by Cari Z.
“Hungry.”
Ferran nipped his shoulder. “Hungry for food?”
“For you.” Jason swung his lover up onto his body, and as Ferran started to move, he forgot everything else and lost himself to the pleasure of their joining.
Chapter Four
THE FINAL few hours before their landing on Perelan held a special sort of franticness, differently flavored according to each individual’s position in their little expedition. When Jason could be distracted from his own nerves, he found the comparisons interesting. Ferran seemed to veer from intrigued to jarred, judging from the way his nose wrinkled every now and then. Not that Jason had the chance to observe Ferran very much in the course of their preparations, because both of them were kept extremely busy.
Dori kept Jason for over an hour in the infirmary, putting the translation implant into his ear, shooting him up with final doses of over a dozen vaccines, and finally making him put in the contact lenses that were a requirement for humans on the planet. “The acidity will get to you before long,” he told Jason, “mark my words. I can’t force you to wear them, but if I could, I absolutely would. Do you want to wake up with your eyeballs hemorrhaging all over your pillow?”
“Thank you for that stunning visual.” Jason reached out and took the contacts. These sorts of medical devices were common enough, but he preferred not to make changes to his body if he could help it. It reminded him too much of being a prisoner, when nothing about him had been within his own control except his mind.
“Do you need help putting them in?”
“No.” He lifted the glistening semicircles out of the stasis gel that held them, tilted his head back, and slipped the right one over his iris. The disk spread out from there until it covered the whole of his exposed eye. Jason blinked reflexive tears away and looked over at Dori.
“Let me check the fit.” The doctor shined a painfully bright light into Jason’s eye for a moment and then stepped back, nodding. “Good. They’re designed to pick up extra light too, you know, so they’ll improve your night vision by a substantial degree, which you’re gonna need once you start going out on the town. Now do the other.”
After Dori checked the second lens, he pulled away and said, “Good. Remember, they’ll have to be changed every four to six months, once the contacts become saturated. Now….” He slapped a small med kit into Jason’s hands and began describing its contents. “Nasal spray, to save your tender sniffer. The chewable tabs will protect your mouth and esophagus, so be sure to take one every morning. If your skin starts to feel raw, be sure to use the lotion. In fact, you should use the lotion daily anyway, but especially if you start feeling rubbed in the wrong places. And by the way,” he poked a thick finger at the chew tabs again, “this is metabolized through your kidneys, so your urine should have a protective effect on the tip of your penis.”
“How exactly do you think—no, never mind.” Jason really didn’t want to know what Dori thought his sex life consisted of.
“I’m giving Ferran chew tabs as well,” Dori continued, oblivious to Jason’s discomfort. “Once he gets back on Perelan, his own body’s acidity is going to increase back to normal levels, and I don’t want him giving you heartburn from swallowing his ejaculate.” The thought of it seemed to amuse him, and Dori chuckled.
“I’m pleased that this is entertaining for you,” Jason said coolly.
“Always keep your sense of humor, son. That’ll see you through the hard times.”
Jason left Dori chortling to himself and walked to the conference room. Giselle wanted to meet with him, and he knew what it was about this time. The upcoming decision made his stomach churn a little.
The doors slid open to reveal Giselle sitting on the far side of the table, Penelope standing a little bit behind her. As soon as he entered, they both looked up expectantly. “Come in,” Giselle said.
Jason came over and sat down across from her. One glance told him that the formal adoption document was displayed on the table. “Ah.”
“It’s time to decide, yes or no,” she told him. Her voice was brisk, as no-nonsense as a schoolteacher’s. “I understand that this isn’t something you really wanted to have to deal with, especially now, but once we land, our legal status on Perelan is finalized. If you decline, I’ll only be able to help you as much as any ambassador could help a citizen on a foreign planet, which isn’t very much.” Giselle looked at him for a long moment and then softly added, “If it helps at all, you should know that offering this wasn’t an easy decision for me. I have two daughters, neither of whom I’ve seen in years. I know how it feels to be part of a family, and to be severed from that family. I’m not asking you to call me Mom, Jason. I’m asking you to let me help you to the best of my ability going forward. I wouldn’t have put this option on the table if I didn’t truly think it was for the best.”
