Chapter 21
Badass on the outside, lonely on the inside
Hannah.
I can’t believe it’s been a month. I can’t believe I’m comfortable with a giant snake as a housemate.
I am astounded that I have taken so well to becoming a peacekeeper apprentice.
I used to make coffees and serve grilled sandwiches.
Now I’m strapped into kevlar over my combat suit like it’s a second skin.
“Tumva! Move your butt!” I grin as I step away from the pulley seat, tugging at my pierce-proof vest. They call them pierce-proof on Thelia, as being stabbed isn’t the only thing the protective gear guards you against. The natives have fangs longer than most regular hunting knives so the kevlar derivative peacekeepers wear to protect against it all.
Blades, fangs, and low calibre projectiles.
The Ucfeni don’t do guns, per say, but blow darts are a risk out on the lower level of Orna. Particularly at night.
“Who are you telling to move?” He sneers at me with affection and I swivel on my ankles to look for him.
Ah, I should have known. Tumva always rises before me and he’s normally training on that combat dummy.
I grin. He doesn’t like that I call it a dummy, as he says it’s very smart to hone one’s skills with an aid like this one.
Almost as useful as an actual person. Speaking of which?
“You.” I chuckle and ooo at a bowl of fruit that never seems to deplete in our kitchen.
I rummage around with my hands until I find my favourite Thelian fruit that is safe for human consumption.
It looks like a cucumber, but it’s blue and tastes like cooked sweet potatoes.
Oh wow. I love to have one for breakfast so I get excited when I see one in the bowl.
I have the fruit in my hands when I turn to look at Tumba with a smirk. “Because I don’t want to be late.”
“We’re never late because of me, Hannah.
” Tumva swaggers over and I can see the lecture I’m about to receive in his fathomless black eyes.
“On the occasions we have been late it has been because of you. You and that small patch of fur on your head that despite covering very little of you, seems to take an age to groom.”
“A huh.” I grin and lean my lower back against the kitchen counter. I brace my left hand on the counter, and in my right hand I’m holding the long blue fruit. I shouldn’t do it. I know I shouldn’t. But I can already tell this lecture will bore me if I don’t.
“I set your uniform out the night before just so you will get ready quicker.” He continues and his hands go to his hips.
That’s it. He’s telling me off like I’m a naughty child, so I’m going to do something immature in response.
I slowly raise my right hand and open my mouth to receive the end of the long blue fruit.
“U huh.” I pop the end in my mouth and maintain eye contact ‘innocently’. Rather than just chomping through it like I normally would I suck at the end like it’s a piece of rock candy.
“You’re only going to wear a helmet anyway, so why must it take so long to preen your…
” I raise a brow to show I’m waiting to hear the rest of his chastisement, but I’m cackling on the inside.
His chin dips and I can tell he’s trying to ignore me sucking on the end of the fruit.
He clearly can’t tell if I know that what I’m doing looks suggestive and I’m keeping a straight face. “…hair when you’re only going to…”
It’s too funny. I’m not giving the fruit a blow job or moving it in and out of my mouth, but sucking on the end is enough to render Mr. dark and bossy into an uncomfortable mess. “We don’t have time for you to take a long time to eat. Hurry up or we’ll be late. I’ll wait for you outside.”
Bam.
Tumva was a blur of black scales as he quickly slithered outside and shut the door behind him.
I snorted into one hand, highly amused, and bit into the blue cucumber as I normally would.
I ate it quickly over the sink so I didn’t spill any juices onto my uniform, cupped water to my mouth to wash away any residue, and headed to the front door.
I stepped into my boots and securely fastened the laces as my mind wandered.
I have a problem. I’ve thrown myself into work since Billie got upset with me and she hasn’t called me back.
If I call her and she’s not prepared for it, she’ll get upset again, so I need to wait for her.
So, focusing on work has helped. Tumva has supported me with that and I’m starting to see that he’s a badass on the outside and very lonely on the inside.
I’ve seen it for years in Billie, that inability to connect to the world around her but wishing she could.
Tumva has the same stare when he thinks no one is looking.
His black eyes seem to sparkle when he smiles, and so far, he’s only ever smiled at me.
We’ve become good friends, being in each other’s pockets, so to speak, 24 hours a day every day.
He is so fussy in the house, er, nest, to the point of being clingy.
Having a housemate who needs reassurance isn’t new to me.
If anything, it helps to fill a Billie-shaped void in my life.
Though, he has very different ways of showing that need for reassurance.
If Billie required something, she would inform me.
I knew her cues when she was struggling.
The way she’d tap her fingers or squeeze her eyes shut to control what she had to process.
Even when she didn’t speak to me, she said volumes about how she was feeling.
Tumva? He was a bit harder to read. Not because he was complex, but because he was new and his needs were different.
For a start, when the engineers came to install human comforts into his nest, he had my bed installed on the top tier to replace the basking rock.
He declared that there wasn’t room for both and he would put my needs first. We would sleep together, as nestmates did, and proceeded to bundle me up in the blanket and pillows before coiling around me like he was my nest. When I started to argue he looked me right in the eye and begged me.
“Please?” He whispered and I saw that massive Naga tense for rejection. It had the same raw vulnerability that Billie’s plea had when she needed help so she didn’t fall into herself against her will. We’ve slept ‘together’ like this ever since.
