Ch. 14: Hot and Cold

The loud music was unceasing. Not as many humans were line dancing now. They seemed to drop in or out at random. Quar watched them now as she ate, particularly Houston, who had been bouncing around the room like a fly trapped in a bottle ever since his parents left. Most recently he'd been on the dance floor, but after stumbling into some other humans a pair of males his age had guided him over to a booth. For a while he sat with his head down in the pillow of his arms while his friends sat with him, one beside him on the outside of the booth and the other across from him. When Quar looked again, through, he was speaking animatedly, gesturing in a way that involved his entire body rather than his just his arms, while his two friends responded with more subdued gestures. She recognized the looseness of his movements to be the result of extreme drunkenness, and the more she watched, the more Quar realized that his gestures and glances were directed at her. Perhaps not at her specifically, but at her and Lahroujel, at least.

Then the music cut out for a moment before the next song began to play. (That was so jarring. Good Rriigkhan music flowed from one song into the other.) In that moment everyone was suddenly shouting, because when the music was on they had to, to be heard. A snippet of Houston's angry voice belted across the room, then.

"– those wolves –!" and then was cut off by the beginning of the next song. No one seemed particularly concerned, except for the Reverend, who Quar saw winding his way calmly over to that booth. It dragged Quar back to reality. She wasn't sure what she had heard, really. Houston did seem to be upset, but he wasn't making any attempt to get up, and one of the other humans was blocking him into the booth anyway. Quar stared blearily down at her half-consumed chicken, then up at Lahroujel. Kesh, but she was tired, more tired than she had ever felt in her life. It took so much effort to hold her head up.

"I think there is no more reason for me to be here," Quar said. She felt as if she were pulling those words out of herself more than speaking them, and they came more drawn out than she intended, like a long sigh. "I thank you, Kharis, for... all of this." She gestured vaguely to the room, then chuffed at the absurdity of thanking Lahroujel for bringing Quar to this chaotic refuse pile full of people who probably hated her, but of course she would understand what Quar meant by that. "I hope we will have cause to meet again when you return from Ssaar-Engh. You were a pleasure in the arena."

When she stood it was with one palm braced against the table so that she herself leaned heavily over it, and with a sharp upward jerk of her chin she tipped back her head at Lahroujel (like goring something with her tines) in place of knocking crests, but the sudden movement of her head made her dizzy. She sidestepped away from the table, bumping the chair back away from herself, and slowly stood upright while her vision came in and out of focus. Anything Lahroujel said to her after that she partly ignored, because she had turned to scan the room. As soon as her attention shifted toward one thing everything else in her mind was lost, although she did remember to utter a "Sath-Nghahr" as she moved off toward the exit.

The entry hallway had a low plaster ceiling. Quar's crest knocked into it before she remembered to stoop. She reached up to feel at her crest as she hobbled through, leaving behind a basically invisible smear of chicken grease as she did so. In the little outer vestibule Quar leaned against the door with her shoulder wedged up against the jamb and her crest against the wall, resting and listening to a howling wind. She could smell the fresh air seeping in from the bottom sill of the door where it was not quite snug against a metal threshold. It was so sweet a scent after being submerged in stifling stink for hours.

She opened her service menu to ping Ray, then remembered he probably didn't have his earpiece, so she settled for staring outside of the little window in the door instead. It was dark out now, the electric lights lining the street seen only as blurs in the water beading on the glass. It wasn't raining heavily, but was the sort of storm in which every sudden gust of wind flung droplets more forcefully down to drive like cold needles into anyone unlucky enough to be caught in it. Quar was not happy about having to walk all the way back to the park in that, but there was no place to bring her ship in closer.

She let her eyes close, and let her body rock slightly with every slow breath as she leaned against the jamb, her tail limp on the floor. The music in the next room reverberated in her head. She held to that scent of clean air like it was the only part of the universe that mattered.

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The crowd had changed in O'Shannon's. Nearly everyone was Houston's age, Sam's age, Micah's age - or close enough. The Reverend was still there, but he'd been on his way out since not long after Alred and Martha, declining to sit and have another drink, 'just saying goodbye' with one table or another why he worked around the edges of what it would take to cajole them back to Sunday Service, or at least just Easter and Christmas. A few new people had entered, and most of them made their way to the core group of Houston or one of the women who looked related to him, before poking around under the foil lids at the table or putting down their quarters at the pool table, never mind that it was unlocked for the night.

Ray watched in silence, taking some pleasure in neatly taking all the meat from each wing, sucking even gristle and cartilage from the joints so his pile of bones were suitable for Rriigkhan children's crafts, probably. Doubtless they wore little necklaces made of bones. He could picture Quar about the size of a malamut, holding hers up proudly, showing off the neat holes augured into each humerus. There would have to be dyed feathers, too.

He tried not to think about Quar. He made a point of not looking back to the Darts Alleys, at least until he heard them thunking neat and quick into the board again, and twisted around to see a few newcomers there, sinking their 60s, or trying to. Startled now that he'd missed them go, Ray twisted around heavily, still chewing on a rogue bit of celery (the potato salad was gone almost immediately) while he tried to figure out where Quar had gotten off to. He found Micah (or Lahroujel, first) at the table where Quar had first sat; she stretched sideways across the booth and let her crest rest on the wall behind her. No Quar, though.

Could she... would she be in the bathroom?

Gathering up his plate and the few others at the table, plus a couple that he could balance from the next table over, he dumped them all into lined garbage bin (leave it to Wymoning to still collect garbage in bags; it probably had to ship somewhere else to be reclaimed) and snagged a small stack of paper napkins to clean his fingers and under his nails on the way out.

The asshole barkeep tossed his head toward the entryway while Ray was approaching, before he could even ask or indicate. "Went out, your one."

"Hunh." Now that he knew she was there, he could just about see her looming through the faceted frosted glass panes in the inner doors - maybe it was a cast shadow or some bit of fur he didn't recognize. Leaning around the corner might have confirmed it, but he didn't bother. "Hey, there isn't an umbrella in the lost and found, is there?"

The barkeep raised a suspicious brow, finished drying the glass he was working on, and asked, "Why? Did you lose one?"

"Maybe."

"What color?"

"Black."

Finally the barkeep's grin broke at the safest answer, and he reached under the counter to pull up a deep plastic bin filled with all sorts of things left behind - mostly coats, but including a half-dozen umbrellas.

Ray selected a big, black and white golf umbrella while Herb watched him with narrowed eyes. "That's the one."

"Found that guy last month."

"Yep, makes sense." Ray nodded.

"I thought you said it was black."

"The parts that I like are. I just live with the white." He dug his phone out of his pocket to swipe open a tipping app and load five bucks onto it, then waved it through the machine. "Thanks."

"Right. If you want to do me a favor. Take some of these. You're not driving, are you?"

"Not even licensed." He turned the label on the bottles toward him, tipped his mouth into an appreciative moue, and then tucked the beer under his arm, where he realized what a terrible idea it was since they were still ice cold and his shirt wasn't that thick. He was stubborn, though.

