Chapter 3 MATING FLUIDS
MATING FLUIDS
Xenoth couldn’t sleep. His brother had been making obscene noises in their shared cleansing room for the past half hour.
Xenoth tried not to listen. One of his kropek flicked out, the long, prehensile tube-shaped strand turning the dial on his sleep machine.
Calming tones emitted from the surrounding speakers.
His brother’s noises grew steadily louder.
Xenoth pulled the blanket over his head, turning his tones up another level. Urzan’s groaning pleasure noises reached a sudden crescendo, the strength of which had Xenoth momentarily worried for his brother’s health.
It fell blessedly silent in the domicile.
For about 10 minutes.
Xenoth had almost achieved senselessness when his brother’s pleasure grunting began once again.
“For Z’arth’s sake!” Xenoth muttered in annoyance, flinging the blanket off. It slid down the side of his too-small bunk, slithering with a soft sound off the sculpted planes of his abdominal muscles to pool on the sprawling strands of his kropek mane.
The nearly-black strands of his dark green mane were spread out under and around his body, the ends of them plugged into the sensors and data banks hidden within the natural architecture of his sleeping quarters.
They pulled free of their ports as Xenoth rose from the bed, their lengths retracting until they were only slightly longer than his body length.
He stood and immediately regretted placing his bare feet on the cold metal flooring of the domicile. He winced, before using his kropek to lift his body, holding himself up and skittering across the room like a many-tentacled sea creature on the strong bio-engineered strands.
He did not enjoy having cold feet.
He didn’t bother turning on the lights; his kropek knew the room’s layout and fed it to his optical sensors for navigation purposes. His fist found the door to the shared cleansing room with ease and he banged upon it just loud enough to interrupt his brother’s pleasure noises.
“Urzan, unlock the door!” Xenoth called, leaning tiredly against the doorframe. Urzan’s grunting continued. Xenoth banged louder. “URZAN! If you need to be drained, let me in so I can assist you and then we can both get back to sleep!”
The door unlocked and opened a crack, one of Urzan’s lengthy kropek extending to pull it open fully before shrinking back across the room to its owner. The mass of heavy purple bioengineered strands on Urzan’s head pulsed with a variety of colors as Urzan’s emotions washed through him unrestrained.
Xenoth found himself rankled to see zero embarrassment in his brother’s colorful display.
He crossed the room to the showering facility in which Urzan stood, mating tube in hand, his fluids spilling freely down the drain.
“Z’arth’s sake, Urzan! You’re not even collecting it!” Xenoth rushed to grab a fluids container, shoving it at his brother. “Shall I alert Arzog?”
Urzan let out a tired, tiny huff of a laugh. “It’s fine, Xenoth.”
“It is not fine! This is the fourth night in a row! I thought you said you wouldn’t need draining until the end of the current lunar cycle?”
“I don’t.”
“You clearly do!”
“I don’t.”
“No?? Then why are you in here jerking off in the small hours of the morning?”
Urzan looked at him finally, annoyance writ across his expression. “A male is allowed to have a private wank now and then.”
Xenoth felt his kropek mane puffing up, his dark turquoise lengths swelling out around him as he growled at his brother angrily, his ire fizzing its way down his strands and sparking across the floor to zap against his brother’s purple ones where they lay limply against the floor.
His brother growled back half-heartedly, not even bothering to move his kropek out of the way of Xenoth’s angry display.
“Four. Nights. In. A. Row.” Xenoth leaned in, poking Urzan in the shoulder with each word, the physical skin-to-skin contact a liberty only he could get away with, being blood-kin.
“When you have been away from your female for so long, then you may lecture me as to the proper duration and quantity of my self-pleasuring sessions,” Urzan snapped. “Until then, just shut up and get me another container.”
Xenoth blinked. “Already?”
“YES, ALREADY!”
Xenoth swiftly handed him another fluid collector, his brother’s kropek doing the swap so that Urzan’s hands could continue stroking his mating tube.
Xenoth did his best to keep his eyes averted, a pretense at propriety.
His own kropek took the full container from his brother, before stretching long to slide it into the wall slot across the room, which would send the full container down to cryo-storage.
“You should let me call Arzog,” Xenoth pushed gently. “He will at least drain you properly.”
Urzan’s head thunked against the sterile wall of the shower stall, his shoulders hunching and his kropek bunching around him in a tired, defensive position.
“Can you not just let me have my agony wank in peace, brother?” his voice mumbled from behind the purple curtain of his kropek. “Just hand me some containers and go. Please.”
