I don’t have to go anywhere I don’t want to, she told herself. But she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t curious to see if dating an alien—or even just messaging with one—wasn’t a sight better than being disappointed by yet another human fella.
“OH MAH GAHD!”
Sally jumped as Tracy yelled at the television, thinking Tracy had busted her for ‘working’ on her laptop.
“GIRL, WHAT IN TARNATION ARE YOU DOIN’?! DON’T MARRY HIM! HE’S OBVIOUSLY LYIN’!—Lou, what the hellkinda bullshit movie is this?! I thought she was gonna fall in love with Wolf Tatum?!”
Lou left off from her liplock with Chet long enough to reply with a, “Shush, you! Just watch the dang movie! I ain’t givin’ you no spoilers!”
“Well at least the dress is excellent!” Tracy griped, but piped down to watch the drama play out on-screen.
Sally chortled quietly to herself, appreciating her friends’ ridiculous cinematic enthusiasm. Turning her own attention to the movie for a few minutes, the rodeo queen decided it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if she found herself her own ‘Wolf Tatum’.
She hit the button.
???
MATING FLUIDS
Xenoth couldn’t sleep. His brother had been making obscene noises in their shared cleansing room for the past half hour. Xenoth tried not to listen. One of his kropek flicked out, the long, prehensile tube-shaped strand turning the dial on his sleep machine. Calming tones emitted from the surrounding speakers.
His brother’s noises grew steadily louder.
Xenoth pulled the blanket over his head, turning his tones up another level. Urzan’s groaning pleasure noises reached a sudden crescendo, the strength of which had Xenoth momentarily worried for his brother’s health.
It fell blessedly silent in the domicile.
For about 10 minutes.
Xenoth hadalmostachieved senselessness when his brother’s pleasure grunting began once again.
“For Z’arth’s sake!” Xenoth muttered in annoyance, flinging the blanket off. It slid down the side of his too-small bunk, slithering with a soft sound off the sculpted planes of hisabdominal muscles to pool on the sprawling strands of his kropek mane.
The nearly-black strands of his dark green mane were spread out under and around his body, the ends of them plugged into the sensors and data banks hidden within the natural architecture of his sleeping quarters. They pulled free of their ports as Xenoth rose from the bed, their lengths retracting until they were only slightly longer than his body length.
He stood and immediately regretted placing his bare feet on the cold metal flooring of the domicile. He winced, before using his kropek to lift his body, holding himself up and skittering across the room like a many-tentacled sea creature on the strong bio-engineered strands.
He did not enjoy having cold feet.
He didn’t bother turning on the lights; his kropek knew the room’s layout and fed it to his optical sensors for navigation purposes. His fist found the door to the shared cleansing room with ease and he banged upon it just loud enough to interrupt his brother’s pleasure noises.
“Urzan, unlock the door!” Xenoth called, leaning tiredly against the doorframe. Urzan’s grunting continued. Xenoth banged louder. “URZAN! If you need to be drained, let me in so I can assist you and then we canbothget back to sleep!”
The door unlocked and opened a crack, one of Urzan’s lengthy kropek extending to pull it open fully before shrinking back across the room to its owner. The mass of heavy purple bioengineered strands on Urzan’s head pulsed with a variety of colors as Urzan’s emotions washed through him unrestrained.
Xenoth found himself rankled to see zero embarrassment in his brother’s colorful display.
He crossed the room to the showering facility in which Urzan stood, mating tube in hand, his fluids spilling freely down the drain.
“Z’arth’ssake, Urzan! You’re not evencollecting it!”Xenoth rushed to grab a fluids container, shoving it at his brother. “Shall I alert Arzog?”
Urzan let out a tired, tiny huff of a laugh. “It’s fine, Xenoth.”
“It isnotfine! This is the fourth night in a row! I thought you said you wouldn’t need draining until the end of the current lunar cycle?”
“I don’t.”
“You clearly do!”
