[M/M, MC]
Synopsis: Space Marine Lance meets an alien and his human boyfriend who bring up some unusual thoughts.
Disclaimer: The naked hypnotist strides confidently into your room. His lips curl in what might be a smile as he dangles his shiny crystal pendulum before your eyes and announces, "Listen and obey. If you are not of legal age, or if you offended by sexual situations, you will leave this place immediately. From here on, no matter how realistic it may appear, everything will seem like fiction to you, a pleasant dream where scientific possibilities and laws may change according to my suggestion. Now, if you are willing, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride."
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He inhaled the sharp bite of the chilly alien air and curled his fingers around the heavy iron ball through the even heavier magnetic gloves. He ignored his tired muscles, wiped the sweat beading his forehead, studied the goal under the midday sun. The target and obstacle-blockers swirling randomly around it seemed to taunt him.
This whole fucking backwater planet, too far away from the civilized worlds for communication or beamed-in entertainment, didn't offer much to do in the leisure hours--putting in extra time on the shuttle simulators wasn't leisure, and playing cards with his Space Marines buddies got old quickly, as did working out in the gym, running the track, or going for hikes in the barely five square kilometer area cleared for humans behind the rigid no one allowed outside the perimeter wall ever, this means you rule. Near as he could tell, this world had three types of human on it: colonists and scientists who thought humans had an obligation to occupy every flying dirtball that orbited a star and was capable of sustaining life; ebon-ore miners who focused on digging up the precious ore so they could get rich and retire after a few years, and the small cadre of Space Marines assigned to guard this settlement in case something, anything, interrupted the unrelenting tedium.
He was seven months out of boot camp, and he'd pulled this off-Earth deployment immediately, which had excited him at first. An alien world! But seven months stuck in the ass-end of nowhere--nowhere to go, nothing to do, and little privacy to do it in--had worn through that excitement pretty damn quickly, and his boredom was turning into frustration and anger. Even his thrice-a-week shuttle flights, where he flew the small team of scientists in one of the carefully prescribed routes over the jungle, jungle, and more jungle outside the perimeter as they directed their latest scanners this way and that and jabbered among themselves about the readings in big scientist nonsense words, had become boring. Hell, the shuttle's auto-navs could fly the route just as well as he; he wasn't even necessary! The high point of the last month was that time a four-winged flitterbird veered into his path and he'd had to adjust course to miss it; the thing was hardly larger than his head--hardly a threat to the shuttle. But the swerve of just a couple of degrees off the path had upset one of the scientists' scanner-thingees and thrown off the readings, which got him dressed down by his commander back at the base. Still, the novelty was almost worth it?
When, a few weeks ago, one of his buddies introduced him to magball and the pair of open-air courts someone had built back next to one of the low cliffs that separated the far southern settlement perimeter from the wild stony crags beyond, he had leapt at the chance to try something different--and he'd liked it, liked it enough to keep trying to get better. He'd seen magball played on the entertainment channels sometimes when he was growing up, but he'd never tried it until then. Too bad his buddy had been redeployed to some other world last week, before the buddy could teach him much about the game-play. What the hell, he'd just have to teach himself; he had plenty of time to improve his body and work on figuring out the game. At least his buddy had left his equipment behind as a parting gift.
He liked the feel of his muscles pushing in the slight chill, on a planet several degrees cooler than Earth, straining against gravity that was roughly the same as Earth's, liked sucking in lung-fulls of air that had never been wrung through a recycler. The air was slightly higher than Earth's in sulfur, which had made the place smell like rotten eggs when he first arrived, but he'd gotten used to that; the oxygen-nitrogen mix was similar to Earth's so the air was breathable for outside exercise.
He gripped the ball, launched his body upward, flung the ball into the zone, and began straining to push the iron sphere through the erratic shifting of the magnetic fields. The ball's path responded to how he positioned his feet, swung his gloved hands, bent his legs, weaving as he moved. He just needed to push a little more, a little harder, to rush its way through the blockers. He'd never yet been able to beat difficulty setting three, a mid-beginner level, and he needed to get it done. Just needed to push a little more, find a tactic or random path that worked, move his feet, his other hand, reach higher, twist just so, until he had the ball almost in the goal, had this level tagged and bagged--oorah, Space Marine!--and then maybe he'd move on to a new challenge on a higher difficulty setting. He just needed to push a little more, reach a little more--
His balance went too far out as he strained to steer the ball and avoid a swift obstacle. Gravity, that bitch, pulled his weight backward and away, the magnetic feedbacks responded with a forceful push, and he fell. He landed--whump!--on the slightly padded court, saw the currents send the ball careening outside the playing area--again!
He sat up, sighed. The fall had not been hard and the court padding had cushioned him well enough, which was good--Marine Command would in no way be pleased if he injured himself during his leisure time.
The nearby cliff, probably thirty-five meters, just outside the courts, loomed over him and seemed to mock him. The vertical wall was a rock blacker than any he'd seen on Earth, but this planet was full of stuff never seen on Earth; that was the definition of alien, right? Except technically he and all the colonists, miners and Space Marines were the aliens here.
How could a slab of rock seem to mock his failure like that? He knew he was projecting his anger, but still. After hiking back here by himself, carrying his ball, gloves, and gear on his back along with plenty of water against dehydration in the dry air, he felt as though he should have more to show for his day that scuffed gloves and a red ass from landing on the court repeatedly. Space Marines didn't do easy, but the blocks and falls were getting frustratingly repetitious. Too bad the fellow Space Marine who'd gotten him into magball had left last week for redeployment; he could have used some advice, since figuring this out himself meant he wasn't improving as quickly as his ego wanted. He was determined that today would be the day finally to beat level three, after two weeks of trying, and to establish his dominance over that damned goal. Why couldn't he master this stupid fucking beginner level?
His frustration kept turning to anger, an emotion he'd supposedly been trained to push past. He couldn't calm himself no matter how long he sat on the court studying the goal, the swirling blockers, the cliff beyond, no matter how many deep breaths he tried to use to stuff the emotions down. He normally enjoyed magball, but this fucking level? It had him so riled he couldn't seem to find anything equivalent to calm.
But he wasn't about to let the game beat him yet, wasn't about to pack up and drag his failing ass back to the barracks, not yet. He stood up, brushed the dust off his gloves, and prepared to do combat with his stoic enemy once again. The magnetics pulled the floating ball back to him, and this time he started his drive near the bottom, taking advantage of a gap in the obstacles' paths, picking his way precariously as he guided the ball through the swift blockers, to the left, dodge down, up again. He breathed out, searching for calmness, and reached again, reached to push the ball closer to the goal--and missed, the ball ricocheting out of bounds again.
As he stomped his foot on court surface, he heard: "Close!"
Who said that? Who the fuck was out here at the ass-end of the southern perimeter where no one ever went? He twisted himself around, looking for the speaker. There--Two figures stood at the end of the trail that led through this planet's equivalent of a forest. He felt more anger rise. He'd wanted to have this spot to himself, so he could play--and fail--in peace, no one around to see except that damned cliff, the sort-of trees, and whatever flitterbird happened to be flying overhead.
Now two figures approached, both carrying their own gloves and gear. Males, civilian colonists or miners probably. He could tell they were strong. Something about the way they moved, the way they eyed the second court, told him these two knew what they were doing, better than him at least.
The first emerged from the shadows of the trees. He looked to be several years older than most of the Space Marines, maybe about thirty, hair nearly as black as the rocky cliffs, good-looking, built strong and lean. Probably one of the ebon-ore miners? This one stepped closer and set his pack on a clear patch of ground beside the other court. "I'm Paul," the intruder said, extending his hand.
He blinked, unsure what to do with such an archaic Earth gesture. A handshake?--An actual handshake? Then he recovered and gripped a powerful, calloused hand. "I'm Lance," he said.
"And that big lug skulking in the shadows--that's my partner, Tivk," Paul said, nodding back at the other man.
