Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Where the hell is Invincible when you need him?

That’s the first complete thought that forms in your head as Cecil Stedman, gray-haired Director of the Global Defense Agency and professional pain in the ass, materializes before you in a luminous flash with a surprise request. It’s far from the first time it’s happened, but it’ll never fail to surprise you.

“Y/N. We need you in Chicago, pronto. Bad timing, I know, but you’re the strongest hero we have on hand.”

He’s right about one thing: his timing is awful. It’s roughly 7 PM on a Tuesday night in March, and you’ve just sat down at your desk with a steaming bowl of reheated noodles. Clothes haphazardly strewn across your apartment suggest that you were about to get folding, but Cecil’s not interested in your laundry routine. His heavy periwinkle eyes are those of a man who has seen everything, weathered all the storms that life could send his way. But tonight you see in them a bright sliver of fear. You haven’t seen it since Omni-Man tore up Chicago a couple months ago.

Same city. Same terror. The familiar feeling of adrenaline creeps into your veins. Oh God, is he back?

“What are Invincible and the Guardians doing right now, anyways?” you inquire. They can’t all be busy. 

Cecil turns up his nose, the corroded wrinkles of skin on his jaw scrunching up as he does so, and holds up three fingers. “I’ve got three in critical condition, and the rest are offplanet. Can you help us or not? We have about twenty minutes to get you ready.”

“Twenty minutes? What the hell is happening? Don’t tell me Omni-Man–”

“No,” he says, cutting you off, seemingly to assuage your fear of impending death, but you know he hates to hear that name, and more than most. You both know well the torture of being utterly powerless to save so many lives; each one depending on you and people like you for protection. “But it could be worse. And before you protest,” he says, holding out a creased hand in front of you, “let me finish.”

Worse? How could it possibly get worse? You exhale. “Okay, go ahead.”

“GDA satellites caught something– someone– entering the upper atmosphere, heading toward us at the speed of a small meteorite.” He retrieves a tablet from inside his coat and presents a blurry picture that looks to have been taken by one such satellite. Though the sheer speed of the object and the graininess of the camera make them hard to pick out, you can identify arms, legs, and even a head. A great grey smear is where you imagine its back to be. Based on the pose, the humanoid doesn’t appear to be flying– and you’ve seen a few fliers in your time– rather, it’s falling.

“We’ve seen this guy before. In Chicago, like everything these days. I know you’ve seen the footage of the Guardians raiding Machine Head’s skyscraper. We believe he’s the alien cat who wiped the floor with them. The one who put Invincible, Monster Girl, and Black Sampson at death’s doorstep.”

How could you forget? Before Omni-Man’s rampage showed Earth’s heroes how impotent they were against forces from beyond the stars, this huge lion-man-thing with his stupidly large mace laid the groundwork for that despairing feeling to fester. You don’t even have a Viltrumite’s flight; all you have is your super strength and durability, and that’s been enough until now, but it feels grossly inadequate here. If he could do that to the Guardians without sustaining a scratch, then you’re definitely dead meat.

You open your mouth to interject, but Cecil waggles his wrinkled finger in front of your face. “Remember, no talking until I’m done,” he grunts. “If you remember how that fight ended, he left everyone alive on purpose because the power differential between them was too great.”

You cross your arms. Oh, good, you think. So he won’t kill me, just cripple me for life. Cecil’s gaze reads your distress, and his grimace affirms it.

“So now he’s on a collision course with Chicago. Probably looking for another champion. And he touches down in twenty minutes. Well…” He rolls up his sleeve past his wrist and glances at his watch. “More like seventeen now. We’re evacuating civilians, so you don’t need to worry about saving everyone. But I need to know if you’re in or out.”

You stuff your face with noodles, speaking in between the plumes of steam that sputter from your mouth. Still way too hot. You make a note in your head to take thirty seconds off the microwave timer next time, but then you wonder if you’ll ever get a next time. “I’m confused. If there’s no one to save, what do you want me to do here? I mean, you don’t expect me to win in a fight, do you?”

Cecil exhales through his nose and shakes his head, his hands firm on his hips. “I don’t. We just need you to distract this cat long enough for the GDA to figure out a way of stopping him, or sending him back where he came from. Keep him in the city limits and away from any civilians still fleeing the area.”

Distract the cat. That might be doable. All you have to do is keep away from the beast and not get too cocky or try to land cheap shots. If he grabs you, it’s over. Flashes of the footage from Machine Head’s tower replay in your mind. You remember the steps and missteps they took; the swings they thought would deal damage but didn’t. No matter how many times you run it over in your head, it always ends with their bodies strewn across the penthouse in bloody heaps, the panicked screams of their comrades as they hit the floor…

You hold the line against fear, as all heroes should in the end. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

Cecil doesn’t smile per se, but his gaze softens and the corners of his mouth tweak up: these are the hallmarks of hope, however small and distant, gracing his ruined visage. “Good. I had a feeling you’d be up to the task. Make sure to put your suit on. We want to look like professionals.”

Just as quickly as he had arrived, Cecil is gone, and all that remains is your mission and the time until it crashes down on you. You sink nine minutes into changing outfits into your suit, a process that would normally take five. For the next five minutes you pace around your apartment, wondering if you should write any goodbye texts or put away your laundry in case you don’t come back, but in the end you do neither. At fifteen minutes the noodles fall to room temperature and you make the call to the GDA.

“Right on time, kid,” Cecil says on the other end, and the light envelops you. It’s even more disorienting to experience teleportation than to witness it, leaving you wondering how the GDA guys use it every day without ever once throwing up— in front of you, at least. Your eyes adjust slowly to the sudden absence of that choking light, and Chicago comes into view.

The city is so cold at this time of night. Although no rain is present, a wild wind howls through the shells of buildings, heralding worse weather to come. All around you, sparsely illuminated by street lamps, is the husk of Chicago, bereft of people and purpose, reduced time and time again to a fighting ring for alien gods. You expect it to be the same way tonight.

A blinding streak of light cascades down from the night sky like some kind of furious falling star. It slams into the earth about a hundred yards away from you with a deafening crash. The cat’s arrival upends the street itself, sending flaming, cracked chunks of pavement through buildings and across the city and punching a roughly 80-foot-wide impact crater into the planet. The resultant shockwaves threaten to knock you off your feet, but your stance is sturdy enough to keep you from being blown away. The impact also decimates the street lamps within another hundred feet of the crater, leaving the entire zone in utter darkness after the supernova.

The darkness adds a thick new layer of fear to the encounter, and like all fear, it stifles your ability to act. You take a staggering step forward into it, listening for anything that could clue you into the beast’s movements. All you hear are the sounds of the figurative dust settling, shattered glass clattering on floors, building frames groaning.

Then, a heavy crunch rings out as, you suppose, the alien’s feet come down onto the pavement. It’s almost as loud as the impact itself. It hasn’t even been a minute after he slammed directly into the planet from space, and he’s already on his feet again.

I’m fucked.

Another crunch. You can feel the asphalt below you cracking further and further with every stomp. You try not to freeze up, instead taking small steps backward. His sound is coming closer, which suggests a night vision much stronger than yours. All you see of him is a slowly growing silhouette. His long shadow blots out what few details behind him are illuminated by the moonlight. You stay in the light, waiting for him to show himself. But he stops. It’s difficult to tell, but you estimate he’s a mere fifty feet away when he does so. And he speaks.

“You. Human. Where is Machine Head?”

You recoil. You know the alien’s voice from the footage, but it’s even louder and more oppressive in person. It has a thick bass about it that you imagine could carry it across an active warzone, and a low purr that’s as appropriate for a cat-person as it sounds.

You get caught up in the noise and forget what he actually said. The only answer that comes forth from your mouth is an undignified, noncommittal “Uhhhh…?”

He snarls and you know immediately that you’re testing his patience. “Machine Head. He lives in this city, doesn’t he? Tell me how I can find him.”

His commanding voice is fucking with your head. You deliver a lopsided answer that sounds like you pulled it straight from a public relations manual. “He’s been at Payton Penitentiary for several weeks, under close surveillance by the Global Defense Agency…”

He interjects. You feel as though he has every right to do so. “Do you think I know where your penitentiaries are? Give me a direction and stop wasting my time.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t really tell you that,” you squeak. You can’t stand how pathetic you sound in this situation, but showing indignation is just going to get you in more trouble.

“You talk as though you want to die,” he rumbles.

You exhale. What am I supposed to say now? You remember Cecil’s directive and wonder how you’ll get there. Distract. Goad him, but don’t commit to the death match.

“Maybe if you come where I can see you I’ll–” you start, but you’re rudely cut off as you hear more thunderous footfalls in your direction. You take this as a sign that you should back up, and quickly.

As the beast steps into the light, your blood runs cold and your heart flounders. He’s the same imposing white lion you’ve seen beat the Guardians to a bloody pulp, but so much worse in person. He towers over you at a height of 7 foot 6. His muzzle is fixed in an imperious scowl. His body is one great shifting pack of strength, almost as wide as it is tall, and you can see his corded musculature contracting from behind his armor plating as he breathes heavy breaths through his nose. Black sclera and orange irises make his eyes look like hollow vessels. Something vivid and dreadful burns behind them: not quite hate, not quite malice– it’s more like a blazing bundle of rage. Maybe not specifically towards you, though you’re definitely not helping.

And yet he’s not completely the same as in the footage. A mighty sword with a cruel, serrated blade the size of your entire body is affixed to his back rather than a heavy gilded mace, and a ragged gray shawl billows behind it. The braids woven into his long mane are asymmetrical now; rather than one on each side of his face, he has one on the left and two on the right. It’s not as though the outfit alterations make him less scary. If anything, the sword might hurt more than the mace.

There’s something else nagging at you, though. He’s kind of hot, isn’t he? It’s a strange feeling considering it never even crossed your mind when you and your colleagues reviewed the footage of the Guardians’ defeat. Maybe you were too preoccupied with seeing the strongest among your coworkers in critical condition and contemplating what all that meant for you. Or maybe it’s the immediacy of his presence that’s getting you hot and bothered. After all, you are currently looking death in the face. Not quite, actually; you’re more fixated on its chest. And those thighs…

Oh, shit. Maybe you do want to die. Or at least this wouldn’t be the worst way to go.

The alien huffs, adjusting a long blood-red glove over impossibly sharp claws. His face is totally inscrutable, and you can’t tell whether he’s picked up on your arousal. “One more chance, human. Tell me how I can find Machine Head. I don’t often suffer worms like you to live.”

You take careful note of his distance. Starting thirty feet away is a real gamble. You really shouldn’t have bid him come out into the light. You don’t even know how fast he could be. You’re not slow yourself, but you’re no better at anything than Invincible, so by the transitive property, the alien is very likely faster than you.

But heroes gamble every day. You throw your hands up, trying your damnedest to sound tough. “If you want to know, you’ll have to beat it out of me.”

A rude smile surfaces on the cat’s grim face. You hate how flustered it makes you.

“I accept your proposition,” he purrs.

You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.

The cat is fast, and deceptively so. You blink and he’s upon you, his great hand grabbing your face and shoving you straight into the pavement. The earth itself ripples and spasms from the force of the slam, which sends you through several layers of ground. Your vision dims, but you recollect yourself as the cat peers over the side of the pit he created; presumably, to see if you’re alive.

Ow. It might’ve been easier to die. Every part of your body aches and throbs. Gasping, you attempt to climb out from the solid five feet of earth the cat has put you under. But he expedites the process by clutching your neck and violently wrenching you out. You come face to face with him, and though you’re largely busy struggling for air, you detect some curiosity in his expression. He cocks his head. He wants to know just how much you can handle before you tap out. You’d be excited if you weren’t being choked halfway to death. If the power differential between the two of you wasn’t so wide.

He lets you go, but it’s only to take you by your wrist and fling you across the street. Your skin burns and splits, leaving a trail of crimson as you collide against the ground. You manage to halt yourself by digging your bloody fingers into the pavement. But by then he’s upon you again, picking you up by the arm and delivering a brutal punch to the abdomen. It knocks the wind out of you, and you can swear it displaced a few organs.

He hits like a truck. Worse, actually. You’ve been run down by trucks and they don’t hurt half as much as a single impact from him. And he doesn’t let you get one in yourself. Fighting to catch your breath, you go in for a left hook and his backhand sends you through two buildings.

“I so await your statement of submission, human,” he tells you, and you’re too busy counting your cracked ribs to deliver a witty comeback. Pain, brilliant and terrible, surges through your nerves and electrifies your entire being. The cat hasn’t even drawn his sword.

He doesn’t try to convince you that he’s enjoying this. The archival footage shows that he categorically loathes a one-sided fight. He’s not smiling anymore, either. But his discontent hasn’t stopped him from breaking you apart. Right. He’s just testing your limits until you give him the information he needs.

Too bad you’re stubborn. Too bad for both of you.

You get the feeling that he’s not doing as much as he could, and that’s for a good reason. He knows as well as you that you’re weaker than his last foe on this world. His attacks, though hellish to bear, feel highly restrained, as though he’s trying not to accidentally end your life. How considerate. It makes you want to laugh, but your mind never gets to stray too far from the fight thanks to the crushing pain that follows each blow.

Did you just trick him into caring about you?

He’s not just pulling his punches. More than once you slip up and he has a perfect opportunity to finish you off, but he doesn’t pursue it.

It’s like that just before the two of you breach the city limits. You see a momentary opening to drive a kick into his stomach, but he sees it too and parries just in time with the back of his arm. Then he takes the crook of your neck in his right hand– it may very well be over right now. You grunt as his claws dig into your flesh. White-hot agony blazes across your shoulder and surges in your throat. Vision blurring from the pain, you writhe and wait for him to tear your arm off, but he doesn’t. Rather, he retracts his claws, lets you fall off-balance, and wraps his wrist around your right ankle before you hit the ground.

He crouches, muscles rippling, and suddenly the ground disappears, as do all the darkened buildings and trees in your peripheral vision. His shawl billows out above you and blots out the night sky. He’s taken a mighty leap above the city. God knows where he’s headed to now.

The wind on your open wounds amplifies your pain, but it gives you clarity as well. All your strength and audacity spills forth from your injuries with your blood, but you pool what remains in your left fist, waiting for the moment when the wind brings your upper body into contact with him. When that moment finally comes, after what feels like an eternity of flailing limply, you concentrate on the space below his sword and line up a wild swing with his back.

He doesn’t even flinch when you connect. Conversely, you break nearly every bone in your arm. You want to scream, but you barely have the breath for it.

