“It’s sexy, whatever it is. Bathe me, Lora. I need that cold shower like I need a white Christmas.” I point to the shower in my most demanding way.
Lora laughs, setting me on my feet with a stabilizing grip on my forearm. “I am not getting into a cold shower with you, Ollie. My biology is far too sensitive to cold for that.”
I frown at that. “But you’re pale. Like really fucking pale. Pale usually indicates evolving in colder climates on this planet.”
Lora’s answering smile is both sexy and terrifying because it’s full of sharp teeth. “Maybe on this planet, but on my planet pale indicates that we’ve adapted to deflect the heat of our environment. We don’t have to worry about UV radiation burning our skin like you, but we can boil in our own bodies if we don’t have a way of dispersing the heat. We’ve adapted for higher temperatures than usually occur on your planet, but the trade off is that we cannot abide temperatures below…” He pauses for a moment before continuing with, “about sixty six degrees in Fahrenheit.”
“Oooh. This planet is going to be hard for you come winter,” I point out, stepping into the shower, dropping my swim trunks, and grabbing the bodywash.
Lora rattles again, and when I look up, he’s watching me. Ooooh, does the ScaryDarkAlienVampire like the look of the tiny human?
I laugh. “I can’t believe I get to call myself a tiny human.”
Lora gives me a bemused smile. “You are tiny compared to me.”
“That I am,” I agree as I start rinsing the soap off.
Lora watches as I finish getting the hot tub ick off me, then he makes sure I’m steady as I dry off and wrap the towel around my waist. He escorts me to my bedroom, where I flop on the bed instead of trying to get dressed.
“You know, I’m not against revisiting sex when I’m sober,” I tell him, blinking slowly because I’m suddenly exhausted.
“We are surprisingly biologically compatible,” Lora states, pulling my blanket over my body. “Good night, Ollie,” he says before disappearing with the clap of thunder.
I close my eyes against the sound, and the next thing I know it’s morning.
CHAPTER TEN
Alien invasion aside—no wait. Let me restart that sentence.
Because of the alien invasion, this has been the best summer of my post-college adult life. Let me count the ways my life has improved because of the ScaryDarkAlienVampires taking over:
No bills
No shitty boss named Chad
My cousin lives next door
I have a luxury apartment with more amenities than I ever thought I’d have
Free groceries
Free medical
And on top of all that, I made a new friend. Usually I can’t really count people among the blessings, but I’m really enjoying Lora as a person, and yes, that is colored by the stupid crush I have on him, but I think we can all agree that if humans had gone out into space first and found the alien empires, we would have figured out two things right away: how to kill it and how to fuck it.
We’re just violent, little, horny beasts, and we can admit that. Or I can admit that for all of us. Either way, we all know it’s true.
For the most part, the apartment building, which is massive by the way, is filled with the humans who’ll be living here for now. I live on level seventy nine because Lora thought the view from that level was better than any other level, and isn’t that the sweetest thing you ever heard? He said he thought I should have the best view because I’ve been actively helping them since we met. I guess even aliens understand the concept of positive reinforcement.
So, as I sit on the balcony outside my apartment (it’s a front door balcony that anyone can walk by on their way to their apartment from the high speed elevator), sipping wine and eating off a charcuterie board that I made for myself, I’m completely unworried about the future. Lora says that now that all the humans have been resettled, they’re going to start reassigning people to contributive labor options. Bee already has her new job lined up. She’s working in the rapid response medical center, and has already been educated about how to work the almost autonomous medical systems.
That’s right. Bee has been reeducated. Voluntarily. I actually watched it happen since Lora is one of the reeducators, and he’s the one who delivered her education package, for lack of a better description. He pointed a device at her head, pulled the trigger, so to speak, and Bee froze for about ten minutes before coming back online with all the knowledge she would need to be a technician in what qualified as an emergency room in the new infrastructure.
What was weird was that Bee said it felt like she’d gone through months of intensive studying as if, while she stood frozen, she actually went through the time to train on the machines. She said that the last training course she took prepared her for rejoining me in the same moment she left.
“It was all very… sanitized for human brains,” she explained a little hesitantly. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”
I’d been curious, of course, but there was no reason to reeducate me, so I remain curious.