This guy was tall--Lance hadn't realized how tall at first--but as he stood next to Paul, this guy must have been nearly two and a quarter meters tall. And strongly built. And not human. His skin might pass for human under dim light, but in the blazing sun it had a distinctly gray-purple tone. Instead of eyebrows or hair on his scalp, he had a series of small interlocking plates, like dark scales, with a slight iridescence in the light. A what?--A T'zikian, then? Lance had heard of them, had seen one on a sport program on holovision once, but had never seen one in real life before. But who had?--The T'zikians seldom left their world, because ... why? Weren't they one of the quarantined planets? He tried to remember the basic xeno-identification training. Their kind didn't have a vocal language, though they could learn to speak oral languages like Earth's; among their own kind they communicated by ... what? Pheromones? Telepathy? Empathic something-or-other? Lance wasn't sure--something that humans weren't comfortable with, anyway. And why hadn't he heard a T'zikian was here on this planet?--That was the sort of thing the rumor mill loved, back at the base.
This Tivk had a mostly human-like face, aside from the skin color and those scales where a human would have hair. The stern, unflinching set of his mouth suggested an evaluating expression or possibly an intimidating attitude--but did T'zikians express emotions anywhere close to the ways humans did?
Lance self-consciously scrubbed a hand through his almost translucent blond hair, cut regulation Space Marine short. At nineteen, suddenly he felt like a kid among adults. "You guys here to play too?" Lance asked, then inwardly cringed the moment he said it. Well, obviously they were, Lance scolded himself. "Other court's free." Which was even more obvious and embarrassing; maybe he should just keep his mouth shut until he got over the surprise. Lance was disappointed that his solo time had been interrupted, but an alien?--a real alien?--That more than made up for the disappointment. Well, sure, technically they were all aliens on this planet, and sure, he'd seen non-humans from a distance before, but he'd never been this close to one before, and a T'zikian at that. He wished he remembered more about them, like why their planet was quarantined. Still, he decided the novelty of his first alien more than compensated.
Paul and Tivk started stretching their arms and shoulders. Shit, these guys were serious magballers! They wore A-line shirts in spite of the chill, and their exposed arms were corded with muscle. Paul was built lean and strong. Tivk, except for his height and gray-purple skin, seemed to be built similar to a human who spent every surplus moment in a gym. Lance watched their chests expand, their forearms flex; he didn't realize he was staring until Paul said, "Don't let us stop you. Go ahead--keep playing. We'll try not to disturb you."
Lance blinked, closed the mouth he hadn't realized was open. "Okay," he tried, not sure if his voice would work right. "I was just resting. Been at it a while already."
Paul nodded, seemed to accept the excuse. But Lance's next attempt at launching the ball betrayed how flustered he'd become. He didn't even reach that the second layer of obstacles, not that difficult, before one knocked his ball away.
By then, Paul and Tivk seemed ready to begin. Tivk, who hadn't pulled on his gloves yet, was working some kind of finger exercise, and Lance noticed his fingers weren't quite human: thicker, ending in some sort of blade-claw he could retract like a cat's instead of a human fingernail.
"Mind if I go ahead?" Paul said to Tivk, which also snapped Lance's attention away from Tivk.
"Go," Tivk echoed, a rumbling voice.
Lance watched the way Paul stretched upward, giving the taller and scruffier Tivk a peck on the lips before he stalked over to the starting position.
What?--Wait--
Lance's neck burned, flushing. When Paul had said partner, Lance assumed he meant game partner. But were these guys partner-partners? And why the hell did that thought make Lance's whole body feel warmer than the weather warranted? He wasn't gay. He'd turned down the occasional advances from other male Marines, had never dated or hooked up with anyone but women. Sure, he'd admired the bodies of other Space Marines, male or female or whatever, but that was totally normal, just comparing their physiques to his. He could respect, maybe even admire, the strength in Paul's corded arms as he pulled into the serve, could appreciate the definition in Paul's calves as he pushed upward to reach for a path that routed the ball over a blocker, and none of that meant Lance was gay, right?
Suddenly Lance saw Paul's grip flinch, as a blocker hit the ball and the magnetic feedback made a glove turn awkwardly--shit, what obscenely high level was Paul playing?--and pushed Paul physically backward as the ball fell.
Tivk made a series of clicking noises--maybe curse words in whatever language? "Should warm up," Tivk grumbled in an accented deep voice.
The sound vibrated right through Lance, settled in his balls, and he flushed hot again.
"Yeah, yeah--I know," Paul muttered. "But we've done this a zillion times. It's not like this is a difficult level."
"Warm up good for body," Tivk said, flexing his fingers and their odd claws. "Not hotshot magball kid anymore."
Paul rolled his eyes, and Lance was struck by how attractive those eyes were--warm, somehow inviting, maybe even ... pretty? "Well, I'm also not an old man, not yet anyway."
"Old for magball," Tivk declared matter-of-factly, which ended that discussion.
Tivk stalked not toward the court but toward the cliff, and he reached for the rock, claws extended and curling, finding purchase in the stone. He moved slowly and deliberately at first, which gave Lance far too much time to admire the way tension pulled every muscle in his arms and back and shoulders taut. Then, when he was a few meters above the ground, Tivk began to climb faster, inhumanly fast, not bothering with holds or grips but simply ticking his claws into the rock like pitons and pulling himself up, up. His muscles bulged and shifted like cable-operated machinery, and as Tivk shifted his path to be almost horizontal, Lance admired the way his muscles--
Wait--What the hell was happening to him? Were Lance's pent-up hormones playing some sick joke on him? He'd planned for this to be a regular magball day, a chance to work up a sweat, work off some stress and frustration, work his body to exhaustion. But here he was ogling two strangers--sure, one of them was an alien, but both of them were undeniably male--and Lance found that trying to focus on the way they were moving, trying to pick up some techniques, was just not snapping him out of the spell. He couldn't seem to stop staring.
Tivk had paused by a patch of something slightly less black than the surrounding rock. He seemed to be picking pieces of that something off the wall, putting them in the small pack he wore strapped around his waist.
Lance felt Paul nudge his shoulder and he twitched, a little spooked by the sudden contact. He'd forgotten Paul was there. "What's he doing?" Lance mumbled, trying to cover his embarrassment.
Luckily Paul was watching Tivk instead of Lance. "Picking blackrock mushrooms. They grow wild all along this rock face. That's why we come here--well, that and the magball courts." Paul looked at Lance. "Ever eaten one?"
Lance shook his head, feeling mildly shocked. "No. They're edible?" He was incredulous at the idea of putting something native to an alien world in his mouth. Had Paul or Tivk even tested those mushrooms before eating them?
"Raw they're nothing special, but cook 'em right and they're delicious. Probably a lot better than the ready meals they serve you at the Space Marine commissary, right?"
"Right," Lance agreed flatly, since everyone knew military food never rose high on the chart of culinary experiences. He supposed Paul had a point. After enough pre-fab meals or too expensive shipped-in food, maybe Lance would also become adventurous enough to pop just about anything that looked edible into his mouth.
The conversation seemed to have ended, because now Paul again was advancing back to the other magball court--which gave Lance a look at his shorts-clad ass as the fabric clung and the cheeks tensed, and Paul's solidly muscled legs pushed him upward. Lance blinked, shocked at feeling his cock stir, reminded himself not to stare, made himself look away.
His situation only marginally improved as all three of them worked the courts for the rest of the afternoon. He couldn't seem to concentrate fully on his play because part of his attention kept getting snagged by the other two straining to hit a goal. Clouds moved in, covering the vaguely green sky and the sun, and the temperature fell another few degrees, which Lance decided was good because it kept the exposed courts from getting hot under the sun, and the cooler breeze on his sweat kept him from overheating. This was turning into a near-perfect day to play, so perfect that eventually Lance's stray thoughts faded to a murmur as he got accustomed to Paul and Tivk's presence, and he settled into projecting the ball through the game obstacles alongside these two friendly strangers, especially Paul because he was human and moved like a human, while Tivk seemed to now and then enjoy showing off skills that came with being taller, being able to move in not-quite-human ways. They and Lance were obviously playing at different levels, but something about puzzling out the same objectives together, how to move and bend to get closer to the goal, was forging an easy bond between the three of them. The friend who'd gotten Lance into magball said the sport was like boot camp: the shared struggle of conquering the game could create friendships very quickly, even between complete strangers.
