September 12, 2363

As predicted, Blue handed Kaith his ass on a platter, and it was fun to watch. In the name of good will, he drug the lot of us out to the bar he and Travis had found in their wanderings during the day, and bought the first few rounds. Kang, Zia, Travis and I held down a booth for the group of us, while Kaith and Blue prowled the bar and acted like macho idiots to attract the ladies.

Despite being shorter than most of the ladies in the bar, Blue did attract quiet a bit of attention. He wasn't prepared for the suggestions that came up that his very sensitive antennae should be used as handles. Being the tactless wench that I am, I actually helpfully called out some suggestions as to what would be a better way to treat said antennae, which caused Blue to flush a deep blue color and Travis to all but choke on his blood wine. When Zia and Kang laughed merrily, and Zia suggested she wanted antennae now, Blue elected to try to pretend he didn't know us.

I do know that Blue eventually succeeded in his quest for sex that night, as he snuck back into Kang and Zia's place in the wee hours of the morning, then tried to just curl up and sleep without being noticed. His bedroll was on the floor next to the fold out couch that Travis and I'd been set up on, so I leaned over the edge of the bed to ask him about his adventures. Even in the dim light, I could see the beginnings of bruising, and he was grinning from ear to ear.

As he and I sat up talking quietly, Travis eventually woke up and wondered what all the fuss was. The three of us ended up sitting up the rest of the night to talk. Blue, growing tired of being on the floor while Travis and I were on the bed, climbed up to join us. When Zia found us like this the next morning, she offered up raktajino, but the boys both admitted they needed more sleep as Travis had only gotten half of what he needed, and Blue was long over due for his small ration of it. When I climbed out of bed, the boys didn't take long to sprawl across the bed and fall asleep.

When I followed Zia into the kitchen to get the promised raktajino, she made an off hand comment about my harem, and it hit me sideways. When talking about the two together, I'll often call them “my boys” or “the boys” as if they're a single unit, and if Travis were to tell me it was okay, I would happily start having sex with Blue again. Zia laughed when I admitted this, and pointed out that the only person in the trio the sex actually mattered to was Travis.

Kang joined us in the kitchen not long after, and the three of us just chatted until Kaith showed up. The day before, Zia had shown us how much of a slave driver she was, insisting we sit like statues, fussing with how we were positioned, and generally fussing with us as much as she fussed with her oil paints. Despite seeming like she spent so much time fussing, and so little time actually painting, I was amazed to see what she'd done on the first day. Remembering this, it made it easier for me to indulge her the next day. At least until Travis and Blue woke up and found their way into the studio to watch.

It started innocently enough at first, they just hung around watching Zia work and talking to all of us. Then somehow we ended up on the subject of Blue's sexual exploits of the night before. Naturally Kaith and Kang were curious, and Travis seemed to be also, though he wouldn't admit it. As when I'd started to inquire into it earlier when Blue had returned, Travis had woken up and guided conversation in another direction, so I elected to jump into the conversation when it came up again in the studio.

When Kaith decided to stir the shit, and suggested that Travis should try painting himself up blue and sticking something on his head to mimic antennae, he looked horrified at the prospect. The troublemaker came out in Blue at this suggestion, and he started nosing through Zia's paints, stealthily, testing the occasional blue against his skin to look for a good match. When Travis figured out what Blue was doing, he started likewise sampling the paints, looking for a good pinkish skin tone. All this was occurring behind Zia's back, and it took me and my brothers all our self control to not start laughing at the boys' antics. They each found the right color to match their skin tone at about the same time, so next came the paint brushes. They each loaded up a brush, and brandished them like swords. Form wise, Blue probably had the advantage, having actually held bladed weapons of that nature before, but with the egotistical lunatic factor on his side, Travis landed the first splatter of paint on Blue. A pale peach stripe down his nose.

It wasn't long before Blue landed his first patch of blue paint on Travis, painting his left collar bone. From there, it pretty much snow balled, and soon both had most of their exposed skin, as well as not a little of their clothing, covered in paint. When Travis decided he was covered with enough paint, he elected to start mocking Blue's antennae using his two pointer fingers. This was the point where my brothers and I failed to maintain a straight face anymore. Almost as if in slow motion, Zia spun around to see what had us all so amused, and she stood silent and angry for a minute before she turned back to me.

“Diziara! Get your harem to behave or get them out of here!” she ordered. Blue and Travis looked at each other, Blue's antennae twisted into a puzzled gesture, and Travis imitating such the best he could with his fingers, and they mouthed the word harem at each other. Before I could say anything, Blue asked if two people could constitute a harem as Travis asked if they could be a harem if he was the only one of the two currently having sex with me. Despite the mess of her paints and torture of her paint brushes, she couldn't help being amused by this, and giggled.

