by Ashley West
"Okay," he gasped, one arm thrown over his eyes as the two of them laid there in the aftermath, sticky all over again. "Now, I'm done for the night."
Haven's laugh was rapidly becoming one of his favorite things. "I've heard that before."
"I mean it," he said. "I'm done. You've killed me."
"Death by sex," she teased, pressing a kiss to his chest. "I can think of several worse ways to go."
Chapter Thirteen: The Lull
Amid the more exciting things like fighting the Alva and having sex, there were still mundane tasks to be done. Like going to work and doing people's taxes, and grocery shopping. It hadn't been on her list to go to the market that day, but it was her day off, and watching the news had revealed what she and Kal had already figured out themselves. There hadn't been any attacks in two weeks.
The blonde reporter walked around downtown Chesley, talking about how it had officially been fifteen days since anything had happened and how that was almost the longest time to date where there hadn't even been a sighting of one of the creatures.
People were cautiously optimistic. Kal was bored.
Haven knew that because when he was bored, he talked to her more than usual, and since they were currently at their respective homes, her phone had been buzzing almost nonstop as she attempted to clean her house. She'd plugged her phone into the charger since constant texting was running the battery down and then sat on her couch to think.
It wasn't strictly her job to entertain Kallel. He was her...something. Her lover, technically, but she hated that word. It sounded like something out of a bad erotic novel, something whispered by busty maidens with their clothes half torn off. It didn't fit her, even though Kal did sometimes look like he could be on the cover of one of those bodice rippers, his muscles oiled up and glistening in the moonlight.
Haven covered her mouth and giggled, surprising herself. Her phone buzzed again, and she sighed, shaking her head. Get ready, she sent him, fingers moving rapidly across the screen as she typed.
For what? he sent back.
We're going on an adventure.
And alright, she was aware that grocery shopping didn't really count as an adventure. There was nothing dangerous or new about it, but for someone who was new to the planet and maybe didn't have experiences with markets, it might be a good distraction. Plus, Kal was always talking about wanting to see things, and this was as good as she could do on short notice.
He seemed entertained enough as they drove.
"You didn't have to do this," he said, pale eyes glancing over at her.
"I really did," she said back. "You were just going to keep bothering me until I did something."
Weeks ago, he might have apologized, but now he just smiled. Haven wondered if she was pleased or disconcerted about him knowing how to read her now. That was how it usually went, though. People either learned how to read her, how to deal with her, or they went away. She'd lost plenty of friends over the years because they hadn't been able to handle her attitudes, her bluntness, or her obsessive need to plan.
More than one person had called her OCD and went on their way before Haven could give them a lecture about how that didn't even make sense and she had never been formally diagnosed with any sort of obsessive compulsive disorder and the need to have things organized and thought out wasn't a sign of mental illness.
Sometimes it was a wonder that Darren had stuck around as long as he had, and she supposed part of their friendship revolved around them tolerating each other's strange quirks.
Or it had, anyway. They hadn't talked since the fight at Sheila's and she didn't know how to bridge that gap. On the one hand, she was still upset about how he'd talked to her. On the other, she missed him. So she was stuck in the middle, wondering what to do. So maybe this was a good distraction for her, as well, since they couldn't have sex all the time and there were no monsters to fight at the moment.
"What do you do on Horu when there's nothing to fight?" she asked absently as she looked for a parking spot on the busy street.
Kal scoffed. "There is never anything to fight on Horu anymore," he told her. "We made an impression, and now they don't even bother."
Haven remembered him telling her about the wall and how they had to watch it even when there was nothing coming. And how they had battled anyone who would think to come steal from them.
"So you just stand there?"
He nodded. "For hours. In the cold."
"Well," Haven said, finally pulling her car into a spot and killing the engine. "This is almost guaranteed to be more exciting than that."
They got out of the car and walked into the market. The cashiers smiled at her and eyed up Kal as she took a cart and made to head for produce. This was spur of the moment, but she'd thrown together a list in the time it had taken her to get dressed that afternoon. She wasn't about to throw everything out the window, after all.
"Excuse me," someone said, and they both turned.
One of the cashiers, a middle aged woman with a name tag that read 'Sofia', had stepped away from her register and was standing near them.
"Yes?" Haven asked, head tipped to one side.
"I'm sorry, just...you're them, aren't you? The...I'm sorry, this is going to sound rude, but they've never said your name, the alien and his helper?"
Kal looked startled, and Haven just sighed. Sensational journalism was a mess. "Yes," she answered. "That's us. Apparently."
The woman looked like she might cry for a second, and Haven was alarmed. "Just...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, you probably get enough of this as it is, but I had to say something. My daughter, she's only sixteen, and she was at that movie theater the night the Alva attacked with some of her friends."
Haven held her breath. 'She is only sixteen', the woman had said. Present tense. She was probably still alive then. Haven hoped.
"Is she..." Kal asked, looking concerned.