But he felt as if something more was happening. Paul was personable and chatty and threw himself into his plays like a daredevil, with an enthusiasm that infected Lance no matter how he tried to resist and concentrate on his own dodging, blocks, falls, and consequences. Even brusque Tivk opened up a bit as the day continued. Lance was learning that Tivk wasn't cold in the human sense but just quieter and more intense. He came to appreciate Tivk's single-minded focus as the alien maneuvered through the game patiently, as if his goal was inevitable.
Lance felt intimidated, felt as if he didn't measure up to these obviously more experienced players. He wasn't as unflaggingly optimistic as Paul; he wasn't as fixated and analytical as Tivk. Rather, Lance felt himself getting discouraged and angry at himself. He fell several times, not from great plays but instead from dumb mistakes Paul and Tivk probably could have cleared effortlessly. Lance, frustrated, grumbled at his failures and had to walk away at times to let his anger cool off.
Still, the longer he was here with Paul and Tivk at their common task, the more their outlooks seemed to shape his own. Lance found himself talking through his strategies with these strangers and listening to their advice, working on the most precise shifts of weight and turns of foot or hand placement which didn't seem as though they would make any difference, but which changed previous failures into little successes.
When Lance's ball succeeded in swinging under the last blocker and dropped into the goal, he froze in surprise. Sure, he'd been driving through for several minutes, but he felt as though he'd blinked and suddenly found himself in the goal. He sat on the court surface, breathing hard, feeling like he might wake from a dream any moment. He'd worked this level for weeks with no success, and suddenly two strangers had changed everything.
Those strangers were applauding him from the other court.
"That was great!" Paul called to him. "Knew you could do it!"
Tivk just nodded, but Lance already knew him well enough to know that was high praise.
Lance waved and grinned his thanks. The brief break gave him time to catch his breath. He'd beaten level three, accomplished his goal, and he didn't have to stay now that he had his win for the day. He had every right to go home. But, as he watched from just outside their court as Paul made his latest play on some insane level eighty-something, something compelled Lance to stay, something beyond just watching to pick up pointers. Tivk had already beaten the level, of course, with little fanfare--his playing style was wildly different than a human's. Still, Lance liked how well Paul and Tivk worked together during their individual runs, casually giving each other advice and encouragement to succeed.
Lance cheered as Paul dropped the ball into the goal, but then he realized something that struck him cold: they had all reached the end-point, the sun was setting, and now they had nothing left to do but pack up their gear and go home. Lance should have felt elated; he should have strutted back to the Space Marines barracks with a glow of victory and confidence. But all he really felt was regret. In boot camp he'd learned how a shared struggle and a shared triumph left him feeling connected to the people around him, and playing magball today had felt the same; stepping away from that feeling always left him a little depressed and let-down. He might not see these men again, not unless they met at the courts again by happenstance. Why did that thought sadden him? He'd known these guys for only a couple hours. They were fun to play alongside, and Tivk certainly had the appeal of the exotic, but they and Lance were still basically strangers. Still, the thought of not seeing them again somehow damped his mood.
Nothing to do but get it done, he told himself as he shoved the rest of his gear in his pack, preparing to haul it on his back to the Space Marine base. "Well, I guess I gotta get going," Lance said. "Glad I ran met you guys; this was fun."
He lifted a hand to wave as Paul and Tivk looked up. This should have been the part where they smiled and waved back and said goodbye as they returned to their own place--except that Paul shot Tivk an unreadable look as some message passed between them, and Tivk smiled, and Paul called brightly, "Hey, I bet you've tired and hungry. Why don't you let us feed you?"
Lance raised an eyebrow, sure he'd heard wrong.
"Good human food. You like," Tivk called.
"Tivk means he's a great cook," Paul threw in when Lance hesitated. "And you can taste what he does with those blackstone mushrooms. I hope that isn't too weird to just throw at you. We live a five-minute walk away, and Tivk is going to make way more than we can eat either way, so I figured we might as well offer. You don't have to go all the way to the other side to the base right now, do you? And how long since you had a real cooked meal with actual flavor instead of something that gets squirted out of a processor machine?"
"Uh," Lance began. Why was this simple offer so damn flustering? All he had to do was say yes or no. This was just a meal. His stomach grumbled, making its opinion known. When had he last eaten? He'd brought plenty of water and some snack-packs, but he'd been so caught up in the magball that he'd forgotten about them.
"Good cook. Not murder," Tivk added.
Paul elbowed him. "That's a weird thing to say to humans."
Tivk just nodded toward Lance. "See? Laughs."
Lance's mouth had indeed twitched into a chuckle before he could stop it. "Yeah, okay," he said. "I'm starving. I won't say no to food right now."
Paul's smile was dazzling. "That's great! We live over this way."
Just through the forest, their house was large for this settlement; the main room alone was bigger than the barracks where Lance slept with a cadre of other Space Marines. Its furnishings seemed simply but somehow lived-in, a real home, and the air was filled with an interesting faint smell that made Lance feel a bit light-headed.
"Tivk will make dinner," Paul said. "He really is a great cook. Why don't you go take a shower? You can use the guest bathroom."
"You Paul size," Tivk stated flatly, passing Lance a towel and a clean folded sweatshirt and sweatpants.
Lance nodded and accepted them, because he felt numb from exhaustion and hunger and the earthy sweat-stink that clung to him after a day of hard playing. He let Paul shuffle him off toward the guest bathroom and its shower.
The bathroom contained the same simple lived-in coziness as the rest of the house, and the entire shower stall seemed to be made of slabs of the same black stone as the cliff. He ran his finger over the wall; yeah, definitely made of the same type of rock they'd been playing next to earlier. Using raw local materials instead of pre-fab stuff must have been expensive. Just how much money did these two have? Paul had mentioned earlier they were miners; they must have been making a hellacious lot of credits pulling ebon-ore out of this planet.
Lance shrugged and got into the shower, letting the hot water wash away his thoughts. Honest-to-fuck hot water, and honest-to-fuck water pressure! Compared to what he'd grown accustomed to in the barracks, this was a luxury. Maybe he was crazy for just following two near-strangers to their house, but Paul and Tivk seemed friendly, not the murdering type at all. Of course, what would he know of the murdering type, Lance wondered. And even if they were, he would get to shower and eat first, and that was all he cared about right then. And how many guys back at the base could ever say they'd had dinner with a real live T'zikian?
Still, he needed to be respectful. While Paul and Tivk likely had solar collectors on the roof to defray the cost of power to heat the water, they had to pay for the water itself, and water was expensive and rationed. Lance finished scrubbed himself with some sort of unscented body wash, rinsed quickly, then shut off the water and began toweling himself off.
Someone tapped at the door. Paul's voice came from the other side: "Mind if I poke my head in?"
Suddenly modest, Lance quickly made sure the towel was wrapped securely around his waist before he said, "Sure."
Paul opened the door barely enough to see Lance still dripping and bare-chested beyond it. Lance was used to being seen naked or nearly so around the barracks--no privacy--but he thought he saw something hungry in Paul's eyes as they swept over his chest. Was he imagining it? Well, so what if Paul appreciated his chest? He didn't know whether Paul and Tivk were officially married, but they certainly acted like it. Their home felt warm and lived-in, and their touches at the courts had been casual and easy thanks to, Lance assumed, several years together. So Lance pushed down his brief nervousness and let him look.
When Paul quickly dragged his eyes up, he said, "Tivk sent me to ask whether you have any allergies or dietary restrictions?"
Understanding that question took Lance longer than it should. "Uh, no--I'll eat just about anything."
"Easy to please, huh?" Paul said with a smile. "I like that."
"Sure," Lance agreed, swallowing hard, feeling the nervousness creep back.
Paul disappeared, shutting the door again. Lance paused to breathe before he shrugged into the borrowed clothes. The clothes bore a faint scent like ... Where had he smelled that smell before? The whole house bore it. That's right--Tivk--Lance had smelled that scent on Tivk earlier at the magball courts. He pressed the fabric to his nose and inhaled deeply. Maybe he was loopy from the sun or hunger or exhaustion, because when Tivk's scent hit him, locked in those clothes, Lance had to brace against the sink to steady himself, and feeling his cock twitch. I'm not even gay. What the hell is wrong with me today?
