EFAW, chapter 11 (Patreon)

When Max woke, he was in his bed alcove in the tiny space that he thought of as his bedroom. The thin sheet was tucked around him and any evidence of bodily fluids had been removed. Clearly Rick had been busy.

Max sat up and winced as his ass complained about the abuse it had suffered. He reached around and touched the puffy entrance. It was sore, but no worse than if he had overindulged in some vigorous sex while drunk. He never used enough lube when he was drunk.

Max swung his legs over the edge of the bed and cradled his head in his hands for a couple of minutes. He had a strange wooziness that he hoped was a simple case of hunger. He was definitely thinner than he had been. It made sense that the children would create some sort of membrane around them and store up liquid, but for some reason, that hadn't occurred to Max beforehand. He had thought alien food had too many calories, and he’d been trying to run off the paunch he had developed. 

For the first time in his life he had those hip creases that all the male models had in gay magazines. Apparently they actually did exist. Max had wondered if they were the magic of photo manipulation, especially when even the gym rats on base lacked any hint of a hip crease. 

Apparently a lot of running plus working out added to an alien pregnancy resulted in really hot hips. 

Max stood and grabbed the wall to keep his balance. First stop definitely needed to be for food. A lot of it. And after that, Max needed to go find out what happened to the children. That was a conversation. Max was not looking forward to having. 

If they had lost the third child, and given how small it was, Max assumed they had, Rick was going to be miserable. Max had no idea what he was supposed to say to a father who'd been forced to watch a child die. Aliens had all this advanced technology and spaceships and intergalactic drives, or at the very least, interstellar drives, but they couldn't seem to save one premature baby. 

Max had to wonder if that was some philosophical stand on medical intervention. Maybe aliens were Scientologists. Or maybe Rick just didn't have enough money to buy the right medical equipment. Maybe he had spent his last dollar on hiring a surrogate. 

The thought inspired intense levels of guilt that usually required his mother and a major national holiday to inspire, but it made sense. It wasn't as if Rick had a lot of crew around to draw salaries, so whatever he did, he didn't make enough to have underlings. And Max had to assume that medical equipment was expensive in any culture. After all, the law of supply and demand clearly worked in alien universes as well. Rick had had to offer a whole lot of money to find someone willing to surrogate for his children.

Max wandered to food storage and grabbed a couple of the bars that had an almost chocolatey black bean flavor to them. Those were not two foods that Max would've put together, but the combination worked. It was sure better than the small round discs that tasted like an asparagus and a fart had been chemically joined. 

He had finished one bar on his way to the infirmary. Since he had woke up naked, he had to assume that Rick had left Max’s clothing somewhere. Max normally swam in just his underwear, so the swimming pool was the most likely place for his pants and shirt; however, Max wasn’t ready to deal with a grieving father yet. As long as Max didn’t track Rick down, he could hope the third offspring was alive. Once Rick told him the child had died, then it would be real.

The exam room was empty, but a half dozen tools were scattered on the floor and table. Rick was meticulous about putting everything away, which made sense in an environment where an emergency could lead to zero gravity or unexpected acceleration that would turn objects into projectiles. When Max gathered the tools off the floor, he grimaced at the slime that had pooled around a few. It smelled like urine and had the viscosity of dog slobber. Using two fingers, Max carried them over to the cleaning unit. When he opened the drawer, he found his underwear.

A little grossed out at the alien version of a wash-all, Max took his underwear out and put the medical equipment in before securing the drawer again. 

With his underwear on, he felt a little less vulnerable, although he doubted he was going to feel normal anytime soon. Kohei had been incredibly cute, and now Max wondered if he would be welcome around the children he had given birth to. If he didn't want Max near his children, Max couldn't blame him. From Rick's point of view, Max was a strange alien from a species with no record. That was not an ideal situation for a nanny. Which is another reason why Max should have figured out the truth long before he did.

Walking toward the pool felt like a funeral march. Max hated himself for getting too fucking involved. He always led with his emotions, even when common sense warned him to avoid getting too invested in someone who probably didn’t feel the same. 

Max walked into the pool room with his stomach churning. Immediately he spotted Rick in the water. He had taken his hat off, something he didn't normally do when he was swimming. Once Rick and Max had gotten into a splash fight, and Rick had moved his hats to the edge of the pool so that he could thoroughly drench Max. But for the most part, Rick would float upright with his weird fisherman's type hat in place. Right now he was floating so low in the water that only a few of his eyes were visible above the surface.

Max spotted his clothing in the corner, but he ignored it for the moment. He edged closer to the water, stopping when he was ankle-deep. “Rick?”

Weirdly, calling Rick's name out caused three or four of his tentacles to flail and splash madly. Rick rotated, and Max spotted the first child. It was the size of a football and turning in mad little circles, its tentacles waving faster and faster until his head looked like a top. Max was guessing that was Kohei. Either that or Rick had two insanely athletic gymnasts for children.

“Query. How are the offspring?” Max left the question generic so if Rick chose to avoid talking about the third child he could.

Rick swam slowly toward him. “Offspring one,” he said as he touched the whirling dervish of a baby octopus. It paused, and Max could see that he actually had most of his tentacles pulled up under his body. He’d managed all that speed with two or three limbs. He was going to be a handful. “Healthy and absorbing nutrients quickly,” Rick said. A tentacle rose up and pointed toward one of the water filtration islands. “Offspring two healthy and absorbing nutrients quickly.”

