by Lyn Gala
Apparently a lot of running plus working out added to an alien pregnancy resulted in hot hips.
Max stood and grabbed the wall to keep his balance. His first stop needed to be for food. A lot of it. And after that, he needed to go find out what had happened to the children. That was a conversation Max was not looking forward to having.
If they had lost the third child—and given how small it was, Max assumed they had—Rick would be miserable. Max had no idea what he was supposed to say to a father who'd been forced to watch a child die. Aliens had all this advanced technology and spaceships and intergalactic drives, or at the very least, interstellar drives, but they couldn't save one premature baby.
Max wondered if that was some philosophical stand on medical intervention. Maybe aliens were Christian Scientologists. Or maybe Rick didn't have enough money to buy the right medical equipment. Maybe he had spent his last dollar hiring a surrogate.
The thought inspired the intense levels of guilt that usually required his mother and a major national holiday, but it made sense. It wasn't as if Rick had a lot of crew around to draw salaries, so whatever he did, maybe he didn't make enough to have underlings. And Max assumed medical equipment was expensive in any culture.
Max wandered to food storage and grabbed a couple of the bars that had an almost chocolatey black bean flavor to them. Those were not two foods Max would've put together, but the combination worked. It was better than the small round discs that tasted like someone had chemically joined an asparagus and a fart.
He had finished one bar on his way to the infirmary. Since Max had woken up naked, Rick must have left Max’s clothing somewhere. Max normally swam in his underwear, so the swimming pool was the most likely place to find his pants and shirt; however, Max wasn’t ready to deal with a grieving father yet. And since the children needed water, Rick was going to be there. As long as Max didn’t track Rick down, he could hope the third offspring was alive. Once Rick told him the child had died, it would be real.
The exam room was empty, but a half dozen tools were scattered on the floor and table. Rick was usually meticulous about putting everything away, which made sense in an environment where an emergency could lead to zero gravity or unexpected acceleration that would turn objects into projectiles. Max gathered the tools off the floor and grimaced at the slime that had pooled around a few. It smelled like urine and had the viscosity of dog slobber. Using two fingers, Max carried them over to the cleaning unit. When he opened the drawer, he found his underwear.
A little grossed out at the alien wash-all, Max took his underwear out and put the medical equipment in the same drawer before securing it again.
With his underwear on, he felt a little less vulnerable, although he doubted he would feel normal anytime soon. Kohei had been incredibly cute, and now Max wondered if he would be welcome around the children he had given birth to. If Rick didn't want Max near his children, Max couldn't blame him. From Rick's point of view, Max was a strange alien from an unrecorded species. That was not an ideal situation for a nanny. Which was another reason why Max should have figured out the truth long before he had.
Walking toward the pool felt like a funeral march. Max hated himself for getting too fucking involved. He always led with his emotions, even when common sense warned him to avoid getting too invested in someone who didn’t feel the same.
Max walked into the pool room with his stomach churning. He spotted Rick in the water. He had taken his hat off, something he didn't do unless he feared getting in a splash war. Before Max had introduced him to the concept of horseplay, Rick had always floated upright with his weird fisherman's type hat in place. Right now he was floating so low in the water that only a few of his eyes were visible above the surface.
Max spotted the rest of his clothing in the corner, but he ignored it for the moment. He edged closer to the water, stopping when he was ankle-deep. “Rick?”
Calling Rick's name caused three or four of his tentacles to flail and splash. Rick rotated, and Max spotted the first child. He was the size of a football but beige with a few streaks and spots of mint green. All the gray had vanished. He spun in mad little circles, and his tentacles waved faster and faster until his head resembled a top. Max was guessing that was Kohei. Either that or Rick had two insanely athletic gymnasts for children.
“Query. How are the offspring?” Max left the question generic so if Rick chose to avoid talking about the third child he could.
