Amber sat on a thick fur blanket, all lavender pudge and big gold eyes, and stared unblinking at Levi. Levi stared back with an arm rested on his bent knee, hanging his coffee by his fingertips.
I watched him for a moment with Cauline on my hip before asking what in the world he was doing.
"The first one to blink loses," he said.
I snorted and set down Cauline on the edge of the blanket, where she proceeded to gum on her fingers and stare at her sister. Their brother, Shorack, was preoccupied with pulling himself up on the stone ledges of the empty conference room usually used for important royal meetings, but which had become our unofficial playroom when we had non-royal visitors. His little tail stuck out straight like a kitten's from his puffy diaper and his little pink lips were slightly parted in concentration. He alone, out of the three babies, had natural human coloring, besides the purple of his hands and feet and hair. His eyes had faded to a brown-gold and, according to Naomi and Levi, looked the most like me.
Amber blinked.
"Hah." Levi smirked.
I rolled my eyes. "Good job, Levi. You beat a baby at a staring contest."
"She was asking for it."
Amber burbled and started to suck on her bottom lip.
"Nu uh," Levi tapped her chin hard enough to pull the lip out. "No suck." He grabbed the teething toy nearby and tickled said lip with it. "Num num."
Amber wrinkled her nose in distaste at having something shoved into her mouth, but then chomped on the cool, squishy toy with gladness.
"Good girl," Levi crooned.
I chuckled, even as I handed a teething toy to Cauline to save her poor fingers, which were as bruised as Amber's bottom lip from their attempts to teeth on themselves. The teething toys themselves were a stroke of brilliance on mine, Naomi's, and Levi's part. They were basically cooling biogel packs used in the cooling system on the life pods. They had extra thick skins meant to survive increased temperatures and grew colder the more heat they were exposed too. Just right for sore baby gums trying to break a tooth. They also had the added bonus of being nontoxic, if the babies somehow tore through the thick plastic, which was highly unlikely.
All the aliens took it as one of the many evidences that divine beings were phenomenally inventive and out of this world intelligent, baring the fact that none of the us had invented the biogel.
Watching Shorack waddle his fluffy butt along the seats was Naomi, who'd become all stars and warm grandma the moment she'd met them. A lifetime of wishing for children came in full and I never knew Naomi could look so content and happy. Though, occasionally, something sad would cross over her eyes and I knew she was thinking of Joshua.
"You're never going to look big and bad again," I told Levi.
"There's nothing more big and bad than a man with a kid," he said. "Like a bear with cubs. You just don't screw with them."
"Does that make you mama bear?"
"More like uncle bear. Damn, these little freaks shouldn't be so cute. There's got to be a law against that somewhere."
"Don't call my kids freaks."
"It's an endearment."
Cauline rolled onto her back with a flop to get a look behind her, still chewing on the biogel pack. Amber looked over to see what the movement was for and caught sight of her sister's wiggling toes. She meant to grab them, but forgot to let go of her teething toy in the process and ended up smacking them with slobbery biogel pack instead, making Cauline jump a little and stare.
"Any word from the base?" I asked.
"Well—" started Levi, only to be cut off harshly by Naomi.
"Don't ruin my happy hour! No base."
"Then plug your damn ears, hag, she asked."
Naomi glared at her brother, the petulantly plugged her ears and went back to cooing the little boy the last few feet to her.
Levi huffed in amusement then turned back to me, even as he tugged Amber's lip out from her mouth again.
"It's the usual. Still demanding we bring out one of the babies for them to run tests on or letting them send in a representative, because apparently Naomi and I don't count."
"Well, you don't."
"Damn right. I ain't no spy. I didn't accept a job with that much paperwork. High school was, like, fifty years ago, damnit."
I chuckled, knowing very well he was all bluff. Levi could be incredibly intelligent, especially on paper, when he wanted to be.
"Naomi gets a lot more pressure than me, though, since she's medical and all that. She's given them the basics to get them to shut up but they're always asking for more. Oh, and that one intern died, so now they're all freaking out about eating anything from this planet."
"Was it really a space tapeworm?" I asked.
"They don't even know because Naomi's too busy playing with babies to go and see."
"Damn right," came Naomi's chirp.
"I thought you weren't going to listen," said Levi.
"Baby love needed my hands," said Naomi, gesturing a chin to where she was holding a triumphantly squealing Shorack, his stiff little tail wagging like a puppy. His long, draconic legs clawed along the ground with soft, jelly-bean toes.
"Someone's dead and you don't care," said Levi. "Have you no shame?"
"Nope. I didn't make him eat that crap."
Levi shrugged and shook his head with a wry, half-smile.
"And they call me the sociopath."
"I think it's probably being alone in space with just each other for too long," I said, unable to resist playing with Cauline's little feet. They were bigger than a normal human infants, and her legs longer (they'd be decent T-rex legs when she grew up), and she giggled around her gel pack. "You've disconnected from the rest of humanity. You know, like you, Naomi, Josh and me are a species unto yourself."
"Hmm. Sounds about right." He tugged Amber's lip out of her mouth again. "Jeeze, girl, for real, what's your sore-ass lip got over this jelly goodness?" He put the gel pack to her lips again, to which she happily chomped down on.
"She's a creature of habit," I said fondly, reaching a hand over to tweedle her little toes to. "At least they're being cautious of not stepping on any toes where the aliens are concerned. That's at least one good thing that came out of Josh's death. Though I'm sure Gilrack is more than ready to demonstrate should they forget. Did you tell them their bodies absorb metal bullets?"
"Hell no. Let them figure out that shit themselves."
"Wow, Levi."
"Hey, if they get into a situation where they have to shoot an alien which half-worships them as 'divine beings' they deserve it."
