It also kind of occurred to me that I didn't care. It was weird, really. The scientist in me was the one who wanted to know, not the lover. The lover would have found a way to accept that soul in whatever form it took. Saidan was beautiful, and there was nothing about him that scared me. Discovering him was a fantastic journey.
I stood up, trying not to keep following the garden path where my thoughts led me. It was impossible to even imagine that we could be together, and even to allow these feelings of desire to grow was a danger in itself. I didn't have the level of self-control that Saidan did. I wasn't sure I could lie there in my pod and not touch myself if erotic thoughts came to mind. Meditation techniques only went so far.
I found myself at the water's edge. I considered going into the water with my jumpsuit, but realized it might be impossible to explain later on. We weren't exactly supposed to be swimming, after all. So I threw caution to the winds and stripped down. I felt eyes on me, and looked up to see Saidan paddling on his back, watching every move I made like I was a lab specimen. I wondered what he thought of my naked body as I waded in to join him.
The water was warm and comforting, like swimming in the womb. I swam to Saidan's side and he seemed to gracefully draw me into a dance. I was weightless in both body and spirit as we swam together, synchronized from all our hours in the lab together.
I found myself falling underneath the water and it filled my eyes and ears. I controlled my panic and swam upwards. As I took a breath, a wave hit us both, carrying us back onto the shore, delivering us softly onto the pale beach.
I reached my hand out and found Saidan's. Our fingers entwined as we gasped like dying fish. I finally summoned the courage to roll over and lie by his side as the waves licked at our feet. My eyes roamed over his body, trying not to look, but drawn to him like a magnet. His penis hung between his legs, much the same as any human's, although that same blue-green in color. It was pretty large, even flaccid and cold, and I found myself wondering how spectacular it might be when the foreskin was pulled back and he was hard as a rock.
I was growing hard. I couldn't help it. Something about him did things to me that no human being ever had. I thought about getting up and diving into the water to hide the evidence of my desire, but then his eyes met mine with a flash of excitement. It was too late. He had already seen, and he knew that I wanted him. His body twitched in response, and I watched his cock grow as he watched mine, as he processed the fact that I wanted him.
I thought about the fact that he'd never been allowed pleasure, and knew it would be severely unfair to tease him. That being said, I was afraid to make the first move. The risks were mostly his, and I had no idea what Valerians did for pleasure. I never would have wanted to do anything that would have made him feel ashamed or used.
"Please." Saidan's plea was desperate, spoken through dry lips.
I couldn't help but need him. I rolled on top of him and captured his lips in a deep kiss, caressing his face as I guided him through the alien gestures of affection. Our cocks met, the friction unleashing a moan from him that escaped his body and passed into mine.
"What did you imagine when you touched yourself?" I asked him. I needed to know what he wanted, what he thought about, what would make him feel the best.
"I read in a forbidden scientific text about fellatio." He blushed, the green flecks apparent against his bluish skin. I touched them and found they were little bumps that made his soft skin rough to the touch. I liked the friction against my fingertips and he moved into my touch, a starving man who had been denied a man's needs for so long.
"You want to know what a mouth feels like on your cock?" I had to tease him a little. I was nervous, but his eagerness put me at ease and I needed to see more of it, needed him to guide me. I was a virgin, yet somehow I was the more experienced one. I at least knew what two men did together. I figured we were mostly going to be fumbling our way to ecstasy. I'd thought long and hard about sucking another man's dick in the past, and at that moment, thinking about doing it to Saidan made me hard as hell.
"Oh, yes!" His words alone could have sent me over the edge.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. I kissed my way down his body, marveling at the way it was similar to ours, and yet at the same time, a foreign landscape. He had no nipples, yet the shape of his body was mostly the same. I kissed down over his hips and paused beside his cock, my hot breath caressing it as I studied him. I lifted his cock and saw there were no visible balls underneath. I resolved to ask him about it when the moment had passed, but right then, I had other things on my mind.