Ray took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh before rounding the landmark of the pickled egg jar and drawing open the door with a whoosh to stop in front of Quar.

"I hope I didn't keep you waiting long."

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Quar was unsure how much time had passed when the inner door to the coat room creaked open, but she knew the person approaching was Ray by his footsteps before he even spoke, then by his scent. Her eyelids tightened without opening.

"I have not been happy in a very long time," she sighed, the words breathy in a way she hadn't intended. She didn't even know she was going to speak until after it had already come out. Some part of Quar roared at her to stop acting like such a fool. She was drunk, and making a complete ass of herself, and should shut up immediately. Instead, she pressed on. One hand was curled against the door. The other came up to grasp the ruffle of her shirt. Both her booted feet were braced on the ground to hold her up while she leaned.

"You made me feel like I was a treasure, and I answered you with cruelty..." Her eyes cracked open then, though they slid to the side to stare out the window. Because the edge of her crest was pressed into the door, her head rolled around that pivot point when she moved. Her lower lids grew heavy with welling moisture, but not enough for tears to fall. She added, very softly, "I hope you... understand why." Because I am bound. Because I don't understand what I am feeling.

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Her answer - or non-answer, maybe part of a conversation she'd already ran through several times in her head before he arrived - caused him to stop in the middle of fumbling at the umbrella release. It had some kind of catch he wasn't used to, and the icy bottles were distracting him, too.

"I'm sorry. To hear that." That was true, honestly. Clearly she was drunk and spilling things she'd regret in the morning. Better not to let her get too deep into them. But what she was telling him was truth, more closely guarded than the sort of 'truth' that always cut his legs out from underneath him. It was an admission - the sort of drunk truth that had to be respected for what it was. Even after everything else, he hated knowing she was miserable. Maybe because of it - she'd have more excuse for spitting vinegar if she was at least living her 'best life', or whatever it was they said.

But hesitating wasn't enough when she continued. He pushed the umbrella down against the ground like a cane (that, combined with whatever else he'd unlocked before let it open against his leg, but at least it didn't spring to fill the whole vestibule). Sighing again, he looked out the glass of the front door - or at it, since it was frosted, too. "Quar. I don't understand. I mean," he continued quickly, to keep hold of the talking stick, "I can guess at why you might say you had to. But if you're asking me to accept the things you said to me because you're better than me and I'm shit? No. I don't understand it. I don't understand any government or philosophy or religion or whatever that says I'm not a person just like you. I accept you're bigger, stronger, probably smarter, and better in a dozen other ways. But not better as a person. We're equal there. And that means saying things like that isn't 'understandable'."

He'd been meeting her eyes through it, staring right into them, and daring her to roll her head back toward him and stare back, but now he let them drop. "But, hey-ho. Humans say the same stuff to each other, and yours is a better place to work than most. So I can bow and call you 'Ghara' and keep to my lane. There's more important things than my feelings."

After starting to push open the umbrella again, he hesitated again. "You know, the funny thing? If you weren't my boss? If I didn't have everything to lose? I'd probably be lying to you right now and telling you that I understood, because... Because sometimes I really like being around you. You're interesting in a way nobody else is. Not even other Rriigks." Probably, he shouldn't have called her that, but he'd only just managed to correct from 'Rick' in time. "And I wouldn't want to lose that. Maybe a little lemon in the eye is the price for that. But we're under contract, you and I, and I've got to make this work. So call me limited, or whatever, but no. I don't understand why you think it's okay to trample on my feelings, or act like the purpose of my existence is your convenience. The purpose of my existence is getting my daughter through med school."

Putting his hand on the door handle, but not pushing the lever down yet lest she stumble through, he handed her the half-open umbrella. "Here. I don't think I can reach to hold this over your head."

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Quar didn't look at him. She couldn't look at him. The shoulder that was not against the door lifted in a cringe. Her eyes narrowed until her vision blurred. She had no rebuttal to any of the things he was saying. It didn't matter who was right or wrong about human equality. Like Lahroujel said, there was no need to wield her superiority like a hammer. She saw herself so clearly now – her childish gloating, how she'd played with human lives like they were her toys.

She was ashamed. Deeply ashamed. Her tail snapped aside and flopped against the wall before it fell still again in response to that sharp swelling of emotion.

When he moved under her with his hand on the door, she lifted her head away from it and dropped her muzzle to look down at him, finally. Her ears were tucked back under the edge of her crest and her eyes seemed very dark under her drooping lids, their surfaces slick with unshed water. They were the glassy eyes of a drunk, set in a slack face. She knew he was holding the umbrella to her but she made no move to take it, nor did she move her eyes from his.

"I don't think you're shit," she said very slowly, carefully pronouncing each word in a low whisper that was almost a rasp. The hand clutching her shirt tightened. She stared at him a moment more, simply breathing languidly through the part in her lips. "...I think you're beautiful."

Her eyes closed again. That was wrong. Wrong thing to say! She exhaled shakily, and sighed out,

"I've spoiled what might have been... I wish I had not gotten caught in my tempest... wish that I had listened to Dotta... I don't think I could ever be like Lahroujel, but then I would not have hurt you..." An acrid new scent spilled out of her crest. It was the warning of physical injury, a plea for assistance.

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She didn't take the umbrella handle, and that messed up everything. With an exasperated sigh - she probably expected him to figure out how to hold it for her and get it high enough - Ray jutted out his jaw and let the handle fall against the door, where it settled into one of the debossed panels. A nudge from his knee kept it from 'settling' on the floor instead. Pulling the two beers out from under his arms, he worked the blunt end into his pockets instead, rotating them like they'd screw in. They'd get even warmer there, but it was free beer, so no big loss.

Usually, he had a lot of patience for the drunk, as long as they weren't the type to start fights. Michelle had been a poet when drunk (not because of the rhymes - god, those were awful) but because because she would fixate on the most joyful, playful imagery. She had fun drunk friends. Quar didn't come off as particularly aggressive (maybe she was too far along for that, anyway; if she started asking to be carried, he was going to have a hell of a time), but he had this rotten feeling in his gut that whatever she said tonight, he was going to regret in the morning.

But she called him beautiful. Nobody had ever done that before, even with beer goggles.

His hand went to the paw making new ruffles in the ruffles at her chest. His fingers found the little valleys between her knuckles and squeezed between them, then went about loosening them from the fabric, taking her hand to hold between his, facing up and cupped in his palms, so his thumbs stroked little circles against her pads. Letting one hand fall away, he lifted hers to his face, caught it between his hand and his cheek, though the size of her paw covered more like half of his face. Turning his face into her palm, he left it there, so his nose and eyes were buried for a moment, then kissed and moved it back around to the side of his face so he could meet her eyes again. His weren't glassy, but they weren't sharp, either; if anything, they were weary, hooded, brows pulling together in the middle to make a crease that would be a wrinkle in another 20 years.

