Page 52

Ezra

Months ago, Ezra would have said with his whole chest that there could never be a more awkward dining experience than the one he’d survived at Al and Jude’s rehearsal dinner.

Unfortunately, he had been incorrect.

Walking through a crowded supermarket naked would have been less awkward than this.

Mr. and Mrs. Leon had finally arrived, and now they—Mr. and Mrs. Leon, Titan, Al, Jude, Kyle, the kids, Corbin, and Ezra himself—were all seated around the dining room table while Ezra slowly lost his mind.

Usually, avoiding a topic just made everything worse, but right then, Ezra would have loved to avoid, avoid, avoid, because from the moment they’d been dropped off by one of the nameless Men in Black, the elder Leons had been hellbent on addressing the elephant in the room.

They talked about it relentlessly.

Endlessly.

And with matching handlebar mustaches.

“You must have understanding, Ambassador Ezra,” Mrs. Leon said, her bushy upper lip bouncing as she spoke. “We still consider you to be amongst the more respe ctable humans?—”

“Of course, the news that you are only half human explains your superiority to the others of your species,” Mr. Leon added, dabbing his own mustache with a cloth napkin.

“—but there is slut blood inside of you, and you have now passed that slut blood down to our son’s offspring, and this is a problem of great significance that cannot be ignored.”

“I mean,” Ezra muttered, pushing peas around on his plate like a petulant child as he tried not to get frustrated, “they’re my offspring, too.”

“Yes, but you are not important, Ambassador Ezra,” Mr. Leon explained, with no trace of irony.

“Ezra is the first human to facilitate intergalactic contact with any being outside of this solar system,” Al interrupted, seeming a bit too eager to jump in and argue with his parents.

“Before my entry, no other creature had ever breached Earth’s atmosphere.

Ezra is doing highly proficient work in a job that did not exist prior to my arrival.

How can you feel shame toward him, or think that he has unimportance? ”

“Thanks, man, but you don’t hafta—” Ezra tried, but Mr. Leon spoke over him.

“You are correct, AA.??’p’Zx, that prior to your breaching of this planet’s atmosphere, the beings of Earth had no knowledge of our species. And perhaps, had you filed the proper paperwork beforehand, we would not be in need of defending your brother’s reputation.”

Al started speaking in rapid-fire Darvrokian, which Ezra was surprised he could, for the most part, understand.

He hadn’t absorbed enough to put together every individual word, but he knew enough to gather that Al was saying something along the lines of, “How? How do you do that? My brother breeds a clutch inside of a human, and somehow you’re able to make even that my fault. Incredible.”

Ezra shared a glance with the other humans at the table.

Jude, wh o may not have been able to speak Darvrokian, could understand Al through their bond, and Corbin, who was likely regretting accepting the invitation to dinner in the first place, seemed to be getting the gist of their friend’s rant even without any alien superpowers or shared neural pathways.

They all exchanged an identical grimace, silently asking one another, “How did this become our life?”

“The food is wonderful, who did the cooking?” Corbin asked loudly, trying to drown out the Darvrokian bickering, as Mr. and Mrs. Leon were now firing back at Al with equal amounts of ire.

The food, like most meals in a human/Darvrokian household, was a mix of normal and atrocious, with the normal being a nice roast with garlic mashed potatoes and buttered peas, and the atrocious being the chocolate sauce in one of the gravy boats and the giant blue Jell-O mold with dinosaur chicken nuggets trapped inside of it.

“I created this meal,” Kyle said proudly.

“My newest way of making time go past is to become a douchebag and watch Earth entertainment programs where humans prepare food for others’ consumption, and it has made me feel the desire to attempt food preparation as well.

I have become very excellent at this task, isn’t that correct?

” He looked between Ezra and Jude expectantly.

Ezra, who had made the mistake of letting his guard down after Kyle had made several good meals in a row and, as a result, was still recovering from the turmoil that was ingesting a blueberry salmon scone the week prior, could only muster a half-hearted “uh-huh” and a single thumbs-up, while Jude, also a scone victim, hummed noncommittally.

Meanwhile, Al and his parents continued to fight.

“I am unable to see a purpose for this arguing,” Titan said, speaking up so suddenly that everyone turned to look at him, as he had been uncharacteristically quiet for hours.

He had, at the beginning of his parents’ visit, tried valiantly to defend Ezra and their relationship, but after being brushed off repeatedly, Ezra had taken him aside and told him to save th e energy.

After that, he’d clammed up and said nothing, a sour look on his face.

Much like Ezra, he’d been distracting himself by pushing his food petulantly around his plate, but now his fork was down and there was fire in his eyes.

“Mother, Father, why are you directing your disapproval toward my brother when it was my actions alone that have disappointed you?”

“No, not yours alone,” Ezra said quietly. He took his hand beneath the table, and Titan granted him a warm, albeit small smile.

“Our actions, then,” he amended, squeezing Ezra’s hand in return.

“It is likely that Grandpa and Grandma are directing their disapproval toward Papa because they have more experience feeling disapproval for him than for you, Uncle Titan,” one of the kids said.

Ezra had no idea which one. All seven of them were currently disguised, seemingly at random, as either Mr. or Mrs. Leon.

