Chapter 8

Five days into the voyage, with the foundations for the cabin finished and the roof going up today, and Lou was beginning to feel a mite guilty about the fact that he had never told his wife what being transgender actually meant. It was one of the things about being married to an alien – especially an alien so ... well, alien from the human norms. Beatrice had absorbed a huge amount of information about the human race, and was learning more every day as the lighthugger slowly accelerated out of the Alpha Centauri system. She had studied the history of the War of the Roses, learned about Shakespeare, read the poetry of Qu Yuan and Cervantes and Shelley, and even begun to watch the earliest cinematic works that abutted the edge of what Neopolitans usually studied – the early works of Cocteau and Lang.

But she still didn’t know what a spatula was or what it was for.

This much was apparent by the way that her spider body’s eight eyes were all locked on the metal tool as Lou flipped some steaks on the grill that he had managed to, through painstaking following of ancient instructions, put together using the nanofabricator as little as possible. The other Beatrice bodies were off reading or exploring the inner workings of the lighthugger, leaving only her spider-body with Lou. He wondered if he hadn’t had the time to get used to oddness of being in love with girl that was part moth, he might have had more trouble with a girl who had six arms and eight eyes and fangs.

Then again...

If that girl was Beatrice, it was entirely possible that he’d have adjusted just as quickly?

“What is that?” she cooed.

“This is a spatula. It’s a tool for the manipulation of meat while cooking. And eggs and bread. And ... lots of things.” Lou nodded, then used his palms to roll the spatula between his hands.

“Why not use a fork?” she asked.

“Well, there are some situations where a spatula is more effective and easier,” Lou said, nodding. “There’s also tongs and whisks and graters and peelers...”

Beatrice giggled.

“What?” Lou asked.

“I just ... humans ... make so many bits and bobs to put in their hands!” she said, her red eyes sparkling with delight. Her outermost eyes closed – what he was beginning to recognize being the same way that a human’s eyes might crinkle with a smile. “Most species would stop at rocks. I stopped at rocks. I never need anything more than a rock, and once I figured out that I could make bioforms that had bladey hands or scooper hands or pokey hands...” She grinned. “All scientific names, I’m sure you know.” She paused. “The last would be proboscis, I know the word, I’m just being silly!”

Lou chuckled.

“Anyway, I never needed to use rocks ever again. But now you have flippy rocks, cutty rocks, wire frame rocks that ... that ... what do whisks even DO!?” She scrambled on her belly to lay closer to where his tools were laid out, then snatched a whisk up. She held it before her eyes. “Humans!”

Lou snorted. “It’s for mixing things. And breaking down the protein barriers in eggs.”

“Ah, a weapon...” Beatrice said, her voice solemn. “When will mankind learn, protein barriers need not be broken. You could simply leave the eggs in peace!”

“You are being silly,” Lou said, sticking a thermometer in the deer steaks.

“You do know that I can digest them raw, right?” she asked. “And I think you can too.”

“Yes, but the cooking makes them taste better. And they’re healthier. And more efficient.”

“Hurmph!” Bea scoffed. “It sounds as if it is merely an excuse for gastrointestinal laziness.”

Lou saw that the steaks would take a few more minutes to cook. He could begin to plan for setting up the roof of the half finished cottage. He could ask Beatrice about what she was reading about today. He could even ask her about how the life support systems on the lighthugger were handling her additions – her growing sub-hive of organisms that made this lighthugger a small colony of herself in the interstellar void. He could even bring up the whole issue of children and how to manage the logistical problem that Beatrice had cheerfully dropped into his lap with her prediction that any synthesis of human and hive mind would require him to ... ah ... handle his husbandly duty hundreds of times.

Thousands, actually, if there was a failure in ... ah...

Transmission.

But none of that involved talking to Beatrice about what she had asked him about then promptly ... not quite forgotten about. Beatrice didn’t forget things. She just sometimes let them slip into the back of her awareness, then brought them back into the focus of her attention again when she was ready to handle them. Which, honestly, considering the vast stretches of time that she had been alive and needed to juggle multitudinous tasks and subjects, made a lot of sense. She had needed to think of a lot of things even when she had thought she had been the only species in the entire galaxy, the entire universe even.

So, there was no ... cowardice in not talking about his transness.

But it was also such a nonissue. Beatrice would respond by blinking at him, proclaiming it yet another fascinating facet of humanity, then go on back to whatever else she was doing. And yet ... Lou’s tongue stilled as he looked down at the steaks. He looked back at Beatrice, and breathed in, then out again. He felt like a rank hypocrite – and then felt a flare of raw, fierce anger in his breast at that thought. Right, it feels like literally anything I do is nothing next to my parents, so, why should I even care?

And yet, he needed to tell her.

“Lou, you seem disturbed. Are you okay?” Beatrice asked.