Rick floated toward him. “Offspring One,” he said as he touched the whirling dervish of a baby octopus. He paused with his tentacles curled up under his body before resuming his wild athletics. He was going to be a handful. “Healthy and absorbing nutrients quickly,” Rick said. A tentacle pointed toward a water filtration island. “Offspring Two healthy and absorbing nutrients quickly.”
Max looked, and the second offspring had climbed halfway up the water purification pipe using his walking tentacle, which was only slightly less stubby than his other tentacles. This one had less green and more beige and white. While Max watched, he slipped, falling back into the water with a splash. Max took a step closer, half afraid the child had gotten hurt, but the little one pulled his smaller tentacles up tight against the underside of his body and swam away to explore the far end of the pool.
“Good.” Max nodded and did not ask after the third child. His heart ached at the thought of that tiny creature swimming madly in his brother’s birth sac. He had been so full of life. Max’s eyes stung, and he brushed the back of his hand across them. “Good. I'm glad they're healthy. And I was right, they're cute.”
Rick came into the shallows and braced his walking tentacle on the bottom before he tilted his body. Two of his tentacles parted to show a palm-sized octopus tucked up against the place where tentacles joined the bottom of his body. “Offspring Three is small.”
Max's legs turned to jelly, and he couldn't support his own weight. He sat down so fast that water splashed up around him and Rick slid backwards into deeper waters. “Oh, thank God. He’s alive.” A few tears slipped free, and Max scooped water up and splashed his face. “Query. Is he healthy?” He was so damn small.
“He is growing.” Rick pulled his son away from the bulk of his body and into the shallow water before uncurling his tentacle. The little one swam vigorously, all of his tentacles contracting in unison like a jellyfish.
“That's good, right?” Max asked.
Rick kept his tentacle near the child the whole time, and after a few minutes, those tiny stubs of tentacles started to slow. Rick wrapped his limb around the child and pulled it close again. “Must stay warm to stay healthy, but must move to gain nutrients to stay healthy.”
Max watched Kohei. He had slowed and was now swimming in circles. Most of his tentacles were tucked up close to his belly. Immediately Max spotted the problem. The smallest child was so small that he couldn't move without kicking all of his tentacles, which meant there was a lot of exposed skin to get cold. “But if you stay with him, he'll grow, right? Query?”
Rick paused. “Yes.” The news sounded good, but Rick's tentacles were far too squiggly for him to be happy. Max narrowed his eyes and studied Rick. He was sluggish. The pool currents shoved him from side to side, and a few of his eyes seemed dull.
“Query. How long was I asleep?”
“Clarification. Not sleep. Hormone to relax hosts is produced by offspring. My offspring waited too long. I regret.”
That sounded like redirection. “Fine. Query. How long was I passed out cold from baby hormones?” Max suspected most of that wouldn't translate, but Rick already knew what he was asking.
Again, Rick hesitated to answer. “Sixteen hours.”
Fuck. That explained why Max had felt groggy and dizzy when he’d gotten up.
“Have you been down here with the offspring the whole time?” Max asked.
“Yes.”
“Query.” This time Max paused, not sure how to ask this. However, he couldn’t walk away bef
ore knowing the answer. “Query. How long can you continue to shelter the offspring?” Whatever life cycle Rick's people had, they were not aquatic as adults. Never once had Max walked in to find Rick already in the pool. Clearly, the pool was something Rick associated with offspring and surrogates, not something he enjoyed for himself. And when Max had first walked in, Rick had been startled. That was the sort of reaction Max expected from someone who was exhausted.
“Many hours yet. He may still swim.” Rick's tentacles turned into curly fries.
Max heart raced. The offspring would survive if his father could forgo eating or sleeping until he grew large enough to swim on his own. That wasn't likely. However, Max wasn't about to let him die. He stood and waded deeper into the water. “Show me what I can do to help him,” he demanded.
Rick rotated to consider Max out of a new set of eyes, and then rotated again and considered him out of the large one that he normally used. “I can continue several hours.”
