“Fuck fuck fuuuuuuuck. Balls. I’m an asshole.” I wiped my hand down my face and groaned. He wasn’t telling me not to be around other Ucfeni. Or to stop them touching me. He was just asking me to take a bath because it upsets him to smell them on me. Because I know how he ‘feels’ about me, and I shouldn’twantto upset him. As in, do something intentionally that I know will upset him to spite his feelings. “Shit.” My reaction must have said otherwise. Like I didn’t give a shit how he feels about me, or that I’m in his home. I told him to fuck off. Wow. I wasn’t prince charming today, was I?I released my face and read the note again. All I could think about was Dalahan crying and my stomach knotted.
“Y-you know how I feel about you.”
Yeah. I know how Dalahan feels about me. At least I thought I did. He’s not exactly been subtle about wanting us to have sex…but this? I looked at the note again. He’s always doing little things like this. Leaving me notes in my lunch, usually with little smiley faces on a cartoon snake. Probably meant to be an Ucfeni, but he can’t draw for shit. Not unless it’s a building. I laugh as I recall the time he tried to draw a little human and say it was me. It looked more like a blonde monkey.
He wakes me for breakfast and when I’m half asleep he carries me to the middle tier as I’m too sleepy to safely use the pulleys. Dalahan even puts my clothes out on the bed for me so I can get ready for work quickly.
He makes a point of making my meals because I forget them otherwise. He regularly carries me to bed when I pass out reading downstairs. Dalahan fusses over me when it’s my day off. Apparently, he has an office, somewhere, but he always makes sure to finish in time to collect me from the clinic, and he works from home on my days off-shit!
I sit up in the bath, reading the note again for the hundredth time, and my eyes wide with shock and anger. “You have plenty of food in for tomorrow? That yellow-bellied bastard.” I throw the note away from the bath and hurry to scrub my body clean with soap and a sponge. “He knows I’m off work tomorrow and he has no intention of coming back before then. He’s run off after all. Oh no you don’t.” I have no intention of feeling like an asshole all night and all day tomorrow because he’s too chicken-shit to have this out with me. “No way.” Sure, boundaries are still an issue for Dal…but he didn’t deserve the way I spoke to him. I lost my temper and I hurt his feelings. I’m not that guy. I need to apologise, and I’m not waiting two days to do that. I’m sure as hell not the kind of guy to stop his boyfriend from wanting to come home.
Not that he’s my boyfriend. Because he isn’t. I’m just going to get dried, dressed, and go out into the night in an alien city to go looking for him, so I can drag him home by the tail, apologise, and hug it out so we can reconcile and— “Shit heismy boyfriend. Fuck.”
Chapter 13
Tabitha is a good friend.
Dalahan.
“Sounds to be like he’s a bit of an asshole.” Tabitha decrees having listened to me cry and regale her with my sad tale. I’ve tangled myself up into a ball so I’m laying on my right side, the right side of my face resting on my folded arms, and my tail coiled around my miserable self. I’ve left directly above me open only so I can breathe and so my best friend can hear me whine. I came straight here after my fight with Charlie to become a whimpering mess in the middle of her social room on the bottom tier of her nest. “How long until you can throw his ass out of your nest?”
“…his probation period is another month.” I nuzzle my face back and forth over my folded arms to wipe away my tears.
“Good.” I feel her hands on the top ring of my coil and peer upward at Tabitha. The human lighting she has in her nest gives her tight afro a halo. “Of course, you can stay with us tonight.” She lowered her arms on my top coil and her chin in them with a cheeky grin. “Want me to tell Shane he has to sleep on the couch so we can nest down together like we used to?”
Slowly I smile and raise my head up in my coil to be level with hers. Just peering my teary green eyes to look into her warm brown ones.
“He won’t mind?”
“He doesn’t get a vote.” She whispers to me with a grin and a wink. “Besides, he works the night shift patrolling Allico colony borders to keep the critters out, so he won’t be home until the wee hours anyway.”
“Can you at least let him know this time?” I chuckle and flick my tongue out at her nose. She’s so used to this that she doesn’t flinch or tense like Charlie does. “Last time I came to visit and sleep over, he tripped over my tail in the dark and landed on us. He screamed. Like a girl.”
“Hescreamed,Dal, because you woke up hissing and wrapped around him like you were going toeathim.” Tabitha snorted and leaned forward to tap her nose against the space between my front scent pits. “OnlyIget to eat my boyfriend, okay?”