Sensing a shift, the cat changes his grip on you, pulling you forth to carry your splintered, bloody form in his broad arms. You feel the wind’s direction changing, the air resistance pushing your limp arm upward, and realize that you’re finally descending.

He gazes down at you. Anger has drained from his eyes. There’s a difficult mix of intrigue and worry in his face– and maybe a dash of sympathy– but it’s hard to puzzle out an exact ratio, and far from your primary concern as your entire body feels like it’s ripping apart at the seams. As you near the ground, he pulls you in close to himself, burying you between his arms and his chestplate, such that you don’t feel the impact save for a slight thud below you and the shifting of his body. It’s a surprisingly gentle treatment.

You’ve landed in a clearing, somewhere in a forested preserve southeast of Chicago proper, though for the time being your location is totally lost on you. The cat lays you down on the short, wet grass, and then kneels down himself to examine your wounds.

Pain begins to subside and you start to lose feeling in your limbs. You’ve been this way before in training; you’re not dying, just passing out. You welcome the reprieve.

The beast looms over you, licking your blood from his finger, and speaks. “Forgive me, human, but I must take your loss of consciousness as an admission of forfeit. We will review the terms of our agreement again when you awaken.”

He wants your forgiveness. That’s rich. You want to rag him about what a softie he sounds like right now, but when you try to speak you sputter and cough instead. The taste of iron in your mouth means more than a little blood came alongside your staggered breath. With an uncharacteristic tenderness, the cat places a hand on your chest and implores that you try to rest for the time being– or something to that effect, anyways. You’re having a hard time focusing on anything. Each blink makes your eyes heavier and the world fuzzier.

Are you watching this, Cecil? Your mission is a success; the beast’s attention is squarely in your grasp. It doesn’t immediately occur to you what that means, but you take great solace in it as you fade to black.

Chapter Text

You awaken to the smell of corpses.

It’s not a welcome scent, but it’s not an unfamiliar one either. Superheroes often have to reconcile pretty early on in their tenures that not everyone can be saved. You were no different. You always likened the stench to the nasty juice at the bottom of a garbage bin. Instead of being confined to a single object you’d normally walk around on the street, though, death is all around you, permeating the air. The implications make you gag just as much as the stench does.

Who died here?

It definitely wasn’t you. You’re alive– you’re pretty sure, at least– but still on your back. The pain in your arm, shoulder, and joints is returning along with your sense of touch, but instead of being crushing like you remember, it’s faded to a dull soreness that pulses and throbs. You groan and examine yourself.

Your chest, all the way from your ribcage to your upper trapezius, and your left arm are both wrapped up in a thick substance that looks like a cross between a bandage and a cast, but feels more like a shifting gel pack. Whoever placed it on you wrapped it tightly; it overlaps itself several times as it covers your body. The material is bloodstained, but not soaked through.

It seems like you can move your neck with minimal pain. There’s a twinge on your right side as you do so that might take some getting used to, but it’s more comparable to a cramp than the several puncture wounds you remember sustaining. It gets you wondering: how well can you move your arm?

Wincing preemptively, you start with your shoulder, gingerly raising it above the ground, then slowly inch your way down to your hand. You feel a drastic, uncomfortable, but ultimately very necessary crack as your bones pop into place. It’s not painless, but your arm is almost fully mobile. You sit up, slowly, and start to roll your neck and shoulders. It’s nearly therapeutic.

You laugh to yourself. Full recovery. Almost. It could be a miracle, but you pin it on whatever substance is compressing your wounds. You’ve never seen it before. Experimental stuff from the GDA, maybe?

Okay, enough looking inwards. Time to assess the situation.

There’s that awful smell, first of all. It’s putting a serious damper on your mood. Everything is wet, too; your clothes, the ground, and your hair are all thoroughly drenched. It’s definitely intensifying the stench. It must have rained a lot last night. Or for however long I was out, you think.

Wait, how long were you out? Moisture on the ground and a thin layer of fog in the forest beyond your clearing signal that it’s morning, though you can’t verify how early. The last thing you remember was getting your shit kicked in by a giant space cat.

Shit! The cat!

Your eyes widen. You were supposed to keep him busy, and now he’s gone. You could’ve been unconscious for any amount of time, which means he could’ve gone anywhere and killed anyone. Is that why this place smells like dead people? Cecil’s going to murder you. If he’s not dead himself, that is…

You scramble to your feet, but you’re unsteady and end up collapsing again the first time you try. You push yourself back up and look around yourself. Nothing… nothing… shit. You try to examine the ground for large footprints, but the rain has already washed over the area and obscured any obvious depressions, even those left by a creature of such titanic strength.

Okay, then. If you can’t find him, at least you can sweep the area for damage. There’s no obvious source for the smell; either it’s totally suffused the air here, or there are just that many bodies. You choose a random direction and stumble out of the clearing.

You’re immediately ankle-deep in gore. Splashes of dark, brownish blood and the slashed-up remains of dozens of individuals are strewn about the area that borders on the clearing you woke up in. The sound of buzzing flies here is stronger than the background noise of the entire forest, and you have to cover up your nose and mouth with your hand to proof yourself against vomiting from the sheer smell.

A closer look reveals artificial components strewn among these remains; not just wires and batteries, but entire mechanical headpieces and limbs. The natural stuff itself doesn’t seem all that human, either. You notice graying skin, exposed musculature, and mouths missing their lips. These must have been corpses even before they were sliced up.

Cecil’s ReAnimen. So the GDA finally stepped in. Unsuccessfully, as you can see. That means there’s a decent chance that the cat is still around here. And this place has his name, whatever it is, written all over it. A trail of smashed or sliced trees makes a good lead.

He’s not hard to pick out. You find him seated on the stump of a wide tree that he likely felled himself. He’s easily as tall as you even when sitting down like this. His serrated sword has left its magnetic sheath; it’s positively coated in undead blood. So are his shoulders and the entire front of his chest. He scrapes a rock against his blade, sharpening it with a screeching sound that makes your skin crawl.

When you arrive, he turns his head to look at you. His ear twitches and he drops the rock. “Human.”

“It’s Y/N, actually,” you huff. “What the hell is this? How long did you knock me out for?”

“As for your second inquiry, you slept for at least a day,” he says. “As for the first, it should be mine to ask and yours to answer. What were those things that attacked me?”

“ReAnimen. You really killed them all?”

“Those ‘ReAnimen’ tried to kill me. But they were… disappointingly weak. Too weak to live. Although I don’t think they truly were alive,” he says, tapping his chin with a claw. Then a small, bloodthirsty smile forms on his feline face. “If the dead walk on your world, I may have misjudged its worthiness.”

“They, uh, don’t. These are the exceptions.”

“Oh… pity.” His smile reverts back to a scowl and his gaze returns to his sword.

“Why are you still here anyways? Shouldn’t you be out… killing people or something?”

He grunts and stands up to his full height, casting a shadow that comes to totally overtake you as he gets closer. His sword drags along the blood-drenched earth. “You seem to misunderstand how seriously I take our arrangement. How have you healed?”

Weird question. “Faster than I thought, thanks to this,” you blurt out, gesturing vaguely to the material covering your chest and arm, before pausing and considering. “Wait, did you put this stuff on me?”

“Was that not obvious?” he asks.

“No. Why’d you do it?”

“I require your assistance. I felt as though dressing your wounds would expedite your recovery.” He seems to think nothing of his deed. It’s not normal to almost kill someone and then nurse them back to health.

“That’s a lot of trouble to go through to save one person’s life,” you tell him.

Snarling, the cat wrenches his massive sword from the earth and points it in your direction with one hand. “You assume I did this because I care about your life. I do not, and if you give me much more trouble I will kill you. I spared you so you could tell me how I can find Machine Head, and for no other reason.”

You didn’t realize until now how much you’d been sweating. It’s a cold morning, so you don’t have anything to blame it on but your fight-or-flight response. And you want so badly to flee, even if you know you’re going to come right back. He seems to know how you feel. His inky eyes trace a bead of sweat that starts on your forehead and falls down the bridge of your nose before plummeting to the ground. He licks his muzzle and you’re sure he can taste your fear.

You suspect he has violent intentions with Machine Head from the way he spits the crime lord’s name out. If I help him, I’m sacrificing Machine Head. No matter how much evil he’s done, you don’t believe in taking lives. And there’s no telling what the cat will do once he’s completed his objective.

But you are, effectively, at swordpoint. It wouldn’t take long at all for him to close the distance– you count about fifteen feet between the two of you– and lop your head clean off your shoulders.

Cecil must have a camera somewhere, you think. If he didn’t, the GDA wouldn’t have a clue where to deploy the ReAnimen. Now would be a good time to do something.

What would the GDA even do, though? Send more ReAnimen that’ll get hacked apart in ten seconds or less? Intervene? If they stepped between you and the cat– or anywhere close, at this point– they’d be eviscerated.

“If you don’t mind,” you start after what feels like an eternity, angling to secure confirmation of your theory. “Why… are you looking for him?”

“Why do you do anything?” he snaps. “I’m looking for him because I want to.”

“Sure, but… what’s your plan here?” you ask, keeping your tone as low as possible. “Are you trying to fight him, or…?”

The cat huffs, adjusts his grip on his sword, and casts it down. It clanks heavily as the serrated edge sticks deeply in the dirt. “The last time I set foot on this world; and the first time, for that matter;; I was deceived. Machine Head promised me a worthy foe in exchange for a small favor. But the opponents I faced then were far from worthy. Now that I have the time and clarity of focus to pursue him, I mean to cow him into giving me the location of an opponent who can actually give me the battle I seek, before repaying him in kind by ending his pathetic life.”

That tracks. The question on everyone’s mind back at the GDA headquarters is how the hell a crime boss like Machine Head even managed to get ahold of this beast in the first place. Shouldn’t risk prying too far in that direction, you think. Maybe Machine Head would be more inclined to answer a question like that, but—

Thump. He cleanly cuts off your train of thought by taking a thundering step closer. Mud and gravel splashes across his boots.

“Now. I’m growing tired of your aimless chatter,” he says, placing a hand on his hip. “I didn’t stand vigil for over a day just for this. What are you trying to achieve here?”

How much do you believe him? Before you went dark you remember him asking for your forgiveness. People who don’t care about you don’t usually say things like that. But he’s not from here, so there’s the chance he just expresses himself differently. And, of course, having next to nothing to do for over 24 hours (he didn’t seem particularly enthused by the ReAnimen) probably sanded off any respect he may have had for you.

Say something. Anything. It doesn’t have to be good.

You weigh your options as to whether you should spill. Not your reason for being in his presence, he probably already suspects a greater motive from the ReAnimen showing up, but what’s troubling you. The confusion that struck you when you saw him in the flesh for the first time; the tension between your curiosity in him and your survival instinct.

You imagine he’ll gut you either way. So no reason to keep it down.

“I just… want to know more about you,” you tell him, and he raises an eyebrow. His impassive facial expression leaves you in flux between dread and hope.

Then the beast laughs at you. It starts with a smile that spreads across his muzzle, followed by a breathy exhalation that devolves into deep roars of laughter, presumably, as he realizes you’re actually serious.

You don’t know whether he’s laughing at the incredulity of the situation or at your pathetic attempt to distract him from the information he needs. But it’s the most emotion you’ve seen from him, besides bloodlust and revulsion, since he showered in Invincible’s blood all those months ago.

The cat’s laughter dies down, but a surprisingly genuine smile still lingers on his face. “Do you even know my name, human?” he rumbles. He sounds… charmed, strangely.

“No– and that’s… uh, part of the problem,” you say haltingly.

The other part of the problem is that you won’t call me by mine. And that you probably want to cleave me in two. And that I can’t tell you it’s a problem out of fear that you will, in response, cleave me in two. It’s a pretty multifaceted problem, honestly.

“Then let me propose a solution,” he says before taking a couple steps closer and bending down to examine your face. He’s savoring the mix of nervousness and fascination in your spirit and the way it manifests on your features: a deluge of sweat, a furrowed brow, and a contorted smile you can’t fix. “On my homeworld, I was known as Thokk.”

It’s an alien name if you’ve ever heard one before. Thokk. It sounds blunt, like someone getting whacked in the head. In that way, it fits him perfectly. You’re pretty sure you heard a thokk when he splintered your ribs with his fist.

“Is that… what you want me to call you?”

He shakes his hair out. Water droplets slide off his fur and splash on your face. “I’m not opposed to it,” Thokk tells you. He’s close enough for you to feel his hot breath on your nose. “But in my years of wandering the stars, I picked up an appellation, of sorts. One that grew into a name of its own.”

“That being…?” you ask him, playing his game.

He seems to approve as he steps back and stands up to his full height, his own curiosity writ large on his visage. He effortlessly pulls his sword out of the dirt where it’s lodged and rests it on his shoulder. He curls his empty hand into a fist and places it over his broad chest.

“Battle Beast!” he bellows, and his voice shakes the forest. From his widened eyes and anticipating grin, it’s almost like he’s… hoping you like it.

How’d he get like this? It’s like he turned into a whole different person. Not five minutes ago, he was threatening your life, and now he wants your approval. You’d laugh if you weren’t still scared of him. Why?

Is he… lonely?

He’s still the most dangerous thing you’ve ever been around, especially for this long, and you know you should be looking for exit routes, but something about his total inability to keep a cool exterior around someone he thinks is interested in him is melting your instincts. You feel heat well up in your face.

“Battle Beast,” you repeat. “I like it.”

It’s such a silly name, but you’ll never say that to his face.

Chapter Text

When Cecil told you to “distract” Battle Beast, you didn’t expect it to be so easy; and, most likely, neither did Cecil. The cat is largely cooperative as you try to find the nature preserve’s trailhead, constantly looming behind you and bending over your shoulder as you examine wooden signs. The bushes around the two of you rustle as animals flee from his thundering footfalls. His oversized sword drags in the earth, carving a trail that runs alongside your footprints. The sun has risen a bit higher in the sky now, burning off the morning’s haze, but it’s still trapped behind a thick layer of rainclouds, trapped themselves behind green leaves. You hear the musical chirping of birds, always distant, never straying too close to you or, more aptly, your alien companion.

“This way, Thokk– I can call you that, right? Thokk?” you ask as you stop in front of another sign and glance back at him. You’ve tried not to look at him too often, as your life still depends on his not being annoyed; now, you notice he still looks as imperious as ever, but his eyes have widened enough for patience to show on his face.

