The new dwelling seemed a temporary sort, more like a spaceport cabin than a place to call home. There were no facilities for Serjeh to prepare himself food, for one, and the single room offered no separation, something humans seemed to need.
Een didn't completely understand what had happened. Other humans, humans in authority, had arrived and had upset Serjeh. They had frightened him, then threatened him. Whether the other humans had meant harm or whether Serjeh merely thought so didn't seem important in that moment when the closest human had drawn a weapon. He couldn't stand by and watch his host, his friend, hurt for trying to protect him.
Perhaps panicking and throwing the melai hadn't been the best choice, but it was only supposed to keep them still until more reasonable thinking prevailed. The melai had paralyzed them, yes, but also rendered them unconscious and, according to Serjeh, had stolen bits of memory. He should have realized that reactions would be unpredictable with unfamiliar physiology.
He hadn't been thinking except to protect Serjeh. Perhaps he had committed a crime. It made him dizzy to think so, his joints aching from worry. Serjeh had been on his pocket communication device for some time, seeming more and more agitated as he paced and spoke. He had smiled for Een, said everything would be okay, and had left the temporary dwelling.
If only he'd had a little more time to understand this new world before having to face it. With no knowledge of social or governing structures, he was at a loss, anxious over how grave the situation actually was. What if Serjeh now felt he was too much of a risk? What if he had abandoned Een in this place? At least he had left the larger data device. Een tried to bury himself in language study, devouring concepts and context, wishing Serjeh was there to answer questions.
Serjeh would come back. He would. Een trusted him. Liked him. More than liked. He had never felt so comfortable and companionable with any other alien being. While the rational part of him said that he couldn't understand the motives of a being he could barely speak to, every fiber of his physical being said that Serjeh was just as he seemed—patient, gentle, and compassionate.
The first sharp aches in his lim surprised him as he struggled through information on federal agents. He dismissed it as the aftermath of throwing melai, something he hadn't had any need to do since he'd matured and taken mates. But the pain grew worse as he waited for Serjeh, and when he reached up to touch one of the lim, the outer covering was tender.
He had been expecting it, of course, just not so soon. It was probably for the best that this came now. Serjeh didn't deserve to be driven from his home, and with Een gone, he would be able to return to his life.
Serjeh returned before full dark with packages and furtive looks out their single small window. When it seemed he was satisfied with whatever the outside world had to show him, he turned to the packages and produced a lamp with the proper light spectrum for Een to feed and water in sealed containers.
"Een? Are you all right?"
"I am…" Een waved his fingers as the language implant processed. "Ill. Sick?"
Serjeh moved the lamp so it shone more fully on Een. "Does that help?"
"It is more." Een waited until Serjeh sat beside him and held his hand. His vocabulary grew each day, but he wasn't certain he could explain this with the words he had. He had to do his best for Serjeh, though. "Aalana…adult Aalana mate."
"Yes." Serjeh gazed at him in what seemed earnest concern. "Humans do that, too."
Een shook his head. He hadn't said it right. "Adult Aalana must mate."
The skin of Serjeh's forehead wrinkled, an odd expression that Een had been able to associate with puzzlement. "You have to mate or you get sick? What if you don't have a mate?"
"If other Aalana lived here…there are Aalana who help. With no mate. Their…job?"
Serjeh stroked his smooth thumb over the back of Een's hand. "So if you were home, there'd be other Aalana whose job it is to, um, help out. If you didn't have a mate. What happens if you're alone?"
Een nodded, since Serjeh sounded as if he had put things together correctly. "Alone, we become sick." He waved a hand at his lim. "I pollinate. The lim do this. Without mates the pollen…stuck? Gathers. Swells."
Linguistically, he knew he was stumbling badly, hoping that throwing more words out would help.
Serjeh reached up and ran a finger gently over one of the outer lim. Even that careful touch was painful, but Een sat still, allowing his examination.
"Een, they're hot. Are they painful?"
"Yes."
"Can I get you some ice? Is there anything I can do?" Serjeh took both of his hands. "How does it get better?"
Too many questions, Een had trouble following. He would need to find ice in the database later. "It is bad fast. Surprising. I must pollinate."
"Or what? What happens if you can't?"
"I will die."
Serjeh drew in a sharp breath. "No. No, we can't let that happen. What can I do?"
