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Thace woke up with purple goo smeared over his face. “Good morning, Keith,” he muttered. He had to coax a sleepy Antok to stretch some tendrils out of his body just to pry his son off of his eyes.His partner, Antok, was the victim of a scientific experiment intended to fuse Galra together to give them enhanced abilities, except it ended up leaving Antok without a physical form of his own and unable to survive without being bonded to another Galra. Thace got captured for the experiment, bonded with Antok, and helped him escape.They were still fugitives, but they had gone into hiding and settled into a more or less normal life, as much as that was possible for two Galra in a committed relationship who also shared a body. When their baby, Keith, a Galra cub who also had the traits of Antok’s fluid-like form, was born, Thace’s life only got weirder.Once Antok pried Keith off of his face, Thace was dragged out of bed by the gnawing hunger in his stomach that couldn’t be ignored. That tended to happen when one was bonded with the amorphous form of another Galra. Thace scooped Keith up in his arms and made his way to the kitchen.He cracked some eggs into a pan and turned on the stove with one hand, while holding Keith in his other arm. Then, he set Keith down on the kitchen counter, and turned back to his cooking. A minute later, he turned around, and Keith had disappeared.“Where is Keith?” Thace asked Antok.“You were supposed to be watching him,” Antok said.“You know where he is at all times, so how am I supposed to be the one watching him?” Thace replied.In response, Antok tilted Thace’s head up to the ceiling, where the small inky purple blob was quivering as if he were laughing.“Keith!” Thace yelled. “Get down from there!” He clambered on top of the kitchen counter to try to reach Keith, but his grasp was still several inches short of the ceiling.“Why don’t you let me help with that?” Antok said, swallowing Thace up in their full transformation which added a couple feet of height to Thace’s small frame. They almost bumped their head on the ceiling from when they were standing on the counter, but still couldn’t grab Keith, who stuck a tendril out at them like a tongue blowing a raspberry, then slithered into the ceiling vent.Antok swore under his breath.“Shh! Keith might still hear you,” Thace scolded him.Antok released Thace from the transformation, but then Thace felt the pins and needles as Antok rushed up his arm and extended himself from Thace’s fingers. “What are you doing?” Thace said.“I’m going after him,” Antok replied. That was the last thing Thace heard before their link broke, and Thace saw the navy blue-black form of his partner chasing his son across the ceiling and into the air vent.
Thace sighed. Then, he hopped down from the kitchen counter, put on his slippers, and dashed out the door.He ran across the hallway to his neighbor’s apartment and banged on the door. After about twenty knocks, he was greeted by a scowling Zarkon in his robe. His old friend Zarkon looked for the most part like an ordinary Galra, and no one would ever suspect that he shared his body with his partner, Kolivan, the same way Thace did. They had been the first pair to escape from the experiment. Zarkon reconnected with Thace when he was struggling to control his new abilities, and helped him cope with the bizarreness of bonding with Antok. When Thace and Antok had a child together, Zarkon and Kolivan had moved into the apartment across the hall from them to help them out. Thace was grateful for this on a daily basis.“What do you want, Thace? It’s eleven in the morning,” Zarkon groaned.“That is a perfectly reasonable time to be awake,” Thace retorted. “And it’s an emergency.”“Fine. What is it?” Zarkon said, his voice taking on a slightly higher pitched echo in the way that meant that Kolivan was speaking in unison with him.“Antok and Keith are in the ventilation and I can sense that they’re heading your way,” Thace said. “Can I come into your apartment and, like… get them out?”Zarkon sighed wordlessly, but stepped aside to let Thace into the apartment. He searched for the vent on the ceiling, and once he found it, set his eyes on the furniture for something to climb. When he placed his foot on top of a glass table, precariously close to a lamp, Zarkon’s hands closed around his waist and lifted him up to the ceiling. Zarkon by himself was even taller than Thace in Antok’s form, and didn’t need to transform in order to help Thace reach the vent.
“Nope. Can’t have you getting footprints on the table. Kolivan would be so mad at me,” said Zarkon jokingly.“If you needed a boost, you could have just said so, Thace,” said Kolivan through the skin-to-skin link. It was weird communicating with someone other than Antok that way, but Thace and Kolivan had teamed up in the past to get their reckless partners out of trouble, so they were used to each other.Once Thace’s hands were on the vent, he unscrewed the bolts holding it into the ceiling with his claws, and let the grate fall to the floor. Keith tumbled out of the vent when it fell, and Thace gathered him into his arms. “Got him!” he cried triumphantly.Antok followed shortly after, seeping back into Thace’s skin. “Great teamwork, love,” Antok purred once their connection was restored. Even after such a brief, voluntary separation, reuniting with Antok always felt like the sweetest relief. “But none of this would have happened if you had watched him like I told you to.”“We’ll deal with that later,” Thace replied.Zarkon lowered the three of them back to the floor. Keith cooed in Thace’s arms, and transformed back from his amorphous goo form into a fluffy Galra cub with a mop of black hair and bright yellow eyes. He smiled, like he was waiting for Thace to laugh at his mischief, but Thace fixed him with a stern frown.
“You’ve been very naughty, little one,” Thace said. “Apologize to uncle Zarkon and Kolivan for inconveniencing them.” He held out Keith in his arms. Zarkon reached out his hand, touching Keith’s face, and Keith took one of his fingers in his tiny hands. Then, he bit down on Zarkon’s fingertip.“That’s not what apologizing means!” Thace scolded. Zarkon drew his hand back, and Thace saw a trickle of blood where Keith’s fangs had broken the skin. “I’m sorry…” Thace said. Then, he saw a flash of periwinkle grayish-blue spread itself across Zarkon’s hand, Kolivan instantly healing his injuries.“You don’t need to apologize,” said Zarkon. “All Galra cubs are a handful, and there’s never been one like Keith in the universe before.”“That’s why I’m so glad that I have you two to help us,” said Thace, with a relieved sigh.Antok perked up inside him, putting Thace back on alert. “Do you smell something burning?”Thace turned around. The doors to Zarkon’s apartment and his own were both open, and Thace saw that the omelet he had left on the stove was now ablaze.“Quiznak. When I ran over here to get Keith, I was in the middle of cooking breakfast, and I forgot to turn the stove off,” Thace muttered. Antok helpfully covered Keith’s ears when Thace swore.“I’ll get the fire extinguisher,” said Zarkon. Kolivan’s pale blue tendrils shot out from Zarkon’s back and grabbed the metal canister off of the wall while they followed Thace and Antok back across the hall into their apartment.Thace and Zarkon attacked the flames with the fire extinguisher while Antok and Kolivan held back, extending their forms to keep Keith away from the fire, which was especially dangerous to their slimy bodies. Once the blaze had been put out, Thace and Zarkon walked over to Thace’s couch and flopped down on it, exhausted.Zarkon’s head lolled on top of Thace’s, while Kolivan extended a hand from Zarkon’s wrist to hold his hand. Antok emerged from Thace’s body to nuzzle against Thace’s chest and cuddle with Keith, who, despite all the chaos that he had inadvertently caused, had fallen asleep in Thace’s arms. Moments of relative peace like this didn’t last long in their household, so Thace took the opportunity to doze off himself, Antok purring contentedly in the back of his mind.