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“Have you ever actually been on a date?” Kenesha’s words cut through the deep thought Tao’s found himself in.
(She has that effect on him. He’s never exactly stupid around her, but she can short circuit his brain for a few seconds. He’d never admit it, but he does get a little thrill out of it.)
He takes his forearm off his face, blinking a few times to adjust to the light as he leans up, balancing on his elbows but still half-lying on the bed.
Kenesha’s getting dressed, buttoning her shirt in the mirror. Tao catches her eye in her reflection, and she smiles.
(For a moment, Tao forgets that he’s bitter at humanity, and warmth pools in his chest like it’s paint dripping off a paintbrush.)
“What?” he asks, sitting up fully. He still hasn’t gotten dressed. Kenesha got up before him and has been going about her routine while he lays with his arm over his eyes, mindlessly droning off facts he thinks she might find interesting. Eventually, the two of them had settled into a comfortable silence as Tao thought and Kenesha focused on tasks like ‘finding pants’. Until, of course, she piped up.
“It’s a rhetorical question. You never went anywhere before we found you,” and Tao silently resents that phrasing, the implication that he owes the C.A.T.s, but he pushes by it.
“I’ve read about them,” he says, sliding out of bed. He sidles up behind her, placing his chin on the top of her skull and wrapping his arms around her. He’s always been somewhat gangly, and never really cared for it, but Kenesha insists that it makes him ‘cuddly’, despite the fact that he’s rail-thin and suitably pointy.
“They’re an… appointment one takes, usually with one other partner, and usually of a romantic nature. An outing. They take place in places with food more often than not, which is indicative of humanity’s natural proclivities to share food and resources in order to establish and build trust—“ Kenesha turns and presses a finger to his lips, cutting him off.
“You are very pretty,” she says, “but you talk too much for your own good.” Tao smiles under her finger, and he doesn’t even do it as a calculated move this time.
“Why did you ask if you didn’t want an answer?” Tao questions, and Kenesha goes on her tiptoes to give him a kiss. It feels better than any physical contact he’d ever been able to imagine when in Optigen. When she moves away, Tao follows, pressing another kiss to the corner of her mouth.
“That’s how conversations work, Tao.”
“The way conversations work is tedious and inefficient.”
“So is saying ‘tedious and inefficient’ instead of ‘stupid’.” Tao laughs at that, really laughs, a genuine sound that comes unbidden. In the back of his mind, he tells himself to stop losing control, to keep his eyes on the prize, to remember why he’s here. To win. Not to love.
(But it’s damn hard, isn’t it?)
“Touché,” he settles on, resting his hands on her hips. He learned she liked that, liked to be held. The first few times, he did it stiffly and clumsily, holding either too tight or too loosely, unaccustomed to touching someone else. She had taught him how to rest his hands, how to soften his edges, how to let her take control of things to show him. He was grateful for that, and almost sorry to lie to her because of it.
“No, I haven’t,” he adds, reaching up to brush hair out of her face. She smirks and slips out of his grip, turning back to the vanity and retrieving a necktie, which she begins to put on. “Been on a date, that is.”
“Take me out, then.”
“On a date?”
“On a date.”
Tao scratches the back of his neck, a wave of nervousness washing over him. It wasn’t a feeling he was unaccustomed with — he had felt anxiety many times in Optigen, when he was still an infant and, while incredibly smart, knew nothing about the world, or why the scientists were jabbing him with needles, or how to handle pain. He cowered in fear of their sharp objects and scrutinizing glares for months until he cut that part of himself away and hid it. He would never feel fear like that again, he had decided.
And this wasn’t fear like that. The nervousness here was different. He didn’t want to disappoint Kenesha, and that was a familiar feeling, but this was one of the rare occasions he didn’t know how to go about doing something. He had had similar feelings when Kenesha had kissed him — in that case and in this one, he knew the theory, the technique, but had none of the experience.
It was terrifying, and Tao wanted it — wanted her — like he wanted the world; carnivorous, starving, frenzied. His teeth itch, so he sinks them in.
“Okay,” he says, shark-smile crossing his face. “Tomorrow night.” Kenesha raises an eyebrow as she pulls her goggles over her head and then rests them in her hair.