"Do? Stay with me? I have…expected this."
With a little cry, Serjeh ran both hands through his hair. "You knew this was coming. And you didn't say anything. How can you be so calm?"
"What thing to do? There is nothing. No mates. No Aalana."
Serjeh got up to wander the room in sharp steps, as he did when upset or considering. "How do your mates help you pollinate? Could I help you? Why does it need to be another Aalana?"
"Do you pollinate without females?"
"I do. I always have." Serjeh took the data device from Een and placed it on the nearest surface. "I don't need to do it. But I've always done it with other males. Or by myself."
Een considered. He'd always been taught that the presence of the catalyst spores and the ova allowed pollination to occur. Perhaps…it could be done without? Though if that were true, surely other pollinators would have done so.
"Let me help you," Serjeh said in his softest, almost toneless voice as a drop of moisture leaked from his left eye.
They were such lovely eyes, so strange and dark, but so beautiful. Worried, Een caught the drop of moisture on his thumb. "You are injured? Your eye…"
"Those are tears, Een. They're normal. I'm fine. Our eyes use them to flush things out or they happen when we get upset."
"Upset?"
"I don't want you to die. Een, please. Let me try."
Despite the language barrier, Een understood what Serjeh intended. While it most likely wouldn't help his situation in any lasting way, a bit of physical comfort certainly couldn't hurt, and Serge seemed so unhappy. No, he wasn't being truthful with himself. He wanted Serjeh's touch. More than his lim yearned toward him. The harmony they had found together, such an unexpected connection, was bittersweet now that Een knew it would be so short. He didn't want Serjeh to suffer and he knew, again being truthful, that Serjeh would when he died. Whatever he could offer now, he offered with all his being and hoped it would help stave off the darkness.
"How?" Een asked as he curled up on the bed, facing Serjeh. "For you?"
Serjeh hesitated, then let out one of those gusty breaths. "No, no. This is about you, not me."
"Both," Een insisted and tried to imitate one of Serjeh's smiles. "You and I. Both."
"Hmm, okay, but—"
"You remove your coverings?" Een knew this to be the case since he had watched footage of humans mating. That had been a pollinator and an ovulator, male and female, though. Perhaps it was different for two pollinators.
"I…yeah. Sometimes," Serjeh said as he stared at the corner of the bed.
Een tugged at Serjeh's top covering. "Both. Mine removed. You."
"You took yours off the second we got in here. Fine. All right. If it makes you more comfortable."
The uncovering process fascinated Een. First Serjeh pulled the top covering off over his head, revealing a torso liberally sprinkled with human faiina. Hair. He had to remind himself to use human terms. This was quite different from the uncovered humans he had seen on the data device, who had been strangely smooth, like spacer textiles. Serjeh was far more attractive than those denuded specimens. Some of the hair was even the beautiful silver color that sparked through the dark strands atop Serge's head.
The bottom coverings came next, with extra layers for Serjeh's feet and from waist to mid-thigh. With his odd reproductive construction, Een understood how that made sense and apparently Serjeh's circulatory system often left his extremities cold, so the foot coverings were sensible as well. He was so different, and also so beautiful.
Een held out his hands in welcome, the invitation clear without stumbling over strange words, and Serge eased onto the bed beside him so they lay face to face.
"What do I do?"
"Touch." Een brought one of Serjeh's hands to his lim, stroking Serjeh's fingers over one of the painful, swollen tendrils. "Touch and touch. Careful. Soft."
"Okay. Gentle, I got it. Any one of them? All of them?"
Despite the pain, Een couldn't help a trill of pleasure at having his lim stroked so tenderly. It helped to some extent, though the lim reacted to Serjeh's touch, swelling further, leaving the casings feeling tight and strained. Still, it was wonderful to have Serjeh touch him in more than a comforting way.
"And you? Serjeh? How best to touch?"
"Um…" Serjeh glanced down where his reproductive organ stood out from his body, straight and engorged in the state Een had learned indicated arousal. But he seemed hesitant, uncomfortable. Serjeh had been mated. Surely this wasn't new for him. Maybe this was a human thing and there were traditional mating phrases and rituals Een was skipping past in his ignorance.
"Touch?" Een asked softly. "With fingers? Good?"
