Al
So far, introducing Jude to his parents was a total disaster, and Al was feeling mortification at the whole situation. Why had they needed to bring up the consequences of breaking the bond? Al would have told Jude about them eventually. Probably. Maybe. Okay, maybe not at all, but that should have been up tohimto decide. Now he was going to have to explain that he was willing to risk the brain damage if it meant Jude felt happiness, and it was probably going to end up being a whole thing.
Of course, he couldn’t focus on that right at the moment, because apparently, according to Corbin, his parents had been stupid enough to park their ship right outside the house. And they gaveAla hard time for his recklessness. Honestly.
“This is a goddamn train wreck,” Jude was saying. “It’ll only take five seconds for a photo of your parents’ spaceship to go viral, and then all of us are going to get abducted by the government and be dissected like lab rats. And the eggs.” Jude’s eyes widened in horror. “Al, you can’t let anybody come for us. I’ve never been particularly homicidal, but right now, with these weird-ass hormones, I’m not surewhatI’d do if someone were to take them from me.”
He looked so helpless in their nest of pillows and other soft things, but Al knew that Jude was right. If someone were to threaten their offspring while Jude was still in the nesting phase, they would not escape unscathed.
“I will handle it,” Al promised, placing a reassuring hand on Jude’s shoulder. The touch inundated him with a rush of complex, stressful emotion—Jude was not particularly reassured.
“Maybe I should go with you,” Jude suggested, but even as he did, he sounded uncertain. He glanced at the eggs, all meticulously arranged around him, and Al knew that there was no way Jude would be able to leave the bed without an unprecedented amount of anxiety, and that wouldn’t be good for Judeortheir offspring.
“I will handle it,” Al said again. “Ezra and Corbin will assist me.”
“Um, Corbin does not remember volunteering for that,” Corbin piped up, still ghostly pale in the face.
“Ezra will assist me,” Al corrected. He looked at Ezra, who shrugged.
“Sure,” he said nonchalantly. “You may want to go back to your human disguise, though.”
Oh! Al had almost forgotten. He nodded and closed his eyes, concentrating, and soon enough, his body had reshaped itself. When he blinked his eyes back open, he once again resembled a human male.
“Maybe also put some clothes on,” Ezra suggested.
“Or don’t,” Corbin said, a little color returning to his face as he examined Al from head to toe. “God, when you look likethatI almost forget that I’m living in an actual nightmare horror story.”
“Don’t listen to him. Please put pants on if you’re going to go disperse a crowd,” Jude said, rubbing his temples.
“Isthatwhat you’ve been meandering around in since you landed here?” Al’s mother asked in their language, lips pursed as she observed Al’s new form. She did not appear to think as highly of it as Corbin. “It’s so… clunky. And pink.”
Al tried not to let the comment get to him. He located a pair of jeans from amongst the assorted clothing on the laundry chair and began shrugging them on. “This is what desirable human males look like, Mom,” he said, doing up the button of his fly. He did not disclose that this was what desirable human males looked like according to Jude. “It’s not like I could walk around looking like myself. You should probably get disguises, too, if you’re going to be sticking around.”
“Rather bold of you to give us advice on diplomatic relations given your mishaps on this planet,” his father huffed.
“So I didn’t file one piece of paperwork! The universe isn’t going to collapse in on itself.” Al angrily yanked a shirt over his head and adjusted his lanyard so it lay visible against his chest. “At least I didn’t park my spaceship in plain sight.”
“I don’t know what everyone is getting so riled up about. We researched and took the necessary precautions,” his mother rebutted.
“Yeah, doesn’t sound like it.” Al turned to Ezra and, in English, said, “Come assist me, thank you very much please?”
Ezra gestured for Al to lead the way, and out into the hall they went.
It was a short walk from Jude’s room to the front door, and a shorter walk from the front door onto the porch. Al emerged from the house, braced for any number of the very bad men Jude had said came from FBI, United States, Earth, but found instead a small group of humans that did not seem hostile in the least. A crowd of a dozen or so of them had gathered along the street, gawking at…
Ezra saw it and barked a laugh.
Al groaned and put his head in his hands.
“Necessary precautions” indeed.
Al’s parents hadn’t, as they all had feared, left a spaceship out in plain sight. What they had done, however, was a cursory amount of research into Earth vehicles, and had somehow come to the conclusion that the appropriate form of camouflage for their ship would be a neon-green race car with a blood-orange stripe and a giant fake logo on the hood that read in thick, bold letters: ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE INC.
Al was not an expert on all things Earth—he had, in fact, just the other day, discovered why Jude told him it was a bad decision to put hand sanitizer on his hot dog—but even he knew his parents’ ship’s disguise was what Corbin would refer to as “extra.”
“Your parents are a riot, man,” Ezra said, still chuckling as he looked upon the vehicle.
“This is not the turn of phrase I would use,” Al muttered.
