to interrupt my hand's slow journey towards his middle, so I take that as a go-ahead, and my fingers reach the spot where his "manhood" will re-grow in due time. There's...

Well. Uhm. That was unexpected.

This feels... really familiar.

Turns out when he said 'I am not a man right now' he was also being quite literal in the anatomical sense.

There's a strange clicking sound in his throat and his breath, thankfully resumed before he could pass out, stutters out from between his lips and tingles against mine, that's how close we suddenly are. His tail wraps around my left calf like he needs some support. The fingers that are still clamped around my wrist tighten a little in warning.

"Tender?" I ask him, pulling my fingers off what I can only describe as... a... vagina.

There's a vertical gash formed by puffy folds of skin around a teardrop-shaped indentation and a hole (from which in due time his new penis will grow, I'm sure), so... it does feel a lot like a pussy. I'm sure it'd look like one, too, but no way in hell am I going to avert my eyes from his face right now.

Man, Dryth are such a fascinating bunch. The strength, speed and agility, coupled with their high-performance brains, the wonky exoskeleton, the super-flexible hip sockets, the weird feet, the glowy eyes that change color and the groovy pupils, the detachable, sentient, autonomously functional penis with the testes fused to the base and the ribs along the side, the tail that can also do some wicked things, the frilly, super-powered tongue, the non-hair and the (apparently) magic ears...

(It's almost like they're from another planet, Val!)

A planet on which, I'm fairly certain, nobody would ever do what I'm doing to this Dryth right now. Nobody ever gives them blowjobs and handjobs and any other type of job. Nobody ever begs them to touch here or lick there. Nobody reaches out to them to return a favor. Nobody shares softness with them. Nobody on that bloody planet ever bloody kisses them even though they have lips to die for.

For a second, I'm completely stunned by the realization that I am truly the most privileged bitch in the galaxy because I get to be that person who does all those things.

"Does it feel good when I touch you there?" I ask him straight. I need more information.

He kisses me hard.

Now there's an answer.

What follows is probably a little similar to the first human man drowning in physical euphoria and frantic anxiety all at once as he discovers just how bewilderingly awesome pegging feels. I literally get to hold Bane upright as he shivers and groans partially untranslatable curses in Drythish and kisses me with a growing desperation that lights a fire in my gut, stroking his tongue into my mouth in the same rhythm that I stroke him with my fingers, penetrating shallowly with every pass.

For a long, long moment, I forget all about everything and just am. In this moment. With another living, breathing being to whom I'm giving pleasure. Receiving pleasure from him, both indirectly through his spike massaging my insides and directly through the sensual delight of touching and seeing and hearing him share himself with me. It's... beautiful.

I don't register the moment he climaxes - I guess it happens inside of his body at this stage? - but one second to the next, my touch seems to be too much and he pulls my hand away quite roughly.

He stands there, panting hard enough to make his exoskeleton creak, now holding both of my wrists, the light in his eyes pulsing.

His look says that I just rocked his universe.

I can't help it, I smirk at him.

"You're welcome," I singsong. "Now, would you kindly wash my back for me?"

I turn, sliding out of his twin grip, and spend several long moments gathering up all of my hair just to give him a moment.

There's silence between us for a long couple of minutes as he washes my back and then even my legs all the way down to the soles of my feet, coming up again at the front and passing the sponge over every square inch of skin, all the way to the tips of my fingers.

Then, there's exfoliating, hair-trimming and shaving, nail-clipping and nail-filing, and brushing and conditioning to be done and he even helps me with all of those without me asking. It makes me smile, just like the thought that he personally stocked this bathroom with all those girly products for my sake. He's not verbal often, but he says a lot in his own way.

When he slides his fingers into my hair, brushing by the shells of my ears, I am reminded of Rune. Figuring that there will never be a better opportunity to ask, and never a higher likelihood of getting an answer out of tall, dark and taciturn here, I just come right out with it.

"What happened earlier? With you and Rune?"

He stops in his tracks for a second, then resumes and - predictably - doesn't give me an answer. Yeah, didn't think he'd come right out with it in return.