"I don't know what half of that means. I don't know why you would want to listen to Dotta, or be like Lahroujel." It was hardly the moment to tell her what Dotta had said about her after all. "Be like Quar. If something is spoiled, just unspoil it. If it's in anyone's power, it's yours, isn't it?"

Ray pressed her paw back to her chest before he turned away, fumbling for the umbrella handle again. It was right there in front of him, but he wasn't seeing it. His eyes and nose stung, and that meant he was going to cry, which was nothing he wanted her to see. "Don't worry," he muttered, playing it down for himself, more than her. "I've been hurt before. I'm an adult." True, but it wasn't like he was eager to have his heart ripped open again. Maybe for the Rriigkhan, it was a sport - not the ripping, but the being ripped. Perhaps they had some way of patching those wounds back up just a seamlessly as what the hospital did for their faces and hands.

"Let's get you back to your flying thing."

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Oh, he was touching her again... Despite everything, she thrilled at the attention from him – it made her heart flutter in her chest – and when she saw what he was doing her tongue flicked out to lick with nervous excitement over her nose. When it drew back the tip was caught between her teeth, her lips lifted just enough to show a flash of pink and her top incisors while she stared down at her hand in his. Though his hand may have guided she was holding her own paw to his face with gentle pressure. Her pads pressed to his scalp, claws poking out to very lightly grip him. The short fur under her pads brushed over the shell of his ear. Her hand closed over it like an earmuff, trapping the heat of her palm against his face, and her thumb stroked slowly over his brow. He really was as lovely to her now as he had been in the louse cave. It wasn't all hormones.

Of course he does not know what I'm talking about. It finally occurred to her, for the first time, that he might not have understood why they'd had sex at all. Quar's eyes narrowed in concentration as she tried to think of a way to explain it plainly, but she kept coming up with euphemisms.

"I was..." she began slowly, sounding like she was explaining it to herself as much as to him. "Receptive? I was... in estrus. Dotta warned me that I was and I ignored her. The first day is a time of high emotion, stressful... and your touch burned my skin... Ah, but it still does, anyway." Her fingers tightened briefly on his face before she let him guide her hand away again, though she wished more than ever that she could just gather him up in her arms and press him into her chest.

She stood up from the wall and reached down to take the umbrella handle before he could. She vaguely understood what it was, though her people just used field technology to keep the rain off them. When she took hold of the handle she leaned all of her weight on it and went stumbling out into the night as the door swung open.

A very short cloth awning overhung the door, solid forest green with beveled edges that flapped in the wind. It kept rain off Quar from above, though the wind was driving it at them sideways, too. The sidewalk was in poor repair and her boot thunked down right over a place where it was deeply chipped and water had pooled, creating a tiny splash. Holding the umbrella upside down she shook it to get it to open, and it did fall open a little, but it didn't snap open. Her tail swished in consternation. He'd been fiddling with something on the stem, though....

She lifted the umbrella to run her hand down the length of it and her thumb found the rough metal tab or whatever it was, some kind of button, and when the ribs of the umbrella shot out to their full extension she jolted upright in surprise, ears flapping up from under her crest. Her tail curled in stupid drunken pride at her accomplishment, and when she glanced down at him her jaw dropped open so that her tongue spilled sloppily out at the side. She held out her arm to him, to usher him close so they would both be protected when she stepped away from the awning.

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Quar's clothing looked far too delicate to hold onto. It probably wasn't. Probably, it was like spider webbing, stronger than steel, et cetera, et cetera. Still, Ray hesitated, drawing back his hand when he reached out to grab a bit at the back rather than let her fall through the door as it opened.

Of course she caught herself, and probably if she had fallen he would have just been yanked after her, but Ray still put a steadying hand on her back after he'd stepped out of the way for the door to close behind them, and patted her belly when she managed to open the thing. "Well done. I don't know why they can't all open the same way." At least, he'd meant to pat her belly, but his aim had probably been a bit too low because of her height, and he felt the beginning of a swell at the edge of his hand. Ah. Right. Rriigkhan anatomy. It wasn't quite like touching a woman at her neckline - he didn't think - but his hand corrected quickly anyway, reaching up toward more like his head level. Tucking in beneath her offered arm instead of hooking it, his shoulder pressed into her, at least a little steadier than the cross-legged drunken amble.

"This late, you might just be able to call it to touch down in the intersection. I doubt anyone's going to complain." They were at the center of town, so individual cars or small groupings passed by a few times per minute, but some of the intersections within sight could go entire light cycles without passing a vehicle through. In any case, most people didn't follow the lights anymore, not when their rental vehicles were self-driving and could communicate with the grid to pass them through. If the transport took up an intersection, they'd probably just be rerouted.

"Estrus is like heat, isn't it?" Not that it got him that much closer to the truth - all the animals he'd owned had been fixed - but maybe he got the idea. She'd been horny. She couldn't control herself. Maybe she thought she'd raped him?

Ricks were so top-heavy, he couldn't imagine what they did when they got drunk at home. There must be bars on their homeworlds, space stations, or whatever, absolutely devastated by the imprints of crests, where walls and doors were accidentally headbutted. "Come on. You can lean on me a little bit more if you want to. You're going to fall off the sidewalk."

"I don't know about estrus, or tempests, Quar. To me, anyway, it didn't feel like horny, instant-regret sex. And if we'd never had sex at all, I'd still want to look in your eyes. I still think you're elegant." The gusts that accompanied the rain, and the sound of splattering water where it fell out of roof gutters in need of repair meant he had to speak at full volume, but hardly anyone else was crazy enough to be out in the weather.

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The way Ray's delicate little body fit into her embrace felt utterly perfect to Quar. His heat warmed her through both of their clothes, and it seemed like a heat that spread from within her belly as much as against her side. Her hand settled on his hip first, the fingers splayed and cupping him possessively. The other hand held the umbrella over them, but she honestly wasn't doing a very good job of it. The pattering of rain against the vinyl was a distracting sound; her ears kept twitching at it, and the wind was trying to tug the umbrella out of her hand. It wasn't that Quar's grip was weaker than the wind, but she found it so hard to concentrate on more than one thing at a time.

She leaned on him, though not heavily – it was more like she swayed against him from time to time as they moved away from the awning, but she always found her footing.

"Ah. Hold on," she said, stopping on the sidewalk so she could call up the ship's menu in AR. It was a laborious task that took up so much of her attention, with wasted seconds spent looking around for the correct menu icons and trying to remember which did what. To an onlooker she appeared to be staring vacantly into empty space, the movements of her eyes as they twitched from one menu to the next practically invisible in the dark.

Her arm tightened around him as she did this, her hand sliding across belly where her fingertips encountered the buttons of his shirt. She picked at them idly with the claw of her pointer, enjoying the sensation of his belly moving under her hand as he breathed, and the click of her nail against plastic. Quite by accident her claw slid through one of the gaps between the buttons, though the hole was too tight for her large fingers to follow past the very tips. He could feel her own belly tighten up against him with a subdued laugh that didn't make it further than a little puff of air from her nostrils. Why it was funny that she could stick her fingers into his shirt, Quar couldn't have said. But it was.