Unlike Billie, I can’t make him breakfast or do his laundry. If anything, he seems to take offence if I try to do basic chores in the house. Tumva went on a rant one day when I tried to stop him doing everything and pull my own weight.
“No! Why would you feel the need to tend to the nest? Am I not doing a good enough job? Where am I lacking?”
“…Tumva, you’re not ‘lacking’ anything? I just want to do half the workaround here is all. It’s not fair for you to-”
“But this is my nest and you are female. If I am not lacking, then why would you tend to the nest?” He hissed and snarled in such a way that I thought I’d really pissed him off.
Tumva is one scary mother fucker when he’s angry.
I can see why everyone stays away from the massive midnight serpent.
He’s never shown me his fangs, but in that moment I thought I was going to.
“It is my place to care for you. If you tend to the nest, that is because I have failed to do so.” His anger vanished and that loneliness returned to his eyes to grip me by the heart.
“I am…new to having someone to…please Hannah? Whatever I’m doing wrong, please tell me so I can do better. Don’t…”
I stood up and put my hands on my hips to frown at the front door.
We both knew that he was going to say don’t leave.
It was shortly after that conversation that Tumva admitted to me that he had lived his entire life alone.
That he was a kind of Ucfeni called a Death Striker.
His ancestors ate other Ucfeni and their venom was the most poisonous on all of Thelia.
It explained a lot. Everyone at the pit shunned him.
Ucfeni in the streets practically threw themselves to their bellies to slither away from his presence.
I thought it was impressive that faced with all that hate, he managed to get himself off the streets and into a uniform.
He has his own place, a career, and he serves society.
Even if they will never thank him for it.
I could tell that Tumva had feared my reaction.
He was this big muscly guy, and he was braced for impact from a tiny little thing like me?
wow. I mean I told him off for waiting two weeks to tell me all of this…
but then I handed over the laundry we’d been arguing over and told him not to mix the light and dark colours together this time.
I can still remember him coiling around me that night as we ‘nested-down’ and him whispering ‘thank you’ to me before we went to sleep.
It was still pretty weird for me to let someone else do everything for me, but I see now that it’s not for me.
It’s for Tumva, weirdly. It’s normal for Ucfeni nest mates to have the male tend to the nest. He sees it as a failure if I try and do anything, as an insult to his ability to provide for me.
I just didn’t want him thinking I was a slob or that I was taking advantage of him.
I’m prepared to respect cultural differences.
Besides, he clearly needs it. I can’t imagine being alone my whole life.
I’ve always had Billie. In fact, I was terrified of not having her when Izule claimed her as his charge at the dumpster fire that was the pairing party a month ago.
I’ve missed my sister every day, and it hurt so much when she was upset with me on the com-call.
I don’t know how I upset her, and I wasn’t the one who took care of her.
“No, you don’t need to support me. I don’t need you to do that anymore. I-I have Izule now. He’s taking care of me, and I earn a lot of money from Allico Inc. I don’t need you to support me anymore.”
She said she doesn’t need me. I felt lost and hurt in that moment.
And then Tumva was there. His hands braced on the bean bag and his bottomless black eyes stared into my soul.
He didn’t pretend to have the answers. He even offered me comfort.
But what I needed was a distraction and he gave me that in abundance.
I am not used to someone else taking care of me…
but…it’s not so bad. It’s nice, actually, to wake up and see my clothes ready for me on my new chest of draws.
To not have to think about going shopping or any of the chores for that matter.
He even polishes my boots and our helmets together.
I don’t mind, because I can see that letting him take care of me is the best way I can take care of him.
Oh, and some occasional hazing is also in order.
He is way too tightly wound up and it’s so funny to taunt him.
Sometimes he asks me questions and I can’t help but mess with him.
Tumva asked me what my weight was, for a kind of harness for his back, but I could not resist.
“Tumva?! Don’t ask a lady her weight!”
“…but I need to know for the harness Hannah? If I don’t ask you then I could purchase the wrong-” He tends to catch on that I’m teasing him when I start to snort and snicker.
“Drop me Tumva, and I will be very pissed.”
“I would never drop you! That’s why I’ve purchased a harness to-”
Snort.
I can’t help it. He’s so easy to tease. On the job he seems to like my sarcastic tendencies.
We are always at the back of whatever briefing Ezid is giving, because no one wants to be near the Death Striker.
Which means I can whisper up at the big guy some choice quips.
I see him tense and his lips purse together as he refuses to laugh, but I see the sparkles in his eyes.
My teasing is usually very tame…but three days ago…something happened at work that has forever tainted how I look at not just the Ucfeni, but Tumva. Thus, why I decided to suck on the end of a phallic-shaped fruit with a straight face to psych him out.
I still can’t get my head around the fact that Thelia has a thriving, but illegal, porn industry.
The most recent addition to the fetishes their customers are craving, is Xeno-porn.
That was some evidence I had to help catalog…
and I hope we found enough clues for the digital deep dive to use to locate and arrest the ones behind it.
I push the porn out of my mind for what won’t be the first time today and step outside to find Tumva is already wearing the harness to allow him to carry me at speed through the streets.
I chuckle as he chides me for making us late, again, and climb up his back to sit in the harness.
My arms go around his neck and I smirk at the way he clears his throat, before leaning forward to head towards the pit.