“I find your constant need for my approval slightly endearing, if not supremely annoying. Next time, human, consider testing the waters yourself,” says.

You’d take his advice if you weren’t scared he still might cut you down the middle.

“Ahem. Yes. You may call me Thokk. I don’t care,” he clarifies after a silence, perhaps coming into some self-awareness of how he presents to you.

“So, Thokk,” you start as you continue down the path. “Why’d you come back here? Well, I know why, but from what we know about you, Machine Head just seems…”

“Beneath me,” Thokk says, stealing the words from your throat. “He is. But after I left this world to continue my search, my trail went cold. So I thought that perhaps, if he could get ahold of me, then he might also have connections to other beings of my strength… preferably stronger.”

Stronger than Battle Beast? What would that even look like? You’re not sure how he compares to Omni-Man. Maybe that would be a less one-sided fight than what he put you or Invincible through. But Earth has been through enough. Maybe they can fight in space or something.

You should be nearing the trailhead if you turned the right corners. As you leave the field of corpses Thokk left in his scuffle with the ReAnimen, the immediate smell of death slowly filters out, but you can’t help but notice that the cat still smells like blood and dead flesh. Maybe I should teach him how baths work on this planet.

“You still want me to take you to him, right?” you ask.

He stays quiet for a lot longer than you expect him to. You furrow your brow. You’re relieved he hasn’t just affirmed you, but there’s still a chance for it to get worse.

What he says, though, you couldn’t have anticipated: “No. Not right now, at least.”

Feeling less hostility in his voice than usual, you take the risk to keep your back turned to him. “Isn’t he your whole reason for being here?”

“It was,” he admits. “But I changed my mind.”

He’s so casual about it. That’s not normal.

You decide to stop, face Thokk, and inquire further, although you’re pretty sure you already know the answer to the question you’re about to ask. “…Why?”

Thokk scratches his cheek with a razor-sharp claw that, miraculously, doesn’t break his red glove. A subtle smile plays at the corners of his muzzle. “You intrigue me, human, and it’s rare that I take interest in anyone beyond their combat capabilities. I want to know more about your life.”

You swallow on a dry mouth. Nervousness stings your throat. “What does that mean? Are you going to… stay with me?”

“If you’ll have me,” he says, chuckling, before swinging his sword back over his shoulder. “Otherwise… I’ll just go about my quest—”

You put your arms out, feeling a dull pain beneath your bandages. “No, I’ll have you. Just…”

The sentence you began trails off as something clicks in your head. I can take advantage of this!

“...There are some rules.”

Thokk’s eyes narrow and he huffs out of his nose. “Rules? What rules?”

You start counting on your hands, your index fingers colliding as you list off your first rule. You don’t have a plan yet. Better start with the obvious stuff. “Okay, first, no killing.”

The cat tilts his head, sharp teeth gritted, overall looking genuinely baffled. He can’t imagine a life without killing people. Well, too bad.

“Second, no maiming… or injuring.”

Thokk sighs exasperatedly. “What else is there to do on this planet?” he groans. You’d laugh if he hadn’t meant it with every fiber of his being.

“A lot! A lot. Don’t worry. Third…”

“There’s another one?!” Thokk exclaims, scratching beneath his braids. “So particular, you humans.”

“Hold on… please,” you stutter. You can tell he’s getting impatient, wondering how he’s going to manage his bloodlust. Maybe you can help him with that. But I’ll cross that bridge if I live to get there. “The third rule is that you have to stay with me… always. Unless I say otherwise.”

There’s another silence. Thokk’s expression drops with his sword, which he sticks in its sheath. He’s gone from looking annoyed back to being totally unreadable.

“Is that… too much?” you ask, tensing up. Anything can happen now.

He shakes his head and stares down at the ground. “No. Honestly, I had expected something… worse.”

***

The nature preserve’s parking lot is mostly devoid of cars. You didn’t see anyone in the forest or on the main path, but what few vehicles remain here are empty, and rain dapples their hoods and windshields. Trees whose branches hang low and heavy shadow the place, their leaves sweeping Thokk’s fur as he pushes past you and his giant frame brushes up against them.

You don’t recognize the immediate area around you when you reach the lot. Not sure what I was expecting. That jump must’ve covered more area than I thought…

Maybe he can do it again?

You want to sidle up to Thokk and run your little not-quite-plan by him, but you’re cut off halfway there. Harsh light fills your field of vision. Cecil.

“Y/N. We need to talk,” he says in that rough voice of his.

He doesn’t look much different, but what is different about him, you chalk up to you being unconscious for over a day. Did he sleep at all during that time? His deep eyebags and heavily lidded eyes tell you he hasn’t. Poor guy.

Thokk turns around, snarling, and begins to stomp over, but another bright flash consumes the world behind Cecil and, when it passes, the cat is set upon by at least fifty ReAnimen, all hissing madly. If being so close to an alien that could (and totally would) end his life in seconds is causing Cecil any fear, he’s doing an excellent job at hiding it. The only change in his expression is the upturning of his nose as the rancid stench of corpse-flesh and metal fills the air again.

You, however, can’t hide how you feel. You won’t, anyways. Cecil’s sudden appearance, to make no mention of the addition of all those ReAnimen into the proverbial meat grinder, seems way more dangerous than just leaving the two of you alone. You were making progress with the cat! Now— you see as you look past Cecil— he’s sweeping zombies out of his way with the broad edge of his sword, whacking them across the lot and into the vacant cars at the periphery. Broken horns honk rudely at you.

As you noticed when he fought you, he takes no pleasure from pulverizing weak prey, but he also has no qualms with it…

You grit your teeth. “What are you doing, Cecil? I… we had rules! He was listening to me!”

“I heard your rules, kid,” he concedes, crossing his arms, back still turned to Thokk and his ensuing killing spree of the living dead. You can barely hear him over the cacophony of noise in the backdrop. “But frankly, this is the only way to buy a five-minute conversation with you. We need to discuss next steps.”

You take another glance behind Cecil. Thokk wrenches a ReAniman’s head from its neck with his teeth, splashing sparks and gore across his chest and face. He drops it from his mouth before flinging its body into the throng of ReAnimen clawing futilely at his bloodsoaked fur. They clatter across the lot like bowling pins. Thokk doesn’t seem to be paying Cecil much mind, but in between blinding bursts of carnage, your widened eyes meet his narrowed ones; wordlessly, they tell you what he means to say. If he’s still here when I’m done, I’ll kill him too.

“Next steps? Like what?” You spit those words at Cecil. Surely he knows the gravity of his actions here. If Thokk backslides now, the results could be lethal, and not just to your mission. “You want to put him down?”

Cecil crosses his arms. Your righteous anger isn’t amusing him. “I thought you had a plan. I hoped you did. Adopting an alien that kills for the hell of it. I mean, Christ almighty, it calls itself Battle Beast. How are you going to address that?”

“He said he was okay with my rules–” you start to object, perhaps at an inopportune time as a crumpled ReAniman sails past you and Cecil, intestines trailing behind, almost clipping the Director with its metal arm.

“Yeah. ‘No killing’ is paying dividends,” Cecil scoffs. His suit is spattered with blood, a fact he seems mildly annoyed about. But you know better than to buy his tough-guy act; his brow is furrowed and you see serious unease in his eyes. “Look. I know how precious you get about taking lives. I don’t blame you. I was the same way, a long time ago. But if we just let him get what he wants with Machine Head and leave, he’s off this planet for good. If you could save Earth right now, would you?”

A silence follows his question; a relative silence, at least. Thokk is still smashing ReAnimen to bits, of course, and the noise from his killing spree is making it harder for you to think.

“If we do it my way,” you start, gaze falling down to your shoes, “no one has to die. And he can…”

Your sentence flounders. Ugh. Why am I thinking about him right now? Cecil’s right. Keeping Thokk around is beyond dangerous for Earth and everyone on it. It couldn’t be less about him. But then you lock eyes with him again (at the moment he’s stamping his footpaw on the neck of another undead soldier) and you wonder if he’s wasting his time with the ReAnimen because he needs something from you. It’s so important, apparently, that he’s dropping his mission…

A life beyond the constant roar of battle. That’s what you can give him.

“...He can be happy,” is what you finish with, but you’re much quieter than when you began.

“Speak up, kid!” Cecil demands, his hand cupped over the back of his ear. “I can’t hear you mumbling over all this bloodshed.”

“He can be happy!” you shout, turning your gaze back up to his scowling face. “You’re trying to give him what he wants. That’s fine. But what about what he needs?”

The Director widens his eyes, seemingly equal parts impressed and concerned at the empathy you’re showing for this beast. He is wondering if it will get you killed.

Then Cecil takes a glance behind him, and your eyes follow his. Thokk has brutally dispatched most of the ReAnimen the GDA sent over, leaving their bodies in crumpled heaps or indistinct piles across the parking lot. There are a lot of missing limbs; or more aptly, found limbs with missing bodies. The cat, currently shoving his huge paw through a face of flesh and metal with a sickening crunch, is making more glances in your general direction in between blows, but you notice he’s sizing Cecil up rather than making eye contact with you. He doesn’t expect to be doing this for much longer, either.

The GDA could probably deploy more ReAnimen, but you figure they’ve already exceeded their threshold for acceptable losses. Cecil seems to agree, and he lets out a sigh you can’t hear over the din of the horribly one-sided battle but is all too easy to see on his face.

“Fine,” he concedes. “If you really think this will work out, let’s arrange something, quick. We can teleport you back to your apartment, with the alien, too, but he has to listen to your rules. We’ll relieve you of some responsibility for the next few weeks so you can keep an eye on him. If your plan fails in any capacity, we are pivoting to mine. Immediately.”

“Really?” You cock your head, disbelieving. It’s weird to see Cecil cave to your requests; usually, trying to reason with him is about as productive as pushing water uphill with a rake. But you suppose the GDA will have Machine Head on standby for a while in case Thokk gets… bored, for lack of a better word, of quotidian life.

Cecil adjusts his tie. “Yes, really. But if he, er, ‘relapses’ and kills someone, it’s your ass. We can’t contain him, but we won’t hesitate to cut ties and take you in if we suspect you might have been a collaborator.”

The implications hit you like a truck. Your stomach, already compromised, double-knots itself. It wasn’t as though the stakes weren’t high already, but now Cecil’s given you an ultimatum. Is it unreasonable? No. If this goes sour, it’ll have been my fault for humoring Thokk.

“You look down, kid,” Cecil says, noticing your sudden insecurity. “It might be a stupid plan, but I’m banking on it just as much as you right now. Besides… it gives us time to move people back into Chicago.”

“Okay,” you say, swallowing. “Then let’s do it.”

“Good luck.” He places one of the GDA’s teleportation bracelets into your hand. You’re about to ask Cecil how it’s going to fit around Thokk’s wrist when another flash removes him from your field of vision.

In his absence, you see Thokk unobscured. With a grunt of dissatisfaction, he takes the last hissing ReAniman’s shoulders in his arms and, exerting minimal effort, tears it in two down the middle. He casts both halves to his sides and wipes his bloody paws on his breastplate as he stomps over to you. Car horns are starting to die down, and the position of loudest sound in the immediate vicinity quickly shifts to the crashing of Thokk’s footpaws on the asphalt of the lot.

“Who was that?” he asks, looming over you once again. Blood flecks his brow and stains his muzzle all the way down to his feet. You’ve noticed he usually likes to taste the blood of his enemies, but you haven’t seen him lick his hands or even his lips. Maybe it tastes worse coming from a decomposed body. “And what business did you have with him? I tolerate more than most, but I find conspiracy in particular so insulting to my strength.”

Am I dead here? Did Cecil fuck me over?

You shake your hands. “No, no, no, that’s not it at all; we’re just… going home.”

“Home?” Thokk quirks his eyebrow, that subdued smile creeping up onto his face again. Though his smile, bedecked with wicked teeth, is never entirely easy to accept, the blood on his face makes it so much more sinister. This is what he’s been wanting: the chance to follow you. “Is it nearby? Hurry up, human.”

God, he’s so enthusiastic. “No, but he’s going to take us there… you just need to put on one of these.”

You hand him the bracelet. His paw is so huge and so warm underneath his blood-slicked glove. He shifts the device around in his paw, taking it in his fingers, checking it from all angles.

“Promise it’s not a trap,” you say, hoping to assuage some doubts of his, and his smile widens.

“A trap? Don’t make me laugh. There’s nothing your kind could harm me with. My only concern is how… delicate it appears. A ring doesn’t last very long when you fight in close quarters like I do.”

Yeah. Ring. That works. “You won’t have to wear it for long.”

He doesn’t want to break the “ring”; he asks for your assistance in putting it on. You gingerly latch it around his thumb. He cocks his head; he likes the care you show his hand even if you had no chance of hurting him in the first place. You can almost hear him purring.

The two of you don’t get to enjoy the silence for long, though, for as soon as the bracelet is affixed to his thumb, the world around you melts into pure light. You squint your eyes, but Thokk seems totally unfazed. Before the spots can leave your vision, the first thing you notice is the familiar smell of your apartment– though the scent of blood and sweat on the cat quickly overpowers that. Yeah, baths are in order.

When your vision comes back, you start to understand how ill-equipped your apartment is for someone like Thokk. The tips of his ears nearly touch the eight-foot-tall ceiling, and his bulky frame would have trouble squeezing through any door without ripping the surrounding wall out. And that sword— where the hell is that going to go?

“This is home?” He’s glancing around your apartment, scratching behind his ear and likely feeling the same way as you. “It’s smaller than I had hoped. But then…”

“Yeah, I know. So am I.” You glance around your apartment. Shit. So many things to take care of. The laundry you put off putting away is still sitting around your room as it, assumedly, has been for the past day or so. Maybe that’s for after you and Thokk are cleaned up; the longer you stand here, the dirtier you feel you’re making your immediate surroundings. Thokk isn’t the only culprit. You were laying face-up in the rain and mud for a whole day, after all.

Then your gaze flutters over to your desk, where your phone lays face-up beside a full bowl of noodles. On the one hand, you’re glad you didn’t take the device with you; it’d probably be worse off than you were after your fight with Thokk, and totally without miracle bandages to repair the circuits. On the other hand, there are probably people in your life; family, friends, coworkers; who are worried about you after so many hours of radio silence. And on top of that, your bowl has probably collected a coterie of ants in your absence.

