“What are you talking about?” Max’s parents always talked to each other. He and his brother got annoyed with their “united front” parenting. Other kids could play their parents off each other, but that didn’t work in Max’s family.
Dee shook her head as if he were being a particularly amusing toddler. “I've been married for fifteen years,” she said. “Sometimes, I am the last person my husband wants to confide in and I know there are lots of times that I tell you idiots in the unit more than I tell Henry.”
“What?” That made no sense, not if they had a healthy marriage.
“When the unit was shipped out to Iraq, how were you feeling?”
“Not good,” Max said, but he didn't want to get in more detail than that.
Dee nodded. “Exactly. Hell, we all talked about it. We all wondered if we were going to fight. We all drank a little too much and worried a lot too much, and spent excessive time on the flight simulators. I had the engineers rig mine to practice missile strikes on the wings over and over and over again. I wouldn’t talk to my husband about any of that shit.”
“Why not?”
Now she looked at him like he was a brain-damaged toddler who had shoved a crayon up his nose. “He didn’t need to hear that shit, not when he was dealing with fears of his own. Being married doesn’t mean you share every stupid thought in your head, especially when those thoughts will hurt your partner.”
“So, what am I supposed to do? If he’s doing some weird protective thing, how do I get the idiot to talk to me?”
Dee huffed. “Figure that out, and spouses everywhere will worship you as their new god. However, I found a good blow job tends to loosen Henry up.” She turned and headed into the ship. Max stepped through the hatch and triggered the locks, watching while the heavy hull door slid shut with a thunk.
Her words bounced around in his head like billiard balls that had been hit too hard. They ricocheted off a hundred memories and more than a few fears. He knew Rick loved him, but they weren’t the same species, and Max often worried that he couldn’t give Rick everything he needed. Marriages were difficult when people were from two different cultures or religions and people had to work hard to overcome the inevitable differences. But they were from different planets. Max wasn’t even sure that Rick’s people would count as mammals, even if they were warm blooded.
Maybe Dee thought she was reassuring him, but Max couldn’t escape the feeling that if two humans who loved each other couldn’t share their true feelings, that Max was screwed.
And not the fun sort of screwed with tentacles.
Rick wasn’t into blow jobs, but tangling tentacles was an option. Maybe if he made his husband really, really happy, the big, stupid octopus would open his mouth and share something. Anything. Even if the truth was that he was embarrassed about having a human husband, that would be better than this awkward silence. Max’s insecurities multiplied like bunnies on acid when left alone in silence too long. Good acid and no birth control.
Max went in search of his annoying husband.
Rick was in the main computer room, but from the way that his tentacles stiffened when the door opened, he would rather not have been found. Max hesitated at the door, but then he took a deep breath and pressed forward with the plan. “I am incredibly proud of my beautifully asymmetrical husband.”Max closed the distance between them and wrapped his fingers around one of Rick's smaller tentacles, He gave it a teasing tug, and the tentacles on either side curled around Max’s wrists.
“I am most busy.”
“Are you designing a genius new program?” Max asked. He looked past Rick to the computer display as if he would recognize anything in Rick's program. The only people who thought Max had two brain cells to rub together when it came to computers were his parents, and that's because Max could reprogram their microwave after a power outage. It wasn't a high bar.
“I am completing perfectly adequate and normal work of not genius level,” Rick said, most of his tentacles still on the computer display.
“I suppose even geniuses have to do normal stuff sometimes.” Max leaned into Rick, letting Rick's strong body carry his weight. When he had first met Rick, he hadn't understood how incredibly strong he was, but Rick could easily hold Max's weight, even when Max had his back to the wall and his legs spread and Rick was doing some acrobatic thrusting. His Rick was a multitalented alien.
“Max Husband is increasing frustration levels,” Rick said. That was remarkably direct from Rick.
With a sigh, Max straightened. “I think my levels of annoyingness are matching my husband’s,” Max said. If he couldn't use sexual wiles to tempt his husband into spilling his darkest secrets, then he would go for brutal honesty.
“My annoyingness is inferior like younger hunter to your excelling and aged annoyingness,” Rick said. Something in his anger pushed Max past the point of reason.
“Are we or are we not married?” Max demanded. Rick jerked back, and all his tentacles curled tightly in misery.
“Marriage of Max and Rick is unchangeable by outsider law!”
“Good,” Max said bluntly. He didn't want to give his insecure husband a reason to have a heart attack, not that that was possible. When Max had explained the concept, Xander had spent no small amount of time explaining exactly why the idea of the central nervous system relying on one muscle was exceptionally stupid. There was something about a four foot high octopus describing the depths of your body's stupid design that made a man regret the species he'd been born into.
“For humans,” Max said, “being married means sharing information.”
“I will share information. Much information,” Rick said as his tentacles tapped away on the computer. Files flew by the screen, including Max’s identity number flashing over and over. Apparently, Rick's response was to send a plethora of command files that Max couldn't even understand. Either Rick was a genius in manipulation, or his husband was a bit of an idiot. Max assumed it was the second.
“I'm talking about information about your personal life, like why you are acting so incredibly strange lately.”
“My behavior is well within cultural and individual norms. Your behavior is weird,” Rick accused him.