I let my tongue run up his shaft. It was salty from the sea water, a flavor I loved and couldn't get enough of, mixed with a musky taste that had to be Saidan. Saidan moaned as I teased his cock's blue head, his hands clutching fistfuls of sand as I gently lowered myself to take as much of it in my mouth as possible. He made a keening sound that was uniquely alien, but definitely erotic, as I sucked him off. I was no expert, but I put everything I had into pleasuring him, getting off on the fact that I was sucking his dick. Saidan, my forbidden Valerian lover, had his cock in my mouth and was loving every second of it.
His keening grew so loud that I was afraid the bus's cameras would catch it, but there was no stopping a lifetime's repression from finally being expressed. He came with a sharp cry, his seed spilling into my mouth. It tasted like the protein bars we ate in the morning, and I tried not to laugh at the thought as I swallowed it hungrily.
I raised my head and let his cock slip from my mouth to see there were tears spilling down his face. My arousal forgotten, I scooped him up and held him in my arms, rocking him as he sobbed. I didn't know why he was crying, but I had a good idea. He'd never been so close with anyone in his life. He felt good in a way that was forbidden, but his weren't tears of shame. They were tears caused by his final understanding of the truth about what was being kept from him and the other Valerians by the Sisters.
His back was coated in sand and I rubbed circles in it to soothe him. He eventually pulled himself together and drew away from me.
"There's no turning back, is there?" His eyes were sparkling with sorrow and joy. I realized how conflicted he must have felt. I rested my head on his shoulder and kissed his neck, needing to feel him close to me.
"Probably not," I whispered.
"We are in a lot of danger."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"No. Don't be." Saidan's hand caressed my face, exploring the lines that were furrowed into my brow. "It's a risk I'm willing to take."
"They could kill us." I lowered my head as fear shot through me like a bullet.
"They might." His hands explored down my chest, his fingers fascinated by my nipples. "What are these?"
I chuckled despite myself. "A useless leftover of evolution. The females of our species use them to feed their offspring. We, however, have no practical use for these little nubs. They are sensitive, though." I gasped as he flicked his tongue over one.
"Interesting. I shall have to explore this further." He sounded like the consummate scientist, but there was a sparkle in his eyes that spoke of desire and playfulness. A hand stroked down my chest, over my semi-hard cock, and down to my balls. "And these?"
I felt like a lab rat, but his fascination excited me as well. "Testes. We keep them outside the body to reduce the temperature of the sperm, which is most fertile at a cooler level than the body."
"Hmm. Ours are internal." He ran his cool fingers over the sensitive sac and then gently massaged it. I gasped.
"This is pleasurable?"
"It's not un-pleasurable. Just be gentle."
"Understood." His hand moved up to massage my cock. He was teasingly slow, admiring the length of it as he slowly moved his hand up and down. I lay back in the sand and gasped as his ministrations worked up a pace. Handfuls of sand seemed to flow through my fingers as I climbed the long road to orgasm in that timeless place. I was oblivious to the crashing of the waves and the wind blowing. Only he and I were there, in that place at the end of the world.
I lost all conscious thought as I let myself concentrate on what he was doing. Saidan was pleasuring me and that was enough. The fear of being lobotomized if we were discovered and the doubt that we could pull off our forbidden love affair under the nose of the Sisters would wait for later. For now, there was only pure ecstasy as Saidan lowered his head and licked pre-come from the tip of my penis. I gasped, driven over the edge and I came in fitful bursts and spurts as Saidan watched with a mixture of desire and fascination. He dipped his finger in one of the small puddles forming on my stomach and tasted it the way a partygoer might sample the spread of dressings.
I pulled him down on top of me, my insecurities and fear creeping in at the edges of my mind. I silenced my thoughts by kissing him deeply, as if we could hold back the hours with these simple touches. I knew I had to preserve these memories to last me through the lonesome hours and days we would have to spend apart.
In our entangled state, he looked down at me. I must have looked wild and disheveled, my hair full of white sand as a wave licked at my hair. I knew we should be getting dressed and gathering samples, but I didn't want the moment to end. Not without something to get me through the night.