He stared at his reflection in the mirror over the small sink. Maybe he was just horny. His last relationship never got serious, had ended way back when he started boot camp, and that was too many months ago. Since then he had been on this planet, where the Space Marines mostly kept to themselves; and anyway they were mostly men, the few women paired or trioed with others already, and he had turned down the times when a fellow male Space Marine had made overtures. He was young, and this was a long dry spell. Too, he hadn't jacked off in the last several days, lacking privacy, so maybe his stupid overactive libido and exhausted brain were just latching on to the first friendly faces and warm bodies that came his way.
Warm, sexy body, some voice in the back of his head said as he thought of Paul.
Warm, sexy alien body, the voice amended as he thought of Tivk.
Well, he couldn't hide in the guest bathroom all night. By the time he exited the bathroom and headed toward the kitchen area, dinner-making was well underway. As Lance offered to help them finish up the food preparation, Paul and Tivk exchanged another of those inscrutable looks, some message Lance wasn't receiving, and then Paul announced he was going to shower.
Tivk set Lance to mashing up some sort of steamed tuber. Tivk proved a patient but blunt instructor. Lance was apparently mashing the tubers wrong, because Tivk stood behind Lance, around coming around, seized his hands, and moved them forcefully. Tivk's hands, large and strong, the fingers thicker than a human's, covered Lance's as they guided his through the mashing motion. Which, now that Lance saw it, was similar to the motion for--
Wait. No. He couldn't think like that with Tivk standing so close and pressing his hands. Tivk leaned over him, and the alien's musky-sharp scent bit strongly into Lance's nose since Tivk hadn't yet showered. The alien's presence, his touch, his scent--everything made Lance dizzy, made his cock stiffen in the borrowed sweatpants. Each breath carried a tang, like the smell that permeated the house and the borrowed clothing, but stronger, as strong and dominating as those rough hands that guided Lance's through the increasingly ludicrous pumping motion of mashing up the tubers.
The shower stopped. Tivk eased away. In a few moments, the bathroom door opened and Paul rejoined them in the kitchen. Clad in a T-shirt and sweatpants like Lance's, Paul hugged Tivk from behind and stretched up to kiss at his neck. Yep, definitely partner-partners.
"Your turn," Paul said to Tivk. "We can finish up here."
Tivk nodded and headed away for his own shower. Lance barely dared to breathe. He simply kept mashing, fixing his gaze on the tubers in front of him. Why was he so horny? He was just a base-hetero--hetero!--Space Marine who'd run into a two friendly men, and played magball alongside them, and was about to have a normal dinner with them.
Completely normal.
"He tell you want those are?"
"Whuat?" Lance croaked, snapping back to the present.
"What you're mashing up. Those are some roots Tivk digs up in the forest to the west, just outside the perimeter."
Tivk went outside the perimeter? How? And was that even allowed? As far as Lance knew, all of the colonists and miners were supposed to stay inside the four walls of the perimeters. Not even the Space Marines were allowed outside except in the shuttles for patrol flights. But Tivk--?
"Here. Taste." Paul held a fork loaded with something that looked like meat, a light brown gravy with small black chunks.
Lance opened his mouth, accepted the offered bite. And the flavor--
"Wow!" Lance said around the food before he swallowed. "That's really good!"
"Isn't it? Told you Tivk's a great cook. He's had that flitterbird slow-roasting all morning, and the sauce has those blackrock mushrooms we gathered."
Wait ... He'd just eaten a couple of things native to this planet? They weren't supposed to eat the local plants or animals--xenobiologists were still studying whether they were safe to consume.
Paul snickered at Lance's expression. "Relax. They're harmless. Tivk has a good nose for that too."
Also, Tivk was as efficient with showers as everything else he did. Seemed to Lance, the shower had hardly started before it silenced again, and right about then Tivk emerged, wearing nothing but a small garment covering his groin and the sizeable lump in his crotch. The wetness had turned the dark scales that covered his scalp pitch-black. Water drops glinted on his neck and his bare chest and powerful legs, following the curve of every swollen muscle, still pumped up from the magball play. Most human men would kill to look that cut. Were all T'zikians like that? Beads of moisture caressed his chest and the muscled ridges of his stomach, all the way down to the V disappearing into his garment.
"Tivk," Paul scolded. "Pants, please. We have a guest," Maybe a shirt too?"
Tivk shrugged, made a series of grumpy clicking sounds--and disappeared through a nearby door, presumably his and Paul's bedroom. He re-emerged half a minute later in a completely unremarkable T-shirt and loose shorts, and Lance remembered how to breathe, nearly gasping after so long without air.
Lance felt relieved to sit at their small table and spoon mashed tubers onto his plate. Tivk doled out roasted flitterbird, then passed the gravy. Paul dug into the beans--normal Earth beans, though grown here on this planet, near their house. Tivk shook his head when Paul offered the beans.
Paul scolded him gently with, "I don't care about your weird metabolism. You can't eat nothing but proteins and carbs."
"Work so far," Tivk muttered, shrugging.
Paul rolled his eyes, but smiled. "I guess I can't argue with that. You've been the better magballer for, what, a decade now?"
"A decade?" Lance said, glancing between the two men. They definitely had some years on him, but he didn't think it was quite that many. He couldn't guess at the T'zikian's age, but Paul looked about thirty? "You don't look so old."
"That's flattering," Paul said, "but magball's a young man's game, and we've both been at this a while."
Lance seized the opportunity to shift to a safe topic while he ate; he needed to let his brain cool off. "How exactly did you two meet?"
"Magball," Paul said. "I played in college, then went pro for a while. Tivk and I played on the same circuit but had different sponsors. He was the player all the fans either loved or hated. Half of them loved him because he was a damn good player, and the other half wanted him shipped back to T'ziki because of the quarantine. I sure hated him at first, but that was because he was always beating me. I just couldn't catch him. There was always that one damn magballer from T'ziki standing a step higher than me on every winners podium." Paul shot Tivk a look, but a smile softened his mouth. Even Tivk smiled a little.
"You take many trophies too," Tivk said.
"That's true, baby, but not nearly as many as you. And I'm still pissed you beat me at Galaxy Games 14."
Lance chewed a mouthful of mashed tuber, which tasted like spiced yams. As he realized something, he froze. "Wait," he said. "You're ... You two ... I think I watched those competitions; I remember a T'zikian winning ..."
"Wow, really?" Paul said. "Magball wasn't such a big deal back when we competed. Nobody remembers those days. That was seven standard years ago," Paul said.
Lance wondered, "So you guys met through competitions and just ..."
Paul nodded. "We kept following each other around. It sort of happened on its own. T'zikians communicate with telepathy and pheromones, so he knew I was into him--"
"Paul not subtle," Tivk inserted.
"--before I knew he was into me too. That was a crazy time, and it's weird to think back on. I miss the comps sometimes, but it's nice having our own place way out here. And the money we make mining ebon-ore is a lot better than if we'd stuck with magball.
"I bet," Lance agreed.
The flowing conversation and the food helped calm whatever nervousness had overtaken Lance when he first arrived here. His shoulders relaxed. Soon, Paul asked if Lance had duty the next day, and when he said he didn't, Paul offered a beer. Alcohol?--Here? "We brew our own--and that's something I'm better at than Tivk," Paul said, slightly gloating. So they'd switched to sipping beer and swapping life stories--magball and competitions from Paul and Tivk, boot camp from Lance--as though they were familiar friends.
By the time they moved their talk from the table to the living area, the sky outside the windows had gone completely dark, but Lance wasn't particularly worried. His stomach felt contentedly full, and the two beers had him feeling a slight, pleasant buzz--and how many chances was he going to get to talk with guys like them, former professional magball players, and one a real live alien! Besides, he couldn't go back to the Space Marines base until after the alcohol wore off or he'd be disciplined severely.
