“Hello. Are you ill? Shall I call a medic?”

“Huh? No, I’m fine. I just ran here really, really fast. I tried your comms but you weren’t picking up.” She paused to gulp down a few more lungfuls and then tentatively let go of the doorframe, roaming her eyes up along his bare torso until she got to his face, where she was sure she saw a brief smug smirk cross his features. “Sorry if I interrupted anything.”

“Just a shower. What’s the matter?”

Just a shower, her mind reeled at the notion. She noticed now that he had a towel in one hand and, failing to stop her eyes from drifting down over his naked chest again, saw the droplets of water clinging to him, a couple of them tracing rivulets down over the creamy yellow scales to the darker orange-red at his stomach, and lower, to coalesce and diffuse into the fabric at his hips. Her cheeks flushed.

“Uh... Sorry. It’s Brat, I think he’s hatching. The cocoon started cracking.”

“Oh!” Geoffrey spun on his heels and retreated into his quarters, leaving the door open. Cam gingerly stepped just over the threshold, enough for the door to close behind her, and waited while he busied himself in a room out of view. When he emerged again he was fully clothed, much to Cam’s simultaneous relief and disappointment.

“I don’t think I have it in me to run all the way back.” She watched Geoffrey stuffing some recording equipment into a satchel. “But I can give you my keycard if you want to sprint ahead, and I’ll catch up when I’ve got my breath back.”

“No need.” Geoffrey slung the pack on his shoulder then guided her with him out into the corridor. “Hop onto my back.”

Cam perked a brow. “Are you serious?”

“I can carry you and sprint.” Geoffrey assured her. “My family may have constantly berated me for my lack of strength, but what little I do have will easily extend to carrying such a slight thing as you.”

“You sure know how to charm a gal.” Cam was short, but she was by no means slim; a few years of wrestling with the station’s rickety ships and hauling around the necessary maintenance machinery and heavy hull panels had given her a fair bit of bulk; ‘guns for days’, as Vi would often joke. “Go on, then.”

Geoffrey dropped to one knee and gestured to his back; Cam climbed on and wrapped her arms around his neck, and he stood and then sprinted for the elevator. He’d been right – he was handling her weight as if it was nothing, his powerful reptilian legs pumping them quickly along the corridors to the elevator. She barely had time to savour being so close to him when she had to disembark.

“And you say you’re weak for a Clakovian?” She gawked at him as they waited impatiently for the elevator to move.

“Quite so.” Geoffrey smiled a little. “A ‘skinny little runt’, as my mother would often call me.”

Cam frowned. “Well, fuck her. Oh, shit – I’m sorry, was that super offensive?”

Geoffrey’s smile widened briefly. “No, I rather share the sentiment.”

“So other clakovians are bigger?”

“By far. Taller, wider, more muscular. Wider shoulders.” He held out his arms. “”Ripped’, in the common parlance, I believe.”

The elevator lurched into movement and began its silent passage through the station.

“Well, I think you look fit as hell exactly as you are.” Camryn’s eyes widened and she slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she mumbled through her fingers; “that was supposed to be an inside thought...”

The tip of Geoffrey’s tail flicked energetically from side to side, the bristles on the back of his neck rustled, and his claws dug so hard into the elevator floor that they left dents in the metal. He sighed, looking down, still smiling a little.

“Well, since my thoughts appear to be constantly broadcasting when I’m around you whether I like it or not, it’s only fair you share your inner monologue with me on occasion, I’d say...”

“Hah!” Cam guffawed. “Careful what you wish for. My inner monologue is usually not fit for public consumption, especially when I’m around you.”

“Is that so?” Geoffrey regarded her with that same smug little smirk he’d had when she was failing not to objectify him when he was half-naked in his doorway.

Saving her from spurting any more incriminating tidbits about what went on inside her head regarding Geoffrey, the elevator came to a quick stop and the doors hissed open. Wasting no time, Geoffrey took the knee again, Cam climbed on board, and they were off, sprinting through the passages much to the horror of any oncoming foot traffic, until they got to her door.

Camryn slid from his back and quickly swiped her keycard. They bundled through the open door and made a beeline for the corner ceiling that Brat had chosen as his temporary home, but the cocoon was empty, a gaping hole in its side, and Brat nowhere to be seen.

Cam sighed dejectedly, but Geoffrey was already pulling little scanner devices from his pack and pointing them at the empty shell.

“Sorry.” Cam slumped onto her sofa. “I didn’t think it would be so quick.”

“Not at all.” Geoffrey swapped one beeping device for another and continued taking readings. “This is fascinating. The shell is some kind of silicate composite with traces of some unknown element.”

“Unknown? As in... unknown?”

Geoffrey glanced at her, his eyes sparkling, and she felt a little surge of warmth for him.

“Indeed. At least, unknown to this equipment, and I updated the software and firmware three days ago. I suppose it could be an equipment error, but everything else seems to be functioning correctly. I’ll check the bug reports when I’m back just in case, but I’m more inclined to believe that this is something...” He paused, checked the readings one more time, and then slid the device back into his satchel, turning to give her his full attention. “Never before seen.”

“Huh.” Cam leaned back on the sofa, and Geoffrey joined her, perching on the edge and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

“I’ll send the data for analysis to the device manufacturers tomorrow, unless you’d rather I didn’t?” He asked her.

“No, it’s fine. Actually – send it to V first and she’ll strip identifiers from it then ping it through the planetary system relays so that it’s harder to trace back.”

“Good call.” Geoffrey nodded, interlacing his fingers and then pulling them apart again, like a nervous tick.

“What are the odds,” Cam leaned forwards so that their arms were almost touching, “that we’re a station chucking junk into a wormhole that we know fuck all about, and in the same week that the wormhole apparently spits a freaking intergalactic sausage recipe from beyond the void at me, an unknown creature turns up on the station and it’s assumed it hitched a ride on someone’s ship unnoticed, but what if it didn’t?”

“Slim.” Geoffrey said after a moment’s silence. Whenever he un-clasped his fingers, the fabric of his shirt sleeve would brush against hers and make her arm tingle.

“And the creature made a weird freaky eldritch goddamned city in its fish tank that makes my head spin whenever I look at it.” Cam continued, and shifted her arm slightly outwards, so that their elbows were touching.

“And ensconced itself upon your ceiling in a cocoon made partly from a material that seems to be unknown in our corner of the universe.” Geoffrey stopped clasping and un-clasping his fingers, his hand drifting towards hers.

“And we just... lost it...” The backs of their hands touched, their fingers slotting into each others’ and shifting so that their fingertips pressed together. They sat there quietly, staring at their own hands, digesting both the weight of this potentially monumental fuck-up and the apprehensively exciting advancement of their relationship, until Cam’s door buzzer cut jarringly through the silence.

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He pulled a scruffy folded map of the station from his back pocket and scanned over the diagram with his finger until he found the right number. The lower levels? Interesting – now he might be getting somewhere. Jareth took the next elevator down and exited cautiously, hoping the time between lifts had put enough distance between them that she wouldn’t hear the pneumatic doors hissing open and closed.

The corridors on this level were dusty enough that he could easily trace her bootprints along them. He hoped he wouldn’t catch anything and already had the sensation of cobwebs clinging to his hair – were there spiders in space? – he’d need to factor in time for a quick shower before reporting back to Draegan’s; couldn’t have them seeing him at anything less than Peak.

Jareth squinted through the gloom, poking his nose into the open doorways of abandoned workshops and stretches of corridor cut short by stacks of desks and chairs blocking the way. He’d heard this part of the station closed because of cost cutting something something boring blah blah, and nobody came down here any more – the perfect place to bring a chick on a date, though, quiet and out of the way. Make up some spooky ghost story, get her hugging in all close...

His mind began to wander and he almost stumbled into the direct line of sight of Cam and that weird little sausage vendor from the canteen around the next corner, and shuffled back quickly, pressing back against the wall and holding his breath. When he was sure he hadn’t been noticed, he ducked into the room behind him and crept beneath the windows along the corridor until he was close enough to hear them.

They were talking about complicated business things like profit margins and upscaling. He drew in a deep breath that was intended to precede a long sigh of boredom, and that’s when it hit him – that smell! What was it? He hastily drew in another breath, and then another, sucking the air deep into his lungs, turning his head every which way. He followed his nose, found an air vent at the bottom of the adjoining wall and lay down on the floor and pressed his face against it. Damn, this beat the smell of Draegan’s burgers by a million billion. He licked his lips, huffing hungrily at the vent. No wonder Draegan wanted in on whatever was going on here.

He waited for them to stop talking and heard their footsteps echoing along the empty corridors, then snuck from his hiding spot and along the corridor to the doorway to the next room. He peered through the grubby windows, seeing a setup that looked familiar to some of the things he’d seen in the back rooms of the canteen, with shiny metal surfaces that were a stark comparison to the dust-caked abandoned rooms on the rest of this level.

Jareth reached for the door handle, then paused and pulled his sleeve down over his hand. He frowned – this was one of his favourite shirts with a cut that really showed off his pecs and he’d hate to stain it with something that wouldn’t wash out. Besides, who’d be fingerprinting the place? This wasn’t a crime scene. He was just having a look – no harm in that, right?

He jiggled the handle, and when it didn’t give, he crunched it hard and broke the mechanism. The door drifted open and the smell hit him full force. The lights were still on and his eyes landed on the racks and racks of sausages cooling on the counter – sausages that were giving off the most delicious, most mouth-watering smell he had ever smelled in his whole damn life.

There were loads of them, trays and trays in rows along the counter and they looked delicious, too. They wouldn’t miss one, would they? He had to taste one. How could he not, with a smell like that? He walked up and down the line of sausages on display, eyeing every one. Would it be better to take one from the middle, or from an end? Which would be least noticed?

One on the end, he decided, and reached for it tentatively. He took the girthy tube in his fingers gently, plucked it from the rack and held it under his nose like a cigar, sniffing it first before taking a little nibble from the tip.

His eyes bulged. God damn he’d never tasted anything like this. He took another bite, and then another, and soon was working his way through the second then third then fifth sausage before he’d even realised what he was doing.

Fuck. Fuck! He didn’t even know what was in these – was he carb-loading? Were there even carbs in sausages usually? They tasted sweet – was there sugar in them? Fuckity shit fuck, he couldn’t be doing with stuffing himself full of sausage! He’d have to cut off shift an hour early and squeeze in an extra gym session just in case.

He backed away from the rack, knocking over an empty steel tray from the counter behind him, and forced himself to step through the door and back out into the corridor. Clearly these sausages had an addictive property, a chemical in the smell that made people crave them and eat sausage uncontrollably! Is that what they were up to? Some kind of sausage take-over?!

Draegan had to be told. Draegan had to be told right god-damn now.

****

In the insurmountable void there exists only nothingness, vast and all-engulfing. Eternal are the masters of this space, the ebb and flow of time that ripples forth the facets of creation and embraces all things through life and in death.

In the insurmountable void there exists only nothingness, vast and...

In the insurmountable...

There is awareness.

There is presence, physical and tangible.

The insurmountable void pushes against all things, expanding for all eternity until all is engulfed -

A congregation of atomic particles coalesce into a cohesive unit giving form to the insurmountable void that engulfs and embraces -

The insurmountable void will not be contained!

****

Cam glanced up from her datapad to the cocoon in the corner of the ceiling, fixing it with a hard stare through the silence.

There was an almost inaudible crack, like an egg breaking, and a little cloud of dust drifted to the floor.

“Oh, shit.”

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Cam paced up and down the cargo hold of her ship, booted foot-falls echoing on the cross-hatch metal floor. She checked her watch again, sighed, leaned onto one of the railings, tapped her fingers, and then got up and started pacing again.

“Hello,” She heard Geoffrey's voice behind her and span on her heels. He was peering around the open cargo hold doors and carrying a bucket filled with cleaning supplies.

“Hey,” She smiled and waved him in. “Please excuse the sorry state of my ship, but y'know – the station doesn't care much for upkeep.”

“Mm,” He chuckled, setting the bucket down on the floor and pulling out a variety of bottles and cloths. “It's not as if you're doing anything dangerous like flying into a vacuum or anything. Oh, wait...”

“Yeah. I'm surprised the Powers That Be sanctioned this, even. Usually we've gotta clean our own stuff, outside of our flight hours.”

“I think the last time our team got assigned ship cleaning duty was just after I arrived on the station – a few years ago now,” He stood up with a cloth in his hand and hooked a few bottles onto his toolbelt.

“Two years and a bit,” She nodded. “I remember.”

He cast her a lingering glance, smiling, and she blushed at making it clear she knew how long he'd been on the station.

“So, uh,” Cam cleared her throat. “Is there anything I can help with?”

“Not at all,” He started spraying down the bare metal walls with detergent. “Regulation says you've got to be here, but no, you don't need to do anything. Just sit there and look pretty.”

He wasn't looking at her when he said that last bit, and good thing too, because she was blushing again. It didn't take much, where Geoffrey was concerned; especially not right now, with him cleaning her ship, just like she'd dreamed.

Well, not just like. Small mercies.

“You rushed off earlier,” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Is everything alright?”

She hopped up onto a railing, hooked her feet behind the crossbar and balanced herself with her hands on either side.

“Oh. Yeah.” She looked out through the cargo hold doors, looked at the other ships she could see getting the same treatment as hers. “Yeah, it's fine. Sorry about that.”

“You seem to have a habit of leaving me stranded in random corridors,” He grinned at her, reaching for a brush and starting to scrub where he'd sprayed.

She laughed. “Yeah, I guess I do. I should try to spice it up a bit, maybe leave you stranded in an elevator next time, or one of the cargo bays.”

“I don't know if I could take the excitement,” He rubbed his bare forearm over his forehead. He'd pushed his sleeves up above the elbow, exposing the beginnings of the colourful stripes that ran up along his arms.

She caught herself staring and looked away.

“It's okay,” Geoffrey moved to the next panel and unhooked the spray bottle from his belt again.

“Hmm?” She arched a brow.

“I'm the only Cleckovian on the station. I don't know how many of us you've seen, but can't be many. We don't tend to get out much. You can look; it's okay.”

She felt herself getting hot under the collar. “You're the only one I've seen,” She answered his question. “I don't mean to stare though. I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“Not at all,” He reached for the brush again. “If it were any one else, I might. But you? It's fine.”

Cam smiled at him and then looked down at the floor, feeling a little self-conscious. When she looked up again he'd turned his attention back to the wall and was scrubbing intently.

“Why don't Cleckovians get out much?”

He took a beat before answering and for a moment she wasn't sure he'd heard her over the noise of the brush rubbing against the metal.

“My species are uh... Traditional,” He spoke slowly as though he were paying close attention to his choice of words. “Customs and caste and 'the way things are meant to be'. Space travel is a new concept to us. Leaving your position to fly off into space is uh... Well, it's not done.”

He was frowning when he looked over at her between swapping the brush for the spray again. He crossed over to her side of the cargo bay and started spraying down the far panel.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry.”

“You're not,” He said, focusing intently on the wall. “It's just... A difficult subject for me to talk about. Personal. Not that I don't want to tell you,” His fiery eyes flicked over at her briefly. “I do. But it's difficult.”

She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Okay.”

“What about you? Your people, space travel?”

“Oh, I'm a bit of a nomad,” She chuckled. “My parents were traders. Travelled everywhere. When I was old enough, I set off on my own to uh, forge my own path. Didn't get very far,” She gestured at the ship, “as you can see.”

“You didn't want to become a trader too?” He moved to the panel right next to where she was sitting. The subtle muskiness of his aroma carried through the sharp smell of disinfectant, and she inhaled, slowly but deliberately, taking it in.

“Nah. My parents were... Not entirely honest. I don't have that in me, that ability to con people. Just can't do it.”

“That's not a bad thing,” He smiled at her. “How did you end up here?”

“Oh, well...” She drummed her fingers on the railing and sighed. “It's the trash. I... kinda hate it. I was down on Sigma 304 working, and looking up at this sky filled with junk every day... I just couldn't.”

