"...1," the med scan whirred to life beneath Kados' deft fingers.

She's an empath. I watched Addy as she laid on the table, her fingers neatly knitted together clasped across her stomach. She was chewing on her lip as she watched Kados, trying to read anything from his expression that she could.

I saw her tongue dart out to wet her lip. It was always so captivating, I desperately wanted to know what she was feeling. "Are you feeling something?"

Kados eyes flickered between Addy and the screen.

"Spearmint gum," her voice was thoughtful.

"From Kados?"

"Yeah."

It was always odd how the gift was felt. No two Empaths had the same interpretations, so I would expect Addy to feel the same charged feeling that I got from Kados in waves, though it was further muddled by the fact that she was human and our frame of references for sensations —particularly the two she was experiencing most— was entirely different. "What do you think the feeling is?"

It took her a while, but she finally settled on what she felt was the closest approximation, "I think it's focus. From a memory maybe..." the words trailed off as she disappeared into the fog of her mind.

"What do you mean?"

"I heard about a life hack—" the phrase didn't translate and she seemed to gather that from my look, "something that makes life a little easier. You're better at recalling things if you chew gum while studying and then chew the same gum while taking a test. I can't stand Big Red or Juicy Fruit gum, so I always chose spearmint when I was studying."

"I would certainly say I'm focused," Kados interjected.

"Anything interesting?" Addric asked from his spot back at the entrance of the room.

"Always," Kados' reply was absent-minded, bordering on airy whenever he was lost in his studies, "I'm mostly right, though there are a few unexpected spots that are changing as well."

"Like?" Addy asked the question just as I stepped a little closer to catch a glimpse of the screen past Kados.

"A fairly prevalent line of change following your mid-sagittal plane along your lower stomach up to your ribcage and chest, specifically."

My hand shot to my mouth to keep the laugh from escaping and to halfway wipe the smile off my face.

The realization didn't come as quickly to Addy, though that wasn't necessarily surprising. I doubt the memory had quite the lasting impression on her as it did on me. The feel of her hand on my cock had both haunted me and kept me sane. I could see the lightened glow of the shirt she'd pulled off baring that same skin that she'd pressed flush against my body and felt the heat of it while she'd stroked my cock between us, teasing me until I'd come along that area that Kados was musing about.

I would know seeing as I traced that gentle slope of her body with the cloth not long after, worshiping the fact that she'd chosen to gift me with pleasure and take none for herself despite the fact that I could smell her heat on my tongue. It was thick enough that, I'd been assailed with thoughts of slipping the underthings from the ship down her legs and baring her to me...of finding my way between her legs be it with my cock or my tongue and tying ourselves so tightly together the knot of our threads would never come free.

Addy's face scrunched tightly. Her hands that had been clasped along her stomach followed the line up her middle past her navel and up to her ribcage while she puzzled through whatever could have caused that area of her body to change. Her questioning glance shot to me, just over Kados shoulder, a second later.

The realization was a slow dawning of a dusky rose along her cheeks and even down her neck. She looked away just as fast and muttered some non-committal sounds echoing some sentiment about the change being strange, though I'm sure Kados had an inkling that it wasn't.

"We could run a deeper diagnostic on nerve endings and brain wave patterns when you're sensing something," Kados glanced to me, "we could do the same with Esayr as well and see how the two readouts compare, though that's a more involved process. What I'd like for right now, is to study some of the cells of your mouth and compare them to the earlier set. And, if you'd be willing I'd like a sample of the basal cells from that mid-sagittal line as well. You can take the sample yourself if it would make you more comfortable."

"Yeah, that's fine. I don't mind."

At Addy's assent, Kados turned to his questions to Addric, "Are you able to contact our parents and have them send the genetic files from their mating? So I can compare the progression between them to Addy's to see if there is a similar evolutionary process between the two? I'll reach out to Cedonie and her mate as well."

Addric gave a curt nod, one he'd adopted from being around the more military-minded males in the docking bay, "Cedonie's a good idea, though hard to get a hold of."

"She's my first option, but if I can't reach her I'd at least like another comparison until we could possibly get ahold of Cedonie and her mate."

"If you need a mated couple, I'm sure my parents would offer as well," Kados considered the offer so I continued, "At the very least, they're both Empath's as well so you could at least look into any changes that might have occurred in those genetics when they mated, I'd imagine you could find their profiles in the system of the ship files as well, both before and after mating."

"Uhh...not to interrupt, but can I get up?" Addy drew our attention back to the med scan where she was still politely laying on the table.

Kados jumped into action, "Yes of course." He was scattering things along the nearby work table, looking for something in each of the drawers. When he finally pulled back he held up two collection containers each with their swabs. He deftly handed them to Addy, "Your mouth and mid-sagittal line, just run the swab along the skin in both places for a few seconds then place them back in the container. I can," he paused to resume the hunt in the room before he found what he was looking for: a pen, "mark each for you so they don't get mixed up."

He passed off the newly marked container to Addy who immediately got to work with her swabs, allowing Kados to spare only a minimal amount of attention while he considered the option of reaching out to my own parents. "It would be helpful to have their input certainly, though Cedonie still remains my first choice as I think the insight they would provide would be the most helpful."

"Any particular reason why?" I'd met Cedonie a fair few times over the years that I'd known both Addric and Kados. She'd been a novelty, as one of the handful of females born in our generation, and just as --if not more-- devious than her brother. She'd gotten on another searching ship, split along with her parents when she'd been pulled in a different direction than her brothers. It had been a while since I'd last seen her, only keeping up to date with her whereabouts because of her infrequent Comms with her brothers.

It was Addric that answered me, "Her mate is half-human."

*****A/N*****

I'm sorry this is a shorter episode. I just found out from my mother that one of my childhood pets just died. We had him for 16 years, so this morning has been a little staggering and I'm a little bit out of it right now, but I did still want to get something up today in between this and prepping for possible rain from the nearby storm in the area.

Thank you for taking a minute to read it I hope everyone's day has started off a little better than mine has.

~Layla