"Game rigged. Referee hate me." Tivk sat beside Lance on the two-person couch, and his grumbling voice made the couch vibrate like a mild ground-tremor. Paul had insisted that Lance sit there, while Paul took an adjoining chair for himself. Paul sat in it sideways, one leg cocked over a chair arm.
Paul rolled his eyes. "The refs did not hate you." To Lance he added: "Every time Tivk lost, he swore the human referees were out to get him because he's T'zikian. But since T'zikians communicate by telepathy and pheromones, the refs did ride him a little hard, maybe to show he wasn't telepathically influencing their judgments in his favor."
Tivk growled a rapid stream of that click-and-tick language.
"That's just rude," Paul said. "That'll offend every human--"
Tivk rolled his eyes, nodded toward Lance. "He not understand."
"You don't know that either," Paul replied.
"It's okay," Lance interrupted. "I don't know a word of ... that language. Besides, sometimes referees can be jerks. Maybe they were just prejudiced against him."
Tivk's lip curled in a tilted, smug smile. He'd so rarely worn any expression this entire day that this brief smile seemed so charmingly handsome, and Lance had to raise his empty beer bottle to his mouth to hide his reaction.
Paul moved. "Empty? I'll get you another."
Paul hopped up and snatched Lance's empty bottle before he could protest about not needing another drink. Or maybe he did. That uncomfortable feeling was back, and a second beer might help mute it.
Paul disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Lance with Tivk in a heavy silence. Somehow Tivk's arm had gotten across the back of the couch, practically around Lance's shoulders.
"Sounds like you had a lot of fun playing pro magball," Lance said, attempting to fill the space.
"Good life then. Good life now." Tivk leaned forward as he spoke, setting aside his own beer bottle. When Tivk sat back up, Lance felt the alien's arm officially settle across his shoulders, and Tivk seemed to have somehow shifted a little closer on the couch, Tivk's pectoral pressing to Lance's shoulder, but Lance dared not fidget--moving nearer would feel weird, and moving away might likely be rude.
This close, the warm scent that Lance had come to associate with Tivk was stronger, nearly intoxicating, and Lance's thoughts seemed to spin in a pleasant way that might have been just the beer, might have been more. Tivk's hand at Lance's opposite shoulder squeezed gently, seemed to urge Lance closer. Lance turned his face upward toward the taller alien's. Tivk's cool, dark eyes swept over Lance, appraising him. Something in that look left Lance feeling desperate to measure up.
"I feel ...," Lance tried, aware of his own heartbeat thumping in his chest and in his slow-swelling cock. Something was going on. "I--I don't know what's happening here."
Tivk nodded, lips pressed together, as if holding down amusement. "All okay. Rest. Breathe. You like."
Lance had to swallow. He felt disoriented. Had Tivk's scent gotten stronger? He took a deep breath, saw Tivk's lips curl again, exposing a bit of teeth. They looked sharp but he couldn't tell for sure. He wanted to see, so he reached up, touched a finger to Tivk's lower lip, pulled it down to expose teeth that sloped to a point, felt the sharp cutting edge of the slopes.
Suddenly aware he'd likely committed a social faux pas, Lance tried to pull away, trying find some excuse. Holy shit, was the air getting warmer in here? Lance needed to separate himself and Tivk, but he had nowhere to move on the tiny couch, and Tivk's grip on his opposite shoulder held him tightly ... and Lance found he didn't really want to leave the protective arc of Tivk's arm. The arm was only half a circle, wasn't trapping him, not technically. He could pull away at any time, just by sitting forward or standing up. Yet the mere press of Tivk's skin on his, the scent of him, the weight of Tivk's gaze into his eyes kept Lance planted where he sat, heart thumping inside his chest. Was this the pheromone think Paul had mentioned? Or the telepathy?--Was Tivk reading his thoughts right then--Or was Tivk pushing his thoughts into Lance's? Lance wished he had paid more attention during the xeno-identification training, but then, he never expected he'd be this close to a T'zikian.
"You strong. Good magballer someday. Beginner, but good someday." Tivk's voice vibrated low, heavy as a syrup dripping into Lance's ears and flowing through his thoughts, warming and relaxing his whole body, before settling in his balls. Lance felt himself flush, felt his cock passing half-plump and turning sensitive. And Tivk was getting closer. Lance wasn't imagining this. Taller Tivk was bending his head toward Lance's now. "Understand why Paul like you."
Those last words flowed out like a sigh. Tivk set his fingers under Lance's chin and his thumb against Lance's bottom lip, lifting Lance's chin to look at him. Lance felt the risky sharp points of Tivk's barely retracted claws. Tivk simply waited, watching Lance's face as Lance blinked and tried to steady himself. "Rest quiet," the alien instructed, soft as a whisper but somehow still commanding. "All feel good. Easy. I guide. I say. You do. Easy. You like. You see." After a couple thumping heartbeats, Tivk stroked Lance's lip gently with his thumb-claw. Lance's whole body shivered in response, and his cock jerked needily. Something seemed to be filling his head and pushing his objections aside. Tivk's scent, Tivk's presence ... The presence that moved through Lance left no space for fear, confusion, doubt. Lance felt only the warm, liquid desire for more flowing through him. His cock was swelling, and he needed, needed so much. He leaned into Tivk's touch, not thinking about what he was doing, not caring, just wanting, wanting more, and Tivk's fingers under his chin felt warm and firm and--
"Looks like that went better than I expected."
Lance jerked away, clumsily, with a gasp. Tivk grumble-clicked. Paul, holding two unopened beer bottles, stood before the couch
"Don't let me interrupt," Paul said. "Please continue."
"I wasn't ... It wasn't ..." Lance couldn't find a way to explain why he, a base-hetero guy, was very nearly making out with Paul's partner right there in their living room. He tried to clear the fog from his spinning, disoriented head. Pulling away had been so difficult; all he wanted to do was let go and sink into the daze that seemed to fill him.
Paul laughed as he slid onto the couch, squeezing into the small space opposite so Lance in the middle was forced in tightly between him and Tivk. Paul put his arm around Lance's shoulders and smiled. "Calm down," he said. "I'm not mad."
Lance struggled to wrap his thoughts around this. "You're not?"
"Nope," Paul said. "Tivk has this effect on pretty much every human he meets. All T'zikians do. Why do you think their planet is quarantined? Besides, I'm cool with it, and looks like you're into it. Just be careful with kissing; his teeth are super-sharp. That's kind of the problem. The teeth, the claws, the ... uhm, genital incompatibilities--doing sexual stuff with a T'zikian is dangerous for humans no matter how careful you are. So we use proxies. You know, where someone stands in for someone else and takes his place."
Lance's foggy thoughts couldn't decode quite what Paul meant, but he felt as though he was about to find out. Tivk's finger under Lance's chin eased his face back around toward the alien's.
"We want to ask something from you," Paul said, and Lance felt him moving closer as Lance stared into Tivk's eyes. Paul's lips brushed against Lance's neck as he spoke. "Tivk and I love each other very much, but we can't have sex with each other, not directly. So we find proxies, people who are willing to let Tivk use his telepathy. He'll feel what they feel, and he's inside their mind running the show, so it's really him having sex with me through their body." Paul slid off the couch, crouching on the floor beside Lance's feet. "That's how he and I make love. Will you do this for us? Will you be Tivk's proxy and let him use your body to have sex with me?"
"That's ..." Lance struggled to find words. What was happening? He wanted them both so badly, but something ... "But I ... I'm base-hetero."
Paul chuckled gently, no mockery. "So be hetero, then," he said. "All you have to do is say yes, and we'll take care of the rest. Afterward, Tivk can erase your memory, and you won't remember a thing. You'll remember we had dinner, talked some, and then you went back to the barracks, hetero status intact.
"Paul want you at courts, soon as saw you," Tivk said. His lips brushed against Lance's ear as he spoke, a flick of a rough tongue. "Saw how you look back. You want too. Relax. Let happen. I guide. You do. You want. Yes?"
Looking into his eyes, Lance couldn't have lied. Because what Tivk said was true. Because Lance couldn't deny it. Because Paul's warm hands were on him and the touching felt good and Tivk was looking at him with that slanted smile and his dark, dark, probing eyes and Lance couldn't have lied if he tried. He wanted them, both of them. He had somehow gone from curiosity to burning need, and he wanted more.
