It'll Make a Man Out of You

It'll Make a Man Out of You.

	Chrome gleamed, lit by long strips of neon light in all manner of exotic colours, as Blake leaned against the bar. Even as a regular patron, he couldn't help but be amused by the decorations. The bar – Neon Future – looked like it had been designed by some hack in the 21st century, based off an absurd vision of the future. Polished metal, pulsing neon lights and a faded synth beat in the background, the bass notes robbed of all their power by the low volume.
	Still, he had been drinking there for years and nothing – not even the sudden influx of hipsters – was going to chase Blake off. Besides, on a Friday, the barmaids wore tight silver miniskirts and cropped tops, although they could never quite explain why. Some ancient Earth tradition, perhaps.
	Of course, “Friday” was something of an abstract term on a space station far from that ancient planet. Google – named after the megacorp that had founded it – was one of the few space stations left that stuck to Earth time. That meant a seven day week, and artificial light cycles of 24 hours. It played havoc with some of the alien visitors, who preferred to stick to their own territories and stations.
	There were a few aliens in the bar, though, huddled together in a corner booth as they carried out a muttered conversation. Blake was the only other patron, practically slumped over his empty glass. With a heroic effort, Blake lifted his head and gazed into the polished mirror behind the bar. He needed a shave, he noticed, a thick black stubble covering the blunt edge of his jaw. It gave him a rather masculine look, as though he had stepped from the poster for an action movie. As he stared at his reflection, a pair of figures entered the bar, crossing the room to sit either side of him.
	“Hey there,” the woman on his left purred. Blake's attention was immediately drawn to her long, golden hair. It was unusual to see people with long hair these days. Most people kept their hair short, to keep it from getting caught in a sealed helmet. The woman was attractive enough, with full lips and a dainty nose, but Blake couldn't help but feel suspicious. “I'm like to buy you a drink,” she added, deliberately oblivious to Blake's lingering examination.
	“That's very generous of you,” Blake replied, still curious about the woman's intentions. Of all the bars on the station, she chose to walk into this one and strike up a conversation with him? Odd, to say nothing about her silent companion. “What's your name?”
	“I'm Talia,” the woman – Talia – gestured to the barmaid and held up two long fingers, nodding her head towards Blake's empty glass, “Been drinking here long?”
	“Not long,” the man shook his head. He was fatigued rather than drunk, his body aching from a day's work in the shipyard, “I'm Blake, by the way. Who's your friend?”
	“That's... that's Haem. A nickname, but his full name is rather...” Talia paused, “Long. Not very easy to pronounce either. You know how it is.”
	“Sure,” Blake lied as he turned to his right, looking at Haem. Talia had used the masculine pronoun, so Blake knew that he was looking at a boy, but that was the only reason he was able to make a sound judgement. Haem was the embodiment of true androgyny, his chest boyishly flat yet his face as beautiful as his companion. If his confusing gender hadn't been enough indication, the cool blue tone of his skin told Blake that the boy was clearly an alien.
	The drinks arrived, small glasses of a clear spirit that was produced for the alcohol content rather than any notion of taste. The hipsters drank it ironically, while Blake preferred it for the numbing effect that half a dozen glasses could produce. “Come on then,” Blake announced, emboldened by the fresh alcohol, “You want something, right? Why else would you be talking to me?”
	“Well...” Talia took a sniff of her drink before pushing it away, her face crumpled up into a wince, “Yeah, we could use your help. It'll be really easy, I promise! You'll even get laid, can't say fairer than that, right?”
	“Wait,” Blake leaned back, holding his hands up as if he was about to fight off an attacker, “I think you've got me confused with someone else. I'm not... selling it, okay?”
	“No! No, no...” Talia stammered, laughing nervously to herself, “I mean... Look, Haem is a Kadathi. Have you ever heard of them?”
	“I'm not really what you'd call a smart guy,” Blake grunted, closing his eyes as he tried to think, “Don't they need someone else's DNA to reproduce? Wait, doesn't everyone need someone else's DNA to reproduce?”
