The Technician's Fight, Draft 1, CH22

Jeremy moved on the dance floor, surrounded and often touched by a lot of other people. Someone would step before him, put their arms around his waist or over his shoulders, and they’d moved to the music for a bit before moving on. Some danced with him longer, and he thought he saw hope in their eyes, but eventually, most moved on.

There was a lot of changing of partners as part of Kelsirian dancing, he noticed.

When one stayed, took his attention longer than the others, an offer followed, and here, he experienced the biggest difference from the little he remembers of handful of times he’d been convinced to go clubbing by his classmates.

When he turned them down, they moved on. Male or female, it didn’t matter. They approached him, stayed with him, which he was confident was, in itself, an indication of their interest, and when he didn’t respond to that, asked if he was interested in going to a leisure alley with them, or back to their place. He politely turned them down, and they found someone else.

He had this memory, back during his university days of going to a club with a few people he considered friends. Of a woman saddling up to him while dancing, of staying with him through multiple songs. Of how hungrily she looked at him. At one point, she asked him to leave with her. Not being interested, he told her he wasn’t done dancing. She’d become insistent. Belligerent. One of his friends had to come to his rescue when she started chasing would-be dance partners away.

Jeremy was certain she’d been the exception. That a number of women had made offers and not made a fuss when he turned them down. But he didn’t remember those, while he remember that incident. How it had made him feel.

Toomerim danced with him, with a glint in his eyes that made Jeremy think he was planning something, but if he was, it didn’t happen there. Thur danced with him, his mate at Jeremy’s back, as they moved to a particularly slow piece of music. It called for them to be pressed close and he felt his friend’s excitement while Nirlakasar rested her head against Jeremy’s shoulder.

Then, they moved on and other partners took their place.

Kelsirian dance music was slow, with the occasional up tempo in them. There was a languidness to how they moved most of the time, pressed against each other, ran their hands over their and other’s bodies. Then, they’d be throwing themselves into fast motions for a few seconds to go along with the music.

Jeremy preferred those, and multiple times kept going with rapid motion even once the music slowed again. He garnered a crowd when he did, all happy to press against him once he slowed to something they could handle for more than a handful of seconds.

When he took breaks, more to hydrate than because the dancing tired him, he always had company. Males and females who asked about his life before the ship. Einstein, Earth, Earther’s in general, those he worked with.

Talking was easy, another difference from what he remembered of his experience. Back then, if he and his friends wanted to talk, they needed to move to one of the sound proofed section of the club.

Here, they simply talked.

While not quiet, Kelsirian music wasn’t overbearingly loud, maybe because Kelsirian hearing was more sensitive than his, but even they didn’t seem inconvenienced. The music was mostly that, as far as he could tell. There were voices, but there seem to be used as instruments, instead of adding lyrics. Even the occasional word, he wasn’t certain was more than his mind trying to give the sounds meaning.

It did not escape him that throughout his time there, he had a few ‘regulars’. A handful of males and females who returned every so often to dance with him. Who would sit with him and asked questions about his life. His thoughts on Kelsirian life. He grew comfortable with them enough that when, as he was deciding to return home, a shorter, but muscular male, suggested he could accompany him, maybe that they could detour by an alley, Jeremy agreed.

It was fun.

They talked a bit more afterward, then dressed and heading their separate ways.

*

“Are you sure this is allowed?” Jeremy asked once they were in the exercising room. “Shouldn’t you clear this with my Beta?”

“I’m his Alpha,” Gral replied. “If I want to see how your training is coming along, it’s my prerogative.”

“Isn’t that what those performance reports he fills out after each of my training sessions are for?” He dropped his jacket in a seat.

Gral removed his vest. “He told out about them?”

“You know a lot of the hunter procedures are public, right? I read about them. It’s why I know it’s just about unheard of for an Alpha to bother with evaluating a lowly hunter like me.”

“There is nothing lowly about you, Jer. Your Beta has made that quite clear in his reports.”

“Please tell me those don’t include our sex life.”

His Heart snorted through the laugher. “I don’t need second hand experience for that.”

Jeremy smirked. “How about you come at me?”

Gral returned the smirk. “You’re the one being evaluated. You come at me.”

“Just remember, you asked for this.”

*

Jeremy rested on his back, his Heart half draped over him, nuzzling his neck. “I swear. If a recording of the sex we just had surfaces anywhere, I am going to make the people responsible pay.”

Gral chuckled. “Private room, no emergency. If anyone hacks the system to get it, they’ll be breaking a dozen laws. I’ll make sure they pay.”

