Hen gave me a gentle smile. “I think she does. That makes two of us.”
“Aww.” I blew him a kiss, then looked back at the tv, where the detective was conversing in subtitled Korean with a forensics tech. “Ten bucks says they’re going to bang.”
“The cop and the tech?” he asked, eyes rising over the top of the phone and presumably focusing on his tv. “Hmm, maybe. Or maybe you’re just horny,” he added teasingly.
“¿Por qué no los dos?”
He grinned and cocked his head to the side curiously. “Do you actually speak Spanish, or are you just quoting the commercial?”
“Un poco. Suficiente para pedir comida.”
His smile widened. “I have no idea what you just said, but I’m sure it was impressive. I speak…English. And a little German, from high school.Wo ist die Toilette? Mein Name ist Henry.Et cetera.”
“That’s more German than I speak. Too bad neither of us speaks Korean, or we could be critiquing these subtitles.”
“Yeah.” He stroked Curie’s ears. “That was definitely not offered in my high school. There’s always DuoLingo.”
I shrugged. “I’m holding out for the invention of the Babelfish.”
“Like inHitchiker’s Guide?”
I blinked at him. He blinked back at me. “Exactly,” I finally said, picking the phone back up and bringing it closer to my face. “I didn’t expect you to get that joke.”
He grinned. “You should see the contents of my Kindle. It’s a madhouse.”
“I…would actually love to do that sometime,” I confessed. “Seeing someone’s library shelves is like seeing them naked. And I’ve already seen you naked.” I wiggled my eyebrows. “I liked the view.”
He laughed loudly. “Well, my library shelves contain a mix of sci-fi, nonfiction, and embarrassing gay romance, so…”
“What makes it embarrassing?” I couldn’t help but ask. “I mean, is it just that romance is cheesy, or…?”
He mumbled something I didn’t catch.
“What?”
“Omegaverse empreg.”
That…didn’t clear anything up. “Come again?”
He coughed. “M-preg,” he enunciated a bit more clearly. “In the omegaverse.”
“Ok I…sort of know some of those words. A little. Explain?”
He flushed dully. “There’s a genre of gay romance set in what’s called the ‘omegaverse’, where it’s sort of like…wolf pack dynamics? With alphas and betas and omegas?”
“Like, the alphas are in charge, and…?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “And omegas can get pregnant. The men,” he clarified when my expression apparently gave away my confusion.
I blinked again. “So you read romance with…bossy alpha guys who get their boyfriends pregnant?”
“See, I told you it was embarrassing. I’m not, like, fetishizing pregnant men or anything,” he said quickly, though honestly, that hadn’t even had a chance to cross my mind yet. “It’s just a really big genre within gay romance and you kind of find yourself there if you get deep enough into the various sub-genres, whether you like it or not.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Mmhm.” I wasn’treallyjudging him…much…but damned if I wouldn’t take the opportunity to tease him a little. “Does that mean you secretly dream about being preggers?”
He made a cute littlehmphnoise and frowned at me. “No, thank you. A little alien parasite in my body…nope. Mad respect to people who do it, but me? Nope, not even if I could.” He paused, dropping the frown and looking thoughtful. “Do you want kids?” he asked tentatively.
Taken aback at the sudden turn toward the serious, I said nothing for a long second. “I…don’t really think so,” I finally said, my voice every bit as tentative as his had been when asking. “I know it’s supposed to be, like, a biological imperative and all, but kids make me nervous and I just have a hard time picturing me being a father. Fathers are serious and grown-up and stuff, and me? I’m just…me.”
