14. HIVE
fourteen
W e had not expected everything to go smoothly, but of course it was frustrating, our gleaming one not fully understanding us. The frustration was easier to deal with than the idea of having pushed him to do something with us that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with.
Leo had sunk into a nap between us, but we couldn’t sleep, were left with our human and the fear we might cross a line with him like had been done with us. The movie he had chosen, in its own way, echoed that fear, bodies taken and used as incubators, choices removed.
We watched it end with rapt attention, stroking Leo’s head absently while also watching him closely. The main character acted smart, planning with others. In a way, with the small spaceship and the seven sleepers, we could see this being a story about a hive instead of singulars. For a hive, being reduced from seven to one would be traumatic, but once the movie ended, we thought about it, whether we would risk our numbers to make sure Leo was safe.
We couldn’t even imagine not doing it even if we weren’t certain what the pain of such a loss would do to our mind. In the darkened room, our thoughts drifted back to when we had been captive, kept apart, and used.
Some of us shivered. We knew we were no longer in that room with the lock and the metal frame bed. The room was a place inside our mind, like the memory of filthy, damp sheets. One of us let out a tiny whimper. Leo stirred, not waking. He turned on his side and put an arm around us.
We smiled. We were sure that he needed touch now, perhaps enough to forgive the things we didn’t want to tell him about us. If he wanted more than to be held…we desired it. We had felt him, earlier, but no physical reaction, no matter how obvious or immediate, was an invitation.
We remembered what that other human, the one whose name we didn’t want to think, had said to us: See? You’re hard. You want this as much as I do, you’re greedy for it. We wouldn’t repeat the words from that sickening mouth, lies he’d wanted us to swallow like poison.
With effort, we pushed all those thoughts from our mind. One of us had grabbed so hard that we had probably bruised our own arm, and we’d have to make sure Leo didn’t see it.
One of us stood from the cozy place we’d made on the floor to walk around, pacing to help us clear our head. There were other things we wanted and needed. The job at the Dazzle and the yoga studio would help, and there was the business Leo had inherited.
In our pacing, we stopped at the small storage room and saw that it was full of candles and handmade soaps among other things, everything stacked and labeled. In the room, there was a recipe book for the candles and the soaps as well, and we flipped through it.
Leo’s Lion Soap, tear-free soap for children, we read. The instructions to make it were handwritten, and we carefully traced the line of the L.
“We’ll be taking good care of your grandson. Of your son. We promise it.”
Leo turned again, though he couldn’t have heard us whisper to the ghost of the parent he had lost. He ended up snuggling closer to our chest and burying his nose in our hoodie. Hot tingles ran through us.
We got to watch Leo for almost two more hours at which point he blinked himself awake to look at us with sleepy eyes, that shard of emerald bright in the left one.
“Did I fall asleep?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t wake me?” He stretched, and we stroked along his arms and chest.
“You must have been tired to fall asleep like this, which means you needed the rest.”
He groaned. “I should probably get to St. Auguste. I have to sort this situation with the headmaster-principal of scones.”
“The who of what?”
Leo grinned, closing one eye while he rubbed it. “The vampire. Who said he wants me for my resting bitch face. Principal Farrow.”
We hissed. “We should have a word with him about that.”
“Ugh, no thank you. And it’s temping. I’ll just temp for him. It’s not like I’ll be good at being a secretary anyway. Given it’s a school, I probably have to be there way too early.”
“We can go for you,” we offered.
Leo stared at us. “Huh?”
“To be a secretary. We can do that. You can stay here, maybe show us some of the things your grandmother made. The candles and soaps?”
Leo sighed. “You would really do that, huh?”
“Of course.”
He sat up. “I have to head to class though. And don’t forget, the Hawthorne people want me to work. It might not be the worst idea in the world. I can’t be unemployed forever.”
We thought he very much could but kept that to ourselves.
“We will accompany you.”
We said that firmly. It was not a point we were willing to negotiate, not after watching over Leo in his sleep and realizing how precious he was.
He did the human thing, looking from face to face. “With one person. No, wait. You are one person—one personality? You know what I mean. One unit of hive. You can come with one of you if you want to come at all.”
“Wouldn’t two be easier?” we asked. We had done very few things with just one ever since we had escaped from the human who had used us. Whenever we did, we were on edge.
“I don’t need bodyguards.”
“But company? Two make very good company. And maybe you can get used to us not being singulars that way?” We imbued our voice with hopefulness, with pleading.
Leo made the joints in his fingers crack, then those in his neck. We flinched.
“Sorry. But let’s go with one of you, okay? Especially considering there should be none of you.” He looked at us, one of us, as if he wanted to make sure we got it.
We loved when Leo looked at us, we realized. A hive was difficult to miss, and supernaturals generally liked us. But we were rarely seen , were rarely understood. We thought that perhaps the gleaming showed us the person who had it in them to understand and know us. The gleaming itself had faded slightly like we knew it would over time, though never fully.
In this moment, we wondered if perhaps, perhaps we should tell Leo, of how we had been betrayed and sold out to the human, of how he had hurt us. We wondered if he would see us the same way after we did. We were not weighted down with childhood naiveté and knew the only way to know was through telling him, but we were afraid. We were afraid so much our hand trembled. We balled it into a fist to stop it and leaned forward to hug Leo close.
“Oh, okay. Group hug. That’s nice.”
“We’re not a group,” we whispered into his ear while enjoying the warm, sleepy scent of him.
“I know. But, like, that’s the human way to describe this. Do you want me to call it a hive hug?”
We squeezed tighter, just a little, and smiled against his hair.
“Yes. Yes, we would like that very much.”
“Okay. Cool. Hive hug then. But there’s still only one of you coming along to class with me and to whatever the head-principal-master of Freak High has planned for me.”
“We will not let him do anything to you,” we said. “Is that school really called Freak High?”
“Nah. We’re not supposed to call it that, but the actual students—the ones that are underage and attend regular classes—call it that, so it’s fine. Just don’t tell on me.”
“We never would. We’ll keep all your secrets, Leo,” we said, and when he turned in our hug—in our hive hug—to find our lips, we gave him the sweet kiss that he wanted.