Once the aftershocks wore off, Al pulled gingerly out of Jude and placed a soft kiss on his tailbone.
“That was… whoa,” Jude said, breaking the silence. “It was like your cock was made for me. Was that because of your alien form? Could we have been fucking like that this whole time?”
Al was about to answer that, yes, obviously, when something caught his eye. He looked toward the bassinet and saw that the eggs’ patterns had all stopped shifting and changing color, and that one of the eggs was rocking ever so slightly. A thin crack had developed upon it, and when the egg next wiggled, it splintered further.
“Jude,” Al gasped, sitting up straight. “The hatching has begun. Our offspring are on the way!”
25
Jude
Having just been fucked within an inch of his life, it took Jude a moment to understand what Al was saying. But when hedidunderstand, he went from postcoital bliss to panicked excitement in the span of a millisecond.
“What?” he asked, losing his balance and falling onto his belly, right into the wet spot on the comforter. Something so unfortunate would have usually ruined his mood, but Jude was so distracted, the gross factor barely registered. He scrambled up in a hurry and, without a single complaint, came to peer over the side of the bassinet where he saw that Al was right—the eggs were starting to hatch.
“Do you see the crack in the large one’s shell?” Al asked, sounding just as excited as Jude felt.
“Not only that one,” Jude pointed out, because while yes, it was true the largest of the eggs had a very noticeable crack at the top, at least three of the other eggs had tiny jagged lines where their shells were beginning to break apart, and they deserved praise too. “I can’t believe it’s happening. Do we… do we help them? What should we be doing right now? What shouldIdo?”
“Go stand beneath the indoor rain quickly while I dress,” Al instructed, leaving the bed to pluck a pair of discarded boxer shorts off the floor. Far too casually, he slid them on.
“But…”
“The hatching process is lengthy, Jude.” Al returned to the bed and kissed the top of Jude’s head reassuringly, nuzzling into his hair. When he next spoke, he did so in a whisper. “You will not miss anything of importance. Of this, I promise you.”
Jude bit his lip, uncertain. It had been hard enough leaving the eggs when they had been doing nothing, but now that they were hatching, it felt like an impossible task. But Al was right. He was filthy, and he didn’t want to meet his children for the first time smelling of eau de a-very-enthusiastic-boning-with-their-other-father.
“Don’t let them out of your sight,” he warned, although he knew Al wouldn’t.
Al held a hand to his heart and nodded gravely, so solemn that Jude would have laughed at how over the top he was being if it weren’t for the fact that he knew he would go nuclear if he missed anything. He picked a couple of articles of clothes haphazardly off the laundry chair and made a beeline for the bathroom.
* * *
The world record for fastest shower taken by a human being was set that day. Jude hopped in before the water was properly hot, and was out before the mirror on the medicine cabinet had fully fogged up.
“Did I miss anything?” he asked breathlessly, bursting back into the room as he struggled to tug on a t-shirt over his damp torso. His hair was dripping, staining the cotton dark with water. Wet t-shirts usually bothered him, but today, he couldn’t have cared less if he tried.
“You have been gone for very few Mississippis, Jude,” Al said from his spot on the bed, sounding slightly amused. In the time that Jude had been away, he had stripped the dirty sex blanket off the bed and shoved it into the spot of shame behind the laundry chair. “Nothing of importance has happened, and as such, you have not missed anything. Breathe, my love. More oxygen will help you feel calmness.”
Jude, somewhat reluctantly and entirely just to appease Al, took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled it slowly through his mouth. It did help somewhat, but not entirely. How was he supposed to be calm when there was still so much he didn’t know? And what if something went wrong?
A terrible thought took root in Jude’s mind as he looked down at the eggs in the bassinet.
What if he and Al weren’t biologically compatible, and the babies weren’t able to survive with their combined genetics? Al was the first of his kind on Earth—there was no way of knowing how the two of them would mix.
As though knowing his thoughts—or perhaps knowing them all too well thanks to his alien mind powers—Al reached out and took Jude’s hand, gently tugging him to the bedside. Jude sat beside him and, bereaved despite the lack of evidence to support his dark thoughts, rested his head on Al’s shoulder with a shuddering sigh.
“You are feeling many terrible things,” Al observed.
Jude snorted. “Of course I am. Our children are about to be born, and they’ll be the first of their kind. There’s no telling what might go wrong. What I don’t understand is how you’re so calm.”
“Do not misunderstand—I feel nervousness and anticipation the same as you. However, I believe that perhaps when you are feeling emotions so strongly, I feel them less strongly in order to comfort you.”
“Your anxiety has a Jude-override,” Jude said with a laugh. “That’s convenient for me.”
“Perhaps this is true,” Al agreed, pushing a strand of wet hair out of Jude’s face and swiping away the damp spot it left behind on his cheek. In a whisper, he added, “I wish for you to know that I feel happiness when you say the words ‘our children.’ There was a time when I did not believe I would ever hear you speak such a thing.”
Jude’s heart swelled. He kissed Al’s temple and assured him, “That’s not something you have to worry about ever again. Am I scared shitless about the prospect of being a dad? Hell yes, I’m shaking in my boots over it, but those babies inside those eggs? No matter what, they’reours.”
