“So that’s what one of them looks like.”

“One of what?” Yaro asked, looking up from what could only be described as a meat-muffin. Cooked meat thankfully, but the sight of it still did little to arouse Jason’s appetite.

“A guy,” he said, gesturing across the small café with his drink to where a pack of Rakiri had just walked in. Sandwiched between the lot of them, as he looked around for a table with sufficient seating, was a male.

“You’ve seen males of my kind before,” she pointed out.

Jason nodded as he set his drink down – which was probably for the best. Yaro had pitched the green fruit juice to him as being similar to a coffee. Which it was. In roughly the same way that diesel could be conflated with rocket fuel.

Suffice to say, he was already feeling jittery and he wasn’t even halfway through the cup.

“Sure, but I’ve never really noticed before now,” he said. “You don’t have as… distinct a difference in physiology compared to Shil’vati.”

“You expected them to be small?”

Jason flinched as he glanced over at the male. “It’s less that, than that I expected them to be...”

He could almost hear the metal groaning as the massive alien male settled into his chair, his pack of females vying for spots around him.

“…less physically imposing.”

He struggled to keep his eye from twitching as what must have been the ‘head’ female brought over an entire tray of the meat-muffin things that Yaro was eating.

Prior to last night’s data-net search, he’d just assumed that like humans, the rakiri as a species had the occasional over-eater. Sure, said fatties had always been surrounded by a pack of rakiri, but that hadn’t seemed odd to him. While the wolf-like aliens were capable of traveling alone, they just as often traveled in groups.

Yaro turned toward where he was staring.

“Ah,” she murmured. “They must be a wealthy household indeed.”

“Because they just bought enough of those meat-muffins to feed me for a month?”

Those things weren’t cheap. Hell, nothing on the menu was cheap – even beyond the already inflated prices that Gurathu’s remote location already incurred. The café they were in was fancy, and while Jason might have preferred to eat somewhere cheaper, the thus far silent member of their trio had insisted.

He glanced over to where Kernathu was happily munching on a meat-muffin, oblivious to the rest of the world. He wasn’t bothered. He considered just getting the reclusive engineer off the base to be a win.

“In part,” Yaro allowed, drawing him back into the conversation. “Though I wish you would call them by their proper name rather than meat-moofin.”

Jason just shrugged. “Pippiyas then.”

“Yes, the acquisition of so many pippayas was expensive given the locale,” the wolf-woman continued, daintily sliding her own partially eaten one towards Kernathu, who took it with a hum of thanks. “But that is not the only signifier of wealth that the pack possesses. The state of their male is another.”

“He’s fat?”

Jason thanked Kernathu deep in his heart as she blurted out exactly what he’d been thinking since the mass of fat and muscle had wandered into the café.

Once upon a time he might have done the exact same thing as the socially inept engineer, but after the last few months, he’d learned that saying the first thing that popped into his head came with consequences. And given the kind of people he’d been rubbing elbows with recently, he really needed to curtail that urge.

Though he’d freely admit that his attempts to learn ‘tact’ were a work in progress.

However, it seemed that his attempts to avoid pointing out the obvious were a wasted effort in this case, as Yaro just nodded matter-of-factly at Kernathu’s tactless interruption. Though she seemed slightly less sanguine about the meat crumbs the alien spit across the table in the process, given the way her ears flipped back.

Something the engineer was quick to notice as she turned blue and practically sank into her chair.

“Sorry,” she squeaked quietly.

“Not a problem,” Yaro smiled reassuringly, even as she used a napkin to sweep away the crumbs. “And yes, you were correct. The male’s girth is a sure sign of his pack’s wealth.”

“Food’s not that expensive,” Jason pointed out.

“I would disagree,” Yaro said reasonably. “You may not have noticed it, as your food is for the most part subsidized by the Imperial military, but food is not cheap on Gurathu.”