Thokk stays quiet as you scramble to that desk, picking up the bowl and checking beneath for bugs, using the fork to pull the now-stuck-together noodle block apart and investigate. Ugh, thank God. No ants. You rush over to the kitchen with the bowl, dump the once-edible contents in the trash bin, and shove the dish and the accompanying silverware into the washer. On the way back to your desk, you see his arms crossed and a curious, almost endeared smile on his face; he’s probably wondering what’s making you so frantic. Sorry, “Battle Beast”, you imagine telling him in your head. Some people have more going on in their lives than weapon maintenance and looking for the next fight. Frustrated as you are by the sudden wrinkle that Thokk adds to your life, you won’t let those words leave your mouth.

“I’ll, uh, be a moment. Sit down if it helps you,” you say, gesturing loosely to your couch as you pick up your phone and take a seat at your desk. With a sigh, you begin to scroll through your texts. As of this morning, an old acquaintance from your former hero team wants to catch up over coffee. Late last night, a friend asked if you’d seen the newest episode of your favorite show to watch together. And yesterday at noon, your mom sent some pictures from a hike; you’re busy examining the views when you hear a loud crack-thud behind you.

You swivel around in your chair. Thokk is sitting on the floor between two freshly snapped pieces of couch. Wide-eyed, he looks at you like he’s innocent; as though he couldn’t possibly have known it was too flimsy for him.

“Oh my God.” You immediately start to wonder if the GDA will cover a replacement. What you have now is unsalvageable. Even the cushion is torn in two under the cat’s weight. Why did I expect anything else? “Uh, okay. Okay. Can you stand up? Let’s… clean off. How does that sound?”

He obeys your request. Wood chips fall from his haunches as he stands back up. He’s almost at eye level with your overhead fan. You rise up to meet him. You’re frustrated, of course, but the last thing you want to be with Thokk is impatient.

“Clean off… I accept,” he says. “Where are the facilities in your home?”

“Cute that you asked, but I’m not letting you go alone.” You circle around him, shuffling over to the bathroom door, crossing inside, and flipping the lights on. Thokk follows you slowly, not wanting to accidentally break anything else of yours even though you can tell he’s not especially sorry about the couch.

You take a look back outside the doorway. Thokk is leaning down to fit in the frame. “Your doors don’t seem to be fit for beings of my stature, either,” he grumbles.

“Yeah. Sorry. Humans are boring. Can I help you get your armor off out there? Would that make it easier for you to get in?”

“We can certainly see.”

As you circle around to stand behind him, he kneels so you can work on his clothes. He taps near the back of his neck, and after a moment of digging in his shawl you find a metallic clasp. When you undo it, the whole cloth falls away in a blood-heavy heap around his knees. He grunts his approval, so you keep going and help him lift his scabbard. The sword inside is much weightier than you thought it would be, but you have an easy enough time lifting it off his back, owing to your superhuman strength. 

His chestplate is largely unlike any armor you’ve seen on Earth. You press it with a finger. It’s firm with a somewhat pliable outer layer. He doesn’t prickle, so you run your finger down, feeling gentle grooves. You imagine it’s highly shock-absorbent. It didn’t budge when you got that hit on him that broke your arm. Art would be into this. Maybe I’ll take it to his place later.

“What is this stuff made of?” you ask, meanwhile looking for a brooch or or something of the like holding it together.

“Mostly a copolymer of isoprene and isobutylene. But there are many other materials in it, all cross-linked to create a superior suit of armor. And the sheets are bound with an aramid weave. You humans have rubber on this world, don’t you? This is… similar, but far stronger.”

“That seems awfully complex,” you say somewhat absently. Thokk didn’t strike you as a chemistry nut, but you have to imagine he takes his armor very seriously. “How do you take it off?”

“The buckle is on my side. I just wanted you to ask me about it,” he says, smiling slightly again, as he undoes it and removes the chestplate. After that he removes his gloves, showing his hands off for the first time. His claws are retracted, or at least they appear to be, so they give the impression of human hands— just huge, covered in fur, and with fingers far thicker than any human’s. No paw pads. Disappointing.

He takes his gloves in one hand and casts them aside. You tense as he does so. “You’re going to get blood all over my floor.”​

Thokk pays your complaint little heed. The next thing he takes off is his shirt– it’s a bright red, sleeveless thing that hugs his form and highlights the dense, corded musculature beneath. Its shape matched nicely with his form-fitting armor plate, to the point you were convinced they were part of the same chestpiece. As he stretches his outsize arms above his head and pulls off his black sleeves, you see the muscles in his back ripple and curl. The warm glow of your ceiling bulb recasts his chalky white fur in a light cream color.

His belt comes off before his pants and shoes; it’s inlaid with some yellowish-gray metal that glimmers in direct light. Not gold. Probably something more esoteric. After everything else is off, he undoes his braids and places the bloodstained metal rings on top of the shawl. Soon enough, Thokk is sitting before you, back turned, naked but for his black undergarments. You don’t want to risk putting him off by touching him but you make note of how plush his fur looks, especially the fur of his forearms and back, which is clean of all the blood and grime marring his face and hair. He stands up to his full height; he’s still just as huge as he was with the armor on. You’re unsure of why– or whether, for that matter– you expected anything to change, but at least it makes it easier for him once he’s inside the room.

You come through the doorway first, then beckon him inside. He has to squeeze to enter without hitting the doorframe too hard, ducking down and placing his arms before him. When his hips threaten to crack the frame, he adjusts his angle, barely pulling himself through.

Once you’ve turned the water on, Thokk does about the same with the shower door, fitting through with some difficulty. His hulking form dominates the shower cubicle. You’re glad he doesn’t have an aversion to water like the cats of your world do. While your mind is on cats, though, the thought occurs to you that maybe he cleans himself like one.

“You, uh, usually lick yourself clean?” you ask him.

“No. Do I look like someone who would do that?”

“Forget it. And do you know how…”

“Yes, human. We have showers in ‘space’.” He leans over to let the cold water wash through his matted mane, rumbling pleasantly as it warms.

“Okay, okay. Uh, I have hair soap– it’s behind you, mostly– if you want to use it. I guess you can use it on your body, too, because, you know, you have hair there too.”

He doesn’t respond, instead running his huge hands through his mane, working out the kinks that formed from having his braids in for so long. Blood is collecting in a shallow pool at his feet, diluted by the water. You know he doesn’t like how you mince words, not when it’s something important at least, but he does seem to think it’s cute. Like you imagine most ultra-powerful alien warriors would, he appreciates a little reverence, even if he’s not intentionally trying to keep you on the edge of your toes all the time. He likes the effect he has on you.

On your end, it’s not especially fun to be scared all the time, but there’s something appealing about the way he does it. Keeps you wanting more. You’re not certain where it comes from.

Is it because he’s hot? Probably. I’m fucked if I think being in mortal danger is hot.

You flex your shoulder again. You can hardly feel the stinging anymore. These bandages, whatever they’re made from, are miraculous. An injury like the one you sustained to your arm should’ve taken you at least a week or so to heal, and that’s with your superhuman healing factor. But if Thokk is telling the truth about how long you were out for, they were back to normal in just over a day.

“So, these bandages– what’re they made of?” you ask, turning to him. He’s drenching his whole body in your shampoo. At this rate, you’ll have to wash your hair with conditioner.

“Those? I don’t know. I stole them.”

“Oh.” That checks out. You don’t want to unravel them just yet, in case whatever scientific (or, at this point, it might just be magic) bullshit is repairing your bones hasn’t finished doing its thing. “Hey, you never told me where you’re from. Can I ask now?”

“A war-ravaged world called Dornn.” Thokk rests his leg against the wall, rubbing it up and down with your hair soap. “But that information is next to useless to a human like you. I doubt you’ve heard of Dornn, let alone been there. What with your species’ spaceflight capabilities being so primitive…” he says, gazing up at the ceiling.

“Okay, okay, enough.” You try to mask your indignation at his insulting your entire species behind a guise of playfulness. “And it’s not useless. You called it ‘war-ravaged’. What does that mean? Is everyone there as strong as you?”

Thokk shakes his head. “I am, as far as I can tell, unique among my kind in my strength. But make no mistake: my position is not to be envied. I am the inheritor of a curse, after all. I was able to turn my world into a paradise, but I had to leave for fear of destroying it anew…”

You expect him to keep going, but all he does is widen his eyes and half-nod toward you, and you realize he’s waiting for you to start talking.

You blink. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t just say something like that and not elaborate. That’s not how a conversation works. Not here, at least.”

“Oh well,” he says. “I tire of talking about myself. I want to know where you come from.” He pokes the glass in your direction, leaving a little bloody spot there that the water quickly washes off.

“...Me?”

“We’re in your home, aren’t we?” He glances around the bathroom, then back at you. “I thought you humans built cities to live in. But I may well have been mistaken.”

“No, we do,” you say. “We’re in Brooklyn. That’s a part of New York City. That city is in the United States of America. That’s a country in a continent called North America…”

He huffs. “None of those words mean anything to me. What do your people care about? You seem to adulate heroes. Do you respect strength?”

You remember Thokk’s frame of reference for ‘heroes’. Our new Guardians of the Globe. Not very impressive at all, in comparison to what’s waiting for us out there. Is there a single hero he’s met that he hasn’t, in some capacity, beat the living shit out of?

“We do. We like superheroes. But not everyone can be one, so most people just try to lay low and avoid getting caught in the crossfire.”

He lets out a thoughtful rumble. “Even when I try to understand it, it’s so foolish. Your world and all its people should be steeling themselves against what’s beyond. I’ve visited your world twice and both times I’ve been sorely disappointed. But the longer I remain here and talk with you, the more I want to try this life. If only to know what it’s like.”

Just your luck that he wants to do it with you, right?

“I thought you were cursed. You said you could’ve destroyed your world. What happened to that?”

“I am cursed, human,” he snaps. You recoil, so he swallows and begins again, more quietly this time. “But when you proclaimed you were… interested in me, I felt something shift. At first I was incredulous. Then I considered sparing your life, and I couldn’t understand why. I came to recognize that there was something important I was missing, and I felt my rage emptying for a moment. It was a relief like none I’ve felt. I thought, maybe, you had weakened my curse.”

Holy shit. You can do that to him? At this point, you’re not sure whether this makes your job easier or harder. A bit of both, I guess.

“Your curse… did it come back when you fought those monsters?”

He nods. “Yes. It angered me even more to know that it could return so easily.”

He’s rinsing off his body now; you notice he’s been pretty reasonable about his hot water usage, even if he wasted all your shampoo. You watch the movements of his muscles as he exposes different sides of himself to the water: stretch, contract, curl, stretch. There are some pinkish residuals of long-decomposed blood still left on the walls; it shouldn’t be especially hard to wash away. In an abstract sense, he seems to know how to keep clean, even if he doesn’t preen himself constantly like house cats you’ve known. You imagine Thokk lives in blood-drenched fits interrupted by long, soul-crushing stretches of terrible cleanliness.

***

It isn’t until after you’ve both showered and dried yourselves that you get a sense of your body’s immediate needs. Thokk soaked all your towels, and while you were waiting for him to dry off, you washed your hands and got to work on putting your clothes away. Your own shower was private and relatively quick, as you didn’t have any shampoo left. You emerged imperfect, but imperfect was an improvement over blood-soiled. You changed and threw your uniform in the same corner with Thokk’s.

It’s around 2:30 PM now and you’re seated at your desk, texting Cecil. He tells you the GDA’s own cleanup crew can help you with the bloodstains and the broken couch, but that’s probably better left for tomorrow. For now, you’re busy with the fact that a day-plus of not eating anything has caught up with you all at once.

“What do you know about Earth food?” you ask Thokk, who’s laying face-up on the floor, blankly reading one of the comic books laying around your coffee table. Seance Dog. For all he knows, this could be the pinnacle of literature on Earth. He’s rebraided his mane in the same asymmetrical way.

“I know humans taste much better before they expire. And without all the metal bits,” he says, not looking up from his reading.

“Ew, okay. I’m going to go get pizza. Stay here, please.”

“Another companion?” He closes up the book, rolls over onto his chest, and looks up at you. “We had best prepare a great feast.”

“No, that’s not– pizza is, like, food.”

“Oh.” His eyes widen. “If you’re hunting your meal, allow me to assist you!”

“Please just stay in.”

He stands up and brushes himself off. “No, I insist. You’re weak, and I am a consummate hunter. I can make this trivial.”

You sigh, realizing you’ve played this the worst way. “What are you even going to wear out? All your clothes are covered in blood.”

He gestures to his underclothes.

“Okay, put the bloody ones on. For now.” You wave your hand at him. There’s another thing to talk to Art about: some new clothes for the big guy.

You throw on a jacket over your clothes; the weather app didn’t say it would rain today, but New York City in March is not known for being especially pleasant. Or predictable. You turn around and catch Thokk clipping the scabbard onto his back.

“Leave the sword here. Rule two is no hurting people. Remember?”

He scowls, but obeys.

Once Thokk has pulled his shawl over his shoulders, you stand outside and open the door into the hallway for him. As he did with the shower, he has to do a lot of adjusting to not get caught in the frame. The stairway doors that take the two of you from the second floor to the first are thankfully more accommodating; you were never one to take the elevator to ascend or descend a single floor, and you’re not sure if Thokk breaks the elevator’s weight limit. It’s not like an elevator malfunction would cause either of you much trouble, even from the top floor, but it’d make navigating the apartment pretty annoying for the other residents.

Despite Thokk’s conspicuous stomping, you don’t see other people in the hallways. It’s better this way. You’d hate to have to explain this situation to everyone else in your life. Thokk hasn’t been in your life for long, and you haven’t figured out the words to delicately describe that you’ve taken in a homicidal alien cat for a roommate, and that you might’ve saved the world by doing so.

Brooklyn is about as cloudy and windy as it was two days ago. You always liked your neighborhood for the trees that line the sidewalks and shadow the street. Their leaves loose themselves and fall on the sides of the street as the wind tosses them about. The streets themselves are narrow and, generally, not heavy on cars, which means they’re prime real estate for jaywalking.

Your goal here is a pizza place that you and your friends like in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The owners are Sicilians and in your time you’ve developed a taste for square pizza slices. Price is always a concern, but you found this place at the corner of quality and affordability. Not the most gourmet option in the area, but a sixteen-dollar pie in this economy is rare enough to be treasured regardless of how good or bad it tastes. Thokk probably doesn’t care, either.

People stare. A few pull out phones. Superheroes and supervillains are a known quantity– not like you present as one without your costume– but apparently not giant lion-men. Thokk doesn’t much appreciate the attention. He bares his teeth and snarls at anyone who makes eye contact with him. Or, as you notice, with you. The two of you get a lot of space on the sidewalk and in the subway station, but you end up mouthing way more apologies than you would’ve liked.