"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry. I'm a mess today, honestly. She's fine," Sofia said. "She's fine. Her friends are fine, too, and it's thanks to you. She was in the group that you led out," she said, looking at Haven. "And if you hadn't been there to stop the Alva, who knows what would have happened." She looked all the way up at Kal. "I just had to say thank you. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't...if it had been worse."
Haven had never gotten such an outpouring of gratitude from someone before. Sure, people were grateful for their coffee, and more grateful still when she finished their taxes and got them refunds, but this woman had actual, honest to god tears in her eyes, and Haven didn't know what to do.
Apparently, dealing with grateful family members was a part of warrior training or something, because Kallel smiled and stepped forward, taking the woman's hand in his own. "I'm happy we were able to help," he said. "We couldn't save everyone, but I'm glad we saved your daughter and her friends. I hope we can save more people."
It seemed to be enough, because with one final murmur of how much she appreciated them, the woman went back to work. Haven stood still for a moment, fingers wrapped around the handle of the cart.
"That was...surreal," she murmured.
Kal looked at her. "What do you mean?"
"I've never...No one's ever..."
He smiled, seeming to understand, and with a gentle push of one large hand at the small of her back, he got her moving. "People like to show their gratitude when you save things and people that are important to them," he said. "It comes with the territory."
"Maybe your territory," she murmured as they headed to the produce section. "I'm no hero."
"Except you are now," Kal replied. "That girl, her mother, her friends, they're going to remember that you were the one who led them to safety."
It was disconcerting to think about, being a hero had never been a part of her plans either, and she shook her head, deciding to focus on the things she understood. Grocery shopping. She needed cucumbers and baby carrots.
The brightly lit and colorful produce dragged Kal's a
ttention away from their conversation and back to the matter at hand. His eyes darted this way and that, trying to take in everything at once. He was like a kid in a candy store, if people who were seven feet tall could be considered kids and carrots and bell peppers were like candy.
"What is this?" he asked about everything, apparently just holding himself back from touching it all. "Why is this so yellow?" he asked about a squash. "And this, it's so soft!"
Haven did have to drag him back before he poked holes in all the tomatoes and she launched into an explanation of different vegetables and fruits.
"Don't they have things like this where you're from?" she asked, deliberately not saying 'on your planet' out loud because she really didn't want more attention. Although, it was sort of hard not to attract it when you were standing with a man who was seven feet tall, muscular, and looked like his head was on fire.
"Our vegetables and fruits aren't this bright," he explained. "Not enough sunlight, I think. And most of them develop a hard outer shell to protect them from the cold."
That made sense, and she let him wander around, looking at and smelling everything.
Her shopping had never taken so long before, but she found she didn't really mind. There was something almost...sweet about how excited Kal was about everything, and she found herself getting caught up in that excitement. She answered his questions as she shopped, and they moved from the produce aisle to the meat and then from there to the bread. She told him she'd make him dinner that night and let him help, and those silvery eyes lit up.
It wasn't hard to make Kal happy, and more than that, Haven was finding that she was good at it and happy to be so. She liked it when he smiled at her, when something she said made his eyes go crinkly at the corners, and her heart thumped approvingly when he laughed.
It was disgusting, really, the sappy way she felt, and she had promised herself once before that she wasn't ever going to go so gooey over a man that she lost herself.
Only...this didn't feel like a loss. She wasn't giving anything up. There was no voice in the back of her head screaming at her that she should be doing something else. She wasn't a teenager anymore, making bad decisions and trying to be someone she wasn't.
She was just Haven. She was just Haven, and Kal was Kal, and somehow they worked together in a way that didn't even make sense to her.
Haven wondered if it was odd for him. Back on his planet he was probably some sort of wonder stud. A warrior with skill and handsome, there had to have been women swarming all over him. Alien women were probably attracted to skill and strength just as much as human women were. Maybe he'd had someone special back home, someone who was waiting for him. Or maybe he was like her, and it had been hard for him to find his place there and find someone who wanted him, outlandish dreams and all.
"What are you staring at?" he asked as he came up beside her at the deli counter. She was waiting to be given her two pounds of black forest ham and staring at cheese like it held the answers to the mysteries of the universe. Granted, it was asiago, so very good cheese.
"Nothing," she replied, taking her wrapped package from the man behind the counter and getting them moving again.
Nothing about this was a normal shopping trip, starting with the fact that it wasn't her usual shopping day, and ending with the fact that unless she had suddenly started having hallucinations, Darren was at the other end of the freezer aisle. He had a carton of organic frozen yogurt in his hand and was staring at it like it was suddenly going to explain itself to him.
What was it about dairy today?
Haven hesitated. He hadn't seen her yet, she could keep moving and come back to this section when he was done. When he had gone back to his fancy office and his normal life and Miss Margarita. But before she could make herself do that, he was looking up and their eyes met.
For a moment, a stricken expression crossed over his face, and then he laughed and walked closer.
"What?" Haven asked, looking away. "Is something funny?"
