15. LEOPOLD
fifteen
H ere I was, heading toward school with the guy I was…dating? I looked at the single unit of hive who was walking next to me, the late afternoon light slanting just so to bring out the lines of his profile. He was holding my hand, something that had happened almost as soon as we’d left the house. I’d always thought holding someone’s hand was going to be awkward but it wasn’t, not with the hive.
“So what do I tell people you are? My date? My mate? Someone I might hang out with more in the future?”
The hive was looking all around us as we turned left and went down the stairs to the subway, but he stopped and focused on me before he answered.
“Is that very important?” He sounded actually clueless.
“Yeah? I think. I mean, for people. Like, when I bring you somewhere, I’d introduce you…do I use an alias for that?”
“Where are you thinking of bringing us?” He smiled like he wanted to say, wherever it is, please take me.
I felt my face heat even as we resumed walking, our footfalls echoing on the stairs. “I…uh. Places. If we end up…going somewhere. Oh, Tate’s place!” I’d never actually been to Tate and Ezra’s place, but we did have plans to remedy that. Or we had plans to make plans at least. “And there are always school events—assuming I temp there for more than a week and they have…whatever schools have. Parties. Dances. Meetings of secret societies.”
On the subway level, we stopped at the tracks, the hive standing close to me. There were two other people, an older lady with a shopping bag that had yellow tulips on it, and someone younger with big headphones and a gym bag slung over their shoulder. I only noticed because the hive looked at them before returning his attention to me.
“Tate knows who we are and who we are to you, and so does his secret boyfriend. People at school will understand when they see us together. But you could always tell everyone else that we are your hive. We think we would like that.”
That was only marginally helpful, but the thing was, the hiveling looked very excited about the prospect. His smile was bright, and while he waited for my answer, he shuffled an inch closer to me.
“You’re my hive?”
His mouth dropped open, closed. I then realized I’d never been looked at with love in someone’s eyes. I mean, yes, my grandma had looked at me lovingly, but that was different and nothing at all like the way the hive was looking at me. He had love in his eyes. His lips flushed redder in the station’s lights, and roses bloomed in his cheeks.
“We are your hive, Leo. We would—can we kiss you?”
“What, here?”
He nodded.
“O-okay.” I didn’t think the older lady would mind. I didn’t think the kid with the headphones would notice.
The hive leaned in. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this. Watching people kiss in public as if they were about to devour one another had always felt sort of weird to me, not yucky or anything like that, just…unfamiliar.
But the hive didn’t kiss me like that. He pressed his lips to mine, firm for a moment, then gentling the contact before he pulled away and looked around, left and right. He then focused on me again.
“Thank you. For calling us that. We like it a lot. We like being your hive, Leo.” I nodded, reaching up to touch my mouth with my free hand. The hive frowned. “You didn’t like the kiss?”
“Oh! No, I did. Really. More than I thought I would. I liked when we slept together earlier. Ah, I mean, not sleeping together , but lying on the floor next to one another while we were both not awake. I liked that.”
His thumb stroked over the back of my hand. “We were awake. It’s rare for all of us to sleep. We watched over you.”
“Watched over me, all creepy-like?”
I said that in a playful tone, or thought I did, but by the hive’s expression, he didn’t see it that way. His lips pressed tight, and his jaw set, determination written all over him.
“You must tell us. If we ever scare you. If we ever creep you out. But when we watch over you, it’s because you’re a singular, and you have to sleep. You are so defenseless when you sleep and are alone. Someone could walk in on you and—” He shook his head, pressing his eyes shut. “We’ll let nothing bad happen to you, Leo. Never.”
Clearly, this was a really important point for him, so I reached out with my other hand. I liked their face, those blue eyes, and I ended up cupping their cheek.
“Okay. I trust you. Not sure why, but you seem like a trustworthy guy. Or guys? How do I talk about you? Always in the plural?” I frowned. “Do I think of you in the plural?”
