Gilrack kept me held to him long after my hair had dried. He was somehow able to tell the moment I started to overheat in the blanket/towel combo and undid the big knot he'd somehow made out of me, though he was careful not to make me feel exposed. I was able to keep the towel over the most important part of me. Sometimes he responded to my questions and we were able to talk, somewhat. Other times he only answered in the tones of his language, which was good practice or me, albeit I was nowhere near as adept at his language as he was with mine. All the clicks just sounded the same to me.
I could somehow sense from him, in those 'mind waves' that hadn't stopped since that moment in the shower, how deeply he was into his instincts. It was what alerted me out of my panic to what was happening when he'd suddenly whisked me away to his den.
At some point, deep in the well of his instincts, crooning and wafting warm-hot waves of 'peace' and what I now recognized as 'love' over me, he ducked his face into my hair. A cautious hand set itself on my bare knee. Purrs attempted to come up, but they were all smothered by something.
I'd been asking him what was wrong since we had gotten there, but the only theory I could come up with was that he thought I was rejecting him, though it somehow didn't sit right. He hadn't lost it this thoroughly since we'd met. But, then again, this was an alien. I didn't know all that happened in their romance rituals. He'd already made it clear that there was no forcing involved, but this wasn't forcing. It was just him in, like, a panic mode. As though...
I frowned and pinched my bottom lip. Maybe it was his reaction to my own distress? He did say we didn't hold back our mind waves in the slightest, and none of us had figured out how to 'block' our thoughts and feelings from getting out yet, despite Gilrack's efforts to teach us.
His face nuzzled down my hair to the curve of my neck, where he made a throaty roll of 'r's that sounded like a cat's 'prrbt.' He was asking for attention.
Without thinking I started petting the hair away from his face, earning me a hot puff of air from him across my collarbone.
It was kind of cute...
When those 'mind waves' seemed more conscious and less muggy with emotions, I asked "What do mates do? Your people's 'mates,' I mean."
There was a spark of bemused confusion from his mind waves. He probably thought it was obvious.
"They love. They help, male help female, female help male. They make young and raise young. Male and female try to make each other happy and safe." He paused to gather his thoughts. It was the calmest he'd been so far. "Male protect and provide. Female nurture young and make safe den...Male and female nurture each other. Make den. Make home and nests. Make happy."
"Sounds basically what our mates do," If they're particularly conservative folk. Though such a coincidental similarity in our species was hard for me to believe. What was the likelihood that some alien species roughly twenty lightyears away from our planet had the same purpose in mating? Then again, I didn't know the unspoken rule to intelligent life forms. Tell me to calculate the acceleration of time in proximity to the wakes of a black hole, done. Ask me why Gilrack was fine being naked and I wasn't? I dunno. Just 'cause?
I was interrupted from my pseudo-disbelief by Gilrack 'prrbt'ing into my shoulder again. I got back to work petting.
"How many mates do you have?"
He rumbled a low tone of displeasure for some reason.
"Depends," he said stiffly.
"How so?"
"Most one mate for life," he said. "But some...nurgh."
I laughed. It was so funny to hear a sound that was purely him and alien and yet it came across so human.
"My mother had many mates," he said, only because he was pleased with my laugh. "She was—is? Chief. Very beautiful, very powerful, but I never understood. It is harder for one female to give many males young. And she..." A tickle of a mind wave across my mind gave me the impression of a wrinkled nose of disgust, though whenever Gilrack made that expression it was always obviously practiced. "She is not gentle. She is not kind. She is great and sometimes very fierce, and to some, ugly. But she has wings and the blood of chiefs, so she is chief, no, chieftess."
"We have another name for a female chief that I think works better here."
I felt his ears perk up against my cheek.
"Queen," I said. "That would make you a prince."
"Prince? Like...lesser...little chief?"
"A prince is a son of a Queen and can grow up to become a King, or chief."
Gilrack puffed air across my collarbone again, raising goosebumps across what bit of my chest was exposed above the towel. I felt a note of displeasure, but he didn't say anything to that. Perhaps he did not want to be in a leadership position, which I could totally get. Having to worry about other people constantly and tell them what to do and all that attention—ugh. There's a reason I came to the edge of the known galaxy.
His hand on my knee drifted, feather-light, across the top of the towel where it hesitated over my stomach. When I didn't protest, he gently set his hand against it. A thrill of satisfaction that wasn't mine rippled through my thoughts.
I pinched my knees together. "Um, that isn't, uh, what does that touch mean?" They were very, uh, not liberal with their touching. Touch was the same as clothes, I had to remember that.
"Mine," he rumbled. His mind waves were getting thicker again, less coherent.
"What? No, wait, don't go back—shit."
He was back to crooning again, and no matter what I asked only clicks were my answers.
It was like he thought we were already mated.
"I didn't agree to this," I told him.
He actually whined a little at that.
"No, really, I didn't. We are not mates."
His arms tightened around me, as well as the hand on my stomach. The hole on top where the corner of his wings didn't quite cover, like the opening in the top of a teepee, shrunk to a pin point.
Okay, so wrong thing to say, but seriously.
When his instincts once more retreated, though, his body relaxed and the teepee hole grew looser than before.
"I know," he said. "I—I'm sorry. Instincts..." His shame low-key stung like low-grade acid across my thoughts.
"Do your females have to worry about male instincts?"
He hesitated, and I took note of that.
"It's...it's all...not in order with us—with Gilrack and Jolene. Different...different kinds."
"Okay, I can get that."
"...I love you."
"Yeah, I heard that."
"..."
"Gilrack, let me go."
His body against mine spasmed as he reflexively tensed to tighten around me at the same time he tried to force himself to relax and step back.
"I...I can't."
"No, seriously, I have to pee."