"You fought. Then his eyes turned your color, and yours turned his color. You were super-intense for a second. He bit you. Really deep."

I pointedly look at the black crescent of a wound on his upper arm.

"Mating frenzy," is all he offers in terms of explanation.

I tisk. It's like pulling teeth with this guy every time. Then again, that's not the biggest, most interesting tooth I want right now, so I let it go.

"And then you bit his ear and he... I don't know. Yielded? What's... what happened?"

Bane pulls his hands from my hair and stills for a long time. Even his tail is still. Man, that's a lot of heavy thinking right there.

"Look," I sigh, when there's no response of any kind forthcoming after at least two minutes, "I realize that I'm probably well into top secret Dryth stuff here. Like, under no circumstances can any other species learn that the fearsome Dryth race can be brought to heel and made into the most docile kitten by biting their ear. I get that."

I look straight into his eyes so he knows I'm sincere when I ask, "You know I'd never voluntarily tell anyone anything I experienced with you and Rune, don't you? Not that I'd ever get the chance... right?"

Saying that, with all its implied meanings and subtexts, is probably a little bit underhanded of me. But I really don't want these two to let me go. I hope they won't ever get tired of me - I know if

(when)

if they do it will probably suck, badly - but if the worse comes to worst, I need some insurance that they can't just put me back where they found me, or into some similar place.

After Bane and Rune, I don't think I can ever let any other man or alien touch and grope my body again. Nor do I want to.

"So anyway," I continue, breaking eye contact. "I figure some Dryth are just different from others. Some have ears and whatever that stuff is that grows on Rune's head, and some don't. Now I didn't get a good look at the other guys on that table but I don't think any of them had ears...? I mean, there's so many of you across the universe, there must be several different... like, races? For example, even on Earth we have black people and white people and all shades of brown and red in between, and some would even say Asians are, like, yellow-ish. And that's just the skin. Some people are left-handed, some have freaky pale eyes and some people can roll up their tongues like so-"

"You will not tell," he interrupts me, and I stop my rambling as his scant words sink in.

The syntax says 'question', but the tone of words says 'warning' going on 'threat'.

But below the surface, what it really is... is a promise.

It's the closest any of the two has ever got to verbally assuring me that they plan on keeping me around. That they won't let me go, that they don't want me in contact with any other alien.

Again, this probably looks awful from the outside, like some girlfriend of an obsessed boyfriend who's locked up by him in his basement and developing Stockholm syndrome or something.

From where I stand, though, it's the first time my life had any hint of auspiciousness since that evening I drove my Volvo home from work and came to floating through the asteroid belt on an intergalactic tow truck. Hell, even before that, my life wasn't all that bright or exciting.

Right now, I have a place to sleep. I have plenty of food and water and hygiene, the air I breathe is clean. I occasionally have my peace.

I have two fascinating and wonderful if occasionally terrifying companions in Bane and Rune.

I don't have a manager because my only "job" is making and keeping my two boys happy. Which makes me, technically, self-employed... and man, I should have tried that long ago.

My life is awesome and I don't want it to change anytime soon. I'm so tired of changes.

So when he says, "You will not tell", what I hear is You will stay with us. It makes my heart jolt, hard.

"I will not tell," I swear to him. "Never. Not to anyone." I will stay with you.

Bane takes my words in and eventually nods. "You will not tell," he repeats solemnly and lifts his hands into my hair again, continuing the scalp massage/conditioning I had interrupted with my nosy question.

I feel a little knot form in my throat and try not to cry. I hadn't even noticed that this had weighed on me, but it feels good to have it out of the way.

He takes another couple of minutes before he opens his mouth again, just as he brushes both of my ears with his fingers.

"We call them khyruna," he says, three words in English and the last in what I assume is Drythish.

My translator chip jumps right in.

"'Crowns'," I parrot the computer voice. "That word means 'crowns'."

"It is crown," Bane confirms. "It is blood. It is power."

I nod. Sounds just like monarchy. A crown is just an item, a round little pot someone puts on their head, but it's also a symbol of authority and lineage.

"All Dryth are born with kyrhuna - with... ears, like him."