Distantly, across the far side of the park, tiny white lights blinked to life in the general shape of Quar's ship. It didn't have anything like headlights because the sensors that served as the "eyes" of the onboard AI could see better in the dark than Quar could. The little lights studding the various wing and fins and outlining the door were purely aesthetic, and now allowed them to watch the ship slowly lift into the air.

Quar hadn't given the ship specific instructions beyond "get close to me." She could have, but that would take too much brain power right now.

"Mmm. 'Heat'. Yes, that could describe it," Quar agreed. His words petted over her as surely as if he'd been stroking her, and Quar closed her eyes to savor them, her chest swelling with a slow, gentle inhalation.

They were maybe twenty paces away from the pub when a wolf howl sounded from behind them. A couple of Houston's friends huddled under the awning and snickered as they lit up their cigarettes. After taking a draw, one of them howled again, cupping a hand to his mouth and drawing it out into a "Awoo-woo-woo", like he didn't know the difference between a wolf and a beagle baying.

Ray twisted, glancing back behind to peer through the rain; the hand at Quar's back lifted momentarily to give them the finger.

"Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it wasn't just a sex-thing for me. I mean, that was there, and I wasn't saying no, but I liked you anyway. Just like this, right now. Talking like people. I like this too. Is this wrong? Can we have this?"

The sounds the humans made at them didn't connect in Quar's mind with any kind of insult. Rriigkhans didn't howl, and after the music she had just heard, for all Quar knew that was just another senselessly obnoxious sound humans liked to make. When Ray twisted in her arm she took that opportunity to adjust herself, transferring the umbrella into the hand which had held him, the left, so that she could angle it against the wind and protect him most. It wasn't doing her that much good, partly because of the height of her crest, and in any case her instinctive behavior tended toward chivalry.

That arm still encircled him, though not as tightly as before, and was now higher, her bicep against his shoulder. She turned herself to face him so that her right hand could come to his face, fingers gently combing his hair before she let them curl in to stroke down his cheek with the backs of her knuckles. When her hand settled against the base of his neck her fingers cupped him from behind while her thumb played with a flap of his collar, flipping it up and down a little from below.

"I don't know," she said, sighing, head titled down so she could gaze into his eyes. There was a deep longing there. Could she be like Lahroujel? Could she let the world laugh at her behind her back in exchange for a bit of peace in her private life? Quar did not know if she could be so strong again. She could be reviled, but to be a joke... "I became upset afterward not because I regretted you, but because... the stigma..." Her gaze dropped guiltily away and her jaw briefly tightened.

The occasional droplet of rain dribbled down the ruts and grooves of her crest, and she blinked when they fell past her eyes onto her snout. Carefully, cautiously, her eyes returned to his. "I... like this. I like you. It feels good to be near you, to speak with you, to touch you..." To emphasize her point, the fingers at the back of his neck tightened against him with a dragging, shearing sort of pressure, rather than downward. She flicked her tail out to curve around the both of their feet, holding it off the wet ground.

The ship touched down in the nearest intersection, only several paces from where they stood on the corner, the bulk of it actually dampening the wind that blew against them slightly, although the wind tore loudly over the fins. A field stretched out from the craft in a circle where rain no longer touched the pavement. It was visible over the craft because the droplets reflected the red and green of the nearby stoplights, and as the side door to Quar's personal compartment slid open, a warm yellow light spilled out across the extending ramp.

Quar transferred the umbrella to her other hand again, nudging him toward the door with a hand at the small of his back so that he would proceed her.

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The rain alone would have been excuse enough to huddle close to Quar. It came from a predictable direction, but the gusts were anything but, buffeting, quick enough to ripple the puddles one moment and still the next, leaving the rain to patter in little drops. Ray's button-up shirt wasn't very good protection from the weather. One side and a shoulder were soaked through. Goosebumps were creeping up his arm. But it wouldn't have been much better if he was holding the umbrella himself, and it was an excuse to walk like this, half-entwined, without questioning it, under the auspices of the rain.

That little touch beneath his shirt took Ray away to another place, though. His eyes glazed, and he didn't really pay attention to the uneven sidewalk squares or the puddles trapped in their corners, except to lift his feet so he would trip. His neck loosened, his head tilted back the several degrees to rest against her bicep. Did she even know she was doing it? It was so intimate, so disarming. It felt possessive, the sort of thing that might happened with a partner who had earned the right to that sort of casual, possessive touch out out at a bar, or just staying in to watch television. Maybe the problem here wasn't Quar at all, but that he'd let himself become intimacy starved, and was milking the situation for these kinds of touches. He certainly didn't question it out loud, didn't mention it or do anything that might cause her to pull free, though it had to happen soon enough anyway. When they did withdraw, he sighed.

"Thanks." The tilt of the umbrella, the reason she'd moved it to that side, were obvious. Again, more reason to remain close while the ship approached.

Ray did start up the ramp first, but since they were under the field now, he turned on the way up to hold out his hand for the umbrella, and frowned at it while he figured out what Quar had done to open it. Once he'd released the little ring that held it up and outstretched, though, he gave it a good few ins and outs to throw off most of the droplets. There weren't too many, and no good reason to let it air-dry, since it was a hydrophobic cloth. Not bad for five bunks. Inside, he tilted it against the wall and then--

The pilot/attendant. Right. Nibbling his lips, Ray glanced over at the doorway, then dropped down into the nwohl seat from the previous journey, by itself, tucked between the ramp and the cockpit bulkhead. That was the human spot. Sitting anywhere else would draw obvious attention.

"Thanks for giving me the ride, Ghara." It was for the pilot's benefit, really - the proper pronunciation of the honorific, to dispel any suspicion of fraternization. "It would have been a real trick to pick up a rental back to the dome this time of night."

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Quar dropped heavily onto the corner edge of the couch, on the same side of the craft as the nwohl seat, so the exterior door stood between her and Ray. She slumped with her knees apart while her hands smoothed over her face and then down the sides of her neck. The fur was standing up in water-darkened spikes on her ruff, and her dress clung annoyingly to her back where she was wettest. As the ramp pulled in behind them and the door closed with a pneumatic hiss, the faux gas lamps lining the walls dimmed slightly. It was still plenty bright for Ray's eyes, but the warmth of those lights washed out some contrast in the cabin.

When her hands dropped down into her lap, palm up and fingers slightly curled, Quar lifted weary eyes to the pilot. She could only see his backside from here, as he sat facing a huge bank of controls that had probably only ever been touched in emergency tests. He didn't even have the main viewscreen turned on; probably he was looking at the ship in a simulation of the nearby environment rather than real video.

"Pilot, close the door," Quar said without inflection, staring dully ahead at him. Her body was angled slightly toward Ray on the edge of the seat, and so she was facing the cockpit, too. She swayed a little in her seat, and when she blinked it was very slowly, like her eyes didn't want to open up again.

