Thrum

The longer I spend in the docking bay, its enormous maw opened up to the infinite cosmos, the louder my thoughts become. The louder that distant hum. It’s unending. It has to be the ship’s engine, no matter what Dorian said. Or some power supply, maybe even the flow of electricity through the ship’s synthetic infrastructure, its metal and rubber veins, coppery filaments, its manufactured chassis. Dorian would be used to it by now. That’s why he can’t hear it.

Unsettled by the sound, my jaw tight and my shoulders drawn inward, I reach my limit. I don’t know how much time has passed, but it feels as if I’ve been waiting for hours. And I realize I don’t want to do this now; I don’t want to occupy my hands and try to forget.

I want to talk to Dorian again. I want to laugh again, feel his warmth. He’s my only anchor in this place, the only thing that keeps me afloat.

“Dorian,” I say, almost a whisper in the echoing room. I’m afraid if I speak too loudly, the cosmos just outside the docking bay will hear me and suck me out through the forcefield and into itself, digesting me whole.

There’s a hush of air against my neck, and Dorian is there.

I spin to face him, flushed. “You — you startled me,” I snap, unable to keep the fear from my voice. My heart thunders.

His face falls, a perfect, loose wave of black falling over one eye as he lowers his chin deferentially. “I’m sorry.”

I try to slow my breathing. “You didn’t mean to. It’s fine. Just… stop sneaking up on me like that.”

“You called me.”

“I know,” I say, annoyed at myself for reacting. I open my mouth to explain that I was getting scared, that this docking bay fills with dread when he’s not here with me, but I don’t. Instead, I say, “I changed my mind. I don’t want to work on my ship right now. I thought maybe we could… eat together? If you even eat, I mean. All I’ve had since waking up from stasis is nutrient bars.”

“Anything you want.” His stare bores into the tender flesh of my lip, where my teeth left their mark, and he’s stone still like a gargoyle. I move away, ever so slightly. His gaze snaps up to mine. “Just tell me what you need.”

The ship’s hum pulses in my skull, like the reverberation of a strummed guitar string.

I’m seeing things that aren’t there. Nothing here is real.

“I don’t know what I need, Dorian.”

He takes my hand in his, not waiting for permission. I remember the way he held me before, let me cry on him, let me break like a wave against him. I have felt this way before, in dreams. Where fear mixes with anticipation, and though the trees may bend in a gorgeous wind, the clouds may scud across a cerulean sky, a darkness lurks behind it all. A nightmare at the edges, its claws curving around the doorframe.

I have held men like this before and then fled. I’ve stayed, too. But were they different men, or was it always Dorian?

“Come with me,” he says, and I am once again trailing after him, a puppet on a string.

By the time we reach our destination, I’m no longer stiff with fear. And the hum has lessened. I feel like I’ve woken from a dream or a long dissociation. Lily would have known. She could have explained it to me, why the brain shuts off and directs us elsewhere when reality becomes too much.

A trauma response, MiMi, I imagine her saying, her face all soft and sunlit. The way I’d prefer to remember her — not gray and lifeless, an empty shell.

Dorian ushers me into a room, his arm held out like a butler at a five-star hotel. I drift in, allowing my senses to take it in.

This is unlike any room I’ve ever seen. It’s an ancient Victorian ballroom, and outside its tall windows, stars and nebulae wheel past. There is something wrong with the chandelier; it’s tinged with red and appears to be suspended in midair. The floor feels uneven though it appears to be marble. At the center of the room sits a stately table set for two, and laden with food. Fruits and vegetables, loaves of bread, steaming tureens, and delicate iced cakes festoon the surface. It’s a king’s feast. I couldn’t begin to make a dent in it.

“Where are we?” I ask, because it’s the only reasonable question.

“The dining room,” says Dorian. “I’ve designed it for you.”

I turn to him, and he looks so painfully hopeful, almost eager. “Oh.”

His face falls. “You don’t like it.”

“No, it’s…” I falter. “It’s beautiful. I’m just surprised. I’ve never eaten in a room like this.”

He frowns. “I see.”

