Carbon laughed as she pulled her apron off and wiped it clean, folding it carefully before stowing it back into a drawer beside the stove. “Very well, it can wait until she is done. There is not much to do this morning, though we have a meeting this afternoon, and a state dinner tonight.”
Well, someone was on the ball. “State dinner? Already not looking forward to it.”
“I am not as well. Before you ask, it is not something we could send Neya to in our stead. Perhaps one of us, if there was a circumstance that prevented attendance. The more important the host, the less room there is for substitution.” She leaned on the counter and watched him scrub dishes.
“Guessing that means the host is Eleya?” Might as well go right to the top. Who else would be holding a state dinner, anyway?
“You are correct. We are receiving a few soldiers who have past experience working with Humans, they will be attached to the project regarding the artifact we found. That is what the meeting is about as well.”
“Oh, really?” That got his attention, the prospect of cracking open the secrets of that place reigniting in his mind. Maybe not being a pilot, but xenoarchaeology on an alien dyson sphere was a reasonably cool second place as far as jobs went. More Tsla’o he could possibly talk to without having to translate everything was a pleasant thought as well. “That part sounds interesting at least.”
“I know the Captain, he is a good sort.” She closed her eyes and nodded once.
“Oh, uh... How fancy is the state dinner? I did not pack a lot of nice clothes.” Speaking of his nice clothes... “Do you know what they did with my bags?”
Carbon inhaled and her eyes drifted away in thought. “I do not. Another thing Neya may be able to look into, unless you would prefer to take care of it yourself? It may not matter today because the dinner will be very fancy.” She seemed particularly amused by that turn of phrase.
“Ugh. Fine. I’d still like to have, you know, clean clothes in the meantime. I wore all this yesterday.” They’re going to make him wear a tie. Ugh. “I don’t have to dress nice for the meeting, do I?”
“No, and for the dinner there is traditional clothing being made for you now. It should come as no surprise that one of Neya’s tasks is picking it up.” She handed him the pan off the stove, cool enough to the touch to be safe to wash.
That filled him with a peculiar sense of dread. The regular clothes that he’d seen them wearing really wasn’t his style. Formal dress was likely to be vastly worse. “I dunno if that’s at all necessary... I’m sure I packed a linen shirt and slacks.”
“Ah. It is very necessary, Prince. One cannot expect to go to a formal dinner hosted by the Empress wearing just a shirt and slacks.” Carbon folded her arms over her chest as though she were serious - which she certainly was about what everyone would be wearing - but there was a lot of mirth in her eyes. “The tailors have your exact measurements, their initial attempts were perfect, were they not?”
She had him there. Despite the handful of physical differences between their races, the pants and shirt they’d made fit perfectly. Alex set the pan and the scrubber into the drying rack and shook his hands out. “Ok, ok. So traditional clothing for the dinner. That’s... fine, as long as everybody else is wearing it. Everyone else will be wearing it too, right?”
“Of course. Though, not all at the same level as you and I. Active military have their own formal dress, as do Senators.” She stepped up to him, catching him in a hug that lingered as she pulled him against her. “I know you dislike fancy dress, but this is a reflection of our station.”
He would admit that he did have an academic interest in what Tsla’o formalwear looked like. He really did not want to wear it, or even go to an event that would require him to wear it. Alex was sure Carbon could describe it in detail, or just find some pictures, if he asked. He just didn’t want to deal with it right now. It’d be easier if he didn’t have anything specific to dwell on and the whole thing was a surprise. “All right. Guess there’s no getting around that.”
“Thank you, Alex.” Carbon stood on her toes and kissed him softly on the lips, a sly smile on her muzzle as she stepped away after the shower shut off, busying herself with plates and utensils and pulling the food from the oven before dishing up three plates. Two of the braided ‘pancakes’ each, and a neatly arranged row of fried sausage that had been bias cut into thick, oval slices.
Alex watched her work, laughing softly to himself. “Reminds me of Portuguese sausage.”
“Oh? How so?” She just set the dirty dishes in the sink and shooed him away towards the table before he could start washing again.
“The cut, the way it looks. Easily the most familiar Tsla’o food I’ve seen so far, except for the noodles.” One of the foods she’d shared back on the Khslav’o had looked exactly like fettuccine. The sauce shattered the illusion, a very unappetizing shade of translucent green shot through with spicy red fibers. “We’re going to have to go to Hawaii at some point.”
“Is it on Earth?” She brought the plates over, setting them around the small, rectangular table. Two on one side, one on the other, setting a pair of chopsticks on the bottom edge of each plate. She paused, staring at the arrangement. “Would you prefer to sit next to me, or across from me?”
“It is, yeah. Little tropical island chain out in the middle of the Pacific ocean.” Of course she wouldn't be as familiar with the locales on someone else’s home planet. “We tend to chat during meals, and it’s awkward if you’re sitting next to me. Make me feel like we’re being interrogated.”
