A Big Favor 1 (Patreon)

@Keevin Childers made an interesting request this month. He wanted something about Tish, preferably from her childhood. I thought about this a lot and I did manage to write something about Tish, but I went with a more modern scene where we all know the players...

Also, while I'm here, I'd like to say that I had a wonderful time at Megaplex. It was a very fun con and it was so nice to see so many familiar faces. I got to hang out with @Pickles a lot and he was great company.

I've got two more cons coming up in the next couple weeks: IFC and MFM. Will any of you guys be at these? I don't know what to expect from IFC, but I know that @Pickles will be at MFM too, so that should be a blast!

———

Tish sat in the barrack’s far corner for most of the morning, talking quietly with Sekara. They whispered, they hugged, they dried each other’s tears. Even after the big lio gal finally stood to leave, Tish spent another ten minutes with her at the airlock, hugging and saying goodbye, and another five minutes recollecting herself before she headed over to speak with her best friend, Suni.

But Suni played coy. From her studies, she looked up from the side of her eye and acted like she hadn’t noticed how occupied Tish had been. “Oh,” said the little chocolate female, “did Sekara go?”

Tish sat down on the bench beside Suni and wrapped her long arms around the little geroo in a tight hug. “Yeah,” Tish sighed, “we had a lot of catching up to do. The two of us have so much in common.”

“Muscles,” offered Suni with a grin.

Tish chuckled.

“And mates you could probably snap in half if you weren’t careful.”

That made Tish stick out her tongue. “Her more so than me on that one,” said Tish. Sekara was a good head taller than Tish, but her mate, Pa’uma, was even scrawnier than Kanti—now that he’d regained the weight he lost, at least.

When Tish went silent, Suni looked up and touched her paws. “Something wrong?”

The honey-colored geroo shrugged. “Not wrong so much as … I’m not very good at asking for … favors.”

“Yes,” said Suni with a smile.

“Yes?” laughed Tish. “You don’t have to be so quick to agree with me! I never even… What favors have I even asked of you besides that one time we snuck up onto the counter to take a call together?”

Suni rolled her eyes and squeezed Tish’s paws once more. “I mean, ‘yes’, as in, ‘Whatever favor it is you’re trying to ask, yes, that’s fine,’” she explained.

Tish sighed and leaned her head on top of Suni’s. The two friends sat there for a long time before Suni finally asked, “So, what did I agree to?”

Tish just pulled inside herself, sitting slumped on the bench. “You have no idea how hard this is for me.”

Suni rubbed her back. “I already said, ‘yes’, Tish. Now, you just need to tell me what I agreed to do.”

“I never ask anyone for anything,” the big geroo explained, “not even Kanti, and I know he’ll always do anything I ask.”

Suni smiled. “I distinctly recall you asking him to bathe Rahua last night. Oh, the tears!” At that moment, the little cub popped by, her little weaving hops aimed at her mother’s leg. Suni snatched the cub up and buried her nose in Rahua’s stomach, drawing some deep snorfling breaths until the little ball of fluff giggled helplessly. “You smell so much nicer now!” Suni laughed as she transferred the cub into Tish’s arms.

Tish snorted. “Asking Kanti to give Rahua a bath is hardly a favor,” she explained. “That’s just me being nice when I remind him it’s his turn.” She squeezed the cub close for a few moments before Rahua decided that she wanted to go and wriggled free once more.

The pair watched the little cub hop away before Suni turned back to Tish. “Well?” she asked. “What’s the favor? Just tell me. I’m awful at reading minds.”

Tish whispered, “It’s … a lot to ask.”

Suni grabbed both of Tish’s wrists and shook them. Growling, she said, “Just spit it out!”

“I want another,” whispered Tish.

“What?”

Tish closed her eyes. “I love Rahua to pieces, but I want another. I want her to have a little brother or sister.”