“If you’re not fast enough, you get what I leave you.”

Gral licked his neck. “Your Beta wasn’t lying. You have become something of a menace in a fight. There was nothing about you being all Sharavan-like and climbing over me to take me down in them.”

“He might not like that I’m getting some training outside what he’s giving me.”

“Halan training?”

“How can you tell?”

“Jer, the Bane patrols the Line. Do you have any idea how many Halan we come across? In the last two months since delivering our prisoners, there were three, one of which we boarded.”

“That’s when you returned all scratched up?”

“Yes. I’ve fought the Halan. Unorthodox doesn’t begin to describe how they fight. And with his smaller size, the Quartermaster would be one to be all over someone.” He paused. “For more than fighting, I expect.”

“That’s how he’d paying for the sex.”

“You charge for sex?”

“He started it, with his ‘if I’m not getting anything out of something, I’m not doing it.’ I’m just playing his game. Once his probation was over, he wanted to keep having sex. So I said he needed to teach me how to fight for it. Speaking of training. I noticed you move a lot less.”

“Your Beta and others who are training with you have been creating courses on stamina control. If Earthers attack again—”

“When. Trust me, they aren’t done with me.”

“I want to be able to keep them in check.”

“You should ask Xenial. He is impressive with how little he needs to move until he’s ready to take me down.”

“And have to pay for his help? He’s going to make shortening our names the price.”

“Counter with having sex. You know he’s going to jump on the chance to have sex with you.”

“And then he’d going to use that as an excuse to shorten my name.”

Jeremy licked the closest of Gral’s ear. “You really don’t trust him, do you?”

“Not with the history we have, and not about small things like this.”

In the seat, Jeremy’s tablet buzzed.

“Shift starts in two hours. We should get cleaned up and head to work.”

Gral nipped his neck. “Two hours is more than enough time.”

Jeremy laughed. “Why do you think I set it for two hours? Shower, now. We can have sex there.

*

He and Prertiros ran to the eatery.

“I said we wouldn’t have enough time,” his friend said.

“Fine, but you are the one who said we weren’t leaving the leisure room until you finished me up.”

“What kind of friend do you take me for?”

“The best kind. The one who’s willing to go hungry for my pleasure.” He slowed as he entered the eatery and stepped into line.

“Next time, I’m telling you no.”

“Next time, you’re the one who’s going to ask for us to miss food in favor of sex.”

The inside of his friend’s ears were red well before they folded back in embarrassment.

“Look who is joining us,” Nialias Deriesilk sel Timar said.

“I thought you were going to be sustaining each other off sex from now on,” Lrorfremie Asurdien added.

“He doesn’t orgasm enough to make that possible,” Prertiros replied.

“But I make up for it in volume.”

Grakiranirakarim sel Nirag narrowed her eyes at him. “What happened to the Earthers who turned redder than Jrorak anytime one of us talked about the sex we have?”

“He became Kelsirian,” Jeremy answered before eating.

*

Alix sniffed him as Jeremy sat before his console.

“I can extend my break if you want to spend a bit of time on the couch, Engineer.”

“Maybe once the shift is about to end. Right now, you have reports to go through.”

Yet more reports. This was like doing the worse part of when he was working on Einstein, going over all the tech’s reports about the work they’d done for the scientists so he could attempt to predict the next disaster before they caused it.

At least, with these, he wasn’t dealing with people trying to break the laws of physics in an attempt to get their names in scientific papers.

*

“Engineer,” Thur greeted them as Jeremy and Alix joined those already at the table.

“Beta,” Alix greeted back. “How are your new duties?”

“I miss my old ones under you.”

“Liar,” Jeremy said, sitting next to his friend and rubbing his leg.

“I miss not having to train this one,” his friend replied.

“I don’t understand your problem. I find him to be perfectly tractable. I set him a task. He does it. He doesn’t even complain anymore.”

“I didn’t do that often,” Jeremy protested, to the laughter of the others.

“Once,” Leiha said, “Is all that is needed for the Engineer to remember and bring it back any chance he has.”

“Are you okay?” he asked Jurani, instead of playing into the barb. She was looking at her food morosely. He suspected the problem. Her muscles had lost a lot of definition over the lasts month. Enough she attracted looks. She wasn’t fat. Jeremy didn’t know if a healthy Kelsirian could be fat, but she now had a layer of the stuff softening her form.

“Medical is enforcing a controlled diet regiment,” she replied. “I’m not allowed anything sweet.”