"Certainly, Ghara. Inform me if I can be of further service," the pilot answered, raising his muzzle slightly to one side without swiveling around to actually look at her. He lifted a hand toward the controls. Ah, so those buttons did have a use – the cockpit door slid shut.

Quar's eyes reached for Ray in a roundabout way, sweeping down over the floor and then lifting with hesitance to his face. She scooted down the couch, allowing enough space that if Ray moved, she wouldn't crowd him, and she patted the empty space beside herself before withdrawing her hand to her own lap. She was still not looking at him directly, but from under her shallow brows. The end of her tail, which lay behind her on the couch curving away from Ray, began to slowly twitch. There was a lot of space between her and the backrest because she was sitting at the edge of the couch.

"....Sit with me," she said softly.

They could barely feel it when the craft began to rise. They might as well have been in a lounge on Ssaar a few thousand years ago. The kitchenette/bar in the center of the space was all sandstone-red burl wood and unpolished bronze fixtures, so they did not gleam in the light.

"It would always be like this," Quar said, drawing into herself, both in her expression and her sagging posture. She rubbed at the pad of her upward-turned palm with the other hand, pressing her thumb into it, a bit of an anxious gesture.

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Ray stood. He'd expected to, in a way. Maybe not in his conscious mind - that had already been preparing for a silent flight with either a beer or nodding off or both - but there was this tension of anticipation that her motion against the seat had unlocked.

The two bottles in his pockets gave him a strange profile, made the jeans tug tight in a weird way, and at this point, they were warm. Still, he twisted one out of his pocket, and held it out for her to examine. Just a cheap American beer, not even a brand that got advertised - the lable was red, silver, and blue, and the silhouettes of a variety of humans (specifically and obviously humans, Ray thought) decorated the edge of the label in the way they hadn't when Ray first started drinking. "This," he said, not answering Quar just yet, "is the traditional come-down off a night of drinking. Kind of a way to smooth out the ride between drunk and afterward. It's not very good, so you can just tell me it tastes like piss or moldy bread water now and get it out of the way. I know. I agree. Still." He gestured with it, not for her to take, but, tipping it toward her awaiting her nod so he could twist the top for her. "Or, I can get you something off your bar."

He twisted the top off his as he sat beside her - first on the edge, then pushing back against the back of his couch. His lips shaped to the neck, and he let it fill his mouth, linger on his tongue before he swallowed. His cap, he tucked into his shirt pocket, where - if he followed tradition - he'd forget about it until laundry day.

"I get it, you know. About it being like this. It makes sense. Wouldn't want everyone else getting jealous, right?" His head rolled toward her, and he wore a crooked, lopsided grin that didn't part his lips. "Seriously, though. I understand. I don't have anyone to impress here, beside you. Back home... Before this chapter of my life, the amount of fallout I would have had to deal with if my friends saw us walking down the streets together would have been immense." He blew out through his lips, lifting his brows as far as they'd go as though imagining the full extent of it.

He leaned, so his arm worked in beside hers, and his hand could join hers in rubbing her palm, though his finger was doing more exploring of the creases than any legitimate rubbing. "You know, there are two schools of thought in flow management. One is architectural. They measure inner diameters, account for pressure differentials along the inner surfaces, establish shearing parameters at the angles in a Y-joint. You get it... it's all planned out, precise, mathematical. If it's not working, you rip out pieces until the system conforms to the plan. Then there's the garden approach. Plans are good and all, but what you really care about are meeting the needs the system is there to serve. Not everything has to be perfect if it's working toward the whole. Sometimes, that's just an excuse to hide laziness, but when I was in school, I saw the architects giving themselves ulcers trying to shave off fractions of a percent of efficiency loss, and gardeners loving the work that drew me to it in the first place.

"Which is all to say, my philosophy is, if you find something good, you work with it. Nurture it. Nothing's every perfect, but if you can see the good and accept whatever weird little garden you found it in, then life is worth it, because you get to enjoy those treasures. If it's gotta be a particular way, then that way is worth it, don't you think?"

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"I don't know what piss tastes like," Quar said lightly, amused by that comparison. Her face brightened, ears lifting as the concerned twitches of her tail turned into a roll. Did he know that was a smile? She'd noticed that both Dotta and Lahroujel had imitated human expressions when speaking to Ray. Surely it couldn't be that hard to do...

Spine straightening, Quar gestured with a crooking of her fingers for him to hand over the bottle, and when he scooted back on the couch she twisted to face him. She sniffed cautiously at the opening, the velvet skin over her nose twitching. "Moldy bread water" was a good description of the smell. Her eyes darted toward him, to the way he held the bottle by its neck. Her gaze lingered on his hands before returning to the bottle in hers, which she held around the body because a larger object was easier for her to grip. There was such grace in his fingers, in their movements, in the way she could see his bones flexing under the skin. Watching him was a treat all by itself.

"I have nothing with ethanol in it here," she said, dipping her head a little toward her bar. She brought the bottle to her lips and tipped it back cautiously, expecting a disgusting flavor to wash over her tongue. She didn't form a seal around the hole so much as she draped her lip over it and let the beer flow into her mouth. The moment that warm beer touched her tongue she twitched away from it, her lips lifting off her teeth in a cringe that made skin ripple up the length of her snout. She'd pulled away faster than she could lower the bottle which caused some of it to dribble out against her mouth, and she knew she'd only done that because she was drunk and uncoordinated. She smacked her lips a few times, tongue swishing around in her mouth with the deep offense still plastered over her face. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked to him as the cringe gradually smoothed off her features.

"Hmmm," she said, dragging out the low, contemplative sound. "We don't... Naturalists typically ingest no drugs other than what is medically necessary. I have not been drunk in many... many years." Quar herself really had no strong opinion about light drug use, but Nahrosh had been so adamantly against it, and she'd been happy enough to live as he lived. Rather, she indulged him. He has his jaws on your howrf, his sister would say.

She held the beer off her lap while she scooted back to lean on the backrest beside him, body gradually easing back with a sigh. It was the first time she'd been able to relax her back that entire day. She hadn't sat so close to him that she wouldn't be able to see his face by turning aside, though, and she watched him now with the bottle resting on the divot between her legs. (Because her top was knee-length the fabric created a shallow valley where her legs parted, so she couldn't quite use that space as a drink holder, but she did support the bottle there with her hand.)

Ray's grin acted not only on his own face, but touched something inside of Quar – there was that light again, shining just for her in this private moment. When she inhaled the air inside her felt lighter than air ought to be.

"Lahroujel would weep bitterly that I had got the better male," Quar agreed. The tail draped beside her wagged sloppily, only the end rolling up several times before her smile finally faded. It was sobering to think that, to humans, she was often not any more a person than humans had been to her. She was the alien, the occupier who had robbed Earth of its future. Of course Quar knew this previously, but it wasn't anything she spent much time thinking about. Tonight had brought those sentiments into focus for her.