“Answer me one question first and then I’ll go.”
Urzan grunted in agreement.
“How long has your cycle been shortened?”
Urzan peeked over his shoulder with a guilty expression, yellow streaks of embarrassment passing swiftly from his crown and down through to the base of his kropek. Xenoth’s lips thinned as his suspicions were confirmed.
“Are you in pain yet?”
Urzan’s face turned away, the curtain of his kropek closing him off once again. “Every Z’arth-damned day.”
Xenoth sighed, acid-green worry flickering through his turquoise locks. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. It was worse than he thought.
“How long, Urzan? I need to know. It’s important.”
“The last three lunar cycles,” Urzan told him quietly, still stroking himself behind his drooping purple kropek.
Xenoth let out a curse that would have made his mother’s ancestors proud.
“THREE CYCLES?!” he shouted. “YOU’VE NOT TOLD ME FOR THREE Z’ARTH-BLASTED CYCLES?!”
“You were busy!” Urzan flinched, hunching in on himself, kropek pulling in tightly to protect him from his brother’s fury, little hints of orange and yellow flickering here and there throughout his strands.
“I’M ALWAYS BUSY, URZAN! THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE TRYING TO REBUILD A SPECIES!”
Xenoth threw several empty containers at his brother’s head before stomping out of the cleansing room.
A gentle tug on his kropek brought him to a halt in the doorway.
One of Urzan’s strands had slipped across the floor to tangle with Xenoth’s; the little brother grabbing onto his big brother for support.
“I’m sorry,” Urzan said, tears in his eyes as he looked across at Xenoth. “I’m sorry, Xenoth. Please…Please don’t be mad! I’m just…” He looked away, sobbing slightly. “I’m scared.”
Xenoth wound his kropek around his brother’s, stroking it gently in their familial gesture of affection.
“I’m sorry for yelling,” he told his brother quietly, still holding tightly, kropek to kropek. “…I’m scared, too.”
Urzan looked over at him, tears running down his face in a glittering stream, only to be reabsorbed by his skin before they could drip from his chin.
Xenoth marveled for a moment at what brilliant, fucked up designs their bodies were.
No water wasted, dozens of prehensile limbs, built-in camouflage and weapons.
But keep a male separated from his female for too long and his body went into shock, spilled all its fluids, and if he was lucky, put him into a coma.
Where was the Z’arth-blasted sense in that? !
“You’re all I have left, Urzan. If anything happens to you…” Xenoth swallowed, squeezing his brother’s kropek gently. “I don’t know what I’d do.”
Urzan squeezed back, holding on tightly for a long moment.
“I’ll hook up my bio-sensors to your feed tomorrow,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “So you can monitor my changes.”
“And you’ll talk to Arzog?” Xenoth asked.
Urzan nodded. “I’ll talk to Arzog.
Xenoth sighed with relief. “Good.”
He shifted awkwardly, not sure what to do next. “Did you want me to stay, or…?”
Urzan snorted, withdrawing his kropek.
“Go back to bed, Xenoth” his voice was gentle. “I’ll try to be quieter.”
It was Xenoth’s turn to snort. “As if I could sleep with your moaning. I’ll take a walk. Message me when you’re finished or if you need me to bring you anything.”
“Thank you, Xen.”
Xenoth nodded, closing the door gently. “Goodnight, Urzan.”
As he left their shared suite, Xenoth activated the bio-sensors he’d installed in their cleansing area weeks ago. It was set to only a very basic level of sensing, nothing that would violate his brother’s privacy, but it would let him know if his brother collapsed or was otherwise incapacitated.
Considering that Urzan had kept the change in his fluid production hidden from him for three months, Xenoth did not think activating the sensor to be a particularly unwise course of action.
???
Xenoth walked for hours.
Urzan had messaged him not terribly long after he’d left their rooms, but once Xenoth had begun moving, he couldn’t seem to stop.
His feet had taken him all over the compound, wandering through every public space within the community.
He’d stopped in on the station that monitored the planet’s security systems—the entire reason his people had been contracted to come to WLN269—but all was quiet, and his presence there only made the other Z’arthaxians on duty nervous.
He left and continued along the perimeter until he found himself staring at the sunrise over the gryllrogi fields.
The lavender grain that fed the giant insects waved gently in the planetary breeze filtering in through the bio-shield.
A few of the insectoids could be seen hopping through the tall grain, their purple exoskeletons glinting in the growing sunlight.