Chapter 18: Stay With Me
The trip was over quickly. Paulie took his dirty laundry to the cleaning room and deposited it into the machines. They would clean, sanitise and dry them all at once. But it would be a while before it was done. No sense waiting around, he figured he could always pick them up in the morning. He noticed that as Jakiikii had mentioned there was indeed another machine active. He could not see inside it, but from the banging racket it was making he had to assume it was her stealth suit. Hopefully it was shrink-proof, he chuckled at the idea.
Paulie walked quickly back down the hall. He was in a rush to return even as he knew he was likely to arrive before Jakiikii had finished in the bathroom. A part of him was loath to be away from her side though, the subtle feeling of his need for her company had grown stronger in their last adventure. Something he didn’t really understand. The feeling was new to him, almost instinctual.
He fumbled his lasercard in his haste and dropped it on the floor. Leaning to pick it up quickly he looked both ways to see if anyone had seen his stumbling buffoonery. The hall was delightfully empty and he nodded to himself. That was just as well. Though a part of him longed for the smiling faces of his friends, he was alone.
‘No. Not alone’ He told himself as he opened the door and stepped inside. He heard once more the low thrumming song of Jakiikii as she showered. The tune was hauntingly familiar and alien in equal parts. Like something his Aunt Margaret had sung to him as a child mixed with a sort of otherworldly longing for a home long lost.
With a start he realised she wasn’t just singing tunelessly now, he could make out words in the song here and there as she rose and fell in volume. She indeed seemed to be singing about loss, and hope. A song about something long gone, but never forgotten. He sat on the edge of his bed again and leaned back into the mattress as he closed his eyes and listened to the melody for a while.
He didn’t know how long he laid there, but it must have been several minutes for just as his eyes began to grow heavy the sound stopped and the shower turned off. The acoustic dryers ran for a minute to be followed by the harsher sound of the stall’s self-cleaning function again.
He sat up and opened his eyes, swinging his legs over the corner of the bed to face the bathroom. After another minute it opened and he was taken aback yet again.
Jakiikii stepped out into the room, her bathrobe now laying across one arm as she looked at him with all six bright orange eyes. The cat-like irises flashing in the light as she smiled at him widely with those same eyes, the pink sclera of them only dimly visible from across the room.
She was wearing a pair of striped, blue pants of semi-loose fit that were covered in tiny flowers of alien design almost like the kind of sleep wear one might see back on Earth, and nothing else. His eyes were immediately drawn from her face to her bare chest. Her very fluffy bare chest. She did not have breasts, he knew that already from the nearly form-fitting stealth suit she always wore and it made sense as her species were nectarivores and could likely drink the sweet liquid from birth or hatching or whatever they did.
She turned and pulled the door closed and he noted with curiosity that her back was mostly bare of the fur that covered her front, though near to her slightly flared waist there was a small patch of it in the small of her back. Her muscles were clearly defined and he noted with curiosity the triple muscle groups that controlled her three pairs of limbs. So alike his own upper shoulder muscles, and yet so alien. Higher up the mottled greyish skin of her body he could see the twin breathing vents that sat just to the inside of her middle pair of shoulder blades. The two openings looked like slightly raised grooves in which he could see the movement of bright pink flesh as her gills fluttered when she breathed.
She turned back toward him now. Her body language was slow and methodical as she veritably sidled up to and then past him, close enough for her bare shoulders to brush his chest as she did so. She placed the bathrobe on the table and sat back on one of the stools, crossing her legs as she nodded in his direction.
“Thank you for letting me use your shower.” She grinned with her eyes, the tell-tale crinkling of the flesh around each bright orb giving away the underlying mirth of her comment even as she kept her body language impassive. Paulie nodded and then slowly moved to join her at the table. As she leaned forward and placed her two upper pairs of hands on the table he sat on the stool across from her.
“Yeah. Well, I will admit that you gave me quite a, uh.. a surprise when I saw you there.” She looked at him intently and he gestured to the bathrobe. “I guess you had to wear something, your stealth suit was too dirty.”
Once again she chuckled and moved a hand to gesture to herself. “I don’t sleep in the suit, Paulie. What did you think, I never take it off?” He turned a little red as she said it.
