The Flare

Getting to Know Each Other

“s**t!”

Jake jammed his thumb straight into the metal beam that would support the gangplank. He hopped around, sucking on the sore appendage, muttering. He and Salona were repairing the second docking bay. Some of the metal got loose, requiring them to reattach it in several areas. He picked up his drill and reapproached the offensive beam, trying to ignore the pain in his thumb.

The space station needed a lot of work. Both docking bays needed hazard maintenance, the bulk of the main room still needed clearing out and only three of the living quarters were habitable. He wasn't sure they were going to get it all done before the ISC showed up. The station was far from being finished; though it wasn’t dilapidated by any means, it needed a minor rehaul for its intended use. They had most of the large projects done but it'd been hard to focus. Between bouts of soul bending s*x occurring like clockwork, Jake was either too tired or completely distracted from the job at hand.

Salona did not make it any easier. She insisted on wearing that skintight one-piece suit she brought from Naron. It didn't hide one inch of her delectable ass or those perky little breasts. Luckily his now throbbing thumb made it a little easier to focus. Funny how pain had a way of doing that[HW1] .

After examining her bio-scans Jake responded to Salona's subtle s****l suggestion, not wanting to put her body at risk. They fell into a comfortable routine. Work. s*x. Sleep. s*x. Work. He ran as many scans as he could, documenting and charting her brain’s dopamine responses.

They didn't talk about the s*x. It made Salona uncomfortable. Making her uncomfortable got her jittery and brought on her shakes early. A dopamine episode was the last thing they needed, and Jake could only take so much. He continued to have Marilyn monitor her, tracking her biological responses before and after s*x. He didn't know when or if he was going to show her the data. Every time he tried to discuss what was wrong, she began shaking her head, looking scared. So he just rode it out, being as careful as he could.

Jake tried not to feel like a f**k doll. He thought of himself as more of a medication really. The whole situation brought on feelings he wasn’t familiar with. The fact that she was using him to satisfy her physical needs sat sideways with him.

It was hard not to get frustrated when he looked at her, watching her focus on her task. She was so attentive to whatever she was working on, not giving a thought to what he was feeling. He was beginning to care a lot more about her than this damn mission and that scared him.

"Hold that other side still." Jake drilled the solid piece of metal into the wall. They were currently fixing hangar bay two. Number one was working fine, but according to the prep documents, the humans and Naronians would each be allowed their own private hangar bay. Apparently, they were terrified of sabotage.

"Frickin’ paranoid assholes," Jake muttered, not realizing he was talking out loud.

"What’s that? Asshole?" Salona asked. Jake smiled; the question had become familiar. He found her genuine curiosity adorable. Every day he said something that brought the same question.

"Uhm, literally or pejoratively?" Jake asked, knowing from past experience it was best to be very specific with Salona.

"Both." Salona smiled, knowing she was in for another example of his ridiculous language.

Oh boy, Jake thought. This'll be interesting.

"An asshole is..." Jake was cut off by the plank falling and landing at the bottom of the bay. "Shit." They were going to have to drag it back up.

"An asshole is s**t?" Salona asked, smiling. She knew what s**t meant. That was the topic of yesterday's conversation.

Jake laughed, picking up a pile of chains they could use to pull the metal plank back up. "Well, technically it's where s**t comes from. So, you can imagine its pejorative uses...if we call someone an asshole, they are equal to the place where s**t comes from. Which is conceptually worse than s**t itself."

"Ahhh...the word of the day. Asshole." Salona smiled, "I'd appreciate it if you stopped pulling my chain.”

"But I'm serious! Why would I joke about that?"

"Of course, you're not joking! But you are pulling on my chain. And I need it to help pull up the plank."

Jake looked down. His chain was tangled with hers. He laughed, feeling a little sheepish.

"Our chains seem to be tangled, ma'am," Jake said, wiggling his eyebrows.

Salona didn't notice. "Yes, and you're pulling on them. Stop yanking at it. We need to disengage them!" She'd turned the tables on him and didn't even know it.

Jake bent down, untangled the chains, and handed her one, laughing the entire time. He jumped down into empty space between the loading gate and the door to the rest of the station. Joking around with Salona was the better than any fancy five-star date he'd ever been on.

"What's it like, living on Naron?" Jake asked.

