“Not returning to Earth Max.” Rick stretched his tentacles out stiffly.
“I don’t think I even want to go back, not now,” Max said. “But I still have to tell Earth the truth. They need to know they’re safe. My parents need to know I’m alive.” Max definitely planned to skip the part where they were sort of grandparents.
“Query. Explain.” Rick stopped after those two words.
Max wasn’t sure where to begin. “I miss parts of Earth. You would like music. I think. You would like our oceans. I like to think you and my parents would get along.” Max frowned. That might be pushing it. His parents were supportive, but his father got a sour expression any time Max brought up being gay. Gay and fathering tentacle babies would probably push their tolerance too far.
“Query. Max prefers to return.”
“No.” The Air Force would court martial him if they found out he was choosing Rick over the service, but Max didn’t care. He might if the Office of Special Investigations had a branch in space, but it was human ignorance for the win on that front. If they wanted to charge him with being a deserter, they would have to build the space ship that could find him first. And really, considering how he had left Earth, they would have listed him as Missing in Action.
Rick’s tentacles uncurled.
“I like the ship and you and the offspring. I like protecting the ship, and I want to know how those invaders managed to get onboard without any alarms going off, and we are going to fix that problem,” Max said. Rick curled a few tentacles around Max’s arm. “But I want to get close enough to Earth to send them a message.”
More tentacles curled around Max’s leg.
“And I am not trying to avoid sex. I didn’t want to have sex when I liked you. I was afraid you only wanted me for the offspring and I wanted to avoid having my feelings shredded.” Max was fairly sure the translator would choke on that bit of emotional bloodletting.
Rick pressed forward, claiming a space between Max’s knees. “You fear tangling tentacles. You fear damage.”
Max huffed. Maybe the translator worked better than he’d thought.
“You are warrior,” Rick said, and Max got the feeling that Rick used that word to mean something between a comic book hero and a super soldier. Max wasn’t either.
“I can still hurt. Hell, you’re a lot stronger than I am,” Max said. Some days Max felt like a windshield with a tiny spider web crack in the corner. One bit of pressure on the wrong point and he would shatter.
“Max stronger. Rick better with computers,” Rick said.
Max laughed. “That you are.” His whole body felt stiff and sore. Giving up Earth had sapped him of all his strength. His stomach bruising felt worse than ever and his head was throbbing in time with his heartbeat. “I think I should go lie down,” he said. “Maybe in that nice new bed of mine.”
Max stood, and Rick held onto his leg for a few extra seconds. Feeling about a thousand years old, Max moved toward his new quarters. Later he would have to get the one pair of spare pants that constituted his worldly possessions, but for now, all he wanted was sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Max woke to find aheavy weight on his left side. He cracked his eyes open to find Rick taking up at least two thirds of the mattress. All those bright, black inquisitive eyes were closed and most of his tentacles were curled up under him, which gave him a squat look that hit Max's cute button. Something was different. When Max touched his stomach, most of the bruising was gone. Rick had been using his healing trick again; he had missed his calling as a professional mother hen.
