Monsterfucker Research Station

his voice sounds careful. like he's selecting the words from a list.

you step back. let him in.

"i have been thinking," he starts.

here it comes, you think. the explanation. the defense. the way he'll reframe every cutting comment as honesty, every dismissal as exhaustion, every cold silence as you misreading him.

you've rehearsed your responses. you're ready.

"i think i have been doing it wrong," he says.

you look at him.

"the—" he pauses. something moves across his face. a hesitation you don't recognize. "the way i have been treating you. i have been reviewing the data. running comprehensive retrospective analysis. and i can see now that my behavior was—"

"reviewing the data," you repeat.

"thinking about it," he corrects, very quickly. "just. thinking. like humans do."

you stare at him.

"okay," you say slowly.

"i was critical," he says. "i found things to correct when it was not.. when the corrections were not requested. i understand now that this caused you significant emotional damage."

you've known him for years. he doesn't talk like that. he talks like someone who's never wrong about anything, who phrases observations as facts and facts as verdicts.

"are you okay?" you ask.

he blinks. one second too long. "i am functioning within normal parameters. what i mean is—" he stops. resets. "yes. i am okay."

"who did you talk to?" you ask. "while i was—while we were on the break."

"my male companions," he says.

you go very still.

"your-" you repeat. "your what?!"

"my companions. who are male. my—" he seems to be searching for something. casting around behind his eyes. "my bros."

the word comes out like he's never said it before in his life. like he learned it an hour ago and isn't sure where the emphasis goes.

"right," you say.

"they were very informative. they explained the dynamics of human pair bonding at length. we had an extremely productive discussion about your emotional needs and how i had failed to meet them adequately. one of them had a small beast on his lap the entire time and it stared at me without blinking and i found it—" he pauses. "i found it charming," he finishes, in the tone of someone who found it deeply threatening.

you open your mouth.

you close it.

"a beast," you say.

"a small. domestic. beast." he holds his hands apart approximately cat-width. "with orange fur. it made a continuous low-frequency sound from its chest cavity."

"a cat. it was a cat."

"yes," he agrees, with great relief. "yes. the cat. i knew that."

"what changed in four days?"

his expression does something enormous. theatrical. his jaw tightens, his eyes go distant, and he turns his head slightly toward the window like he's about to deliver news of a war.

"i could not bear it," he says, very gravely. "the separation from you was an agony i had not anticipated and could not calculate my way out of. i consulted my male companions. i sat with their beast. i stared into its eyes for a long time and it stared back and something shifted in me." he looks at you. "i do not want to lose you. so i went and i figured out how not to. i will do better. i am committed to doing better. this is my vow."

this is my vow.

you are going to need a moment.

"you're vowing?"

"i am." he reaches across the cushion and takes your hand, and his grip is warm and steady and so achingly familiar that your chest does something you weren't prepared for. "you are important to me. more important than i communicated. that was an error and i intend to correct it."

his thumb moves across your knuckles. once. deliberate.

later, you tell yourself. ask later.

you turn your hand over and hold his back.

"okay," you say. "vow accepted."

something moves through his face. relief, you think. or whatever the equivalent is, wherever he's actually from.

"excellent!" he grins, and closes his eyes as he starts to pepper kisses across your knuckles, and for just a second he looks so genuinely, overwhelmingly grateful that you decide, for now, not to ask anything else at all.

every wednesday was date night, one of you would plan date night and then the other would do the week after. you'd been planning date nights for two years, aswell as paying for them whenever he decided to show up.

"i found us a place," he announces, and shows you his phone. it's a steakhouse with 4.7 stars and a review that says great for special occasions!! that he has highlighted somehow.

he pulls your chair out when you arrive. stands there holding it with both hands like he's been rehearsing. you sit down.

the candle on the table gets forty seconds of his complete and total attention before you click your fingers and bring him back.

he orders what you order, you have to remind him he's allergic to mushrooms.

walking home he holds your hand and it's nice, it's really nice, until you notice he's slowly rotating your wrist to look at your fingers from different angles and has been doing it for half a block. "what are you doing..?"

"nothing," his response is so quick it almost gives you whiplash.

outside your building you stop and turn and he's already doing the face—jaw set, eyes very serious, like he's about to announce something grave and historic. you smile up at him and you lean in.

he takes a very large step backwards.

"what are you doing," he says, in a completely different tone than any he's used all evening. alert. wary. his eyes have gone very wide.

"i'm going to kiss you."

"you are going to—" he looks at your mouth. back at your eyes. "you are going to press your face against my face?"

"yes."

"aggressively."

"no. not aggressively."

he doesn't look convinced. he looks like a man running rapid calculations about exit routes. "my male companions did not mention this part.." he says.

"it's a kiss. it's romantic."

"you are coming toward me with your mouth."

"that's what kissing is."

long pause. he looks at your mouth again with the focused expression he gave the candle before his energy shifts and he lifts his chin, squares his shoulders, and closes his eyes with the energy of someone preparing to take a hit.

you press up onto your toes and kiss him, soft and quick.

silence.

he opens one eye. then the other.

"that's all it is." your voice is soft, almost warm as you flutter your lashes at him.

he touches his mouth with two fingers. looks at you and then looks at his fingers as if expecting blood, "that was not an attack," he says slowly.

"i told you it wasn't."

"it was—" he pauses. the enormous face happens again, but softer this time, around the edges. "it was acceptable," he nods. "you may do it again."

"how generous."

"yes," he agrees, completely sincerely. "i thought so."

you grin before peppering his face with glossy kisses.

you're sitting on the counter the way he hated, ankles crossed, watching him make tea.

he's very serious about the tea. he always is. he found the process on his third day in your apartment and decided it was important, something about the ritual of it, and now he makes it every morning with the gravity of a man performing surgery.

kettle, mug, the specific shelf where you keep the bags.

he's memorized which one you like without ever asking.

you're watching his back when it happens. the kettle's not quite hot enough, you can tell by the way he tilts his head at it, and then he points two fingers at it, almost casually, the way you'd reach over to turn a dial, and there's a soft sound like the air tightening and the kettle starts to steam.

he pours. stirs. turns around and holds your mug out to you.

you take it say thank you and he nods.

you wrap both hands around the mug and look at him; really look at him, the careful way he's standing, the way he's always slightly more still than a person should be, the way he blinks like he learned to, and you think about a year ago when everything was sharp edges and cold silences and you'd started to forget why you stayed.

"what?" he asks, because you're smiling into your mug.

"nothing, love."

he looks at you for a moment longer before he smiles and turns back to make his own tea, and when the kettle cools again between cups he does it again and is completely unbothered. like he's forgotten to hide it, or decided not to bother.

you think maybe it's the second one.

you take a sip of your tea. it's exactly right, the way it always is when he makes it, and he's standing in your kitchen being an alien, being yours, and you think you love him more than you ever did before.