“Again, I feel necessity to remind you thatStar Trekis a fictional entertainment program.” Al said it with the air of someone who had made the same point far too many times.
“Buzzkill,” Jude muttered. “Okay, if not magic crystals, then what?”
From the pocket of his human pants—a pair of plaid shorts that Jude had said were “pretentious, but in a ‘my ass looks good in these’ type of way”—Al produced a battery he’d extracted from an old iPhone Ezra had let him have.
“This,” he said, holding it up for Jude to see.
Jude frowned. “A battery? All this work you’ve been doing on a super cool, intergalactic transmitter thingy, and the final piece is a goddamn iPhone battery?” He crossed his arms and shook his head. “Lame.”
Al ignored this miniature tantrum and instead began the process of inserting the battery into the back of the communication device. Jude watched with derision for a few increments of time before huffing a sigh and coming in closer to see what Al was doing. Out of the corner of his eye, Al noticed Jude grimace and clutch his stomach. Al paused what he was doing immediately.
“Are you all right?” he asked, feeling worry.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jude said, his grimace fading as quickly as it came as he waved away Al’s concern. “It’s the chalupa.” He pulled out one of the lab table’s stools and took a seat, then propped his elbows up on the table and held his face in his hands. Al eyed him with suspicion for a handful of Mississippis, but decided to let it be. Jude was an adult human and would tell him if something was seriously amiss. For now, his focus had to be the task at hand.
“Assuming your mega-long-distance cell phone works,” Jude said as Al got back to work, “what exactly are you going to tell your parents?” The “about us” was implied.
Al twisted his mouth and pretended to be highly focused on inserting the battery—even though it was a very simple task—just to buy himself some time, because truthfully, he had no idea what he would say. He’d gone over the options in his head many times over, but nothing seemed like the right answer. Telling them about Jude over the transmitter seemed like an awfully impersonal way to announce such significant news, but on the other hand, having them come all the way to Earth where they would learn about the situation by surprise didn’t seem ideal, either.
“I am planning,” Al said thoughtfully, “to ‘play it by ear,’ I believe is how the nonsense English phrase goes.”
“You don’t have a single fucking clue what you should say to them, huh?” Jude asked with a cheeky, although not unkind, smile. It was remarkable how he saw right through Al, and it had nothing to do with their bond at all. Jude simply knew him that well—knew him even though he was supposedly unknowable. Knew him better than anyone ever had, and it’d only been three Earth months.
How on Earth, Darvrok 6, or any other planet Al could think of, was he supposed to leave this man?
Choosing to believe Jude’s question was rhetorical, Al clicked the battery into place, resealed the device, and pressed the button that was meant to turn it on. A bigger part of him than he felt desire to admit hoped it wouldn’t work.
He had no such luck, however. After three or four Mississippis, the communication device became illuminated as a dozen tiny lights all turned on at once. Al sighed. That part, at least, was functional.
Damn.
“Well, clearly it turns on, at least. Good job,” Jude said, although the tone of his voice didn’t quite match his words, almost as though he too had been feeling hope that the device wouldn’t be ready for use.
“Clearly,” Al echoed in a mumble. He drummed his fingers on the table and stared down at the device. It was emitting a low humming noise that felt targeted, like it was taunting him, daring him in unkind ways to make the call he was very muchnotfeeling desire to make.
“Hey,” Jude said, reading Al’s mood without touching him at all, because of course he would be able to do that. Al resisted looking over at him for a quite small increment of time, feeling shame about the whole predicament, until finally he couldn’t help himself and shifted his gaze onto Jude. Jude smiled and offered him his hand, palm up, and Al took it without hesitation.
Their fingers laced together.
Very gently, Jude squeezed.
“It’ll be okay,” Jude told him. “I’ll be here the whole time.”
Al mimicked his smile and squeezed Jude’s hand in return.
Then, although he felt much dread about it, he picked up his communication device and punched in a series of numbers—the coordinates of home.
The communication device whirred and crackled as the call attempted to go through. Perhaps he’d get lucky and no one would answer. Or maybe his entire solar system had been consumed by a black hole, and Jude would have no choice but to let Al stay, because he was too good of a person to let him be homeless.
“You do not feel actual desire for your family to be consumed by a black hole,” Al reminded himself under his breath.
“What was that?” Jude asked.
“Nothing.”
“How long is this supposed to take? I mean, it’s gotta be kinda long, right? Since it’s going all that dis—”
Jude was interrupted by a crackly voice coming from the other end of the line, speaking in Al’s mother tongue. Or so he thought. The connection was very bad, and it’d been so long since he’d heard someone speak his language that it took him several Mississippis to understand what was being said.