“You're here to help clean space?”

“Yeah,” She shrugged. “I know I'm just one of however many people doing this job. I know if I quit, someone else would take my place and do the same thing. But I can't. It just irritates me so much, and I have to do something. You know? Get my hands dirty. There are so many people down on that planet who complain and complain all day about the state the sky is in but not a single one of them cares enough to do something about it.”

“You did,” He'd stopped cleaning and was standing next to her listening intently.

“Ah, but I'm not from Sigma 304. I didn't grow up in a luxury space colony with beautiful views and luxury commodities and billboards everywhere telling everyone to spend, spend, spend. You'd think they'd care more, considering they grew up there, that it's their precious sky being sullied.”

Geoffrey sighed quietly. “But they don't. They just make the mess; they don't want to clean it up.”

“Exactly,” She looked down and saw his hand resting on the railing next to hers. “Not that they're the only ones to blame. They're just the ones being spoonfed that lifestyle, being told from every angle to mindlessly consume.”

“You're more than you let on,” He said after a moment, narrowing his eyes at her.

She chuckled and hopped off the railing, turning around to drape her forearms over it instead, facing him. “Yeah? Well now I'm curious. What did you peg me as?”

He leaned over the railing likewise, just inches away from her. “Hmm. What do you call those buttery pastry things shaped like crescent moons that they serve at the canteen in the mornings?”

“Croissants?” She arched a quizzical brow.

“Yes! Croissants. I thought you were like a croissant. They look substantial, but the really good ones, they're delicious but there's a lot of air inside.”

She guffawed. “Well gee, thanks.”

“But you're not a croissant,” He hurriedly continued “As I am quickly learning.”

“So what am I, if not a croissant?”

“Hmm, let me think. Ah! A fruit pie.”

“A fruit pie. Hmm. Alright, explain that one to me.”

They were so close that the fabric of her jacket was touching his forearm, and when he gestured with his hands she could feel the movement through the cloth. Her heart started beating a little faster. She dared not look at him, knowing how close he'd be, but she felt rude not meeting his eyes – they were having a conversation, after all. She glanced up at him, found that his eyes were sparkling with something akin to mischief, that the corners of his wide reptilian mouth were curved upwards into a little smile.

“I um... Well,” He looked up and across to the other side of the ship, and then down at the floor, smiling a little wider. “Sweet, wholesome, and filled with a variety of delicious things.”

“Huh,” She could hardly contain the wide grin that was tugging at her lips.

“I'd have said a sausage, given your penchant for them, but... No, not colourful enough.”

“Fruit pie,” She mulled it over. “Yeah, I think I can live with that. Spacegal Fruitpie.”

He laughed. “A solid nickname.”

“Now we just need a nickname for you.”

“You mean aside from Geoffrey?” He quirked a brow at her and turned back to the job at hand, spraying down the next panel.

“Geoffrey's a nickname?”

“Of course,” He chuckled. “Do I look like a Geoffrey?”

“Now that I think about it, yeah, not so much,” She laughed. “So what's your real name?”

He turned back to her, curling his hands around the railings and bracing himself with straight forearms. He took a breath, and then reeled off a complex combination of guttural growls and lyrical trills the like of which she'd never heard before. Her eyes widened.

“That's your name?!” She gawked at him.

“Indeed.” The mischief was gone from his eyes now, and he was back to his slightly bashful normal demeanour. “That is why people began calling me Geoffrey. The Clackovian language is unpronounceable to most non-reptilian species, and even to a few reptilian.”

“Damn,” She was still staring at him wide-eyed. “That was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.”

​ His eyes burned into hers, which utterly ruined her ability to not think about that dream and that fantasy and he was right here cleaning her ship and her cheeks caught fire again. Geoffrey looked down at the rosy glow, frowned, cleared his throat and stepped back, turning his ministrations to her bulkhead once again.

​ Cam scowled, heart thumping in her chest, and took a deep breath.

​ “Okay, in an effort to avoid another tragic misunderstanding, what just happened? You’ve done that before, just suddenly turned away from me. Did I do something?”

Geoffrey sighed and stood, stuffing the cleaning cloth through his belt. He fixed his eyes on the floor and she saw his pupils flicking between two panels of grating, his talons curling and uncurling.

“It’s... Silly,” he peeked aside at her and then looked at the floor again.

“Well it just so happens that I love silly.” Cam leaned back against the railing. “Lay it on me.”

“Very well. My species have many patterns and colourations that can occur in myriad combinations, some prolific and common, some more rare... But the rarest of all is a red colouration beneath our eyes. This is not true of all cultures, but the culture of my people specifically, when the red colouration appears, it is said to be a manifestation of the divine.”

His tail was perfectly still and he still stared intently at the floor as if he could stare through the metal by sheer force of will alone.

“Oh.” Cam digested his words. “When I blush, you... You think I’m... ‘manifesting the divine’?”

“No, gosh, no!” He looked up at her and away again, and then back at her, indecisive. “No, it just... it reminds me. I didn’t believe in all that anyway, that’s part of the reason I...” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I don’t think you’re... It’s just...” He shuffled.

This conversation was clearly making him uncomfortable, and suddenly she felt bad for forcing him to address it and making him feel so awkward.

“Hey.” She put her hand on his arm briefly. “Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have-”

“You’re beautiful!” He cut her off, turning to face her fully, his eyes locking on hers again, and making her blush, again. Her skin would be great after this. “You’re beautiful and when you blush it makes me think that maybe you are divine. Not our gods; Clackovian gods are brutal and angsty and vicious – no, something else, something befitting how soft, and gentle, and lovely, you are.”

She stared at him – no, she gawked at him, terribly aware of how wide her eyes were, and how her mouth refused to close, and gosh, he was so close she could see the individual scales on his chest where he had those top few buttons of his overalls undone, and -

Something beeped loudly and made them both jump.

It was her shift alarm.

“Shit. Geoffrey, I-”

“I’ll see you later,” Geoffrey gathered his things, “if you like. I’ll be in my quarters. When your shift is over. If you like.”

“I like,” she mumbled, and then cleared her throat. “I like. Yes – I mean -”

Geoffrey curled a delicious little smile at her, and then stalked off along the cargo bay and down the ramp and was gone, leaving her standing there, still gawking, still blushing.

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“Do you have everything you need?”

We had left the party immediately, and Sebastien had driven me home to snatch up some belongings. I had stuffed a random assortment of clothing and my laptop into a rucksack and practically skipped back to the car where he sat waiting, not daring to stop and think lest my nerve left me.

“I think so.” I dropped my bag into the back seat and resumed my spot in the front passenger side. Of Sebastien Fae’s car. Me. My stomach vaulted.

“Good. This is where we’re going.” He showed me a map on his phone. “This may sound odd, but uh...” He paused and rubbed the back of his neck, wincing slightly. “Would you send the address to someone? Or turn on location sharing on your phone?”

I raised a brow.

“Even though I do feel that I’ve known you for an eternity, realistically we have only just met, and I’m aware that you’re a woman, in a car with a man who is really a stranger-”

He was rambling. I smiled, pulled my phone from my pocket and sent a link to my phone tracking to a friend with a brief explanation, mentioning no names because I knew I’d get a barrage of responses and there was only one person I wanted to be sharing my time with right now.

“There. Though I feel I should also remind you that you’ll be spending the weekend with a porn writer,” I hissed the words with feigned distaste, “and you should probably let someone know. We’re an uncouth bunch, you see. You could be heading into a weekend of debauchery, only to emerge thoroughly corrupted.”

I glanced across at him; his cheeks were flushed, a nervous smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “That sounds awful. Shocking, shameful behaviour. Whatever have I done to deserve such delight?”

“Rescued me from a shitty party, at the very least.” I eased back into the seat as the car turned onto the highway and we picked up speed. The roads were mostly empty at this hour – my favourite time to travel, while the world slept.

“I think we rescued each other.” He moved his hand to rest palm up on the gear stick, and I, throwing caution to the wind, took it. His fingers curled up through mine and squeezed tightly. “Forgive me if I’m cloying. I’m getting more sentimental with the years.”

“Usually it would be, but from you I rather like it. I don’t know why. You’re sincere, despite you professing that you’re a clown.”

“Clowns are sincere.” He took his eyes away from the road a moment to meet mine. “We like to make people smile because we know the tedium of existence. Bringing joy is serious business.”

He still held my hand tightly. There was something in his expression, some almost tangible feeling where the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes met, the laughter lines that were almost too quick to appear, right on cue.

“What were you doing at that party? I know I don’t know you well, but... It seems like the least you place to be.”

“I could say the same for you. You stuck out like a...”

“Sore thumb?”

He laughed. “Non. Like... Like the first flower of spring, bright and vibrant against a blanket of featureless snow.”

“Oh.” My turn to blush.

“If I don’t go to at least some of these parties, I become ‘the weird recluse’ and nobody wants to hire me. So I make an appearance, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it. I usually sit in a corner and try to look as unapproachable as possible until it’s an acceptable time to leave.”

“That’s shit.” I frowned. “You should take up writing, we’re practically expected to be weird recluses.”

He laughed. “Which brings us back to you...”

​ “It’s part of my contract.” I sighed. “I have to attend any events that Dean feels will ‘amplify’ my career, meaning, his career.”

​ “And you are in the hole that is comfortable, because it is familiar, but it is still a hole.”

​ “Yup.”

​ “Is there a termination clause?”

​ “For the contract? There’s a fee. It’s extortionate. It expires soon though, so I’m just riding it out and trying not to think about it too much. Besides – for once, it seems to have worked out in my favour.”

​ “I could say the same.”

​ His fingers pressed into the back of my hand and I looked down at our hands entwined, marveled at the impossibility that I was being whisked away to a country cottage for a weekend with someone as deliciously delectable, both outside and in, as Sebastien Fae. My word-brain barrier broke.

“This is surreal. I’m in a car with you at 2am going to your coastal cottage and we’ve known each other for a sum total of some 180 minutes. 180 minutes! This is unreal!”

He shuffled awkwardly in his seat. “Did you want to go back? There’s an off-ramp coming up – it’s fine if you do-”

“No!” I shook my head and clung to his hand. “Don’t you dare. I’m in one hundred and eleventy percent. It’s just – this is me, weird misfit loner who drinks water at parties she’d rather not be at and tries to avoid talking to anyone and has panic attacks deciding what to wear, and-”

“And you danced with me – with me!” He took the reins of my monologue. “The man who has his back to the room hunched over his own depressive thoughts because even that’s more enjoyable than socialising. Who wears sneakers and no-name jeans to a house party in the Hawthorns even though he knows people will sneer at him for it and he’ll hate it there even more, but goes anyway. And have you seen my hair? It’s not like this on purpose.”

“I like your hair. It makes me wonder...” I trailed off, faltering on the precipice of bravery.

“Mmm?”

“It makes me wonder how it would feel running my fingers through it.”

“Oh.” He grinned briefly, and then regained control of his expression. “Well... Mmm.”

“Mmm?”

“Well now I’ve pictured it.”

“And?” I turned in my seat to angle towards him.

“And if this were happening in one of your books I would ask you to perhaps consider a sci-fi setting where teleportation exists because we still have a few hours car ride to go.”

“Shame.” I was now very aware of the feeling of the palm of his hand against mine, his skin warm and soft. “Won’t you need petrol along the way?”

“No, the tank is – oh. Well, I might. I should, perhaps, stop to fill up, just in case.”

“It would be prudent. Just in case.”

“Well, wouldn’t you know.” He nodded ahead, as the lights of a tall petrol station sign glowed brightly at the side of the highway in the distance. “Kismet.”

“Clearly it’s a sign.” I was grinning; I couldn’t help myself.

“We would be fools to ignore it.” Delicious dimples had appeared in his cheeks where he grinned likewise, and I imagined how the tip of my nose might fit into those little recesses.

“Let no one say that we weren’t sensible.”

“Not a soul.” Sebastien nudged the indicator and the tick, tick, tick matched the thumping of my heart.

The high floodlights of the petrol station lit the empty lot, and Sebastien guided the car into the last slot at the far end, where the light was dimmest. He pulled up the handbrake, turned off the engine, and a blanket of silence descended upon us. At the party we’d been getting up close and personal, each touch leading to another closer dalliance, but now we’d had a distance between us and that uncertainty of first contact had returned.

Sebastien opened the door and stepped out, filling the car with the cool night air. I followed suit and walked around the hood as he watched me approach with an intense curiosity. I stopped at the edge of his bubble, and then took one step closer, into his personal space. He was a head taller than me and I was close enough that I had to crane my neck back to look up at him, and found his eyes, dark pools of mossy green, flicking between mine.

Gently he took my wrists and guided my hands to his shoulders. I stepped closer still and he moved my hands to his neck until my fingertips touched the curls of hair at his collar. I could smell his cologne again, subtle and only noticeable when my nose hovered at those top two open buttons of his shirt. I closed my eyes and drifted forward as if carried on the scent, and caught myself just before my nose touched his skin. My breath fell hot on his shirt, and his likewise close to my ear, our chests rising and falling in unison as anticipation prickled between us.

I remembered the reason for our little pit-stop and reached my hands up into his hair, thick and soft between my fingers. His breath came faster and I struggled against the urge to curl my fingers into fists, my nose now pressed hard into his collarbone. His hands found my hips, traced the curve of my waist, pulling me into him. Our faces turned inwards simultaneously, noses tracing jawlines, trailing cheeks, lips touching, pressing, parting, gasping.

We paused, caught our breath, met each other’s eyes beneath lids hooded and heavy with need.

“Is it how you pictured it?” I moved my fingers through his hair, my voice breathy. His nose nudged against mine, nuzzled at the corner of my mouth.

“Hmm, in the picture in my mind we may have been more horizontal. But the kiss was a welcome addition that I should very much like to revisit.”

“We could take it to the picnic table if horizontal is what you’re after, but I doubt the staff here would appreciate bearing witness to our transgressions.”

“Sadly.” He moved his nuzzling ministrations to my neck and then sighed and stepped back, my hands falling from his neck and into his, where he raised them between us.

“I’d like to revisit the kissing part, too,” I offered quickly, “Just uh, maybe when we can follow through. Because it was really fracking good and we’re still three hours away from a time and a place where we can, you know...”

“Where we reach the part in the story where you trail off with an ellipsis, suggesting pleasures consummated, passions ignited?”

“Oh I don’t think we need to worry about igniting passions.” I coughed, my cheeks furiously hot.

Sebastien Fae placed a gentle kiss on my forehead that made my insides quiver, and escorted me back to the passenger side door.

“Then we should resume our journey,” He paused with one arm on the open door and leaned close to whisper in my ear, “so that I can run my hands through your hair while we assume a decidedly less vertical position.”

The mental image plastered itself on the canvas of my mind and I fell heavily into the car seat with wide eyes, an uncontrollable smirk, and butterflies running rampant in my stomach.

Thank you for reading! If you liked it, let me know at WelshPixie <3

​ “Come on, Miss. Edwards,” My agent pulled at my elbow insistently. “This'll be good for you. I don't know what you're worried about!”

​ I swallowed back my anxiety and let Dean, my round, blotchy-cheeked, thinning-haired agent lead me up the gravel incline. My agent was taking me to a house party. It was in an expensive part of town that I'd heard about but never been to, and the house was a big white cube with large windows and a lovely garden, but there were people here. Lots of people in clothes more expensive than mine sipping drinks that I don't indulge in and gossiping about things I don't care about. Social anxiety curled its icy talons around my innards and twisted, squeezing out waves of panic that crested into the shores of my self-consciousness.

​ The fact that Dean had started calling me Miss. Edwards didn't help. He only called me that after he'd had a few drinks, when he thought it sounded enticingly sophisticated enough to lure me into his greasy hands. I shuddered. We crossed a wild-grassed lawn specked with flowers that I imagined would have been quite colourful in daylight and passed through French doors into a spacious lounge. Dean led me to the open kitchen at the back of the room and bustled us into a small circle of people who politely re-shuffled to make room for us. I smiled apologetically and shrugged my elbow out of Dean's hand.