They were still banished from the studio, but not before I picked up the holocamera Zia had laying around, I assume for taking reference pictures. I intend to get the picture put into a little holodisplay, so I can leave it somewhere like a desk or something, and embarrass my boys decades from now. They even elected to ham it up for me, crossing paint brushes as if they were dueling with swords. I think Zia muttered something about rendering the picture in oils eventually, and titling it The Harem. I look forward to seeing how it comes out.

Travis and Blue drug us out for another evening at the bar that night, and this time Blue hung around the table with the rest of us, while Kaith prowled the bar on his own. Somehow the subject of the tendency for Blue and I to get into bar fights came up, and Blue surprised me by telling about the encounter with the Andorians who became violent when he refused their proposal to join their bond. Kang told Blue he considered him like a brother, and I think Blue took some comfort in this. Travis piped up, wondering why he hadn't been told such too, and I pointed out that when they got him smashed on Blood Wine during Mara's wedding, and repeatedly kicked his ass sparring, they were welcoming him into the family.

The evening ended earlier than it did the night before, and the five of us left Kaith to prowl the bar alone. Kang and Zia were quick to make for the privacy of their bedroom, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what their goal for the rest of the night was. I had harbored hopes of a similar sort involving Travis, but he quickly squashed those flat by instead curling up against me to sleep when he, Blue and I ended up in the living room, on the pull out bed in the couch. Commentary about this turn of events, including ribbing from Blue directed at Travis as he was drifting off to sleep, was exchanged all while the three of us lounged on the bed.

Travis has a thing about skin to skin contact, where he seeks it as much as possible, but he doesn't seem to like the idea of anyone else seeing me naked. He isn't particular about what part of my exposed body makes contact with his, and he seems to have come to terms with the fact that Blue's just going to see my naked body from time to time, due to the nature of the living arrangements on the ship. Sometimes, I even get the idea that Travis is still a little worried, jealous even, of what there'd been between Blue and I before we got together. He might even be worried about if I'm going to pull what his ex did, and cheat on him with Blue. I think the only thing that soothes his worries is that the same reason why Blue's just going to occasionally see me naked also makes it so we wouldn't be able to hide anything on that ship, even if we were the sort to betray his trust like that.

At any rate, when Travis settled down to sleep, and leave Blue and I to talk, he nuzzled up against my leg, flipping my skirt out of the way. Once he was asleep, Blue asked me about the Harem commentary from earlier in the day. My responses were vague, because while I knew Blue would understand how things really stood, the last thing I needed was for Travis to wake up to hear some of it, and misunderstand what he was hearing. I did rib Blue for his choice of commentary, and I think there's more there he's not telling me, but his reasoning for not talking about it may be similar to mine. I love Travis dearly, but he puts too much emotional value into sex, and therefore sometimes gets a little stupid about it. It's not his fault, it was the culture he was raised with, and so I work within the boundaries he's comfortable with.

When the conversation got too weighty, such that it got stuck and couldn't move forward in the vague state it had tried to hide within, I decided to lighten the mood and rib Blue about the paint mess. Blue tried to insist that Travis looked better in the blue paint than he did in the pink paint, and I wouldn't hear anything of it. When he scoffed as I implied that he was my property, in the process of insisting I was color blind about my boys, I teased that I would strong arm him into submission if it weren't for Travis being asleep on my thigh.

I was actually getting tired, so he excused himself to go read in the garden. My brother Kaith apparently has a Shakespeare collection in the translated English, as that's what Blue was going to the garden to read. When I expressed my confusion over this, he explained that Kaith claimed it gave insight into the Terran culture, and language, when compared to the original plays in Klingon; comparing the mistranslated words, verse, and sometimes whole acts even, to the original, gives one a feel for the largest and most subtle of cultural differences. Normally one would be a scholar or an actor to want to pay that much attention to The Bard's works, and the social implications, but apparently Kaith believes that it gives him a tactical advantage to know these things, and that one needs a tactical advantage over the human race. Seems Travis is one of the only humans he finds to be worth associating with, which seems odd given his tactical failings, but it might just be he cares about his sister, and seeing me happy is the important thing.

The next morning, I woke up before Travis. Blue had been outside reading the whole night. I managed to grab my journal from my bag without disturbing Travis, so I put this down. Zia will likely be awake soon, so I'll probably leave Travis in bed and go see how a night of Shakespeare did Blue.