"Yeah." Serjeh's voice had an odd rasp to it. "Fingers are good. You don't have to be as gentle with me."
Een nestled closer and closed his dominant hand around Serjeh's tube. The skin was warm and soft, a lovely, smooth column under his fingers. A long, low sound came from Serjeh as he pressed his forehead against Een's shoulder.
"Hurt?"
Serjeh huffed, a sound of amusement. "No, no…Een. That feels so good."
A ball of heated light lodged at Een's center at being able to bring pleasure. He hooked his leg over Serjeh's and pulled him closer, leaning into the hands caressing his lim. Some part of the terrible shadow of loneliness lifted in this simple joy of sharing physical space. Some light warmed him in being able to please someone he cared about. There would be no relief from it, not for him. That frustrating blocked feeling throbbed in his lim, the one he had only experienced previously in times of stress when he could not pollinate. Even so, Serjeh's touch was wonderful.
He moved his fingers up and down Serjeh's shaft as he had observed the humans in the data vids do, tugging gently, and running the pad of his thumb across the tip.
"Harder…please." Serjeh's breaths came shorter, sharper.
Een did his best and there were frustrated growls and several adjustments. Soon though, Serjeh's hands stilled in Een's lim, his hips twitching and jerking in time to Een's tugs. A warm, earthen scent filled the air. Then heated ropes of white shot from the tip of Serjeh's pollinator. This had been shocking the first time Een had seen it on the vids, thinking it was a neurotoxin like the melai from an Aalana's lim. But it was merely the delivery method used for the human pollinator gametes. It was sticky, but pleasantly so, and Serjeh calmed quickly after his release, removing Een's hand gently.
"Are you even close?" Serjeh whispered, moving a hand to stroke Een's face.
"No. It will not." Een folded Serjeh in his arms, crooning softly. "It was good. Thank you, Serjeh. My harmonies with yours. My Serjeh. But I…can't."
"God, Een…I'm sorry." Serjeh did an odd thing. He leaned in and brushed his mouth over Een's. The touch was tender and most likely meant as a comfort, though it was strange for Een. "What can I do?"
"Stay with me. There is nothing else. I am last. I will die."
The water gathered in Serjeh's eyes again and Een regretted his words. But it was true. He couldn't hide the truth. This way they were both prepared. Serjeh was with him and he needn't be afraid of facing his end alone.
Serge tried to keep his frantic brain from spinning. He sat on the end of the bed with his head in his hands, Een's feet in his lap. After their unsuccessful attempt at getting Een to pollinate, Een had fallen asleep. Attempts to wake him fully after that failed. Serge could get him to drink some water, though he usually drank through his damn lim, too, and wasn't getting much anymore, but beyond that groggy half-awareness, Een didn't come around. His beautiful lavender coloring had faded to a dull heather. All his lim were fever-hot while the rest of his body was cold, even when Serge put him directly under the sun lamp.
No one from the university had returned his calls. He hadn't gone so far as to say, help, my alien friend is dying, but he'd thought of the colleagues he'd contacted as friends. Asking for help should have gotten him some response. Nothing. Not a whisper.
Going into the office to find someone to talk to face to face hadn't seemed a viable option. He couldn't leave Een, especially not when he'd promised to stay with him. Hours were slipping away, hours Een didn't have. Fucking universe. He wasn't going to just sit here and watch someone else he cared about slip away, was he? No. Not again. Not so soon. No.
Morning slid in under the door, and he couldn't stand it any longer. Someone was going to talk to him. Someone was going to promise not to hand Een over to the government and someone was going to try to save him. Yes. Fuck you death. Fuck you. You can't have Een.
As carefully as he could, Serge bundled Een's long frame back into his borrowed sweats and socks. The sleeves and the legs were too short. He couldn't even think about pulling the hood up over Een's swollen lim and wrapping the scarf around his head made him gasp and moan in pain.
"Hey." Serge put a hand to the side of Een's face, pleased when his eyes slid half open. "We're going for a drive. When we get there, I might have to leave you in the truck for a few minutes. But it won't be long, okay?"
One corner of Een's mouth exhibited the smallest curl upward. "Okay."