“Not even waiting for a weekend? What about the C.A.T.s?”
“We can save the world whenever we want. It’ll still be ending when we get back,” he says, and the true humor of it hits him and not Kenesha. She just rolls her eyes and pulls her shoes on.
“Fine,” she says, grabbing her coat from the rack. Tao picks a piece of lint off it. He gets a kiss on the cheek for his efforts, and then she’s out the bedroom door.
He stretches, feeling something in his back crack. An appreciative, satisfied hum escapes him as he flops back into bed, closing his eyes. He barely notices when the door opens again. He DOES notice when an article of clothing is thrown at his face. He pulls it off to see Kenesha poking her head back in.
“Put your shirt on, lover boy,” she says, before closing the door for real this time. Tao pauses, then snorts in spite of himself, before going about the rather arduous process of getting dressed.
“Maxwell.” Max nearly jumps out of his skin when Tao says his name, clearly unaware of the man behind him. To be fair, Tao has always had an unnerving presence, and that combined with his uncanny ability to slink up silently and unnoticed means that he startles people more often than not.
The mercenary turns, glaring at Tao. He looks a bit like an angry bulldog, with his lower jaw jutting out like that. Tao finds it incredibly amusing, and bites back a smile as he seats himself across from the man.
“Jesus, man,” Max says, rubbing the back of his neck. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“I’m six feet, ten inches. I’m not hard to spot. You should develop better peripheral vision,” Tao says matter-of-factly, before placing a plastic bag on the table. Max looks at it like it has teeth.
“What’s this?”
“Food.” There’s a moment of hesitation where Max is clearly debating whether or not to take Tao at his word (Because Tao is, in his words, “a creepy motherfucker who shouldn’t be trusted with your car keys”), but he slowly opens it. His expression relaxes upon seeing that it is, in fact, just food.
Tao barely has time to register Max’s appreciative grunt before he’s shoving the burger in his mouth. Disgust crawls up in the back of Tao’s mind — people are so repulsive, and in this moment, Max especially — but he pushes it down. He’s here on a mission, after all. “Consider it both a gesture of good will and a bribe.”
“A bibfe?” Max asks through a mouthful of food. Tao sighs and rubs his forehead.
“I need your advice.”
“On what?”
Tao grimaces and looks around to make sure they’re alone before leaning forward, elbows on the table, hands cupped around his temples and cheekbones so as to block out any stray glances should anyone come in. “On… dating.”
“DATING?” Max almost yells it, and Tao immediately shushes him, face turning an uncharacteristic shade of scarlet. Dammit. The redhead is laughing now, hand over mouth. “Shit, man, I know you and Savant have been hooking up, and that’s weird enough, but… you? On a date?”
“You begin to see my predicament.” Tao sighs — the second time in the last five minutes — and puts his head in his arms on the table. “I have no idea what I’m doing.” He can hear Max snort and bite into the burger again.
“Awww, little buddy. It’s okay. Papa Cash will teach you how to get in a chick’s pants.” Tao glares up at him.
“I don’t need to get in her pants, Maxwell. I need to… to… to woo her.”
“Okay, well, for starters, don’t use the word woo.” Max stares, mouth half-open as Tao wordlessly produces a notebook and pen. “What are you doing?” Tao’s gaze flicks up.
“Note-taking.”
“Don’t you have a photographic memory?”
“Yes. It’s easier for me to write things down, though.”
“Dude.”
“What?”
“That’s weird. Lesson one. Don’t do that.” Tao hesitates before putting the notebook and pencil down, clasping his hands in front of him. It’s true, he does have a photographic memory (or very nearly), but he’s too embarrassed to admit that he thinks when it comes to Kenesha, he’s as human as the rest of them. Fallible.
“I need to impress her. That’s what I meant.” Max scratches the side of his face.
“You’re covered on impressive. You need to know what you DO on a date, man.”
“Right.”
“Lesson two. Take her to a nice restaurant and pay.”
“She has more money than I do.” Max shakes his head, waving a hand dismissively.
“Not the point. You gotta show you can take care of her. That’s the whole point. Drive her to the place, pull her chair out for her, give her your jacket if she’s cold. You know. Normal things.” Tao slumps in his seat a little. Max chews thoughtfully for a minute before snapping his fingers. “Dance with her. I bet she likes dancing. Or take her on one of those… two-person bike rides.”