She slid the plate with the less carefully made pancakes across the table, rotating it to arrange the chopsticks properly. “Now you may interrogate Neya and myself.”
“Well, hang on.” The door to the head opened and Neya returned, fluffed out from the dryer and naked again as she made a bee-line for the dresser. He averted his gaze and wondered just how much nudity was normal for Tsla’o, because it seemed like it was a hell of a lot in private. The first eight months he’d known Carbon for had been wildly inaccurate. “Someone could sit at the end of the table and then we have triangulation so no one has to look over ninety degrees. Or we could get a square table. Maybe a round one.”
“You are putting too much effort into seating at a table with four chairs.” She sat down across from him with a smirk on her face. “There will be so much effort put into seating at dinner, do not exhaust yourself with the subject now.”
Alex groaned to himself. “Speaking of that, I’m going to need a rundown on etiquette for dinner. I’m guessing that it’s a bit more involved than family dinner at the Chinese restaurant.” That had only been last night. It felt like it’d been months already. Repeated surprises from Neya had probably taken a year off his life in the hours since they’d returned, so months was pretty good in his estimation.
“It is.” She glanced over at Neya, who was now partially wrapped in the long strips of cloth they used as undergarments. “Though, I do not think you will have much difficulty with it, as it falls more towards repetition rather than complexity. For instance, when a course is served, the table waits for the host to partake before they do. The host decides when that course is cleared and everything but drinks will be taken - do not attempt to keep something. Beverages are refreshed and appropriate cutlery is placed between courses. The Empress has not been known to entertain herself with the timing of the courses, unlike some of her predecessors.”
He was pretty sure that was how Human royalty did dining, not that he’d gotten any closer to it than his mother’s interest in royal families. “Alright, that one is easy enough. Should we practice all this with breakfast?”
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Carbon glanced around the table. “No, I do not want to put aside a quiet meal to pretend I’m at a dinner I do not want to be at. I understand that formal dining for humans involves many different utensils?”
“Yeah, there’s three or four forks? I dunno. It’s a lot and very specific.” Honestly, bonus points for not having an incomprehensible series of forks, knives, and spoons laid out for him to fuck up the proper order of.
She nodded, looking away as she puzzled something out. “I have not seen the menu but there will likely be eight or ten courses. We have not had a formal dinner yet in celebration of our entwinement, so I am assuming she will fold that in and make it more extensive.”
Neya joined them, a burnt-orange shirt wrapped around her torso, over plain black pants. She clicked her tongue and swapped the plates on that side of the table. “Must you always do that?” She asked, sitting down beside Carbon.
“Only if you continue to insist upon taking my food.” Carbon had switched back to Tsla to address her, her words stern but carrying a slightly playful tone, and made no attempt at taking the plate back.
“Is that...” Alex was so far out of the loop here that he might as well have not been on board. “Is that okay? I think it is based on your reaction, but I’m recently acquainted with how little Tsla’o culture I really know.”
Carbon smiled, a soft laugh spilling from her as she scooted herself up to the table. “It is fine, in this situation - she wants me to have nice things, not because of some sort of inequality.”
Neya continued immediately, pointing at the malformed pancakes on her plate. “She does this after she makes all of the other lace crackers normally and then keeps these misshapen ones for herself. It is little effort, she is still pouring the batter, and her technique is perfect. It is unfair to her.”
Alex looked down at the ‘lace crackers’ in front of him, wondering if the translator got that one right or if it was another savory crepe moment. Accurate or not, the bread product on his plate still showed the intricate, lace-like drizzle of batter Carbon had used. “The way she did those is way faster, though.”
Carbon leaned back in her chair with a subtle smile on her face that still managed to be incredibly smug. “It tastes the same.”
“It is the proper way to make them.” Neya sighed and seemed to resign herself from the conversation.
“Okay, trying to put some of my most recently acquired knowledge to work here: If you’re not going to look out for yourself.” Alex nodded at Carbon first, before turning his attention to Neya, “You’ll look out for yourself.”
Carbon was the first to respond. “If I take your meaning correctly, that is very close to what is going on here, yes.”
“Agreed, even if the stakes are merely a properly formed breakfast.” Neya nodded back at him with a very pointed look. “Though now I must also look out for myself.”
“You mean me when you say that, right?” He wasn’t that good at this Zeshen business yet. “Uh, us?”
Neya closed her eyes and gave him a single nod. “Correct.”
“That’s still going to take some getting used to.” Something just didn’t sit right about other people looking out for him, outside of certain situations. Ed looked out for him during his training, that was fine. Ed was teaching him. Carbon looked out for him when she was his Engineer, fine. They were in a very supposed to do that for each other. Now as his wife, well... that was something he’d have to get used to, too. He reached down and snapped a corner off the pancake, the texture more like a thin cookie. “Let me give it a few days, I’ll-”
Alex was treated to the two of them reaching out and waving a hand to stop him at the same time. They used the same gesture, and he got a soft tisk and a click of the tongue in stereo. He recoiled slightly, eyes wide with that chunk of lace cracker still poised before his mouth.