​ “Miss. Edwards,” Dean moved his now-free hand to the small of my back; “Let me introduce you.”

​ I could feel his clammy skin through the fabric of my 'Define Interesting' baby-doll T from Think Geek. I wished it was the Donna Karan silk tank that was hanging, never worn, in my wardrobe back home. I wished that I'd worn an A-line instead of my short black net skirt and I really wish I'd worn pumps instead of my flat-soled black and silver knee-boots.

​ I probably imagined the glances of distaste as I shook hands with the polished people in the circle. I'm pretty sure the shocking disdain and up-turned noses were a figment of my self-depreciating brain but I saw them none the less and my cheeks flushed as Dean threw names at me that went in one ear and out the other.

​ “And this,” He reached across the circle and tapped the shoulder of a thin man with a shocking mess of brown hair jutting at defiant angles from his cranium who was hunched over the breakfast bar with his back to us, “if he feels us worthy of his presence...”

​ The man swung around on the stool and I drew sharp breath. I knew who he was but let Dean introduce him regardless; if the fates were kind they'd restore my heartbeat while Dean spoke.

​ “Ahh, here he is! Sebastien Fay. Seb, this is Megan Edwards; one of my authors.”

​ I smiled and reached for his outstretched hand. I wisely decided not to speak; I'm always self-conscious of my voice in crowded places, my feeble little voice, and was pretty sure it'd crack with this bombshell that Dean had dropped on me.

​ “Enchanté,” Sebastien Fay brushed his supple fingers along my palm to clasp my hand and his touch made my legs quiver.

​ My eyes were wide; I could feel this but couldn't do a thing about it. I saw myself from an outside perspective, deer-in-the-headlights expression plastered across my gormless face as I stood in my almost-punk outfit with my hand resting in Sebastien Fay's.

​ His soft green eyes crinkled at the corners and his head almost imperceptibly dipped to one side as he regarded me. I swallowed hard, conscious of the flecks of mahogany and slate in his irises, the ginger-brown stubble peppered with maturing grey, the shock of wild, dark chocolate hair that framed his face in its sexy just-got-up halo. My heart fluttered.

​ “You're an author?” He confirmed, his words trickling with the sweet allure of his French accent. He cocked one eyebrow and its majestic curve made me think of a tilde; approximating beauty.

​ He still held my hand in his. There was no creepy brushing of his thumb over my skin, no unnerving exploring of his fingertips; only his strong, warm, grip as he eased me gently through the circle of strangers to the empty breakfast stool next to him. I could feel Dean glaring at my back as I shunned him for Sebastien Fay's enchantment.

​ “Writer!” I nigh-on blurted, aware suddenly that the moments were ticking longer between his question and my answer. I swallowed. “Writer. 'Author' sounds stuffy.”

​ Sebastien Fay's sensuous lips curled upwards, dimples like little half-moons forming at the corners of his mouth and containing his smile in parentheses.

​ “I'm an actor,” He replied. “But I don't like that word either. I prefer clown.”

​ The waves of his eyebrows crested suggestively and the expressive power of his beautiful face was too much for me; I sank heavily onto the stool as my legs turned to jelly.

​ “I know who you are,” I mumbled reverentially. “I've seen some of your films.”

​ “Have you? Which ones?” This time his eyes were the ones to widen with surprise.

​ Sebastien leaned one elbow onto the counter and tucked his feet onto the stool's rest. He looked so comfortable in his own skin, so easily casual and confident in his jeans, white shirt unbuttoned at the collar and the black blazer that hung open. He looked scruffy and sophisticated all at once. My heart thumped hard against my chest and I clasped my trembling hands demurely in my lap.

​ “Uh... I'm not very good with names,” I winced and hoped he wouldn't interpret my lack of remembering with disinterest for the films. They were very good pieces of cinematography, albeit subtitled as I don't understand more than a handful of words in French – very good, that is, even aside from Sebastien Fey's alluring presence that I could quite happily sit and watch all day without understanding a single word.

​ “One of them you were in only briefly, a short scene at a party. In the other, you were a company CEO.”

​ “Ahh,” He nodded. “En Français?”

​ “No,” I shook my head with a blush. “Subtitled. I don't speak much French,” I wrung my hands apologetically. “But they were very good. I like watching low-budget foreign films; they put so much more emphasis on character and story than Hollywood fare.”

​ Sebastien Fey fixed me with such an intensely curious stare I thought I was about to combust.

​ “So, Miss. Edwards the writer; what do you write?”

​ I knew it was too good to be true. This was the point in all of my social interactions where my conversational partner asked me the genre of my literary flights of fancy and my answer always, without fail, was met with a patronising little smirk akin to a pat on the head. Maybe I could ease into this one; strike myself a lesser blow with some cunning glossing over of facts.

​ I closed my eyes and encompassed my nose with the prayer of my hands and peeked at him over my fingertips, sliding my hands down away from my mouth to answer.

​ “Romance?”

​ My hands poised nervously at the crest of my chin, my eyes already wincing in anticipation of his response. Instead of the expected twitch of his lips that would have betrayed his inner smirk, he clasped his fingers loosely on his lap and bestowed upon me a smouldering, suspicious glance.

​ “You sound as if you're testing waters, Miss. Edwards. Is romance perhaps not the complete truth?”

​ “Fine,” I sighed and dropped my hands back onto my skirt. “I write erotica.”

​ He acknowledged my honesty with a purring “Mmm,” that made my breath hitch.

​ “Do you find it difficult to overcome the taboo so bewilderingly applied to one of few things that unite most of us mere mortals in enjoyment?”

​ Sex. The three little letters formed in my mind's eye and grew until they dominated my mental field of vision. The word drifted from my thoughts and plastered itself all over him, clinging to his easy posture, flickering from his mouth with the brief exposure of his tongue as it glanced across his lips, patterned through the mesmerising flecks of his grey-green eyes as they bore into mine with intense apprehension of my answer.

​ I swallowed hard. “Sometimes. It's getting easier.”

​ “You're a brave woman, Miss. Edwards. Don't be ashamed of what you write.”

​ I breathed a sigh of relief. No dismissive condescension? That was a first.

​ “Please, call me Megan; or Meg. He,” I nodded my head at my agent who was busy turning on the schmooze with one of the women in the circle now that I'd been lost to him, “only calls me Miss. Edwards because he thinks it'll make me like him.”

​ Sebastien followed my gaze and looked long and hard at my piggy little agent before turning back to me. His expression was a sea of unreadable calm.

​ “Agents,” He shrugged. “Never met a single one I didn't want to garrote.”

​ My lips trembled into a tentative smile. Sebastien Fay was demonstrating an uncanny skill for making me relax.

​ “Can I fetch you a drink?” He motioned to the kitchen.

​ “Oh, uh, just tap water will be fine.”

​ Another of my normally eyebrow-raising little quirks that was again met with simple acceptance from this man. I never drank at parties, not even if I uncorked the wine myself and held my glass protectively into my bosom all evening. I watched Sebastien slip easily from the stool, glide around the breakfast bar and into the kitchen. He picked up two highballs from an arrangement on the counter and washed and dried them both before filling them with water from the faucet. I watched him do this with transfixed fascination – did he share my mistrust of inebriated strangers, or had he perhaps guessed my reason for asking for tap-water and poured one for himself as show of good faith?

​ He placed the glasses down on the breakfast bar, slid them across to me, and then danced around the bar to return to his stool. His every movement exuded a boyish energy, a joyeux de vivre attitude that mischievously infected my dour dragged-to-a-house-full-of-strangers anxiety.

​ “To eroticism,” Sebastien lifted his glass with a devilish twinkle to his eye; “and to those who embrace it.”

​ I picked up my glass, tinked it lightly against his and then sipped the cool water. It trickled refreshingly down my dry throat.

​ “To clowns,” I replied with slowly surfacing confidence.

​ Sebastien shrugged with a little laugh and sat his glass down. “To entertaining clowns, at least. If I fail to entertain you then I'm afraid I have failed in my life's only goal and my entire career will have been miserably for naught.”

​ I held on to my glass; the cool surface against my hot palm served as a reminder that this was not a daydream; not a flight of fancy.

​ “You want to entertain me?”

​ “Oui,” He nodded and flashed me another of his charming smiles, his expression painting the simple 'yes' of his answer as if it were only logical.

​ “Why?” I gripped my glass tightly, feeling the condensation pooling at my fingertips.

​ “Ah,” He leaned back a little and looked at his own glass on the counter, tracing one supple finger from rim to base and drawing a line through the dewy surface. “Because you look as out of place here as I feel.”

​ Still facing the glass, he cast me a sidelong glance of tremulous hesitation. My first reaction was to take offense – yes, I knew I looked out of place here, but had he needed to point it out, to make it even more glaringly apparent? But then, if he felt as out of place as I looked, we had a delicate, tenuous connection to each other. He'd been hunched over the bar with his back to the party when Dean had introduced us, I remembered. He hadn't been engaging at all. Maybe he was reaching out.

​ “Am I that obvious?” I offered him what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

​ He glanced diffidently downwards before returning his smiling gaze fully to me.

​ “Only kindred spirits can recognise each other with such unwavering clarity. Thank you for not throwing your drink at me.”

​ A wider smile pushed rebelliously at the corners of my lips and I looked away as it triumphantly overcame my cheeks.

​ “'He' dragged me here,” I refrained from using his name again lest he heard it mentioned and felt that I was requesting his presence. “He thinks these things will be good for me.”

​ “Good for him, he means. He wants to show you off. Although I feel inclined to say I can't blame him, his motives are worlds away from what mine would be.”

​ Sebastien Fay pinned me to the spot with that same intensely curious gaze that he chose to inflict upon me at frequent moments throughout our conversation. I flushed beneath its weight. Ah, if only I could read minds – would I like what I saw there, behind that desperately, wildly handsome visage?

​ The prurient inquisition of his gaze was interrupted by a beautiful woman with uncannily golden hair and an hourglass figure ensconced in a tight-fitting dress who sidled up to Sebastien's side and slipped a piece of paper into his hand. He wrestled his gaze away from me, a frustrated frown furrowing his brow, and unfolded the scrap as the woman lingered near his side. He inhaled sharply, a furious flush daubing his cheeks, and pressed the paper back into the woman's hand with a brief shake of his head.

​ She scowled and turned on her heels.

​ A little baffled, I quirked a brow.

​ “A proposition,” Sebastien ran his hand through his mussy hair. “And not a very polite one.”

​ “Oh.”

​ He looked uncomfortable and embarrassed and I felt a compassionate desire to recapture the prior playful innocence of our conversation.

​ “So what are you doing here, if you feel so out of place too?”

​ “Heh,” A hint of a smile returned to his lips and he held his arms wide with a shrug. “Glutton for punishment?”

​ I knew how that went. He took a long swig from his glass of water and I felt the needy drying of my lips as I watched him brush the knuckle of his finger across his mouth. My heart resumed its palpitations.

​ “Miss Edwards – Meg,” He paused to correct himself – “would you like to accompany me outside? I'm feeling a little claustrophobic suddenly.”

​ I wasn't entirely sure that my legs had re-solidified from their earlier jellied state but I could risk toppling with him at my side to catch me.

​ “Sure,” I slid tentatively from the stool and he offered me his arm, the stark contrast between this gentlemanly gesture and Dean's grabbing hands very apparent to me.

​ I slipped my fingers around the curve of his elbow and he led me through the mingling guests and out into the cool night breeze. A wood-decked balcony wrapped around the side of the house and he led us to a quiet spot overlooking the hillside on which the house was perched.

​ “It's number two, by the way,” He dropped his hands to rest on the wooden railing and I consciously shifted my fingers from his arm.

​ “Number two?”

​ “Number two,” He confirmed and nodded down at my chest.

​ I glanced down – ah, my T-shirt. On it were three definitions of the word 'interesting';

1) Capable of holding one's attention;

2) Arousing a feeling of interest;

3) Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die.

​ I grinned and looked back up at him.

​ “I promise I wasn't staring,” His lips twitched into a boyish smile.

​ “I didn't notice, if you were,” I replied honestly.

​ Number two. Number two began with the word 'arousing' and followed with the word 'feeling'. These were two words I could, right now, very much identify with.

​ “Arousing,” I mumbled to myself and then realised with a tremor of horror that I'd probably said it a little too loudly. I looked down at the grass below the balcony and clenched my jaw with a silent curse.

​ “Indeed,” Sebastien breathed quietly into the night air and from the corner of my eye I saw his fingers curl a little more tightly around the balustrade.

​ I swallowed. This wasn't possible, was it? Surely I was imagining things. I longed for my glass of cool water to press into my palm. He turned away from the view and leaned back against the balcony railing with his hands holding onto the wooden beam either side of his perched behind, his blazer casually, sexily, displaced and a chill breeze playing through the wild meanderings of his unkempt hair.

​ “You were shunning it all, weren't you?” I asked him, very aware of the raspy, breathy quality to my voice. I told myself it was in the best interest of my hearts' health that I spend less time looking at him. Far less time. I didn't think I'd take my own advice.

​ “Hm?” He glanced down at me and I was transfixed by the aesthetic perfection of the outline of his face.

​ “When Dean introduced us, you were alone at the breakfast bar with your back to the whole room.”

​ “Ahh,” He smiled at me and his hand found mine on the railing. A jolt of tingling electricity shot along my arm at his touch. This wasn't the polite, gently reassuring hand-shake of earlier – this was an anticipation-driven gesture fueled by Sebastien's persistent curiosity and flanked by my increasing arousal.

​ “Yes. Rooms full of strangers make me uncomfortable.”

​ I didn't dare look down at his hand on mine, at our entwined fingers, because I knew I would see there no visual confirmation of the crackling energy that coursed from his skin to mine and seeing that nothingness would dampen the magic. Instead I let my eyes trace the contour of his jaw, the trim of his beard, the strong line of his nose and the gentle slope of his forehead. He looked a little sad, I suddenly realised – off-kilter, sobered. And yet his hand still clasped firmly with mine.

​ Someone had found the stereo inside the living room and a baleful female voice accompanied a lilting, soulful melody that spilled through the French doors and wrapped its blue jazz around us.

​ “Dance with me!” Sebastien said quickly and his other hand found mine and pulled me into his grasp before I could respond.

​ “Ohh, I'm not very good,” I warned him since I'd been stripped of the chance to decline but he just smiled at me as he held my hands in his and guided me in slow circles around our little corner of the balcony.

​ He smelled sharp and fresh and intoxicating. It was all I could do not to drift my forehead down to lean into his chest but even as I restrained myself I felt his nose grazing into my hair. There was a tangible magnetism between us and I felt it almost impossible to not close the meager distance from my body to his.

​ “Although, number one is equally true.” His mouth was shockingly close to my ear. “My attention has rarely been held so completely by anyone I know, let alone someone I've just met.”

​ I felt myself melting into his arms. There was no alcohol on his breath; I'd confirmed this by tilting my face just fractionally towards his as he spoke. Yes, if someone was hitting on me I always made a point of checking if they were intoxicated – but only because they so very frequently were. Sebastien Fay, however, was not. This padded my courage with equal parts confidence and confusion.

​ “And number three?” I murmured, so impossibly close to him that I could read the imprint on the buttons of his shirt and see the pattern in the weave of the fabric.

​ “Oh God, Oh God...” Sebastien whispered with his breath warm against my cheek and the intent implied by his intonation made me blush furiously.

​ The song changed to something less befitting of a gentle lulling sway and yet our hands remained entwined. I made sure that I was not holding him at all – that the decision to remain in contact with me was entirely his.

​ “I'm sorry,” He lifted his head slowly and I felt his breath ascend from my cheek up across my ear. His face was so close that the short hairs of his beard brushed into my hair and my displaced strands clung to him with an uninhibited desire that I alas did not myself possess. He laughed lightly and let go of my one hand to smooth my hair back with his gentle touch.