Each look was completed with a matching mustache.

“They are very good at feeling disapproval for him,” another kid piped up. “Isn’t that correct, Papa?”

“Ah.” Al cleared his throat. “When I said this to you, offspring, I intended it to be in confidence.”

“But don’t they already know that they feel more affection for Uncle Titan than for you?” the kid closest to Ezra asked.

“AA.??’p’Zx, you do not truly believe this, do you?” Mrs. Leon asked, aghast. “We feel affection toward all of our offspring equally.”

“I have awareness of this, Mother,” Al mumbled, evidently not as eager to engage in verbal combat now that things were taking a more serious turn.

“We feel pride in your accomplishments. Clearly your path was to find Human Jude, as he is your True Mate,” Mr. Leon said pragmatically. “The life you lead is respectable, but?—”

“But mine is not,” Titan finished for him bitterly. “You have the belief that if Ezra is not my True Mate, then my love for him is not respectable, nor should it be treated with the same amount of significance. Is this correct?”

“You must remember who you are meant to be, ?.Λ.yz’Ο,” said Mr. Leon. “You are a leader, and leaders must make sacrifices. We cannot prevent what has happened, as your offspring will be arriving imminently, but that does not mean that you will be permitted to continue such wanton behavior.”

“And how would you prevent me from the oh-so-criminal action of having love for Ezra?”

“I will have you cease your assignment on Earth and have you resume your responsibilities on our home planet.” Mr. Leon made this declaration casually, but the reaction to it was anything but—everyone stared at him in surprise, even Mrs. Leon.

“You would remove him as an ambassador between our beings?” she asked, voice hushed.

“You are aware that the leaders of both our worlds are feeling eagerness to continue with the next phase of integration. A change in roles could cause unwanted delays. It would take time to find another suitable ambassador from Darvrok 6 that Darvrokians would feel approval of, and who would also be willing to live in such a nonsensical place. And what of the offspring, my love? What would occur if we were to relegate their parents to different planets? We must think of them.”

“Why must we think of them?” Mr. Leon countered, eyes taking on a fiery orange hue. “The ambassadors did not think of them. Their mating occurred with no thought of consequences, but that does not eliminate such consequences from existence.”

“I feel understanding of this, my love, but perhaps we should also feel a minor amount of sympathy? They did not realize that slut blood ran in Ambassador Ezra’s veins. How were they to think of consequences when they were unaware conception could occur?”

“Ooh, she’s got you there. That’s a really good point,” Corbin said, pointing at Mrs. Leon with his fork.

He was sitting with his head propped up in his hand and was watching the conversation with the expression of someone watching an intense tennis match.

Jude, seated next to him, elbowed him in the ribs, making him yelp.

“Why would you be combative about this?” Mr. Leon asked his wife sharply, ignoring Corbin’s remark. “Do you no longer feel agreement that our son has behaved incorrectly?”

“I feel agreement, and I feel understanding that we must have certainty that the news is told from us and not from strangers harboring rumors, but to separate them completely? Do you feel this is truly necessary?”

Ezra shot a glance at Titan, whose face was so twisted in anger that he looked like he had tried to eat a whole lemon in a single bite.

“I feel,” Mr. Leon said with purpose, “that our son is meant to be a leader, and therefore his behavior should be appropriate for a leader. And if he behaves otherwise, then yes, I feel belief that his actions should be corrected.”

“Pfft, fucking boomer,” one of the mini Mr. Leons stage-whispered from beside Corbin.

“Heard, Chef,” Corbin said in response, holding out his closed fist, which the kid gleefully bumped with their own.

“Father,” Titan said then in a low, controlled voice, “I think you are forgetting something.”

“What would that be?” Mr. Leon squared his shoulders and would have looked properly intimidating if his mustache had been just a little lighter on the handlebar.

“You are forgetting that I am no longer under your command, the way I was in my youth. I do not have surprise that you have forgotten this, as for many moons I, too, had belief that I was under the obligation to do everything that you expected from me. But this is an untruth. I do not have to do anything you ask of me, and if you wish to remove me from my ambassador position, then I cannot stop you, but I will also not be accompany ing you back to our homeworld if you do. I have made my choice, and that choice is Ezra Miller of Bumfuck Nowhere, New Mexico, United States, Earth.”

“If this is truth, then I feel urgency to inform you that you are making such a choice without my approval.”

“Well, Father,” Titan said, pushing his chair back and getting to his feet. “As the English-speaking humans would say: you can place your approval up the entirety of your rectal cavity.”

And with that, he turned on his heel and left the dining room in a huff.

A ringing silence followed. Corbin clicked his tongue a couple times, then looked at Mr. Leon.

“What he meant to say was that you can shove it up your ass.” he explained helpfully, then clapped his hands together. “Well, I for one am enjoying myself. What’s for dessert? Not more chicken nugget Jell-O, I hope.”

“I feel enjoyment of the Jell-O,” said one of the kids through a mouthful of dinosaur chicken nugget, blue gelatin glimmering in their mustache hairs.

“For dessert,” Kyle said, “I created scones.”

“I’m gonna go check on Titan,” Ezra said immediately.

He was out the door faster than you could say “blueberry salmon.”