2. Phial
two
Phial
A very sits at one of the stationary barstools near the kitchen island. She hadn't spoken to me since she told me she was ready to head back to the ship. That's okay. I'm used to her silence. We've spent enough time together in it that it doesn't bother either of us anymore. At least, I'm pretty sure it doesn't bother Avery.
I move over to the food synthesizer, planning on making something for Avery. I really wish we had added human food to the synthesizer when we learned we were going to have a human crew for our last mission. The only reason we didn't was because we didn't want to waste the credits for food that might only get eaten for a few weeks at most. We didn't realize Sloane would stay on as permanent crew or that Avery would be with us for the long haul, either.
"I should've grabbed you food from the great hall," I murmur under my breath.
Really, I should've been doing so many other things besides waiting at the entrance of the sanctuary, invisible to all the sisters. I just needed to make sure Avery was safe and that the sisters weren't letting anyone inside that might cause her harm. She's already been through so much. She doesn't need anything else to happen to her.
Jia, the same female I saw Avery with tonight, stopped me one morning during Avery's heat and told me I was always welcome to wait in the small waiting area they have for males who scent match a female who needs to go through her heats in the sanctuary. I almost took her up on it until I realized how sacred such a place would be. Somewhere for the mates of these females to wait. I'm Avery's friend, nothing more, and I can't be blurring those lines, not when, more than anything, she just needs a friend. Even though I'd very much like to blur those lines.
"I don't think I want food from there," Avery says, laying her head on her forearms.
Her eyes are still rimmed in red, and her voice is shaky. She doesn't hide her emotions from me. There was no point in it when she first got here, and I think she got used to me being here, not reacting poorly when she needed to cry or scream or throw things.
She turns to face me, her red rims making the green in her blue eyes stand out. It has my scales shimmering, wanting to change to that color, my new favorite color.
"Why's that?" I ask, pulling my eyes away from hers. My tail swishes across the metal flooring, the only sound for long moments.
I'm not wearing a shirt because, unlike the pants I left for myself at the ship's entrance, I didn't leave myself a shirt. It's not like I'm anything to look at. My body is nimble and lean. I'm a small male compared to the others on this ship, compared to every other male on this planet. I'm pretty sure without my feathers, I'd be shorter than even Sloane, but thankfully, no one here has ever made me feel less male. I mean, a blaster is the great equalizer in all things, and I'm never far from one.
"Phial, I'm pretty sure everyone in that building was fucking," Avery says the word easily. It shouldn't have an impact on me, but I'm still a male. A male who's been without any kind of relief for a long time. My cocks start to stir in my pocket, and I hiss softly at them, telling them if they get hard right now, I will never touch them again. Avery is my friend, and friends don't get boners over other friends.
"Phial?" Avery's voice saying my name so sweetly is not what I need if I don't want to get harder.
Her feet make a soft sound as she slides from her barstool. The padding gets closer and closer, and then she's beside me—not close enough that our bodies are touching, but close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off her skin.
"Hey, are you okay?"
"Fine," I say through gritted teeth. It's then that I realize my hiss has been a soft, steady stream, probably since my cocks started giving me issues. I take a deep breath, forcing the hiss to silence.
"Are you sure, because I mentioned all the…" Avery gives me a funny look and says, "Relations happening in the great hall, and you got weird."
"Relations?" I lift the feathers above my eyes in a mock of her words.
She gives me a soft smile, and everything is back to how it needs to be. Sure, my cocks are half-mast right now, but they're staying tucked into my pocket, and I'm pretty sure they're going to stay inside. If they come out, it better not be until I'm sitting down and can hide how they strain against my pants.
"You got all funny when I said fucking, so I wanted to make sure I didn't upset your sensibilities." Avery laughs before turning and going back to her seat at the island. "Have you been in there? Is it all fucking?"
"I haven't." I rub the back of my head, smoothing down the feathers at my neck, hoping they don't look too out of place. "I'm pretty sure Alik hates the place, but Jovi and Essa have been enjoying themselves."
"But you haven't gone?" Avery asks. A look I can't quite place crosses over her features, making my chest pinch slightly. There's a right answer to this question, and I'm not too sure what it is or why.
"Nothing for me there," I say with a shrug, hoping it's good enough.
Truth be told, there's plenty for me in the great hall. The females here might not think my size is anything special, and they most definitely wouldn't choose me as a mate or the father of their children because, as far as they're concerned, I'm not able to protect them. Whatever, I don't care about that part, and really, none of them do either.
I've been propositioned plenty of times since landing on this planet because Essa and Jovi thought it would be funny to tell the females that while I lack a knot, I can still fill them perfectly fine and maybe to excess.
I thought about sleeping with one of them, thinking that maybe all of these feelings for the pale, plush female I'm friends with were because of my lack of bedding anyone. Plenty of the females on Rythar look like Avery. Small, so soft, and beautiful. Unbelievably beautiful.
When I thought of being with anyone, though, there was always one particular female in those fantasies. I didn't feel right to imagine a different female than the one I was actually with, so I never did make the jump into figuring out if I could fuck away these feelings with someone else.
Avery looks like she wants to say something else, but the food synthesizer dings, telling us the food's ready. Whatever she wanted to say dies in her throat, and I don't have the courage to ask her about it. I grab the food and slide it across the island with a fork and knife.
"Eat up." I tap my claws against the island, waiting for her to pick up the utensils before excusing myself. "I need a second in the room to clean up. I'll come get you when I finish."
"You're leaving me alone?" Avery's eyes widen, and my heart beats rapidly in my chest at her reaction.