​ “Sorry for what?” My eyelids flickered closed at the touch of his hand on my head. That was a sure-fire way to make me completely docile – playing with my hair. I didn't know what to do with my released hand and just held it there between us; he took it in his returning grasp and guided it up to press my palm around the curve of his shoulder.

​ “For behaving as if there aren't a hundred eyes on us and as if I've known you for a lifetime.”

​ A sharp breath drew itself quickly over my parted lips. I knew, without a doubt, that even if Sebastien Fay had only been half as disarmingly handsome as he was I'd still be enraptured by the innocence of his charm.

​ “If I'm not to be ashamed of what I write, then you're not allowed to be ashamed of how you act,” I dared to press my fingertips into his shoulder and felt the responding movement of his muscles as he lowered his arm and brushed the backs of his knuckles gently up and down my forearm.

​ “If this were one of your books, what would happen next?”

​ His question made my stomach flip. I knew exactly the kind of scenario that would follow ours and knew that I'd regale him with the details of such scenarios through cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

​ “Oh, God.” I groaned and looked down at the floor.

Sebastien pressed his hand to my back and pulled me lightly into him so that the top of my head nudged against his chest.

​ “Tell me.” He said and I could feel his smile in the way that he held me as much as I could hear it.

​ “Well, it would depend on the tone of the story. Maybe we'd embrace a popular Latin catchphrase about not wasting any more time and we'd duck behind some bushes for a quick fumble in the dark. Or perhaps there's an old tool shed in the back lawn to which you'd lead me for a little more than just a fumble.”

​ “Hmm.” His hand still pressed unmoving against my back. No roaming fingers confirming the presence of the my bra or sliding downwards to chance their luck at the curve of my backside. “And what if it were a romance?”

​ I smiled. “Then we'd flee this den of banality and head off into the night. You'd drive me to some cherished scenic location and we'd sit on the bonnet and talk until sunrise.”

​ He sighed; a long, lonely sigh that rattled its profundity into the quiet blanket of air around us as his chin dropped to rest atop my head.

​ “Megan,” He whispered and I knew that he was only tasting my name and didn't expect a response. “Megan, Megan... Ahh, who are you?”

​ I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply of him. I felt now that his earlier lively good cheer had been a mask; a shield that protected him from the bitterness of life. I was about to lean back, to look up into his eyes as I offered some answer to his question, when my phone vibrated in my skirt's pocket. I fished it out and Sebastien stepped back a little to offer me more room.

​ I frowned at the name on the caller ID; Dean.

​ “Hey,” I answered and flicked my gaze up to Sebastien; he was peering down at me with complacent admiration. My cheeks heated and I glanced away.

​ “Did I just see you dancing with Sebastien Fay?”

​ “Uh... yeah?”

​ “You two know each other?”

​ “No?”

​ “You spike his drink or something?”

​ “What?” I looked around and saw Dean glaring at me through one of the windows. He was sneering at me lasciviously. My brows dove into a deep frown and I stepped backwards in an impulsive, repulsed response to his expression only to push up against Sebastien's chest. His hands curled protectively around the tops of my arms. I didn't think he could hear the conversation but I was positive that he could feel the vibes of seething fury emanating from my dislodged countenance.

​ “Did you see him when we got here? He's an absolute party-pooper; he never loosens up. And yet there he is dancing with you and he barely knows you. What did you do, did you tell him you write porn? Hell, I'd dance with any chick that told me she writes porn.”

​ “You are an arsehole. Piss off.” I narrowed my eyes and bestowed upon him what I hoped was my most vindictive glare.

​ I thumbed the red End Call button and shoved my phone hard into my pocket, turning my back on Dean glaring at me through the house window and finding my nose against Sebastien's chest.

​ “Forgive me a silly question; are you alright?”

​ “It's fine,” I muttered after forcing myself to take a deep, calming breath. “I've endured worse from my agent than him calling me to ask if you're only dancing with me because I spiked your drink.”

​ I felt his body stiffen. “Is that what he suggested?”

​ “That or something about me telling you I write porn, because apparently that's reason enough for scum-bag Dean to throw himself at someone.”

​ He was quiet for a moment and I languished in the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest beneath my forehead.

​ “I am inclined to defend your honour on your behalf, but I feel that you're the kind of person who would do a better job of it than any man.”

​ I smiled, so close that the movement of my lips nudged at his shirt.

​ “It's okay. I know Dean well enough to know that he'll either go home alone or wake up wishing he had.”

​ Sebastien laughed. “That bad?”

​ “Yeah, that bad.”

​ He pushed me gently away from him and looked down at me with a concerned frown.

​ “But tell me – why are you letting an agent who down-talks your writing as 'porn' represent you?”

​ I blew a sigh through one corner of my mouth. That was a question I'd procrastinated on confronting for months now.

​ “Because... Sometimes it's easier to sit at the bottom of a hole in familiar, if undesirable, surroundings than to climb out into the unknown.”

​ His kind green eyes flicked between mine, his mouth set into a tight-lipped frown of concern. His hands stroked so softly up and down my shoulders that I didn't think he was even aware of their motion, and I would have been too lost in his eyes to notice too if not for the rippling of charge that his touch caused with each brush of movement.

​ Sebastien's lips parted and I heard him taking a quick pre-speech breath only to pause as the creases of a light frown worked across his forehead.

​ I arched an eyebrow at him encouragingly.

​ He pursed his lips and regarded me with pondering deliberation.

​ “I find myself unable to think of anything except how your lips might taste,” He eventually said and his words left me breathless.

​ He dropped his hands and stepped back but I grabbed the lapels of his blazer and held him in place. He looked down at me, his eyes wide with caution, and I moved slowly as if soothing some injured wild creature as I drew myself up onto my toes, guiding my nose along his until I was close enough to press my lips to his mouth.

​ “Wait,” he whispered and his eyes pressed closed with the force of speaking that word.

​ I knew I shouldn't have made that move; too much, too soon, too impetuous. I dropped my hands from his lapels and cleared my throat.

​ “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have –”

​ “Non, non,” Sebastien slipped into French as he took my wrists and gently held them together in his hands. “You are divine and it takes every ounce of me to resist you. But to kiss you here, like this... ” He sighed, “It would do this, this serendipity, an injustice.”

​ I met his gaze again and he let go of my wrists to stroke one thumb across the curve of my cheek. His touch was so light, so reverent, that I wondered if he thought me made of porcelain.

​ “Then what might you suggest?”

​ His hands moved to my shoulders and he rested his chin atop my head as he hummed in thought.

​ “Do you have plans for the next five hours?”

​ “Well, I had planned to go home in an introverted sulk and rage quietly in bed until I fell asleep, but I'm open to alternatives...”

​ He squeezed my shoulders; a reassuring gesture from one wallflower to another.

​ “Mmm. And uh... Tomorrow? Over the weekend?”

​ I perked a brow and peered up at him; he smiled innocently and touched his nose to my forehead.

​ “No plans. Writing, maybe.”

​ “Ah, oui. So... Do you need to write from one special location, or can you write from anywhere?”

​ “From anywhere,” I leaned back and regarded him with a curious half-smile.

​ “I see, I see...” Sebastien trailed off and pulled me back into him, dangling me tantalisingly from the hook of his words.

​ “You're enjoying this, aren't you?” I nudged my fingers into his ribs and he squirmed delciously beneath my tickling. “What are you getting at?”

​ Sebastien stroked his hand along the back of my head, traced his fingers through my hair and danced his fingertips across the skin of my neck. His touch sent goosebumps tingling down my spine and my eyelids fluttered closed of their own volition.

​ “I suggest we... vivre un roman d'amour. Let us live a love story. I will be your co-author and we can pen le romantisme. Drive until sunrise, you said? I have a cottage on the coast, some four hours drive west. The sun will rise in five. Are you with me?”

I grinned, barely able to contain the squeal that bubbled to erupt from my soul. I cleared my throat and composed myself.

“Oui.” A palpable period tailed my confident acquiescence, closing abruptly our house party prologue to make way for our story to begin.

Thank you for reading! If you liked it, let me know at WelshPixie <3

​ “Hey, uh, I need to talk to you about something weird,” Cam flipped on the back thrusters and watched the junk-package sail off towards the wormhole. ​ “If it's about Wryk'ars – sorry, Ars – I don't want to hear it.” ​ She chuckled. “Naw. It's uh... It's about Jareth.” ​ “You want a threesome? I'm not really into it but he probably would be.” ​ “Eww! Gross! Like I'd sleep with him. No, look, I know you're joking around but it's kinda troubling.” ​ “Okay, okay. What's up?” ​ Cam sighed, leaning back in her chair and watching the station drifting closer. ​ “So I was with – Actually before I continue, I'll prefix this by saying 'not in that way', because I know you'll shriek otherwise – nothing happened. So I was with Geoffrey night before last.” ​ “Oooooooooooh,” Vi crooned into the headset. ​ “Brat has cocooned himself up against the ceiling in my room. Geoffrey came to visit him and said we should document this stuff because he can't find anything out about what Brat actually is, so we got his scanning equipment and he stayed a while doing that.” ​ “Right. How is his equipment, Cam?” ​ “Yeah, yeah. Anyway about 2am, someone buzzed the door. It was Jareth.” ​ There was a moment's silence. “Oh?” ​ “He had a six-pack of beers with him. Wanted to come in and have 'brewskies', and when I declined, he got a bit forceful.” ​ “What do you mean?” ​ “I told him no, like, a bunch of times. I don't like the guy, I certainly don't want to hang out with him. He's your 'thing'. He wouldn't accept no, tried persuading me and kept asking if he could come in, and eventually tried shoving past me, so I floored him.” ​ “Fuck.” ​ “Yeah. He left after that, but then yesterday I came out of Geoffrey's place –” ​ “Okay you really need to tell me what's going on with you two.” ​ “– Nothing. I left Geoffrey's place and Jareth was sleeping at the end of the corridor on the floor.” ​ “Huh?” ​ “Yeah, he was just – sitting on the floor leaning back against the wall, looking towards Geoffrey's place, getting his Z's on.” ​ “So weird. The hell is that boy up to.” ​ “I dunno. How are things between you, are you still bumping uglies?” ​ “Yeah. Saw him day before yesterday actually, must have been before he went over your place at 2am.” ​ “Was he acting weird?” ​ “Naw, he was fine. Wait – he did ask me about the recipe. He's pestered me about it twice now. I didn't tell him anything, said I wasn't going to tell him squat until I'd asked you if I could.” ​ “What kinda things was he asking?” ​ “He wanted to know exactly what you found and whether it came through the wormhole or not.” ​ “Hmm,” Cam stood as her ship slid into the station's cargo bay and docked for the next pick-up. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

• * * *

​ “I've missed this,” Cam panted as Wryk'ars slid their azolae up under her shirt and tickled goosebumps over her skin. “How long are you back for?” ​ “Just this day, most-endearing-one,” They mumbled, pressing into Cam's stomach. “But this one has three hours to spend here.” ​ Camryn could feel the thousands of tiny cilia rippling against her skin; a sign of Wryk'ars' arousal that accentuated her own excitement. She let Wryk'ars peel her shirt off and carry it away on the tip of a tentacle to slide onto the floor, discarded and unnecessary. Wryk'ars used two more tentacles to turn Cam around so that her back pressed into Wryk'ars' trembling form, while their deft azolae unclasped her trousers and slid them, and her underwear, down to her ankles. She dutifully stepped out of them. ​ “A whole extra hour,” Cam whispered, smiling. “Whatever shall we do.” ​ “This one has a few ideas,” They pulled Camryn back against the bulk of their form, supporting her weight so that she was leaning back at an angle, and then wound two tentacles up around her calves to tickle at the top of her thighs, gently easing her legs apart. ​ Camryn stretched her arms back and up over her head, letting Wryk'ars take her weight as she relaxed her body. She let out an anticipatory sigh, enjoying the preamble but eager for the conclusion. Wryk'ars' azolae curved around her supine body from either side, dancing softly around the soft skin of her breasts, tickling deft circles around her perked nipples. ​ “Are they changing your rotation?” Camryn mumbled, eyes fluttering closed. ​ “No, most-endearing-one,” Wryk'ars pressed their soft, warm mouth into Camryn's neck and up to caress her earlobe. “This one is participating in workplace training. This one finds it tedious.” ​ Camryn chuckled. “Yeah, don't we all.” ​ She felt another two tentacles slithering up along her arms, wrapping around her wrists and holding her arms gently above her head. She was lifted up off her feet, her whole body now supported entirely by Wryk'ars. ​ “I like this,” Cam murmured. “Not too tight though, okay?” ​ “As you wish, most-endearing-one,” Wryk'ars' breath was hot against Cam's neck. ​ The tentacles that held her legs apart curled higher, their rounded tips tickling at the very top of Camryn's thighs. She could feel Wryk'ars' flugthore engorging beneath her, but Wryk'ars wasn't ready for Cam to take the organ into her just yet. Instead, while their azolae continued to flick at and encircle her nipples and massage the gentle swell of her breasts, the tentacles at her thighs crept a little further upwards and started stroking back and forth lightly, at first along the point at which her thighs met her outer labia, and then moving slowly inwards, sliding easily through her eager wetness. ​ “Oh Tizlel,” Cam whispered, her body wanting to writhe to try to angle herself onto one of those delicious dancing tentacles, but unable to, held in place by Wryk'ars and prone to their teasing administrations. She wasn't sure which she enjoyed most – having her eyes closed and able to focus purely on the physical sensation, or having her eyes open and the oddness of seeing nothing at all in front of her, or even in her periphery, to cause the sensations in the first place. ​ “This one is pleased that you are not conversing about the lizard man on this occasion,” Wryk'ars said as they flicked a tentacle-tip in circles around Cam's clitoris. ​ And that was it – Geoffrey was immediately in her mind's eye. Unbidden she saw him in her ship's cockpit, just like in the dream, except they were both naked, and he was leaning down over her as she sat in the pilot's chair, one hand behind the back of her neck as he rubbed his other hand against her crotch. ​ “Fuck,” Cam winced and strained against her bindings, orgasm threatening. She tried to will the images from her mind but they found fuel from Wryk'ars' movements, mirroring what Wryk'ars was doing to her body but her mind placing Geoffrey there as the administrator of the attention. As Wryk'ars circled Cam's vulva with one of their soft, throbbing tentacles, so did Geoffrey in her mind pull Cam's body down onto his stiff cock, lingering his tip at her opening. As Wryk'ars pushed their tentacle fully inside her, so too did imaginary Geoffrey thrust into her. ​ “Oh fuck oh fuck,” Cam's orgasm punched her sudden and hard, muscles spasming, back arching away from Wryk'ars' body. Her hands balled into fists and she bit back her lip, relenting to the mental images and imagining fully that it was Geoffrey who had brought her to climax. ​ The tidal wave calmed to a gentle ripple and Camryn sighed, her body relaxing. She felt a little pang of guilt, and then anger that Wryk'ars had chosen that precise moment to mention Geoffrey. ​ “This one senses that your pleasure was great,' Wryk'ars whispered into Cam's ear, tentacle withdrawing as they shifted Cam's body around so that their flugthore was positioned just under her slit. “This one is excited likewise.” ​ They slid their swollen flugthore inside her; the organ was thicker than their tentacles and filled her completely, and as they thrust slowly and deliberately into her, they shifted a few azolae downwards to dance around her clitoris as the remaining azolae continued tweaking at her nipples. It didn't take long for Camryn to feel a second orgasm building. Well, in for a penny, she thought to herself and this time it was Geoffrey in the chair and she on top of him, bucking up and down against him as he held gently onto her waist with his clawed hands, fiery red eyes boring into hers, his head tipped slightly back, his chest rising and falling against hers. ​ “Fuck yes,” Cam groaned as Wryk'ars body started shuddering intensely beneath her, their body releasing in orgasm just as her second climax reached crescendo. ​ When their bodies had stilled, Wryk'ars unwound their tentacles and Cam slid gently downwards until her feet touched the floor. ​ “I need a shower,” She padded around the room collecting the scattered items of her clothing. Wryk'ars was silent a moment, and then reached one tentacle out to take Camryn by the wrist. ​ “This one is wondering if it is a coincidence that most-endearing-one achieved orgasm just as this one mentioned the lizard man,” They said quietly. ​ Camryn sighed. “You caught that, huh.” ​ Wryk'ars retracted their tentacle and moved to perch on the sofa. “This one is surprised at how often most-endearing-one forgets that this one's species has a heightened sense of emotional awareness.” ​ “Yeah,” Cam ran her hand back through her hair. “Did you have to mention him right at that moment?” ​ Wryk'ars executed what was their version of a shrug. ​ Cam narrowed her eyes. “Oh. Oh, I see how it is. That was intentional, wasn't it? You wanted to see how I'd react.” ​ She watched the iridescent alien for a long moment, but there was no sign of denial forthcoming. ​ “Well, I hope you're happy,” Cam said quietly though her fingers curled into a tight fist around the clothes she was holding. “I hope you got exactly what you were after. I'm going in the shower; when I come out, you should probably not be here.”