She let him take her paw where it sat palm-up on her thigh, her claws sheathed, staring down at the joining of their hands. Slowly, her fingers curled down to trap his under her pads, and she rubbed her thumb along the side of his hand. His fingers would be able to slip between the gaps between hers, something no Rriigkhan could do, something which she found strangely intimate... almost like she fit together with him better than a male of her own species. She could not believe how good it felt simply to touch him like this, and to breathe his scent every time she inhaled. Her breathing deepened, became more deliberate, and she lifted her chin to watch his face again with softened eyes. The backrest came up only to the base of her skull so her crest didn't scrape against anything when she turned her head aside.

"Yes... It could be worth it," she said, and in that moment, she really believed that despite her trepidation. "I am.... ready, I think. Ready to have something good in my life again. This is not the kind of happiness I'd been waiting for, but..." Her fingers squeezed his. She swallowed, uncertain, cautious, and wet her lips with a tiny lick. "Being with you feels good to me. That is enough of a reason."

She attempted a human smile then, to show him what she felt in a way he could understand, if he could not understand her pheromones. If Dotta could do it, Quar could... Her lips lifted and she bared her fangs at him with her tongue caught between her incisors. It was obviously not a snarl because her ears were relaxed and her skin didn't wrinkle up, though her nostrils flared without her realizing it – it looked more like a grimace, and one side of her cheek twitched with the effort of it. When she lowered her lips she felt a slight ache in her face that came from working muscles she rarely had occasion to use.

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When he wasn't watching the way his fingers disappeared between her pads and the fluff that surrounded them, Ray was watching her face. The times when he could do that openly felt rare, even if they had not been, simply because there were times he could not, and because at least someone thought that he shouldn't? How was he supposed to understand her, to get to know her or anticipate her without studying the shapes her eyes made or the movements of her ears, which he could almost translate into eyebrows.

So, he was already watching her when she turned to look at him. Naturally, his eyes glanced away after a second of contact, but they came back, under his brows and lashes, to to remain. His fingers squeezed back. Then, the grin that spread across his face did bare his teeth and turned his eyes to crinkly, amused slits. No, hers did not look anything like a smile. If he'd known better, he would have thought she was trying to show off her teeth for a dentist, but he did know better. Rriigks trying to make human expressions had this particular, unnatural focus on their face; besides, he'd had a daughter he had to teach to smile for the camera, too. He knew every variety of lip-curler a little girl could make, and Quar's wasn't far off.

"That's cute." Reaching up with his free hand, he half-swiveled to reach across her and stroke her muzzle with his beer hand, using his thumb and a couple of knuckles, tracing between the barely-visible spots where the short, sleek fur isolated her whiskers.

His hand slipped away, and he took another drink from his bottle before setting it aside. "You don't have to drink that to make me happy. But I am happy you tried it." The grin had faded away, too, so his eyes were just intent again when he lifted them to her face, to study the closest eye, the corners of her black lips where they turned sinuous, then up to the place where her crest emerged from her fur. "You speak like someone who was happy, once. Before you weren't. Is that something you want to talk about? With me? No pressure - it just seems like it might be a big part of you."

The flight wasn't going to be all that long - they were already well into the thirty minutes or so that would speed them from Northern Wyoming to Quar's dome. Had the pilot taken the parabolic path to the edge of the atmosphere, it might have been even less, but at these short hops there wasn't any need. Ray understood that, intellectually. He understood that when they got back to the dome, this was done. Nothing like this would happen under Vern's watch, and where couldn't he see with one of those house-fly-sized cameras or a silent little marble drone?

And that sucked. But sucking the marrow out of this moment didn't mean trying to cram as much physicality into it as he could. Entwining his fingers with hers meant too much to let go, even when his palm got a little sweaty. He tipped against her, pressing his temple to her shoulder, and closed his eyes so watching that river display in the floor wouldn't turn into a countdown.

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Cute? Maybe something was lost in the translation from English to Cant to Plenitongue. One ear tilted sideways and Quar huffed a hot blow of air from her nostrils across his hand when it came near. That display of vexation was only in jest, and did not match the gentle wagging of her tail. Inwardly she was pleased that she had done something right in dealing with a human, even if it was only a little thing.

"You have amazingly nimble fingers," she sighed, eyelids fluttering shut when he touched her. Normally she might not have leaned into the touch so obviously, but now, with few inhibitions, she tilted her head very slightly to guide his knuckles over the sensitive bridge of her nose. When her eyes opened again they were only slivers of liquid black and a flash of storm blue, but they remained trained on him, breaking contact only briefly when she leaned forward to set her drink on the floor between their feet.

When she leaned back again she brought her legs up on the couch, one tucked beneath the other, her lower body angled toward his so that her knees brushed his thigh. She hated how clunky her feet felt in those boots, but... she was glad now that she'd worn them. Otherwise her bare pads would've touched the floor in O'Shannon's, a truly unsettling prospect.

His boneless melting against her side touched a place inside of Quar that she'd thought sealed away. He could not possibly know the shiver of pleasure his touch produced on the inside of her skin. Yes, let me be your pillow, she thought, sighing. Nothing could ever entice her to move. With her newly free hand she clasped her palm over both of theirs. After a moment she lifted that hand very slightly, still covering him in her warmth, to trace a single pad along the back of his hand. It stopped to feel at the bony part of his wrist, then continued up his arm to explore the muscle, this time with more fingers exerting a slight pressure. A single claw snicked out to trace the lines of his markings. She'd meant to ask him the meaning of these pictures, but then...

A spark faded from her eyes as her gaze deepened. Her ears splayed and sagged until they were parallel to the ground, and the languid curling of her tail gradually stilled. Even with her muzzle angled down, she could not see much of his face due to her height and the fact that he was leaning on her shoulder. Mostly the tops of his brows and his nose. It was just as well. It would be harder to speak looking straight at him.

How much to tell him? And how to say it? For so long when she spoke of Nahrosh it had been my husband is but, in time, she'd begun to say my husband was. It hurt, every time she caught herself saying those words. Like he was already dead, like she'd already moved on. Well, perhaps she had been moving on, considering her recent attempts at courting. No matter how much she wanted to believe she could wait for him, Quar was only mortal, and a flawed one, at that. She was not a queen from a fable who could wait a thousand years for true love's return.

"My husband..." she said, very quietly. Very simply. She had meant for that to be the beginning of a sentence but the words died in her. That phrase communicated so much, she thought. Her hand tightened on his again, this time for longer, and when the fingers relaxed it was with a clear reluctance – like she needed something to hold onto.

"Is?" "Was?" Which would it be?

She steeled herself with a long, steady, silent breath. The pause had already stretched on long enough that it probably wasn't clear whether or not she was going to continue. When she did speak her narration was filled with pauses, though her voice remained steady.

