“What’s up, dude?” Ezra asked when he saw Al enter the kitchen.
“Hello, dude,” Al returned politely, although he was not sure why Ezra insisted on being so formal with him. They had been living together for the last two months, and had established a friendly relationship. The best Al could make of this strange behavior was that Ezra was simply a highly dignified human being.
“I’m making myself a grilled cheese, you want one?” Ezra asked. As he spoke, he reached down to tighten the string to his baggy sweatpants. They had lost elasticity in the waist from overuse and were now threatening to slip past Ezra’s hips and fall to the floor. He then scratched the dark, uneven stubble on his chin and looked at Al expectantly.
Al approached the kitchen counter and observed the various ingredients laid out. There was a loaf of bread, a tub of butter, and a small stack of those thin orange cheese squares wrapped in plastic. Al recognized the squares as cheese as he had eaten several of them one day a few weeks back, only stopping when Jude had told him they were not meant to be eaten with strawberry jam, and also that the plastic part was not meant to be eaten at all. Al had not seen the point in eating them after that.
“How do you grill cheese?” Al asked, frowning at the arrangement of food items. “It does not seem efficient. The cheese would melt and cause a considerable mess, yes?”
“You don’t grill thecheesepart, dude,” Ezra said with a laugh, although not an unkind one. “You put cheese between a couple slices of bread, then you butter the bread, and grill that part. It makes the cheese all melty on the inside with the bread all toasty on the outside, and it totally slaps.”
Al stared at Ezra for a moment. He felt near certainty that he was misunderstanding a slang term again, but he couldn’t help himself from clarifying, “It does not literally—”
“It does not literally slap you, no. It’s a turn of phrase. It means ‘it’s really good,’” Ezra explained casually. He, like Jude, had gotten used to Al’s fumbling with language, but he was always extremely polite about it. Almost all of the humans Al had interacted with during his time on Earth seemed to find his grasp of English lacking—even Jude, on occasion, was unable to help a laugh when Al made a particularly significant linguistic blunder—but Ezra was never impatient or mean, which Al felt great appreciation for. A highly dignified human being indeed.
“Why is it named ‘grilled cheese’ if it is actually ‘grilled buttered bread with cheese on the inside’?” Al asked.
“Dunno.” Ezra shrugged. “I guess it’s just quicker to say.”
Al hummed, feeling unimpressed, as usual, at the inefficiency of English. Perhaps the reason humans found his grasp of English to be lacking was because English was not worth knowing. But that was a feeling of frustration he would unload onto Jude at a later time. He was in the kitchen to distract himself from negative thoughts, and if he spent too long thinking about English, he would be full of nothing but them.
“I am experiencing a panic spiral,” he told Ezra instead. “Does grilled buttered bread with cheese on the inside assist in making panic spirals desist?”
Ezra turned around to face Al fully, his back braced against the oven, one hand on his hip. He frowned, asking, “Panic spiral, huh? What’s eating at you?” Then quickly added, “That means ‘what’s bothering you?’”
“That is a stupid turn of phrase,” Al said, “but thank you very much please for asking. It is kind of you to feel caring for me.”
“Hey, dude, of course. Jude was going through it before you came along.”
“Going through what?”
“What I mean is that he was unhappy. His ex-boyfriend was a huge asshole and, well, you’ve met his family.”
“They do not feel adequate appreciation for Jude,” Al said, eyes narrowing at the mere thought of the disastrous meal last weekend.
“Damn straight, they don’t,” Ezra said soundly. “But you do, and it’s been fucking great for Jude. I’ve never seen him like this before, and I’ve known him a long time. Not as long as Corbin, but pretty damn close, and I bet he’d say the same thing. You make Jude happy, and when Jude’s happy he spends a lot less time listening to emo music from the early 2010s. That automatically puts you in my good book. That, and Buttons loves you, and I trust Buttons’ judgment.”
“Buttons is very wise,” Al agreed sagely.
“My point is, if something’s bothering you, you can talk to me about it. I like you and wanna help you out, dude.”
Al smiled. “Thank you very much please, dude,” he said, feeling genuinely touched.
“Well?” Ezra gestured at him, as though waiting for him to continue, and Al twisted his mouth in thought. He felt desire to have Ezra’s advice, but he had to be careful. He was not allowed to tell other human beings that he was not from Earth, or else he might be taken to the same place the government had taken his ship to do experiments on—which he still felt alotof bitterness about, by the way.
“Have you ever felt concern,” Al began slowly, being meticulous about his words, “that a mate of yours might find your physical form inadequate? Perhaps so much so that they no longer wish to be your mate?”
Ezra raised an eyebrow.
“Uh.” He looked Al up and down from head to toe. “You’re not worried that Jude might think you’re ugly, right? Like, you realize that you’re probably the hottest person any of us have ever seen in real life? You look like you walked right off the cover of a smutty romance novel.” Ezra paused, then huffed an irritated sigh. “Did Jude make you watchI Told You You’re Ugly?”
“Yes.”
“God, I hate that show. It can make anyone feel shitty about themselves. See”—he pointed at Al—“this is what’s wrong with society. There’s too much focus on physical beauty, when real beauty comes from within, man, like damn.”
“I feel understanding that the premise of that entertainment program is—what was the turn of phrase you used two days ago? When you were speaking about government laws banning recreational marijuana use?”
“I believe I called it ‘whack as fuck.’”
