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Sazahk quickly untangled himself, pulling his hand out from under Garin’s and unwrapping his limbs from around the man’s body.
Garin started awake with a sharp inhale. After a moment, he groaned and rolled away, apologizing in a voice rough with sleep. “Sorry.”
“It’s nothing.” Sazahk cringed as he clamored out of the sleeping bag. He should be the one apologizing, taking advantage of Garin’s incapacitation to feel him up. To grope him.
Not that he’d really groped him. Garin sat up, rubbing his eyes, and the blanket pooled around his hips, barely covering the very obvious bulge of his morning erection. Sazahk swallowed. Groping would have been dropping his hand a little lower and wrapping his fingers around that hard length.
He’d thought the skin of Garin’s stomach was hot to the touch. How might his cock, flushed with blood, burn against Sazahk’s palm?
Sazahk spun away and reached for Garin’s bag, digging around for the perennial protein pouches. That was not an acceptable thought to have about a colleague. Especially a colleague he would continue to share a sleeping bag with. But his hands turned green anyway as they pulled the protein pouches out of a ball of wet shirts.
Qesh didn’t get morning wood. It was a fascinating quirk of male human biology, and despite himself, Sazahk wondered about the differences between Garin’s morning erections, and his erections brought about by actual arousal. Would he respond to manual stimulation in the same way? How did he respond to manual stimulation of his cock in general? Sazahk struggled to imagine the uptight, by-the-book, controlling man lost to pleasure.
Sazahk gritted his teeth and shoved a protein pack at Garin in a hand spiraling with gray and green. It was hard to imagine, and he definitely shouldn’t try.
Garin’s eyes tracked the swirling colors up Sazahk’s forearm and frowned at him but accepted the pouch. “Thanks.”
“I think the optimal next action for us to take is to stay here for one more day.” Sazahk took himself as far from Garin as possible without being intolerably awkward. “There are a number of pools and microbial mats I’d like to sample in the area, as well as geysers to observe, and you can use the time to mend your pack and spread your clothing and supplies out to maximize the surface area exposed to the sun during the day’s hottest hours.”
“To dry my things, you mean.” Garin’s lips quirked around the protein pouch tube.
“Yes, that’s what I said.” Sazahk fiddled with his own pouch before scarfing down a tasteless, chalky mouthful. “And don’t bother with a lecture about being careful around the dangerous things. I’ll be careful.”
“I’ll consider the lecture given.” Garin set his empty pouch aside and moved to stand before stopping himself, a hand clutched around the edge of the blanket.
Right. Naked. And shy, for some reason Sazahk couldn’t comprehend. Garin’s chest and back bore plenty of scars and sun damage, freckles scattered between pale lines and gnarled starbursts of ill-healed flesh, but they also had the prerequisite defined musculature and low fat percentage to be considered highly attractive. The covered bulge Sazahk had glimpsed a few minutes ago indicated that the size of his genitals was at least average, perhaps above average.
From what Sazahk could gather, Garin had no reason not to preen. He could, maybe, be missing a testicle. It wouldn’t be the most uncommon torture technique and most of Garin’s record was redacted, so something like that could be hiding in the files. He didn’t show any other signs of similar torture, though, such as missing eyes or fingers.
Garin cleared his throat and when Sazahk glanced at his face to see him blushing, he realized he’d been staring.
“I’m wondering why you’re shy.”
Garin made a strangled sound. “What?”
“Objectively, your body and face have all the markers of health and hardiness that science has identified as making up attractiveness in the human species.” Sazahk crossed his legs as he studied Garin. “Most of those markers are effective cross-species, meaning that qesh and klah’eel would generally find you attractive as well. You’ve seen mirrors, I’m sure. You must know this about yourself. So why, when it’s a matter of survival and comfort, have you been so cautious with nudity around me?”
Instead of loosening his grip, Garin’s knuckles turned white around the blanket. “It’s not about what I look like.”
Sazahk cocked his head. “Then what is it about?”
“It’s…” Garin’s face scrunched, then he blew out a sigh. “It’s nothing. It’s a habit.”
“A habit, that doesn’t…” Sazahk trailed off when, in a rush of movement, Garin shoved the sleeping bag down and stood up, fully nude. He was—Sazahk swallowed around his dry mouth—exactly as objectively good-looking as Sazahk had assumed. Long-limbed and lean with a well-sized, half-hard cock and two testicles nestled in a well-trimmed thatch of dark hair.
“Happy now?” Garin raised his eyebrows and Sazahk dragged his eyes up from noting that he had been circumcised.
Sazahk gathered his wits, scattered by the sudden expanse of skin before him, and shrugged. “My happiness isn’t affected either way. I was merely curious about your psychology.”
“My psychology is fine.” Garin crouched beside his pack and pulled out everything that had gotten wet. Which was everything.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” Sazahk assembled his supplies, keeping his gaze on his work instead of his naked companion, and slung his pack over his shoulder. “I’m going to investigate the pink pool over there.”
“Be safe.” Garin laid a shirt and a pair of pants out over a rock as the sun broke free of the horizon.
“I will,” Sazahk scowled, but refrained from rolling his eyes.
Stepping around a brilliant orange mat and halfway to the pink pool, curiosity about what lay before him drove out all thoughts of Garin’s physiology and psychology.