“I can… probably do that.”
“Get her flowers, too. Maybe chocolates? Chicks love those in movies.”
“In… movies.”
“Yeah.” Max finishes his burger.
“…Maxwell, how long has it been since you went on an actual date with an actual woman? One that went well?”
Max’s silence and slow frown confirms Tao’s rising suspicion: nobody on this goddamn team can help him with this. Internally, Tao drags his hands down his face. Externally, he stands, pockets the notebook and pencil, runs a hand through his hair, and walks off without saying another word.
As per usual, he’s going to have to go this alone. Nothing to be done about that. He works better alone, anyway. Prefers to figure things out his own way.
At least, that’s what he’s telling himself to quell the rising hot coil of anxiety in his gut.
When he returns to his room — his own, not the one he and Kenesha share on nights she shows him just how good a person’s body can feel, or nights when he’s feeling more human than usual because of the night terrors, and just needs to be held — he makes his way to the bathroom.
He turns on the sink, collects the ice-cold water in his cupped palms, and splashes it on his face, hoping to cool the hot fog of frustration, nervousness, and inexperience that’s clouding his usually pristine thinking process. He leans on the sink, looking at his reflection for a moment.
For the first few years of his life — which amounted roughly to the first two decades or so — he had never seen himself outside of the passing glimpse of a reflection against glass. He had felt his own face many times, squinting at the distorted and faint reflection of it in the tube he was held in, trying to make sense of what he looked like by drawing it. He never got it right, always settling somewhere just outside himself. Looking at his own face, seeing it, is a strange experience.
His eye bags are dark and heavy, lending themselves to the air of mild dishevelment that he seems to carry with him at all times. His skin, a light brownish-olive color, is dusted with freckles — a feature he was legitimately surprised to discover he had.
His eyes are dark, and they’re his least favorite feature. He never thought he’d be so vain, so human, as to not only pick apart his appearance, but to rank pieces of it, and yet, here he was.
Kenesha’s eyes are brown. A rich brown. Flecks of green and yellow, swirling into something just outside of hazel when the light hit them just right. He likes them best when they were just brown, though. They look so alive then — like soil after rainfall. Full of energy and promise and potential. Shining with the morning dew and teeming with life just waiting to burst forth.
Tao’s eyes are brown, too. A deeper brown, a colder brown. A deader color. He does not have light in his eyes like Kenesha does. His eyes are slabs of obsidian, cold, unmoving, sharp, hard, unable to be ‘dead’ because they had never been alive in the first place. His gaze is intimidating, even when he tries to soften his features. The parts of himself that know why he’s here, the ambitious parts that want to make this world pay, they think it’s good. They think it’s useful to have such a cold, penetrating glare on hand perpetually.
The hidden, quiet part of him, small and scared and barely alive, a flower growing out of concrete, wishes he had light in his eyes for Kenesha to see. That part wishes Kenesha could look at him and feel what he felt when he laid his eyes on her.
(Another part of him wishes he wasn’t so hard on himself, nitpicking things that don’t matter. He pushes that one aside.)
He stares in the mirror, and a thread of bile creeps up in his throat. He looks so human. So deeply human, so repulsive and disgusting. So he takes his shirt off, then his pants, and stands under a freezing cold shower spray as he thinks about the best way to go about tomorrow.
The night air is comfortably settling into coolness, a welcome contrast from the early-summer heat and humidity that’s been drowning Tao all day. He glances down at himself again, running through a series of mental checks on the suit he’s put on. Black, except for a purple tie and gold clips in his hair, pinning his unruly bangs back to give the impression of formality and dignity. He dusts some pollen from the flowers he picked up off of his jacket, rocks back and forth on his toes, flexes the hand that isn’t holding flowers, and then knocks on Kenesha’s bedroom door.
His breath catches in his throat when she opens, arm leaning on the doorway.
Kenesha’s suit is… glittery, for one. Tao has never really been in a position where he can see this much sparkling and sequining in real life, so that takes him off guard. As does the soft sunset sheen of it all, glittering somewhere between a dulled, muted gold and a pale brown. She’s adjusting the tie at her collar, which has gold plating on the tips, smoothing it down to lie flat under the black vest. Heeled boots allow her to run, and the trousers seem to have a good range of motion.