"...He was very ill. We had... thirty-three years together... Half of my life. A fraction of his. The largest harem I ever had through those years was four. The other husbands, they flitted into our lives and out again, but Nahrosh... Nahrosh was mine for life. He was my joy. I don't... I still have not learned how to live without him. I do not want to learn. Sometimes. It was only loneliness that drove me to seek others."

Part way through speaking she'd let her eyes close. The tears that suddenly oozed out from under both eyelids to trickle down her cheeks had no warning at all. No hitch in her voice, no stinging nose. She was reminded of the first days without Nahrosh, when she would begin crying at any time. Her eyes had continually leaked no matter what she was doing. Now those tears carved dark paths through her fur and gathered the fluff at the bottom of her jaw into dripping stalactites. One such drop pattered down onto Ray's arm.

Quar hated that. It was a sad topic, yes, but certainly not a fresh pain. It was almost as if the tears had no connection to her mental state.

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He never truly forgot the tattoos, but Ray sometimes forgot that they were anything noticeable. They were a part of him as much as his hair or his muddy eyes. When Quar explored his arm, he assumed that her pads - which had something of the texture of a very fine-grit emery cloth: simultaneously grippy and non-abrasive - were feeling for the muscles that bulged and shifted beneath his skin when his fingers moved. He tapped them in quick sequence, a pantomime of the motion someone might make while they were waiting, and his forearm shifted and retracted like snakes moved beneath it. "You should have seen Michelle," he answered her compliment, gaze fixed vaguely on crankshaft movements of his knuckles. "Or even Oranda. Drawing. The perfectly little pictures that would come out of their fingers."

Her husband? His head lifted from her arm so he could se her face again. Had he misunderstood just what it was that made this little intimacy taboo. If she was married...

He could have spiraled off into the black-hole of doubt that the possibility presented, but instead he listened, and as she continued he straightened away from her entirely, pulling up his knees between them to watch her as she spoke.

"I'm sorry."

I know what it's like.

It would have been the easiest thing to say, but no-- No, he fucking didn't. Just as she wouldn't know what it was like if he told her about Michelle. They weren't the same grief. Nobody's was. He couldn't even be sure he really carried grief, or if shell-shocked numbness was something else and he'd let other people talk him into believing it was grief. He missed Michelle, terribly, but he'd missed her before she died, and what he was left with was a sort of partial sundering that was never going to have a chance to resolve. He was still her husband, but it was possible - maybe even probable - that others knew her better, loved her more fiercely, when she died.

It wasn't like Quar's pain at all. But what were the chances? Both widowed, both... Maybe the chances were higher, actually. Were they really connecting person-to-person? Maybe they were each just an outlet, a safe path for intimacy that didn't intrude upon the memory of their loss, because they were a different species. Certainly, she would never see him as another ...Narosh?

Slowly, he pushed himself up so he was standing on his knees, so he could lean into Quar's shoulder and then stretch his leg across her, to straddle her lap and sit across her thighs. His eyes searched hers, dancing back and forth, and then followed the streaks in her fur. His fingers rose to touch them, and the saltwater drops transferred to his fingertips, spreading out over his prints. "These are important. They're so much better than feeling nothing." Slipping his hands between the ruffles, he pressed those fingertips into her ruff, approximately where a human heart was.

Without saying anything else, his arms wrapped around her, and he leaned into an embrace, a tight squeeze that left nothing behind - she could take it, he was sure. He buried his face near her throat, where the fur hid his face. I wish I could cry like that. A few times he had, but they were selfish tears.

People talked about a hole when their partner died - a raw, unclosing wound where their other was ripped away. Michelle hadn't left him raw. He carried a gravestone inside him instead - cold, heavy, and when he tried to address it, all he got was his own voice echoing back. It was nothing he was going to burden Quar with, but right now, holding her seemed to take a little of that burden away anyway.

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Quar pulled back her head to blink at Ray through the blurriness in her eyes, perplexed by his movements. She lifted her hands hesitantly, at first unsure where to place them, but as her paws settled on his hips it seemed the natural thing to do. She returned his gaze less assuredly, first squeezing down her lids and then blinking rapidly to clear the moisture away, and even after that it took a moment for her to settle her eyes fully on his own. When she did, she was drawn into him. That... that expression on his face was something she had never seen before, like he was looking into her soul. (As much as she had come to hate that word, it was the best label she could find to describe her own sense of personhood beyond her body, which, in the era of gene sculpting, really was no more than a vessel for her consciousness.)

That gaze pinned her, and she only broke it when his fingers moved toward her eyes, and even then it was only so she could blink fresh tears away. When he hugged her, Quar's own hands moved up his back, sliding, never breaking contact with his body. Magnet and steel, she thought. He was so very solid under her hands...

"You're right," she said hoarsely, her voice finally cracking, the grief that would seem to warrant such tears suddenly surging in her. Then, with force, "But I am so weary of this pain. Years pass, and it hasn't –" Like a puppet with the strings cut, her head slumped down against his, and her arms wrapped full around him, tightening to crush him against her. It hasn't gotten easier, she'd started to say. That wasn't really true – she sometimes went entire days not thinking of Nahrosh – but in this moment that was how she felt.

Quar let her entire body curl into his. Her jaw rested against the top of his skull. Her arms held him tightly, her paws gripping his ribs. Even her tail curled up to touch his side with a loose loop. She held him and let herself be held by him for what felt the longest time, just squeezing him, absorbing his warmth and strength and most importantly his comfort without a single thought to what it might cost her. The tears continued to slowly leak from her closed eyes, wetting his hair.

Gradually her hands shifted over his back so that her arms weren't wrapped around his torso. Instead they moved to cradle, one at the back of his scalp and the other at the small of his back, gripping him firmly but gently. Her jaw slid along the top of his head until it was the side of her muzzle pressed to his temple, and her breath blew hot against his skin.

"You are so sweet to me, Ray," she whispered, whiskers moving against him and breath ghosting over the top of his ear. She turned her head just enough to press the end of her snout against his flesh, leaving a kiss of moisture from her nose. Her tongue oozed out from her barely parted jaws to press a real kiss onto him, slow and chaste, and when her tongue pulled back into her mouth she merely breathed on him while her fingers kneaded where they held him. "...I have never known anyone... like you."

The hand on his scalp moved down to his shoulder to push, to gently urge him to sit back only so she could look into his eyes again. The hand on his back moved between them to hold him under the chin, supporting the underside of his jaw with her knuckles while her thumb stroked along the bone. The fur on the backs of her fingers was smoothly textured, like her nose, because the hairs were very short and lay in one direction.

Holding his chin in place so he would not move, she ducked her head in to kiss him again, this time right between and slightly above his eyes, on the place where lines sometimes formed with certain expressions. Her furred lips touched him first, then the smushing warmth of her tongue, and now that he was holding himself upright again the hand on his shoulder petted down his flank.

A new pheromone and its accompanying smell trickled out into the lounge. It was yeasty, with an acidic bite that lingered at the back of the nose, like vinegar or skunk spray but without the accompanying stench. While many Rriigkhan pheromone scents could be subtle to a human, this one was not.

