#1 Swerve lover

• They’ve definitely tried, though. Swearing and arguing among themselves when he stubbornly keeps them locked out. Ignoring them, his attention always shifts to the other side of the fence. To the house there and you. Waiting for you to come out, listening for your soft voice singing to yourself as you trim branches and water plants. Likes that sound. It’s what made him decide to take you with him. Spent too long here. Needs to find the others. Now, he steps over the fence into your yard, trying to keep low and hoping humans don’t see well in the dark. You’re less active at night.

• Crouching as he circles your house looking into windows, he wonders what the others will think of his song bird. Of you. They’d let him keep you. At least, he hopes they would. Maybe he could get you to sing for them. That might convince them. Wants something soft and warm to keep him company. He’d heard you outside talking to someone on your tiny communication device before. Had imagined you were talking to him. Smiling for him.

• Startling awake when you hear a crack, you push upright. Can see something moving on the other side of your bedroom window, a massive shape. Then there’s a red glow that casts your room in fitful light. Breath locking in your chest, you hear that cracking again and you scream when massive servos break through the window and wall like it’s tissue paper. Falling against the wall when you shove yourself away from that massive, groping hand, you yelp when the bed slides. And you’re falling between the bed and wall, getting stuck as you try to wiggle free.

• It’s a bit more work to write in your language using his alien glyphs instead of your own alphabet, but you’re pretty sure he’ll love this. At least, you hope he will. Especially since he’s hovering and trying his hardest to peek at what you’re doing since he has no patience whatsoever. “I’m bored. Aren’t you bored?” He mutters and you fight back a laugh as he vents dramatically. What’s it been? Two hours? You not paying attention to him is apparently killing him. “Don’t you want to do something?”

• “I am doing something,” you counter, still writing. Maybe you’re breaking up with him. In one single word at a time written on those papers and folded into stars. Maybe the fun is watching him unfold them all and spend hours trying to get them in the right order only for it to be an anti-love letter. ‘You’d just tell me if you didn’t love me anymore, right?’ He asks and you look up with a frown. “What now?” Gesturing sullenly at the paper stars, he shrugs as you stare at him like he’s being irrational. ‘I mean you wouldn’t go to diabolical and elaborately time-consuming means to break up with me, right?’

• What? Huffing out an exasperated breath, you stick your hand in the jar and find a colored star. “Yellow is for anxious, but I guess it covers being paranoid and weird,” you say, holding up a yellow, origami star. And he makes a face, mass shifting and pinching the star in his big servos as he tries to open it without crushing it. Watching him smooth out the paper, his frown deepens. ‘Yeah, yellow is for jibberish, apparently,’ he mutters and you snort at him, showing him the cypher. “Translate it to my language first, you goober.”