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Picture by Timothy Morris

Koen woke up in the middle of the night. "I have to kiss Laura."

There were other thoughts in his mind. I failed, I failed and I wasn't reliable and I should have said… but only said this one out loud because the others were too terrible.

She wanted him to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her. He conveniently forgot about his pride and told himself that the only thing that had stopped him were those damn cameras. Therefore…

"Let's go out," he told Laura the next morning, over breakfast.

Laura remembered her last, bizarre and terrifying experience outside the embassy and downed the rest of her coffee. She had a terrific headache. "Why? Do you need to shop again?"

"No, no," he said. "I just want to take a walk. Get some fresh air. Explore." Koen did not do anything so obvious as to point at the ceiling and say "I want to speak with you in private." Instead, he glanced at the camera in the ceiling and trusted Laura to pick up the implication.

She didn't. She was too busy encoding an implication of her own. "I have a lot of work to do here in the embassy, Koen."

"We could go on your lunch break."

"I eat lunch at my desk."

"After you finish work?"

"It will be dark," she said, willing Koen to connect "dark" with "scary" and remember what she'd told him the previous night. The terrible secret she'd shared and which still hung over like the heel of a boot.

He didn't get it. "Well, I'd really like to," Koen cleared his throat, "take you out. Maybe tomorrow?" His next attempt would be inviting her up to the roof.

"Tomorrow I'll also be busy, Koen." Self-pity, always sealed within Laura at great pressure, found a seam to hiss through. "I'm always busy."

Now Koen did get the message. It just wasn't the one Laura had sent.

He drew back (he had been unconsciously leaning toward her, as if warming his face before a fire) and said, coldly, "Quite a change from last night, huh?"

"Huh?" said Laura.

Which was when Mark walked in. "Yeah!" he shouted (he'd already had his energy drink). "What's for breakfast, Swedish chef? Doopa doopa mork mork!"

"Swedish?"

"Mork mork?" Koen shook his head, wishing he could allow himself another coffee. "How about eggs? I remember you said you wanted to keep things low carb."

"You're a scholar and a gentleman," said Mark. "Scrambled?" He thought that was the fastest was to prepare them.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Laura?" asked Koen.

"I shouldn't."

It was an invitation for Koen to convince her that she should. But Koen was still feeling annoyed at Laura. "Got it," he said. "So, four eggs."

But by the time he'd opened the refrigerator, Koen had reconsidered. He'd make six in case Laura turned out to want some. He would need the big frying pan.

Mark jerked his head toward the kitchen. "He seems tense." In fact it was Laura who looked tense. She looked to Mark as if she was being torn in half, but he knew what questions would be safe to ask.

"He is oblivious," snapped Laura. "An idiot. I'll go. I have work to do."

Last night, Mark had not exactly calculated that a romance between Laura and Koen would be advantageous to him. He had simply followed his instinct to draw the two closer to him. Give him a better handle on them.

The actual calculation began now, as Mark considered how to accomplish the goal he had just formed. Laura needed to feel understood and supported. She should remember what she had in common with Koen. And it would be convenient to start a conversation that could be bent in the direction of helping Mark prepare for his upcoming cultural event.

"I see you're still upset about the way General Graa treated that, uh, guy he was riding."

Laura shot him a look of impatience. "I'm worried about bigger things than that."

"Such as?"

Laura opened her mouth to say, I wanted Koen to kiss me, changed her mind halfway to It's none of your business, which was moderated into, "Work things. Embassy things."

Koen tried not to think about the cost of the butter he removed from the refrigerator. Vegetables, meat, and eggs might be found locally, but a processed product like butter would be very hard to find in the Zogreion. Humans might be the only resident species that used milk products at all.1

He was as generous as he dared with the butter. A knob the thickness of the last joint of his thumb melted slowly over low heat while Koen cracked the eggs into a bowl.

"Yes, work's sure to pick up now," said Mark. "Graa apparently really liked us."

"How do you know?" asked Laura in the tone of "how can that possibly be true?"

"He kept talking about Koen's cooking."

Laura's shoulders pulled up. She didn't say anything, but Mark decoded her expression as It's only a matter of time until Koen loses his temper and starts an interspecies incident with Graa.

"If we play our cards right, cooking will only be the beginning."

Laura looked annoyed, but distracted. In the kitchen, whisk rang against bowl.

The eggs made a sound like a diver hitting the water.

Koen stuck his spatula under a quadrant of cooking egg and rolled it over. Another. Layers of harder, well-cooked egg sandwiched layers of looser, less-cooked. No danger of salmonella. These eggs had been sterilized already. Koen could serve them raw, but he doubted Mark would enjoy that. Would there be a difference in flavor? Koen would have to make a serving for himself to find out. He should have done that already, but it had been years since he'd needed to test his basic ingredients like that.

"I know this isn't the sort of official business you usually organize, but it's a foot in the door," came Mark's voice from the table. He sounded like he was trying to convince Laura that Koen was worth keeping around after all.

"Maybe you can tell me how we can leverage Koen and my, uh, cultural activities into support for the embassy. Maybe even some benefit for all those people back on Earth?"

Laura mumbled something, but Koen didn't catch it.

His ear twitched and he spun back to the frying pan. He pulled it off the burner, but the eggs were already over-cooked. The layering was ruined. Now the middle would be hard and the bottom would be edging toward rubbery.

"Eggs ready?" asked Mark.

Koen looked down at his eggs, thinking of how much they had probably cost the taxpayers of Earth. He doubted very much that Mark would care, or even notice. All that stood between Mark and these suboptimal scrambled eggs was Koen's pride.

He set the biggest frying on the counter next to the sink and pulled out the second-biggest.

"Sorry," said Koen. "Not quite yet."

1 Koen was not exactly correct in this, but the exceptions would be considered disgusting to most humans.