“Of course.” I chuckled. “Shane isn’t my type regardless, trust me.” I sighed, thinking of whowasmy type. My scaly lips lowered from the brief smile I wore to the frown I felt. “…he was somadwith me…”
“Hey? Dal?” She holds me beneath my chin and makes me look at her. Tabitha is angry on my behalf and is trying to reassure me. “It’s your nest, your rules, and you arewellwithin your rights to ask him not to stink up the place with the pheromones of others when you’re home. We don’t have the same sense of smell that you do, and incompatible scents for Ucfeni can be like constantly smelling someone else’s fart all the time.” I snort. She always did have such a way with words. “Sure, okay, it’s a bit messier than that because you’re crazy for this guy, but still. He’s an asshole and you deserve better.”
“He’s not an asshole.” Tabitha taught me what that word signified long ago. “He’s just…not interested in me like I…like I…” I close my eyes and lower back into my coil with fresh tears. “He doesn’t feel the same way about me that I feel abouthim.” I whine at the end and lower completely to curl up within the protective emerald fortress of my tail.
“Oh Dal don’t-damn.” Tabitha grumbled at my retreat. She rested her forehead on the top ring of my tail and sighed. Then she heaved herself up to lower her upper body down into my coil. Her hips bore her weight, her bottom in the air, and her legs hung down the outside of my coil. I had to laugh at her upsidedown pout. “You don’t get to come down here without me. You know that.” She strokes the back of my head and neck and I sigh with a smile. This was my Tabitha all over. She was relentless, kind, and so brave.
When I met her at the pairing party on her first arrival and got right in her face to declare that her scent was palatable, she replied with ‘you know how to sweet talk a lady huh?’ Then she laughed and took my hand to shake it. Unlike all the other humans in her party that were being selected by Ucfeni sponsors, she never cowered. Her smile never faltered. She even stroked the scales of my arm and commented that I was warmer and smoother than she was expecting. She and I shared a nest for sleeping, until she started dating. Then, becauseShanewas uncomfortable with her ‘sleeping with another guy’, I had the hammock netting installed. Not because Tabitha asked me to, but because I didn’t want to get in the way of what was clearly a good thing. She respects my culture, but I also respect hers. Their mating customs are different to ours, and I want her to be happy. It was a good call too, as once her sponsorship finished, Tabitha and Shane moved in together and chose to remain in Orna. I built them a beautiful home with as many of her human comforts as I could within the confines of an Ucfeni-tiered structure. I kept the lower tier large so I could visit easily, of course. Icantravel about their home, but the rooms are smaller and they have more of them, so it’s a little cramped. My last visit was to oversee the installation of yet another nesting room for their future youngling.
“What are you doing? Don’t do that.” I catch up with myself with alarm. I quickly take hold of her shoulders and as I rise up in my coil, I lift her up and out to stand on her feet once more. I hiss with worry, unravelling completely and huddling my hands and face at her stomach. “You shouldn’t put any pressure on your clutch!”
“One, I didn’t, and two, I’m having a baby, not a clutch of eggs.” Tabitha laughed but she didn’t resist as I backed her up to sit on her couch. “I’m only two months pregnant, and I wasn’t resting on my stomach anyway.” She cups my face to wipe away the rest of my tears and lifts my gaze from her stomach. Her breast wrap and shorts make her belly easily accessible, and I worry for her with no scales. Her skin is soft and she could be harmed so easily. At least Charlie has more defined muscles to show his strength. “Good Lord, if you’re this fussy now, how are you going to be when I’m heavily pregnant and have to waddle about the place?”
“Worse.”
“HA!” She laughed, but I wasn’t joking.
“You know I worry about you. If Shane wasn’t in the picture you would have moved back in with me already so I can protect you both.” She would have because I would have carried her back to my nest. When she told me the joyous news I congratulated her in the same breath that I suggested she and Shane come back to my nest. Shane shot that down right away. Tabitha is and always will be like a clutch-mate to me. A sister from another clutch. Ucfeni pregnant females rarely left the nest, and were certainly not alone. Their cargo was so precious! A breeding pair that were expecting a clutch were inseparable. Our males become highly territorial and hunt more often to provide for our females as they nest-down more often. When the eggs are laid, the mother doesn’t leave the nest at all. They withdrew from society for the most part, including after the clutch is newly hatched.
“I don’t needanyoneto coddle me, Dal. Even Shane knows better than to try and make me sit on my ass. I’m only two months pregnant. I’ve got another 7 months to go yet!” Yes, and the thought of her being vulnerable for so long terrified me.
The fact that human females continue to work right up towards the end of being gravid made me pale with shock. If an Ucfeni female was heavily gravid and still working, it was assumed there was a ‘reason’ for the lack of nest support… The family of the pregnant Ucfeni usually took her in to care for her as she nested if she didn’t have a mate.