Carbon didn’t seem to notice or care about that synchronized display. “Like with formal dining, a meal made at home waits out of respect - though it waits for the cook.” She picked up her chopsticks and reached over to her stolen plate, breaking a small piece off the misshapen cracker and popping it in her mouth.
Neya likewise was not bothered by anything that had just transpired. “It is not an issue in a restaurant - the professional chef is paid for their work, a different form of respect. Or if you are eating from a dispenser, which is a form of disrespect to the self.”
“Huh.” Alex ate the cracker. He was busy unwinding what he’d just witnessed in his head, and he didn’t taste it. A hint of that panic he had last night about the weaving, two individuals giving and taking from each other after years of mental links, crept back in. That, piled on top of how they were interacting right now - he saw lifelong friends sitting across from him, or a couple. That just didn’t jibe with what he’d been shown about Zeshen yesterday, what he had been told.
“She believes she can taste the difference between prepared and dispensed foods.” Carbon didn’t seem to notice the turmoil he was going through as she ate. That made sense, it was inner turmoil for the time being.
Neya gave a derisive little snort. “It is because I can. Dispenser made food tastes like plastic and metal.”
They continued talking about that as he continued to turn inward. How would he even breach that topic? Hey wife of three days, who I sort of dated for a couple of months and was coerced into marrying for protection, I noticed your not-a-personal-assistant, that my language doesn’t have a word for and my culture doesn’t have a comparable concept of, seems less like the thing you said and more like you’re married to someone else, and that makes me feel really bad.
Fuck, talk about the worst possible option floating to the surface first.
Maybe it would do him well to sit on this for a few days, maybe a week. Get more information, figure out what his real feelings were. He would not try to figure this out on four hours of sleep. Take the time, see how everything shakes out once he’d been able to acclimate himself to this whole situation. They were aliens, they’re going to do alien stuff. Pretty tame compared to what movies had told him aliens would be like, not a single chest-burster to be found. Although he had been hunted a bit, but not for sport.
And if things weren’t looking good, if he didn’t feel like this was something he could adapt to... He’d have the time to figure out a better way to talk to Carbon about it.
“Alex?” Carbon was staring at him from across the table, a hint of concern in her voice.
“Yeah?” His eyes focused again, no longer staring out into the middle distance. He’d picked up a slice of sausage while ruminating, holding it delicately between his fingers over the plate like he was about to make a point about something with it.
“Are you all right?” She leaned in a little, eyebrows pulled together, ears perked up.
“Yeah, no. I’m just working through some stuff. It’s been a big...” He tapped his head with his free hand and checked the clock in his Amp. “A big six and a half hours. Lots of learning to process.”
Carbon sat back and looked him over, really scrutinizing his face. “As you say, much has changed for you, literally overnight. I wish that I had the opportunity to ease you into... everything.” She sighed softly, glancing down at her plate.
Alex got the distinct impression she didn’t fully believe him. He wasn’t exactly lying. There was a lot going on, he just wasn’t forthcoming with the extent of it. “You didn’t think any of this was going to happen, you said so last night. I can hear you preparing to beat yourself up over it right now, so to get it out of the way: don’t. Knock that off.” He finally made a point with the slice of sausage before tossing it into his mouth. Smokey, fatty, a little bit peppery, with other spices he wasn’t familiar with. He could eat that every day.
Neya looked like she was about to add something before Alex finished talking, but settled for a low, excited hum, violet eyes alive with mischief as she gave Carbon a sidelong glance.
Carbon, in turn, groaned softly to herself.
“What’s that mean?” He went back to the ‘cracker’ and actually tasted it this time. It made him think of what would happen if you left most of the sugar out of a batch of shortbread cookies, and then pan fried it. A little more gritty, sure, but it left him wondering if you could fry cookies.
“Knock that off is going into my collection of things to say when this one decides she would prefer to beat herself up over things she cannot control, rather than accepting them and moving on towards a solution immediately.” Neya was pleased as could be to have that new phrase under her belt, grinning widely as she turned to Carbon and repeated it. “Knock that off.”
It was nice to see that translated clearly both ways. “Knock it off would probably work too.” Alex was nothing if not helpful. This brief exchange with Neya was also easing his mind. There was no friction there. She appeared to be genuinely happy that he was looking out for Carbon, even if he was more coarse about it.
He liked that she was looking out for Carbon, too.
They did have a much longer history together. That wasn’t bad, it was just different. If he had someone who was supposed to be himself, who was privy to his life and experiences, how would he act with that person after a decade? Like a brother? Like a couple that had been together for years?
Maybe he was willing to find out.