Suni opened her muzzle to reply, but Tish was talking fast forward now, trying to explain before she could be rejected. “Ever since I got pregnant the first time, all my mommy-urges have kicked in full blast. I want another. Hells, I’d love to have even more than two, but every couple should be entitled to two, right? Maybe even more if some of us don’t have any—”

“Tish,” Suni sighed sadly, squeezing both of the bigger gal’s paws just as tightly as she was able, “I appreciate that all of you have this weirdly misplaced faith in my abilities to be your doctor, but some things are right out of my control. Kanti’s DNA has been changed, lost, and even if we had taken a sample before that and stuck it in the commissioner’s freezer for safe keeping, I really doubt that I’d be successfully able to impregnate you with it.”

Tish opened her muzzle, but now, Suni kept talking. “I know that back aboard the White Flower II, they saved semen samples from all the males a few months before we left, but unless you’ve got a way to get back there—”

Tish put her fingers over Suni’s mouth, shushing her. “I know. His DNA is gone. That’s why I want to find a surrogate.”

“A surrogate?” the doctor gasped.

“Yeah,” Tish whispered, “I’d need someone to fill in for the part that Kanti can’t do, but then the two of us could still raise the cub as our own.”

Suni put a paw over her muzzle and sat back. “Wow,” she whispered, “have you spoken to him yet? He’s uh … really sensitive about what the sourang took from him.”

Tish sighed. “No, I haven’t. I just know he’d love having a second, but I’m terrified that he’ll take it personally if I suggest that someone help us out.”

“He’s … jealous…”

“I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but perhaps?” said Tish. “He was gone a long time. He had other lovers… I had Saquel of all people… It’s just … really complicated. I want this, but I don’t want to hurt him to get it.”

The two sat in silence a long time before Tish added, “Sekara was really understanding. She’s in the same situation, though I think it bothers her less. Both her and Pa’uma had their DNA changed, so no surrogate could help them out. They could adopt, but all the cleaning crews are tight-knit communities. I can’t imagine any of them having a cub who no one wanted to raise.”

Suni sat a long while, gently rubbing a single pad over the back of Tish’s paw. “Yeah, okay, Kanti’s pretty sensitive. It’s possible that he might feel really hurt about this. I don’t have much in the way of equipment here, so your best shot for getting pregnant is … doing it the old-fashioned way.”

Suni winced and met the larger gal’s eyes. “And yeah, he might be very unhappy about you sleeping with another guy,”—she wrapped her arms around Tish and pulled her close—“but I also know he loves you more than anything in the galaxy. No matter how much he hates the details, I just know he’s going to get over them and be happier in the long run.”

“Thanks, Suni,” Tish sighed, soaking up body heat from the hug. “That’s what I was thinking too, but it feels so much better to hear it from someone I trust.”

When they pulled away, the two sat side-by-side on the bench, shoulders touching, Suni letting her legs swing gently over the side. “When you do talk him into his, he’s going to be so happy. I know he loves having photos of you with curves, but he missed seeing them in person.”

Tish grinned and slowly stroked her palms over her flat belly. “Yeah, I know he will.”

They sat in silence awhile longer before Suni spoke again. “So, when you ask Kanti, and he gets over his hang-ups … have you thought about who you’ll ask to be his surrogate?”

Suni turned sideways and crossed one leg over the opposite ankle. “What about Lape’s mate?” she suggested. “Kanti said that Osang feels indebted to him for getting his mate freed, and since they live in the warehouse, you wouldn’t have to see him again. It would spare you both those awkward moments.”

“Heh. Maybe…” Tish whispered, refusing to look at Suni’s face.

Suni waited and waited and eventually put her paw on Tish’s knee. “You do have someone in mind, don’t you?”

“Well,” whispered Tish, “instead of someone I never have to see again … I was actually thinking of someone we love enough that they’d want to stay part of the experience…”

Several heartbeats passed and Suni gasped. Her fingertips moved instinctively to her own necklace where she furiously rubbed the odd bead out. “Henzi?” she whispered. “That’s the favor you wanted to ask? You want my mate to … to…”

Tish turned to face her best friend. “We’ve always thought of you as Rahua’s aunt, and now that you and Henzi are together, he’s been a wonderful uncle…”

The big geroo shrugged, looking more vulnerable than ever. “I thought, ‘What could be better than if you two really were part of our family?’”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FwSSBz3jcCdTzld4qaFHr43W-LHBNEOY-6PHYdwtb24/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?