Well, he supposed it was an ice world. Still, he didn’t think the cost of living was that high out here.

“Plus,” the wolf-woman continued, “you are a human, and as the entirety of the crew has noted, you do not eat much.”

“Yeah,” Kernathu nodded eagerly. “Tisi was getting worried that you weren’t finishing your food.”

“Finishing my…” he spluttered. “Have you seen the sizes of the portions we’re given?”

Back in the Crucible, each meal had been precisely doled out for each cadet. Which meant that, naturally, he and Tarcil got significantly smaller portions than the rest of the recruits.

Though, now that he thought about it, Tarcil still tended to get more than he did. Yet it wasn’t like the guy expended that much more energy than him. If anything, Jason’s training regimen had him burning far more calories than Tarcil should have been.

Were Shil’vati metabolisms just that fast? Or inefficient?

“Yes, when you first arrived, our captain feared that you might be starving yourself for aesthetic reasons.” Yaro nodded sagely. “The notion seemed strange to me, but Rocket assured me that such practices are not uncommon amongst Shil’vati males who wish to appear more appealing.”

“Given that I haven’t had Tisi beating down my door to force feed me and admonish me about my diet, can I assume that someone talked her out of it?” Jason deadpanned.

“Cerilla did.” His fellow engineer smiled.

Jason sent the ship’s resident doctor a prayer of thanks as he reclined into his seat.

“Right, now that we’ve established that I’m not dieting, you were saying something about food on Gurathu being expensive as shit.”

“Feces is not expensive,” Yaro said.

“It’s just…” Jason sighed. “Why is that guy being fat so impressive.”

To her credit, Yaro seemed entirely unbothered by his tiny outburst – if anything, she seemed amused. Which had him belatedly wondering if she had actually misunderstood his earlier idiom, or if she was just messing with him.

Either was possible with the enigmatic wolf woman.

“Rakiri eat a lot,” she said simply. “For one of us to garner a large reserve of fat speaks of an intentional decision, rather than mere happenstance.”

“The fur-ball chose to fluff up like a balloon?”

Yaro nodded. “Or his packmates… requested him to do so.”

“Why?” Jason couldn’t help but ask.

“For the same reason that Hela wears expensive and rare metals on her person.” Yaro glanced over to the other pack and he thought he might have seen just a hint of envy in her eyes. “As a means of displaying their affluence to others.”

Jason almost opened his mouth to point out how stupid – and health hazardous that was – but shut it at the last minute.

It wasn’t like the rakiri were the only species in the universe to do dumb things in the name of being ‘fashionable’. The corsets worn by Victorian era women were amongst the things to jump to mind, but they were hardly alone. Hell, high heels were still in use, and they were a rolled or broken ankle just waiting to happen. And given that his entire crew had suspected him of starving himself to be ‘prettier’, he was pretty sure the Shil’vati were little better on that front.

“Sounds dumb,” he blurted out.

He cursed himself as he did it, reminding himself that it had only been a minute ago that he’d reaffirmed his decision to keep his mouth shut on topics like this.

It didn’t help that Kernathu was nodding avidly in agreement with him.

“Boss, you just knocked your meat-muffin off the table,” he said.

“My meat-moofin? What do you- agh!” the engineer cried. “My pippaya!”

Both he and Yaro ignored her as she scrambled under the table to retrieve the greasy looking thing. Part of him hoped she’d put the gross thing aside once she recovered it from the floor, but he had a feeling that he’d be disappointed on that front, and the expensive food item would be going straight back into the woman’s mouth.

Though the floors do look clean enough to eat off of, he admitted grudgingly as he glanced at the marble looking floor of the expensive establishment.

“So you know his pack’s rich because he’s on the heftier side,” he said, turning his attention back to Yaro.

“And inclined towards older ways of doing and being,” the woman added. “As you have noted, overfeeding a male as a means of displaying affluence is ‘dumb’.” She glanced at the alien again as another tray of food was brought out for him and his pack. “The health hazards are known, and thus the practice has fallen out of favor with younger generations. Still, it persists in the older and more conservative.”