“I never really thought about it that much I guess.” She grinned wider at him as if to say ‘sure you haven’t’ and then shifted a little in her seat.
Jakiikii leaned forward in her seat, the fluff of her chest pushing into the table slightly and drawing his eye. She seemed to notice and smiled, but didn’t comment on his lapse of decorum directly. Instead the termaxxi woman just rolled her head and then spoke casually, “Well. It is late, we should probably get some sleep. Tomorrow is already on the way.” One of her eyes tried and failed to maintain its neutral gaze but he saw it flicking over to look at his bed.
Paulie felt a pit of anxiety in the bottom of his stomach suddenly. Surely she didn’t mean..
It seemed that she did as he asked aloud, “Well. Yea, um. I guess, good night.” He pushed back from the table and stood but stopped as she stood too. Fast enough to startle him.
She shook her head suddenly, her tone dropping all pretense of neutrality now. “You big, slow dummy, I mean here.” She paused, her skin flashing pale white as she lost control of her emotional response. “With me.”
There was a brief silence as Paulie’s lips tightened, he felt his pulse quicken as he tensed slightly. It seemed she was asking him directly now, he had to make a decision. He looked at her, this alien from another world far from his own place of birth. She was so different, and yet..
He smiled as he hung his head a little, his mind flashing across all the time they had spent together in the short weeks since his abduction.
And yet, she was more familiar to him than any other person he had ever met. He knew her, her thoughts and fears. And she knew his, maybe better than he knew them himself. He looked up at her again, the smile playing across his lips as she gazed back at him with some unreadable yet desperate expression he could not understand. As he did so she stepped forward slowly around the edge of the table and reached out slightly towards him with four arms, the other two wringing together nervously as if she was really worried about his answer.
She spoke slowly as she stepped closer. “Paulie.” She paused, he could hear her take in a large, slightly shuddering breath as if preparing to leap from a high cliff. “Paulie, I love you.”
He nodded, “I know. I love you t..”
She cut him off. “No, not what I..” She placed a hand on her head and shook it as her petal-shaped eyes roved around the room. She did that little side-to-side shuffle she often did while nervous and her skin flashed pale not once but twice as she tried to gather herself.
Paulie pushed himself up straighter as he prepared for something, not sure what to expect.
She made a slight hissing sound, maybe frustration with herself and he frowned a little. “Why is it so hard to say?” She grumbled, then stepped closer again. Her six eyes were locked on his face now. Her dainty mouth hung open slightly as she breathed a little heavier. “Paulie. I think, I know.. you love me. And I love you, I want to be with you for the rest of my life.” He nodded, she had said so once before and his teeth flashed as he grinned wider. He opened his mouth to speak but snapped it closed as she stepped forward to him fully, her arms on his chest as she pressed herself closer.
“No, I need to say it now.” She breathed in and then, “I want to.. marry you.” The word seemed almost unfamiliar to her, almost as if she were speaking of something which she was not even sure of herself. She gripped his shoulders as she said it. Her eyes peered at him pleading, demanding to know his answer.
Paulie was at first stunned. Was marriage even a common practice in the GGI? Or had she heard it from him talking about his parents and past life back on Earth. As he thought about it he started to realise that he already knew the answer, he had known it for days now. Maybe longer, tonight’s events had only seated their relationship to him. What was she to him? A friend, no, much more than that. A partner, but also more.
She seemed to see the decision in his face, her eyes lighting in hope as she pressed her face into his chest and hugged him tighter. “Earlier tonight, in the dark..” She gasped, a sob escaping her as she recounted her feelings of earlier. “I thought that I had lost you for real. And the thought of spending another moment away from you.. I couldn't do it.” he wrapped his arms around her in return, suddenly overwhelmed with a powerful urge to hold and protect her. As if he could be the bulwark against this new pain that assailed her.
“Shhhh.” He said, one hand stroking her shoulders as he leaned his head down to see her better. “I am okay, I would never leave you.”
“I know.” She clung to him and cried for another moment before pushing back slightly. There were tears in her eyes and his heart nearly broke for her as he realised just how strongly his love for her ran through his very soul.