"Not that interesting," she said, just a little too fast. "What about Earth? Is it beautiful there?"

Jake knew she was evading any conversation about her home, but he didn't push it. Every now and then she leaked details. He'd been assembling them over time.

So far he knew she came from a big family but wasn't close with any of them except one brother. Her mother died when she was young. She and her father were close.

"It depends on where you live on Earth. Some places are beautiful, some are ugly. And that always depends on how you look at it. To some people the glass is always half full.”

"If it weren't half full what would it be?" Salona asked, Jake loving the adorable confusion showing on her face. She was beginning to understand Earth language. And if she didn't understand what he said, she usually figured it out from context. And she never hesitated to ask.

"It'd be half empty."

"But that's the same thing."

"Exactly! It's the same thing, the same amount of fluid, and yet two different people can see it completely differently. You may focus on how it's empty—how you are missing half a glass. But then I may say, it's half full...and I'll focus on what I have, not on what I'm missing. It's about perception."

Salona’s body tensed; her eyes were wary. Jake wondered what was wrong now. "Perception? And how do you see things, Jake? Is the world half empty or half full for you?"

"I'm a half full kind of guy. There's beauty in everything, it's just how you look at it." Her visible relief confused him. But all he could do was add that to the list of confusing Salonaisms.

"I agree. Many where I come from find it difficult to see the good in circumstances. They wish to make things better for themselves, seeing everything as a threat and need to assign blame."

Jake climbed out of the pit and handed Salona one of the chains. "I can understand. Who doesn't think that way sometimes? Especially if they're hurting." Jake stood, bracing himself. "Now, when I say so, pull as hard as you can. I can't do this by myself." He grabbed the other end of the chain attached to the plank and waited until she nodded her understanding. "Pull!"

The plank wasn't unbearably heavy, just awkward, requiring interesting maneuvering to get it back into place.

"You hold it still and I'll drill, OK?" Salona nodded the affirmative.

"Why did they send you on this mission, Jake? It's not a glorious mission. Or did they describe it to you as salvation for your planet?" Salona asked, focusing her eyes on the job in front of her.

"No, you could say it was a punishment of sorts."

"Oh." Salona's eyes went big. "There is an implied insult toward my people in such a punishment."

Jake looked up, startled he may have insulted her. But then he saw her smiling. She was teasing him.

"Yes, well, that's probably why they sent you after all..." Jake teased back.

Salona was quiet for more than a moment, making him look at her with concern. But she quickly gained back her composure.

"No, that just shows how lucky you are."

"Ahhh...yes, my glass is definitely half full now."

"Only half?" She smiled, looking at him from beneath her eyelashes, and they both laughed.

"Seriously, though. They sent me here to get me out of the way." Jake tested the plank, it was secure. On to the next.

"You were hindering them?" Salon asked, holding down the next plank.

"No. I wouldn't say that." Jake looked a little squeamish. Why was she so damn curious? She was like a five-year-old with her questions, constantly needing the answer.

"So what did you do?"

"Let's just say I dipped my pen in the wrong ink." Jake spat out, frustrated over his embarrassment. He hated telling Salona the real reason he was sent off Earth. But for some reason it felt even more wrong lying to her about it.

“You mixed ink? That’s a very harsh punishment, wouldn’t you say? Is mixing ink bad on Earth?”

Jake couldn’t beat around the bush with Salona. She was a plain-spoken woman and any veiled attempt on his part would end up confusing them both. He rubbed his neck, trying to be as delicate as possible.

“I…uhm, slept with the wrong woman.” He couldn’t look at her in the eye, his cheeks were on fire. The sensation was damned unmanly.

“What’s wrong with sleeping…?” Salona began to ask but one pointed look from Jake finally got the message across.

Salona’s eyes widened with understanding. "I see. Was she bound to another man?"

"No." That's one mistake he'd never make. Unlike his father.

"That's absurd. A man and a woman having s*x on my planet is something to celebrate." Salona scoffed.

"On Earth a man can have a physical relationship with a woman, but it's often expected for him to make a long-term commitment to her."

"Like a marriage?"

"Yeah."

"These women don’t ask you to marry them before they...have s*x with you?"

This conversation was just getting more and more strange.

"No, not really. I mean, if they did, I would say no, to both marriage and sex."

"You want to have s*x with them, but you don't want to marry them?" Salona's eyes scrunched up, clearly confused.