(Sexy but practical — ready to get up and do her job at a moment’s notice. What a woman.)
Tao feels a bit underdressed, a bit boring, a bit not-enough in her presence. It sends a thrill through him, and he grins.
“Hello,” he says, and his voice is much smaller than he thought it would be.
“Hey,” she says, and she’s grinning. It’s beautiful, and Tao moves forward.
“May I kiss you?”
“Hmm.” Kenesha taps her chin, playing at thinking about it. “I dunno.” She laughs at Tao’s wide-eyed, deer-in-headlights expression, the way his mouth opens a twitch and then closes. “Yes. You may kiss me.” He grins, wide and shaky. His smile – the real one, not the one he wears when he knows he’s supposed to smile, the one that only comes out in rare moments of actual joy – is lopsided, skewed to the left of his face. When he bends down and presses his mouth to Kenesha’s, the kiss is lopsided too.
“For a genius,” she says, teasing, “you’re a real idiot sometimes.” Tao’s grin turns vindictive at her words, a sliver of malice crossing his face. He picks her up with a surprising level of ease for someone so skinny, and she squeals.
“Retaliation,” he says simply, and carries her to the car – a convertible, silver, top down. Gently setting her on the ground, he leans over and opens the passenger side door for her.
“Can you even drive?”
“Of course I can drive.” Tao places one hand on the hood of the car to anchor himself and jumps over to the driver’s side.
“Better question,” Kenesha says as he slides into the driver’s seat, “do you have a driver’s license?” Tao smiles at her and turns the car on. Her jaw drops, scandalized, as she reaches towards the keys.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Tao tuts, placing one hand over hers. “I’ve read all the manuals. I know the laws. I won’t get pulled over.”
“You so will.” Kenesha’s words are drowned out by Tao revving the engine.
“What?!” he shouts, revving it again. “Sorry, couldn’t hear you over the engine!” A disbelieving laugh escapes Kenesha as he presses his foot to the gas, pealing away from the headquarters with a screech. Tao laughs too as they pull onto the highway, the wind ruining whatever minute sense of tidiness he had managed to instill in his hair. “WHOO!” It’s a joyful sound, accompanied by him taking his hands off the wheel for a moment, which causes Kenesha to scream and lean over to grab it.
“We are so getting arrested!” Her tone, which is one laced with genuine frustration and incredulity, makes Tao’s smile falter a little. He puts his hands back on the wheel and turns on the radio.
“It was just for a second. There aren’t any cops around.”
“There are other cars. We could have crashed.”
“We’re going straight. And will continue to go straight for the foreseeable future.” A glance in Kenesha’s direction tells Tao she isn’t impressed, and he sighs. “I’m sorry. I’m just excited.”
“About the date?”
“Well, yes, and about the car. I’ve never driven one before.” Kenesha puts her head in her hands and laughs, and Tao pauses before laughing along with her. “I haven’t!”
“I know! I know, it’s so…” Trailing off, Kenesha leans back in her seat and looks at him. When Tao meets her eyes, he’s struck by the amount of emotion in her gaze – like she’s seeing something not only worth looking at, but something she loves more than anything else. Like she’s looking at all the artifacts from all periods of history, laid out in front of her – her passion, her life, her soul. “You seem so old sometimes, but then there’s times where you’re… I dunno. Like a little kid.”
Tao snorts. “I assure you, I’m a full grown man, physically, mentally, and emotionally. You know firsthand that I am fully d—”
“Yeah, yeah! I know!” Kenesha sighs and then shrugs. “I just mean… sometimes… you do things, and it’s so amazing watching you do them because it’s like watching someone discover how much wonder there is in the world.”
“The world is largely mundane.”
“Yeah, for the most part. I mean, I’m thousands of years old. There’s not much I haven’t done.” Tao considers that for a moment – the age gap between them is certainly absurdly large, what with Kenesha being literal millennia older than any living human, and Tao really only being chronologically about 20. Yet, the two of them are at near identical points in their maturity.
“But you,” Kenesha continues, “there’s so much you haven’t done. Watching you do things for the first time reminds me what it feels like.” She glances at him. “It’s nice.”
