Chapter Eleven #2
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.
“You have been weird ever since we got to this planet. I'm not sure why you even wanted to come here.”
“Children must have opportunity to engage with culture of birth,” Rick trumpeted.
“Given how you are reacting to your culture of birth, I'm not sure I want my kids anywhere near them.”
Rick’s tentacles curled in distress. “Max husband will not interfere with children. Children possess individual will for choice.”
Max threw his hands up. “Fine, our children have every right to pick these assholes who make you miserable. Now, will you explain to me why they make you miserable?” Max begged.
Rick had always been so open, even when they’d had trouble talking to each other because of the universe’s worst translation program.
“I suffer no misery,” Rick said.
“Bullshit,” Max snapped.
“The excrement of male farm animals is irrelevant in this discussion.”
Now Max knew that Rick was being intentionally thick. Rick delighted in idioms–idioms, commercials, and weird English sayings were Rick's happy place. Give Rick a metaphor, and he would go squiggly with the joy. He was an English teacher's dream alien.
Max moved into Rick's personal space and wrapped his arms around several of Rick's tentacles. “Talk to me,” Max said softly. “You are my husband, and I love you, and I feel like I'm failing you as a husband when you need to shut me out.”
That worked where nothing else had. “You are not failure,” Rick said in a voice that could almost be described as soft from a Hidden one.
“And you are not a failure either,” Max insisted.
Rick curled his tentacles around Max’s body and held him in the tightest hug Max had ever felt.
He was cocooned in Rick’s embrace. “I am the failure,” Rick said, but before Max could reassure his sensitive husband, tentacles were working inside his waistband, and under his shirt.
Tentacles brushed over his perineum. Max had come here hoping to seduce his husband into telling him the truth, but apparently Rick's seduction game was more on point.