The shuttle down to Zerric was the roughest Adam had taken, ever.

It would have been a more gentle ride had they left on time as Vas-Tin had planned, but Adam had asked to swing by and visit his sister and nieces before he went, as he wasn’t sure when he’d see them again, and once his sister heard the news he was leaving the moon for good, Adam had to be literally pried from her hysterical arms and that alone ate up nearly three hours.

But Adam was glad he did it. Once they were down (or was it up?) on Zerric, that would likely be it. Vas-Tin had no reason to return to the moon, and his new master had made it clear that Adam wouldn’t be going anywhere without him, so the only way Adam would be communicating with his sister was over the radio, and the connection to Zerric was notoriously patchy because of the violent weather.

Down on Zerric, they took the metro – a train deep underground – toward the sector Vas-Tin lived in. Adam didn’t know all that much about how the Zerric lived other than the fact they were very territorial and liked to keep to themselves and their family units. The children stayed with the women and the elders until they were adolescence, at which time the males would leave and set out on their own while the females stayed relatively close to their mothers. Other than that, Adam knew that the government paired them off through a mating system, and mated pairs stayed together for life, just...not together in the same area. They’d mate during times when the hurricanes were further out to sea and Adam vaguely remembered hearing something about the birthing traditions being psychotic, but he had never been all that interested in learning about that.

When his interest got piqued, it was usually only when they were talking about the wild sex lives of the Zerric and their pets. Other than that, Adam had better things to focus on, like what his crops needed, how he was going to package things for his sister and her daughters, if he was ready for the next run, what the town was up to and what he was going to do the next night cycle since he didn’t have a partner to dick around with inside.

But he didn’t have to worry about that stuff anymore, so…

He supposed he better learn a bit more about the Zerric.

If he had expected to get any answers on the metro though, he was sorely mistaken. While he would have otherwise been disappointed, Vas-Tin was entirely focused on running interference between Adam and literally every living thing around them and that ended up being one of the most entertaining things Adam had gotten to experience. It was like watching a toddler try and isolate his favorite toy from the other curious children, constantly blocking them with their body and occasionally pushing them away. It was just other Zerric though – humans he clearly wasn’t threatened by, by any Zerric that came within five feet of them got the full show of teeth.

If Vas-Tin hadn’t actually started a fight with another Zerric for sniffing too close, Adam probably would have had a little fun with it, but by the time they got off at the station, he was sort of ready for them to be away from other people.

It was hella tense having Zerric all around and an attack dog ready to chew on anything that sniffed a little too close, and Adam had only been doing this for a few short hours. He didn’t know how he was going to deal with this long-term.

Up on the moon, they had few transporters and so you either walked or took one of the rails, but here in Zerric, they had public transporters you got at the metro, took home, and then they’d just drive themselves back to the metro. Though he had been hoping to get a better look at the city on the way to his new home, the transporters were just metal boxes - no windows - which made sense. The Zerric didn’t need to see, so why would they have windows?

So a long transporter ride later and they arrived at the housing sector, located under its own dome, just as each city was located under its own massive domes as well. What made this dome of particular interest was how freaking low it was. Every dome he had seen before this were a solid ten thousand feet tall, arcing across the sky like all those pictures of rainbows his sister had hung on the walls of their shared bedroom as a child, but this one was twenty feet max, ending right above the roofs of the one-story, cement structured dwellings that were each separated by walls that went straight to the glass domes, giving each resident privacy and likely done to ensure they felt they had their own territory.

While Vas-Tin slid his finger around the panel on the outside of the transporter Adam gazed up, looking out the dome at the furious gray-blue clouds, his vision misting over as he felt himself grow upset over his loss.

So this was his home now.

As he watched a lightning strike shoot across the sky, the air exploding with the sound of the thunder, he thought it was a very hostile home. But he supposed his home on the moon had been hostile as well, hadn’t it?

But it had been his home.

And he would just have to get used to this being his home as well.

It would be strange looking up and not seeing Zerric and its two hurricanes though, instead seeing it from the other side. He hoped he’d get to see the moon, but he knew that it was very rare that the Zerric got a good look at it unless they were sitting directly in the eye of one of their storms or during a year where the hurricanes were out at sea.

But maybe one day.

“Why is the dome so low?” Adam asked as he was led to the entrance of what he assumed was Vas-Tin’s home, his master holding his hand to the front before the door beeped and slid open, revealing the inside to be pitch black.

His master pulled a face and twisted, lifting his chin like he was looking and just realizing the dome was low before he shrugged and pulled Adam in by his arm.

The air was less humid inside, and Adam blinked at the darkness as Vas-Tin went back to the transporter to get the few bags Adam brought down. He squinted as he tried to make out anything in the room, but all around was only darkness.

He heard the transporter saying it was returning to the station before he saw Vas-Tin hurrying back over, entering the dwelling and closing the entrance with a wave of his hand.

And then there was nothing.

Just….

Complete darkness.

Adam smiled at it, chuckling nervously before he took a step back. Before he could take another, he felt Vas-Tin’s large hand grab the front of his jacket and yanked him forward to pull him close, starting to walk him backward. Adam tilted his head back as he stumbled over his steps, grinning up at Vas-Tin as he loosely held onto his master’s wrists. He stumbled again, feeling unsure in the darkness, but didn’t feel like he would fall, not with his master’s hold on him.

The bed was very low on the ground he found out, hitting the lower back of his calves instead of his lower thighs, so when he fell back onto it he fell way further down than he was used to with his own. And while he would bounce on his own cushy mattress, there was no mattress on the floor, just a thick mat made out of what felt like several woven mats, and their combined firmness knocked the wind out of his when he hit it.

He coughed violently, cursing under his breath as he sucked in a mouthful of air and got up onto his elbows with a scowl. Vas-Tin lowered himself to crowd into his space and Adam licked his lips before he pulled his master down on top of him fully, letting the other attack his neck with aggressive nips and sucks that stayed firmly on the line between pleasure and pain. Adam pulled Vas-Tin closer, groping around to feel for the zippers to start undressing the other, pushing his jacket off his broad shoulders before he reached down to try and pull the heavier shirt underneath off from the bottom.

Vas-Tin pulled back then and Adam heard the other stripping out of his shirt, the smaller male reaching up to touch his master’s naked flesh, pressing the pads of his thumbs into the firm flesh of his sculpted abdominal muscles. “You're so fucking gorgeous, I want to see you – is there any light in here?” He asked. He figured there probably wasn’t because, you know, the blind thing, but it couldn’t help to ask and he really liked to see Vas-Tin in all his glory.

Vas-Tin growled but pulled back a fraction. There was a beat of silence before he slide off the sleeping pad to walk quietly off somewhere into the darkness. There was a click and Adam was temporarily blinded by a light that reminded him of the blue lights all the homes on the moon had to regulate moods during the long stretch of darkness.

But then his vision came back – first in spots and then all at once, and Adam jolted at what he saw.

Every wall of the small room they were in was crowded with preserved animal heads, all their dead eyes staring back at him, their mouths opened all the way to show off their teeth. Adam’s face twisted in shock and horror and let out a loud scream that voiced exactly those emotions, Adam waving a hard at it all. “Turn off the fucking lights!” Adam cried out, Vas-Tin frowning but doing so, reaching over to hit a switch on the wall to plunge them into darkness again. “Jesus fucking Christ – okay. Nevermind.” Adam said loudly. “Sweet mother of -” He sucked in a breath and looked around in the darkness, knowing that the dead eyes were still watching him. “Your place is terrifying,” Adam said plainly.