Chapter Text
They called themselves the Xanthye.
Humans like Henry Rhee could approximate the pronunciation of the species name with reasonable accuracy by using a strongly aspirated bzzz sound at the beginning of the first syllable and a glottal stop at the beginning of the second. However, humans who were not Henry Rhee usually didn’t bother making the effort.
Instead, according to most humans who were not Henry Rhee, the Xanthye were “bugs.” Or “bugpeople” whenever the human in question wished to be at least somewhat politically correct.
Which Henry’s mother certainly did not.
“How can you stand to be around those…those…those…those bugs?! Sweetheart, I don’t understaaaaand!” she wailed. “You were going to be a doctor – what happened? You had your whole life ahead of you!! Why did you have to go so far away??”
Henry pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Medicine had been her plan for him. He had always wanted to explore the galaxy. She knew that damn full well. She was just pretending she didn’t.
“I check my messages every day,” his mother’s voice continued relentlessly. “Why don’t you ever write or call? It’s like you’re avoiding me!”
Now Henry was rolling his eyes. It took nearly six months for messages sent from Earth to reach the Xanthye flagship. He was just listening to this one for the first time today, and even if he replied immediately, she wouldn’t receive the reply for another half a year.
But he wasn’t planning on replying immediately. What would he say? Remind her for the thousandth time that space travel was ridiculously expensive, and the only conceivable way he’d ever afford to realize his most deeply held desire was to take employment on a spacefaring vessel?
“You’re such a talented boy, Henry. You deserve so much better than to be—”
“Henry! Heeeeenry!”
His Royal High-Pain-in-the-Assness, Prince Xanto was calling him.
Henry paused his mother’s message and put his tablet into sleep mode. Hurriedly, he straightened his suit, double-checking to make absolutely certain he looked impeccable, and glanced at the clock. Ah, time for afternoon tea. Of course. Prince Xanto would undoubtedly be famished.
“Heeeeenry! Henry, where are you?! Get over here right this second!! Right this second, I say!! Henry, you’re already laaaaate—”
“I’m here, Your Majesty, and I’ve brought your afternoon tea.”
Prince Xanto was reclining beneath a heat lamp and reading one of Henry’s books. He did not look up to acknowledge Henry’s arrival, and he did not reply. His urgent calls for his favorite human butler had apparently, at least for the present, been forgotten.
Henry expected nothing less. Unconcerned, he began to lay out the afternoon tea spread. There were three scones, pots of strawberry jam and clotted cream, and the finest Indian whole leaf black tea already steeping in a bone china teacup.
The Xanthye had developed a bizarre fascination with certain stereotyped human cultural practices. So, although Henry was not English and had never visited the British Isles, he was, to the very best of his abilities – which were not inconsiderable, he knew – a high-priced English butler in the service of the future King of Xanthyeiea. (The accent was on the final “e.”)
Hey, it was one way of seeing the galaxy.
In theory. In reality, he spent most of his time seeing after Prince’s Xanto’s every whim.
You see, the Crown Prince, like princes everywhere, was a royal, spoiled brat. Henry had gotten used to it, and really, catering to a spoiled brat’s every whim was a small price to pay when you get to see the Lion’s Mane Nebula with your own eyes. From five different vantage points during various routine stopovers at the Xanthye’s various colonial outposts. Okay, it was from a small viewport. But still. It was the principle of the thing.
“Give me a massage,” Prince Xanto commanded, his first words since Henry’s arrival. He was already tucking into the scones, but since the Xanthye rubbed whisker-like bristles on either side of their heads together to produce speech, they could literally talk with their mouths full.
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
The prince had an exoskeleton, but it was not a hard, armor-like, chitinous shell. Instead, it was pliable, almost velvety in texture, and in the recycled, dry air of the ship, it risked cracks and splits, painful, difficult to heal wounds which leaked hemolymph. The slick, moisturizing oil that Henry applied to Prince Xanto’s body daily was a necessity, and one which, if he were honest, was one of his more pleasant duties at the prince’s 24/7 beck and call.
Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, naturally, but to Henry’s eyes, Prince Xanto was beautiful. The Earth bug he most resembled was a caterpillar, and his base coloring was the milky green of mint chocolate chip ice cream, with occasional orange and magenta spots and whorls along the length of his back to accent it. He had eight pairs of limbs, with the first two pairs of appendages closest to his head modified for grasping and manipulation – like hands, in other words.
Prince Xanto rumbled with pleasure as Henry massaged moisturizer into the textured sole of one peg-like foot. If it this felt good on Henry’s skin, it must feel good on the prince’s exoskeleton… Mmm, the heat lamp was warm… The repetitive massaging motions were hypnotic…
“Henry, answer my questions about this book!”
Henry blinked, jolted out of his pleasant mental haze.
“Hmm? Which book is that…?”
But Henry, peering around Prince Xanto’s bulk, could already see the book in question. It was one of Henry’s medical textbooks.
Oh, swell.
Just.
Swell.