“What?” Lou chuckled. “Oh dear, am I becoming so transparent?”

“Your opacity and cunning are both unchanged and I’m certain that if a dastardly scoundrel was around and spying upon you, he or she would be utterly taken in by your external grace and think you are as stoic and focused as any other Neapolitan star prince. And yet, said dastardly scoundrel would not be your wife. Unless I was planning something sneaky.” She grinned, showing off her fangs. “Which I am not! Oh! But now, you must wonder: Is Beatrice planning something lewd and mortifying? Is that why she claims innocence.” She chuckled. “I have caught you in a linguistic trap, unsure of my motives or meanings...”

“ ... have you been reading Machiavelli? You do know that was a satire, right?”

“Drat...” Beatrice sighed. Then she looked back up at him. “Also, you have evaded my question! Maybe it is you who is the dastardly scoundrel!”

Lou flushed, looking back at the steaks. He picked them up with some tongs then laid them onto a ceramic plate to cool. He pursed his lips, slightly, then put his hands on his hips and forced himself to examine his feelings and came to the slightly embarrassing conclusion that the real thing that was making him loathe to talk about being trans to Beatrice was ... dirt simple. It was so simple, so direct, and so base.

He liked her thinking of him as a man. Simple, direct, and it felt like a slap in the face to every historic transgendered individual who had fought for the simple right to be who they were without censure. They didn’t struggle to become invisible – they struggled to be themselves. He tried to marshal a way to begin talking about this when he felt his wife’s teeth nip at his ankle with a soft ‘nom.’ He looked down and saw that she was biting at him with a fearsome expression on her face – ruined only by her then enunciating each play bite with a soft ‘nom’ sound. He sighed.

“Fine,” he said. “When you asked where my Y chromosome is ... well ... I was born with two X chromosomes. This meant that my outward appearance, to my mother and my father and the midwife, was that of a woman. They named me Alexandriatta. However, from ... a very young age, I knew that it was ... wrong.” He sat down beside his wife, petting her white hair slowly. “I felt ... male. It was like a splinter in my mind – one that I could not remove. My parents, upon hearing of my confusion, explained that I was ... that I am ... transgendered. And so, they used drugs and surgeries to alter me until I was as outwardly male as I felt inwardly.”

“Oh,” Beatrice said, then nodded. “Those surgeries and drugs were highly effective.” She laid her head upon his lap, nuzzling against his thigh. “When can we eat the steaks? That’s S T E A K S, I don’t want to eat the S T A K E S...” She nodded over to the row of carpentry tools that was set up near the half finished cabin.

Lou laughed – and felt the nervous tension in his belly unwind. In the end, it always had been a worry made of smoke. But knowing that he had been feeling silly hadn’t actually made the feeling go away. The only thing that could, the only thing that ever would, would be Beatrice, really. And hearing her laugh, feeling the smoothness of her cheek against him, the soft kiss, then bite of her lips as she nuzzled and nipped at every bit of exposed skin that she could find while she cuddled against him ... it was like a balm. He ruffled her hair.

“Five minutes,” he said.

“Five eternities...” She whispered. “This bioform shall waste away into nothingness. Why? Why must we wait?”

“The meat needs to rest.”

“Ah! AH!” She sat up. “That is precisely what you said when my wasp body had only orgasmed three times and my moth body had orgasmed four times and I demanded you balance things out!”

Lou kept waiting for the moment.

It didn’t come during the four weeks that it took for him to build the first half of his log cabin. During that time, Beatrice and he took their time enjoying the labor. The internal space that they lived in had no real dangers and no real risk of exposure – if he ever got chilly, Lou could simply cuddle against all three of his wife’s bodies and enjoy their warmth, which got even more effective once Beatrice excitedly brought her wasp body out and demonstrated a neat trick she had learned. She was able to run the ‘engines’ of her wings inside her body (the same way that bees buzzed) to create waste heat, which suffused her body over time. It turned out if she buzzed for long enough, she went from being slightly chill to as warm as an electric blanket.

“And thus!” she had proclaimed. “The extremely large breasts will serve as your pillows!”

“They already did, though,” Lou had pointed out.

“ ... well ... more so, then...”

The moment didn’t come after Beatrice’s three bodies helped him put the finishing touches on the roof – her moth body flying from the ground to the roof with supplies and tools, while her spider body demonstrated that her spinnerets could be useful for more than just impromptu bondage, and her wasp body ... mostly provided some support on the ladder while jiggling distractedly. Which did eventually lead to Lou saying: “Listen, honey, I appreciate your ... ah ... assets...”

“By which he means your honking huge titties!” Beatrice’s moth body said, causing her wasp body to giggle – an interaction that caused Lou to stand up straight and gape at the two of them.

“I ... are ... are ... you...”

