"When will they hatch?" I asked as I ran my thumb over a blue and purple speckled egg. They were beautiful, in their own way.
He had to think about that for a moment, as he always did when converting his time to our time.
"About three months your time," he said.
"Three months..." I cupped my hand about the egg. It was so warm. "Am I going to have to cuddle them like this for three months?"
"We take turns. Once you are well."
"I'm not really chicken material...what if I squish them in my sleep?"
He rumbled with his version of a chuckle and tapped his claw against the same egg I examined.
"You are light, and they are strong."
"Then how are the babies going to come out?"
"The shell will grow soft near the day. They take in shell to grow. Shell is made of good stone. Lots of nutrients."
Huh. That would be interesting to research. The super multi-vitamin which was shells. Though that also brought to mind how much I had eaten in protein supplements the past few months or so. I'd have to count back to my birthday. Damn, that wasn't a long pregnancy.
"You know, we keep grow our young in our bodies for ten months, then birth them already hatched, no shell at all."
He made a funny squawky noise in his throat that made me laugh. I could feel his disbelief enough to interpret the unfamiliar noise.
"That sounds...uncomfortable." He said, and I knew he was thinking of himself going mad with worry over my few months of pregnancy.
"It is. More than half of us get sick in the beginning as our body adjust to growing another person, and there's all sorts of complications that are considered normal, like swelling and pain and not being able to move well."
"...How are your people still alive?"
"How are yours spending three months doing nothing but cuddling eggs?"
"We work in pairs, we have to—"
"Well, we don't have to work in pairs if we take the baby everywhere with us. Lots of our females are able to birth babies without the help of a mate or family. It's harder, but it happens, probably more than it should."
He didn't like that. He didn't like that at all to the point his mind waves left pin like prickles all along my back.
"You're able to do more when you grow your baby inside you the whole time instead of lay eggs," I went on. "Lots of women still work and do what they usually do when not pregnant."
"Your males are lacking," he said, all growly like.
"Why not the females? It takes two to make a baby, you know."
He was quiet for a bit.
"Instincts," he finally said. "Your kind have weak instincts. My kind, once a male mates a female, he stays near so he can scent pregnancy. When he smells the young, his instincts don't allow him to leave without misery, because they are his. Young are happiness. Young are precious, small..." he pondered for the right word. "Beautiful."
"I think the word you're looking for is cute."
"Yes. Cute. Very cute. Are your young not cute?"
"Oh, no, they're cute. And we have something like instincts that make us uncomfortable and miserable if we leave our young too. It's just...people have choices. Sometimes they don't think young will make them happy, even if they are cute, or staying with their mates is so miserable they don't think the young make it worth it."
The combination of his disgust and disbelief were making my back itch and my tongue feel like I'd licked something a little spicy. I'd found in the past few days that being closer to Gilrack had made his mind waves more than just foreign feelings in my brain and more tactile in my body's reactions to them. His feelings now came in tastes and sensations.
"The point to freedom is that you have to allow people to find out for themselves that the right choices make them happy, like staying with young and mates. If they don't make bad choices we wouldn't know they're bad."
"I know," he said with such a human like tone of exasperation I chuckled. "My kind have stupid too. I just do not like thinking about it while my mate and young are here. Stupid stupid, wrong."
"Well, sometimes it's hard to tell that it is wrong, because sometimes we make bad choices in mate because we are in love."
His quiet after that was telling. It made my stomach clench, and his ensuing apprehension didn't make it any better.
"You think I'm bad choice," he said quietly.
I jerked my head back. "You? Aren't I the bad choice?"
"No!" His internal denial was so violent it made my insides tremble. "You are perfect!"
"There's no such thing."
"Yes," his arm draped over me tucked under me and the eggs to tighten. "You are kind, intelligent, motherly—you protected eggs before accepting them, you—you—" His voice broke off in a strangled whine as he tried to find words in a language he was still learning. The emotions washing over me from him were even warmer than his body heat, making even more sweat pop along my skin that hadn't been there before.
"You're smothering me."
"Oh..." His arms loosened and he lifted his wing from over us. Cool air come rushing in. "Sorry. Colder in tunnels."
"I imagine." The station had a constant temperature of seventy-one degrees Fahrenheit. That was probably balmy compared to whatever dwarven mines Gilrack had dug himself out of. "What if the eggs get too warm?"
"They won't. Mother instincts know best. If you are hot, they are too."
"But our instincts are weak."
"No. I felt." He tapped a knuckle on my forehead. "Protected eggs, even while denying them. You are...full of kindness. Of love. Wonderful mother. Wonderful mate."
I couldn't help but blush into my blankets at that. In our short time together, Gilrack had probably complimented me more than I've been my entire life.