I don’t know where to begin explaining the ancient architecture, how Earth’s 1800s occurred centuries and centuries before I was born, how there’s no room left on the planet for even a house this big, let alone one dining room. So I don’t. “It’s very beautiful,” I amend. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to visit this sort of place. Ancient homes, you know. The old, old things that no longer exist except in history books.”

“You miss Earth,” he says and moves toward me. “I can make other rooms for you, Ami. Other places. Show you things you’ve never seen before.”

His eyes are swirling pools of everything I want. I let him wrap an arm around me, let him steer me toward the table. He pulls out a chair for me, and I sit. It’s easy to let him do these things. To let him direct me. I’m exhausted, my emotional state hanging by a fraying thread. I don’t want to take the lead. I want to let go.

He seats himself across from me, and we dine.

I don’t know what I expected — that he might simply watch me eat, unable to consume human food, like some vampire, sipping a goblet of wine, waiting for his next victim to become drunk and willing. But he joins me, delicately chewing, shooting me wry smiles between sips of red wine. It’s almost as if this is a normal meal. It’s almost as if I’m not shaken to my core, never to recover.

“What do you really look like?” I ask, midway through a list of these sorts of questions: what do you call your kind (You wouldn’t comprehend the word, it’s worse than my name), where is your home planet (Billions of light-years from here), is it anything like Earth (No), how can you eat this food (By putting it in my mouth and chewing), what do you normally eat (Nothing you’d recognize as food), do you listen to music (If the vibrations of the universe count as music, yes). “I mean, really.”

He leans back in his chair, pulling at the cravat at his throat. As it loosens, my gaze falls on his neck, his pulse. A smile curves one side of his mouth. “Think of it this way. You’re looking at me, right now. And so what you see is how I look.”

“But you’re not human,” I persist.

“I’m not,” he agrees. “But it’s the image I’ve chosen to project. If you touch me, I feel human. You know that.”

My stomach flutters. “Show me your true form.” I’ve had a little too much wine, so much that I’m conveniently not thinking about the fact that it’s not real wine at all. I’m not thinking about how warm my face is, how Dorian’s every glance is like a physical touch against shivering skin.

“I’d rather not.”

“Please?”

“You wouldn’t like it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You hardly seem to like this form.”

“That’s not true. It’s just… too beautiful. I was trained for all kinds of biological oddities.” I catch myself. “Not that you’re an oddity. But the body you’ve chosen, it’s… a lot.”

He leans forward, chin resting on folded hands, elbows on the table. “How so?”

Heat rises in my face. I’ve driven myself into this corner. I take another swig of wine. “You’re, well, I’m not sure if this will make sense, but you’re my type.”

I avoid his gaze, blushing painfully. I don’t know why I said it. Why I’m flirting back.

“I read your welcome package,” he says slowly, and his tone is tinged with unspent laughter. “I know what a type is.”

“Oh?” I stare at the edge of my wine glass, running a shaking finger along the crystal until it makes a faint sound. “Well, with millions of options at your disposal, you picked exactly the kind of body, and strangely, exactly the kind of clothes that—” I stop myself, my breath hitching.

What am I doing? This is every kind of bizarre. I’m in a Victorian ballroom inside a vast alien ship, drinking wine with the alien himself.

“Exactly the kind of body that… what?” Dorian says, but it’s clear that he knows exactly what.

Exactly the kind of body that makes me want to lose control.

But he knew that, didn’t he? He tailored himself for me.

I stand abruptly, knocking my chair over. It clatters to the floor, the sound ringing ostentatiously in that quiet room. “Thank you for dinner.” It’s a rush of words, my heart pounding against my ribs.

Dorian watches me intently but says nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I add. “I’m tired, and it’s late. Or it feels late. I don’t know what time… anyway, I should sleep.”

He rises gracefully, showing no sign of disappointment or anger, any of the usual razor-sharp edges a man might show after a date cut short. The wine that isn’t real feels sickly in my stomach. This isn’t a date.

I take Dorian’s offered arm as he escorts me back to my room. He’s steady and firm, and for a second I pretend that he is just as human as I am. When we say goodnight, he is the perfect gentleman, without a single roving hand or salacious word.

And as the door closes behind me, leaving me alone once again, I press my hands to my face, nearly suffocating against my clammy palms. All the while, somewhere deep in the ship, I feel it at the core of me: that far-off hum.