Page 78 of Mutant Mine

“Little bird,” Roth replies, cupping my cheek to look into my face. His voice is gravelly and exhausted, but his eyes are fever-bright. “Nothing I have ever experienced before can compare to tonight.”

He pulls me into his chest.

“But I have not done this since… before,” he says. “And I have never been in love.”

“Roth,” I whisper.

“There is still so much that I do not know about my own body. But for so long, I have had thisfeeling,” he continues urgently, knocking his heart with his hand, “That we are connected. It aches, Rory, and I do not... I do not understand...”

“I feel it,” I say, simply. “That connection. And I’m not half alien, so it must just be that I love you, too.”

Roth’s arms tighten around me. We press our foreheads together and let the word wash over us. It has been on the tipof my tongue for hours.

After a moment, Roth speaks quietly in the darkness, as if he’s confessing to a sin.

“I wish that this feeling came from me, my mind, myself… But I do not think it does,” he whispers. “I fear that it is… biological.”

First comes a sharp stab of hurt: Roth fears his feelings for me? He doesn’t want to feel this way?

But I push that away, and really think about what he’s saying — and every painful truth I now know about his past. This man was ripped apart and remade, with half of his newly formed self a mystery that he may never fully understand. It makes everyone around him perceive him as a monster.

It makes him perceivehimselfas a monster.

“Why can’t it be both?” I ask eventually. I worm my way up his body until I can kiss again under his jaw — finding the fragrant, sensitive, definitely-not-human swellings that hide just under his skin. The lightest touch of my lips there makes his whole body relax, as if I’ve hit a switch.

“Why can’t it be every part of you, together, feeling this?” I continue, as I suck lightly at his throat. “Alien and human? What I feel for you… some of it’s my body. Some of it’s my mind, or my soul, or whatever. And all of that matters. I want all of it.”

He kisses me then, desperately, like he can taste the words on my lips.

* * *

LATER, I SPEAKagain. I’m close enough to sleep to have lost all self-consciousness.

“But you said you don’t age,” I murmur. “You’ll stay young, and I’ll grow old.”

“I will love you until our final day together,” Roth replies solemnly. He’s wide awake.

“Even when I’m old and gray?”

“Always.”

Are these silly promises, hidden from the light, whispered in a haze of sensations and desire? Maybe. But it brings me the last bit of peace I need, and I slip down into my dreams.

38

Roth

A REDlight flicks on in the darkness of the room. It flashes in silence for a moment. Then:

“ATTENTION,” says the computer. “ATTENTION, PLEASE.”

I sit up from the warmth of the bed. Beside me, Rory groans at the loss of my embrace.

I know the feeling. Since last night, for the first time in so long, I felt peace. Absolute, primal peace, now that Rory was finally fucked and filled and in my arms.

But now, the real world is crashing down on us.

“Computer,” I say. “What is the alert?”

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