Outsourcing After Care
Rocket was gone by the time Amelia got out of the shower. She dried off and was just getting ready to heal the small scratches he had left on her shoulders, when Drax came in.
He looked at the scratches. "Will you let those scar?"
Amelia was surprised, "They barely break the skin, Drax. Even if I leave them, they will be healed in a few days."
"I have never marked you."
She just looked at him.
"After that first day." He added, looking embarrassed.
"No, you never have." She stretched up on her tip toes and kissed his chin.
He was watching her. "Are you alright?"
"He didn't hurt me Drax. Rocket is a good person, he just doesn't always remember that.” Amelia sighed while she treated the scratched she asked, “What can I do for you, Drax?”
Drax frowned. “Rocket sent me.”
“When?”
“On his way from your room to his work room.”
Amelia blushed. “Would you excuse me?”
——
Amelia just let herself into Rocket’s work room and sat on the floor near his desk.
He ignored her.
She ignored him.
After a while she said, “Ok. I get that I am apparently terrible at hand jobs, but you don’t have to run and hide while I’m in the shower.”
He didn’t set down the… thing he was working on. “I didn’t run and hide. You aren’t terrible at hand jobs, in fact I kinda hate Drax right now.”
Amelia considered this. “Neither one of us want you to feel alone. He isn't upset by this afternoon. If you need-“
“Stop talking! Fuck! What I need is some god damn time to process what just happened!”
Amelia nodded. “I love you, Bandit Bear, even when you are sneaking out on me.”
He stared at her like she had lost her marbles. She got out the phone he had built her and started to read. It would be easy to tell her to get out. He was pretty sure she would if he told her to.
“Why are you here?” He snapped. Then he felt guilty. That sounded way angrier than he intended.
“I want to make sure you are OK. It’s a … post coital thing. I need to know that you are OK with everything that happened. That there wasn’t a point where you needed me to stop and just couldn’t say. And the big thing that I worry about is that your internal dialog is calling you names just now and that if I’m not here, you will start to believe it.”
He set down the bomb he was working on and stared at her.
“Ok, Rocket, what’s it saying?”
“You have to admit, it’s pretty pathetic that I have to get a hume to jerk me off cuz I can’t-“
“Stop. No. It isn't pathetic. You didn’t have to. I offered because I love you and wanted to help.”
“What if I wanted to return the favour?”
For a moment, Amelia looked shocked, but she got it under control. “I honestly never considered that you would want to. I …. I would need a little time to get used to the idea.”
“Of fucking an animal.”
‘Well, of having sex with a person who isn’t shaped like a Terran. But also of having two lovers at the same time. Culturally, my people like to pretend we are monogamous. I have had more than one partner, but never at the same time. Serial monogamy, sort of. Um.. Wow… Now I need sometime to process.”
“You don’t consider this afternoon having sex.”
“That was… helping out a friend. Like getting someone to scratch an itch you can’t quite reach yourself.” She paused here and considered her next words. “Rocket, you spent a lot of time calling me a monkey and generally making comments about my lack of body hair to suggest that I wasn’t sexually attractive to you. I just want to be sure… is this just some temporary post sex thing, or are you sure you are actually interested in me?”
She was giving him an out, he was prepared to take it. “I don’t know.”
They sat together in silence for another couple of minutes.
“Drax offered to take it up the ass for me.”
“I doubt that he put it like that, but yes, he told me. Drax has a much more relaxed attitude about sex, without any of my baggage.”
Rocket wanted to point out that Drax had a shit ton of baggage about sex, it was just that Amelia couldn’t see it because it didn’t look like hers.