	“You're close,” Talia said, rather generously, “Kadathi need an injection of foreign DNA – from a male donor – to reach physical maturity.”
	“So that's where I come in. You need, what, some skin scrapings? A cheek swab?” Blake asked. Talia didn't answer, shuffling her feet awkwardly, “Blood? Is that it?” Talia cleared her throat, looking pointedly down at Blake's crotch. The man looked down, following her gaze. “Oh,” he said, his voice hollow as realisation dawned.
	“And you can't use a cup,” Talia added, her words mingling together as she hurried them out, “Well, I guess you could, but it's a ritual thing. Male bonding, y'know? Come on, you've got to do it!”
	“Look, I understand your problem,” Blake began. His father had never been around when he was growing up, so he felt a certain sympathy for the alien boy, “But I don't swing that way, get it? Even if I wanted to, I don't think I could give him any... DNA.”
	“Please?” Talia whispered, leaning in so that her breath tickled Blake's ear, “Not even if I helped?”
	“I don't know...” Blake murmured, although his resistance to the idea was wavering. It had been a long time since he'd been with a woman, and the soft puff of Talia's breath against his ear had caused a certain stirring down below. That said, the alcohol had also gone a long way to softening his will. “Alright, fine, I'll do it,” the man threw his hands up in the air, relenting, “This is going to be awkward, isn't it?”

	As it happened, Talia had an apartment not too far from Neon Future, perhaps why she had picked that particular bar to search for men. While they walked, she told Blake more about the Kadathi and how she had met Haem. Until they reached physical maturity – the reason Blake was being dragged to their apartment – Kadathi tended to be quiet and withdrawn, as though embarrassed by their childish bodies.
	Haem, having been isolated on the human dominated station since birth, hadn't been able to find a partner willing to usher him into adulthood. Older than he looked, he was trapped within the androgynous frame that few humans would even consider lying with. Even though he hadn't been raised by parents of his own race, the boy had a firm grasp on their culture and yearned to become an adult the true way. After one disastrous attempt to feed him seed from a cup, the pair of friends had argued for a week. Talia hadn't made another attempt since.
	Just as the young woman was about to tell Blake how she had met the alien, they arrived at her place. It was a small apartment – all apartments on a space station were small, unless you had some serious cash to throw about – but well decorated. After showing Blake into the bedroom and sitting him down on the crisp sheet, Talia pulled a length of material out and wrapped it around his face. Though thin, the material made a highly effective blindfold, shrouding the human male's sight in darkness.
	“Don't worry about a thing,” she purred, letting her hands slide down Blake's chest to rest on his belt buckle. He felt his breathing grow heavy as her nimble hands undid his trousers and pushed them open. Her hands were soft as she reached into his underwear and touched his penis, pulling it free from the loose cotton shorts. Blake could feel his member harden under her touch, roused from its slumber by the sensation of her fingers drifting up and down the length. “I'll take care of everything,” Talia's voice drifted up to him as a wet heat engulfed him.
	Blake groaned softly, the languid motions of Talia's tongue stirring his member to full hardness. The inside of her mouth was soft, like wet velvet, and she seemed to know every inch of his penis in intimate detail, following every ridge and vein with her tongue. The last time Blake had managed to talk a girl into going down on him had been years ago, at some drunken party he could barely remember, and that had been unremarkable at best. This, though, was good – mindblowing even.
	With her lips wrapped tightly around his member, Talia began to bob her head in Blake's crotch, taking his cock in and out of her mouth as she caressed his balls with one hand. Every motion sent a wave of pleasure through Blake, weighing his body down as his fatigue was transformed into something else entirely. All he wanted to do was lie back and luxuriate in the warm sensation of the young woman's mouth. Blindfolded, he couldn't see her lifting her head from his crotch, but the sudden rush of cool air around his saliva slick member couldn't have been because of anything else.
	“It's good, isn't it?” Talia's voice was like caramel in his ears, her hand a soft pressure on his chest as she pushed him down onto the bed. She was stroking his penis with the other hand, a slow rhythm that teased him and kept his shaft throbbing eagerly. “Just let me do all the work,” she whispered, her voice caressing the inside of Blake's ear.