The word rose in his throat before he realized he was going to say anything, and Lance heard his voice release it: "Yes."
"Thank you," Paul said. "We'll start off light. Do you want to kiss me?" Paul slid his hand across Lance's chest, rubbing over the borrowed sweatshirt, his touch light and skating, but soothing as well.
Was Lance even in charge anymore? His need seemed to have taken over--or was that Tivk? Either way, Lance whispered, "Yeah."
Paul's smile increased. "Good. Because I really want to kiss you too."
Lance didn't get a chance to worry any longer. Paul's other hand slid smoothly behind his head, supporting and guiding, leaving no space for hesitation as he drew Lance's mouth to his; their lips pressed together. His lips were firm, his stubble scratchy as he pushed to get even closer to Lance. Paul's tongue prodded, then flowed into Lance's mouth, powerful and demanding. Paul licked like he was searching for a prize hidden in Lance's throat. The kiss, Lance decided, wasn't that different from kissing a woman--more forceful, but Lance had kissed some forceful women before--and he decided the kiss felt good. Different, but good.
When Paul broke the kiss, Lance looked back at Tivk, the alien was wearing that crooked smile again. Lance hadn't noticed when Paul's hands had slid up under his shirt, but once the spell of the kiss was broken, Lance gasped from the feel of warm fingers rubbing near his nipple. Lance swallowed, incapable of speaking. Holy shit, what am I doing?
Paul's voice was husky with lust: "May I undress you?"
Lance felt himself flush, felt a lava heat flow through his body. His stiff cock pushed at the front of the borrowed sweatpants, definitely visible. He turned toward Tivk, and the alien's fathomless eyes seemed to expand until they consumed his entire field of vision. Lance stared into an abyss, his thoughts falling into it. He had no idea what he should do here. Pheromones--telepathy--beer--lust--was he even in control at the moment? He couldn't say no, but what would saying yes mean? And what would happen after the undressing? He knew, of course, what would physically happen--he had a hard cock and he knew conceptually what human guys could do together--but would he like it and what would it mean?
His doubts swirled away into the calming void of Tivk's eyes, and his body answered for him. The heat in his veins, the prickling sweat, the blood surging into his dick--
"Yes ... undress ..."
Lance's arms lifted. Paul's hands slid upward, stripping Lance of his shirt in one smooth motion, fumbling only a bit as the neck-hole went over Lance's head.
"See?" Tivk said. "I guide. You do. Easy. You like. Show you."
Somehow Tivk's presence in his head grew stronger. Lance felt compelled to ... what, exactly? He couldn't seem to translate the compulsion into action. Then somehow the pressure to do something clicked and his body knew what to do; he felt his legs spread, knees wide apart. He looked down as Paul slotted himself into the opening between Lance's thighs. Paul's touch turned bold, rubbing over Lance's pants-trapped erection. Yesterday Lance would have punched any man who touched him so familiarly, but today?--He craved more.
And something happened and seemed to tip Lance toward a deeper condition where everything turned so slippery. Lance felt his thoughts being surrounded, gripped, lifted, and set aside, like a shuttle pilot pushed aside into a passenger seat, as Tivk's presence took control of his body. When Lance tried to move his arms or legs on his own, somehow the attempts just faded into nothingness before reaching his limbs. His body moved, yes, but at the directive of a will that wasn't his own.
"I want to put my mouth on you, baby," Paul said, his hand gently squeezing Lance's hard-on through the sweatpants. But baby?--Paul wasn't talking to him. Lance was just the vehicle, and Paul was talking to the driver, Tivk. "May I, please?
In his head he heard Tivk's voice. Not request. Likes it very much. Begging.
Paul was ... begging?--Begging to put Lance's dick in his mouth? Lance's world felt fuzzy at the edges. He'd gotten plenty of blow-jobs before, but no one had ever begged to do it.
"Please," Paul moaned, his fingertips at the waistband of the borrowed sweatpants. "Please, baby? I want to make you feel so good. I want to make both of you feel so good. Please let me take your pants off?"
"Yes," Lance heard Tivk say with his voice.
Good boy. You like too.
"Thank you, baby," Paul said. Lance wasn't sure whether that was for him or Tivk. Maybe the distinction didn't matter.
Lance felt his mouth curl into a slanted smile like Tivk's. "Want cock?" Lance heard his voice tease, but the inflection was Tivk's.
Paul, torso pressed against the insides of Lance's thighs, gave a shiver of anticipation. Paul gave the slightest tug at Lance's borrowed sweatpants, pulled the front down enough to free his erection, tucked the waistband under and behind Lance's ball-sack.
Paul's eyes dipped back down--and so did his mouth. He said, "I knew you'd have a pretty cock, baby," just before he slid his lips around Lance's prick and plunged down so swiftly Lance's body reflexively gasped and jerked. Tivk's body, beside him, pressed in too, and Tivk's almost uncomfortably abrasive tongue traced Lance's throat while Paul's mouth engulfed Lance's cock.
Lance watched as his hands--Tivk using his hands--reached slowly for Paul's hair and settled there, holding and encouraging. This felt familiar to Lance, something he'd done before when women blew him. He had something stable now, something he could touch and understand, unlike the barrage of sensations barreling into him from his neck and cock.
Paul just moaned and took Lance's cock deeper into his throat, sucking with a warm, wet mouth, the tight pressure of lips around the cock-base. Fuck, Lance thought, Tivk's right--this guy loves it!
Tivk made Lance lift his hips. Paul pulled the sweatpants down. Cool air licked Lance's naked skin, followed by the softer warmth of Paul's lips painting a trail down his hard cock, then up again. While Tivk nipped gently at Lance's neck, Lance felt as though he should gasp, but his body under Tivk's dominion continued to breathe steadily; still, Lance felt goosebumps shiver over his skin. His head tilted, limbs going limp against the couch.
As Paul sucked, Tivk's hand roamed across Lance's chest, squeezing his pecs. Lance had never really thought of his chest as sensitive or even erotic, but Tivk's hand engulfed one pec and squeezed; the bladed claws scraping gently over the skin sent a shockwave through Lance's whole body. His hips rocked up on instinct, pushing his dick deeper into Paul's mouth.
Tivk's mouth was on Lance's neck, pressing gently, a nicking sensation, then Tivk pulled away with a sharp pop. Shit!--Had Tivk marked him with a hickey? Would it show over Lance's uniform collar when he was next on duty?
Before Lance could worry about that: Look, said Tivk's voice from somewhere inside Lance's head. His head was moved, his gaze directed downward, and he saw that Tivk was naked now too alongside Lance's body, the alien's impressive musculature on display, but what caught Lance's attention was Tivk's crotch. The alien didn't have a penis or a vagina, but instead a sort of genital mound, and Lance had never seen anything like it. Its condition seemed to be the T'zikian equivalent of an erection: an oblong cone, sixteen centimeters across from hip to hip, jutting forward about thirteen centimeters, the last centimeter and a half or so tipped with clusters of short, thick forward-pointing spines.
"Don't touch those little spikes," Paul came off of Lance's cock to say.
"Very arousal-making for other T'zikian," Tivk explained. "Not good for humans."
"He means don't get it on you. The slime coating those spikes is an aphrodisiac for T'zikians but a little toxic to humans--and it burns like hell."
"You touch," Tivk said, and Lance felt the compulsion even as Tivk took his wrist and guided Lance's hand to trail sideways along the un-spiked base of the mound, "like this." Lance understood he was to stroke his fingertips across the base, back and forth, hip to hip. Tivk moaned appreciatively, then: "Good boy."
Lance felt himself become lost between the other two, drifting between them as Tivk caressed the exposed skin on his torso and Paul licked and teased at his cock and balls. Lance couldn't shut his eyes, not on his own; he couldn't shut out what was happening to him, and he didn't want to. Still, the will directing him was making sure he didn't have to think, could just relax and do what was so much easier: just feel, let his body react to a caressing hand or a tongue-flick. Everything beyond this moment faded from his thoughts, seemed to disappear.
