A bunny and a fire

Rye sat silently staring at Dustin for just long enough after his declaration of eternity to get him to start to worry, then nodded. “As per usual, ya know exactly what to say to me, Dusty. Honestly, I never thought I’d be in this situation…” she chuckled before continuing “…remember our first time? When I had ya use those magnetic clamps to lock my legs to the floor? We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?”

Turning to stare into the fire, Rye shifted closer, leaning her head onto Dustin’s shoulder. “Rest of pairing - bar one bit we need to really go to my homeworld for - isn’t as scary as I’m making it out to be. At least, it’s not scary when it’s with you. Only really hard part is gonna be the denial week, but I’ve already talked to the others about that and they’re okay with it. There’s a whole bunch of ceremonial stuff - robes, bathing, incense, the whole deal - that we can do basically whenever, plus a bunch of talking through our past and future which is gonna be intense but not a major problem.”

She sighed, snuggling closer into him. “Beyond that…” she waved one arm out over the fire “…there’s doin’ something we haven’t yet that requires bravery. Most Rabyth find that the hardest one of all, on account of normally being pretty frisky so they have to really think about what they’ve not done in the bedroom.” Rye gave a nervous laugh, then nodded. “Easier for us. Ya get bunny butt, that ticks off something we want to do that I’ve been nervous about. And then it’s just the um… public display of affection.”

Dustin wrapped an arm around Rye. “Kissing you in public isn’t really a challenge…” he began, then felt her head shake against him. “Not kissing, Dusty. Ya gotta… y’kno, get me there, in public. Well, ‘public’ isn’t exactly right - but it needs to be in front of an audience.” Feeling his arm tense, the Rabyth woman sat upright. “Don’t worry, the others count!” She said hastily. “Just, gotta do it a bit more mystically than it normally is when one of us monopolizes ya in the big bed.”

Relaxing at her words, Dustin tugged her back into a hug, stroking her golden ears softly as he spoke. “And that’s it then? Fully paired? One round of butt-sex, one demonstration fuck in front of the rest of the ladies, and then what I am guessing is a week where neither of us has sex with anyone given it’s a Rabyth ceremony and it’s called denial week? Plus some ritual hand-waving? I’m not seeing why you got so stressed, love.”

Rye gave a contented sigh and nodded “Yea. It’s just… ya know I took that spray to make it safe for us, right? And we’ll be paired fully soon. And Meli and Trea’k are both pregnant. There’s a whole mess of emotions there; I’m super happy for them, and jealous, and busy with the ship so don’t want to have to worry about a burrow-full of kids… and also kinda would like to see a little Rye running around with your hair, tinkering with everything. And on top of that there’s the nerves about some of the stuff we’re gonna be doing for the pairing…”

Rye tugged out her necklace, turning the empty medspray over in her hands before tucking it away. “Never thought I’d end up like this, Dusty. Honest to Cogs, I didn’t. So I’m ecstatic, and terrified, and in shock and over the moon all at once and it’s… It’s just too much sometimes for me to handle alone.”

Dustin closed his hand over Rye’s, holding her tight. “Rye, you never have to handle this stuff alone. I’ll always be here. And if it’s something you don’t want to talk to me about, Meli will be there as well, and the others. We’re a family, all of us. By the metrics of your species and mine it’s a pretty weird family, but it’s family none-the-less. So, whatever you want, we’ll try and help you get.”

The pair sat staring into the flames for some time before Rye spoke again, her voice soft. “Dusty… Can we go to bed? Ya know I don’t do well with this kinda talk, and it’s been a long day.” Dustin nodded and rose, before bending down and scooping his engineer up in his arms. Rye made a vain protest, but a kiss silenced her as he stepped towards the shuttle.

In contrast to the previous night, Dustin settled into a bunk with his lover just wrapped in his arms rather than engaging in any form of sexual intimacy. Somehow, however, it was all the more intimate for it - while Sammie and Bleu’s soft moans filled the cabin, he gazed into the Rabyth woman’s eyes until sleep claimed them both.

The following morning, Dustin woke late to find the others already busy preparing for another trek back to the ruins. “Got some data off the drives we found” Rye said when she saw he’d woken. The bunny girl seemed determined to not let any of the vulnerability she’d displayed the previous evening show as she bustled around checking and double checking the straps on her pack. “One of ‘em included a map of that building, there’s a server room a few floors below where we were. If anything good has survived, that’ll be where it is.”

