“Hey…”
The voice in the dark surprised Tahnahos. He had been sitting in the cockpit, minding his own business, keeping an eye on the ship and its maintenance while everyone else was asleep. Kinisis had demanded that her Guardians take her to a specific Life Oasis on the very edge of the new Phoviversal Void, and that meant a long, boring journey, mostly done in stealth mode.
Being a long trip, everyone had opted to work in shifts, taking turns in maintaining the ship and maintaining Kinisis, keeping her happy and occupied. Right now, it was the Third Shift, where most of the ship’s occupants were asleep or guarding Kinisis’s bedroom chamber. Tahnahos’s job in the Third Shift was to keep the ship on course and in stealth, so that was what he was doing.
“Uh, hey Teekay. Why are you up?”
Teekay looked around uneasily. “Are you alone here?”
“Yeah, of course. It’s Third Shift, you and Tahvra should be asleep. Akah and Vexer are on guard and Kayenus should be patrolling. You should be asleep. Or at least on relief right now.”
Tahnahos glanced at the navigation console. They were floating through a particularly empty void right now, and if anything popped up, the automated systems would tell him. Teekay tutted then made his way over to the co-pilot seat next to Tahnahos, being careful not to step on Tahnahos’s insanely long tail.
“I’m feeling… weird right now…” There was a look in Teekay’s eyes that Tahnahos couldn’t place. Being a Skyavok, most of his expressions were eye-based, but this look seemed like a cross between tiredness, awkwardness and satisfaction. “Was just going to get a drink but…” Teekay trailed off.
“Is everything alright?” Tahnahos asked. “You seem really out of sorts.”
“No, things aren’t alright. I feel like I’ve done something bad, and there’s pretty much no one else on this ship I can talk about it with except for Relkir.” Teekay fiddled with his fingers, sitting with his legs apart and his tail tucked to one side. The Skyan’s telekinetic energy wings and psionic energy aura weren’t present, and only Teekay’s orange eyes glowed in the dim light. The orange was a stark contrast to the dark, cool, blue aura that Tahnahos emitted.
“Well, what could you have done that’s genuinely bad?” Tahnahos asked. “Did you murder someone? Did you put us in danger? Did you accidentally let a Decay Lord on board?”
“Uh, no.”
Tahnahos shrugged. “Whatever you did, it can’t have been that bad.”
“I… I slept with Relkir.”
The Kronospast didn’t say anything at first, then shrugged some more. “Cool. Was it nice to get laid?”
Teekay clearly hadn’t expected Tahnahos to react like that. Words stumbled out of his mouth and drooled down his maw as he tried to work out what to say.
“I assume it was all consensual, yes?”
Teekay nodded. “Yeah. We’d been talking all night. I said I thought he was a beautiful being. He said he has had strange feelings for me ever since we became Kinisis’s Guardians. We both felt like we knew each other from somewhere else. Somehow that ended up with…”
Tahnahos twirled his chair round to face Teekay and leaned forward. “Mhm?”
“You want to know?”
The Kronospast laughed, pretty loudly. “Mate, I may have a spotty memory and don’t remember the specifics from my own past, but I’m a god-damned ‘Spast, Sex is like the fourth thing we’re most interested in after food, alcohol and fucking around with other species. You don’t have to tell me, but I take it you enjoyed it.”
Teekay sighed, then nodded. “It was far nicer than I expected. I’m… glad I did it.”
“Good. Now you can go back to bed and wake up feeling refreshed for your shift.”
“You don’t think it’s weird? A Skyan had sex with a-”
“I am pretty sure, before I ended up serving Kinisis, that I had sex with a Rethan, a Skyan and a Vrekan, among other creatures!” Tahnahos boasted. “And that was before we all ended up being godly beings, essentially the same godly species. After all, Kinisis herself said that we are all the same, just shaped differently for different jobs.”
“I guess…” Teekay gave in. He still had an awkward look about him, but he seemed to have settled down at least. “Is it my shift next?”
“No, Tahvra’s shift. You’ll be doing the final haul…” Tahnahos grunted. “No fucking clue why Kinisis is making us travel this far though. And doing it under stealth means it takes even longer.”
The Skyan tutted, his little energy wings unfurling, flapping at the same speed as Tahnahos’s own wings. “None of this makes any sense, if I’m honest.”
Tahnahos rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t, but we just gotta go with the flow. Everything will work out eventually.”
With one last tut, Teekay got up to leave. Before he could do so though, Tahnahos stopped him.
“Hey, mate, don’t fret too much. I’m happy that you and Relkir get along so well. I want you both to continue being happy together.”
Teekay smiled, just a little. “Thank you, I appreciate that a lot more than you’d think…”