• * * *

​ Geoffrey sensed her approaching long before she came into view. Her footfalls thudded distinctively along the corridor some way away, sending vibrations through the metal that he picked up through his talons on the floor. She was jogging, and he closed his eyes, standing up a little straighter and spreading his toes out, curling his talons into the ground somewhat so that he felt the vibrations more distinctively. ​ Her pace was slightly faster than normal, her footfalls heavier. Was she angry? Energetic, perhaps? After 'listening' for a moment longer, he opened his eyes and took a breath, reaching for the sweeping brush and busying himself with it. ​ He felt her come around the corner ahead of him, the spines along his tail bristling a little in reaction to her presence. He looked up as she slowed her pace to a walk, plucking ear-buds out of her ears. ​ “Hey,” She smiled at him. “I was hoping I'd run into you.” ​ “Hello,” He returned her smile, battling for a moment with a feeling of self-consciousness that his smile was full of fangs and pointed little razor-teeth and hers was soft and smooth and voluptuous. ​ Geoffrey cleared his throat. ​ “Do you have time for talking?” She sidled up to his cleaning cart and rested her hand on the handle casually. ​ “Yes,” He brushed some dust and fluff in towards the little pile he'd accumulated and reached for the pan. “For you, always.” ​ Her cheeks flushed and he struggled to control his tail that wanted to flick wildly back and forth. ​ “Did you try the sausage?” She looked over at him, anticipation evident in her cool blue eyes. Like water, he thought; like still, gentle water, while his were red and fierce and angry. He looked away quickly. ​ “Yes. I'm sorry that I could not accommodate you for longer when you visited last.” ​ “Oh it's fine,” From the periphery of his vision, as he kneeled down and swept the pile of debris into the pan, he saw her raise her arms up over her head, interlocking her fingers and standing up on her tiptoes, her whole body lengthening upwards towards the corridor ceiling, stretching out. He narrowed his eyes, focusing on collecting all of the dust into the pan. ​ “Chemical spill in one of the docking bays from a ship that hadn't realised its hull had been pierced,” He explained. “I was on call.” ​ “Really, it's fine,” She flexed her neck back and forth. “What did you think?” ​ “Of the spill? It wasn't anything serious; just a precaution really that they'd called us.” He stood and tipped the pan into the open bag hanging from the cart. ​ “Of the sausage,” She giggled at him and the sound sent shivers rippling through his skin. ​ “Oh,” He smiled bashfully. “Yes, it was delicious. Better even than the... Buttersausage, was it? That you bought for me that once.” ​ She grinned wide. “Awesome! Because I have a follow-up question; it's the other reason I was calling in on you.” ​ “Oh?” Geoffrey hung the pan from a hook on the cart. “Can we walk and talk?” ​ “Yeah!” ​ He reached for the cart handle and for the briefest fraction of a second, the side of his hand brushed against hers as she took her hand away. He drew a sharp intake of breath, and then forced himself to move. ​ “I have this and two other corridors to take care of,” He glanced down at her as she walked alongside him. “What is it you wanted to ask?” ​ “Well, the sausage is a huge success. I mean, it's delicious. Like, amazingly delicious. Blimm, my chef friend down in the canteen, he's happy to start churning them out and selling them if I provide some of the credits towards buying ingredients.” ​ “I see,” Geoffrey paused the cart and took a spray bottle and cloth from one of the trays. “It was a particularly delightful sausage, I must admit.” ​ “But he needs somewhere to cook them; somewhere on the down-low. Thinks lots of people will be after the recipe and the canteen is too obvious.” ​ “Mmm,” Geoffrey spritzed some cleaning solution over a window that looked out onto another section of the station, and then rubbed the cloth over the window. He stretched up, working the cloth into the high corners, and caught her reflection in the glass staring at him. Or, more specifically, at his body, her eyes traversing the length of him from his neck to his feet and back up again. He looked away with a small grin, pretended he hadn't noticed. ​ “You're the first person I thought of for asking,” She said after a quiet moment. “With the work you do, you probably know all the... quiet places.” Her voice had become throaty. ​ He turned, placing the spray bottle and cloth back onto the cart. She was watching his every move like a Gos'ohute Night-Wamff watched a Preiglashua on the plains before swooping in to snatch it up. He swallowed hard, aware of the fire rising inside him. ​ “I'm sure I can find somewhere suitable,” He mused, pushing the cart forward slowly. “There are some areas on D and E decks that don't see much foot-traffic.” ​ “Sounds perfect. How do you want to play this – shall I leave it with you, or shall we go scouting at some point?” ​ He smiled, pushing the cart to one side and picking up the brush again. Now he was imagining what they might get up to, scouting through the quiet parts of the station together. ​ “You should come with me. You know more than I which kind of place would be suitable.” ​ “Cool,” She bounced on her toes. “My next off-day is in three days. It's actually my two days off, so that day or the day after.” ​ “Three days time, come to my quarters when you get up in the afternoon.” ​ She grinned. “You remembered I work the late shift.” ​ “Of course,” He shrugged, pulling the brush across the floor. “I presumed you'd get up later.” ​ “You'd be surprised how many people aren't that considerate. So you're not working on that day?” ​ “In the morning,” He grabbed the pan to push the dust into it, but she took the pan from him and kneeled down so that he didn't have to. “Thank you,” He said quietly and pushed the dust into the pan; when he was done, she tipped it into the bag and shrugged. ​ “No bother.” ​ They lingered for a moment in silence, having reached the natural conclusion of that topic of conversation. Realising she was still holding onto the pan, he reached out and took it from her, their hands touching again, moreso this time. He let out a slow breath, re-hanging the pan onto the hook. ​ “I'll see you then, then,” Cam stepped back and fondled with her ear-buds, getting ready to replace them. ​ “I shall look forward to it.” ​ He held her gaze a moment, watched her round pupils dilating a little as he looked into them, and then she took a step back, smiled a little, and started to walk away. Hearing her footfalls again reminded him of their cadence when she'd been approaching him. ​ “Hey, Spacegal,” He called after her and she spun around eagerly. ​ “Yeah?” ​ “This is um... Probably none of my business, so please don't feel obligated to answer... Are you alright? When you walked over, you seemed... Angry, maybe?” ​ A frown shadowed her features for a moment, and then she sighed, dropping the ear-buds and stepping up to him again. ​ “There you go being perceptive again,” She smiled, but it was a small, fragile looking gesture. ​ He sensed the tension in her and fought the urge to wrap his arms around her shoulders, remembering the last – nay, the only – time they'd hugged, how close and warm and soft she had felt. ​ “You don't have to tell me anything,” He assured her. “I only wanted to check that you're alright.” ​ “Oh I'm fine,” Her smile widened a little. “I just uh... Kinda ended things with 'Ars.” ​ “ 'Ars?” He perked a brow. The trader who flies in now and then?” ​ “Mmm,” She nodded. “We kinda had a thing. It wasn't serious, just something fun to pass the time.” ​ “And yet you're angry,” He leaned back against the corridor wall, hooking his thumbs into his pockets. Her eyes flicked downwards over him again, but she quickly checked herself. ​ “Yeah, it's the thing that led to the ending-of-things that riled me.” ​ “Would you like to talk about it?” ​ She opened her mouth as if to speak, and then suddenly her face flushed the brightest shade of crimson. ​ “Er, no,” She coughed. “No I'm fine. But thank you! That's really sweet of you to offer. ​ He nodded. Clearly something about the discussion made her uncomfortable and, intrigued though he was, he didn't want to press the matter. If she wanted to tell him, eventually, she would. The datapad in his pocket beeped just then, cutting through the silence between them. ​ “Excuse me,” He said, slipping it out and flicking the screen on. It was a memo for his janitorial team. He skimmed through the contents and glanced up at her. “You're on the evening shift tonight, correct?” ​ “Yeah,” She said, “Why?” ​ “Your ship – is it the XZ-Seven, B-class?” ​ “That's the one. Reg FIS-0876.” ​ He turned the datapad around to show her. “It seems someone complained about the station not allocating cleaning resources to the ships.” ​ She flicked her eyes over the text and then looked up at him. “You're cleaning my ship this evening?” ​ “It would appear so,” He turned off the screen and slid the datapad back into his pocket. ​ “Cool!” She smiled, and then scowled almost immediately, and then flushed an even deeper shade of crimson than she had previously. ​ “Is everything alright?” He asked, becoming a little concerned for her health now. Was it usual for human skin colour to change so drastically, so quickly? ​ “Yeah,” the word came out as a high-pitched squeak. She cleared her throat. “I mean, yeah. Is it hot in here? Did the air con break?” She tugged at the collar of her t-shirt. “Hey I gotta jet. I'll see you tonight at my ship,” She nodded at him, and then broke into a jog, shoving her ear-buds back in and leaving him standing there more than a little confused.

Thank you for reading! If you liked it, let me know at WelshPixie <3

​ Jareth sat at the cheap metal table and tapped his neatly trimmed nails on the tinny surface. The sound echoed through the quiet food-court with soft little tink-tinks. It was just after 2am – usually far too late at night for Jareth to not be wrapped up warmly in bed for a solid eight hours of beauty sleep, but he had been summoned by the great Draegan Black (or at least, associates thereof), and he would not be one to disappoint the great owner of his favourite fast food chain in the universe. ​ “Ah,” The same waiter who had met with him in his quarters wandered up to the table from the Draegan's kitchen. “I'm glad you could make it.” ​ Jareth shrugged and stood up to shake the man's hand in greeting. “Well it's a bit late. Did we have to meet at 2am? It's just, I like my sleep, man. I'm going to have some serious bags under my eyes tomorrow and it's going to take an extra fifteen minutes out of my prep time just to apply concealer.” ​ The waiter blinked at him. “Yes, well – always pertinent to conduct business of this variety when there are as few prying ears present as possible. The food court never truly closes, of course, but there are quiet times, and 2am happens to be one of them.” ​ “Right,” Jareth sat down again. “So why did you need to see me?” ​ “His Eminence Draeghan Black would like to know what you have discovered.” ​ “Ah,” Jareth folded his arms across the table. “Well, I asked Vi. Cam did find something, and I'm pretty sure it came out of the wormhole – she slipped up when she was talking to me.” ​ “Indeed,” The man nodded. “But we know this already. Have you found out what exactly it was?” ​ “Not yet,” Jareth fidgeted. “I'm going to ask Cam but haven't bumped into her yet. Station's big, you know? And we're on different shifts.” ​ “I see,” He frowned. “Time is of the essence, Mr. Rockrod. I suggest you pick up the pace a little or His Eminence will be most displeased.” ​ Jareth's insides squirmed. He certainly didn't want Draegan Black thinking of him as a failure. ​ “I'll make a plan,” Jareth punched the table decisively. “I'll get Drae – eh, His Eminence Draegan Black – the information he's after. He can count on me.”

****

​ Cam's doorpanel beeped signalling a visitor. She glanced at her watch with a frown, and then across to Geoffrey, who was busy moving the equipment from the tank to the cocoon in the corner. ​ “Are you expecting someone?” He paused, arching a brow at her. “I can retire for the evening, we can continue another time –” ​ “No,” She replied, setting down the tripod she was helping to carry. “Besides, it's like, 2.30am – who the heck visits at this hour?” ​ She wandered to the door and waved her hand in front of the panel; the door slid open. ​ “Dafuq?” Cam frowned, leaning into the door frame. ​ “Hey chica,” Jareth flashed his pearly whites at her and ran his free hand back through his lustrous black hair. His other hand held a six pack up in front of her. “Brewskies?” ​ “Uh... No?” She crossed her arms over her chest. ​ “Come on,” He winked at her. “You know you want to.” He swung the six pack around in front of her face. ​ “Yeah, I don't think so.” She stared at him hard. ​ “How about just a chat then? I can manage all these by myself if you're going to be a bum about it,” He tried leaning past her but she shifted and blocked his way. ​ “Nope.” ​ Jareth narrowed his eyes. “Come on. You're up, it's not like I just woke you up or anything. You might as well, right?” ​ “No, I might as well not. Not that I'd invite you in even if I wasn't already entertaining company, but I am, so either way, fuck off.” ​ “Hey now,” His chipper demeanour was breaking down. “No need to be like that about it.” ​ “Oh, there isn't? Because by my count I've told you no fewer than four times now and you're still here, and before you start calling me the asshole, remember that you asked a question and I gave you a clear answer and you're the one still here trying to ask the same question over and over until you get an answer you like. Ain't happening, buddy.” ​ “Who've you got in there?” He used his height to his advantage and peered over her shoulder, left and right, until he caught sight of Geoffrey in the corner of the room. ​ “Lizard-man? Gimme a break. What can he offer you that I can't?” ​ “He's polite, for starters,” Cam was losing her patience. She moved her hands to her hips. “Come on, Jareth. Leave. Does Vi know you're here, even? Weren't you with her tonight?” ​ “Maybe I've decided I like you more,” He frowned down at her. “Look, just – let me inside, okay? I just want to hang out, you know, shoot the breeze and whatever.” ​ “And as I keep telling you, I don't. Leave. Go back to your quarters or I'll report you for harassment.” ​ “I'm not –” He sighed, throwing his arms up, six pack of beers swinging wildly, “ – I'm not harassing you, okay? I just think you're being unreasonable.” ​ “Honestly, dude, you carry on with this crap and I'll show you unreasonable. What are you going to do if I keep saying no; force your way in here?” ​ “Is that an invitation?” He grinned and extended his arm to push his way past. Cam grabbed him by the wrist and used his own forward momentum to pull him past her, downwards, and with a shove into his back he was face-first on the floor. She crouched down over him with her knee pressing into the back of his neck and his one arm bent behind his back, pushing up so that he winced and fell still. ​ “If you ever – ever -come within ten feet of me again, I'll do this again, except it'll be my boot at your neck and I'll push down so hard your teeth will crack. Do you understand?” She whispered into his ear. ​ “What the hell,” He hissed at her, trying to squirm and wincing with pain. ​ “Do. You. Understand.” ​ “Yes!” Jareth nodded as much as he was able. ​ Cam stepped back away from him, letting him go. Jareth pulled himself to his feet and wiped himself down. ​ “Fucking psycho,” He glowered at her, and then grabbed the beers he'd dropped and scurried through the door and away along the corridor. ​ Camryn turned as the door slid closed and leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes and letting out a slow breath. Her hands were shaking and her heart was drumming in her chest. Remembering that she wasn't alone, she opened her eyes again. Geoffrey was standing in the corner, scanner in hand, regarding her carefully. ​ “Are you alright?” He quietly asked. ​ “Yeah,” She pulled herself away from the wall and sat down on the edge of the sofa. “Yeah, just wasn't expecting that. Not that you can ever expect something like that,” she frowned to herself. ​ “You handled the situation magnificently,” He offered, setting the scanner down and walking over to take a seat on the sofa next to her. “I don't think I would have been so calm.” ​ Camryn looked down at her hands. They were still shaking. She held them out in front of her. “Doesn't look calm,” She said. ​ “That's just adrenaline. A perfectly normal reaction. You didn't raise your voice even once,” He pointed out. “While that man – whoever he is, he overstepped himself significantly.” ​ “Jareth Rockrod,” Cam interlaced her fingers and pushed her palms outwards, stretching away the tension. “I thought he and Vi were an item. Well, they were. I don't know what changed – last I heard from her they were doing fine. ​ “Perhaps she doesn't know.” ​ “Yeah, maybe. That kinda came out of nowhere, though. I've only spoken with him twice, I think, before this. Once down in the cargo hold on C-deck just after he arrived; I'd escaped to my spot to eat and he found me and introduced himself. I think you were somewhere around,” She realised while saying it that it would mean she had seen him there, had noticed his presence, and flushed, frowning. ​ “Oh. Yes,” Geoffrey replied quietly. “I... Seem to recall the event, now that you mention it.” ​ “The second time, Vi made me go eat with her at Draegan's and he came over to say hi to me but got distracted by Vi, thankfully. I left them to it and they hit it off.” ​ “Peculiar,” Geoffrey mused. “This does seem to have come from nowhere, then. Was he drunk, do you think?” ​ “I don't think so. Couldn't smell anything on his breath. I've given him absolutely zero indication that I even want to be friends with him, let alone anything else.” ​ Geoffrey sighed. “Some people don't need an indication to consider themselves invited into your lives. Don't be too hard on yourself about this – you are most likely faultless.” ​ “That's a nice thing to hear from someone,” She smiled across at him. “Thanks.” ​ “Of course,” He tipped his head at her, fiery orange eyes burning into hers.