Max looked, and the second offspring had climbed halfway up the water purification pipe, which could not have been an easy task with stubby little tentacles. While Max watched, his large tentacle slipped, and he fell back into the water with a splash. Max took a step that way, half afraid the child had gotten hurt, but he just pulled his tentacles up tight against the underside of his body and kicked away with his largest tentacle as he went to explore the far end of the pool.

“Good.” Max nodded and did not ask after the third child. His heart ached at the thought of that tiny creature madly swimming in his brother’s membrane. He had seemed so full of life. Max’s eyes stung, and he brushed the back of his hand across them. “Good. I'm glad they're healthy. And I was right, they're cute.”

Rick came into the shallows and braced his walking tentacle on the bottom before he tilted his body. Two of his tentacles parted to show a palm-sized octopus tucked up against the underside of Rick's pale belly. “Offspring three is small.”

Max's legs turned to jelly, and he couldn't support his own weight. He sat down so fast that water splashed up around him and Rick slid backwards into deeper waters. “Oh, thank God. He’s alive.” A few tears slipped free, and Max scooped water up and splashed his face. “Query. Is he healthy?” He was so damn small.

“He is growing.” Rick pulled his son away from the bulk of his body and into the shallow water before uncurling his tentacle. The little one swam vigorously, all of his tentacles contracting in unison so that he looked like a jellyfish.

“That's good, right?” Max asked.

Rick kept his tentacle near the child the whole time, and after a few minutes, Max could see those tiny stubs of tentacles start to slow. Rick wrapped his limb around the child and pulled it close again. “Must stay warm to stay healthy, but must move to gain nutrients to stay healthy.”

Max looked toward Kohei. He had slowed and was now swimming in circles. Most of his tentacles were tucked up close to his belly. Immediately Max could see the problem. The smallest child was so small that he couldn't move without kicking all of his tentacles, which meant there was a lot of exposed skin to get cold. “But if you stay with him, he'll grow, right? Query?”

Rick paused. “Yes.” The news sounded good, but Rick's tentacles were far too squiggly for him to be happy. Max narrowed his eyes and studied Rick. He wasn’t moving well himself. He seemed to get pushed side to side by the pool currents and a few of his eyes seemed dull.

“Query. How long was I asleep?”

“Clarification. Not sleep. Hormone to relax hosts is produced by oldest offspring. My oldest offspring waited too long. I regret.”

That sounded like redirection. “Fine. Query. How long was I passed out cold from baby hormones?” Max suspected most of that wouldn't translate, but Rick already knew what he was asking.

Again, Rick hesitated to answer. “Sixteen hours.”

Fuck. That would explain why Max felt groggy and dizzy when he got up. 

“Have you been down here with the offspring the whole time?” Max asked.

“Yes.”

“Query.” This time Max paused, not sure how to ask this. However, he wasn't going to walk away before knowing the answer. “Query. How long can you continue to shelter the offspring?” Whatever lifecycle Rick's people had, they were not aquatic as adults. Never once had Max walked in to find Rick already in the pool. Clearly, the water was something that Rick associated with offspring and surrogates, not something he enjoyed for himself. And when Max had first walked in, Rick had been startled. That was the sort of reaction Max expected from someone who was exhausted.

“Many hours yet. He may still swim.” Rick's tentacles turned into curly fries. 

Max heart raced. The offspring would survive if his father could just forgo eating or sleeping until he grew large enough to swim on his own. That wasn't likely. However, Max wasn't about to let him die. Max stood and waded deeper into the water. “Show me what I can do to help him,” he demanded.

Rick rotated considered Max out of a new set of eyes, and then rotated again and considered him out of the large one that he normally used. “I can continue several hours.”

“I know you can. But I think that little one is going to need more than several hours to grow self-sufficient. Query. Am I wrong?”

Rick didn't answer.

“We need to work together and take turns,” Max said firmly. “I just finished eating and sleeping, so I can handle several hours before I will need to pee and get more food. If you sleep now, you'll be able to take over and give me a break later.”

“Query. You would care for offspring?”

If a human had asked that, Max would have been insulted. He still felt a hard knot of disappointment that Rick thought so little of him, but he understood that Rick didn’t understand him. “Of course I'm going to care for offspring. I wouldn't let any child die, ever. I would risk my life for any child. But that child came out of me. I've already been protecting him, and I will not stop protecting him until I know he is safe.” Max closed the distance so he stood right beside Rick. “Besides, it's not like I'm offering to give up anything other than some sleep and some time sitting at a computer database trying to teach your damn ship how to speak English. Query. How can I help?”

Rick slowly rotated, his tentacles barely moving in the water as he did a full three sixty and considered Max out of each of his various eyes. Max waited, willing Rick to trust him with this. Max would never choose sleep or personal comfort over the life of the child. Never. But he didn't have the vocabulary to explain that moral compass to an alien. 

And he suspected that it didn't help that Rick had a spaceship-sized inferiority complex. Several times he had gone out of his way to tell Max how much other aliens didn't like him. That wasn't easing the way. But with the little one’s life on the line, Max wasn’t going to walk away until the big moron agreed to a co-parenting plan.

Chapter 12: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-12-23553922 

Chapter 13: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-13-23591315 

Chapter 14: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-14-23693389 

Chapter 15: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-15-23715331 

Chapter 16: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-16-23798161 

Chapter 17: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-17-23902574 

Chapter 18: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-father-18-23938595 

Chapter 19: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-19-23961630 

Chapter 20: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-20-24034384 

Chapter 21:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-21-24119410 

Chapter 22: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-22-24165545 

Chapter 23: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-23-24253737 

Epilogue: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-24266071