He leaned into my touch and opened his mouth, but then the announcement for the next train drowned out everything.
He looked around again before he spoke, tugged my hand until I stepped back from the yellow line.
“‘We’ is preferred for us when we talk about ourselves, but we aren’t a plurality of minds. We know for most others and especially humans, they talk in singular. It’s confusing for us, but we generally try. We like that ‘they’ is preferable when talking about another unless a singular has indicated a different preference. It’s almost as if they were like us and not a singular.”
The train arrived before I could interrogate the hive further. I wanted to move forward as the whoosh of air hit me, but the hive’s grip tightened, stopping me.
I looked over my shoulder. “What? Don’t you want me to go? I have to.”
He shook his head. “Wait until the train stops, Leo. It’s dangerous. You could get hurt.”
I chuckled. The hive was serious though, I could see that. So we waited until the subway had come to a full stop and the doors opened.
Once we were inside the pleasantly empty car, I pulled him to a seat next to me. He looked around but then sat instead of standing like he had before when it had been three of him.
The subway sped up, and I looked at the hive, who was tense again, glanced over his shoulder.
“You okay?”
His attention was right back on me. “Of course. We just don’t go out much with one.”
“Oh. Okay. I do all the time.” He didn’t smile at the silly joke, and if anything, I thought he looked sad about me consisting of a unit of one only, so I got back on topic. “So using ‘I’ is you adapting, but you’ve been saying ‘we’ all this time today. Does that mean you’re comfortable around me and don’t feel the need to fit in?”
He nodded. “We are also selfish. We want you to get used to us. It’s why we would have liked to come with two.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, fine. I should’ve let you be two. Next time, okay?”
Their face brightened. “Or we could have another join us? Is that also okay, Leo? For them to join us today?”
I adjusted my bag so I could easier look at him. “Well, I guess.”
He exhaled. “Thank you, Leo. Thank you so much.”
Which…yeah, I clearly had made a poor choice, asking them to split up like that.
“I had no idea it would make you this uncomfortable, being alone. I only asked because—” And it clicked. Instructor Arick’s lessons fell into place. “I was totally applying human sensibilities to you even though I know you’re not like me,” I whispered. “Sorry.”
“Oh, Leo. You don’t have to apologize to us for that. We also…we’re also not perfect, and we’re not as good at understanding humans sometimes. It’s hard to imagine what it has to be like for you, being a singular, being reliant on your name for others to know you. We know your name is important, and we like it, don’t misunderstand! But you are different from us, think in a whole different way, and we want to understand everything about you. We want to learn how you see the world.”
I probably looked really dumb staring at him, but processing that took a hot second. Was it romantic? Probably. It made me feel something. I wasn’t yet sure what, but not a bad thing, that was for sure.
“No one’s ever said anything like that to me,” I told the hive, who saw me as someone worth understanding on a really deep level, a level I wasn’t even sure I had.
“Because it was for us to say it to you.”
There was a conviction in his words, the kind with which you know the Earth circles the sun or that the latter will rise again come morning. Maybe he had that sort of deep knowledge, could tell that it was true on an instinctual level, just like he had seen me gleam or shine back at the Dazzle.
“That makes sense, weirdly enough. I call you ‘they,’ don’t I? And I have to think of you as ‘they’ as well, right? Only not in the non-binary sense, but in the non-singular sense. Did I get that right?”
Their face told me everything. Their face told me I had gotten it right. They had a bright smile, and oddly, I imagined that all five of them were smiling it in this very moment.
“You did. Leo, you did. You are our Leo, like we are your hive, and you understand us.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’m starting to.” I cleared my throat. “Are you actually going to come to class with me?”
They nodded. “If you want, we can take notes for you. Or get you snacks from that cafeteria place we passed before. We noticed you didn’t pack anything and assumed you ate there.”
I rubbed my eyes. “To be totally honest with you, I’m afraid there might be cake.”