Chapter Fifteen
Vel'aan
The realization hits me while we're cleaning up after dinner.
"You don't have anywhere to go," I say suddenly, watching Alex dry dishes.
He pauses, looking at me with confusion. "What?"
"Tonight. You don't... you've been staying here, but you don't live here. You're supposed to return to Tev'ra's dwelling."
"I mean, technically." He sets down the plate he was drying. "But I haven't actually slept there in days. Pretty sure Finn's claimed my bed as extra storage space."
"But your belongings—"
"What belongings?" Alex laughs, but there's something hollow in it. "I came here with literally nothing but the clothes I was wearing."
I pause, frowning at him.
"Vel'aan?" He steps closer, concern flowing through our bond. "What's wrong?"
"You have nothing," I say quietly. "No home, no possessions, nothing that's yours."
"I have you." He cups my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone. "That's all I need."
"No." I pull back, needing him to understand. "That's not... you should have things. A home. A place that's yours."
"I'm fine at Tev'ra's—"
"Stay here."
The words come out rushed, desperate. Alex goes still.
"I already stay here most nights—"
"No, I mean... stay. Move in. Live here. With me." I take a breath, trying to organize thoughts that feel too large for words. "Make this your home. Our home."
Alex stares at me, and through the bond I feel his surprise, his hope, his uncertainty.
"Vel'aan, are you sure? I don't want to rush you—"
"I've been alone in this dwelling for a decade," I interrupt. "It's been mine, only mine, my sanctuary from the world. And now when you're not here, it feels empty. Wrong. Like you took half the light with you."
I move closer, taking his hands. "I want you here. Want to wake up knowing you're not leaving. Want to come home from the fields and know you'll be here. Want..." I struggle for words. "Want to stop feeling like you're visiting my life and start feeling like you're living it with me."
Through the bond, his emotions are a storm; joy and uncertainty and deep, overwhelming love.
"Just like that?" he asks softly. "No discussion? No trial period?"
"We have an empathic bond. I can literally feel your emotions. What more trial could we need?" I squeeze his hands. "Unless... unless you don't want—"
He kisses me, cutting off my doubts. When he pulls back, his eyes are bright.
"Of course I want to live with you. I just didn't want to push. You've been alone so long—"
"Too long," I correct. "I've been alone too long. And then you crashed into my life with your human intensity and your terrible swimming and your determination to thank me for something I thought was a failure, and suddenly alone feels like loneliness instead of safety."
"Vel'aan..."
"Stay," I say again. "Please."
"Yes." He kisses me again, softer. "Yes, of course. But I really don't have anything to move in."
"We'll get you things. Make spaces that are yours." I pull back, suddenly uncertain. "Though I don't know what humans need. Special furniture? Technology? I don't even know what foods you actually like, I just know you'll eat horrifying slime pods to impress my parents—"
"Hey." He stops my spiraling. "I don't need stuff. But... there is one thing I've been craving. Comfort food from Earth."
"What kind of comfort food?"
Instead of answering, he leads me to the synthesizer, programming something with quick efficiency. A few minutes later, he produces something I've never seen—a long pale fruit split lengthwise, covered in white cream and various colored sauces, topped with preserved fruit.
"Banana split," he announces. "Ultimate human comfort food. At least for me."
"It's very... elaborate."
"It's perfect. Come on." He grabs two spoons and heads for the deck. "Best enjoyed while watching a sunset."
We settle on the deck, the bowl between us, our feet dangling over the water. The sun is just starting to sink toward the horizon, painting everything gold and pink.
"Try it," Alex urges, offering me a spoon.
The first bite is overwhelming—sweet and cold and creamy with the strange texture of the banana. But the second bite is better, the flavors making more sense together.
"Do you make this often?" I ask.
Alex is quiet for a moment, taking his own bite. "When you sent me away. After that first morning, when I moved too fast."
My chest tightens. "Alex..."
"I went back to Tev'ra's place and realized I'd fucked up the best thing that had happened to me in years.
Maybe ever." He takes another bite, not looking at me.
"I couldn't sleep. Kept thinking about how I'd scared you off by being too human, too forward.
So I made one of these ate the whole thing while planning how to fix things. "
"I wasn't scared," I protest.
"You were. And you had every right to be. I came on way too strong." He finally looks at me. "But this... this reminded me that good things are worth waiting for. That just because humans move fast doesn't mean we can't slow down when it matters."
"Is that why you came to help with the zhik'ra?"
"Partly. Also I just wanted to be near you, even if you never touched me again." He offers me another spoonful. "This became my comfort food. Made three of these that night."
"Three?"
"Stress eating is a human tradition." He smiles, but there's sadness in it. "I thought I'd ruined everything before it even started."
I set down my spoon, turning to face him fully. "Sending you away that morning was nearly the worst mistake of my life."
"Nearly?"
"The worst was spending ten years thinking I'd failed you.
But sending you away that morning..." I touch his face.
"I regretted it immediately. Spent the whole day in the fields thinking about you.
About how you looked at me, how you made me feel.