Him being Rune, I suppose.

"With uhr'kideh, like him. With hraleia, like him."

My translator doesn't give me a translation for the first Drythish word - something that ended in 'day' - and translates the second one (which ended in 'Leia', like the princess) to 'gift'.

When I ask Bane to clarify, he combs a finger through my hair from the middle of my forehead all the way to the back of my cranium, along the parting. "Uhr'kideh," he repeats, and I realize it's the name for the non-hair growing on Rune's head.

Great. I can't pronounce that properly. I'll keep referring to it as 'non-hair', I guess.

"Hraleia is inside," Bane continues, pointing a taloned index-finger first at the base of my throat and then at my temple. "It is hearing, but not being heard. Listening and being listened to. It is..." He goes silent.

"Complicated," I finish for him because I have not even the faintest idea what the hell he means. Then, I remember what he just said. "Wait. All Dryth are born with all that? But... you-"

"They are removed."

I stare at him, then get on my tiptoes and reach both of my hands up to his head, grabbing and turning it so I can take a better look. He leans down a little, indulging me.

There's the opening to the ear canal, shaped like a bean, nestled into what I always thought of as one of his many ridges, this one vaguely C-shaped. But if I look closely, I can see that the top of that ridge is a little duller in color than the rest of him. A scar. And the top of his head is also too smooth, with the same papery texture that human skin gets when a third degree burn scars over.

I almost ask whether it hurt to do that, and who did that to him, and whether it happened voluntarily, but at the last moment I decide I don't really want to know. I already suspect I wouldn't like the answers anyway.

"Why are they removed?" I ask instead, my heart strangely heavy for him. Being a Dryth sounds like less and less fun the more I learn about them.

"It is a disadvantage in battle," he says and I almost sigh and roll my eyes. Such a Dryth answer: We cut some bits off our heads because they make us vulnerable in battle. Instead of, like wearing a helmet or something, like normal people would.

Then again, a helmet isn't very practical to start with and can be lost in battle, and remembering the drastic effect the ear bite had on Rune and the effect I have on him whenever I run my fingers through his, uh, uhr-something, I guess there's a point? Maybe?

Life in the Wild Wild Space has definitely deadened and blunted some of my sensibilities, but mutilation is still a step too far for me. I don't want to wrap my head around this one.

"Do many Dryth keep their ears and the... the hair-stuff?" I ask, a little bit hopefully. "Like Rune?" Maybe there's a trend in Dryth society to outlaw this tradition?

"No," Bane says, and pauses for a long moment. Just when I think he might open his mouth and go on explaining exactly why Rune still has his features, he just says, "Not many" and leaves it at that.

I sigh, then review all the new info he has given me.

"Wait, so... kee-roo-nah..." I mangle the word for 'ears' so badly that my translator doesn't even pick it up, and I gesture at my own ears just to make sure Bane knows what I mean. "You say it means 'crowns', but also blood and power, so... Does that... Does that mean that Rune is, like, royalty?"

Bane doesn't answer me, but it's not his usual total silence. I can see the answer. It's in the set of his shoulders. My eyes go wide.

"Oh my god, he is, isn't he?" I continue and have a realization mid-thought. "Rune, kee-runa. It's even in his name! The 'rune'-part of his name, that's not really his name but his title?"

That means I have been calling him 'your majesty' or something this entire time and he never even told me, that dickbag.

No verbal answer from Bane, which is an answer in its own right.

"Holy shit!" I laugh, clapping my hand over my mouth because my voice is so loud inside the confines of the bathroom. I'm suddenly somehow star-struck by the guy I've been fucking for weeks now even though his status really means absolutely nothing to me. Still, decades of MTV, TMZ and Hello!Magazine consumption has conditioned me for this moment. Tee-hee, I fucked a celebrity!

(Not just you, Val!)

The realization hits me, so absurdly astounding that I can't stop the words from spilling out of my big mouth. "Bane, you bit and fucked the king!"

"Crown prince," Rune's voice says behind me and I yelp, flinch and whirl around so quickly I slip on the slick bathroom floor. Bane catches me by the upper arm before I can land on my ass though.