One quick breakfast later - and a brief interlude to supply their new centipede pet with more snacks - and the trio departed once more for the ruins. Due to the lateness of their departure compared to the previous day, the sun was already high in the sky and Dustin found himself wistfully wishing for rain, or mist, or indeed anything that would take some of the heat out of the air.

By the time they reached the cool of the fallen tower block they were all struggling; Bleu didn’t bother with trying to step over the entrance; she just walked into it, flowed over the top and reformed her legs on the other side, while Rye dropped her pack with a sigh of relief the instant she was in the shade, unbuckling her overalls and fanning her bare chest with a tablet while she drained a water bottle with her free hand.

“Is it me, or is it even hotter than yesterday?” Bleu said, pushing the neck of her own water carrier directly into her arm and giving a relieved sigh as the liquid began to drain into her body.

Dustin finished his refreshment before checking his tablet. “Three degrees hotter. Not much, but when it’s already baking hot, it’s a lot. Humidity's up by ten percent too, which makes it feel so much hotter. Still as dry as the sand out there, but it’s slightly damp sand now.”

They opted to take a few minutes to rest and recover before heading deeper; while it was still unpleasantly warm in the artificial cave, it was markedly cooler than it had been outside and let their tired muscles rest. Eventually, though, the mission drove them onward. Passing the floor they’d scavenged the previous day, Dustin and Bleu followed Rye as she navigated sideways down the lift shaft using a half-recovered map from a building that had been a collapsed ruin before any of their grandparents had been born.

“Here.” The bunny girl said at last, pointing to doors set into the wall of the lift shaft. Unlike their previous exploration, these doors weren’t hanging open, and Dustin viewed them with some concern. “Rye… if we **** those, how likely is it that we’re going to bring the rest of the structure down around us? We are in a fallen tower that’s covered over with a fairly deep layer of sand at this point after all” he asked as he set his pack down.

Rye considered the question for a moment, then tapped her tablet a few times. “Not too likely.” She said, in a tone that didn’t fill Dustin with much optimism. “But to be on the safe side, we can cut through to one side rather than **** the doors open - it’ll be bit of a tighter squeeze, but there should be a false ceiling on this floor judging by the airflow plans - so if we cut in above the door…”

Dustin watched nervously as the Rabyth woman retrieved a laser-cutter from her pack and began poking holes into the wall until she was satisfied that it was safe. Turning the device to full-power, Rye burned out a chunk of the metal structure of the lift-shaft (several groaning noises coming from below them not helping Dustin’s anxiety) until at last she clicked the cutter off and kicked part of the wall away, revealing a narrow crawlspace beyond.

“In here, then we should be able to just knock the tiles out of the ceiling to get through into the floor.” Rye said, already shimmying sideways through the opening she’d made. Bleu stepped gracefully in behind her, the slime girl’s form shifting to avoid snagging on any rough edges from the Rabyth’s carving work. Grimacing to himself, Dustin sucked in his stomach and followed.

Ceiling tiles rattled as they hit the floor - Dustin wasn’t entirely sure what they’d been made of originally, but the passage of time in the harsh desert air had turned them into something akin to desiccated wooden slabs - wooden slabs that sometimes split as the trio pushed them out, and other times fell into pieces the instant they struck the ground.

Their torches illuminated a corridor - once again, they were stood on the wall due to the building’s angle - and not much else. Rye checked her tablet. “This way, server room should be just up ahead. Might need to climb down to get to it tho, map shows the corridor bending around an office which would put it below us.”

The others followed as Rye lead them past shattered light fixtures and under collapsed walls, the presence of some sand that had clearly fallen through shattered windows not helping any of the trio with their feelings of claustrophobia in the ruined building. Eventually, though, they made it to the server room - a door looking more like a hatch in the floor from the angle the tower was now resting at. Rye tugged the handle and grimaced. “Shoulda guessed it’d be rusted or dead-bolted shut. Gimmie a sec.” Once more the laser torch burned bright, the door glowing as Rye rapidly cut her way in.

Inside, rack after rack of intact computers filled the space, the fading glow from the laser cutter illuminating a grin spreading across Rye’s face. “Jackpot” she said, swinging her legs over the edge of the doorway and dropping down. “Gimmie twenty minutes to pull drives and we can start to load up the packs and get out of here,” she said with a smile. Dustin and Bleu gave her a thumbs up in the torchlight, letting the bunny girl work alone in the narrow space between the computer racks.

It was a little over half an hour before Rye finished getting all the drives stowed to her satisfaction and reached out for a hand up. And, naturally, it was just as she finished scrambling out of the room that they heard the creak and snap of metal pushed beyond it’s limits from back towards the lift shaft down which they had entered the building.