The notes were so faded, barely audible. Serge packed their little bit of luggage behind the front seat, wrapped Een in the blanket from the truck, and set him gently in the passenger seat. A quick checkout and they were on the road, Een curled up on bench seat with his head in Serge's lap. At least he didn't have to worry about anyone spotting Een as they drove. The federal agents might not be looking for them yet, but he had the feeling that was just a matter of time. Someone was going to figure out that they had more questions for Serge and that he'd abandoned his cabin. He wasn't even sure if he'd locked the door, which would look bad if he hadn't.
The drive to the Pitt campus should have been so familiar, but he felt strangely disconnected, as if seeing the students and the buildings through Een's eyes. Humans were strange creatures when he thought about them too hard, and so many of the glass and concrete buildings struck him as ugly. He parked in the garage by the Medical Arts building, nestled into a far, dark corner.
"Een." He lifted a corner of the blanket to stroke Een's lim. "Tell me you'll be all right if I leave you here."
"Serjeh?" The wavering notes, uneven and broken, broke Serge's heart. "You will come?"
"Will I come back? Of course I will. I'll hurry back as fast as I can."
"I will wait."
That was the best Serge could hope for, that Een would hang on until he returned. There was no question of decorum or respectful behavior. Serge ran. Full out, for all he was worth, shouting sorry when he bumped someone, not daring to take the time to look back. When he reached the correct floor and the correct department admin, he clutched at her desk, gasping.
"Mr. Kosygin?"
"Donna—" He held up a finger to ask for a moment and gulped a breath. "Is Dr. Carver in today? Dr. Phillips? Dr. Ahmal?"
Donna's raised eyebrow was her only sign of surprise. "Dr. Ahmal is on vacation for the week. Dr. Carver is visiting up at SUNY Albany. And Dr. Phillips is with a class."
That explained why he hadn't heard back from Omar or Greg. "Can you page him? I—it's an emergency."
"Mr. Kosygin, if you have a medical emergency, you should head to the ER, don't you think?"
"It's not— Please, Donna. I need help. Kurt's the only one here who might have a chance of understanding."
She shook her head. "I'll message him because you look about three sharp words from a complete breakdown, but I can't make promises. Please have a seat. You're making me jittery, looming like that."
"Yes, ma'am," Serge said miserably and sank into the chair by the door. He would've preferred Omar, who had been Josh's friend and sort of Serge's, too, someone who had actually been out to the house and called sometimes to see that Serge hadn't simply died without his husband. He only knew Kurt Phillips from social functions. What if he didn't take it seriously? What if he didn't come? What if he decided it was all too risky and he called the feds?
Donna looked up from her screen. "He's coming, but he says you'd better be on fire."
"I can arrange that if it helps." Serge shot up from the chair. "Ask him to meet me by the ground floor elevator in the parking garage. Please."
"Fine. Your funeral, professor. He already sounds annoyed."
"He's always annoyed. Just please ask him. I'll be down there." Serge hurried off, remembering to call over his shoulder, "Thank you! So much!"
Serge ran back to the garage and paced by the elevators, his heart slamming against his sternum. Speech after explanation speech played in his head, but he knew when it came to actually speaking, he was just going to blurt shit out the way he always did.
Maybe five minutes had passed when the elevator doors opened on Kurt's bland Anglo face and his sharp voice. "Completely inappropriate, Serge, interrupting my class. If this is some personal, existential crisis, I sw—"
"No. Kurt, listen. I have an alien in my truck. He's dying. The alien. Een's been staying with me but now he's sick and he says he's dying. Help. I need help."
"Perfect. Now you've lost your mind. I'm calling campus security."
"No! Just come with me." Serge tugged on his lab coat sleeve, relieved when Kurt actually followed. "I rescued Een from a crash site. He was doing so well until this. And I don't know how to fix it. He can't die. Please."
Kurt huffed and muttered all the way to the truck, but fell silent once Serge opened the door and lifted the blanket to show him Een. "Serge…you know I have to contact the FBI about this. He's not registered, is he?"
"They came to the cabin and wanted to take him away. You can't let them do that." Serge put a protective hand on Een's shoulder. "They'll lock him away and he'll die while they try to understand him."
"I can't—"
"You have the other Aalana here. His companions who died in the crash. It's not any secret Pitt got the bodies for study. You have to know something about them by now. Help me!"
"Serjeh?" Een woke, reaching for him with a trembling hand. "Who?"