	The bed shifted under the reclining man as Talia shuffled about, before the warmth of her mouth enveloped him again. Her lips followed the length of his shaft – slower this time, lavishing him with careful attention – until Blake felt her dainty nose brush against the dense tuft of pubic hair surrounding his shaft. Hands, small and warm, settled on his thighs as Talia let her tongue wander, teasing a groan out of Blake's slackened jaw.
	“You taste good,” Talia purred, seemingly without taking her mouth away from Blake's crotch. After a moment of disorientated confusion, realisation began to dawn. “Shhh... Don't think about it. Don't think about anything but how it feels,” her voice continued, lulling Blake back into a state of numbness. As she had been whispering in his ear, her immature friend had taken over her role, their transition as seamless as a well practised stage trick.
	“It's so long and hard,” Talia's voice was husky with desire, a wet sound reaching Blake's ears as she began to touch herself. “Oh, I'm so wet,” she moaned, “I want you inside me, I want you to fuck me.”
	Before Blake could say anything – not that he could think of anything to say, in the strange situation he had found himself in – Talia pressed her lips against his own, the angle awkward. Another wave of cool air assaulted him as Haem pulled back, letting Blake's cock spring back upright. Whatever reservations the man had been holding onto were fading, washed away by the short yet skilful display of the alien boy's talents. Still, as he felt the slick tightness of a well lubricated hole pressing against his member, Blake focussed his mind on Talia's curvy frame.
	“Oh, that feels so great!” Talia breathed as Haem let his body slowly slide down onto Blake's shaft, the muscles of his anus resisting just enough to provide a glorious friction against the man's erection. A muffled whimper – as boyish as Blake would have expected – slipped from the unseen alien as he slowly took Blake's cock into him. There was a simmering need in the boy, that much was obvious from the pulsating of his inside, throbbing with the fevered rhythm of his heart.

	A weight settled on Blake's chest as Talia straddled him, taking his hands in a gentle grip and moving them to her chest. Eager to bolster the fantasy running through his head, Blake groped blindly at her breasts, his fingers eventually finding the nipples. The imaginary Talia was a little too perfect, perhaps, but it served to distract him from the clenching tightness around his shaft as the slender alien boy took the final few inches inside of himself. “That's it!” Talia gasped, moaning with lustful enthusiasm as Haem started to rock his hips.
	The motion of his narrow hips were slow at first, as though he was testing to see how much his virgin body could take. Gradually, as his confidence grew, Haem began to move faster, letting his lithe body rock back and forth against the rigid length of Blake's member. As much as he tried to keep quiet, little gasps kept escaping Haem as he bounced up and down on the human's lap, the walls of his entrance clenching around the invading member.
	Those little gasps - tender breaths that spoke of a lusty need - distracted Blake, entwining with Talia's attempts to keep the older man's mind from wandering. Writhing atop him, the human woman cooed and moaned, soft sounds rising up as she touched herself, but nothing she could do was enough to keep Blake's thoughts from straying. He could picture Haem, naked and sweat-slick, tongue lolling out of his mouth as he rode the human's shaft. Heavy in his hands, Talia's breasts suddenly felt fake, a crude attempt at replacing the smooth, alien grace of Haem's hairless body. Unbidden, his hands dropped away from the woman's body, sliding up until they brushed against the cool flesh of Haem's narrow hips.
	Acceptance – accepting his alien lover for what he truly was – seemed easier somehow, not that Blake had actually laid his hands upon him. He wondered if it was some quirk of his inhuman biology, casting a soporific net around the human he had chosen to usher him into adulthood. It could have been any number of things; pheromones, some subtle mind control or something stranger still. Or, and Blake was less inclined to consider this last option, perhaps he wasn't quite as exclusively straight as he thought he was.
	Ultimately, though, the why of it seemed unimportant. Blake was enjoying himself, relishing in the clenching warmth of the alien boy's rear entrance as he bucked his hips against Blake's member. His movements had become quick now, taking the man's length with lusty enthusiasm as he rode himself closer and closer to a climax. Blake, for his part, felt his own orgasm building, although it was still a while before he could give Haem the seed that he needed.