He swallowed and nodded. “Yes.”
She glanced at him sharply. “What?”
He said it again. “Yes, Jakiikii. Of course I will marry you, I would be a fool to say anything but a most sincere and profound yes to you. I love you, love you more than anything I have ever loved before. I would spend the rest of my days with you even were they in agony.” She hugged him, the sobbing turning to a steady flow of tears now. But no longer tears of sorrow, but of joy. And he cried with her for a time.
After a little while they settled down and then moved to sit on the mattress of his bed. He held her close for a little longer, one hand moving to stroke the furred ruff around her neck as she chuckled and ran a hand through the mop of hair on his head in turn.
“Does it intrigue you so much?” She asked as she caught him looking at her fluffy chest again.
Paulie smiled and shook his head. “I.. it’s just.. you are so damn fluffy. Like a moth or something.” She frowned.
“And what is a..” she gestured to him. “That word you said?” She asked, her mouth thinning in consternation as she heard the unfamiliar word.
Paulie shook his head. “It is a little fluffy bug, about the size of my thumb. They are known for flying around lights and.. stuff.” He finished lamely as she looked at him with some manner of mild confusion.
She shook her own head a little now, one hand pointing to herself. “You think I look, like.. a bug?”
He shrugged and gave her a boyish smile, “Maybe a little.” She smacked him in the arm, not hard enough to really hurt though. He raised a hand protectively in mock surrender. “Ayy, eyeye.. they are cute!” She stopped.
“You think I am cute?” She asked most cutely, four hands moving to frame her head as the last pair gripped at his shirt as if to subdue him.
Paulie smiled at her antics. “Maybe a little bit. But the moths are still cuter, they.. mmff” He was cut off as she suddenly pulled his head down and kissed him.
After a moment of surprise he closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her, picking her up and kissing her back fiercely as he pulled her from her seat next to him halfway off the bed. He released her and smiled. She snorted, her breathing vents flaring as she placed three hands on his chest. She seemed a little unsteady and leaned into him.
“What, not expecting a counterattack?” he joked as she glared at him for a second, but her gaze almost immediately softened.
She leaned her head into his chest and chuckled. “No, maybe not as such. But it was wonderful.” She glanced up at him. “I am happy, Paulie. Happier than I can remember being in a long time.”
They shared that moment for a second longer when Paulie’s mouth opened in a terrific yawn that he could not hope to contain. She giggled and then a second later she tried to stifle a yawn of her own. Her breathing vents flaring as she sucked in a great breath.
“Oh!” Jakiikii exclaimed. He chuckled and she nodded to the bed behind them. “I think it is well past my bedtime. We should sleep.” She looked toward him and he nodded.
Again, his heart did that thing again, speeding up as the two of them moved the covers and lay down together on the soft mattress. He noted with mild interest that she slept on her stomach, likely because of the breathing vents on her back. If she lay on them she was liable to suffocate herself, it made him wonder how her people had evolved such an odd method of respiration.
He turned his head toward her as she lay there beside him. Her six pretty eyes caught the light that filtered through the blinded windows and she reached out to touch his cheek.
“Sometimes I can’t believe this is real.” She whispered.
He whispered back, turning slightly to better see her. “What is real?”
She smiled with her eyes, blinking slowly. “You. Loving me. Everything that has happened, it is like a story. It feels too fantastic to be true.”
Paulie’s face softened even more as he heard her speak. He loved her so much more than he had words to describe. He nodded, “And how do you think it must feel to me? I am so far from what I might have considered possible even six months ago.” She nodded back, a slight giggle escaping her tired body. He continued slowly, “But it is real.”
Jakiikii lay there silently for a moment. “Will you hold me, Paulie?” He just nodded and she scooched over to his side where they wrapped their arms around each other. Laying on their sides with their heads pressed together. Her slow breathing calmed him and he closed his eyes tiredly.
Sleep came quickly thereafter, the comfort and feeling of safety doing far more for him than any amount of rest ever could. In that moment, he felt as though the universe had finally been set right. His breathing slowed and then he slept the quiet sleep of one truly at peace with their surroundings.