"Of course not. Just because I want to have s*x with someone doesn't mean I want to marry them! That's just...ridiculous!" Jake was beginning to get red in the face. "Hand me the damn wrench over there."

They worked in silence for several minutes, Jake sorting through his feelings.

He’d never thought what he did was wrong before. The women he spent his time with were always consenting and he made sure they had fun. Sure, the fact that he’d been sent to the far ends of the universe because he slept with the wrong woman certainly put a damper on it. But that wasn’t why he was feeling off.

Being with Salona made things so different. The idea of being with a woman for more than just s*x seemed more right than aversive. When did that happen?

"I'm sorry if I've angered you in some way, Jake." Salona said, her hand gentle on his shoulder. Crap. She thought she'd upset him.

"It's not you, Salona. I'm just...embarrassed."

"Why? You are a wonderful lover! I can understand why women on Earth would flock to you. I'm just surprised you haven't several children by now."

Jake took a deep breath. "My father married my mother because she became pregnant with me. He didn't want me to grow up a bastard." At Salona's confused look he explained. "A bastard is a child born out of marriage. It's considered bad to be born without committed parents." Jake jerked a screw in line with the wrench. "But after just three months he left. Always going on missions and even when he was home, we only saw him maybe one or two days. It wasn't until he died my mother found out he had two other families."

"Women on Naron typically have three husbands," Salona said.

"Yes, but you all know about each other!" Jake snapped, immediately regretting his outburst.

"Yes, that's true. Honesty should be highly valued within a family." Her eyes were full of compassion.

"His absence isn't what hurt my mother the most. It was that he didn't love her. Despite all his philandering she loved my father. And my father just didn't love her back. I think he may have tried when they got married but he gave up."

Salona touched Jake gently on the shoulder, offering comfort.

"I promised myself I would never make that level commitment to a woman I didn't love." Jake swallowed, picking the drill back up. He could not believe he was telling her this. "I swore I'd never cause the same pain I saw my mother go through."

For several moments Salona watched Jake drill holes into the gangplanks as if he were making a sieve. She found it interesting, the differences between their two cultures. No woman had less than three husbands and love was never an important issue. Partners came to care about each other, but emotions above that were considered vulgar.

But on Earth it seemed love was obligatory.

"Why must you love before you get married? It does not appear to be worth the potential heart ache." Salona asked, genuinely curious.

"I honestly don't know. And sometimes I think people who say they're in love are just deluding themselves. Eventually someone always ends up getting hurt." Jake coughed. "I've seen my mother. Even after all his philandering. Even after he's been dead for almost ten years, she still pines for him. Frankly, I think it’s a curse."

"On the day I was born my mother killed herself."

Jake immediately paused at what he was doing, giving Salona his full attention.

"She threw herself into the Voyd."

"The void? Into nothing?" Salona enjoyed Jake's confusion for a moment. It was always the other way around. Her confusion over his language.

"Voyd. It's an orifice in the crust of our planet located in the main council chambers. Five thousand decacycles ago the planet shook, opening the Voyd. We saw it as a sign of the Gods' displeasure and changed our government from a patriarchy to a republic led by the High Commander. The advising assembly chambers were built around the Voyd and it's been used to punish our most hated criminals."

"What did your mother do?"

"She bore a female child to her third husband." Salona answered, as if it all made sense now.

"They threw her in because she had a little girl?" Jake seemed genuinely confused.

"As a matter of honor, it is required that a woman births her female to the first husband." Salona said, then added quietly, "And she didn't get punished. She threw herself into the Voyd. I think she wanted to prevent an investigation but we’re not sure.”

Work was at a standstill, neither knowing how to move out of their current turn of conversation. Jake wanted to comfort her but didn't want to scare her into silence. Instead he just allowed her to continue talking.

"My father does not know why. It is not common among my people for love to be involved in marriages. I would say it is extremely rare. But my father did love my mother. He does not regret having loved her. They are lucky, unlike your parents, their love was reciprocated. But the pain of loss is great. I see him suffer with it every year."

"Maybe we're not as different as we think, you and I." Jake said, cupping her cheek in his hand, he felt it begin. The shaking. It was time.

 [HW1]This is where Kate things I need to expand on more than t**s and Ass. Not sure if I should…Jake being a guy and all.