"A friend," Serge reassured him as he gathered Een's long frame into his arms. He seemed to have lost weight in the time it took to drive from the motel. "A person I hope can help you."
"Friend," Een whispered the word as a wavering chord as he rested his head on Serge's shoulder.
Kurt stared at them with a dark frown for an agonizing moment. Then he turned and strode away, Serge's heart plummeting until Kurt said, "Hurry up, then. Let's get him into a patient room. I need to make some calls."
"Not the feds, please don't!"
"Stop being so dramatic. The feds. You're in a crime drama now?" Kurt snorted as he pulled his phone from his pocket. "We've done preliminary work on the bodies, but only as far as basic physiological structure. Tell me, briefly, what you know about him. What he eats, how much he communicates and so on."
"He…he doesn't eat." Serge put his back against the elevator wall and adjusted Een more comfortably in his arms. Briefly? "He's a plant."
"Why do you say that?"
"He doesn't eat anything, but he needs sunlight for fuel. Photosynthesis or whatever he does. When he first started learning our language, he started with Josh's wildflower guide. It…attracted him. And he referred to males as pollinators."
"Does he need water?"
"Oh, yes. He does. Though he's refused to take any today."
"A sentient plant," Kurt mused as he scrolled through his contacts and tapped in a call. "Absolutely amazing. Elena? It's Kurt Phillips. Whatever you're doing, drop it. I need you to come over to Medical Arts. What was that? Oh, no. Much better than dead aliens."
Kurt repeated the process with someone named Kevin before he bothered to explain. "Elena Frank from Biology and Kevin Vitelli, very sharp post-grad over in Bioengineering. You're lucky I've already started putting a team together."
"Yeah, okay. I know Elena," Serge rasped out and cleared his throat. No crying. Not now. Elena had at least been a colleague of Josh's. She did more cellular-level botany, but it was still botany.
"Biology," Een murmured into the side of Serge's throat. "Life."
"Yes, the study of life." Serge tried to sound upbeat even though his voice cracked. "When did you pick that word up?"
But Een had drifted off again, only uttering soft trills of pain whenever Serge moved. They hurried through the corridors, collecting some odd looks, but Een was covered up again and most people in the medical building were too busy for curiosity. At the end of a quieter corridor, Kurt waved them into a room with the usual monitoring equipment and a hospital bed. Kurt must have paged the nurses' station since a nurse with magenta hair and a bright pixie face soon joined them.
"Hi, I'm Sam," she bustled over with a smile and a sunlamp. "And this is Een, is that right?"
"He's, um…" Serge had to swallow hard. "He might not answer right now. But yeah, this is Een."
"Are you related?" She shook her head when Serge gaped. "Sorry. Bad joke. But you're his partner, Serge, yes?"
"I'm…" Serge was going to say no. What came out was a ragged, "Yeah."
"Great. You get to stay. Any idea what normal temp is for Een?" She elevated the head of Een's bed and set the sunlamp up so it shone directly on him.
Serge shook his head miserably. "I'm sorry. He's, um, colder at night and warmer during the day, usually."
"Okay. You're doing fine, Serge." She took a forehead thermometer out of her pocket and took a reading. "Just for a baseline. Any orders, Dr. Phillips?"
Kurt leaned against the counter out of the way. "Not yet."
Another bustle out and in, and Sam returned with water and extra blankets, which she tucked around Een. "How does Een usually drink?"
"Through his lim," Serge hitched a breath and waved at them. "The tube appendages on his head. But they're too swollen. Sometimes…that first night…he drank using his mouth. I guess when he's not doing so well."
She checked the lim visually and nodded, then held the glass in front of Een. "Can you drink for me, Een?"
Two soft chords answered her, but Een didn't seem able to lift his head even that far. She nodded again and produced a straw from her pockets of holding from which she stripped the paper cover and offered the glass again. Now Een could get his mouth around the straw and get some water down.
Why didn't I think of a straw?
The eerie quiet in the patient room disturbed Serge until he realized it was because there weren't any machines beeping or pinging. There was always beeping and pinging. Kurt stayed against the counter by the sink, silent and brooding, and only came to life when Dr. Frank and Kevin arrived.
Serge's vision blurred at the sight of a more welcoming face. "Elena?"