"You forget, they also half-fear them too. Divine beings are supposed to be why they were forced to live underground. Lost a whole war or something like that."
"Worship, fear, they're more or less the same thing. Point is, I never liked people and I don't want any of them near this chubby cuteness, don't I, sweet cheeks?" he squeezed Amber's cheeks as he said this, going downright baby talk near the end.
I laughed, especially at the bewildered baby look Amber gave him around her gel pack.
"You're gonna grow big and deadly and claw up all the bastard's faces, huh? That's right, claw them up good."
"Levi, stop trying to program my daughter into a killing machine."
"Oh, but it'd be sick, and amazing. She'd be just like her mommy then."
"I am not a killing machine."
"You might as well be. It's hot."
"Married!" yodeled Naomi from where she was holding bouncing and tickling a giggling Shorack.
"I know, hag!" yelled Levi back. "Doesn't mean I don't have eyes," he then grumbled.
"It's for your own protection. If Gilrack happened to hear that—"
"He's already heard me said worse, and I'm ready to duke it out when he is."
"Seriously?"
Levi shrugged. "Meh, it keeps me young. Gotta get my exercise in so I can see this beautiful killer when she grows up, don't I? Don't I, baby girl?"
Amber blinked at Levi. And drooled.
"She totally thinks you're a freak," I said.
"You're full of shit, she loves me."
"Keep telling yourself that."
Cauline suddenly gave a happy screech, eyes over my shoulder. Already knowing what I'd see, I looked over my shoulder to see Gilrack stepping into the conference room, wings flaring in and out in irritation.
"Hey! Don't bring your stress to the babies!" said Levi.
Gilrack scowled at him and slapped his tail on the floor. "They aren't your young."
Besides, Levi didn't know that the babies themselves had no fear of Gilrack's stress, unlike they did with mine. On the contrary, they knew exactly what to do to fix their daddy, as they then proceeded to demonstrate by wriggling their way out of all our grips and crawling madly towards their daddy, babbling all the way.
Gilrack's pupils blossomed and his spines rattled. He crouched down, cooing as he held out his arms to receive each baby as they reached him. The girls reached him first, a mess of baby noises and squiggling toes. Shorack, having to cross the largest distance, started giving impatient yowls that bordered on whimpers when he couldn't reach daddy fast enough, so Gilrack crossed the space between them and scooped him up too. The tiny babies, still small for humans but just right for the aliens, fit just right as a threesome bundle in Gilrack's large arms.
Levi tched, radiating jealousy no one needed telepathy to feel.
I patted his shoulder.
"You could always trying wooing one of the females here."
"I am not dating one of those monsters."
"Jeeze, harsh much?"
"They're twice my size! And they got no boobs! I'm a boob guy, remember?"
"Guess you'll be single till you die," said Naomi as she came over to sit on the fur blanket with us. "'Cause none of the women back at camp will have you either."
"Old, grouchy, bossy biddies, all of them."
"You're so picky," I said.
"Damn right. But you know, if you ever get tired of eggs—"
"No."
It was a good thing Gilrack was distracted by his armful of cuteness.
"Just joking, just joking...sort of."
"Damn it, just stop talking," said Naomi. "Go back to your strong and silent play, that was working great."
"How'd the meeting go?" I asked Gilrack, this time in his language. Naomi and Levi were starting to pick up the tongue, but no need to think they were automatically invited to the conversation by speaking English.
Gilrack groaned and sat down near the blanket so he could rest his armful of babies in his lap. The kids proceeded to try and nestle in whatever part of him they could fit their tiny selves into.
"I hate people." He said.
"Which ones?"
"All people," he grumbled. "My people, your people. They only want for themselves and don't care how it effects everyone else and I have to somehow make them care without killing them."
"Sounds like politics," I said wryly.
"This is why I wanted Rikek to be the chief," he said.
A moment of stillness fell between us that didn't escape Levi's or Naomi's notice, but they were wise enough not to say anything about it.
"Welp, he wanted more than he could chew, that's no guilt on our shoulders," I said with forced chipperness. "Shorack was practicing walking with Naomi."
That helped Gilrack perk up. "Already?"
"Yep. I'm pretty sure he's going to be walking before the girls. You should have seen his tail waggle."
"I should have," he said, wilting again.
"Oh, stop that, you have a great life. You can see it again whenever you want. Should we head home for the day?"
He considered Levi and Naomi for a bit before nodding. "Yeah."
With that, we said good-bye to Levi and Naomi, the former of which pouted a bit (I know, right? Levi pouting, who would have thought?). They returned to a cavern home that had been picked for them nearby the royal palace and had been offered guards, but Levi only had to wave around his beloved guns a bit before the aliens realized that, despite their soft, little appearances, the divine beings could defend themselves plenty. It also helped spread a healthy amount of caution about the research camp set up in the woods not far from the cavern's main entrance. Gilrack was doing a pretty good job at negotiating a slow and peaceful communication between the two species, though, considering he had experienced firsthand all the complications that came from their differences.
So far, though, only Naomi and Levi had been allowed to enter, let alone live, in the caverns, and all of us were okay with that. After all, we didn't travel twenty years to live on an abandoned space station because we just loved human society.
Maybe the babies would help us warm up to the idea, in time.
END
_______________________________________________
Thank you all for reading my junk food of a story. Feel free to lay on constructive criticism, I don't mind. I know it's not going to be winning any classical literature contests and it's a rough draft without any editing, not to mention it's incredibly trope and cliche infested, but hey! Egg-slipp'n alien! That's what you were here for and that's what you got. I'm always writing something so stick around and you'll get more. More stories, that is, not more of this. This one is over. I satisfied my craving for weird eggy alienness.