"No," he said, shaking his head slightly. "Just...I'd promised myself that the next time I saw you I'd know what to say. And here you are, and I still got nothing." He glanced up and then up some more at her perpetual shadow, taking in Kal's hair and stature. "You must be the guy Lacey's been gushing about for two solid weeks."
Haven winced. She'd almost managed to forget that Darren frequented Sheila's like the coffee addict he was and knew her schedule well enough that he could get his fix without even having to see her.
"This is Kal," she said, voice a bit detached. "Kal, this is Darren." Haven didn't offer any other information. About either of them, honestly. If Darren wasn't going to bring up their fight and his part in it, then she didn't have anything to say to him beyond the usual pleasantries.
Kal could clearly pick up on the tone, and he held himself back, not making to shake Darren's hand or greet him beyond a polite nod. Haven appreciated the loyalty.
Darren was smart enough to see where this was going, and he sighed. "Haven, I...I'm sorry," he said. "Okay? I am. I didn't mean for things to get so out of hand with us, and I know, before you say anything. I know it was all my fault. I was being stupid and rude and I wasn't thinking about what I was saying. You know I don't think of you like that."
And the thing was, Haven did know that, only to hear him say something that she had worried about herself for so long had hurt quite a bit, and she hadn't been prepared for it. But holding grudges was hard work. That she'd admit. She missed Darren's presence in her life, not realizing until it was too late the part he played in keeping her from getting too serious about things.
From the way he was looking at her, she could tell he'd missed her, too. She wondered what part she played in his life, but didn't want to ask and hear that it was just being his mom friend or something.
Instead of thinking about it too much, she sighed and nodded her head. "I know."
He looked relieved. "Good. I'm glad. I...honestly it made me kinda...sick. To think that you'd think I thought that. We've been friends forever, and you're not a robot."
Haven couldn't help the smile that spread over her face at his words. He was a mess, her best friend, but she cared about him more than she admitted to herself sometimes.
"I know that, too," she said, laughing softly.
Darren grinned at her and then looked up at Kal again. "So Lacey seems to think that you're in a pretend real relationship. How close is she to the truth?"
"I don't even know what that means," Haven told him.
"She thinks that you're pretending to date him to shake some jerk who's been stalking you, but also that you're just pretending to pretend because you actually are dating him."
Neither Haven nor Kal spoke for a second, but Kallel spoke up first. "That makes my head hurt," he said. "Haven is my partner."
She wondered if that word had other meanings on other planets. In the literal sense, they were partners. She helped him take down the Alva, using her planning skills to get them into a place and then out of it safely, and to generally track the movement and patterns of the attacks. He ran in, weapons blazing to fight the creatures and then they went back to one of their homes. The last time they had even ordered a pizza.
In the euphemistic sense...Haven didn't know. She hadn't used the word 'boyfriend' in years outside of a context where she was mocking the word mercilessly. Certainly she hadn’t used it to describe a person, but…
“What he said,” she replied to Darren, who was looking to her for confirmation. He looked like he wanted to argue that there was something more she wasn’t telling him, but he didn’t. For once he just let it go and smiled at her.
“Well, good for you,” he said. And then, even though it was the most ridiculous thing in the world, he looked back to Kal. “If you hurt her…” He trailed off, letting the threat speak for itself or else just realizing how silly it was.
Haven covered her mouth with a hand, but Kal seemed to be taking it very seriously. He looked
at Darren with solemn eyes and nodded. “I would expect no less. You have my word that I will do everything I can to keep her from coming to harm, by my actions or anyone else’s.”
It was easy to tell that Darren hadn’t been expecting him to take it so seriously, and he blinked and then laughed. “Good on you, man,” he said. “And good on you, Haven, for finding someone as weird as you are. Figures since he’s an alien, right?” The look he shot her said that he definitely remembered how adamant she’d been about not getting mixed up with aliens. Wisely, he kept his mouth shut on that front.
And there was another thing that hadn’t been on her list, already checked off. With the shopping done and a friendship mended, Kal and Haven accepted still more thanks from Sofia and then made their way back to Haven’s house.
Kal hovered while she cooked dinner, asking his stream of questions that seemed never ending. Somehow, she didn’t mind it. It was soothing, it was...domestic. It was strange. Haven had always done just fine by herself, and if asked, she never would have said she needed a man to keep her company.
She still wouldn’t say that because if, when, Kal left, she would still be fine. She’d go on about her business as usual, and it would work out. That was what she had to believe.
But it was easy to put those thoughts aside as she cooked and talked with Kal, as they sat down to eat together, when they retired to her room that night to lose themselves in each other.
He moved inside of her, thick and all encompassing, and Haven let him root her thoroughly in the now. There was no point in thinking about the past or worrying about the future when his mouth was on hers and he was whispering her name with such urgency and bringing her closer and closer until she spiraled apart for him.
In the aftermath, there wasn’t any energy for thinking. There was just his arms around her, his weight a solid foundation as they lay there, her back to his chest, breathing syncing up. But in the darkness of the room, when the haze of sleep was slipping over her, she let herself think that she could get used to this. She let herself think it once, and then she went to sleep.
