“Please, Corbin,” Jude panted. The pain wasn’t receding, and the inside of his car suddenly felt sweltering and wrong. So wrong. Like it wasn’t safe. Sweat beaded along his hairline, and Jude clenched his teeth, trying to fight the strange instincts welling up in him. It made him not want to be in the car any longer. It made him want to be curled up in his bed where it was soft and quiet and cool—the perfect place to lay his eggs.
It was such a fucked-up feeling, but there was so much fucked up about this situation that Jude didn’t know how to go about talking himself out of it. It was simply there, making him feel things, in the same way he felt hunger or thirst or the urge to fuck, and he was aware that if he didn’t give it what it wanted soon, it would take over his mind until it was the only thing he could think about.
Get home.
Go to bed.
Nest.
He looked miserably at Corbin, hoping that for once in his godforsaken life, Corbin would mind his business and just do as he was told.
Corbin looked back, and the skeptical look on his face intensified.
“I’m not taking you anywhere until you tell me what’s actually going on,” he said predictably. “Are you dying? Cuz like, I get that you don’t have health insurance so a doctor’s visit would screw you sideways, but I really can’t have you passing away in my car. That would not be a cute look for me, so if you need to go to the hospital—”
“No hospitals!” Jude snapped, making both Corbin and Al jump. “No doctors. I’m not dying, okay? I’m inlabor!”
A ringing silence followed.
“Okay,” Corbin said a moment later, elongating the word. “So you may not be dying, but you have apparently lost your marbles.”
“It is the truth,” Al said helpfully. “He is in the process of delivering the eggs that contain our offspring. I am not actually from Athens, Greece, Europe, Earth. My planet is very far from here, and my true name is not Al, it is—” Al made the baffling, garbled noise that was his name in his native tongue.
Corbin stared.
“Um. What?” he asked.
“We’ll explain in the car, but unless you want to help me give birth in a parking lot, you need to take me homenow.” Jude was growing frantic. “The eggs are coming soon, I can feel it.”
“I don’t…what?” Corbin repeated, but Jude didn’t have it in him to argue anymore. All of his energy and focus was quickly being monopolized by his increasingly painful labor. Without another word, he got out of his own car, pushed past Corbin, and let himself into Corbin’s car, claiming the passenger seat. He then reached over to the driver’s side and began laying on the horn. It blasted loudly in the empty parking lot, and Jude kept it going like a car alarm until Corbin and Al finally joined him inside.
“You can do or say or ask orbelievewhatever the fuck you want,” Jude said once all the doors were closed. “As long as you take me home.”
Jude’s tone was stone-cold serious, and Corbin must have been able to tell, because instead of shooting back at Jude with sass, he held his hands up in surrender.
“Okay, jeez,” he said, but his face betrayed him—he was unnerved.
Without another word, he drove them out of the parking lot and set a course that would take Jude home.
* * *
If you asked him, Jude wouldn’t have been able to tell you what Al told Corbin about the situation on the drive home. He knew that Al rattled off information in a spitfire manner to an increasingly discomfited Corbin, but Jude himself could only think about two things: getting through his contractions, and his overwhelming need tonest.
When they got to the house, the contractions were so bad he could hardly even breathe through them, let alone speak. He was vaguely aware of the low moaning noises he was making, and the worried glances Corbin kept shooting his way, but he didn’t have it in him to be embarrassed. When they parked, Al all but bolted out of the back seat in order to assist him, as though that tiny distance between them through the ten-minute drive had been killing him.
“You are doing very excellent,” Al whispered to him as they made their way slowly to the door, with Jude holding on to his belly and trying to keep his knees from going out. Corbin trailed after them, offering no commentary, as though for the first time in history he had actually been rendered speechless.
The moment they got through the front door, Al began meowing frantically, which was just bizarre enough to get Jude’s attention. Jude looked at Al quizzically.
“I was telling Buttons to fetch Ezra,” he explained. Sure enough, the little white fluffball, who had been sleeping on the back of the couch, hopped down at Al’s instruction and trotted off into Ezra’s room.
Jude would unpack that one… later.
Al led him into their bedroom, and Jude had never been happier to see his shitty, Craigslist-sourced mattress in his entire life. He practically lunged at it, surrounding himself with every pillow he had before gathering his blankets into a singular mound behind him and fixing them so they gave him the perfect amount of back support. He plopped down on top of them and breathed out all the anxiety that had built up inside of him while trying to figure out how to get home, then closed his eyes and allowed himself to enjoy the feelings of peace and safety that came from being in his own bed.
Everything would be okay now.
He would be all right.