You don’t bother teaching Thokk how the subway ticketing system works. If you can help it, he won’t be taking the tube without you. You’re relieved that your local station has a wide turnstile intended for wheelchair users and, from this point on, giant aliens.

The subway ride isn’t long and, to your surprise, Thokk doesn’t make some demeaning comment about its insufficient speed or technics. You can tell he’s holding it in though. Being a touch too tall to stand in the car, he sits cross-legged on the floor near you, glaring. The tube is always crowded, but people tend to afford you and Thokk a good amount of space, even at the cost of their own, which is nice. In exchange, you get a lot more stares, so you bury your head in your phone to avoid having to give out any more awkward smiles.

Thokk looks like he’s holding back the urge to murder everyone on the train car. You have a feeling he won’t act on it. Now you know he has just as much of an investment as you in tempering his bloodlust.

The pizza spot, like all indoor spaces you’ve entered with Thokk, feels awfully cramped. The owners and guests look a little more nervous than usual. Can’t possibly guess why that is.

You beckon him to come over to your side and examine the slices. The squarish shape turns some people away, especially when only the middle piece remains, but you noticed that square pans help the pizza maintain a thick, firm crust without eating like Chicago deep-dish. The toppings run the gamut from pedestrian classics like cheese, pepperoni, and vegetarian to traditional variants like a Palermo-style slice dappled with anchovies and drizzled with olive oil.

You glance up at Thokk, who doesn’t appear to be as enthused. In fact, looking over the slices and taking in the aromas of the restaurant, he seems disgusted. “There’s no sustenance in this. How do you people stay alive with this kind of cuisine?” he asks, gesturing to the slices on display. His thundering voice interrupts a customer’s stammered order.

“It tastes really good, trust me,” you say, motioning for quiet.

He scoffs and crosses his arms. “Taste? Is that all you eat this trash for? I’m starting to see why your species is so weak.”

You groan. “You don’t have a preference, then?”

“What do you think, human?” He narrows his eyes and tilts his head.

“Okay. You wanted to learn about my people, right? This is how it happens,” you say, inching closer to the counter. Thokk mutters and trundles along behind you.

The guy at the counter is young. Probably new to the job, but you only think so because you haven’t seen him here before. He is drenched in Thokk’s shadow. His eyes, their pupils narrow and full of panic, dart back and forth between your face and the cat’s. “H… how can I help… you?”

His fear isn’t misplaced. Thokk has a hell of a presence, and the fact he’s wearing bloodstained armor is just more fuel for the fire. You put on your calmest smile– rescue training taught you to be an emotional anchor for panicked civilians– to try and lower the tension and dig in your pocket for your wallet. “Can I get a box of the cheese?”

“What are you doing? Purchase the one with the assorted meats on it,” Thokk says, leaning over at you.

You shrug. “I thought you said you didn’t have a preference.”

“That isn’t what I was implying.”

“Fine. Be more direct next time,” you say, then turn back to face the cashier, whose fingers tremble at the register as he waits for you to clarify. You promise in your head to tip him generously. “One box of meat lovers’ pizza instead. Please.”

“One won’t be enough,” Thokk interjects again. “I suggest a minimum of four.”

Are you trying to bankrupt me? You glare at him before returning your attention to the cashier, card in hand. “Make that four. Thank you so much.”

“Okay… that’ll be… uh, $73.95.”

That can’t be right. You blink a couple times. Did they raise the price or something? Whatever.

You’re about to give him your card when Thokk exhales, pushes you aside. He must’ve noticed your apprehension. Oh fuck.

“Free,” he snarls, leaning over to come face-to-face with the cashier. His claws dig into the metal countertop. “You’ll give it to us for free.”

The whole room goes quiet. You see wide eyes in the kitchen. The cashier freezes in place, nodding slowly. Staggeredly, he walks towards the kitchen in the back, not taking his eyes off of you or Thokk the entire time. You’re not sure what to do but give him another awkward smile. Once he’s out of eyesight, you push Thokk to the side, away from the counter.

“...What the hell? Why did you do that?” You’re furious. He probably doesn’t think anything of it. Violence and intimidation come naturally to him. Somehow, that makes you even angrier.

“Was I wrong for getting you free food?” He tugs at a braid. “You seemed distressed about the price. Now you don’t have to pay.”

“You’re wrong for… we don’t threaten people into giving us stuff here. That’s not how it works.”

“And who decided that?” he asks. “How is it that insects can tell me how I’m supposed to conduct myself?”

“I’m not fighting you on this here. You’ve ruined enough peoples’ day already.”

“Hmph.” He pouts and leans against the wall; it creaks but thankfully doesn’t give way. You pull out every bill in your wallet– totaling somewhere around thirty bucks– and stuff it in the tip jar. There’s not enough money in the world to make up for that.

***

Thokk gives you silence on the way back. You return to your apartment at around 3:30 PM with four boxes of pizza and a lot of embarrassment weighing you down. You set the boxes down on your dining table and let your new companion in slowly. You’ve already decided to spend the rest of the day indoors; you don’t want to risk letting the cat terrorize any more people than he already has.

You take a seat at the table, and he sits on the floor after changing out of his dirty clothes. He takes a box of ill-gotten pizza in his lap. “Let me know what you think,” you say, pointing a slice at him. You examine it. Extra toppings too. Guess they were motivated.

As you take a bite, he places a square in his mouth and starts chewing on it. You’re expecting to hear words like “pathetic” or “disgusting”, but he says nothing at all. Then he swallows, pauses, and repeats with another piece. And another.

“Excuse me,” you say, leaning over the table. “Do you hate it? Come on.”

He looks up and swallows again. “Is there no custom here of keeping quiet while eating?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Going back to your slice, you can’t help but find that strange. Is he… enjoying it?

You’re on your second slice of pizza when he finishes his box, placing the greasy cardboard on the table. He gestures for another.

“You must’ve really liked it,” you tell him accusingly. He is licking his lips and fingers clean. Caught in the act.

“It was acceptable,” he says sharply. You nod, but he knows as well as you that you don’t believe him. You take two more slices on a paper plate and pass him your box. Four remain; that should be enough for now.

When he finishes (and it doesn't take long), Thokk wipes his fingers and traipses over to the space between your coffee table and your broken couch. He sits down, stretches his huge arms, and lets his back hit the floor.

“I will rest now, human,” he says. “Refrain from bothering me, if you can.”

It seems pretty early to go to sleep, in the middle of the afternoon, but it makes a little more sense when you remember he’s been awake for at least a full day.

That gives you plenty of time to stress into the evening.

***

By around 8 PM, you’re in bed, scouring your brain and your laptop for things around the city that you can try to distract Thokk with. Things that preferably don’t involve customer service. You can still hear– and feel– Thokk’s thunderous snoring, even with the door closed and with your earpods jammed into your ears. Noise-canceling. What a joke.

The cellphone next to you goes off. It’s Cecil. Against your better judgment, you answer. I’ll take anything over another surprise-teleport into my apartment.

“Hey, kid. How did your first day with the big kitty go?”

You rub your forehead. “Not great. He’s kind of a handful… Hey, aren’t you monitoring this shit anyways?”

“We are. But CCTV cameras and remote drones don’t get the full picture. I wanted to check in and see how you were taking it.”

Huh. You didn’t really take Cecil as the type to care about your feelings. He’s always been a strict utilitarian, so hearing him ask about you personally comes as a bit of a shock.

“I didn’t know what I was getting into, honestly,” you sigh. “He doesn’t make it easy. Even though he ‘likes’ me. And the worst part is I can’t do anything about it. We’re not on even footing.”

There’s some silence before you hear anything from Cecil again: “If it’s any consolation, think about this. No one got hurt. No one died. Yeah, that cashier might have nightmares for a while, but it’s not nearly as bad as it could be. You did a lot of good. Even if no one knows that.”

“Thanks, Cecil,” you say. It feels obvious, now that he’s said it out loud. Keeping a potentially world-ending threat at bay does sound like superhero stuff. In a roundabout way.

“Sure thing, kid. Call us if anything troubles you,” he says, and you hang up.

You don’t understand Thokk. It feels like you never will. It doesn’t make sense how he can be so callous to everyone else he comes across but somehow hold you in such high esteem. And after he so thoroughly thrashed you, threatened to end your life. He let you undress him, see him without his armor and his sword. As something more than a warrior. He let you break down his walls, if only for a short while.

You get the sense he wants to fall in love. He doesn’t know what it means, but he wants it regardless.

Chapter Text

As long as a human heart beats, blood flows. Blood flows through you in a closed circuit, racing through your body over and over and over again. Blood enters your heart from the right side; old blood, tired blood, depleted blood without oxygen. The heart pumps your blood through your lungs and rejuvenates it; makes new blood from old. New blood leaves your heart from the left side and powers your body with oxygen. Blood, no matter where it is in you, is just a vessel. Your life hides in blood until it reaches its destination.

Up close, the cycle of blood is almost beautiful, the self-containedness of it. In the abstract, it’s a horrible thing. To a superhero, blood is usually a marker of failure to save oneself or another. You don’t know if you want to see blood ever again.

Thokk says everyone’s blood tastes different; not just based on species– whose blood has which nutrients running through it– but based on emotion. Vestiges of peoples’ souls flow out of their bodies with blood. It carries these impressions that he, with his acute taste, can pick up. He says he is tired of drinking scared blood, blood that fears for its life.

What does my blood taste like? you wonder. Does it taste good? Do I want it to?

***

By Sunday morning, you’re not exactly sure where you are with Thokk. The objective answer would be “wherever it is that you can trust him to stay inside and not kill people when you go out for your grocery run”. When you leave, he distracts himself with your comic books or just stares at a wall until you return.

The abstract answer would be “in a better place than before”. He’s still short with you, and he doesn’t explain himself half as much as you think he should, but you struggle to recall anything he’s said to you in the last couple of days that came across as excessively malicious or spiteful. He loves to point out your species’ failings, although you get the sense that it’s to get a rise out of you more than anything else. (It’s really not your fault; anyone would react the way you did if their favorite pulpy action-fantasy flick was so scathingly criticized on the grounds of its fight choreography being “hopelessly amateurish”. That’s the human nature he doesn’t understand.)

But he seems to understand the steadily increasing intimacy of your relationship. He doesn’t tense up when you come into contact with him. Yesterday he let you braid his mane (before claiming you did it all wrong and doing it again himself, but still!). He loves studying the expressions on your face, looking deep into your eyes, looking through your soul. For an alien who’s not experienced with socializing with humans, he reads you remarkably well. You wish you could do the same with him. He is, for the most part, as opaque as ever. You vaguely know when he’s happy, at least, but it’s not terribly often that he smiles. What really sets him off is closeness, having someone like you to surround with himself. Space must be lonely!

Weirdest of all, he doesn’t shy away from doing all the boring human things with you. Last night, though he didn’t seem to like Deathless Barbarian 2 from a technical perspective, he smiled at how excited it made you, how defensive you got over it. You’d expected him to leave halfway through, but he stayed seated on the floor, attention neatly divided between the bloody 80’s schlock dancing across the HDR screen and all your emotional, overblown reactions. After the credits started to roll and you shut the TV off, he asked you questions. About why you thought such trash was acceptable to show him, sure, but also about what your world called “movies”. He let you teach him things.

You chalk it up to Thokk taking his experience of living like a human— or at least learning what all that entails— more seriously now. That’s why, early in the morning, you resolve to take him out on a date.

Deciding exactly what kind of date to take him on requires a lot of deliberation with yourself. He seems to like watching movies with you, but then he also likes talking over them, so the theater is out of the question. You won’t take him to another restaurant just yet, and he’d break the seats anyways. You’re leaning towards something informational, since he’s with you to learn something, although a few days on you’re still not sure what he’s learned yet. The Met, maybe? No, he doesn’t strike you as much of an art purveyor, though he does seem to be into reading. You get the sense that there’s not much to do in deep space but read and work out. The significance of a historical museum would probably be moot to him, and it would totally give him more ammo to keep making fun of your species.

Hey, doesn’t the Museum of Natural History have a space center?

The more you mull that one over, the more perfect it feels for Thokk. Maybe it’ll be fun for him. And you can put him in front of one of those creepy taxidermied lions to see if he notices any connection. You’re not much of a xenobiologist, so maybe he can put some of your questions about Dornians (so you’ve learned his species is called) being eerily similar to the big cats to rest. Considering he shares so little with them beyond his beastly appearance and predisposition to roaring, you’re inclined to believe it’s a huge cosmic coincidence in the same vein as Viltrumites and humans looking alike, but it wouldn’t hurt to confirm.

You scan over the ticket prices. Don’t remember this place being so expensive when I was a kid. What kind of tickets does​​ Thokk qualify for? Adult, I guess. Do aliens get free admission?

He’d probably try to get in for free, anyways, by terrorizing the booth operator. Good thing I can preorder here. You purchase two adult tickets for a 12:30 PM slot, shut your laptop, and slide out of bed.

It’s hard not to notice just how fast this has all gone. Five days ago Thokk almost killed you. You’re still not sure whether you’ve forgiven that. To be fair, he hasn’t apologized for it. It might’ve been a little too nice to try and buy him pizza after that.

Since then, Invincible and the Guardians who were up in space have returned with a mission success under their belts. Of the three who stayed and fought the Lizard League, one didn’t make it. Word got out about Dupli-Kate’s death yesterday after the Guardians returned. You didn’t know her personally, and you’d been in the same room together maybe twice ever, but hero deaths always put a knot in your stomach. At a certain point, after seeing the Guardians of the Globe get their shit kicked in so many times, you became grateful you weren’t on the same level. Whenever Invincible and Atom Eve are indisposed, “strongest hero available” always seems like a nicer way of saying “first in line to get killed”.

Damn. That could’ve been me. It’s not the most sensitive thought to have after someone around you dies. It’s actually a little callous-sounding. Not wrong though.

At around 7 AM, you open the door into the living space. The GDA replaced your couch expeditiously. You’re not sure where they got the same exact model from, but you’re not about to question it.

It’s hard to miss the cat. He still takes up an inordinate amount of space in your apartment, so you’re glad you haven’t gotten visitors yet. You’re not sure how you could explain this to any of your family or friends. I got a new roommate! He’s a seven-foot-tall alien lion who likes killing people and drinking blood. Right now he’s bent over in front of the fridge. He’s only tried a limited selection of Earth food, so he definitely doesn’t know what he’s looking for. You like the way the morning light from the window dapples his bright fur after filtering through the tree leaves.

