“Is that the name of this vehicle?”
“Yes,” Ezra said, deadpan. The driver pressed the button to open the automatic door to the back seat. Ezra told the driver good morning. The driver said nothing.
Sighing, Ezra turned to Titan.
“C’mon,” he said, already resigned to his day being a day. “Let’s go to work.”
The drive to the Darvrokian consulate had been painfully awkward. Titan had behaved himself, staying quiet about the previous night’s exploits, but Ezra had sat in constant anxiety anyway, certain that at any second he would pipe up with an “Ambassador Ezra finds me to have superior mating abilities” or some shit, and then, before he knew it, all of the world governments he worked with would know that he was an alien fucker.
Or worse, that Al would find out.
They made it in without incident, though, not that it helped Ezra breathe any easier. There were still plenty of ways Titan could blow up his life. Maybe by informing a client that Ezra liked to take it up the ass, or perhaps by asking Kyle if he’d heard Ezra moaning his name last night. The possibilities were endless, and the horrors eternal.
Joy.
Security escorted them to the conference room where Ezra—and now Titan—screened Darvrokian visitors. Like always, Ezra wished them a good day and they replied by shutting the door in his face, leaving him and Titan alone.
“When I first arrived here,” Titan said in that same moment, validating Ezra’s every fear, “I envisioned how beautiful you would look should I bend you over this table.” He patted the conference table for emphasis, and Ezra felt his whole body go hot, as the thought of gripping the edge of the table for dear life while Titan plowed into him entered his mind unbidden.
“We’re at work,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t say stuff like that here. It’s unprofessional.”
“I am the most professional,” Titan said, offended. “I am even wearing the fabric rope you humans use to indicate professionalism.” He pointed at his tie, which was tied like shoelace bunny ears. Ezra had politely not commented on it all morning, which he felt was very kind of him.
“Right, sure. You’re an inspiration to businessmen everywhere. I get it. Just stop talking about us having sex. It was a bad idea and I just want to forget about it.”
“You said this about our first time fucking, yet we did it again,” Titan pointed out.
Ezra scowled at him and pulled out the file detailing the first client they were expecting that morning. “You’re such an asshole,” he muttered under his breath, then thwapped the file down onto the table before taking a seat.
“What was it that you said?”
“I said sit down and do what we’re getting paid to do.”
Titan narrowed his eyes and mumbled something to the effect of, “I do not believe this is truly what you said,” but he didn’t question him further. Blessedly silent, he pulled out a chair at the same end of the table as Ezra, folded his hands in front of him, and looked at him expectantly. Ezra nodded, satisfied.
“This is the client we’re vetting this morning,” he said, handing the file over to Titan. He checked the time on his phone and added, “Kyle should be arriving with him and his escort any minute.”
As Titan flipped through the file, Ezra downed the rest of his coffee, lukewarm now with congealed sugar at the bottom, and grimaced. Maybe, he thought, it was time he get into tea.
When he set his mug down, Titan said something in his native tongue, getting his attention. “Sorry?”
“That is this man’s given name,” Titan explained. “But I see here in his paperwork that he wishes his human name to be Joe Johnson.” Titan pronounced the “H” when he said “Johnson,” and Ezra smiled a little in spite of himself.
“Yeah, not even Joseph or anything. Just Joe. There’s a picture of him pinned to his paperwork there. Do you recognize him? He says he’s a relative of yours, although I’m not gonna lie, the vast majority of people we have come through here are related to you somehow. Your family is gigantic.”
“Darvrokian families do tend to produce more offspring than human families,” Titan agreed. Ezra watched him examine the little two-by-three picture paperclipped to the file. It was a headshot of Joe in his Darvrokian form, which displayed none of his marking. Ezra had tried to tell the US government that it was pointless to require photo identification for a species of shapeshifters who could change their appearance at will, but of course, they hadn’t listened. They hadn’t even cared enough to create a field where each Darvrokian’s markings could be listed despite Ezra having explained that those markings were their equivalent of fingerprints.
It was, to put it mildly, a disaster, but who was Ezra to tell the government how to run itself? He was just the ambassador to their people, after all. No big.
“I do not recognize this being,” Titan announced with a shrug after a moment of consideration. He set the file down. “This does not mean he is being untruthful, however. As yousaid, my family is quite large. I do not know many of my distant relatives personally. In fact, there are times I struggle to remember the faces of my much older siblings. Mine is the youngest of five clutches, and some of our ages are very far apart.”
“Well, he had clearance to come to the wedding so he must have had the right answers, but I didn’t oversee any of those short-term visas, so I have no clue. I’ve never met him before.”
Titan hummed. “So this Joe came to Earth for the bonding ceremony and now wishes to return for a longer amount of time? Why? Earth is very stupid. Look at this.” He lifted up the file again. “Trees are crucial to your environment, yet you willingly murder them to create paper instead of using your technology. You have all the resources you need to have a very healthy, efficient planet, but you simply do not use it for reasons unfathomable to me. Why would this Joe wish to come to Earth when Darvrok 6 is much better?”
“You’re here,” Ezra pointed out.
“But I have reason to be here. I have a job, and I have you.”