“Thank you for clarifying,” Jason said. He’d gone over and over the advantages of the adoption in his mind for the past twelve days, but even though it made sense, it still felt like he was somehow betraying his own family. He stared down at the writ of adoption, reading and rereading the clauses. “This will really only affect our status on Perelan?”
“Yes. To the rest of the Federation, you’re still your own entity at your age, adoption notwithstanding. Remember, though, that you’ve already changed your status dramatically by agreeing to marry Ferran. Legally, you’re in a very amorphous position right now. Being connected to me could only help to solidify that in the eyes of the Federation, even if our connection is limited to one planet.”
“I understand.” And he did. Even if he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of adoption, logic told Jason that he was, in essence, about to be adopted by an alien species. Having his own backup was the smart thing to do. “This includes taking your last name.”
“Yes.” Simple answers, answers that gave him the space to decide, but Jason had already made his decision. He reached out and wrote his name with the tip of his finger on the blank line, then pressed the pad of that finger firmly next to it so it read his print and got a small sample of DNA.
“Excellent!” Giselle turned the document around and signed it herself, then had an impassive Penelope formally sign as the witness.
After everything was done, Penelope passed Jason a small, thin cloth patch shaped like two intersecting circles. “I’ll take care of the rest of your clothing later, but this will work as a quick and dirty fix. Put the patch on the left shoulder of whatever you’re going to wear today. It’s Ambassador Howards’s official insignia on Perelan and will indicate that you’re a member of her household.”
“I’ll do that.”
“I recommend wearing something in green for your first day,” Giselle put in. “The color is appropriate for everyday use, but it’s especially symbolic of welcome when meeting a new person, and you’re going to be meeting plenty of new people in the near future.”
Jason just nodded. Giselle dismissed him with a bright smile, and he headed back to his quarters, not wanting to dwell on the latest change to his life. At this point, things like that were becoming almost routine.
Ferran was there, pacing the living room. He was already dressed in a tight-fitting, backless green-and-gold jumpsuit, and he looked beautiful. Nervous as hell, but beautiful.
“Did you agree to the adoption?” he asked as soon as the door closed behind Jason. “Did you take her name?”
“Yes.”
Tension noticeably eased from Ferran’s shoulders. “Good. I wasn’t sure if you would or not. Names are a very proud thing on Perelan, and I know they have importance for humans as well.”
“I’m still a Kim,” Jason said. He tried to project some of his calm, however artificial, for his husband. “I’m just a Howards as well now. And I assume there’s going to be a Grenn somewhere in there too at some point.”
“As soon as my mother meets you and welcomes you into the family,” Ferran affirmed, looking calmer already. “Which should
happen as soon as we are brought before her.”
“Another act to make our marriage more official?” A part of Jason wondered what signing the marriage contract had accomplished in the first place. It seemed to carry very little weight with the Perels.
“There are a lot of things that need to happen,” Ferran said. He looked faintly apologetic. “The contract is a necessary part of it all. I’m sorry I didn’t explain more fully.” He reached out and took Jason’s hand, pulling it close to his body.
“It’s okay.” And it was. That strange calm that had descended on him was still firmly in place, and that was fine by him. It wasn’t as good as how he felt after meditating, but he had barely had any time for that practice lately. “I have to get dressed.”
“May I watch?”
Jason smiled a little. “Of course.” They went back into the bedroom, and Jason opened his closet. Choices, choices… damn it, he had been a ship’s captain for much of his adult life, and there were very few variations on that uniform. Almost everything else he owned had been plain and, for the most part, completely interchangeable with every other piece of clothing he owned.