• * * *

​ Camryn padded along the corridor towards the canteen. Although she was trying to keep cool, her palms were sweating at the thought of running into Jareth. Fortunately it was the middle of the day and the station was a bustle of activity – the canteen even moreso, full of daytime workers on their lunch breaks. She pushed and jostled her way through to her Blimm's kitchen, where the guy serving the till pointed her through into the back. ​ She'd never been into the kitchen itself before, only seen Blimm emerging from there whenever he brought out his sausage for her. It was full of shiny chrome countertops, stacks of serving-ware, steaming pots and pans. Blimm was at the far end; he saw her entering and called her over. ​ “Friend!” he wiped his feelers off on a cloth and clapped her back. “Exciting times, exciting times. Come, let me show you.” ​ Blimm guided her into a back section of the kitchen that she hadn't noticed; a small recess where a tray of sausages were cooling on a countertop. He handed her a knife and fork inside a neatly folded serviette. ​ “Try,” He gestured her towards the tray. “Try, try!” ​ He stood back as she unfolded the napkin, took the knife and fork and tentatively cut a piece from one of the sausages. It was tender and juicy, and smelled amazing. She lifted it to her nose, took a long whiff, and then popped the segment into her mouth. ​ Her eyes widened. ​ “Oh my glorb,” Cam mouthed around the mouthful. ​ “Yes!” Blimm clapped his tendrils together. “Yes, yes! I had my doubts about some of the ingredients, but – well, whoever gave you this recipe is a culinary genius!” ​ “Fucking hell,” She cut another piece off and chewed it down. “This is incredible.” ​ “Now,” Blimm sidled up to her and leaned in conspiratorially. “Where do you want to go from here?” ​ “I want to deep-throat all of these fucking sausages,” She was hungrily finishing off the first, popping the last bite into her eager mouth. ​ Blimm laughed. “Eat another. Eat two! Three! We can make more. While you eat, let me talk figures,” He leaned onto the counter. “Two hundred credits bought enough ingredients to make what you see here. For a thousand, I make enough sausages to feed – mmm,” He shrugged, “Maybe fifty people. We sell sausage at sixty credits each, make three thousand credits. Split five hundred each – pay for me, profit for you- spend two thousand on more ingredients. Double sausage with the next batch.” ​ “Dang,” She wiped her mouth with the napkin. “You've thought this through. I wasn't even thinking about selling them, but by Tizlel these babies are delicious. Heck, sell them for seventy. I'd pay seventy creds for this, no problem.” ​ “We will try at seventy then,” He nodded. “One more thing to take care of before we can go into production, however.” ​ “What's that?” ​ “We need a place to cook them. I can't do it here. Too public. Need someplace quiet, away from prying eyes This recipe will be in high demand once people try these sausages. Need to keep it safe.” ​ “Right,” She mused. “I think I know who I can ask for help with that.” ​ “Be careful who you speak with about this,” He clicked his mandibles at her. “Don't give your trust too freely.” ​ “Mm, it's okay,” She smiled. “I have the perfect person. May I take one last sausage to tempt him with?” ​ “Be my guest,” Blimm wrapped a sausage in greaseproof paper and transferred it into a little food carton. “Here. Keep it safe.” ​ “Absolutely,” She smiled. “Thanks, Blimm. I look forward to doing business with you.” ​ He grinned. “Me too.”

• * * *

​ Jareth peered through the leaves of the potted plant, watching Cam vanish into the kitchen of that weird little food place in the corner of the C-Deck canteen. The smells coming from there always made him feel nauseous; so many spices and herbs and different aromas all mingling. It was too much for him. Give him a nice greasy burger and fries any day – and not some fancy hoity-toity artisinal bullcrap burger with 100% 'smashed' beef and special sauces and all that crap. No, sirree – just a regular processed meat burger, cheese, ketchup, mustard and some pickles in a plain ole' sesame bun with a side of skinny fries. ​ Ahh, Draegan's, he thought, rubbing his stomach. ​ He yawned, waiting for Cam to emerge again. There were no windows into the kitchen, just the one doorway and the small slot for the serving area but he couldn't see her through either of those. His eyes stung behind his sunglasses. He'd had far too little sleep and looked absolutely dreadful when he got up; tired and haggard, a broken man. He'd gotten up early and kept an eye on Cam's quarters from a safe distance, waiting for her to leave. He'd almost missed her, too, snoozing with his head leaning against the corner wall a way down the corridor. ​ He must have been standing there for a good five minutes when she finally emerged from the kitchen. She was tucking something into the little napsack slung over her shoulder, and she looked pleased as punch. ​ “What have you been up to, little girlie?” Jareth followed her with his eyes from behind his cunning vegetative concealment until she was almost out of sight, and then slipped from behind the leaves and followed her from a safe distance. ​ They exited the canteen, where he followed her along to the elevators. When she was out of sight, he hurried up to see the elevator climbing to B-deck, and then caught the next one up. She was turning a corner ahead of him just as the elevator doors opened, and he snuck along behind her just in time to see her knocking on someone's door. ​ The door opened; she smiled and stepped inside. Whoever's quarters it was, they weren't visible to him. ​ He sighed and slid down onto the ground, making himself as comfortable as possible while waiting for her to leave again. It was going to be a loooong day.

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A Matrix user has chosen to slide into my DMs. They asked me “how does it feel to choke on that leftist cock”. ... In the interests of educating this highly intelligent Matrix user: can someone please explain to me how it feels to choke on leftist cock, in exquisite and verbose detail? Please. I want to help them find answers.

It was the most delicious cock he'd ever tasted. Sweet, like an exotic honey gathered from some rare species of flower that only grew on the east-facing slopes of a far-off mountain and bloomed at the break of dawn, petals drenched in sunlight, oozing pollen that clung hungrily to the bees in its eagerness to be supped.

It was big, too; girthy, the kind of heft that filled his mouth entirely, stretched his lips to a tight seal around its shaft. The kind of cock that had presence, that wasn't fucking about – it was in him, now, its tantalizing liquid sherbert pre-jizz making his tonsils tingle, and it would be staying in him until it shot its load and was done with him.

Eagerly he sucked and licked and took the delectable dick deeper, as far as it would go, further, deep throating the spicy schlong until he struggled to breathe – and yet, harder, faster, hammering into him, eagerly urging the divine veiny dick to spill forth its golden seed and fill his stomach with it.

And then the cock exploded in him, and it wasn't gold but rainbow cum that filled his cheeks and drizzled down his chin painting his skin in the colours of a luscious lewd kaleidoscope. Exquisite jizzm of the gods, lewd ambrosia, saccharine confection that didn't just taste like a delicious candied pudding but of solidarity, of anarchy, of hot, hot equality, of saucy sticky feminism that fountained from this fecund phallus. He gobbled it up thirstily as though the cum would give him life even as it choked him, but at the last moment, as his vision pooled black and unconsciousness was imminent, she pulled her still-twitching cock from his gratified lips and he could breathe again, born anew in blessed leftist glory.

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​ “Hello,” Geoffrey stepped into Cam's quarters, bowing slightly to her in greeting. “Is this a convenient time? I can come back if it isn't -” ​ “It's fine,” Cam waved him in as the doors slid closed behind him. “It's my day off tomorrow so I don't have to get to bed early.” ​ “Ah!” Geoffrey smiled, standing just inside the doorway. It was the first time she'd seen him since rushing off while they were hugging. Her cheeks flushed as she thought about it, and she glanced away quickly. ​ “It's just, uh – well it's a bit weird, actually,” Cam picked a t-shirt up off the back of a chair and threw it into the bedroom. ​ “Oh? You mean with Brat?” ​ “Yeah. He was, uh -” She frowned, scooping a pair of jeans up off the floor and draping them over her forearm; “In his tank, when I left for my shift last night. When I came home this morning– well, come and have a look,” She gestured him over to the corner of the room. ​ Hesitantly, Geoffrey strode over and looked up at where she was pointing, into the corner where the two walls met the ceiling. ​ “Oh,” Geoffrey leaned up on his toes and looked at the thing from both sides. “Oh, I see.” ​ When Cam had got home from her shift earlier that day, stripping clothes off as she wandered into the bedroom to change into something more comfortable, she noticed that Brat's tank was empty and there were little pools of water leading away across the floor. She'd looked all over; under the bed, under the furniture, in all of the cupboards, even in the toilet – until eventually she noticed the mass of chitin and webbing clinging to the corner of her living room that looked just about big enough to contain Brat at his current size. ​ “Yeah. You don't know what kind of creature he was, do you? Species or anything?” ​ Geoffrey shrugged. “I'm afraid I don't. We call them phaelis, but that just means any kind of unidentified critter, usually stow-aways that end up on board looking for food or shelter or otherwise find their way on board and can't find the way off again.” He stopped inspecting the cocoon and took a step back. “I did ask some colleagues if they had any idea what it might be, to no avail. I even searched the system network – I found some things that were a little similar, perhaps, but nowhere close enough to be a match. Certainly none that transitioned via a pupal phase, if that's what this is.” ​ Cam's head had started tingling as she listened to him speaking. She hadn't noticed before, or perhaps the quietness of her quarters, shielded from the ambient noise of the station, let her focus on it more – he had such a soothing voice. ​ “Do you think it's dangerous?” She also noticed that they were standing very close, side by side, her hand just a few inches away from his. ​ “I don't know,” His voice was almost a whisper. “I wouldn't like to say. Did it ever exhibit dangerous behaviour towards you? Seem threatening, or territorial?” ​ “No,” She shook her head. “There was that first night I brought it back – I woke up in the middle of the night because it was flicking water on me.” She blushed again suddenly, remembering that she had been dreaming about Geoffrey when Brat had woken her up that night, and hoped Geoffrey wouldn't notice the colour of her cheeks. Flustered, she turned away to take the jeans that were still over her arm into the bedroom, and in turning, brushed against Geoffrey's arm. He didn't move, or say anything. ​ “That seems more playful than anything,” He called back to her. ​ She shoved the jeans into a drawer, and the t-shirt she'd picked up earlier in alongside them. She was about to return to the living room when she glanced at Brat's tank, and drew a sharp breath at what she saw there. ​ “Holy shit. Come and see this!” She called to Geoffrey. She heard his footsteps padding across the living room and then felt him approaching behind her. ​ She pointed at the tank. While Brat had been a denizen of the glass rectangle he had kept the waters murky, presumably by secreting something – but now that he was no longer present, the waters had started to settle. The clarity that afforded was revealing some kind of formation in the substrate that she'd used to line the bottom of the tank; a structure, something Brat must have crafted. It was euclidean in formation, little towers with perfectly straight edges and mounds that were perfectly curved, stretching into and away from each other, connecting at angles that made her head hurt, and all decorated with symmetrical patterns made from the little coloured pebbles she'd put in there, embedded into the structures themselves. ​ “Is that – some kind of tank decoration you purchased?” Geoffrey hesitantly asked. ​ “No,” Cam whispered. “No, it is not. I mean, it's all stuff I put in there – sand, gravel, pebbles – but it was all just loose on the bottom of the tank. That – I don't know what that is. I guess Brat made it?” ​ “Fascinating,” Geoffrey leaned towards the glass, his hands neatly clasped behind his back. “Utterly incredible. Should we document it?” ​ “Document it?” Cam sat on the edge of her bed, trying not to look at the weird shapes and formations that Brat had brought into existence. ​ “Yes. We don't know what this creature is, where it came from – and I've never seen anything like this before. I feel that we should be documenting this, for scientific purposes. What if this is important?” ​ Cam shrugged, scratching her head. “I guess. Document it how?” ​ “I have a camera and scanning equipment in my quarters,” Geoffrey turned to her. “If it is not too much bother, might I fetch them and bring them here? I don't wish to inconvenience you, however – if you wish to sleep we could do this another time.” ​ “No, it's fine,” Her eyes flicked to the tank and her head started spinning again. She forced herself to look up at Geoffrey instead, but that wasn't much better, her sitting on the edge of her bed and him towering over her, in her bedroom, next to her bed, impossibly close. “I'm not tired, we can do it tonight if you want.” ​ “Excellent! I shall fetch them at once,” He practically bounced from the room, and then returned, leaning in through the open doorway. “Um... Would you like to come along for the walk?”

• * * *

​ “I'll just be a moment,” he guided her into his quarters. “Lights, low warm,” He commanded the AI and a soft warm glow filled the room. ​ “Wow,” She mumbled, looking around. ​ Geoffrey turned away from her, a little bashful. He seldom had guests into his quarters – in fact he couldn't remember ever having a casual visitor. “You can look around,” He waved a hand around the room. “I just need to find my gear.” ​ “Take your time,” She said behind him, standing in front of the bookcase filled with his collection of old natural history volumes from the various planets he had visited. ​ He retreated into the far corner of the room and opened a large trunk of possessions he kept behind one of the easy chairs. The scanning equipment was easy to find – it was lying in its case right on top of the contents of the trunk. The camera would be a little more difficult. He moved around the room opening various chests and cabinets and drawers, and then moved his search into the bedroom. He could hear her walking around, hear the soft sliding of a book being drawn from its place on the shelf and the hiss as it was pushed back into place again. ​ Geoffrey smiled to himself, feeling overcome with a sense of warmth. The thought of anyone rifling through his collections usually filled him with some combination of dread and irritation, but with her here doing it, he was surprised at how comfortable he felt with it. More than comfortable – he wanted to encourage her to look at everything, to talk to him, tell him what she thought of it all. What would she make of the Pa'Tal warbeads from Veritath, speckled with the blue-green blood of generations of warriors that wore them? Or the preserved Arimanth flower in its little sealed glass cube with its alluring opalescent petals? ​ He found the camera in a container under the bed. With that and the case of scanner equipment in hand, he returned to the living room. She was standing in front of his Passotherium macrocua vivarium. ​ “Are these real, or holographs?” She asked, watching one of the little creatures wobbling its way across a branch, little butterfly-like wings fluttering on and off releasing little clouds of shimmering dust each time. ​ “Quite real,” He stood just behind her. “Do you like them?” ​ “I've never seen anything like them before. What are they? They're pretty awesome, man,” Her voice was a low, reverent whisper. ​ “Passotherium macrocua,” He recited. “From Sliri 280. Quite common there – I wouldn't think to keep any endangered species.” ​ “Common, but beautiful,” She replied. ​ “I'm glad you think so.” ​ “Sliri 280 – isn't that over in the Caslyria system?” ​ “Verily,” He smiled a little at her cartographic knowledge of the universe. ​ “That's quite a distance away. Have you travelled much?” ​ “I suppose,” He tucked the camera under his arm that was holding the case and used his now free hand to fiddle with the spines on his neck. He recognised the action as one of his nervous gestures, but she wouldn't know that. The conversation was bordering on discussing his past, and that made him uncomfortable. “Not as much as I'd like to. Alas one must work to provide the means for travel. I've found what I needed,” He stepped back from the vivarium. “Shall we return to your quarters?” ​ “Did I say something?” She turned to him, frowning a little, looking at where he rubbed his neck with his hand. “If I did, I'm sorry.” He sighed. What was it about this woman and deciphering his little quirks and foibles? ​ “No, you didn't. Well – you did, but it's – it's just me. You didn't do anything wrong. I just don't like talking about my past.” He was careful with his words, looking down at her feet because he couldn't quite face looking at that concerned expression she was wearing. ​ “Then we won't talk about it,” She closed the distance between them and rested her hand on his forearm briefly. “Come on, let's go back to my place and you can show me how your equipment works.”