“I am practicing something!” Bea’s moth body landed beside him on the roof, her antennas flicking cheerfully. “It is called ... trying to be less creepy and off putting to humans who are not predisposed to overlook my oddities because they love me ... itus!” She said, her arms spreading out wide as she spoke the words.

“ ... itus?”

“Like tinnitus!” Beatrice said, giggling.

Lou chuckled. “You think having mock conversations with yourself is going to make humans less unnerved by you?”

“Well, what would you prefer?” she asked – and then each of her bodies spoke in unison. “That I speak like this again?”

“You know, you have a good point,” Lou said, kissing her cheek. Then he grinned and spanked her rump, causing each body to squeak in unison. “Can you get me something to drink? It’s thirsty work up here.” At the excited expression on her face, Lou hurriedly added. “Actual drink, not-” He blushed, remembering the time he had asked for a drink and Beatrice had winked at him, then leaped onto him, locking her thighs around his head.

The moment still had not come at the end of the second month, while Lou lay under simulated stars and gently made love to his wife’s wasp body. Her back arched and her breasts heaved as she gasped and moaned, her black fingers sliding along her cheeks. She caught one of her fingers in her mouth, sucking upon it and moaning as her other hand slid down to cup her breast, squeezing herself – more for his pleasure and delight than her own. Though, he could tell that she was delighting in the tactile pleasure of touching her own body. Her fingers gently rolled her nipple and she moaned softly, putting as much emphasis into her words as she could. “How does my pussy feel, Lou? Does it feel hot? Does it feel wet?” She groaned and bounced her hips on him while Lou laid back, his hands gripping her hips.

“God yes...” he whispered, his eyes half closed. Beatrice was getting good at human dirty talk. He had thought he might miss her more idiosyncratic way of speaking – but Lou by now had learned that there was always a way to bring the old Beatrice jumble out of her mouth. But at the moment, all he wanted in this moment was to watch the delightful, ancient poetry that was his wife in movement atop him, her body trembling as she slapped her ass down against him again and again and again, her breath catching, her antennas quivering as he cupped the back of her head and drew her down and kissed her – muffling her orgasmic moan as her cunt tightened on him and he let himself empty himself into her.

Afterwards, as their sweat cooled on their bodies – well, mostly his sweat, as she didn’t have any – Lou chuckled as Beatrice slid her finger along his chest, her eyes narrowing to slits. “I do not have the ocular acuity to see the surgical scars...” she murmured, softly.

“Huh?”

“Well, if you were assigned female at birth, then I presume you would be as exceptionally feminine as you are masculine now,” Beatrice said, as if that was the most logical thing in the universe. “Ergo, you would have had ... amazing titties.”

“You really do love using the most uncouth words,” Lou murmured, his eyes closing.

“I do!” Beatrice grinned, then buzzed her wings and her body against him, cuddling close, her sigh happy. “So, were they as large as this body’s? Larger?”

“I began to transition before I grew breasts,” Lou said, chuckling.

“But according to the textbooks, this occurs a mere twelve to fourteen years after birth, dependent upon various factors such as diet, environment, and genetics!” Beatrice pushed herself up a bit, blinking. “You said that you were aware of this when you were very young, but not that very young!”

“I didn’t think you’d recognize the difference between three years old and eighteen years old, considering you’re older than ... well, our very favorite pastime,” Lou said, chuckling.

“I’m far older than puns!” Beatrice scoffed.

Lou blinked. “I ... our favorite pastime isn’t puns, it’s...” He blushed.

“Fucking?” Beatrice chuckled, softly. “No, my dear husband, it is puns, for after all, every time you think how much you love me...” She wriggled, then squirmed, then sat backwards, so that she could gesture to her curvaceous, black and yellow body. “You are thinking: Oh my goodness, how much I do love...” She paused. “Bee-atrice. Ergo, a pun.” She grinned. “And fucking, our second favorite pastime, is not a pastime at all. It is important labor, your husbandly duty, to breed me.”

Lou flushed and tried to not immediately get a hard on again. But, once again, his relative youth and the intensely arousing matter of factness that Beatrice used about breeding reached into the part of his brain that was all grunting, swaggering machoness and just ... hooked onto it and dragged it to the forefront. Bea grinned, then thrust her fingers into her mouth, whistling – and that signal brought out her spider body.

“I am ready to be sired!” she said.

“Again?” Lou asked. “B-But ... I thought...”

“No reason to not play it safe,” Beatrice said, sliding off – her hand closing around his cock. She started to work him – keeping his cock hard as her spider body walked over, then dropped herself down, impaling herself on his shaft with a happy groan.