"...Oh."
"'Oh' is right."
So, that was probably the most complicated pee I'd ever had to take. Apparently, Gilrack had no clue that the lab had its own restroom, which is understandable as the door was just another metal plane that slid in and out of the wall. When I asked what toilet he had been using this whole time, he was suspiciously quiet. He did lean around me to take a closer look at the toilet as well as how I'd open and closed the door before whisking me back to his puddle of blankets and remaking his wing teepee about us.
I'm not sure how long we sat there, making conversation on and off. Since I didn't have my clothes I didn't have my communicator either, which meant Levi and Naomi didn't have a chance to interrupt. In the back of my mind I worried in case they needed me for something, but it wasn't like I didn't spend entire days alone in the observatory painting and running numbers on whatever phenomenon I'd chosen to look into that day. Though with the arrival of Gilrack my reports back to Earth had gotten lazy, which wasn't good.
By the time my stomach started to rumble for food, however, Gilrack seemed to have gotten his instincts mostly under control, though he still followed behind as close as possible as I left his 'den' and made my way back to my room to dress. Luck was with me and I didn't meet Levi or Naomi on my way back. I didn't want to have to explain...this. Mostly to Levi. He didn't need more reason to think Gilrack was...
Ugh, Levi had been right.
I tried to act natural when I entered the lounge and saw Levi and Naomi having dinner together. It was a mite difficult with Gilrack practically hanging off my shoulders. When I turned with my tray of the closest to meat the food replicator could make in hand, Levi was scowling.
It was Naomi who spoke, a bowl of what smelt like curry tucked up against her chin.
"Where have you been all day?"
They would have checked all my usual haunts, so there was no point lying.
"In Gilrack's room. Apparently, he didn't know it had a toilet, among other things. Very educational day."
All true, yes.
Levi's scowl deepened. I frowned back at him, daring him to say what I knew he was thinking.
"Well, you missed out," she said. "Control finally responded to our latest report."
My stomach tensed. Something twanged in my lower abdomen again as I sat down and I just stopped myself from wincing. Gilrack made a low keen just within the range of my hearing and put a knee on the sofa, before remembering he was too big to sit on it and went around to stand behind me as close to contact as he could get.
"Well? What's the verdict?" I cut a piece of my soybean hamburger steak.
"Earth's been holding out on us," grunted Levi.
"Oh?"
"They've already sent out a team," said Naomi, "and they'll be here in something like five months."
I stared. I stared hard.
"No way."
"Like I said," said Levi around his fork. "Holding out like shit."
"You can't just—how do twenty years shrink down to five months? I mean, I know they figured out how to send mostly non-organic material in six months, but—but people?"
"It's the same technology with some experimental adaptations," said Naomi, her high eyebrows agreeing with my thoughts. "Along with that distortion you sent them data about half a year back."
I gave her my driest look of disbelief. "The wormhole? They're going to try the wormhole? This isn't science fiction, you don't just fly through warped space and hope you stay in one piece."
"Well apparently they've figured something out. Point is, we won't be the sole life on Veta Three come the end of December. There should be about five of them."
"They want us to keep the alien in lock up until they get here," said Levi suddenly, one dark eye on Gilrack.
I caught that dark eye with a dry look and he looked back to his food.
"First time we meet intelligent life and they think locking it up is the best way to start," I said.
"Don't worry," Naomi said to an obviously tensed Gilrack. "We're not stupid or cruel enough to do that to you, Gilrack."
"Not that we could even if we tried," I gave him a friendly pat on the arm. "You would have us down and out before we could blink, couldn't you?"
For some reason, that didn't comfort him in the least. A familiar thickness in the waves of warmth he was sending toward me alerted me. If I didn't figure out a way to calm him down quickly, we'd all be seeing a return of his instincts, and I didn't think Naomi or Levi would take great to seeing me taken hostage.
I tugged on his arm. He followed it in confusion until I sat him on the floor in front of me. All the while Naomi jabbered on about her theory that the team of five would be dead by the time they reached our station. Traveling over that huge amount of space above light speed hadn't been attempted yet with living beings for a reason.
With my leg pressed against his side and one of his wings wrapped about me, I felt more than saw Gilrack melt. A quiet purr I hoped only I could hear started up in his chest.
I looked up in time to see Levi's scowl deepened.
"Aren't you excited?" I asked him. "There might be a hot babe coming for you."
His scowl warped to something very still and very dark.
Naomi only took one look at his face before jumping to her feet.
"Gilrack, sweetie, you're tall and strong, could you help me with something?"
Since Gilrack had yet to close off his mind to me, I could feel his discomfort, but he nodded nonetheless.
Meaning within a moment, I was left alone with Levi's cold stare.
I cleared my throat, just to stuff my mouth with food. The sooner I finished the sooner I could leave too. It was unfair, though, I'd just gotten here, and I hadn't said anything wrong, had I?
He just kept staring at me while I chewed. The air practically sizzled with his anger.
So, since I'm tough, I didn't instantly shovel more food in my mouth when I had finished chewing, even though I wanted to.
"Did I say something wrong?" I asked.
In answer, he put aside his mostly empty tray and stood up. I watched with growing trepidation as he crossed the lounge. I expected him just to stop in front of me, but he just kept coming, leaning over to brace himself against the back of the couch, caging me in his arms.
His black eyes burned.
"I'm done with you playing stupid."
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I hate it when the tortillas in a packet get all smushed together so they stick to one another and it's really hard to peel them apart without tearing them, but they tear anyways, and then you try to make a burrito but the tortilla has a hole or a too thick or too thin spot. So lame. Also, why is it spelled 'tortilla' but pronounced 'tortia?' Like, what the heck, latin based language, do you just randomly make letters silent for the heck of it?