“You were warned to cut down,” Thur said. “You shouldn’t surprise they’ve forbidden you from eating Jer’s pies.”

She snorted. “It’s not just those. Half the sauces are now off limit because they’re too sweet.”

“I’m sure that once they consider your health better, they will reinstate some of them.” Thur said.

“I’d suggest Jeremy’s machine,” Scarif offered. “But it’s broken.”

“It is not broken,” Jeremy countered.

“It hasn’t increased how much weight I work with in two weeks.”

“And I told you last time. Among Earthers who train for strength, it’s normal to have periods where things plateau.”

“I’m not an Earther.”

“Then, it clearly applies to Kelsirians, too. Just kept at it, and you’ll break through.”

“I can take a look at it,” Atarikna said. “I’ve seen enough of its design I can figure out what’s going on with it.”

“Oh, wow. You trust my work that little?” Jeremy replied, mock offended.

“Weren’t you the one who needed my help getting his machine to behave properly?”

“I needed your help with dealing with a technology I wasn’t familiar with at the time.”

“So I should look it over.”

Jeremy looked at Alix.

“Don’t bring me into this. I trust you know enough about my reactor not to cause it to explode when you change components. You have shown me some of the stuff from your drafting table, so I know you’re more than capable of making something I’m not sure even Gezbiliam would understand.”

“You were looking through my ‘I don’t think anything will come of them’ designs,” Jeremy countered.

“Insanity will come from them,” Alix said, smiling.

“Okay, if engineering now had a smiling Engineer, I am glad to be a Beta.”

Prertiros snorted. “If there’s a smiling Engineer there, Jeremy’s the only one who sees him, because when he leave his office, the Engineer is all scolding and frowns.”

“Like I want any of you to start thinking you’re in a leisure alley, instead of work.” He locked eyes with the male, and Jeremy wondered what he’d missed, and how come Prertiros had never mentioned that.

“I was off shift,” his friend mumbled.

“You were in my engineering.”

“The least you could have done was invite him to take part,” Thur said.

Prertiros’s ears vanish in his head fur.

“You are growing far too comfortable away from engineering, Beta.”

“There has to be a benefit to all the reports I have to fill.”

Alix smiled. “You might want to remember that I’m on short name basis with your Alpha.”

“Don’t look at me,” Jeremy preemptively said. “I live and sleep with him. I make no claims as to being able to control what he does.”

The males at the table stared at him.

“Clearly,” Leiha said, “You have not considered threatening to withhold sex.”

Outline section 

It’s been a few months for normal mostly uneventful patrol, with just some responding to merchant ships distress calls and scaring the pirates off the second the Viper’s Bane shows up on their long range sensors. All small prey, but small means fast so no catches.

Scene opens up with Jeremy sparring with Gral. He’ll have shown improvement from the last time he’s sparred with Gral in the story. It’s intense, but at the same time just sparring so there isn’t anything on the line. Well, aside from making it intense enough to end with a victory celebration. There’s a reason they do this in private training rooms rather than the public mats.

###

In the afterglow, Gral will comment on some of the moves Jeremy is demonstrating. Jeremy says he’s been having a few private lessons from Xenial. The quartermaster with a shady background has some techniques that are useful to people who aren’t built like a rock like Thuruk, or a moving mountain like Gral.

Speaking of which, though, he should clean up and meet the others for lunch. If he’s late, they’ll wait for him, and if that happens they’ll all be late in engineer and that means an earful from Ajax. Gral will try to join him, but Jeremy wants to get clean, not have another encounter that will guarantee he’s late.

###

Lunch, and we get a chance to touch notes with the progress of the Techs and their various pursuits. Thuruk is doing well, and he and his mate are debating trying for another cub. Bodybuilder tech has discovered the concept of a plateau, and he’s hating it. And sweet tooth tech is fighting the bulge in an attempt not to have the doctors start telling him to deny his one true desire in this world.

It’s all small talk, and this chapter has gone on long enough. Another case of needing to know what comes ahead to know what the mic drop should be.

Addition 

Start with some of the club from Jeremy’s PoV

the start is another case of realizing I needed to address what took place in the previous chapter, although this case it's more about it allowing me to give a sense of what club music and dancing is like since Gral is so used to it commenting on it would feel forced.

the outline had the fighting be more about them just doing it for no real reason and to give a place to establish time has passed. I instead used it to show how both of their fighting has evolved(well, tell you about it, draft 2 might get more showing of that)

the rest kind of follows the outline and gives updates as to what everyone's is.