“Maybe I can help make that happen,” Qylar replied.“After,I earn your trust.”
“Maybe,” Kenji said, turning again to face him. “If you prove the red flags are false.”
“I’ll do everything in my power to do that.”
“Can we start with that blood test?”
Qylar nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Do we need to go back down to Earth to do it?”
Qylar shook his head. “Nope.”
Kenji grinned. “Good. I happen to like the view from up here.”
“Wewillneed to go to the biolab briefly to take blood… and then we can come right back once it’s done.”
“Let’s do it,” Kenji said.
Qylar grasped his hand again and led him to the biolab, hoping the answer was what Kenji wanted to hear.
CHAPTER 7
Kenji eyed the strange medical equipment scattered in the biolab, while Qylar prepared to take the blood sample. A few of the items looked somewhat familiar to human devices, but most he couldn’t determine their use. His knee started bouncing as he waited for the needle prick, his nerves getting the better of him.
I might actually be an alien. Like, for real… not some made up fantasy in my head.
The thoughthadoccurred to him before, but more in a flippant, wanting to be Kal-El, comic nerd kind of way. Actually, he considered himself both SupermanandAquaman, rolled into one. He had to be both,obviously,because Arthur Curry had been the son of an Atlantean queen, not an alien, so that part had to come from good old Clark Kent.
Yeah, he was a dork and a weirdo, but his imagination was one of the few things he could keep from foster home to foster home, and it didn’t need to be tossed into a garbage bag to travel. He’d used it well and came up with fabulous backstories for himself to keep from being sad or lonely. By his mid-teens, when he wasunable to sleep because he lived in a noisy, shitty group home—that imagination was sometimes the only thing that got him through the worst nights.
He became a pervy little hornball because of it, too.
When coming to terms with his homosexuality, the idea of two men being able to procreate had lodged in his brain for some reason. After that, he came to the realization he couldn’t be a Kal-El/Arthur combo, so he figured that meant he had to be the byproduct of the heroes’ torrid love affair. Arthur had magic, so itcouldpossibly work, right? If aliens could exist, theoretically, so could mpreg.
Later, he’d found fanfic featuring those two men having romantic, kinky sex online—andalso learned he wasn’t the only one with that particular superhero kink, which had been oddly comforting considering the isolation he felt over his freakish abilities. There had been a lot of even wilder fantasies to blossom in his brain after reading what was in other people’s heads. Then DC had come out withMan of SteelandAquaman. Cavill and Momoa soon had recurring roles in his nightly journey of queer discovery.
Now, he learned he might actually be an alien after all. Maybe not a superhero or mutant, but so what? Being an alien would be just as cool and not a fantasy.
But it would also be terrifying.
He struggled enough simply surviving on one planet and living up to its expectations. Now he might have to contend with two? It sounded like a whole lot more of other people’s bullshit to deal with. If Qylar and his friend had chosen to live on Earth instead of Nefyria, maybe that planet was even more fucked.
“Ready?”
Qylar’s question pulled him from his rambling thoughts. He sat up straighter and held out his arm.
“Let’s get this over with.”
Qylar lifted something that looked closer to one of those ear piercers from the junk jewelry stores at the mall.
“That’s been cleaned properly and won’t give me some alien disease, right?”
Qylar eyed him. “You sat there and watched me sterilize it.”
I wasn’t paying attention!“Yeah… okay.”
“I’m not giving you a shot of danger juice, I promise. I just need a few drops of blood and you’re done.”