Another thing the GDA did pretty quickly after the first day was take his dirty clothes and armor off you. He was stubborn about a couple pocketed undergarments and the sword, “in case” (though you don’t know what on Earth could possibly give him so much trouble he’d need his sword to take it on), but he agreed that you had neither the materials or the knowhow required to wash his armor and clothes properly. The GDA had at least the materials in spades, so they could handwave the technique. It also gives them a chance to study the stuff. They gave you some oversized replacement clothing for civilian, or civilian-esque, life. Thokk isn’t big on Earth clothes, but after a few reminders that he’s not here to fight anymore, he’s capitulated. He seems to prefer the skin-tight clothes that hug his form, like the ones he had on under his armor. His favorite (not that he’s said it out loud; you’ve just been noticing patterns over the last few days) has been a dark, sleeveless one-piece that runs down to his mid-thigh. It looks like nylon, but it’s probably something much stronger as it can survive the stretching and pulling of his muscles. You’re mildly curious, but not interested in hearing any more chemistry lectures.

His ear twitches when the floorboards creak under your feet and he turns, standing up to his full height. He completely obscures the fridge. The metal braid bands are out for now. Longer bands made from black fabric took their place.

“Hello, human,” he says in that deep great-hearted voice. There’s another thing. After almost a week, he still doesn’t call you by your name. It’s not like he doesn’t know it. You’ve told him several times by now. He just won’t do it. He knows it irritates you just a little every time, and that there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. You wonder if he gets off on that.

“Morning. What can I help you with?” you ask, leaning against the wall.

“Nothing. I was hungry,” he says before closing the fridge behind him with his foot. It takes conscious effort for him to be gentle enough not to crack your floorboards or, in this case, the fridge door.

He’s not often hungry, you’ve learned. It’s weird, especially considering how big he is. Long journeys through space are probably better if you can go a while without food. You’ll never complain about it; all it does is make your life a little easier.

“Hey, I wanted to look.” You scoot in the way of the fridge, opening it again and crouching down to look at the lower-level contents. You’re thinking about the breakfast you could make for yourself. Pancakes, maybe? Could be nice with scrambled eggs and sausage. No, come to think of it…

You glance back at Thokk. His arms are folded. He is examining you and your indecision, his gaze as judging as ever. No matter what he’s feeling, his eyes and the cruel arch of his brows will almost always make it look like he’s sizing you up for a fight.

…Probably not enough pancake mix for both of us.

“So what exactly are you hungry for? Be specific.” You’re not trying to be his personal servant. If you can teach him to be self-sufficient now, it might pay dividends later.

He pauses, scrunching his muzzle a bit. Then he starts to model a square in the air with his hands. He’s trying very hard not to say it out loud; saying the word out loud, indicating that he remembered it, would be admitting that you were right. Something he desperately wants to avoid. You nod, smirking. Got you.

“It’s called pizza. And now I’m starting to think you really liked it,” you say. He grimaces and it’s the best feeling ever. It’s small, but you have this conversation up on what is possibly the strongest creature in the universe, or at least this corner of it. “On my planet, we like to pace ourselves between foods because we have more to eat than raw flesh.”

He stays silent and you realize he’s not going to walk it back. See? Earth has more going for it than you gave it credit for.

“Maybe if you’re good,” you go on, “and don’t break any more rules, we can get the food you like.”

“I didn’t break any of your absurd rules to begin with. Since we made the accord, I have neither killed nor injured nor left the domicile without your permission. Unless you count those undead. I don’t.”

You love the amount of power you hold over him; the proverbial leashes you have each other on. It’s in his nature to kill constantly– he’s established this– but he takes your rules so seriously that he’ll still try to defy that part of him. Wild.

“But you did injure someone.” You point up at Thokk. “The cashier at the restaurant. You scared the shit out of him. Mental anguish counts as injury.”

“Ridiculous. That wasn’t part of the agreement. You made it up, didn’t you?”

“It was unspoken. It’s… relatively common knowledge here. Hurting someone’s brain is the same as hurting their body.” You did, in effect, make it up, but you wouldn’t admit that and lose your ground here. And isn’t it true? He definitely did you some mental damage, too, putting you through all that.

“It’s baffling to me,” he groans, rubbing his face. “You humans and your social mores. Somehow you’ve convinced yourselves you’d rather be humiliated than just take what you want.”

“It’s too early for this, Thokk.” You’re starting to regret buying those tickets for today. You were almost enjoying this just a second ago; now it’s starting to take a turn. Your new plan is to defuse the conversation as quickly as possible. “Let’s just save this for later. I planned something—”

“Even you,” he says, halting your train of thought mid-sentence. Oh, he’s really mad. He has started to pace, huge hands on his hips, your floorboards creaking with each weighty step he takes. “An insect to me, but still far stronger than most on your world. You could have whatever you want. You have no compulsion to participate in this planet’s foolish customs. And neither do I. Why do you insist on trapping us both?”

“I’m not trapping you in anything,” you retort, standing up to your feet. Your heartbeat quickens. You don’t see him backing down, but you can’t seem to do so yourself, now. This cuts deeper than any nitpick he’s had about your species thus far. The implication that you’re less like a human for your strength, and more like him, is especially disquieting to you. You don’t want to be like him. In fact, he’s only here because he wants to be more like you. “If you want to be Battle Beast so bad, we can send you to Machine Head to find your next opponent. You’ll be off-planet by tomorrow. But I know you won’t because you really don’t want to go back to being a bloodthirsty maniac.”

“These people are so… unlike you. Do you seriously feel allegiance to them?” Disgust drips from his voice.

“I do. This is my planet. I don’t need to explain myself. Just because you abandoned yours doesn’t mean I have to be the same way.” You come closer to Thokk until he’s almost looking straight down at you, and you drive your finger into his massive chest. “Do you see anyone here? I mean really see us. Not like bloodbags, but like people. Like you see yourself. And what about me? Am I even a person to you? Or just some toy?”

A low rumble collects in his chest, welling up as a growl in his throat, and you recoil. Too far? After a few days you’ve gotten a little more comfortable around him. You warmed up to him; almost enough to make you forget. He was never going to kill you, but you know from firsthand experience what he can do to you; what he still could do if he got tired of you. Your shoulder and your arm are healed but so, so fragile. You feel a phantasmal ache arise underneath the skin; it almost feels like it’s to remind you of what’s happened. As though it will somehow staunch the flow of memories, you clasp your shoulder with your hand.

Seeing that, Thokk goes quiet and takes a step back. There is something knowing in his expression, like he recognizes the discomfort he’s put you in, even if he doesn’t fully understand it.

“Human…” he starts, and a particularly hopeful sliver of your being is expecting an apology from him, but the rational side knows very well that Thokk isn’t the apologizing type. Instead, he drops to the floor with a loud whumpf, crossing his legs and taking a seat there.

With Thokk sitting on the ground and you standing upright, your positions relative to one another have been reversed. He is letting you look down at him.

You remain wordless, taking heavy breaths through your nose. Not gonna be the one to say sorry here.

“I am… trying to see your people,” he sighs. He’s having a hard time making eye contact, and for the first time, you’re pretty sure, you hear some shame in his voice. “But this is all unfamiliar to me. I will need more time to adjust. I have this feeling that I have lived this way before; relatively peacefully, companion to another. But… it has been longer than I can tell you, and I have since forgotten everything of that time.”

Slowly, that ghost of pain starts to subside, and you loose your hand from your shoulder. Your brow furrows as you try to make sense of what he’s told you.

So he’s tried this at least once before. That changes a lot. Thinking on it, it makes you a little less confident about the way this is going to go. Not that you were very confident in the first place; your time with Thokk has opened up a lot of unknowns. But this news puts you on a clock, of sorts. Something drove him away. Maybe it’s only so long until it happens again. That scares you. If he feels trapped or bored, you’ll pay for it, more likely than not with your life.

It’s the same brand of fear from when this… whatever this is with Thokk was less than a day old. The added context makes it worse. You get the feeling there’s nothing you’ll be able to do to stop him when things go bad.

“…You’ve done this before? Why didn’t you tell me?” You’re not sure where to start.

“ I don’t know for certain,” he huffs, running his fingers through his thick mane. He still can’t look you in the eye saying all this. “The memory is so distant I doubt I’ll ever know if it truly happened. If it did… I know the curse has something to do with my inability to remember it. But there was a base familiarity in this kind of life. I know I had a mate back then. I wouldn’t label you the same way, as we haven’t…”

“Mated?” You can’t believe you’re saying that word out loud. It’d crossed your mind a couple times that this could get more intimate, but now that Thokk is bringing it up– you’re pretty sure, anyways– it feels that much more real. It’s a little exciting to hear; maybe it might be more so if the fear of imminent death wasn’t creeping up on you again. God! These emotional fluctuations you’ve been having the last few days can’t be very healthy. You make a mental note to see a doctor before you start losing hair.

“Consummated our bond,” he says. “I would prefer that you let me finish explaining myself. But… yes.” Thokk has begun to look at your face again, and he’s already deep in thought. He’s studying you now like he so often does. It’s not fair that he’s so good at it. You want to see the inside of his brain this time, see what about you is keeping his attention away from all the roars for blood and violence borne from the vestiges of his curse. And, at risk of destroying everything the two of you have, how long you have left.

“Just… I wish you’d said something,” you tell him. “You know how this feels now, right?”

“I do,” Thokk says. “And I understand your apprehension. I promise, though, that if it comes to it, I will remove myself from this planet sooner than bring harm to you.”

He’s had the power to do that all along, you’ve learned. At first you were wondering how he’d leave, but of course he had the means to return to a ship in low orbit. One of those door-opening devices. It was stashed away with the clothes he’d kept around in the apartment. The GDA wouldn’t take it from him, anyways. Bad news for everyone if he feels like he’s stuck here.

“All right. Lots of questions, I know,” you say. Thokk gives you a quiet nod; he has patience enough to tell you all that’s important. “But now I’m wondering if we’re– this whole thing we have– are we, uh, doomed?”

“I do not know, human. I suspect this will not last forever,” he says before readjusting to sit on his calves with a grunt. He spreads his knees before you and rests his hands on his thighs. “But, for as long as it does, you can… trust me to be gentle with you, and to henceforward observe your human customs… with less resistance than I have previously shown. If ever I fail, I hope you will find it within yourself to correct me.” He winces a bit when he discusses the bit about the customs. You know he doesn’t like conceding his beliefs.

But damn, if it isn’t the most reasonable he’s sounded so far. It’s hard to believe he’s the same person– alien?– who was brutalizing you earlier this week.

You take a few steps closer before crouching in front of Thokk, at which point he leans in a touch. He widens his eyes in waiting for your acceptance.

“I’m… okay with that. Let’s make the most of this.”

***

Stoic as he comes off, Thokk seems very pleased at the idea of getting to go outside again. The two of you share a short breakfast of scrambled eggs and toaster waffles. You drench your two in syrup before you eat; he shovels his eight into his mouth plain.

The GDA hadn’t anticipated this development— your relationship, to name it— so of course they had trouble scrounging up clothes for Thokk. Other than the few form-fitting pieces like the one he has on this morning, most of it is unwanted stuff from large superheroes about his size or larger. Over top of the one-piece he chose to wear out someone else’s really baggy harem-style sweatpants that actually look pretty nice on him; they’re a good counterweight to his typical top-heaviness. (But you know Thokk isn’t wearing them out of any fashion sense. When they got dropped off for the first time, he mumbled something about them smelling good. Now you’re wondering whose exactly they were.)

It’s kind of jarring to see Thokk wear human clothes, or at least anything close. From the outside, it doesn’t reduce his menace.

Today gives the two of you a particularly blustery morning– though not rainy, thankfully– and you feel goose bumps cropping up where the brisk wind blows past your open jacket and onto your chest. You press in close to Thokk, who glances down at you, amused, before putting his huge arm around your shoulder. He’s warm, but all he has on his upper body is that sleeveless thing.

“How the hell are you not cold?” you ask him, shivering.

“My definition of ‘cold’ is altogether different than yours, human. I’ve weathered the depths of space. This… this is nothing,” he replies. Your adverse reaction makes him squeeze you a bit tighter. Crushing, just a little bit, but a good kind.

“Okay, but you didn’t say how. You just told me the obvious,” you point out, your voice a little weaker than normal from being squeezed up next to him, and he snorts before releasing you.

“You want a biology lesson? Fine. Dornian fur coats are special. Two-fold. We have a fireproof outer layer with a higher water content. The underlayer traps heat and keeps it close to the skin. White-furred Dornians like myself usually hail from polar regions. Our fur is actually transparent with hollow hairs, and it reflects more visible than ultraviolet light, giving it the illusion of looking white. The ultraviolet light largely stays close to the base of the fur and is, eventually, absorbed into the skin as heat. Of course…”

He takes another glance at you to make sure you’re paying attention. You give him a very quick, very knowing nod with your eyes wide and alert. Maybe it’s going a bit over your head, but you’re listening.

“…Some of it is because I am a Dornian, and most of it is because I am me. But I doubt I would need to be cursed with strength to shrug off the wind on this day…”

“Do you remember growing up?” you ask him, curiosity piqued. You probably won’t see another Dornian in your life, but you’ll appreciate the added context. “Like, do you know if you were in a very cold place, or…?”

“No.”

God, okay.

“So you can’t remember your early life, but you can give me all these weird factoids about your species?” You maintain a certain level of skepticism. More likely he just doesn’t want to talk about his life. He hasn’t been scared of being vulnerable, but you suspect there’s an upper bound to how much of his background he’s willing to share.

“I know what matters to me, human. Of my childhood, I remember that I was born and raised in war, and that I was given the name Thokk. Nothing else. Understanding the limits of heat and cold that my fur can withstand is far more pertinent in my life than knowing the details of my upbringing.”

The domineering tone in his voice never gets old. It was petrifying when you first met him, but now it’s cuter than anything else. He talks like you’re already supposed to know the stuff he’s telling you.

“Fair enough, I guess. Sorry for asking.”

“No, it’s… good. I like when you ask these questions. I only worry that I cannot answer them sufficiently. For everything you teach me, I want to teach you at least half that,” he says.

“Don’t stress too much about it. I’ve already learned plenty. Maybe a little too much,” you chuckle.

You feel his arm brushing up against yours again. Expecting a simple breach of personal space, you look down and behold his huge paw twitching familiarly.