How empty everything seemed without you there.
I was terrified of how much I wanted you to stay.
" I trace my thumb along his jaw. "One day and you'd already changed everything.
Made me want things I'd convinced myself I didn't need. "
"Like what?"
"Connection. Touch. Someone to share meals with." I gesture at the banana split, ice cream melting into colorful puddles in the bottom of the bowl. "Someone to introduce me to bizarre human foods while watching sunsets."
He kisses me softly, and I taste chocolate and strawberry on his tongue. A drop of melted ice cream drips onto my hand, and he catches my wrist, licking it clean without breaking eye contact.
"I love you," he says against my lips.
"I love you too," I reply.
We return to the dessert, taking turns feeding each other as the sun sinks lower. Alex explains the components—vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, strawberry topping, something called butterscotch. Each element too sweet on its own but somehow perfect together.
"Like us," he says after licking a drop of chocolate from my finger, then immediately looks embarrassed. "That was cheesy."
"It was." I lean in to kiss the corner of his mouth where butterscotch lingers. "But accurate. You're too much on your own—too warm, too intense, too forward."
"Thanks?" His hand finds my waist, pulling me closer.
"And I'm too cold. Too isolated. Too careful." I nestle against him, my head on his shoulder. "But together..."
"We're a banana split?"
I laugh into his neck. "That's terrible."
"You started it." He presses a kiss to my temple, his arm tightening around me.
We finish the dessert as the sun touches the water, turning everything molten gold. Alex sets the empty bowl aside and pulls me against him, my back to his chest, his arms around me.
"Thank you," he says quietly. "For asking me to stay."
"Thank you for wanting to."
"Did you really think I'd say no?"
I consider this. "No. But I thought you might want to wait. Take time. Humans have that saying about not rushing things."
"'Fools rush in'?" He laughs, the sound rumbling through his chest where I'm pressed against him. "Yeah, well, I crossed galaxies to find you. I think that ship has sailed."
"Ship has sailed?"
"Human expression. Means it's too late to change course." He shifts, pulling me more securely against him, and I can feel his heartbeat against my back.
"Ah." I turn in his arms to look at him, having to push his hair back from his forehead where the evening breeze has blown it. "So we're fools rushing in?"
"The biggest fools." He kisses me again, his hand tangling in my wet hair from the day's work. "But happy ones."
The sun disappears completely, leaving us in the soft twilight. Around us, bioluminescent plankton begin to glow in the water, creating constellations beneath the surface.
We stay on the deck as darkness falls properly, watching the water come alive with natural phosphorescence. I show him the navigation stars my people have used for generations, teaching him the old names while small fish jump nearby, their scales catching the moonlight.
"I should get my things from Tev'ra's," he says eventually, stretching with a small groan. "All one bag of them."
"Tomorrow," I say, catching his hand before he can stand. "Tonight, just... be here. Be home."
"Home," he repeats, and through the bond I feel the warmth that word brings him. "I like the sound of that."
"It's not much. And you'll have to deal with my family visiting sometimes."
"It's perfect. And your family is growing on me."
"Like a fungus?"
"Like a particularly persistent fungus, yes."
I elbow him gently. "They're not that bad."
"They made me eat slime pods."
"You chose to eat them to impress them."
"Same thing."
We bicker gently, the kind of comfortable disagreement that comes from knowing there's no real conflict beneath it. Eventually, we go inside, leaving the dishes for morning, too content to care about chores.
As we settle into bed—our bed now, not just mine—I marvel at how different everything feels. The space that's been solely mine for a decade now holds traces of him everywhere.
"What are you thinking?" he asks, pulling me closer.
"That I'm glad you crossed space to find me."
"Even though I disrupted your entire life?"
"Especially because you disrupted it." I turn to face him. "I was existing, not living. Going through motions, hiding from connection. You changed that."
"You changed too," he points out. "That possessive display with your brother? Asking me to move in? You're not the same person who panicked when I suggested sex."
He kisses me slowly, deeply, and through the bond I feel his contentment, his joy, his certainty that this is right.
"I'm definitely making you try more Earth desserts. Ice cream is just the beginning."
"Is it all that sweet?"
"Most of it, yeah."
"Humans are strange."
"Nereidans are stranger."
"How?"
"You glow when you're happy. That's objectively strange." He traces a finger along my arm where soft gold light pulses under my skin.
"You grow hair in the oddest places." I run my hand over his chest, fingers catching in the coarse hair there.
"You have gills."
"You can't breathe underwater."
"Because we're land creatures!"
"Excuses."
We continue like this, trading gentle insults and kisses, until we're both laughing too hard to continue. Eventually, exhaustion wins, and we settle into comfortable silence.
Just before I drift off, Alex speaks into the darkness.
"Hey Vel'aan?"
"Mm?"
"Thanks for keeping me."
"Thanks for being worth keeping."
I feel his smile through the bond, bright and warm as sunshine.
Home, I think as sleep takes me. This is what home feels like. Not a place, but a person. Not solitude, but shared space.