"No, no, I can stay," I say, ignoring the throb of protest my cocks are giving me. I planned on using my few moments alone to stroke them until I could think clearly again. They're making me a terrible friend. I can't stop thinking about how Avery's body will jiggle as I plow into her, encouraging her greedy pussy, wanting to feel—
I rub at my temples, forcing the thoughts back into the dark recess of my mind. Friends don't think about other friend's genitals. At least, I don't think they do. I've definitely never thought of any of my other friend's genitals.
"Sorry," Avery says, her words trembling as she lifts the fork to her mouth and takes a small bite.
My tail swishes behind us, barely grazing the metal floor as it moves softly back and forth. I'm sitting right next to Avery, but I won't reach for her, and she won't reach for me. We never reach for one another. We sit close to one another, and that's enough because we're friends.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," I say. Her apology is enough to have my cocks shrinking up in shame at the idea of making her feel poorly about herself just so I could touch myself. "I didn't think about how you might be scared to be alone after what happened earlier."
"You wouldn't leave me alone if it wasn't safe." Avery turns her head, her pale hair falling over her shoulder and the short bits into her eyes. I want to reach up and move it away to see the pretty green flecks in her eyes again.
"I wouldn't," I tell her, tapping my fingers against the island to keep from reaching out to her. "I have the ship locked up, and the others know they need to message me on the comm if they want inside."
"Of course." Avery shakes her head. "You're always thinking about me, aren't you?"
You have no idea.
I grunt in reply, not trusting my words. Avery laughs and shakes her head again, this time returning to her food. I look at her out of the corner of my eyes. Most of the time, I don't admire her openly unless she's asleep and leaves the dome clear. She's too focused on her food or lost in her own thoughts, so I allow myself this small moment to admire her.
The wounds she got from the collar that was put on her by the smugglers are healing up nicely, but it's obvious they're going to scar. They're circular cuts that mark the places where the collar was embedded into her skin so that she couldn't remove it. There's a half-inch scar every inch or so all along her neck, the wounds obvious to anyone who's been out in space for any length of time.
I've seen a handful of others with the same scars, but they've all been males who were put to work on prison planets. I've never seen a female with them, and the fact that they're on this female has my stomach boiling every time I see them. I tell myself that I need to get over how they make me feel because there's nothing Avery can do about them. They'll always be there, always a reminder of what she went through.
"Could you stop staring at them?" Avery's voice cuts through all the thoughts in my head and has me acutely aware of how much I'm openly staring at the scars. I turned my face to the side, my eyes dropped to the spots all along her neck, and I didn't even notice how obvious I was being. "I know they're there. I know they'll always be there."
"Sorry, I was just thinking," I say, trying to cover up my blunder.
I start to smooth down my feathers, which are now partially raised because of how embarrassed I am about being called out. I'm usually so good about keeping my eyes to myself when Avery can see me.
If I'm to admire her openly, I either wait until she's asleep or camouflage myself. Not that I've ever done that when she's asking for privacy. I don't sneak into the bathroom during her showers, don't enter the bedroom when she's asked to be alone. No, I just might sneak into girl's nights sometimes or maybe hide in the kitchen when she's talking with Sloane. Nothing sinister.
"Thinking about my scars." Avery's hands go to her throat, fingering the puckered skin where it's still healing. "I think about them a lot, too."
"I know," I whisper the words. I hate that I've made her self-conscious about this when we were doing so well.
"I wonder sometimes if I hadn't tried to remove it myself, if the scars wouldn't be so bad," she says quietly.
The words have my eyes going wide. The confession is the first time she's talked to me about this. She's talked to me about plenty of what happened to her on the smuggling ship. How she was altered while she was conscious, how the crew would take away her ability to move when she cried too much or if she screamed for too long. She's never told me she tried to remove her collar, though, something that could've killed her if she worked too hard at it without the proper tools.
I turn to face her, my hands clasped in my lap. "I've seen collar scars on plenty of others. Nothing you did would've changed whether or not you were given scars. They're meant to make you feel shame." I clench my jaw tight when Avery's eyes take on a misty look. "You should never feel any shame for what they forced on you. Never. And if anyone makes you feel that way, you tell me." I pause and narrow my eyes on her face. "Or Essa or Alik or Jovi or Holoth or K'Vella or even Sloane, I'm pretty sure she'd want to know if someone made you feel less than."
Avery's bottom lip quivers as she pushes away the mostly eaten food. I grab the remainder and eat it, not wanting to waste food. Really, I should've made myself something, too, but it seemed more important to get Avery food first. I rinse the plate off and set it in the dishwasher.
"Are you ready for bed?" I ask.
Her eyes have taken on that far away look that she gets when she's thinking about what happened to her. There's nothing for me to do other than be here for her when she comes back to reality. She slips from her chair, following my lead back to the room without saying a word.
My room is messy, but how could it not be when I've spent most of the last week living in it and worrying about Avery? The dome nest in the middle of the room takes up most of the space. The glass that makes up the dome is still clear all the way through, so Avery can see her nest just as she left it.
It's filled with all of the blankets and pillows from when I used to sleep in there, but now there are more of my feathers in it. I never was one to mark a nest in that way, but then Avery started staying in it, and I had to make sure she knew who's nest she was staying in. I tell myself it's so my friend knows she's safe and is reminded of me when she wakes from her nightmares.
"If you need anything, you let me know," I tell Avery as she crawls through the small entrance into the dome.
I crawl on top, making myself comfortable right in the center, curling my body over it and resting my head on my forearms. Avery curls up underneath me and doesn't fog the glass to give herself privacy. No, she rests her head against one of my pillows and drifts off to sleep without another word to me.
I crawl over the dome a little, placing my face right above hers, watching as her chest rises and falls with her steady breaths of sleep. I stare at her like that for a long time, way longer than is right. I don't stop until my body starts to feel tired, and I finally move back to the center of the dome and close my eyes.