Lance's naked body stood up, towering over kneeling Paul, who smiled up at him and purred, "You're perfect, baby, so beautiful." Then Paul took Lance's hands and pulled him down onto the soft rug, whose texture reminded him of the groundcover plants on his home world--no, not Earth, but ... No, that association must have sloshed over from Tivk's mind in his head. Lance didn't care or object; he simply accepted.
Lying face-up, Lance felt bodies scoot closer to him. Paul's body--when had Paul gotten naked?--that didn't matter--Paul's hard cock pushed alongside Lance's, skin flush against skin, and the man's solid, heated physicality felt damn good. Paul's hands wandered over Lance's body, before returning to his crotch.
A brief flicker of uncertainty colored Lance's thoughts. He was naked on a pair of strangers'--male strangers'--rug while they touched his body in increasingly intimate ways. Before the thought could take hold, though, it simply ... went away. Lance felt himself smiling Tivk's smile again, as Paul looked up at him, licking his lips, his eyes molten with desire. Lance had never had anyone look at him the way Paul was. Lance's body. Tivk's mind. Whether Paul was seeing Lance or seeing Tivk didn't matter.
Paul's expression went mischievous, some unspoken communication with Tivk perhaps, and his head tipped down into Lance's crotch again, nuzzling his so-fucking-hard erection, then swallowing it, then sliding up and down, so slowly, not rushing to orgasm like Lance would usually have done, but stretching the experience into a long chain of pleasure.
Lance's hand wove through Paul's hair, tightening but not really pulling, an action Lance would never have done himself because none of the women who'd blown him ever seemed to be into that, but the new moan vibrating along his cock told him Paul enjoyed the grip.
Tivk's fingers entwined with Lance's on Paul's head. Tivk gripped much harder, tugging Paul off Lance's cock. Lance heard Tivk's voice from somewhere beside his neck: "Like it, yes?" Tivk said.
Paul's mouth hung open like he couldn't wait to fall on Lance's cock again. The glaze in his eyes had turned into thick fog. "Yeah," he mumbled. "Yeah, baby."
"Good boy," Tivk said, and released his grip. Paul plunged himself back mouth-first on Lance's erection hungrily. Tivk's clawed fingers scraped across Lance's chest. "Enjoy too?" Tivk said. Lance wasn't in control enough to move or nod, but apparently Tivk understood. "Good," he said.
Tivk took hold of Lance's other hand, pulled it to his bare chest, and pressed it to the flushed purplish skin there, warm and firm. "You want touch." It was not a question, but Tivk understood Lance's answer. He wanted to touch the alien's skin very much. "Good," Tivk said. And he led Lance's hand downward again, until it returned to the base of Tivk's genital mound.
Lance felt one hand curl tighter in Paul's hair as Paul continued mouth-working up and down his cock, felt his other hand caress the spike-free base of Tivk's mound. Lance had never thought something could be more distracting than a blow-job, but he was fascinated by the feel of Tivk's whatever-T'zikians-called-it. Tivk had directed his hand to it, an obvious invitation, and the urge to accept sang brightly through Lance's head, surprising in its intensity, and he was far beyond caring. A male human had Lance's entire erection in his mouth, and an alien male was scraping gentle marks along his neck as Lance's hand fondled the danger of the male alien's genitals. Lance gave up the need to question how he got to this point or what would happen next. He simply floated and let the river of simple, blunt need carry him along.
Paul moved, which caused Lance's hand to untangle from Paul's hair. The other man's hips swung closer, not quite where Lance's mouth could reach his cock and they could sixty-nine, but close enough that Lance's hand moved, reached, fumbled, found Paul's human erection, so like Lance's own and yet different. The girth filling Lance's hand was somehow enticing; perhaps Lance was fascinated by the length, the time his hand needed to slide slowly and experimentally all the way down the shaft until it could slide no farther. He'd never thought he'd want to touch another man's dick but doing so now was ... interesting?--enjoyable? He didn't have the mental capacity at the moment to analyze his feelings. All he knew for sure was Tivk was guiding him, making him mirror the up-down motion of Paul's mouth with his hand. This both was and wasn't Tivk having sex with Paul via Lance's body--both was and wasn't Lance experiencing sex with two other males. All he knew was he felt good, that Paul and Tivk felt good too, and all three of them were making little moaning sounds of pleasure. When Paul tightened his lips around Lance, Tivk made Lance's hand grip Paul's cock harder. When Paul swiped with his tongue, Iven directed Lance to brush his thumb across the head of Paul's dick.
"Good boy," Tivk moaned. The praise might have been meant for Lance, might have been for Paul. Lance didn't care; he felt only the need to obey Tivk's quiet instructions in his head.
When Paul sped up even more, bobbing his whole head almost frantically, Lance struggled to keep stroking Paul's cock and Tivk's mound at the same rate while avoiding the spines. The tightness and wet heat of Paul's mouth smudged out all other thoughts and sensations, leaving Lance trying desperately to find a way to move his hips and bury his cock into the back of Paul's throat. If Lance's hand wasn't quite keeping the same rhythm, neither Paul nor Tivk seemed to care.
Lance felt Paul pull off of him. He felt himself commanded somehow to stand, and did, shakily.
"Fuck, you're so perfect." Paul, flushed, kneeling before Lance, looking up with lust-shrouded eyes at him, at Lance's cock, his naked body, his face. "You're both so perfect. Thank you for this, baby. Thank both of you."
Make mess. Tivk's voice rolled through Lance's head. Likes it.
The words merged with the warm fog in Lance's head. He couldn't interpret them at first. Vague images, compulsions--he understood what he needed to do. But was Paul really asking for that? None of the women Lance had been with ever wanted that.
Paul said, still looking Lance in the eye, "Cum on my face, baby. Please?"
"Make mess," Tivk repeated out loud, moving closer to stand alongside Lance.
Lance's hand gripped his spit-slicked cock and started pumping, familiar and sure, and Lance had no choice about how this would soon end. He closed his eyes, losing himself in the sensation of jacking off his just-sucked sensitive cock. His existence narrowed around the fast stroke of his hand on his dick.
And all the while Tivk's tongue was rasping against Lance's neck, his thoughts rumbled in Lance's head in ways Lance couldn't understand but could kind of intuit. Tivk was jacking off too--or what seemed the T'zikian equivalent--a hand on either side of his genital mound, clawed fingers making a base-to-shaft scratching rhythm that pushed into the spines and would have flayed a human cock. Lance felt Tivk's pleasure bleeding into his head, and Lance's own body started to curl into a pressure, a growing sensation, preparing to break.
"Yeah, baby," Paul murmured. "Cum on me."
The pressure inside Lance burst, a sudden snap and a release as his body shuddered into ecstasy. Through the fog in his head, he understood was happening--the sweet, delirious moments of orgasm--and he opened his eyes to watch his cum spurt across Paul's nose and cheek. His body seized and seized, sending a second and third rope across Paul's face. And then--a weird sensation through their link, and he understood Tivk was orgasming too, a bliss so different from what humans felt but identifiable as the same ending. Lance saw a fluid, clear instead of a human's milky white, stream steadily from a pore that had opened at the peak of Tivk's genital mount, in the middle of those spines, not a human spurting but a steady flow, and a lot of it, hitting Paul's neck and shoulder and chest--must have been at least half a liter of the syrup-thick clear stuff. As Tivk's flow faded, Paul leaned back on his heels, proudly displaying his own cum on his hand and abs; he'd ejaculated on himself too sometime while they were shooting.
Lance hadn't realized he'd closed his eyes until he forced them open. He was lying on his back on the floor, his hand empty, body limp as a puppet whose puppeteer's attention was directed elsewhere, but his cock still stiff, as if he hadn't just cum--and cum hard. Tivk had produced towels from somewhere. Lance watched as the alien cleaned the fluids--Paul's, Tivk's, Lance's--off Paul's body with an unexpected tenderness and an efficiency borne of experience. Paul might have taken the brunt of the sex action, but Tivk had clearly been in charge. But surely their sex was over now, and Tivk would release him, and Lance would get dressed in his own sweaty clothes and leave, go back to the barracks--except Lance still felt disconnected, the T'zikian very much still in control of him.