“I know you can. But I think that little one needs more than several hours to grow self-sufficient. Query. Am I wrong?”
Rick didn't answer.
“We need to work together and take turns,” Max said firmly. “I finished eating and sleeping, so I can handle several hours before I will need to pee and get more food. If you sleep now, you'll be able to take over and give me a break later.”
“Query. You would care for offspring?”
If a human had asked that, Max would have been insulted. He still felt a hard knot of disappointment that Rick thought so little of him, but he knew Rick didn’t understand him. “Of course I will care for offspring. I wouldn't let any child die, ever. I would risk my life for any child. But that child came out of me. I've already been protecting him, and I will not stop protecting him until I know he is safe.” Max closed the distance so he stood right beside Rick. “Besides, it's not like I'm offering to give up anything other than some sleep and some time sitting at a computer database trying to teach your damn ship how to speak English. Query. How can I help?”
Rick rotated, his tentacles barely moving in the water as he did a full three-sixty and considered Max out of each of his various eyes. Max waited, willing Rick to trust him with this. Max would never choose sleep or personal comfort over the life of the child. Never. But he didn't have the vocabulary to explain his moral compass to an alien.
And he suspected that Rick’s spaceship-sized inferiority complex didn’t help. Several times he had told Max how much other aliens disliked him. That wasn't easing the way. But with the little one’s life on the line, the big moron would either agree to a co-parenting plan or Max would make him.
Chapter Twelve
“I think I’ll call you Xander,” Max told his little friend who clung to his hand. Offspring Three was so small that he could hold on to the base of Max's pinky or the base of his thumb; he wasn't large enough to stretch all the way across the palm from one to the other.
“I don't think you guys get Buffy the Vampire Slayer out here, but you seem like a Xander.” That was stretching the truth a little, but he went on to explain. “The other people on the show all had powers, but Xander had this grip on life. It was like he never gave up.” Max moved his hand a little faster, and the baby held on tightly. “No matter what got thrown at him, he kept plugging.”
“Now I'm not saying he was the brightest member of the Scooby gang, because he wasn't. He once showed up for a fight with a vampire carrying a rock.” Vampires weren't real, but if they were, showing up for a vampire fight with a rock seemed a little stupid, and the older Max got, the stupider that moment seemed. “However, Xander kept plugging and he never gave up on life, and he never gave up on his friends. That's what you have to do now.”
Max slowed as he ran his hand through the water. Rick insisted that was all Xander needed. As long as Xander had the warmth of Max's hand and help moving through the water, everything else would eventually fix itself.
“You have to channel your inner Xander and not give up. And maybe things are hard right now, and maybe they’ll be hard for a while, but I saw you on that scanner. I saw you swimming for all you were worth when you were behind your brother. You're not the sort to give up easily.”
Max turned and tried to find Offspring Two. He didn't seem to have any sort of middle child inferiority complex. He was not one to stand on the edge of things—or in his case float—and wail Marsha Marsha Marsha. Nope. Rick's middle child was determined to explore the far reaches of the pool. At one point, he'd even tried crawling out.
If Max hadn't been busy with Xander, he would've gone after the idiot. Luckily, the idiot in question decided that he was not quite ready to live in the open air, and he got back into the pool. Max needed to come up with some explorer’s or adventurer's name for Offspring Two. He knew there were plenty. Some human had been the first to get the bright idea to go to the North Pole or South Pole. Those would've been great names, only Max was far better with television characters than historical figures. So for now, the kid would stay Offspring Two.
“I bet I'm breaking about a million taboos by giving you nicknames,” Max told Xander. The warmth of Xander’s body against his palm was a comfort. “Before going overseas on my first assignment, we got this whole lecture about cultural sensitivity. They told us how some people would never encounter an American other than members of the service, so we had to become ambassadors of a sort.” Max snorted. That had stressed him more than live weapons training.
