June 4, 2440 7:48 AM
Kevin did not come awake easily at the best of times.
Staying up past three in the morning after nearly twenty-two hours awake had not improved the situation.
He had, however, become accustomed over the last few weeks to people talking around him while he slept. Flight trainees talked. V’ren talked. People getting dressed talked. People who had already been awake for an hour seemed especially offended by the existence of anyone still sleeping.
Kevin had discovered that if he simply refused to acknowledge them, sometimes they eventually went away.
So he lay there.
“I think they call them butt dimples,” Chem said.
Kevin continued to lie there.
Chem covered her mouth to keep from laughing.
This was hardly her first encounter with an insufficiently dressed human boy. Arrow Rock had swimming pools and saunas, and human modesty had turned out to be considerably more situational than she had expected when she first came dirtside.
It was, however, the first time she had awakened to find one asleep in her bed.
Or mostly in it.
Kevin had somehow turned himself diagonally during the night. The sheet had twisted around one leg and migrated downward, leaving most of his back exposed while one bare foot hung over the edge of the mattress.
Chem tilted her head.
“He really does have them.”
D’stan leaned closer, studying the matter with grave scientific interest.
“He is sort of cute when he is helpless.”
She looked at Kevin, then at Chem.
“Poor man probably deserves better than what we are about to do to him.”
That did not stop her from raising her phone.
Chem raised hers too.
A third phone sat propped against a water glass on the bedside table, already transmitting.
Sael was in the shower.
Which was unfortunate, because Chem desperately wanted to know why Sael Thron had appeared in their room sometime after three in the morning with Kevin Wood in tow, announced that the idiot human boy was sleeping here because she refused to let him sleep in the hotel lobby, and then put him to bed.
Chem had questions.
Many questions.
Mall Kerr apparently had other priorities.
The night before, Sael had been left in charge of Kevin.
This morning, Mall had left Kevin in charge of Chem and D’stan.
Or perhaps she had left Chem and D’stan in charge of Kevin.
Chem wasn’t entirely sure which interpretation was more dangerous.
The phone speaker crackled.
“We are assembled here.”
Mall’s voice.
Chem bit her lip.
D’stan’s shoulders started shaking.
On the other side of the planet, Mall had thrown all three camera feeds onto the largest screen in the Marmaduke house. Chem could hear voices gathering in the background, people talking over one another, somebody demanding a better angle.
Kevin shifted slightly.
Everyone froze.
He sighed, tucked one arm farther beneath the pillow, and sank back into oblivion.
Chem looked into her camera.
Mall waited until the room went perfectly still.
“Go.”
Chem attacked his feet.
Kevin ceased being asleep.
His body shot straight upward, folded backward, then attempted some desperate maneuver known only to men being unexpectedly tickled while unconscious.
For one extraordinary instant he achieved almost complete separation from the mattress.
Then gravity remembered him.
Kevin came off the bed like a harpooned whale breaching, twisted inside the sheet, and disappeared into the carpeted canyon between the two beds.
The room exploded.
Chem collapsed against the mattress laughing. D’stan barely kept her phone aimed at him. From Missouri came a roar of overlapping voices that Kevin recognized far too quickly.
He appeared between the beds, hair wild, eyes barely open, sheet wrapped around one ankle.
“What the fuck?”
More laughter.
Kevin stared at Chem.
Chem stared back.
Mall had given her one additional instruction.
Chem had kissed a human boy before. In fact, unless somebody produced contrary evidence, the stupid spin-the-bottle game in Arrow Rock had probably made her the first V’ren girl to kiss one.
She had subsequently learned several things.
Human boys sometimes used too much tongue.
Breath mattered.
Publicly criticizing their technique on social media produced astonishing levels of engagement.
And kissing itself was not particularly mysterious.
This was different only because this was Kevin.
Mall’s Kevin.
And Mall had specifically told her to do it.
Chem glanced toward D’stan.
D’stan’s eyes widened with delight.
Kevin managed, “Why are you looking at me like tha…”
Chem leaned down and planted a quick kiss squarely on his lips.
