“Cool. Must be a magic translation, then. Sorry about that. I’m just here as a place for the baby to cling,” I explain, indicating the flink.
“What is it?” The brave alien asks, taking a curious step forward.
“Don’t approach it! It could have disease!” That comes from one of its companions.
I shrug, “Yeah, I could totally be contaminating your world with Earth germs. Sorry about that. It’s my first time—”
I, along with all the people around me, suddenly jump out of my skin at the appearance of Darcy holding hands with a giant stone gray person with wings like that 90’s cartoonGargoyles. (I streamed it once when I was in my classic cartoon phase.)
“Baby ! You will take him back to the space station and back to your parents right now!” Darcy sounds a tiny bit miffed (pissed to hell). “Or I'm going to bleed your parents dry.”
I don’t think he means that literally, but the next thing I know, I’m in a room with a bunch of potted trees and two very anxious-looking flinks about the size of large housecats. One has burnt orange fur the same color as the University of Texas’s orange and huge blue eyes the color of a winter sky. The other one has yellow fur like a dandelion and eyes so gold I’d swear they were made from the precious metal. Their prehensile tails are wrapped around each other, and they’re doing the villain rub thing with their hands.
“Hi,” I say, waving weirdly.
It’s my first time planet hopping and meeting aliens, so I give myself some cool points even if I’m good at awkward first impressions. I probably shouldn’t be the first contact person for the human race, but hopefully this being a space station in the same solar system as Earth means that I’m not everyone’s first human.
The flinks start chirping very quickly, and then the baby flink chirps back. The adults decide they aren’t going to take back talk and start going at it faster and louder, but the baby is a baby and doesn’t mind screaming in my ear.
Darcy appears with the gargoyle person again during this heated conversation and joins the fray. Instead of speaking English, he also starts chirping, which is pretty cool. I don’t think I can do that with my vocal cords, but he isn’t human so I guess his vocal range is more diverse. That’s nice, and even when he’s chirping like that, his voice is still sexy as hell. I’ve really got to get away from him before sexy as hell turns into oops I fell on his cock.
I look away and pretend to be a couch, which is basically my function until this baby flink gets off me. Maybe the better term is one of those things you can put pre-walking kids into. They sit in a fabric diaper-looking seat thing that’s held in a frame that has wheels so they can roll around in it. I don’t have kids so I don’t know what those things are called, but I can’t imagine them being called anything but a walker. A baby walker. Or maybe a baby buggy. Stroller? When I was a baby I had one of those jumpy-swing things that hangs in the doorway. It—well, let's just say if I ever have kids, I won’t be getting them one of those.
The gargoyle person and I catch each other’s eyes. They’re oddly dressed, wearing furry pants with a pan flute hanging off their belt. They shoot me a saucy little wink. “Well, aren’t youcute as a button,” they murmur, stepping in close so we don’t interrupt the argument happening around us.
Oh, I heard them, which means the baby stopped screaming in my ear.
The whole argument stops, and the baby flink jumps off me to one of their parents, who catches them and holds them close, rubbing their cheeks together. It’s adorable.
“Out, now. Hurry,” Darcy barks, grabbing my wrist and pulling me to the door. We exit quickly, leaving the gargoyle person behind, and Darcy shuts the door, then he points to the next door. We’re in an antechamber type of place, and through the next door is the main corridor. I step out, trying to keep my stares at all the unique aliens walking past as surreptitious as possible. It’s like being on aStar Trekspace station but better, because the aliens aren’t all humans dressed up like aliens. There’s a lot more variety than that.
Darcy grabs my wrist again and starts walking me down the corridor. “I’ve got to get paid, and then I’ll return you to your apartment,” he explains.
I sigh. The most interesting thing to ever happen to me is almost over. “Sounds good.”
He side-eyes me. “I’m good at reading people. I have more charisma in my pinky on any given day than most people have over the course of their entire lives. I have talked a harpy out of her britches, and you don’t even know what an accomplishment that is—harpy’s are notorious misandrists.”
“It’s good you know your skills and value them. A lot of people don’t get how important self worth is. They get stuck on being humble and forget that they’re really cool and have awesome skills, ya know? Good on you.”
Confidence is sexy, isn’t it? I think I’m aware I’m losing the battle against my libido, but I can still deny it. Denial is a powerful tool for not doing foolish things you want to do, unlessyou’re like me and are really bad at denying yourself the little joys in life, like a romp in the sack with a sexy man.
He stops in the middle of the corridor to gape at me like I’ve said something weird. (I haven’t.) Surprisingly, no one runs into us. They’re all giving him a wide berth, which makes me suspicious that maybe he’s charismatic in the way evil villains are. Like everyone likes Doofenshmirtz even though he’s the CEO of Evil Incorporated—ugh, now I have that ditty stuck in my head. “Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated.” IFYKYK.
Darcy recovers from whatever stopped him in his tracks. (I wasnotbeing weird.) “I ain’t finished,” he informs me with a stern look.
I wave for him to go on, because I really shouldn’t open my mouth if his stern expression is going to make me think of kinks I didn’t think I had before now.
“All that charisma, all that intelligence, all that experience in reading people, and I ain’t never met no one who’d take the realm hopping you just did like it was a cool vacation from real life and then go back to their boring ass apartment like their entire paradigm ain’t shifted. You’re the strangest human I ever met, and I been forcibly adopted by Romily Butcher.”
I don’t know Romily so I don’t know if he’s strange or kooky or whatever, but “Taking things at face value and not getting worked up about it is my trauma response. I don’t need to put a bunch of energy into worrying about things I can’t control, ya know. I save that for things that I can control. Like whether I should buy a hamburger or if I should make my own at home. That’s the question. Should I take off my pants or should I go out again? Because once the pants come off, I’m not leaving the house again that day even if it's only ten a.m., ya know?”
Darcy doesn’t look like he knows.
“I once killed a banshee with a single drop of blood,” he says apropos of nothing. “I think that was the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”
“So banshees exist.” Awesome. I’m down for that. Harpies too. I’m not surprised they don’t like men, and Darcy seducing one does seem like quite the accomplishment now that I’m thinking about it. “What exactly does it take to get in your pants?” They’re nice pants. I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but he prefers skinny jeans that don’t exactly hide his enormous cock and balls. His private parts aren’t exactly private, if you know what I mean. That’s probably why I’m struggling with the whole don’t-touch-the-guy-who-kills-people thing.
Honestly, that’s been a life-long struggle.