“This one is nice,” Ferran said after a moment, fingering a dark green, high-collared suit edged with black. “The style suits you. It’s dignified. Mature.”
Jason was prepared to make a joke about being old, but it died behind his teeth when he saw the look in his lover’s eyes. The look was utter, total concentration—complete devotion the likes of which, Jason realized, he probably wouldn’t see again for a long time once they got down to Perelan. Their time would be further divided, and the pressure on Ferran—the expectations of his mother, the Council of Matriarchs, and, in a way, every Perel—would come crashing down. This moment of singular togetherness was a gift, and Jason would be an idiot to ignore that.
He took the suit out and laid it on the bed; then he just stood there and stared at it. Once he put that suit on, it would become his new normal. Jason already knew that he would never go back to his uniforms, but he hadn’t thought it would be so hard to let go of them either. After a moment, Ferran stepped in and slowly unfastened Jason’s shirt, pulling it back off his shoulders and tossing it away. He did the same with Jason’s pants, sliding them down his legs and off, getting rid of the shoes first. Every movement was deliberate: not really sensuous, but decidedly intimate.
Ferran’s cool hands traced up Jason’s shins, over his knees and hips, and across his abdomen as Ferran stood again. Goose bumps sprang to life over Jason’s whole body, accentuated in the slightly chill air of their bedroom. Ferran exhaled against the base of Jason’s throat, warming him, before he turned to the green suit. He redressed Jason with the same care he’d used undressing him, carefully straightening the collar and smoothing out the sleeves before he attached Giselle’s insignia to the unmarked shoulder.
Once everything was done, he stepped close and embraced Jason in the Perel way. Their right temples touched, and each of their right hands cupped the side of the other’s face, gentle and intimate. They kept the rest of their bodies at a slight distance, feeling the heat of each other but nothing else.
“I love you,” Jason said, turning his face just far enough to kiss the edge of Ferran’s cheek. For some reason, he felt it was important to ensure that his lover had those words at the forefront of his mind before they tackled what came next.
“I love you,” Ferran replied. “You first. You always.”
“Good.” Jason kissed him again briefly before he pulled back. “Ready for our grand entrance?”
“Ready.”
ALL OF them joined the pilot up front for the descent. Jason had been seeing pictures of Perelan for weeks now, but watching it loom in the viewscreen of the ship sent an unexpected thrill through him. It was the same feeling he used to get when he was a Federation officer, before the war had so dramatically restricted travel. A new planet, a new people, and he was about to have an entirely new experience. The first human to marry into and get personal access to an advanced alien culture—it was impossible not to be excited about that.
From space, Perelan was a swirling, whitish-green ball, the landmass almost completely covered by mist and clouds. Jason listened with half an ear as the pilot went through the landing procedures and clearances. She brought them down smoothly through the gloom, ignoring the view for favor of her electronic monitors.
Jason couldn’t take his eyes off the sky. It was wet and dark, and rain poured down in pulsing sheets against the hull. Jagged lightning branched and spread like nerves through the sky.
It wasn’t Jacksonville, with neither the vivid colors nor the sheer violence of those storms, but it was just familiar enough to be comforting.
He barely had time to take in the landscape, which looked to be almost entirely trees, before the ship pulled into a hangar. It slowed to a halt and stopped on a landing pad. Jason expected them to be cleared to leave the ship a moment later, but instead, the viewscreen was suddenly flooded with viscous liquid sprayed at a high velocity.
“It kills any parasites that may have become attached during our entrance,” Ferran explained. “They aren’t frequent, but they can be very damaging to Berenze’s internal ecosystem if they aren’t destroyed.”
“I see.” That was fairly standard for more rural landing sites on many planets. “Is this where we’ll be met by your mother?”