• * * *

​ Fuuuuuck, she chastised herself in her head the moment the sentence had slipped sneakily from her mouth and out into the great wide world, spoken, audible, obscene. ​ Geoffrey didn't seem to have picked up on the double entendre – or if he had, he hid it well. ​ “Your stuff is really cool,” She blurted, in a hurry to fill the silence between them as they navigated their way through the corridors back to her quarters. “I'm not saying that as an opening to talk about any of it, if you don't want to,” She quickly added, glancing across at him. He was focused on the ground in front of them, striding purposefully alongside her, no discernible expression on his face. “I just... I like it. Your place. It's cozy. I feel... Comfortable there,” She found herself rubbing the back of her neck now, her skin hot. “It's like a museum or something. I always loved going to museums when I was a kid.” ​ She looked across at him again, thought she caught him smiling for a brief instant. ​ “You can visit any time. I don't have visitors, really. I... Don't like the thought of people touching my things with their greasy fingers and clumsy hands. But when you did it,” He paused, flicking his eyes across to her quickly and then away to look at the floor ahead again, “It was fine. I didn't mind. I think I'd rather like you to visit again and spend some time with it all. If you wanted to, of course.” ​ “Yeah,” The corners of her lips forced themselves upwards into a little smile. “That would be cool.” ​ They reached her door and she let them both in. Geoffrey hovered just inside the doorway again, waiting for her to lead the way. ​ “Where shall we start?” She kicked her shoes off to one side of the door. “We should do the cocoon thing too, right?” ​ “Yes,” He nodded, setting the camera and case down on the coffee table, and then opening the case and pulling the contents from their slots in the foam moulding that kept everything secure. ​ “The camera is just a normal camera. This scanner equipment measures various readings – heat sensor, radiation, etcetera.” ​ “You've done this before?” She stood nearby and watched as he deftly extracted the components and began assembling various bits and pieces. ​ “In a manner,” He glanced over at her, and his forked tongue flicked briefly from between his lips. A little tingle coursed its way through her and she cleared her throat as if to push it aside. “I'm a bit of a hobbyist,” He continued. “Everything I collect is something I have some kind of interest in. I like discovering things, learning about things.” ​ “You're curious,” She smiled. “Well, I have no idea how that works but I'm a pretty fast learner.” ​ “So I've heard,” Geoffrey mentioned nonchalantly, focused on screwing a sensor array into a receiver. ​ “Oh?” She arched a quizzical brow. ​ Geoffrey set the assembled scanner components onto the coffee table and folded his arms in his lap, turning to look at her. ​ “You're somewhat of a frequent topic of conversation aboard the station,” He said, matter-of-factly. “I assumed you'd know?” ​ “I... actually don't,” She was frowning now. People were talking about her? What the Tizlel about? ​ He stood up, looking a little concerned. “It's nothing bad, I assure you. Quite the contrary, in fact. You're pretty well known for your on-the-fly ship repairs and space-walks. You're more competent than any of the other pilots and pretty much the only person anyone's ever met here who actually enjoys space-walking.” ​ “Oh,” She leaned back against the wall, folding her arms across her chest loosely, digesting this new information. ​ “Do you know Troesk, down in ship maintenance?” ​ “Yeah?” She nodded. “She works on the piece of crap I fly sometimes, keeps it running for me.” ​ “She tells a different story,” Geoffrey smiled. “She will regale anyone who listens with the tale of how you fixed a broken thruster on your ship that had misaligned and wouldn't disengage and was sending you spinning towards the wormhole. Says she listened to the comms recording and you were utterly unphased while you were out there clinging to the ship fixing it.” ​ Cam shrugged. “It was no biggie. I knew I'd get it fixed.” ​ “And the time the fuel line leaked over the heating system into the vents and started filling the cabin with a mildly corrosive gas that would have eaten through your skin and the fabric of the spacesuit so you put your suit on and flew the ship back from the roof after patching into the controls from your suit's on-board computer?” ​ “Oh, that was fun,” She smiled at the recollection. ​ Geoffrey tutted with amusement at her reaction. “You're somewhat of a legend on this station, and you didn't even know.” ​ She shrugged again, not sure what to say. “I just do what I need to.” ​ “And your insouciant spacegal attitude,” He smiled at her. ​ Cam chuckled. “'Spacegal'? I like it.”

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Chapter 4

​ Geoffrey pushed the mop into the corner and wiggled it around. When he retracted it, the stain was still there. He frowned, dunked the mop into the bucket again, wrung it out, and then forced it back into the corner, working and twisting and rubbing it, pressing down hard on the mop shaft and really grinding it in there until he was straining from the effort. ​ When he pulled back this time, the stain had gone. He nodded to himself, and then set the mop into the holder in his cart and pushed the cart further along the corridor. At least this section was a little cleaner, he thought to himself as he dunked the mop, wrung it a little, and then slapped the dripping head to the steel floor. ​ “Hi,” Her timid voice came from behind him. Geoffrey sighed and continued mopping for a few moments as he calculated how likely it would be that she'd go away if he ignored her. He'd probably just run into her again, though. It was a pretty huge station, and yet they always seemed to cross paths. ​ He stopped mopping, turned around slightly and leaned onto the brush. She had her hands clasped behind her back and her features were knotted with worry. She could hardly bear looking at him, and for a moment a little floundering of concern threatened to creep up on him. ​ Geoffrey set his jaw and stared at her, hard. ​ She was silent a moment, as if waiting for him to say something, and when he didn't, she pressed on. ​ “I came to find you to tell you I'm sorry.” She peered up at him briefly and then the floor drew her attention again. ​ He narrowed his eyes at her. ​ “Go away.” ​ She narrowed her eyes back at him. Perturbed by her continuing presence, Geoffrey started mopping again. ​ “I misunderstood what you were saying to me.” ​ “Go away,” He pushed the mop up against the skirting and worked it back and forth against the wall, rubbing at the stubborn grime that always gathered there. ​ “You see, I'm an uncouth, uneducated idiot, and I didn't know there was such a word as phaelis, p-h-a-e-l-i-s, referring to a small space creature of unidentified origin.” ​ “Go away,” He dunked the mop, and didn't wring it this time, but flopped it down next to her feet where it splayed water over her boots. She stepped back, but not from the water, but rather to make room for him to mop. ​ “Because I didn't know that word existed, I thought you were saying phallus, p-h-a-l-l-u-s, referring to the male genitalia, particularly an erect penis.” ​ He paused, casting her a cautionary sideways glance, and then continued mopping around her. He didn't tell her to go away, this time, though. ​ “I thought, in my idiotic haze of vocabularic uneducation, that you were implying that you'd had sex with me and were asking me how it was.” ​ “That's absurd,” He spluttered and then silently admonished himself for saying anything other than 'go away'. ​ “Yeah, well, that's what I thought. That's why I tried checking with you that I was hearing you right, and – well, the whole conversation was just a mess born from my ignorance and I'm sorry. I should have... I don't know, explained why I was taken aback or something, given you an opportunity to clarify.” ​ Geoffrey stopped mopping and leaned on the shaft again, looking at the patch of moisture on the floor as it dried and receded. ​ “I mean, I thought I had clarified,” She continued, taking a tentative step closer to him. “I know I asked you if you were saying you were giving me The D.” ​ The corridor they were standing in was silent – far more so than the corridor they had been standing in next to the canteen when they had had the fateful conversation. With the lack of ambient sound masking her words, he wasn't so sure now that he was hearing her correctly either. ​ “Are you saying Nadine? N-a-d-i-n-e?” He glanced across to her. ​ She met his gaze, her eyes full of worry and shame and humiliation and something else that seemed to sparkle just under the surface, and shook her head. “Nadine? No. 'The D'. As in, 'the dick'. It's just slang for referring to penises.” ​ “Oh,” He let her words sink in. “And 'giving someone The D' is... Oh. Oh.” His hearts hammered furiously in his chest as he realised his mistake in all of this, and realised that he had exacerbated the misunderstanding between them. “I thought you were saying Nadine, that you had called your creature Nadine.” ​ “That's... a kinda dumb name for a cool-as-fuck squid monster thing.” ​ “That's what I thought,” His lips threatened to curl into a smile. ​ They stood in silence for a moment. ​ “So you were asking me about Brat,” She took another step closer to him, testing the waters of amicability between them. “That's what I called it, by the way. Brat.” ​ “A more fitting name, I suppose,” Geoffrey shifted his grip to the top of the mop shaft and pumped the mop up and down nonchalantly as he thought, so that it made a gentle 'schlop, schlop' sound on the floor. “Yes, I was asking you how Brat was doing. And you thought I was... That I... Well, what you said.” ​ “Yeah. I'm sorry. I behaved like a dick.” ​ Geoffrey mulled the situation over, replaying through the conversation with this new perspective. In retrospect, he supposed, he couldn't very much fault her for being angry, if that was what she believed he had said. ​ “I think,” Geoffrey said with a sigh, “That given what I now know about how you experienced that conversation, I can't really fault you for your reaction.” ​ A beaming smile of relief flashed across her lips, unbidden and carefree, before she reigned it in and regained control of her expression. Composing herself, she allowed a much smaller curl of her lips, but the sparkle in her eyes had ignited. ​ “Thank you,” The relief in her words was harder to conceal; her voice was practically trembling. “I told Vi about the situation – you know, my Comms buddy – and she knew right away there must have been a misunderstanding because you'd never say anything like that.” ​ He shrugged. “I wouldn't.” ​ “But you and I don't really talk that much. I guess I don't know you well enough to make that call.” ​ Geoffrey returned the mop to the bucket, wrung it out and then pushed it into the holder on the cart. ​ “Maybe we should change that,” The words slipped from his mouth before he could stop them. He had his back to her now, and closed his eyes tightly, chastising himself for being so brash. ​ “I'd like that,” Her voice was quiet and sounded just as surprised as he had been that he'd said those words. ​ He took a deep breath and turned back to face her. Ever since their little spat he had spent his time flipping between kicking himself for not taking the time to clarify the source of the obvious misunderstanding, and hating her for flying off the handle at him for no apparent reason. Now, he felt a surge of release wash over him as he could let those worries go. He felt somewhat liberated. ​ “I am glad we have been able to move beyond this,” He chose his words carefully. “Though we barely know each other, I strongly disliked disagreeing with you.” ​ She smiled warmly at him and the tingle it caused ran from the crown of his head down the entire length of his spine and made the tip of his tail flicker back and forth. ​ Camryn looked to the movement of his tail, and then looked back at him. “Are you agitated?” ​ “Agitated? Oh -” He recalled the segment of their conversation at the canteen where he had hurriedly and somewhat inaccurately explained the flicking of his tail to her. “No. Er,” He cleared his throat as the words stuck in his mouth, “quite the opposite.” ​ “Ah,” The corners of her lips perked upwards. “You'll have to tell me all about the secret life of your tail some time.” ​ “I'm not sure my tail would like having its sordid history divulged, but if you insist,” He managed a smile of his own. This conversation was fast becoming rather pleasant – certainly a far call from where they'd left off the last time. He found himself flush with hopeful anticipation. ​ “So look, um,” Camryn kicked the toe of her boot into the floor. “Us humans, when we resolve a conflict, it's kinda customary to hug the person you made up with...” ​ “I see,” His heartbeats quickened. ​ “But I don't want to, just, y'know, force myself on you or anything. I don't know if there's something in Cleckovian culture that -” ​ Throwing inhibition to the wind, Geoffrey closed the space between them with one long stride and pulled her into a close embrace. She froze in his arms and for a terrifying moment he thought that he was doing it wrong, it had been so long since he'd hugged anyone – it wasn't exactly a part of his upbringing and Cleckovians weren't generally known for their warmth – but then he felt her relax, and she returned the embrace, snaking her arms around his waist and pressing her hands against his back, just below his shoulders. ​ He had meant it to be a quick thing, sure that awkwardness would swift overcome him if they remained in physical contact for more than the briefest of moments, but he found himself unwilling to coax his arms to release her, and besides, she appeared quite content to stay there. ​ “You're really tall,” She mumbled into his chest. ​ He smiled. “You're really short.” ​ A moment's silence passed. ​ “Do you have two hearts?” She was hovering her ear against the fabric of his janitorial jumpsuit. “I can't quite make it out, but I swear -” ​ “Yes,” He croaked, and in an utterly audacious move, Geoffrey reached one arm up and undid another fastener at his chest, and then pulled back the fabric to one side. She moved her head so that her ear was pressing directly against the scales of his chest, which made his hearts beat even harder, affording her greater chance to discern their rhythm. He closed his eyes and held his breath in an attempt to regain control of his pulse. ​ “Wow,” She whispered after listening for a moment. ​ He chanced to glance down at her, to see the top of her head below his chin, to see his arms curling around her waist. Not quite believing it, he took a slow, deep breath, watching as the movement of his chest caused her to move against him, and then released it, just as slowly, watching her sink into him again. ​ And then something between them started beeping. ​ “Shit,” Camryn pulled back and he dropped his arms from around her. She fished in her pocket and pulled out a comms pad, checked a message on the screen. “I have to go. I'm sorry. I was waiting for a call from – I set up a meeting – I found a thing -” She'd started rambling. ​ “It's fine,” He smiled at her, seeing that she looked as flustered as he felt. “We'll run into each other again.” ​ “Yeah,” She returned the smile and nervously shoved a stray length of hair behind her ear. He'd never seen her do that before. “We probably will. You can come and see Brat if you want,” She was backing away, ready to run off along the corridor. “I'll tell you what I found.” ​ “Alright,” Geoffrey reached for the mop to resume his cleaning duties. “I'll do that.” ​ She smiled again, a kind of puzzled, curious smile, and then turned and jogged off towards the elevator.