"Oh, Serge." She hurried over to offer a quick hug. "They didn't tell me you were involved. But I should've put it together. You sit. We have questions."
"Okay." Serge pulled in a few deep breaths. "I'll do my best."
"Kurt texted the basics. That Een's more of a plant analogue than animal. Why do you think he's dying?"
"It's his lim. I mean what's happening to them."
"The lim are the structures on his head?" Kevin asked without looking up from his tablet.
"Right. They're stuck. I mean, um, blocked. He's a pollinator and they're blocked."
Elena examined the length of one and peered into the opening, but didn't touch. "That's the function of the lim? Pollen production?"
"One of them. They also have a natural defense thing they can do called melai and I think Een uses them as kind of an extra sense of smell, too."
Now Kevin looked up. "But it's not the melai causing the issue?"
"No. Definitely the pollen. He can't mate without mates." Serge dragged both hands over his face. "God. I mean, he can't pollinate without other adult Aalana. And if he can't, it blocks the lim. The pollen. And the blockage is killing him."
Elena put a hand on his arm. "So Een needs an adult female? Pistil to his stamen?"
"No, no, it's more complicated than that. Female, yes, but they both need another gender we don't have. They're sort of—"
"Three genders, then?" Elena interrupted him.
"Yes. For reproduction. I don't know, maybe they have more, but three for a mating group," Serge scrubbed his hands over his face again, perilously close to tears. "His two mates were the ones who died in their pod crash. Without them, it doesn't work."
"Een," Elena touched his shoulder. "Can you answer some questions for us?"
He didn't respond until Serge perched on the edge of the bed and sang one of the notes of his name chord, "Een."
"You are still here," Een whispered. "Good."
"These people are here to help." Serge took his hand since Een always responded better to communication accompanying touch. "Can you try to answer some things?"
"Sing?"
"I didn't bring the lute. I'm sorry. But I'll sing to you after they ask you things, okay?"
"Okay." Een squeezed his hand, making it clear Serge wasn't allowed to let go.
Elena pulled up a rolling stool and asked her questions slowly and patiently, sometimes repeating things another way if Een appeared confused. She would have been a better candidate for medical doctor than sharp-as-glass Kurt.
Een told her, as best he could, about the missing two genders, the one who provided the seed, the female, and the other who provided what sounded like spores, the one who had no human equivalent. All three partners had to be present and the pollinator actually acted as the receiver. Whatever the result was, a cocoon or an egg or something, Een didn't quite have the vocabulary to explain it, ended up forming on the pollinator's chest.
A few more questions about the ova producer and the spore producer and Kevin looked up from his tablet where he had been taking notes at a furious rate. "It might be possible. Everything's remained frozen. If not, we may be able to reverse engineer the process at least chemically?"
He wandered off with Kurt, both of them muttering over the notes. Elena patted Een's shoulder as she got to her feet. "We have some work to do. Een, your only job is to rest, all right?"
"Okay," Een whispered, the notes in his voice no more than brush strokes on a drum.
Left alone, Serge had little to do but worry. He helped Een out of his borrowed sweatshirt to give him more light exposure and made a sort of nest out of blankets and pillows so Een could rest his poor swollen lim a little more comfortably. He sang as he'd promised, his voice steadying after the first quavering notes while Een hummed in accompaniment. After a Kyrie, a modified In Natali, and a shortened rendition of Greensleeves, Een drifted back to sleep and Serge stretched out beside him, hoping his body warmth might help.
How long they were alone with the sounds of ventilation and Serge's breathing their only company, he couldn't have said. No clock, no watch, nothing but anxiety making the time stretch out interminably. When Een twitched and tossed restlessly, Serge stroked his faiina until they softened and lay flat again. All the hours together, sharing notes, pouring over wildflowers, trading bits of language and dance—all the quiet, small things they had together, those had driven this change. Serge had slid from simply concerned, from feeling responsible for another life, to caring deeply for Een, this gentle, curious soul. A tiny light had caught in the ashes of Serge's heart, fed day by day with little twigs of mutual need.
If Een died, that light would go out. The roiling, clinging mists he'd been lost in since Josh's death would come rushing back and Serge was sure he wouldn't find his way out again. He wasn't sure he wanted to try.
"Stay, Een," he whispered. "Please stay. Just a little longer. Please."