“That’s a lot of pressure for twenty-four-year-old kid. I signed up to fly airplanes not to be an ambassador. And then they told us how it was even more important for officers to be culturally sensitive. They explained that whatever we did, the enlisted would take it as a signal they could do something three times worse. So if we were to do something heinous, they would do something worse, and it would be our fault.” Maybe Max was bored or maybe he liked having an audience who couldn’t understand him, but he found hanging out with the kids cathartic.
“That was a lot of pressure, and I was glad I didn't get stationed somewhere isolated enough that my lack of cultural sensitivity would lead to some international incident. I'm pretty sure my officers were nervous about me being gay, because there are parts of the world where gay does not go over well. However, my point is that if my training officers saw me doing such a culturally inappropriate thing as naming somebody else's children,” and at this, Max brought Xander close to the surface of the water and made puffy faces at him, “they would probably go back in time and flunk me. Funny thing though, I'm not entirely sure I'm going home. Ever. So I think I need to stop living my life like I will be. I’ll stick around and name you, if you don’t mind.”
Max lowered himself until his mouth was underwater then blew bubbles at Xander. Several of Xander’s tentacles waved, and then Xander pushed off from Max’s hand and swam madly for Max’s face. His stubby tentacles caught at Max’s lips, and Max blew more bubbles. Xander’s tentacles danced across Max’s cheeks and up into his nose.
Max snorted and caught Xander in his hand. “Okay. No snotty tentacles for you, sir.”
Xander wrapped his tentacles around Max’s thumb and pressed his belly to Max’s palm. In that short swim, he had already cooled significantly. “If your father told me that he was upset with me for giving you names, I would stop,” Max said. “Of course I named your father after a belching cartoon character and he doesn't seem to mind. You have a pretty laid-back father, but he was still awfully worried about you.”
Kohei swam up and caught Max by his left wrist. “What's the matter? Are you tired?” Max waved his arms as if he were jogging in slow motion. Kohei’s grasp was viselike, especially when Max compared it to Xander’s light grip.
“You're welcome to hitch a ride for a while,” Max told Kohei. It wasn’t like he was going anywhere, not with Xander needing him. “You get so crazy with your gymnastics that I'm hardly surprised you wore yourself out. You have to learn to pace yourself.”
The doors opened, and Rick came in with his hat back in place. He looked better than he had. Considering he had been on the verge of exhaustion, it didn't require much to look better than half-dead. “Query. Did you manage to get some sleep?” Max asked.
Rick slid toward the pool. “I slept two-point-three-seven hours.”
That was not helpful. “Query. What is considered a normal amount of sleep for your species?”
“Five-point-two hours.”
So he hadn’t slept long enough, but Max couldn’t blame him. “Well at least you got some sleep. But both of us need to pace ourselves so that we don't get too tired. The kids need us both rested and fed. Query. Did you get some food?”
“Not yet. I shall.” Rick came into the water until it was halfway up his walking tentacle. Max lifted his hand so that Rick could see Xander still cradled in his palm. “The offspring are fine, but I'm not giving them back to you until you've eaten. You need to be strong.”
Rick came closer, his tentacles reaching out toward Max and the kids. “You have tended them long enough.”
“I had a long sleep. I feel wonderful, so you need to take enough time off that you feel wonderful before you take over. All the children are fine. Offspring Two seems a little overconfident, but Offspring Three is fine and healthy.”
“Query. Clarify overconfident.” Rick rotated, and he only stopped once his largest eye was pointed at the far corner of the pool where Offspring Two was busily sticking a tentacle out of the water like a flag. When Max turned, Kohei launched himself toward his brother.
“Bold. Reckless. He crawled out of the water before deciding that was a bad idea,” Max explained. At this point he was almost more worried about their little daredevil than he was about Xander. Daredevil. Huh. Matthew Michael Murdock was the original Daredevil. Max wondered if that would be a good name for the wild child.
“Offspring must learn boundaries,” Rick said. He turned back toward Max and reached a tentacle toward Xander.