Star Side

Chapter 45

Stellar date (Earth Time): 08-03-2914

Nursing Gilrack back to health turned out to be a near full-time gig. Naomi said, if he'd been human, any doctor would have diagnosed him with a severe case of depression. He didn't eat unless I was the one who gave him the food and he didn't leave his den for a full week. A part of me mourned the muscle loss that would do. Natural or not, anybody got flabby if all they did is lay around and mope.

I must have missed a lot while I was hiding away, because Levi had become more subdued. He behaved as he usually did, gravitating towards me wherever I was and joking, but he didn't try to press kisses on me or otherwise to give him affection. He still occasionally squeezed in a flirt that I could pass off as a friendly joke, but for all intents and purposes, we'd gone back to how we'd usually been before Gilrack had arrived.

A week after I'd started nursing Gilrack, Naomi met me outside Gilrack's den one with two steaming cups of calming tea. She handed me one and we naturally made our way to the lounge. With Levi, I went to the plant biome. With Naomi, I'd go to the lounge.

Being left with my sole girlfriend and Naomi's special brew of tea, which I secretly suspected had more than just lavender, vanilla, and chamomile, I found my tired jaw loosening and spilling to her Levi's deal in this drama. Of course, she wasn't surprised, only smiling and nodding as she thumbed open the door to the lounge and gestured me inside.

"I scolded him good when he woke up," she said. "I told him if it had been so obvious to him that Gilrack had some sort of liking to you he should mess with that where he can see. Honestly, being forward enough to kiss without even asking, no class at all."

"It's Levi," I said.

"Aye. At least he's paying more attention to his hygiene lately." She sat down with a groan and popping of hips. The window which took up an entire wall of the lounge displayed an uninterrupted view of stars. The station was facing away from Vetas today.

I hugged my mug to me like a talisman.

"It's not just him..." I muttered.

"You've improved your hygiene too?"

I rolled my eyes. "Not that," though I appreciated her humor. The tension I'd been holding all week roiled in my stomach like hot snakes. It didn't help that I'd been finding less and less things appetizing outside of meat. "Gilrack, he...he told me he loves me too. And he...he's more than, or, he was a bit too forward."

She examined me over her mug, as she was prone to do whenever she had a drink in hand.

"The seizure of instincts after he threw Levi?" she said.

"Yeah...but he didn't go too far! He sensed that I was scared and stopped, but he bit me—"

"Excuse me?"

"On the shoulder."

She put her mug down with a loud chink. "And you didn't come to me?"

I looked down at my mug, which was now pinched between my hands and knees.

"I was afraid...of what you'd do to him."

"Dear, there's nothing I can do that he hasn't already done to himself, even Levi sees that."

"It healed up fine anyways."

"That doesn't make this better. We have no idea what happens with his bites—"

"He'd bitten me before when I was drunk and nothing happened."

I clacked my mouth closed at the sharp glare Naomi flashed me. It didn't matter that she was a head shorter than me and petite, the fear of god rushed over me.