“So I don’t have to worry about you fattening me up?” he joked.

Yaro’s ears flipped back in surprise, but she quickly rallied, leaning forward. “Perhaps? Perhaps not? While I enjoy a honed physique, there’s no denying that a more… rounded partner can also be fun.”

This time it was Jason’s turn to flush minutely as the feline alien’s eyes roamed over him consideringly, and he had more than a passing inkling that he was currently being undressed in the woman’s mind.

“You know, it’s because of things like this that everyone knows you two are doing it.”

Both he and Yaro turned to look at Kernathu, who seemed to realize what she’d just said. The diminutive Shil’vati gave a small eep and nearly dropped her meat-muffin for the second time.

Jason sighed.

“I guess the cat’s out of the bag.”

Yaro cocked her head at him. “If that means that our secret is out, then yes, I suppose you could say that is the case.”

It wasn’t really an issue. While he might have preferred that his private affairs remained private, the crew knowing that he and Yaro were… friends with benefits?

He didn’t know exactly what they were. Either way, the crew finding out that they were bumping their disparate alien uglies wasn’t really an issue. It just meant that he’d need to expect some coital offers that were even more blatant than usual in the near future.

Which was a strange dichotomy between cultures to him; that to a Shil’vati, a male hooking up with someone was a sign that he was more available, not less.

Aliens were weird.

He looked over to where Kernathu was absentmindedly nibbling on her ‘pippaya’.

At least the engineering room would stay safe for the foreseeable future. He couldn’t see the ungainly mess that was his immediate supervisor working up the courage to ask for a quickie any time soon.

Rocket though…

He shuddered… and felt a little aroused.

Scaroused?

“300 is not softcore porn.”

He should have know it was a trap. It was too well timed. Rocket had reported an issue with her shuttle just as Kernathu started her usual maintenance cycle.

Which was why he was torso deep in the shuttle’s maintenance hatch, searching for a problem he was pretty sure didn’t actually exist, while Rocket argued with him about the crews latest movie night.

He’d honestly been excited when he’d been informed that the crew would be importing something from Earth. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone – least of all himself – but he’d been missing Earth. Nothing in particular… just everything.

It was hard to put in words.

Either way, he’d thought that a night watching some human cultural classics would serve as a nice distraction.

How naïve he’d been.

The Shawshank Redemption? Jaws? Monty Python? What were those? Did they taste good?

No, given who had picked the movies in question, those classics of human cinema had been ignored in favor of films with covers featuring the hunky and shirtless.

And one didn’t get much hunkier or more shirtless than 300.

“It’s an action movie,” he grumbled. “An incredibly stylistic and intense action movie.”

Truth be told, he actually liked 300. It had no pretenses as to what it was. It was the sort of film you could just turn your brain off and enjoy.

Unfortunately, Rocket – and to a lesser extent, the rest of the crew as a whole – hadn’t so much turned their brains off, as started thinking with the ones located much lower down.

Even Yaro had only made it a few minutes into the film before she’d started snuggling much closer into him than was strictly appropriate. He couldn’t even enjoy it either. The ship’s climate control was always set just a few degrees hotter than ideal for a human and the rakiri being covered in fur meant he’d spent the whole film sweating his balls off.

The smell of which had only seemed to drive the wolf-like alien’s ardor higher.

When he’d run off for a cold shower after the fact, it had been more of an attempt to cool off than resist any burgeoning erotic urges brought about by alien snuggling.

Now he had another alien jabbering in his ear that 300 was obviously not an action flick, but a thinly veiled attempt to get softcore erotica into the mainstream of the ‘prudish human film scene’.

His life was goddamn weird.

“It’s porn,” Rocket sing-songed from her cross legged position on the hangar floor.