"I love you." The words passed Saidan's lips with conviction and I felt my heart leap with joy. Nobody besides my parents had ever said those words to me. Here I was now, ten million miles from home and hearing those words for the first time from a lover. From Saidan.
I was quiet for a moment. My throat was tight with emotion. I couldn't have spoken if I'd wanted to. The words meant danger to us both, but I was pretty sure we were already damned on that level. I struggled for a breath that seemed to hurt. Saidan loved me. It was far more than I could have hoped for. So much more than I understood. I saluted his level of self-awareness in reaching his conclusion before I did.
His revelation sped mine up, and I explored my feelings in those long seconds after his confession. Those warm, fuzzy feelings poets and musicians often spoke of sat in the bottom of my gut, the somersaults and backflips ever-present when I saw Saidan's face. It had to be love. How it had happened, I didn't know, but I could almost hear Lankis chuckling in the back of my mind. I told you so, the version of him in my mind said.
I took Saidan's face in my hands, took a good, long look at him as if seeing his face again for the first time. I could break his heart now and save myself. I will confess that part of me advised me to let him down gently, and for a moment, I considered that. It might be the lesser of two evils. Then I looked into his eyes and saw the stars reflected back at me. I couldn't bring myself to do harm to Saidan, to burn a natural wonder like our love. It would have been akin to looting the Science Foundation's archives and scattering the gathered worldly knowledge to the four winds. We had discovered a feeling between us, which was a miracle that deserved exploration, not suppression.
Evening was drawing in. We had no samples. It would be curfew soon, and I found I just didn't give a damn. Not about my safety, or anything. I was lost, spinning around in the universe reflected in his awestruck amber eyes.
"I love you, too." Not an automatic response, but a carefully reasoned one. The promise we needed. The promise that said we would pass through the gates of Hell for one another. It would prove to be important later on that we said those words when we had the chance.
I kissed him deeply, sealing my words and proving the truth of them. He took my hand and helped me to my feet, leading me up the hill to its summit. I struggled to find my balance in the shifting sandy hillock before turning to see the purple sky on fire with the sunset. It was more magnificent than any Earth sunset I'd ever seen, as if the world itself was consumed by flames, the atmosphere burning away. At that moment it could have turned to ashes and I wouldn't have given a damn. The Sisters, the lab, the whole city could have been seared away for all I cared. Saidan was the reason I was still there. Nothing else mattered to me. Even my mission from Earth seemed fuzzy, a faraway promise made by a different man.
"We should gather some samples and get back," Saidan said. He hurried down to the waves and washed the sand from his body, emerging and reaching for his jumpsuit. I could see his trembling motions as he dressed and I quickly followed in his wake. Soon, we were both dressed, serious business and self-preservation on our minds. We hurried to the equipment and spent the next hour grabbing whatever samples we could. It was all unscientific. I'm sure a dozen of the samples were corrupted with my own hands, but I didn't care. Corrupted samples just gave us an excuse to come back again.
We hustled onto the bus and it pulled away. We sat in silence and I watched the stars in the night sky as we headed back to the city, pondering my future. Our future. Was there truly any chance for us? Perhaps we could escape, make it back to Earth. Saidan could apply for asylum and I could go back to the Foundation. It was a nice dream. It could have been a reality if I'd just put a little more thought into it, but my mind was still set on solving Valeria's problems.
Perhaps we should have taken the opportunity while we still had the chance.
I knew something was wrong as soon the bus reached the city limits. Call it intuition. There was a certain level of activity in the city that was plain unusual. As the bus pulled up outside the Science Building, I saw a dozen Valerians being escorted to ambulances. Blue blood was splattered on the street and pouring down the faces of injured drones, who looked confused and shell-shocked.
As soon as the bus ground to a halt, Saidan dived for the doors and jumped out onto the street. I followed at a reluctant pace, curious, but afraid. Something terrible had happened, that was certain. A lab accident, perhaps? The doors opened and I pulled the samples off the bus with me to try and make some attempt at appearing normal in the presence of Saidan's wild emotions.