“Matriarch Grenn won’t be meeting us here,” Giselle spoke up, wrapping a green silk scarf around her neck. “The landing site is a ways out from the main city. In fact, my official residence is just adjacent to this place, no more than five minutes’ walk.”
“They keep you on the outskirts?” Jason asked. He had known Giselle’s house wasn’t in the equivalent of downtown or Berenze, but he hadn’t figured she was actually isolated from the entire population.
“Every ambassador lives outside of central Berenze. Me, the Dorn representative, the Mazi, and there’s also a transitional house for the occasional freelance trader or interest group. That’s part of what makes your new status so special, Jason. You’re going to be the only alien living inside of the actual city.”
Cut off, he thought before he could stop himself. Jason hoped that Ferran hadn’t caught the emotions that went with that thought, but his lover didn’t seem perturbed. Still, it was probably best that he kept his silence. Still. Calm. It was all right. Everything was all right.
“Gloria, have everything taken to my house please,” Giselle instructed her pilot before turning to face the rest of her passengers.
Dori and Penelope had uniforms that closely matched Giselle’s formal wear, and everyone was wearing her insignia. She had even tried to talk Ferran into it, but he had deferred the decision to his matriarch.
“A shuttle will take us into the central city. Once we get there, we’ll be delivered immediately to the Council of Matriarchs for a welcoming ceremony. After that you two will be taken home by Grenn, and then the behind-the-scenes formalities will really get going. Hold on to your hats, gentlemen, we’re living in interesting times.”
“What hats?” Ferran whispered to Jason as they followed Giselle off her ship.
“It’s an old saying. It just means—” Suddenly, they were outside, and the intense, immediate humidity stopped his throat. The air was thick in Jason’s mouth, which seemed to have a mind of its own, opening over and over, trying to force the sour, pungent jungle air into a body that didn’t want anything to do with it.
“Jason?” Ferran held his shoulder, looking at him worriedly. Jason wanted to reassure him, but there was nothing he could say—his body wouldn’t let him—and he was starting to miss the air, to need the oxygen. Just as the first threads of panic began to float across his mind, someone slapped him hard in the middle of his back, just beneath his shoulder blades. He coughed reflexively, and the subsequent gasp of air burned all the way down. The next breath was a little easier, and the one after that easier still.
“Happens to e
veryone the first time!” Dori said with a grin as he stepped out from behind Jason. “I find it’s better not to warn people, make them all nervous about what to expect. Better just to help you through the first few breaths. After that you’re fine.”
Jason knew that the only words that would come out of his mouth right now would be impolite, so he nodded curtly at Dori and tried not to notice that his throat felt like he was swallowing acid.
“It will get better,” Ferran reassured him as they headed for the waiting shuttle. Another Perel stood beside it, his head slightly lowered in respect. He wore a green jumpsuit similar to Ferran’s, although nowhere near as fine. He looked like most male Perels, all white skin and quills and bright brown eyes.
“Ambassador,” he said, inclining his head as they arrived at the shuttle. “Welcome back.” He glanced over at Ferran and Jason, trying not to stare, but clearly curious. “And to you, travelers.”
Ferran replied in Perel, and Jason’s translator got its first workout. He heard the guttural sounds, growling and somehow smooth at the same time, but overlaid on top of it was Ferran’s speaking voice, the voice he used when speaking to Jason or Giselle or any other human. “The scent of home is sweet.”
“So it is,” the other man said.
“What’s your name, son?” Giselle asked briskly.
“Kylarr, Ambassador, of Srell’s House.”
“You know our destination?”
He nodded. “The Council House.”
“Correct. Let’s not waste any time in getting there, all right?”
He nodded again. “Yes, Ambassador.”
“Good.” Giselle entered the shuttle, the rest of them following her like children… which was part of the point, Jason knew, and not something he should feel resentful for. He felt it anyway, but let it ghost through him, into his mind and out of it so fast he knew the emotion didn’t show on his face. Ferran didn’t seem to have noticed either, so that was good.