It was as the first month ticked into the second, then the second smoothly blurred into the third, that Lou realized something. He was as perfectly content as it was possible to be with Beatrice as his partner and companion. It wasn’t that he didn’t sometimes need times alone – and in the large space designed for the pair of them, there was more than enough space for quiet contemplation and being alone with his thoughts. But simply being with Beatrice – even if they didn’t speak a single word to one another – was more than enough companionship for him.

It didn’t hurt that the sex remained amazing.

Lazy sex.

Energetic sex.

Sudden, unexpected sex – the kind of sex that creeps up on you while you’re helping your wife pick a fruit she’s interested in, and before you know it, the two of you are tumbling around on the ground.

Languid sex.

And once, even, angry sex.

That had been particularly odd, as Beatrice had entered into the cabin and said: “I want to try having an argument!”

“ ... why?” Lou asked, frowning.

“Because I have been reading every romance novel written, starting with the most earliest listed in the historical database, and I believe that we have not ever had an argument. They seem to be extremely important parts of human relationships in all of the books that I’ve read. And so, we should have an argument.”

“Absolutely not. Those books are drama, they exist to produce a kind of ... unreal, exciting version of what people have for vicarious enjoyment. Real relationships can be perfectly healthy without a single argument – and even if they crop up, they’re best handled by being adults, not by shouting at one another.”

“Oh.” Beatrice blinked, nodded, half turned to go, then stopped, then turned back. “That is exactly what you’d say!” She said, hesitantly, then with more confidence. “You always think you know the most reasonable way to explain things! Well, I shall tell you, you do, in fact, not!” She beamed at him. “How was that?”

“Are you trying to ... have an argument about having an argument?” Lou asked.

Beatrice gasped, her antennas frilling out, her wings buzzing. “I am insulted by this very insinuation! To think! My husband thinks so little of me!”

A part of Lou’s mind had actually been fairly impressed with how the conversation had wound around in increasingly convulsed knots as Beatrice tried to find the best way to continue the “argument” – and Lou kept trying to keep from ruining for her by bursting out laughing. Then he ended up ruining the argument anyway by stepping close and prodding her in the chest for emphasis while elucidating that, no, in fact, human beings did not have the most ludicrously designed ocular nerve layout in the biological kingdom. That prod, that closeness, led almost immediately to Bea getting into his face, then him getting into Bea.

Then she was against the wall, her thighs scissored around his hips, his cock buried to the hilt in her cool, wet, tight cunt as she gasped and grunted and moaned in inarticulate pleasure as Lou slammed her so hard and so fast that he was half worried that he was going to break her. But the only thing that broke was the dam inside of him – when he shuddered and clenched her thighs tightly, his teeth sinking into her blue neck as her legs tightened and all four of her arms hung around his back, her fingernails digging into his shoulder blades as she gasped out a throaty, eager: “Lou! Lou! Lou!” between the thick gushes of his hot, thick, purple cum, which oozed out from around his cock and dripped onto the smooth wooden floor of the cottage.

After the two of them had stumbled back to the bed – well, it was mostly Lou doing the stumbling, carrying all of her weight – Beatrice panted and said: “Arguments are most satisfying.”

Lou laughed.

It was during the fourth month that Lou realized he had quietly shifted from hunting to fabricating meat more and more often – and he had barely noticed that he had done it. It wasn’t because he didn’t like the hunting. There was a delightful pleasure in stalking prey and loosing an arrow into it, aiming to ensure the animal in question would drop dead instantly, no matter what Amy said about their cyberbrains. But ... Lou found that he preferred, vastly, to spend time with Beatrice and relaxing around the cottage.

“This must be what AnComs live like. The ones that don’t get all the social following, I mean.”

“Hmm?”

Beatrice was cuddling up against his back while the wasp Beatrice was reading a printed out replica of a magazine from the middle of the 20th century. Spider Beatrice was currently out and about for reasons that Lou hadn’t asked upon and wasn’t curious about. Beatrice’s fingers brushed through his hair as he looked out the window of the cottage at the small bubble of habitable space carved out of the cargo space of their star ship.

By now, the space beyond that invisible (to his eyes at least) wall had gone from the relatively cluttered Alpha Centauri system to the utter and complete void of interstellar vacuum. Though, even that wasn’t that clear as far as vacuums went. There was enough hydrogen for the ram scoops on the lighthugger to draw it into the stabdrive and accelerate it out of the back of the ship, producing the constant single gravity of thrust that made the cargo section feel so very Earth-like. There was nothing to see out there save for the slowly increasingly distorted stars. Ahead of them, light was being shifted to higher and higher wavelengths as the ship rushed towards the light, like the doper scream of an oncoming train. Reds became oranges, orange green, and blue became ultraviolet and worse. And behind them, the stars were shifting the other way, seeking to catch up with a ship that was becoming more and more stretched and distorted by the relativistic effects of its long voyage. Red became infrared and microwaves.