"What will they look like?" I asked.
"Like me. Like you."
"Have you seen pictures of our young? Of babies?"
"Yes. I asked Naomi. Very pale and tailless. Ours have our legs, our tails, but otherwise look the same. No claws, no horns, no fangs."
That got me a little excited. If they looked like human babies, I wouldn't mind a weird tail or two.
Babies...I'd be able to have babies...
I hugged the eggs with my body, squeezing my eyes shut and smiling. It was something I thought would never happen to me. Something I'd always internally wanted. Something cute and mine to love and hold. Little pocket companions.
The speaker next to the door clicked on, making Gilrack flinch.
"Jo? You in there?"
It just had to be Levi. Why'd Naomi have to be such a shut in like me? Wait, hadn't Levi been one too? Isn't that why we all got along so well?
I moved to sit up, but both the big alien draped around me and my spent stomach muscles decided to get in my way.
"Gilrack," I hissed.
"No." He said, so solidly I had to stare.
"They're going to find out eventually."
"Let eventually come."
I pouted, but it wasn't like I had much motivation to fight that. Who would look forward to breaking to their station mates: 'Oh, yeah, that big alien we've been sorta accepting, sorta not? He raped me while I was drunk and I laid eggs, but it wasn't rape because he didn't know about drunk people and he thought I was agreeing to it and apparently it was super hot but I don't remember? Oh yeah, we're married for life now according to him!'?
...Yeah, maybe I should just write that down and send it as a note. Like dumping someone over text. Dick move, but so much easier. Embrace my inner coward.
I tapped him on the arm. "When was the last time you ate?"
He grumbled, which told me it had been as long as I thought.
I let him feel my disapproval and knew it work when I heard his tail end thump softly on the floor besides us.
"You still haven't recovered from your 'I'm gonna die' stunk."
His offense tasted like unripe blackberries at the back of my throat.
"I'd hurt you..." he said weakly.
"That's not something to die over. You pick yourself up and work on fixing it."
Still offended, but now I could also feel his embarrassment, like banana peels on the back of my arms. Such weird sensations. Weirder still that I could interpret them all. I wondered just how far this telepathy thing went when it came to mates.
"Instincts..." he tried.
"Yes yes, I know, you were thoroughly mentally, emotionally, and instinctually neglected and abused and away from all you know. The excuses are valid." I twisted just enough to get my hands on his head so I could stroke him. "You're okay, buddy. Just focus on getting better, yeah? I'm going to need you."
That pleased him. That pleased him a lot, so much so I was half expecting something long and alarming to press up against the back of me somewhere. I could almost hear his thoughts singing, 'she needs me!' Which made me smile so wide my vision narrowed.
"Which means getting yourself something to eat."
Good feeling gone.
I laughed.
He gave a low whine in protest.
"I'll be okay," I said. "Just use your sneaky hunter skills if you don't want someone to see you. Didn't you do that when you got my porridge?"
"Mean not that I like," he grumbled.
"'Doesn't mean I have to like it,'" I corrected for him.
He rumbled and nuzzled the top of my head. He really did make me feel so small with his huge body. It was something I had been utterly unfamiliar with before I'd met him and his touchy ways. I'd always been the big one growing up; the first to hit puberty, the first to gain muscle, or the first to gain fat if I so much as got lazy with said muscle. Except this time, because apparently I hadn't been gaining fat, I'd been gaining babies.
"Go. Eat. Or I'll be mad."
He made a few more rumbly tiger noises of displeasure before reluctantly crawling his way out of the nest we had made, for that's what it was: a nest.
As he did so, the blankets moved enough to reveal the smallest egg, tucked up against one of my breasts.
He paused, and I followed his yellow eyes straight down to it.
"What is it?"
He reached out a finger to touch the small one. I could feel his mind shuffle around once more for words, and his pupils tightened to their goat-like, hourglass form.
"No young," he said quietly. "Failure. Too small. I did not throw out because you were...weak."
My chest chilled at that.
"I'm smaller," I said. "Maybe it's just more like me."
He just looked at it, and for the first time I didn't feel an influx of his feelings. Just a coldness about my mentality that made me feel like my brain was too small for my skull.
Whatever he was feeling, he was hiding it from me.
Instead of pushing the matter, he pulled the blankets back over them, tucked us all in, and left with his too-quiet steps out the hiss of the door.
It wasn't until a few minutes later that I remembered the cafeteria robot I'd programmed to bring food up to the observatory. Whoops. Preggy brain? Oh, well, it wasn't like anyone was going to die over Gilrack getting a sandwich, right?
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Nurgh, I made it. Chapter on time. Link and master sword and dragons didn't stop me. My cute husband almost did. Darn him and his cuddliness. Be grateful.