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It felt ironic (it probably wasn't) that now, when he was twice as old and supposedly wiser, Ray still had to resist the urge to answer that there wasn't anything special about him. It wasn't just self-deprecation, even if he had a tendency toward that; it was a Tannerism: out of nine billion people on Earth, very few of them were special. But the moments between people, and the relationships that entangled them - those could be special. With someone else, some random Jenny or Kathleen or Rylee, he wasn't sweet or unique, just the guy who kept the water flowing and the air a constant temperature.

In this particular configuration of Quar and Ray, some kind of important chemistry happened. He was special just because he got to participate in it.

His answer to her? A heavy outbreath against her fur that fluttered with something like soft laughter, and eyes that closed when she kissed him. His own hands had slipped down past her ruff, to the part of her belly where they became as fine as baby's hair, and played idly, unconsciously there. He didn't argue with her hands or the way she moved them, letting her mold his body to the position that suited her kiss. Something hung in the air, collecting, building like that electrical storm once more. It was like the cave, but without the urgency of surviving his attempted murder at the hands of some alien insect. This time, there was no rush; they had all the time--

<<One minute until touchdown.>> The pilot's voice projected ambiently from the walls of the transport, so it felt like it came from everywhere at once, not just on the other side of the bulkhead. <<Please ensure you are secure.>> More than likely the landing would be even more gentle than liftoff, especially with the benefit of Quar's clear field, but if any point of Rriigkhan flight still held danger, landing was it.

Ray's eyes opened, then wider, and he blinked as his eyes began to burn. Natural air from Wyoming had gradually been thickened with Rriigk biota, but it was thicker than that, and he could smell sex in the air; this time he understood that whatever he smelled, for Quar - for Vern, for the Pilot - it would be a hundred times stronger.

Wasting a few of those precious sixty seconds, Ray squeezed the hand beneath his chin, kissed the back of her fingers, and then gave her the hand back. He leaned, his arm swooped to gather up the beer bottle from the floor, and he fixed her with a last tight-lipped smile before hurrying back to his nwohl seat, and touching his hair at the important points to ensure that it hadn't fallen too badly out of place. And because it was still flying, he swallowed and pulled the restraints out from either side to slip his arms through.

Quar's paws followed Ray until they couldn't anymore, when he moved away from the outstretched arm that helped support him as he swung off her lap, when he slipped beyond the reach of her trailing fingertips. When he was gone she wilted. That was only in her slumping posture, and the fists she set on her thighs. Her ears she forced to stand up, knowing the pilot would see her soon, and she wiped her fingers under her eyes again and again to get rid of as much moisture as possible. Her <affection> faded.

"All well with the flight?" the pilot called once the door slid open. The question didn't include Ray at all, but he'd already stood, waiting as the door finished opening, and hopped down beside the ramp to stand beside it outside it.

"All well," she echoed tonelessly as she stood.

She paused at the base of the ramp, body angled toward him while her fingers curled in the bottom hem of the funeral dress and her tail slowly twitched. She studied his face, her own expression neutral but slightly slackened from drunkenness, considering, but only for a moment... and then her gaze dropped.

No storm had swept through the dome, of course, and the fields at the base of the dome had been tuned to keep the wind from blowing the little cookout away, so the remains of it still lingered at the other side of the field under the big, sprawling oak: string lights under the bows, a handful of staff lingering to talk and laugh, Martine with a little amplified ukelele hum-singing through somewhere over the rainbow.

Ray waited until Quar reached the bottom of the ramp before clasping his hands behind his back and tipping his head. "Goodnight, Ghara." He turned and made his way over toward the table to slip onto the edge of a bench beside Deb.

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"Good night," she said, her voice subdued, and turned toward the path that would take her home. With every step her heart sank a little further.

Here she was, on her own property, walking away from what she wanted because other people were watching. If Quar had reached out her hand to Ray, he'd have taken it. She was Ghara to everyone within this dome. No one could stop her doing whatever she wished, and yet, she could not bring herself to reach for him... and that failure produced one of the ugliest sensations she had ever known. It was nausea hardening into a dark lump in her belly. It was grief and confusion pinching at her behind the eyes, pressure in her chest.

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In the ongoing semi-dialog inside his head, Ray told himself that he was loitering outside with the remains of the local memorial to help diffuse the scents that would be lingering on him. Other than Quar and Vern, he didn't regularly encounter other Rriigkhan, but he'd seen them and just running into Vern would be enough. He'd seen Quar's little crest-worms out at the end, and he had to guess that whatever that scent was, it would linger, and it would be damning. It wouldn't fit into the context of a memorial service. Then again, neither did the laughing and story-telling of the night here, maybe. It felt more like the tail end of a holiday, or lingering at a bar on Saturday Night until they started putting up the stools to shoo everyone away.

Were he being fully honest, he would have admitted that he didn't want to be alone. Alone, Ray would have pitched headlong into his thoughts about what happened that evening, which inevitably would mean guessing at the future, dreading the possibility that he'd open himself up to her just to have it all splash back into his face, as it had before.

But that was just a dim shape on the horizon of his mind, not a thought that he actively engaged as he sat beside Deb. He'd only just tipped back the beer he'd brought with him off the ship and rolled the empty bottle so the ridged bottom made a pleasing vibration on the table when he was offered another. Another followed shortly thereafter, and by the next, he was well into that pleasant, warming buzz of weariness and inebriation where everything was silver-edged, and he could just completely relax.

While he was a grinning drunk anyway, today he sat and listened to the others, face resting on his knuckles so it smooshed up one cheek and pressed an eye nearly shut, with the smile of secret knowledge. He and Quar had a thing. Somebody liked him. Somebody wanted him. And he, in turn, wanted her. She was a new world he'd only camped on the shore of - there was so much of her to explore, so much to learn about, and yet more than plumb her depths, he just wanted to touch her face again, to rub his thumb through that little valley at the center of her snout and watch her eyes roll closed in pleasure and feel that rumble in her chest. He wanted to bury his face in her ruff, and kiss the fine fur of her belly. He wanted to feel her tail wrap around his calf.

Did Rriigks practice oral sex? If he went down on her, would her claws come out when she was holding his head? Would she be able to avoid her teeth if she went down on him. God, but he wanted to feel her arms wrapped tight around him, holding him like she'd never let him go while he was moving inside her. Even that weird, yeasty smell that she made - almost like beer when it's just mash - had left this memory his his head of promise, and he wanted to bathe in it, to be surrounded by it.

"What you smiling at, Whiteboy?" Martine asked at one point during the night, when he handed Ray a pair of bottles so he could open for both of them. It was the first time Martine had called him anything but 'Ray', and he knew immediately that it meant he and Martine were friends, even if Ray had been spending a lot of time with Quar, and that made him suspicious. He could just tell these things when he was drunk, and he wasn't second-guessing every instinct.

"Nothing. Just glad to be here."

Martine clinked bottles with him and nodded. "Fuckin' ey."