He is angling to hold hands.

You indulge him, wrapping your cold hand up in his warmth, and quickly feel a deep thrumming. Oh my God, he’s purring. Like an actual cat.

The broad smile on his muzzle, and the joining of your hands, keeps up all the way to the subway platform.

***

You can’t imagine that anyone at the American Museum of Natural History was expecting to share their outing with an alien today. It doesn’t seem like it. You brace yourself to give more embarrassed glances at people, but Thokk keeps quiet. He does pull you in a little closer, though, and you can’t exactly tell whether it’s for comfort, to ground himself, or because he thinks someone’s going to try to hurt you. He knows nobody here can do that, right? You hope he hasn’t forgotten you’re strong yourself. The fact you’re a superhero is getting less and less important to this mission (can you still call it that?) by the day. But by no means is it a bad thing that Thokk is seeing you more like a companion than a challenger.

You’re very pleased with your choice of location right now. It’s more expensive, but New York City is far less “active” than Chicago in terms of supervillain attacks. That’s an advantage in your situation, as much as you want to go out and put your powers to use in the field. It’s better not to tempt Thokk with a good time, because it’ll probably end with an extremely messy win and then he’s liable to go after anyone else in the vicinity, and before you know it your entire plan has failed.

The corollary to this feature— New York City being comparatively peaceful, to be specific— is that there are far less superheroes around. Good thing; it’d be hard to justify this to the other superheroes in your life. Remember that murderous alien from the footage that scared the living daylights out of every GDA-associate team? you imagine asking. Now you have to play around him for who knows how long, and it’s on me because I didn’t want Cecil to give up one of the worst crime lords America has ever seen. Also because I fell in love.

Did you fall in love? You’ve been second-guessing yourself a lot recently. Whatever you’re feeling, you haven’t yet heard any complaints from Cecil or his associates about this whole endeavor, so you’re probably doing the right thing.

Time to get out of my head. You’re approaching the front entrance from west Central Park. The crowds are lighter today on account of the foul weather; a plus for anyone, but especially for those lugging around a huge alien who isn’t exactly accustomed to common courtesy on Earth.

“What did you pay for admission here?” Thokk asks you as you hand your phone to a woman at the check-in. She comes off nervous– everyone too close to either of you does– so you try to downplay the obvious menace radiating from Thokk by acting casual.

“Sorry,” you say, turning to him. “The damage is already done. Please don’t ever ‘pay’ for me again.”

“Hmph.” Thokk crosses his arms. You can see he’s resisting the urge to argue with you. Good.

As you stand on the stairs and pore over the folding museum map in your hands, Thokk leans in over your shoulder. He points a claw that could puncture the page at the location marked ‘Center for Earth and Space’.

“Take us there, human. I want to see what your kind thinks of space.”

“I thought you would! I wanted to do that too. But African Mammals is closer, so I want to see that first. They have dinosaur fossils, too… and huge gemstones. That’s so cool! Okay, maybe we should do space last…”

You look over your shoulder at Thokk, who grumbles, and you put on your most knowing smile before turning your gaze back to the map.

“I know you’re patient enough for this. Besides, you said you wanted to learn about my planet. Or something to that effect, anyways. This is how!”

He’s not happy about your priorities, but he lets you drag him along. He doesn’t see the resemblance between the lions and himself at all, though a part of you is pretty sure he’s just fucking with you. The Tyrannosaurus rex fossil isn’t especially impressive to him, but it’s larger and stronger-looking than anything else he’s seen here, and he looks more than a little dismayed to hear that they haven’t existed for millions of years. He is equally distraught at the news that none of the glittering geodes in the minerals hall hold any kind of magical power. (“What’s the point of having them, then?” he asks you.)

You’re preparing for more disappointment as the two of you enter the space center. Thokk examines displays and signs in relative silence, occasionally punctuating with a thoughtful murmur. Now he’s leading you along, pacing around models and moving on long before you’ve finished reading. You want to stay as close as you can to him in case anything happens. He’s doing a good job of ignoring onlookers, and everyone around him is giving him a wide berth, but one inconsiderate person bumping into Thokk could be all it takes for him to get in a huff again, and historically that hasn’t led to great outcomes.

You catch him gazing up at the models of the planets in your solar system. Wonder if he saw any of these on the way in. Wait, no, that’s stupid. You approach him and lean on the railing to talk.

“So, sentient life exists not just here, but on the next-furthest planet from your star as well…” He notices your presence, but doesn’t turn. He seems lost in thought.

“Yeah. Martians. We don’t know much about them. There was an expedition a while back. Really historic. I think they still have a special exhibit for that here, but I paid enough for the normal tickets. Apparently, they all live underground.”

“These Martians…” he starts, looking back down to you. “Are they strong?”

“Why are you asking?” You cock an eyebrow. “I don’t want to confirm anything about the Martians if you’re just going to go to their planet and look for a fight.”

“No, no, human,” he chuckles, waving a hand. “I’m only curious.”

“Well,” you say, jogging your memory. “We’ve only had one here on Earth. Martian Man– which is such a dumb name now that I’m thinking about it. He’s…”

You trail off as you puzzle out how to finish your sentence. Omni-Man got him. But it’s probably better not to bring him up.

“Dead,” you sigh. “He was strong, I guess. He could shapeshift; that’s not nothing. Probably not strong enough for you. But yeah, he was the only one. We don’t… talk to aliens much.” Thokk nods attentively.

“I’ve noticed. Most worlds I’ve walked on are better connected than this,” he says. You note a difference in tone between this and his typical Earth-bashing. He’s not just trying to rile you up. “The ability to observe the universe is an important milestone. But many of us have already been to its far corners…”

“The universe has corners? I heard it was more of a hypersphere…” You try to imitate the shape you’re describing on your hands before realizing the ultimate futility of emulating a four-dimensional object with your three-dimensional body. What does a hypersphere even look like?

“It’s a figure of speech, human.”

“Right. Sorry. That was dumb,” you say, exhaling. All your energy leaves with your breath. This was a mistake. Just disappointment after disappointment. “I, uh, hope this isn’t too boring for you. We can just leave–”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I like it, actually. I have never considered space this way.”

He likes it? That’s news. He could be lying, of course, to make you feel as though you weren’t wasting time for the both of you. But Thokk doesn’t really lie. Especially to spare peoples’ feelings.

“What does that mean? Is it, like, smaller for aliens?”

“It isn’t that.” He shakes his head and looks back toward the planetary models. “In my experience, space is little more than a long, desolate road. It is a passage between the bloodbaths that make up my life. In space I find no wonder, no mystery, no romance. Not like you do. I suppose I have… an appreciation for your view of space as a horizon.”

You smile for a moment. It’s touching, weirdly. That might be the nicest thing he’s said about humans so far. Now, you could be cynical about this and assume he’s making a backhanded compliment regarding your lower civilizational status, but you choose to believe he’s making a positive value judgment about humanity. That thought makes you happy, so why not chase it?

“Hey, uhh…”

“What are you thinking about, human?” Thokk asks, tilting his head.

“Your ships have to go faster than light to get here on time, right? Do you know… how?”

“I cannot answer your questions,” he says, shaking his head. He seems more disappointed than you do at the news. “I am neither explorer nor engineer. I wander our hypercluster only to kill, and eventually, to be killed myself.”

“Oh.” Bummer. You hope he doesn’t feel as though he’s wasting his time here, when he could be out there getting killed. Everything he’s said and done points to Thokk loving this experience, to your surprise of course, but you can’t help your doubts. This could end at any moment. “Well… let me know if you want to wander back home. Or to the pizza place; I hope they let me back in. But today has been pretty good so far, so I want to… you know, reward us for making it through.”

“Hmmm.” He pauses a moment. “I want to do that thing again, where you put your hand in my hand…”

“So close.” A new smile breaks out on your face. “It’s ‘handholding’. You’ll catch on eventually.”

“Is that human parlance?” He quirks a brow.

“No, I don’t think that’s just us. You probably just forgot. Try falling in love on another planet. I bet they’ll call it the same way. If they have hands.”

“And this excursion here… is it just that? Or do your people call it by a different name?”

“We call this a ‘date’. Again, I bet it’s the same on other worlds and you haven’t been on one in long enough that you don’t remember the word for it. But it gets confusing, because once we go on the first date, you become my date, and I become your date, and that’s a process called dating… Are you following?”

He nods, but from the way he’s looking at you, it’s obvious he’s more interested in your face than the minutiae of your language. The hollow darkness of Thokk’s eyes, which you understand to be a function of his curse, has not fled, and not once has he softened his stern gaze at you, so his eyebrows do all the talking for his face. He looks a little dead when he smiles, but you appreciate him for trying.

“Thus far. Is the similarity to the word ‘mate’… intentional?”

You pause. It sounds like the start to a bad joke, but knowing Thokk, he’s totally serious.

“What? No. No no no. We don’t use the word ‘mate’ like that. I mean, we do use it, but mostly to mean a friend. Some people call their friends their mates. In science they use it in reference to animals… you know, mating. Not people.”

“It bore asking,” he says before turning away from the railing and stretching his huge arms in front of him. “If you wish to return to your domicile, I will accompany you.”

“Of course you will,” you laugh. “Come on.”

***

Your visit to the pizza place on the way back is uneventful, much to your relief. To prevent anyone familiar with the events of last time from panicking, you have Thokk wait outside the establishment instead of coming in, which he understands, but is still not especially happy about. That new guy at the cash register is absent today; you wonder if he quit or it’s just his day off. Like the last time, you take four boxes home, but unlike that time, you actually pay for them.

It’s on the subway ride back where you start to panic. For once, it’s not because of anything Thokk says or does– he’s quietly reading a brochure from the museum– it’s a text message that starts it. From Monster Girl. Amanda. Whatever. Monster Girl is the name that’s in your phone, anyways.

What does she want to do with me? The two of you aren’t especially close. You’ve talked with her the most after any of the New Guardians, but that started before the team assembled, when the two of you got called to the same mission in San Francisco. Since then, you’d describe each other as acquaintances, but you’ve been out of touch recently, especially in the months after Thokk pushed the Guardians’ shit in. Of course, there were the are-you-okay conversations, but other than that…

She says she wants to come over tonight. Why?

Oh my God. Did Cecil tell the Guardians that Thokk is staying with me? You feel your heart rate jump as that thought forms in your head. On the one hand, you recognize she’s probably taking Kate’s loss pretty badly. She needs someone to talk to; someone to ground her when all her teammates are reeling from their last missions and their own grief. On the other, you can’t shake the paranoia that maybe she’s here to expose you. You’re not even particularly close with her; why is she contacting you now? If it’s about grieving, why doesn’t she talk to a friend? She almost died there, when he crushed her skull. There’s no way to defend keeping him around.

You swallow and send a reply, telling her you’re open to it and asking what the plan is. It seems like a neutral enough way to gauge her intentions and feelings. You hate being this furtive around someone who’s mourning their teammate and friend, but you really can’t have this secret get out to the Guardians; who knows what kind of fallout it’ll lead to? And if it’s already out, you need to run damage control.

You look over at Thokk. He’s still reading quietly, but he pauses long enough to glance at you. There can’t be that much to look at in that brochure. Not like he’d be any help anyways.

She tells you she just wants to reconnect. Probably a bad time for that. She went through a loss recently– she doesn’t say who it was, but she probably suspects you already know– and it made her want to reach back out. For maybe just an hour or two.

You want to agree to that, but Thokk’s presence makes this arrangement more than a little bit uncomfortable. Maybe it’s time to call in a favor from Cecil. It’s kind of funny, when you think about it, getting someone to chaperone the alien.

You send a text to his personal number, asking if the GDA can look after Thokk for a couple hours, but your hopes are dashed when he immediately replies by asking how you’re expecting him to be able to hold Battle Beast down when he has no attachment to anyone at the Pentagon. You’ve been putting a lot on faith these past few days, he says, and while it’s mostly worked out until now, he has to draw the line somewhere. Thokk has mellowed out a bit, sure, but he’s still dangerous.

Some help you are. Okay, Cecil’s not convinced. But maybe if you can get Thokk to agree, it’ll all work out.

“Hey, any chance you can leave for a few hours and stay with the, uh, Global Defense Agency guys?”

“Are they the ones that sent those… hideous undead things?” he asks, barely looking away from his reading.

“…Yes?”

“Absolutely not.”

Damn. You were banking on him agreeing. Maybe there’s something else he can do for that time. You take a deep breath and text Amanda that she’ll be the first to hear about it once you know if you’re available tonight.

There’s a way out of this. But you need time to think. You’re running on empty, so maybe some pizza too. For now, you tell Amanda that you have to check your availability. Technically not a lie.

It’s over pizza in your apartment that you get the genius idea to hide Thokk in your bedroom. He isn’t receptive to the idea at first, but you didn’t really expect him to be.

“Can I get you to, uh, stay in the bedroom for a while?” you ask him in between bites.

He snorts and keeps chewing, not even looking up at you, but when he realizes you’re asking in earnest, you get his attention.

“…Why should I do that?”

“Someone’s coming over. It’ll only be a couple hours. My comic books are in there and everything…”

“You want me to hide?” He scowls at the thought of being made to conceal his presence from anyone. “Who do I look like to you? If this is an Earthly visitor, I should have no trouble at all dispatching them. If otherwise, then I accept whatever–”

“Not that,” you interrupt. “It’s just a friend; it’ll be easier if she doesn’t know you’re here. She’s going through a loss and I don’t want to surprise her.”

He pauses, then lets a deep breath out before closing the empty pizza box in his lap.

“When?”

“Let me get back to you on that,” you tell him. Knew it’d work. You text Amanda that you’re free; she asks if 6:30 PM works and promises to bring some takeout to make up for the unexpected intrusion. As unnecessary as that offer seems, you don’t want to deny her the chance to feel helpful. Maybe she really needs it. Not like she was on Earth when it happened, but you know as well as anyone the guilt that comes with being unable to save someone.

You accept that timing and look down over the table at Thokk.

“Six-thirty,” you tell him.

He glances around himself and shrugs.

“That’s, like, four hours from now,” you clarify.

He gives you a little eyebrow flash, pushes himself to his feet with a grunt, and goes off to wash his hands.

Thokk is lazy throughout the afternoon even as you try to tidy up your apartment for Amanda. His body clock is strange, probably on account of spending so much time in space without a day-night cycle, so he doesn’t always sleep when you do. He has periods of real sleep, and then he has these periods of diminished activity, like what he’s doing now. For the most part, he lays on his back in the kitchen staring at the ceiling lights and leaving a Thokk-shaped impression on your rug.