"And he did not fuck me," Rune continues evenly but I still spy some spark of humor in the way his tail undulates. "His aim is atrocious."

Bane gives a very human-sounding snort at that and yanks me back onto my feet just to shove me forward and into Rune's waiting arms.

"Ask him your questions, curious human," Bane grumbles and leaves us alone in the bathroom, somehow managing to slam the hydraulic door behind him.

Rune's frayed tail makes a quick little circle.

***

In the end, I don't really get to ask Rune too many questions at that time because he distracts me with wet kisses (we're still in the shower, you see), and then I have my mouth otherwise full for a bit, and then my two spikes start up at the same time and do the tango together and I can't do much more than gasp for air and twitch, and then scream when Rune adds his tongue into the mix. And then I need a damn nap.

Ironically, I end up waking up again back in bed (in my ditch) and basically as much in need of a shower as I was when I first set out toward the bathroom hours before (or maybe days? I don't know. Hot porridge).

God, my life is just so hard, innit?

If the two guys think that they can just fuck me until my curiosity goes away, they don't know me at all, though.

I mean, they can try.

They do try.

Quite successfully, for a couple of days.

Eventually, though, I manage to trap them in a room with me and distract them enough (momentarily) for them to not immediately start banging me again by employing an ancient, secret technique.

That room is the galley (even though the place doesn't really deserve the name) and the technique is basically frying something in a pot. Or something close to it anyways. I guess it's not really secret but the boys don't know that. It's magic to them.

In my time at the brothel, I have worked the kitchen often enough to learn my way around the many unknown ingredients. I don't know the names or origins of any of them (and thank the Lord for that), but I can mostly put them into different categories by sight and smell: Meat-ish, vegetable-ish, mushroom-ish, liquid-ish, and plain disgusting. According to the category, they can or must be cooked and combined with other things to make them palatable - or thrown out right away.

Bane and Rune, for all their size and mass, don't really eat a lot. I guess their metabolism is as on point as the rest of them (or, hell, maybe they absorb nutrients from the air like bloody trees. Anything is possible with the Dryth). They snack on the fruits and veg that can be found in the forest, they eat raw meat from the storage, and they have something I've started calling Space Lembas. It's a doughey sort of meat-ish-bread-ish-mixture, mealy and bland but not too bad and it fills the stomach very quickly.

But every once in a while, I get tired of fruit and non-meat-non-bread and just want something for the palate. So I take some garment I found in one of the storage rooms and wrap it around myself like some poor woman's apron, macgyver the shit out of the room I've designated as the galley and absolutely everything I've found lying around, and start cooking.

Before long both Bane and Rune, irresistibly lured by the smells of cooking meat and veggies, slink into the room like a couple of orthograde cats and observe my fragrant witchcraft from the door and the far corner respectively.

I like that they keep their polite distance. Food is a stressful topic for all aliens I have met so far. Everyone's got food envy and ends up snarling and clawing at one another (and also the cook) if someone gets too close or even just looks at them and their precious food too long. At least my Dryth are civilized enough to take precautions against any outbreaks of unnecessary violence.

Of course, there was a learning curve. I've had to throw several meals into the garbage chute mid-cooking because they didn't behave themselves. They didn't like that one bit.

In the immortal words of my hard-as-nails mom: "Tough shit." There's no fucking fighting in my kitchen. Galley. Whatever.

"So," I half-yell over the sound of some of the meat-ish stuff sizzling in a puddle of liquid-ish stuff in a rinky-dink pot over the flame of some exhaust vent. "Now that we're all here, we can finally finish that conversation we were having the other day!"

I throw both of them a blinding smile. They scowl in return. Bane narrows his eyes and keeps glancing down at the sizzling meatstuff like he's going to pounce on it from ten feet away any second now. My smile only gets wider, my absolutely rational fear of his predatory stillness momentarily eclipsed by a completely irrational confidence inspired by the memory of my mom. Guess I inherited the brass balls from her and they just decide to come out when it's about food. Just you try it, buddy.

Bane stays right where he is. Maybe he's impressed by my imaginary balls.