“Pretty damn certain,” Jude murmured, barely listening. His eyes were glued to the mirror. To his stomach. To what was, if Al was to be believed, a fuckingbaby bump.
A wave of nausea swept over him, and suddenly he felt like he was going to be sick. Pressing the back of his hand against his mouth, he yanked his boxer shorts back up roughly and fled the room, rushing to the bathroom. He was half-aware of Al following him close behind.
Knees uncomfortable against the cold linoleum, Jude dry-heaved into the toilet for a minute or two before slumping back, exhausted. Everything exhausted him lately. He’d assumed it was just all the stress, but now? Well, he wasn’t so sure.
“Are you feeling all right? Can I assist you in some way?” Al, who was hovering uncertainly behind Jude in the small bathroom, reached out to put a hand on Jude’s shoulder in reassurance, but that was the last thing Jude wanted right then. He recoiled, swatting Al’s hand away. Al quickly took his hand back, but looked so visibly hurt by Jude’s reaction that Jude nearly apologized, remembering himself only moments before the words tumbled out of his mouth unbidden.
“Don’t,” Jude said, putting up his own hand to keep Al at a distance. “Just—don’t, okay? I need you to give me some space until I figure out what the hell is going on.”
“All right,” Al said in a small voice. There was a deep worry line between his brows, and he was cracking his knuckles absently. He’d initially been concerned by the “unfortunate noises human bones make,” until he’d learned a couple weeks back that he could make his knuckles crack on command, and it had quickly become a nervous tick.
“Start over,” Jude demanded. Al cocked his head in confusion. “Explain this all to me again,” Jude clarified. “Start from the beginning.”
“I was hatched two Darvrokian days after the star in a neighboring solar system went supernova, and it is possible the resulting spike of radiation is what caused my brother to become, as you say of your own kin, an ‘insufferable piece of—’”
“Notthatfar back of a beginning,” Jude huffed. “The beginning of you and me. We fucked that first night I met you. Did you trick me? Was this some sort of alien plan to, I don’t know, take over Earth by making alien-human hybrids? I’m still hoping there’s a misunderstanding here somewhere, Al, because I didn’t consent to you turning me into a science experiment.”
Al seemed unable to speak. He opened his mouth as though to respond, but instead he simply stood there dumbly, mouth partially ajar, as though he’d been stunned into silence. Jude stared daggers at him, waiting.
“Do you feel belief that I am capable of such an ethically immoral deception, Jude?” Al asked finally, speaking so quietly Jude had to strain to hear him.
For the first time since the night they met, Jude became viscerally aware of the fact that Al was an alien.
He already knew that, of course. It wasn’tnewsexactly, but it was like suddenly becoming aware of your own blinking or the movement of your tongue—something you knew passively, but was nearly impossible to ignore once the thought occurred to you. Maybe Al had been right to be insecure. Maybe Jude had been distracted from the truth because Al had decided to take the form of the most beautiful man Jude had ever seen.
But Al wasn’t that man. Al wasn’t even a man, not really. Not by most people’s definition of the term. He was something other. A creature, hiding behind a disguise. An unfamiliar, dangerous creature that could—and possibly already had—cause him harm.
Before Jude could react to this feeling, and thankfully before he could say something regrettable, he was suddenly inundated with a barrage of thoughts. Memories, rather. Memories from the past few months.
Al trying to eat toothpaste because he thought it was a type of dessert.
Going to the store with Al and seeing him pick up a day planner and immediately set it back down in disgust because it was an “entire book filled with your bad calendar, Jude.”
Al microwaving ice cream because it was too cold, and drinking it out of a mug.
Al running his fingers through Jude’s hair and never becoming less enamored by how soft it was.
Al fucking him face-to-face, chest-to-chest, so deeply and tenderly it could almost be called making love.
Al learning how to give butterfly kisses and spending a whole night refusing to kiss any other way.
Al standing there by the wreckage of his spaceship and smiling hopefully at Jude—someone just as alien to him as in the reverse—and being humble and trusting enough to ask for help.
No, Jude decided then and there. Whatever Al had done to him, however bad it was, there was no chance in the whole universe that he’d had anything but good intentions when he’d done it.
But that didn’t make it okay.
Jude shuffled around so that his back was supported by the side of the bathtub. He bent his knees, wrapped his arms around them, and took a very deep breath to steady himself. Anger and fear were getting him nowhere—they were simply running him in circles. He needed to channel his pragmatic side, however small and unused it might be.
“There’s clearly something you’re trying to explain to me that I’m not getting,” he said after some self-reflection, forcing himself to sound calm, even though his blood was 99% adrenaline. “Can you explain what you’re talking about in more detail?” A beat passed and he added meekly, “Please?”
Al, although visibly relieved at no longer being the target of Jude’s fury, still appeared wary. He took a minute step toward Jude before thinking better of it and taking a seat against the wall across from the tub.
“Do you truly not feel it?” Al asked, voice almost too quiet to hear.
“Feel what?” Jude asked gently, eyeing Al’s boxer shorts. It was easier to speak kindly when he forced himself to focus on the parts of Al he found endearing.
“Thebond!” Al said, suddenly emphatic. The fierceness in his tone made Jude startle a little.