You pass through the area periodically, running the dishwasher, picking up dirty dish rags to throw in the basket awaiting its trip to the laundry room downstairs, stowing a half-full pizza box away in the fridge. He always scoots his huge body out of the way, just enough to accommodate your presence. The rhythmic sound of his inhales and exhales, as well as the pattering of a new rain outside, lulls you into your own kind of rhythm as you work.

At one point, you return to shove the pizza boxes into the recycling. Thokk gnaws with his sharp teeth at the radial zone of his wrist until it bleeds, then he licks the blood from the tiny patch of raw flesh.

“What are you thinking about?” you ask him, pressing the boxes flat on the counter.

“You, human,” he says absently.

Oh. It’s cute, but a little concerning. Like too many things these days.

“And, uh, what about me is making you bite yourself like this?” You’re hoping he’s not planning on drawing your blood. Maybe doing it from the finger is all right, if he really wants a taste…

“That isn’t because of you,” he says as he finally fixes his gaze on you instead of the ceiling. There’s a little bloodstain on the bottom of his muzzle that you’re resisting the urge to wipe away with a wet towel. “I wanted to have it again. I felt incomplete without it.”

“Hold off, if you can,” you say as you push the bin back and close the cabinet. “I don’t want you getting hooked on it and, you know, going bad.”

Thokk grunts and keeps licking. He talks about blood a lot, but you didn’t take him for such an addict.

***

6:21 PM rolls around after your productivity spurt winds down. Besides the giant alien stretched out in the middle of your kitchen space, your apartment is looking exceptionally normal. Amanda said she’d be a bit late– it’s fine, you’re not sure how she’s getting here, or where from, anyways– so you haven’t made Thokk leave for the bedroom yet. But it’s probably getting to be about that time. He’s been hibernating in the open for long enough.

“Let’s get you out of here, Thokk.” You lightly tap his shoulder with your foot.

“Oh, but I like your kitchen, human,” he drawls, suddenly reaching out to stretch his arms behind his head. The sudden movement makes you jump a bit. A narrow smile forms on his face. “I want to stay and watch the flickering of your overhead light.”

“You said you would,” you tell him. “And we honor our agreements here, don’t we? Come on, get up.”

“I never said anything. I only showed you that I acknowledged your offer. Those are two different things.”

“Don’t be an asshole about this. Not now, anyways. There’s plenty of time for getting hung up on the small stuff later. And you can even sleep in the kitchen. Although to be honest I’m not convinced you actually like this space so much as you’re just too lazy to move.”

His self-satisfied face completely collapses and he starts to push himself to his feet. Being called lazy is a good motivator. You’d know. It works on you.

You call after him as he starts to trudge towards your bedroom. “All my comics are in there. You can read if you want, but don’t sit on the bed or you’ll break it. Er, where are you in Seance Dog?”

“I began the fourth volume last night. But I only got a few pages in.”

“Nice. That’s when it gets really good. Okay, we’ll check in about it later,” you say as you crouch over, inspecting the floor for anything Thokk might’ve left behind. All you hear in response is the bedroom door clicking shut.

It smells vaguely like Thokk’s fur in the kitchen, but there’s not much you can do about it except spritz some air freshener around. He doesn’t smell bad per se, but very recognizable, and you’re not taking any chances in case Amanda remembers the scent for whatever reason.

Examining the floor, you find a couple drops of thick, dark blood that probably fell from Thokk’s fingers or teeth. It’s hard to clean blood off a rug, but not impossible. You grab a rag and wet it down with cold tap water, then get to work blotting the stain.

You’ve just finished and deposited the scrunched-up rag in the laundry bin when you hear a knock at the door. You rinse your hands, dry them off on your clothes, and go check the door.

Amanda is standing there, far enough below your usual field of vision that you have to look down to behold her. She’s wearing a wet black raincoat over top of her other clothes and carrying two plastic bags of some kind of takeout. Somehow, she looks even younger than when you last saw her.

“Hey,” she says, smiling up at you, and you open the door wider to beckon her through. You help her with the bags, placing them on the dining table, and she takes off the raincoat, turning around to look for a rack or something similar.

“Amanda,” you say, swiping the coat from her hands and placing it on a wall hanger next to the door. “You’re right on time. What was all that about being late?”

“Well, I asked the guys on teleportation to take me to Brooklyn Heights so I could take a leisurely stroll over. So of course they dropped me off in the middle of Times Square. I had to get a taxi over.”

“Sorry to hear that. They’re usually pretty reliable with me…”

“It’s not a problem. I like New York, so I’m not mad about seeing more of it.” She shakes her head at you slightly. “My only issue with the way it shook out is that the food might be cold now.”

You each untie a bag and empty the contents. The boxes are warm in your hands; you’re glad you won’t have to rely on your extremely inconsistent microwave to reheat them.

“It’s Chinese. I forgot to ask you what you prefer, and I figured most people like Chinese just fine, so…”

“You were right.” Four entrees plus some rice is definitely enough for the both of you, even if you’re underestimating on account of sharing meals with Thokk the last few days. “Can I get you a drink? There’s no alcohol in here, or soft drinks, but we have…” you trail off, gesturing vaguely to the kitchen area.

“I’m okay with water.” Amanda smiles politely. You rush over to fill up two tall glasses of water as Amanda sets out plastic spoons and chopsticks from the bag, then return to the table with the glasses and two plastic plates.

“So, how’ve you been, uh, holding up?” you ask. “It’s been a second.”

“Before I get hung up on anything else…” Amanda scooches her chair out and loudly sniffs the space around her. “Not to sound rude, but do you have a cat or something? It smells kinda like cats in here. I only ask because I have two myself.”

Your heart rate spikes. Oh, she’s totally onto me. You give her a smile that probably looks way more suspicious than you’re intending it to.

“I do! I do. Yeah. He’s in my bedroom right now. He gets… kind of feisty around strangers so I don’t like to have him around new people on the first visit.”

Technically not a lie.

“I… see,” she says, staggeredly. “Bummer. I like meeting peoples’ cats.”

“Maybe one day,” you say, pulling your chopsticks from their red paper sleeve and reaching for a piece of sauteed eggplant. You feel your heartbeat slowly returning to normal. “But… your life? How are things?”

She sighs, emptying noodles onto her plate. “Getting better. I don’t know. The funeral was a little bit ago. Black Samson was saying we should be scouting for a replacement, but we’re all taking it pretty hard. Especially the Immortal. A lot of us wish we’d been back on Earth instead of fighting those aliens.”

“God, I’m so sorry, Amanda. I wasn’t close with Kate or anything,” you tell her, sipping your water, “but I know that feeling.”

“Well, that’s… kinda why I wanted to talk to you. It’s cool having superhero friends; this stuff doesn’t feel as weird to talk about with you. And, no offense to them…”

You wait for her to finish and swallow your bite. “Go ahead! Nobody’s listening.”

“No, nothing like that.” Amanda shakes her head. “It’s just that we’re all feeling about the same way, and we all know that, so none of us are really bringing it up. I’m worried it’s going to put a rift in between us all. Immortal is despondent. I think Rex and Rae are traumatized. But nobody’s said a word since the funeral. And I want to talk it over with Rudy, but I don’t know if he really… gets it… sorry, I’m definitely saying too much…”

“It’s… really fine,” you reassure her. “It’s not too much. That’s what we’re here for.”

“Well, I feel bad just going on about myself, so… let’s pivot.” Amanda takes a break from talking for a moment with the paper pail of rice. “Your life. What are you up to?”

Your breath hitches. You probably should’ve come up with a vague alibi for this. Okay, I’ll just figure it out on the fly.

“Definitely not as much as you.” You take a bite, using it to plot your next sentences. “I… haven’t actually been a superhero at all for the last few days. They, uh, brought a lot of people out of reserve while you Guardians were out doing the important stuff. I think they skipped over me.”

“Lucky.” Amanda smiles. She seems to be buying it. “They wouldn’t let us off the hook like that. I can’t even tell you how long it’s been since I caught up with someone outside the team over dinner.”

“The pay makes up for it, right? It has to.”

“Honestly?” She leans in. “Not really. Some of us were thinking of asking for a raise. Or at least extra funding.”

Your eyes widen. “For real? Maybe the Guardians of the Globe should unionize. You guys are, like, the strongest heroes in the whole world. The GDA would have no choice but to listen to you.”

“Rae floated that idea, but we’d have to find a better way to go about it than labor-striking. Because there’s no way we can let supervillain attacks go unanswered. Even for a day. I mean, it’s always something new.”

“But the GDA has backups on backups,” you tell her in between mouthfuls of noodles. “If you won’t do it one day, someone else will.”

“Sure, but no one does it like us. I mean, we’re the damn Guardians of the Globe. Who’s outperforming us when we work as a team?”

“Don’t tempt me on my break time,” you chuckle. “Those are fighting words, you know?”

Amanda laughs. It’s a sudden, sharp laugh, maybe one she wasn’t expecting to let out. There’s a warm feeling of purpose welling up in you. Like you’re doing your job, but better than that. You get the same feeling when you see the relief on the face of someone you saved. You’re helping out an acquaintance– can I say friend?– someone important.

It doesn’t last.

“Alternatively,” you continue, “you guys could organize the world’s smallest picket li—”

Click. You tense as you hear the door to your room open. A truly massive presence lumbers through. You can’t see him from your seat; instead, you watch Amanda’s face fall, her eyes widen, her bottom lip start to tremble. Her spoon falls from her quivering hand, lands on its handle, and rebounds just off the plate. She remembers him, all right.

Slowly, you turn. Thokk opens the fridge, bends over somewhat, and looks inside, his huge paws resting atop the door handles. He grumbles a bit as he examines the contents. He doesn’t even look in your direction.

“Hey!” you shout at him.

Your exclamation gets his attention. Now he turns to face the both of you, eyes narrowed. Amanda grips the edge of her chair.

“What… the fuck… are you doing out here? I told you to stay in the bedroom!”

“I was hungry.” He snorts indignantly, like he can’t possibly be wrong here. Oh, how you resent that.

Amanda points a twitching hand at Thokk. She’s trying to recollect herself and get a sentence out.

“That’s… your cat?”

You swallow and put your face in your hand. No sense in denying it. “…Yes. That’s him.”

“You… you… do you know who this is…?” she asks you.

You can only look at her expression from between your fingers; it’s locked up with fear, confusion, and memories of horrible, all-consuming pain.

“I do. I know. I’m so sorry.”

The alien cocks his head, shuts the fridge door.

“I don’t recognize this… juvenile. Did you inform her of my presence here?” Thokk seems to pay no heed to the anguish on Amanda’s face as he stares the both of you down. You can tell he’s not trying to menace your friend, in the same way as he wasn’t trying to menace you this morning, but when you’ve been beaten within an inch of your life by someone, they’ll find it pretty easy to scare you, even unintentionally. Of course he doesn’t see it. He doesn’t even know who she is.

That anguish turns to rage. You see her scowl and stand up from your chair. The bluish mist of her curse envelops her, and before you can tell her to stop she’s already transformed again into that lumbering, green-skinned behemoth you can’t help but feel scared for.

Amanda knows this hurts her. She doesn’t have to do this. And yet…

“Recognize me now?!” she roars in that monstrous voice, and steps closer to Thokk. In this form, she is even larger than he, standing up at twelve feet even and even eclipsing his own musculature. But each of you knows that her superior size was, ultimately, not enough last time. She can’t possibly be looking to go again, can she?

“The memory is coming back, yes,” Thokk says, smiling and baring his sharp teeth. He takes a step closer himself with his hands on his hips. “I crushed your skull the last time I was on this planet. It was… extremely gratifying.”

No way this ends well.

You need to break this up before someone gets hurt, and before Thokk loses control. Acting totally on your impulses that might just get you killed, you rush in between the two giants, drawing their gaze away from one another and onto you. You clasp your hands together in pleading.

“No fights! No fights. No fights. Not in here. Please.”

Thokk looks down at you and snarls, but then something clicks inside him and he recognizes it’s you. His pupils widen, and with a huff, he hangs his head and backs down.

Then Amanda does so herself, releasing the monstrous form and falling back down in the chair.

Fight defused. But…

You turn to Amanda, who’s glaring at you, expecting a reason. “I know you’re probably mad right now–”

“No shit I’m mad. This thing damn near killed me.” Amanda says, cutting you off.

Thokk sneers. “Please. I was hardly trying to kill you. If you nearly died, that’s a failure on your part and warrants further training.”

“Not helping!” you shout at the alien, who crosses his arms.

“Why is he here?” Amanda asks you, rubbing her temples. “Oh my God. Does… does Cecil know about this?!”

You want to ask yourself why he’s here. Staying in the bedroom seems like the easiest task ever. But you know that’s not what she means. There's no way to explain why you’re hosting Thokk. Not without sounding totally insane. He’s my boyfriend… kind of?

“He does,” you tell her wearily. “He knows. It’s part of… this plan. I didn’t want you to find out, because…”

You glance over at Thokk, whose head is back in the fridge, rooting around for the pizza box.

“No, I think I’d rather know these kinds of things,” Amanda fumes, collecting her things. She’s scowling up at you, but there’s a little sheen to her eyes. It’s not that simple. “Now I know where to stay away from. And… who to stay away from.” She puts the bridge of her nose in her hands. “Christ, I didn’t even think he was on this planet anymore. I thought we were done with him!”

You know very well there’s no way of making her stay, or keeping her from telling the other Guardians about your new guest. She wants nothing more than to get out of here, away from Thokk. She’s already getting her coat from the hangar; due to her height (or lack thereof), she grabs it closer to the bottom than the top. She turns around at the door and looks into your eyes.

“Amanda… I’m so sorry.” It’s all you can manage.

“What’s that going to accomplish?” she asks, grabbing at the door handle and pulling it open. “Whatever. And fuck you, space cat.”

She slams the door shut behind her as she exits your apartment, leaving you and Thokk alone. And you haven’t felt more alone this entire time.

You turn over to the cat, who’s started to pore over the leftover takeout. You’re not even sure where to begin with him.

“Is this any good?” He holds the sauteed eggplant box up to you. “It seems pleasant, but I’m not convinced of its nutritional value…”

You can physically feel your heart sinking. Of course he doesn’t think anything of it. You might’ve stopped him from going on a killing spree, but even when you strip that away… he is still a terrible person.