	A sudden change in pressure told the blindfolded human that Talia, perhaps sensing that she was no longer needed, had slid off his chest. He had no idea where the woman had retreated to or whether she was annoyed or not, but even those concerns seemed trifling compared with the pressing need to sink deeper into the alien boy's flesh. Seized by a lust so intense that it was somehow frightening, Blake tightened his grip on Haem's hips and began to thrust into him, the motion of his hips fusing with the alien's gyrations to form a new fluid rhythm.
	“Yes... Yes...” Haem gasped, the first words that Blake had heard him say. His voice was soft and musical, but there was a ragged undertone that suggested a breathless ecstasy. Driven by some unknowable instinct Blake began to thrust harder, his shaft pushing deeper into the alien's tender insides in search of yet untapped reservoirs of pleasure. As if responding to the man's eager thrusts, Haem let out a final gasp – louder than anything Blake had heard from him – and seemed to stiffen up, his body tensing as he began to orgasm.
	Blake had no idea if the boy would come or not, or even if his alien biology had the same concept of an orgasm as a human might. Whatever else his body might have been doing, the muscles clenching around Blake's member seemed to go into overdrive, tightening around him like a fist as if he was trying to squeeze the seed from the human. If that was his intention, it certainly worked.
	Grunting in surprise, Blake felt his orgasm wash over him with alarming suddenness. It had been building for a long time, a growing pressure that began in his balls and travelled up the length of his shaft, but the release had been sudden and violent. It almost seemed like the seed was being sucked from his body, drained by the alien's hungry body. It poured out of him, copious amounts of the pearly liquid pulsing out so quickly that his body seemed unable to keep up, muscles going into frantic spasms in a desperate attempt to shoot the seed out. Despite his body's plight, Blake was deaf to anything but the insistent pleasure gripping his body, assaulting him with wave after wave of intense tingles like some kind of electrical shock. His mind went blank, wiped clean of any lingering reluctance he might have felt, no matter how late or futile those thoughts might have been.
	His orgasm seemed to last a long time until it finally ended, plunging Blake into a fatigue deeper than any he had ever felt. Nothing seemed to compare with the unnatural tiredness, not even a double shift at the shipyards, but there was something satisfying about it as well. It lay across him like a blanket, soothing his mind and banishing any regretful thoughts. Sleep called out to him, and Blake had little choice but to answer. As he felt himself drift away, there was a sudden feeling of release as Haem climbed off him, the clenched grip he had been holding Blake in relaxing as he let the human's withered member slide free. Then, still blindfolded and stained with the remains of his seed, Blake passed out completely.

	A few days later, Blake sat in front of his computer reading about the Kadathi people. Talia had woken him up the morning after he had slept with Haem and ushered him out the door, thanking him profusely. It had seemed like a somewhat urgent brush off, but Blake hadn't argued. Things were awkward enough without having to endure a wordless breakfast with the pair of them.
	Still, the alien species had captured his interest. Traditionally, or so the article he was reading claimed, the Kadathi would seduce men by posing as women, only to escape after their sexual encounter by sapping their partner's vitality. It wasn't dangerous as such, but it stopped a wrathful partner – perhaps angered by the deception – from resorting to violence. The article went on to speculate about the exact method by which they performed their tranquillising act, but the dense text went completely over Blake's head.
	As he was reading, or trying to read, a message popped up in the corner of his screen. A photograph, sent by Talia. Opening the message, Blake felt his jaw drop as he looked at the picture of Talia and her alien friend. It was recent, taken just a few hours ago, but it was difficult to recognise Haem. The alien, previously beautifully androgynous, had changed, transformed by the seed he had taken from Blake. His face had hardened, growing into a profile that Blake found somehow familiar.
	It took a while for the human to realise why it looked so hauntingly familiar. In the end, he had to pull up an old photograph for a comparison but when he saw the two figures side by side, it was unmistakable. The alien, transformed by the DNA taken from his human lover, had grown into the exact image of Blake as a young man.