* * * *

​ Draegan Black sat at his big vanta-black desk in his vanta-black office aboard his prized warship, The Void, flicking lazily from right to left on the little screen in front of him. You just couldn't find any decent, good-looking, corporate-minded capitalist entrepreneurial pro-gentrification exploitative people any more. He'd even made the decision to broaden his dating horizons to include all genders and then, approaching desperation, had ticked the boxes for ten different species aside from his own in his preferences, but the search results being returned to him were still tiresome. ​ With a frustrated sigh, he shoved the tablet away and leaned forwards in his chair until his forehead touched the cool table. There was a knock at the door and a creak as the door cracked open on its hinges, spilling warm yellow light into his lovely black room. ​ Draegan sighed again. ​ “Yes? What is it?” ​ “Reports from Sector 12, Your Eminence,” a hand reached around the edge of the door and proffered some papers towards him. ​ “Bring.” ​ A young man timidly crept into the room, head bowed down as he scurried up to the desk, placed the papers upon it, and then scurried out again and closed the door behind him. ​ Draegan picked up the papers and scanned through the reports. ​ “Air lock malfunction on Omega Prime... Boring,” He tossed the sheet of paper to one side and it glided silently downwards to settle on the floor with a soft sssss. “Ship collision in the Frenelus atmosphere... Yawn,” He flung the paper over his shoulder. “Mysterious object found in the vicinity of Canis Station. Canis Station, Canis Station...” Draegan rapped his fingers on the desk and then picked up his tablet, tapping the screen. ​ “Your Eminence?” A face appeared on the display. ​ “Canis Station – is that the one near the wormhole?” ​ “Indeed, Your Eminence.” ​ “This report from Canis Station,” Draegan waved the piece of paper in front of the tablet, “Bring me the waitron unit who submitted the report.” ​ “Immediately, Your Eminence. I shall have them shuttled over at once.” ​ Draegan hung up the call and leaned back in his chair. Might be boring, he thought to himself. Might not, though. He steepled his fingers, curling a devious smile.

Chapter 5

​ “Blimm!” Cam embraced her friend who had waddled out from the kitchen to greet her with open arms. “Is now a good time to talk?” ​ “Yes!” Blimm wriggled out of his apron and slung it over the counter, and then ushered her to a quiet table to the side of the kitchen. “I got your message. What's going on that I can help you with?” ​ Looking around to check there were no eyes on them and nobody else in earshot, Cam slipped the data pad from her pocket and slid it across the table to her friend. She tapped the power button so that the screen lit up, and then waited for him to read the recipe. ​ “Where did you get this?” He asked without looking at her, re-reading the recipe. ​ “This is where it gets interesting,” Cam said quietly. ​ “It's already interesting. Some of these ingredients – and in these combinations – I've never seen anything quite like it.” ​ “It came through the wormhole,” She enunciated carefully, watching his expression. ​ He glanced up at her a moment and studied her face. ​ “You're telling the truth.” ​ Cam shrugged. “I'd just done a drop and had turned around to come back when it appeared on my radar.” ​ “Just like this?” Blimm tapped the tablet. ​ “It was in a little box, a metal case. I had to tractor it aboard. That's all that was inside, and as far as I can tell, that's all that's on the data pad.” ​ Blimm scrolled up and down the screen, reading and re-reading the recipe. ​ “Funny that the only person on the station who gets a special sausage from me finds a mysterious sausage recipe from a wormhole,” He eventually said, sliding the tablet back to her. ​ “The coincidence isn't lost on me. So – what do you think? Can you make it?” ​ “Oh, sure,” Blimm leaned back in his chair and gazed through the canteen window out into the junk-specked blackness beyond. “Sure, I can make it. Got the equipment here. Some of the ingredients, even. Of the ingredients I don't have, some will be easy to find. Some will not.” ​ “Anything you need from me?” Cam leaned forwards on the table. She was excited to try this new sausage recipe, even if only because it had been spat at her through the freaking wormhole with who-knew-what on the other side. Sentient life, clearly. Telepathic? Sausage-loving. She smiled. ​ “Let me think,” Blimm tapped his fingers on the table as he counted. “Fifty for the fenniorant seeds, another fifty for the ground glogellette, eighty for the tivio root – let's say two hundred chips, to be safe. Those are the most expensive ingredients I'm missing. I'll cover the rest.” ​ “I can do that,” Cam pulled her chip card from her pocket. Blimm took it and scanned it across his receiver; Cam punched in the auth code and then took her card back. ​ “This will be enough for a test batch. If they're good, then...” He shrugged. “Then we'll talk again.” ​ Cam smiled. “No hurry for them. Just let me know.” ​ Blimm stood and clapped Cam on the shoulder. “No hurry indeed – you and your sausages, you're probably chomping at the bit. Is that the expression?” ​ “Yeah,” She chuckled and stood too. “I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty damned excited to try some exotic wormhole sausage.” ​ “Between you and me,” Blimm leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper, “so am I.”

* * * *

​ Someone beeped the door to Jareth's quarters. He was expecting Vi, but not for a good hour yet – was she early? He wandered to the door with the toothbrush in his mouth and waved it open. ​ One of the waiters from Draegan's stood at the doorway, out of uniform. Jareth quirked a puzzled brow. ​ “Hey,” He said through a mouth full of foamy toothpaste. ​ “May I come in?” He asked. Jareth tried wracking his brain for the man's name. Ah! Merrik. It was always a peculiar experience seeing waiting staff without their uniforms and out of context, but Jareth had a great memory for names and faces. ​ He waved him in, and then retreated to the bathroom to rinse his mouth out, gesturing for Merrik to follow him. ​ “Thank you,” The man stepped into Jareth's quarters and the door hissed closed behind him. “I have a delicate matter to discuss with you and appreciate your taking the time to see me,” He followed behind Jareth and lingered at the bathroom door. ​ Jareth spat the toothpaste out and gave his mouth a good, long rinse while Merrik stood stoic just outside the room. When he was done, he patted his mouth and ushered him through to the lounge section. ​ “Have a seat,” Jareth pointed to one of the easy chairs. “What's this delicate matter? Is Draegan's taking the Infamous Bowl off the menu again? Oh no – is it closing? Is the station making you leave because of that hairgrub scandal?” ​ Merrik offered him a cursory smile. “No, nothing like that. Would you sit also?” ​ Jareth took the seat opposite, leaning forwards with his elbows on his knees. He hoped this wouldn't take too long – he still had to wash and blow-dry his hair, manicure his nails and oil his chest. ​ “Very well. I'll begin. We – that is to say, the staff at Draegan's – have noticed that you seem particularly fond of our eating establishment,” Merrik smiled across at Jareth. ​ “Oh, yeah,” Jareth nodded enthusiastically. “Always have been. Best grub in the universe, you ask me.” ​ Merrik wrinkled his nose; what a funny grin he has, Jareth thought. ​ “Indeed. Well, how would you like to work for His Eminence Draegan Black himself?” ​ “Wow. I mean – sure, but I kinda have a contract here as a pilot -” ​ “No, no,” Merrik held up his hand with a tight-lipped smile. “Not working at the eatery. No – His Eminence Draegan Black would like you to work for him on a personal matter. Something that will utilise your position as a pilot aboard the station.” ​ “Oh yeah?” Jareth leaned a little more forwards in the chair. This was starting to sound interesting. Draegan Black wanted him to work for him? How did he even know he existed? “He wants me?” ​ “When His Eminence learned of this matter, he requested that we find someone to carry out this task on his behalf. Someone who would hold the company's best interests in their heart; someone on our side. Considering how often you frequent the Draegan's on this station, and the zeal with which you devour our food, we consider you a perfect fit for the role.” ​ “What exactly is the role?” Jareth asked, a little confused. ​ “It's quite simple,” Merrik assured him. “We've heard about something, and would like you to dig a little deeper. Source more information.” ​ “Like a spy?” Jareth's eyes lit up. “Spying for Draegan Black? Wow, that sounds pretty cool.” ​ Merrik raised an eyebrow. “Quite. Yes – yes, like a spy – a personal spy to His Eminence Draegan Black himself. Are you interested?” ​ “Aw man,” Jareth beamed. “You bet. So what do I need to do?” ​ “We believe someone aboard the station has discovered something... special, something that we suspect might have come through the wormhole.” ​ “Wow,” Jareth leaned back, thinking hard. “Lot of people on the station. Could have been anyone.” ​ “Well, we actually suspect it was one of your friends who found it,” Merrik continued. “A woman called Camryn?” ​ Jareth rubbed his chin a moment, and then sat up as a realisation hit him. ​ “Oh! That's right, Vi was saying that Cam had found something!” ​ “Excellent!” Merrik beamed. “You see? We knew you were the right man for the job. Now – do you think you could find out what it is that Camryn found for His Eminence Draegan Black? I'm sure he would be very grateful – a personal thanks would not be off the cards.” ​ “I'll do my best,” Jareth nodded earnestly. “For Draegan Black, I'll do my damned best.”

* * * *

​ “Hey sexy,” Vi sidled into Jareth's quarters and let the door close behind her. Jareth pulled her towards him and she reached up and flung her arms around his neck and planted her lips firmly on his. It had been many, many hours since she'd last seen him, and that was in a public place not conducive to gross public displays off affection, and they were in that first rosy blush of their relationship where they couldn't keep their hands off each other. Well, that and the fact that Jareth marked the end of a particularly dry spell for Vi and she was getting in as much action as she could to make up for it. ​ “Hey yourself,” Jareth wrapped his strong arms under her butt and hoisted her up, pushing her back against the wall. She wrapped her legs around him and started tugging at the buttons of his shirt. ​ “You smell good,” Vi nipped at his neck and then immediately regretted it as the bitter taste of aftershave clung to her tongue. “Maybe a little too good...” ​ “Mmm yeah, you know it,” Jareth mumbled as he squeezed her butt-cheeks and ground his pelvis into hers. ​ “Ow, shit,” Vi squirmed as the metal button on the fly of his jeans pressed into her thigh. “Let's get these off you, shall we?” ​ “I love how eager you are,” He lowered her from him and then took her hand and led her to the bedroom, sitting her down on the edge of the bed. “Can't wait to get my clothes off, can you? How about a sexy little Jareth-dance?” ​ Jareth pushed some buttons on the computer panel on the wall and soft jazz music wafted through the room speakers. He started gyrating, slowly swinging his hips and unbuttoning his shirt. ​ Vi sighed as quietly as she could, leaning back on her elbows. Really, she was just here to fuck. No need for such a song and literal dance. ​ “Oh, yeah...” Jareth pulled his shirt tails free and undid the last few buttons, pulling his shirt aside and running his hands over his exceptionally oily torso. His eyes were closed and his face focused into a knot of concentration, bottom lip pulled back between his teeth. ​ Vi twiddled her thumbs. “Shall I join you?” She sat forwards, hopeful to move the action along. ​ “Naw baby,” He flicked his long black hair back and grinned those pearly whites. “This is all for you.” ​ “Right,” She sighed again and wondered how to approach this tactfully so as to not hurt his feelings and still get laid in short order. “It's just, I'm really really horny, babe. I don't know how much longer I can wait – you're so sexy, I just want you right now.” ​ She slipped her shoes off and peeled off her blouse, and when he didn't blink, she stood and slipped off her bra and then pushed herself up against his gyrating form. ​ “Ohhh wow,” He capitulated, folding himself around her. “Fuck your tits feel good. Oh yeah, rub them all over me baby,” Jareth wriggled against her, the oil on his torso making the two of them incredibly slippery. ​ “Come on,” Vi walked backwards towards the bed as she unhooked his fly and pushed his jeans down. He stepped out of them thoughtlessly, too engrossed in rubbing his chest against hers. Her legs bumped up against the bed and she laid back, pulling him down onto her. ​ “Take my trousers off,” She whispered in his ear. ​ “Mmm,” He acknowledged her but slid downwards, burrowing his nose into her chest and cupping his massive hands around her breasts on either side, pushing them into his face. ​ Rolling her eyes, Vi wriggled her hands underneath him and undid her own trousers, pushing them down as far as she could and then kicking her feet until they were off. The attention he was giving her tits – although entirely for his own benefit – and now the feeling their almost-naked bodies pressed together was making her even more desperate to get down to business. ​ She cupped her hands under his shoulders and tried pulling him upwards but the oil made him too slippery and she couldn't get a good grip. She wrapped her legs around him instead and tried hoisting him up towards her that way. ​ “Kiss me,” She instructed him. “You're such a good kisser.” ​ “I know,” The flattery managed to divert his attention and he slid his body up along hers until their crotches bumped. She gasped at the sensation, now utterly gagging to get him inside her. He cupped his hand around her neck and pulled her mouth towards his, sinking his tongue between her lips and exploring her mouth as he kissed her deeply. ​ Now they were getting somewhere! She clasped her feet behind his back and pulled him hard up against her pelvis, tracing her fingers down along his spine and cupping her thumbs into the waistband of his boxers. ​ “You're so hot,” He mumbled and hoisted her further up the bed. “Your tits are so hot.” His one hand reached down and enveloped her one breast, squeezing and massaging the supple flesh. He pinched her nipple between his thumb and index finger, and then abandoned her mouth again, returning to her chest and wrapping his lips around her nipple instead, sucking it into his mouth and playing it gently between his teeth. She had no doubt again that he was doing this entirely for his own amusement, but luckily for her the sensation was far from displeasing. ​ “Shit yes,” She whispered breathily and used her toes to tug down his boxers. She felt his hard-on flicking loose against her hip and then the tip of his cock pushing slick against her skin. She was burning hot from her ache to fuck him, and struggled from her pants as quickly as she could. Jareth had moved his second hand to play at her right breast as his mouth still attended the left, and thus distracted she wriggled beneath him until his cock pushed against her slit and then pulled him into her with her heels against his butt. Jareth groaned loudly as Vi slid down onto him, but continued unwavering with his mouthy attention to her cleavage. Realising she'd been given command of the helm whether she wanted it or not, she rocked her own pelvis against him, pulling him back into her with each stroke by her heels at the back of his thighs. She arched her back and closed her eyes, delighting in the sensation of his slick, oily body against hers now. In a few moments he caught on that they were actually fully engaged in coitus at this point, and lifted himself up on his hands either side of her body, thrusting hard into her. ​ “Oh yeah, baby,” Jareth pushed his knees up and spread her thighs wider, ramming into her lustily. “You're such a good fuck. So good,” His eyes were closed and his lip pulled back again, the same face he'd made while he was 'dancing' for her. ​ “I know,” She echoed his own unassuming ego and locked her eyes on the muscles of his abdomen tensing and relaxing as he ploughed her. She ran her hands up his arms, felt his rigid biceps, and up further to cup around his shoulders, kneading her fingers into his deltoids. He was by far the most ripped guy she'd ever fucked. Straight out of a strip joint. She looked at the sinew of his neck pulling with every plunge into her, and felt her orgasm building. ​ “Harder,” She instructed and dug her nails into his shoulders. He looked down at her with a grin and pumped her harder, so hard that the bed struggled against its metal frame and the mattress slipped back and forth with their movements. ​ “You like that, baby?” He moved his hands to her hips and pulled her hard onto him. He tipped his head back, flicking his long black hair out in a wave around his shoulders. ​ “Oh fuck!” Vi squealed. It was too much – the tan, the muscles, the oil, the hair, the pearly white teeth, the square jawline, the perfectly manicured eyebrows. She came hard, thighs clenching around him, body contorting. ​ “Yeah!!” Jareth yelled up at the ceiling, pounding into her fast and hard. “Yeah! That's right, baby! That's right! Oh – Oh -” His face screwed up tightly as he came into her, every muscle of his body rigid, every part of him suddenly frozen and unmoving except for his cock that pulsed inside her. ​ When he was done, he relaxed with a quick exhale and then rolled aside, leaving her on her back staring at the ceiling. ​ “Such a good fuck,” He patted her on the arm, panting. ​ Yes, well, she thought to herself; you're just lucky you're so fucking pretty. ​ “Hey babe,” Jareth leaned up on his elbow and turned to face her. “Did you find out from Cam if you could tell me what the thing is she found?” ​ “Nah,” She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and relishing in that post-orgasm glow that flushed her body. “Haven't seen her.” ​ “Oh,” He sounded disappointed. “It's just – I really want to know what it was.” ​ She peeked across at him – he was staring at her intently. ​ “Soon as I know I can tell you, you'll know,” She shrugged. “But I'm not telling you unless she says it's okay.” ​ He sighed and rolled onto his back again. “Damn.” ​ “Go and ask her yourself if it's such a big deal,” Vi stood from the bed and wandered to the bathroom, scooping up her scattered clothing along the way. ​ “Yeah,” She heard Jareth responding from the bed. “Yeah, maybe I will.”

Thank you for reading! If you liked it, let me know at WelshPixie <3