Kevin stopped talking.
Mission accomplished.
Chem pulled back.
His morning breath was terrible.
She made a small face.
“Good morning, Kevin.”
Kevin stared at her.
Chem smiled brightly and held out the phone.
“Here’s Mall.”
He took it automatically.
Mall filled the screen, looking far too pleased with herself.
Kevin blinked at her.
Once.
Twice.
“You.”
Mall’s smile widened.
“Good morning, beloved.”
Behind her, somebody in Missouri started laughing again.
Kevin dragged the sheet up around himself and looked slowly around the Tokyo hotel room.
Chem was grinning.
D’stan was filming.
The shower was still running.
Three separate phones had recorded his destruction from multiple angles.
He looked back at Mall.
“I trusted you.”
“You love me.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
“They overlap.”
“You had them assault me.”
“You were difficult to wake.”
“She kissed me.”
“I know. I assigned that.”
Kevin closed his eyes.
Chem leaned closer to the phone.
“His breath was terrible.”
Mall laughed.
Kevin opened his eyes again.
“I hate every one of you.”
“No you don’t,” Mall said.
That was unfortunately true.
The bathroom door opened and Sael stepped out through a cloud of steam, already dressed except for her damp hair.
She stopped.
Kevin was on the floor wrapped in a sheet.
Chem was sitting cross-legged on the bed.
D’stan had a camera pointed at him.
Mall Kerr was laughing through a phone.
Sael looked at Kevin.
Then Chem.
Then D’stan.
“I was gone ten minutes.”
“You abandoned your responsibilities,” Chem informed her.
“I put him in a bed.”
“You put him in our bed.”
“There were two.”
Kevin pointed at Sael.
“You.”
Sael raised an eyebrow.
“You were going to sleep in a 7-Eleven.”
“That was peaceful.”
“You looked homeless.”
“I looked tired.”
“You were asleep over a manga.”
“I was reading.”
“You had not turned a page in twenty minutes.”
Chem’s head snapped around.
“Oh, there is tea.”
Sael immediately realized her mistake.
D’stan lowered her phone slightly.
“There is definitely tea.”
Kevin looked at Sael.
Sael looked at Kevin.
Neither spoke.
Chem leaned forward.
“You were together until three?”
“Eating snacks,” Kevin said.
“Talking,” Sael added.
Chem’s eyebrows climbed.
“For hours?”
“Yes.”
“What about?”
“No,” Sael said.
Chem looked wounded.
“You cannot give me that much and then stop.”
“I just did.”
Mall’s voice came from Kevin’s phone.
“Sael?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for making him sleep.”
Sael smiled.
“You are welcome.”
Kevin looked betrayed.
“You’re all conspiring.”
“You needed sleep,” Mall said.
“I needed dignity.”
“You haven’t had that since Mexico.”
D’stan laughed so hard she nearly dropped her phone.
Kevin finally hauled himself upright, sheet still wrapped around his waist, and collapsed onto the edge of the bed.
Chem studied him.
“You really are helpless in the morning.”
“I flew spaceships yesterday.”
“Not this morning.”
“I hate mornings.”
Mall softened.
“Did you sleep at least?”
Kevin rubbed his face.
“Apparently.”
“Then my work here is done.”
“No, your crimes are documented.”
“And backed up.”
Kevin pointed at the camera.
“Delete that.”
“No,” said three girls in Tokyo and several people in Missouri at once.
He groaned.
Then somebody pounded hard on the door.
Three knocks.
A pause.
Three more.
A voice carried down the corridor.
“Up and moving! Staff meeting in twenty minutes! Conference room on fourteen! Coffee and breakfast are already there!”
Another door farther down received the same treatment.
“Twenty minutes! If you’re still asleep, that’s now your problem!”
Kevin looked around the room.
Chem looked at D’stan.
D’stan looked at Sael.
Sael looked at Kevin, still wrapped in a sheet with his hair pointing in several directions.
Mall began laughing again.
Kevin stared at the phone.
“Don’t.”
Mall grinned.
“Good morning, Tokyo boy.”