Then Paul was hovering over him, straddling his hips and his so-hard cock. Paul had a bottle lube in his hand, slicking Lance's rod. Lance simply watched. "This next part," Paul said, as he positioned Lance's cock-head to his asshole and began to sit, "is real intimate, baby. It's just between Tivk and me--" Lance felt the ring begin to side over his glans, felt the promise of tightness and insane heat his dick was entering. "--So don't be scared, but Tivk's going to--"
--Going to what? Lance's mind completed his last thought when he eventually returned, blinked, and knew what was going on around him again. He had been, what, just gone for a while?--Asleep inside his own head?--That seemed about right. He'd been asleep while they'd used his body as a puppet in a special way to express their love for and to each other.
His cock and balls, his whole body, felt exhausted, all energy spent, replaced by a lingering pleasant afterglow. Wherever Tivk had sent him, whatever they'd done to and with his body while he was gone, his body had sure enjoyed it.
He was in a bedroom, on a bed, on top of a light blanket. The room was dark except for dim light from a display case against one wall, a case filled with sports trophies and plaques, seemingly arranged by size instead of who'd won which of them. An oddly companionable quietness filled the room. The familiar musky scent seemed woven into the very air here. The anger and frustration that Lance always seemed to feel these days was gone, at least for now, drained away, with deeply blissful feelings of absolute fulfillment and contentment rippling slowly in their place.
Lance lay on his side, felt the solidness of other bodies. Tivk lay in front of him, on his back, and Lance was pressed up against his arm and leg. Paul was spooned up against Lance's back. Lance felt Paul shift a little, felt the scrub of the other human's erection against his naked ass-slit, wondered ... Yes, Lance had gone away as he--no, his body--had been about to fuck Paul, and the burning soreness in his own asshole was proof Paul had fucked him too. His ass had been de-virgined by a man! Instead of shame, Lance winced from the flicker of excitement as his body reacted to that thought.
Everything he felt seemed to be constrained, his emotions allowed to flow only in one route. He had been given a task and he had completed it. Oorah, Space Marine! But more than that, he knew for an absolute certainty that they had treated him well, not because he was a Space Marine or a fellow magball player but because he had agreed to be the proxy of Tivk, and everything they had done to and through Lance was an expression of what they felt for each other. He didn't need to worry about the missing memories because ... Well, just because.
So many new experiences filled his head. He was surrounded by two naked bodies, strangers he'd just met today. He'd just had sex with a male. Two males! And one was an alien!--A T'zikian! He'd have to change up the story when he bragged to his fellow Space Marines back at the barracks; he'd have to make Paul and Tivk into females in the retelling. Wait, what did T'zikian females look like? Were they even partially sexually compatible with human males? And what if one of his buddies checked into whether one of the colonists and miners was a female T'zikian and found none were?--His lie would be exposed. No, he'd have to change the details to be two human females; less exciting, but maybe exciting enough against the backdrop of boredom.
Lance's head was tucked into the crook of Tivk's armpit; he looked down, and saw the T'zikian's genital mound had receded, spines retracted, all of it shrunken into a fist-sized smoothness that, in pants, would still have made a lump most men would envy. So strange that human males couldn't retract their genitals behind a protection and instead wore them, exposed and vulnerable, right out front all the time. Wait--he was a human male--that thought must have been something he picked up from Tivk. He looked up and found Tivk gazing placidly back at him, and Lance realized he was still feeling the now-familiar quietness of Tivk's mind touching his, pushing back everything else. Whatever part of his brain had been attempting to freak out over the recent events found little traction. As his thoughts steadied, Lance felt too good to worry about any of it.
Behind him, Paul stirred, murmured softly near Lance's ear: "You back with us, baby?"
"Yes," Tivk and Lance said in unison, not breaking their gaze.
"Thank you for that." Paul nuzzled Lance's neck. "That was special for us. Did you enjoy it?"
"Yes," again in unison.
Paul reached over Lance to thump a finger against Tivk's tight-muscled stomach. "Stop it, you. Let him speak for himself."
After completing its reach, Paul's muscular arm didn't pull back; instead it settled companionably, almost affectionately, around Lance's ribs and chest. Lance decided he liked the feel of Paul's arm.
Lance felt a sudden flowing-away of Tivk's presence from his mind. "Sorry about that," Paul spoke quietly into the back of Lance's ear. "Telepathy for a T'zikian is as natural as breathing--one of the reasons their planet is quarantined, and the main reason this big lug is such a fucking pain in my ass to live with half the time."
Tivk made a grumpy clicking sound, but he was smiling.
Lance stretched and yawned, feeling his arms, spine, and legs move of his own accord again.
"You okay?" Paul again. He might have meant the press of their nude, very male bodies. He might have meant the entire weird whirlwind of sex and telepathy and orgasms they'd just led Lance through.
Either way, Lance's answer was the same. "Yeah."
Tivk's face contorted into something that might have been a contented yawn for a human, flashing a double row of sharp teeth that looked like they could shred a cock: more reason, Lance realized, why Tivk and Paul needed a proxy. Another quick series of clicking sounds from the alien.
"Tivk likes how responsive and cooperative you are to telepathy. Most base-hetero men fight him, at least a little, but he said you made it all easy for him."
"Uh," Lance responded, not yet able to decide how he should feel about that.
"I get it." A little squeeze from Paul's arm. "I used to think I was base-hetero too, until I met Tivk and those little curiosities I'd had about other guys' bodies just seemed to make sense." Paul's arm felt strong and warm. "Sure you're okay with all this? We get it. Tivk can make the memories go away, if you want. You'll remember we played magball, came back here to eat, talked some, and then you left to go back to the base. You won't remember any of the sex stuff."
"No," Lance drowsy-drawled, intentionally looking at the T'zikian's chest instead of his face. Lance wondered how many of his fellow Space Marines were walking around with Tivk-shaped holes in their memories. Surely at least a few had been here before him?--Had the buddy who'd introduced him to magball been one of them?--And didn't he himself now have an Tivk-shaped hole that stretched from the events on the rug to waking up in this bed? Lance couldn't seem to process those questions; best leave them for another time. Either way, he didn't want to lose the experience, so he added, "Want to remember."
Rather than risk looking at Tivk, Lance found his gaze had instead focused on the T'zikian's pectoral. The alien's thickly muscled pec didn't have a nipple, not like a human's. Instead it had a thumbnail-sized patch of those small dark-purple scales more or less where a nipple would be. Lance wondered whether the scales were sensitive like a human nip, tested that idea by reaching out his tongue to flick at the patch, was rewarded by a brisk click from Tivk, a pleasant press of the alien's arm against Lance's skin.
"If you aren't on duty tomorrow," Paul murmured, "why don't you stay here tonight?"
True, Lance had said earlier that he didn't have duty the next day, so maybe the question was Paul offering him an escape route? Lance had also earlier declared his base-hetero status. If he stayed, what would happen? He shifted his hips, felt Paul's erection brush his ass-cheek. Yeah, definitely round two--no, it would be round three counting the part when Tivk had put his mind to sleep and piloted his body, or maybe round four. Lance could hardly claim to be base-hetero any longer, not after that blow-job and spraying Paul with his cum earlier, and not with his cock and balls limp-heavy in that just cum several times way, the first time he had felt like that since he'd been stationed on this boring-as-fuck planet. Did Lance want still more sex with them? He felt Paul's muscular body pressing into him from behind; Lance reached back between them, and his fingertips confirmed Paul's erection. Touching it made Lance's cock start to rise and stiffen too, in spite how spent it had felt minutes before. And was that Tivk-arousal scent growing stronger too? Sure, Lance could protest again he was base-hetero and, sure, they were males but--Paul's easygoing masculinity and oral skills, Tivk's strength and alienness--somehow they seemed to provide missing pieces Lance hadn't known he lacked.
Lance looked up at Tivk, found the T'zikian watching him with a casual curiosity. Was Tivk influencing him? He considered the possibility, decided either way his answer was the same.
Lance said, "Sure, I'll stay."