I can see it in her eyes, all four of them.

That curious, excited glimmer, the violet flush spreading across lavender skin, the nervous tug of three fingers up on a dress just a size too small in the chest. Even beneath the pounding rhythm of some garish pop trash from Amharo, I can practically hear the girl's heartsbeat thudding against her chest: She's about to ask the question.

The Question, really, both capital letters very appropriate, as it's been, without fail, asked in every port I've steered the Water Hawk to. Sometimes it's blunt, with some towering guard of Dolrimeen extraction unceremoniously doffing her armor and bending over before the words've left her lips, or sometimes it's couched in exquisite language, mathematics and song wrapped up in pure poetry on the tongue of an elegant lady from the Jewel Nebula, layers upon layers of meaning boiling down to one.

And now this particular lass, edging closer to my table, almost stumbling over herself in the most adorable way, seems to have the same question on her lips. I can't resist giving in, even before she asks it - a friendly wave, a curling beckon of two fingers that causes her eyes to go wide, and a little scoot over to leave just enough room beside me on the rohlremurkh-hide bench for her to slip in.

This particular reach of the galaxy doesn't see much of my kind, admittedly - most of us stick closer in to the familiar stars, and to skate past the Dolrimeen customs ring on a beam of ion fire takes a special kind of stupid half of humanity is too enhanced to even imagine, anymore, but they've all heard the rumors.

"Evening," I nod, to the accompaniment of a startled squeak from my new companion, as I sling an arm companionably around her waist. "Or morning - I can never tell out here in the black; can you? I've always thought the lot of us are better suited to planets, y'know? Someplace with solid ground and comfortable beds, and a definite, unshakable up. You look like you know about up, if you don't mind me saying, Miss - is that an engineer's log I spy in your pocket, or are you just clever enough without the Course?"

Purple, glorious purple, now - she's positively fluorescent, and I risk a grinning chuckle, tossing an offhand nod to the lurking bouncer who seems to have her ears cocked in our direction, now.

"You were going to ask about it, weren't you? I mean, I'd not judge if you were. Everyone's got a few drinks in them, and rumors spread. Hell, I've heard things about this very bar you wouldn't believe - that there's never been a human in it before, and that they've got an entire other floor, just rimward of here, where they..."

I pause, drawing it out as the questions dance in her eyes.

"I really ought to introduce myself, shouldn't I? Captain Nicholas Lockwood, late of the 75th, now just sightseeing, hauling a bit of petty freight, that sort of thing. Out here for a vacation of sorts, is all, for a bit of recreation..."

Her lips are parting, and I hazard a hand a little lower, sliding toward the exquisite curves below her waist.

After all, there are some twenty-odd pinpricks of thought in the darkness, that we know about, depending on your view on whether the Constructed count, though I'm a modern man on that. We've all got our little niches, really - I've met Amharo with their beauty fit to make an angel weep, so much so that I had to close my eyes simply to wrap their thighs around my head. And the Columni with minds so sharp their words could cut glass, living in an ether of logic so far above it makes one's head swim to hear them... I've met them as well, the memories burning bright in flashes of skin on skin and the long, lazy moments after like brilliant amber, and the Dolrimeen... My hips practically scream at the thought, but it always brings a smile to my face when I think of Sev and our little visits whenever I swing through that arm.

And then there's us, the plain-featured, ordinary little primates from a yellow star, the children of an odd path. What are we good at, in a galaxy of wonders?

Now she's asking it, an "is it true" as familiar as time, and I'm grinning, letting her fingertips trace wonderingly down my stomach, beneath the easy swing of my jacket. We may not be the smartest, per se, nor the most elegant, nor the largest in most ways, but I have to simply nod to her question.

Humans, it turns out, know perfectly, splendidly, how to fuck.

An adventure in a wide, dazzling galaxy awaits! Take a spin out past the Milky Way and sample delights beyond imagining... or, hell, let's have a lazy morning in, nestled in rumpled sheets on some lazy station somewhere. Far more than the world, after all, is our oyster - and I'd love to hear from you any time.

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