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“In groups or all at once?” Maxwell kept his own eyes tracking back to their six, trusting Garrett to more than handle their heading.
“Depends on how many able-bodied we have.” Garrett paused at a corner and looked across the intersection to the apartment block, the biggest building in the town other than the port. “I don’t think they have many injured. They didn’t have the supplies to treat anyone.” Garrett grimaced, and Maxwell tried not to think about how many savable people could have been lost for lack of medical care. “And I don’t think there are many children.”
That wouldn’t surprise Maxwell. It sounded like most of the apartment, or at least most of this group of survivors, were qesh. Culturally, qesh rarely had more than a single child. Qesha was a very small planet, and qeshian immigrants often brought their cultural tendency toward density and efficiency along with them even when they left it. Which would explain the presence of an apartment block in this little town at all.
“Ready?” Garrett glanced back at Maxwell.
Maxwell nodded decisively. “Ready.”
Chapter Five
Garrett was extremely uncomfortable.
Ridiculously, distractingly, uncomfortable, and he tried very much not to focus on it as he subtly shifted the way his pants sat on his hips before banging on the door to the apartment building. As soon as a qesh he recognized opened the door, he shuffled Maxwell inside before him. They stepped into the entry hall of the apartment, with bloodstained, carpeted halls stretching out to their left and their right.
“Resistance.” The qeshian man, Nerol, clasped Garrett’s shoulder with relief in his voice and cerulean blue swirling about on his skin. He clearly hadn’t truly believed Garrett would return, and Garrett felt a pang of pity for the man.
“We’re here to get you and your people out.” Garrett returned the man’s shoulder clasp and then motioned to Maxwell. “This is our doctor.”
“Maxwell.” Maxwell stepped forward and reached his hand out. “Please take me to anyone who needs urgent treatment. We don’t have much time, but we have some.”
Nerol shook his hand gratefully, then waved forward a human woman. “Melon can take you.”
“There’s a little girl with a broken leg.” Melon wasted no time grabbing Maxwell’s forearm and pulling him down the hall to the left wing. “We’ve tried not to move her, but I worry now that we’re getting out.”
Maxwell didn’t even look back as he walked down the hall with the woman, and Garrett watched him go with the usual pride and fondness—the man was a saint. An extremely capable and competent saint.
“What do we need to do?” Nerol pulled Garrett’s attention back, and Garrett beckoned him down the opposite hallway.
“Let’s get everyone gathered into this room. I don’t want to leave anyone behind. Are there people on the upper floors?”
“No.” Nerol shook his head, then grimaced. “Well, none that we’re in contact with. Whatever is in those storms gets into the windows up there, and…whenever we have run-ins with anyone up there, it never ends well.”
Garrett stopped and ran his hand through his hair. “Shit. So there are people up there?”
“We really can’t say.” Nerol spread his hands apologetically. “It’s been quiet for the past few days, so we don’t think so. But we haven’t checked.”
Garrett ran through the priorities and limitations of his mission and then nodded. “Alright, first thing is to get everyone that’s here ready to go. If I have time to sweep the upper floors, I will, but there’s no guarantee. Let’s go door to door.”
Garrett spun on his heel and went straight for the farthest door to work his way in as Nerol began knocking on the door closest to him. As soon as Garrett broke into a larger stride, he winced and let himself make a face that no one would see.
He had made a complete mess of his pants and had not had a chance to clean it up.
At this point, nothing but a hot shower would clean the cum crusting his underwear to his skin. It pulled and hurt and was embarrassing, and Garrett tried very hard not to think about it as he ushered people out of their rooms and to the entryway, patting people and hugging people as they needed it, and helping some hobble down the hallway.
He couldn’t regret it, though, as physically uncomfortable as it was now. Maxwell had been so nervous and so anxious and so clearly had a history that Garrett couldn’t fully conceive, and Garrett just couldn’t imagine confronting Maxwell at that moment with… Well, the entire engorged actuality of Garrett’s desire. Maxwell had needed to be taken care of, not to have a man’s cock shoved at him.
So Garrett had stayed clothed. Kept that barrier up so that Maxwell would feel safer.
He hadn’t really meant to come at all, but that had been a forgone conclusion as soon as Maxwell had started moaning his name.
Yeah, Garrett hadn’t missed that. For all that Maxwell had insisted that none of it meant anything, and for as much as Garrett knew that their encounter hadn’t been about romance, he hadn’t missed the fact that every other word out of Maxwell’s mouth in that cockpit had been Garrett’s name.
He couldn’t stop replaying all the different ways Maxwell had cried it, murmured it, whispered it even while desperately trying to focus on this very important mission. Walking down the hall with his hand on the shoulder of an elderly qeshian woman mottled yellow with fear, he saw Maxwell walking toward him with a pinched frown and made another valiant effort to focus on the words coming out of his mouth right now.
“Garrett, I’ve got a situation.”
“So do I.” Garrett passed the woman and her small bag off to Nerol and turned back to Maxwell. “What’s yours?”