“Pass me that breaker-bar,” he said, turning away from the open console in front of him.

“The what?”

He pointed. “The breaker bar. It’s the long metal with the nodule on the end.”

The pilot shimmied over to grab the tool, before shimmying back to him. “Is that what it’s called. I just called it the thingy.”

“It both amazes and horrifies me that I’m expected to trust you to fly me about,” he said as he hooked the tool onto the end of his spanner.

“Hey!” The alien pouted. “I’m a good pilot!”

“Not so great a technician though,” he pointed out, his voice echoing slightly from within the machine.

“I’m decent,” the pilot grumbled. “I just didn’t know what that thing was called. Never used it if I’m honest.”

“Yeah, well we don’t all have the benefit of being living tanks,” Jason grunted as he slowly loosened a stubborn bolt using the extra leverage the breaker-bar provided.

“Aw,” Rocket cooed. “Compliments will get you everywhere.”

“It wasn’t a…”

He paused as he realized that it kind of was a compliment. At least by Shil’vati standards. He knew he’d hardly have an issue with a woman calling him a tank.

“Besides, why be a better a technician when we have you for that technical stuff,” the woman continued. “Much more fun to watch a man get all greased up than doing it myself.”

He couldn’t help but note that the woman’s tone got more and more distracted as she continued talking.

“…You’re staring at my ass aren’t you?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

Jason sighed as he yanked up his pants, earning a put-upon mew of disappointment from the Shil’vati. To be honest, it didn’t really bother him. So long as she wasn’t touching.

Thankfully, while Rocket liked to push the line socially, she respected physical boundaries.

“So, I hear you’re sleeping with Yaro?”

It was a close thing. Jason only just avoided slamming his head on a jutting piece of machinery as he jolted as the pilot’s words.

Taking a deep breath, he determinedly kept his voice level.

“So, why are you called Rocket?”

He took pleasure in the silence that followed his statement.

It was slow going, but he was getting the hang of dealing with Shil’vati. Just like back in basic, the trick wasn’t to shut them down, but escalate.

They never knew what to do.

“Aw, come on,” the woman finally whined. “You can’t just cut me off by asking that.”

Jason finally managed to get the bolt he’d been working at loose. “I can and I have. It’s an answer for an answer, or you can suffer in ignorant silence.”

“I asked first!”

Jason turned to look at her, wiping a strat bead of sweat from his cheek, ignoring the way it left a long black smear along it. Just as he ignored the way the purple alien’s gaze immediately widened at the sight of his sweat stained shirt sticking to his chest.

“I… uh…” the woman mouthed, before regaining some small semblance of her wits. “I had a training accident.”

Jason took an almost vindictive thrill in bringing up the hem of his shirt to wipe away the grime on his face. “And?”

It seemed that for all the woman talked a big game, she wasn’t actually used to someone flirting back. “I ejected.”

Jason frowned, dropping his shirt. “I kind of figured. You know, if you were in an accident.”

He hadn’t. He hadn’t even known that Shil’vati craft had ejector seats until a second ago. Still, if she’d had an accident while flying, she’d obviously end up ejecting.

It didn’t really seem like a good reason to call her ‘rocket’. Then again, what did he know about pilot calls signs? ‘Glider’s’ was equally dumb, given that all they referenced were her ears.

Rocket flushed, for reasons he was pretty sure weren’t entirely due to the impromptu show the woman was getting.

“No… I mean I hit the wrong button.” She looked away. “So when I ejected… we were still on the tarmac.”

Yeah, that makes more sense, Jason thought with a smile, visualizing the event.

“Wait, you said ‘we’?” he pointed out.

Rocket flushed even deeper, her voice going just a little higher even as it got significantly quieter. “Me… and my flight instructor.”

Jason laughed. A long and hard belly laugh. It was so bad he nearly dropped his wrench – into the open console behind him.

“It’s not that funny!” Rocket protested.

Which only made him laugh harder.