“Well,” Tao says as the car slows and pulls off the highway, down into the city, “I am happy to be of assistance in matters of your ongoing midlife crisis.”
“Oh, shut up.” She playfully smacks his arm, and he gives her a fiendish grin.
“How long are you going to live, anyway?” Kenesha blinks. “Sorry. Is that inappropriate first date talk?”
“Yeah, hon.”
“Oops.” Sheepish smile. “Feel free to answer later, post-date.” The car rolls to a stop and turns off in the parking area in front of a restaurant – called, as evidenced by the glowing sign, Sam’s.
Kenesha sits up in her seat, peering through the large windows of Sam’s the best she can. “Fancy,” she says after a moment.
“Obscenely so,” Tao says, and he frowns. Kenesha also frowns, though she does so independently from Tao. The two of them sit in silence for roughly 30 seconds before both beginning to speak at the same time.
“We should go somewhere else,” Kenesha says.
“I think we would get thrown out of there,” Tao says.
The two of them look at each other for a few seconds before bursting into laughter. Tao starts the car again, pulls out of the parking lot, and starts driving away, reservation forgotten.
The place they end up settling on is a pizza parlor, homey and nearly empty. It’s bathed in orange-y light, giving the whole room the same sort of feeling as one gets from sitting in front of a fire.
Tao, for his part, has never had pizza before, and his stomach flips at the sight of it. Not in disgust, but apprehension. Kenesha is halfway through her third bite when Tao finally speaks up.
“How do I eat this?” Kenesha nearly chokes when he asks that, putting the pizza down.
“What?”
“The pizza. How do I eat it.”
“…Seriously?”
“Deadly.”
“Well. You kind of just pick it up and bite into it.” Tao picks up the pizza experimentally, making a face.
“It seems too front-heavy to support its own weight.”
“That’s why you have to eat it from the front.”
“Ah.” Tao’s face screws up more, but he takes a bite. He chews for a few moments, face contorting into one of pain. “It’s hot,” he manages, clearly trying his best to not burn the inside of his mouth.
“Yes. Pizza tends to be hot. You can eat it cold.”
“That seems… excessively slimy.” Kenesha snorts, wolfing down the rest of her slice.
“You’d think so. How’s it taste?”
“…Like cheese. And sauce.”
“It’s made of cheese and sauce, so that would make sense.”
“God, you’re smart.” The two of them make eye contact for a few seconds before simultaneously bursting into laughter. Tao doesn’t feel joy very often – it’s a luxury he was never given back in Optigen, one he didn’t even register as an option until he had met her. And, god, with her, it’s like nothing else exists. He forgets for a moment how angry he is, how scared, and all he feels is how his face strains with the pain of smiling so wide, so real, how the laughing at something that’s only barely funny is making him cough hard enough to need water. He manages to down it, smiling out of the corner of his eye at Kenesha.
“What?” she asks. Tao shrugs.
“Nothing. I just like looking at you.”
“Flatterer.”
“Is it flattery if it’s stating simple fact?”
“Don’t play your logic games with me, lover boy,” she chirps, and takes a sip of her drink. Tao snorts, rolls his eyes, and leans back in his seat. “Tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“Is life what you imagined it to be?”
Tao’s a bit taken aback by the question – that’s the kind of person Kenesha is. She’s clear and honest about her feelings on things, her opinions – she’s an open book, and yet, she still manages to take Tao off guard like nobody else can. This question, it’s one that’s bitten at the back of his mind every now and then, though phrased in slightly different ways.
Is this what he imagined?
What he wanted?
Tao wants destruction. Tao wants the world on its knees, harnessed to him by a leash, a chain. Tao wants chaos. Tao wants to be a god, to reform the universe to his whims, to make it pay for what it did to him, for the insolence and stupidity of all the little idiotic gnats, buzzing around the cosmos, waging stupid petty wars over the same goddamn conflicts, over and over and over again, writing history books and never bothering to check if they’ve done this song and dance once, twice, a thousand times before. Tao wants the world in his jaws, cracking open under his teeth, bleeding out onto his hands so he can take it and make it into something new, something like him. Angry, hatred festering like an infected wound.
Tao wants Kenesha. He wants her sun-kissed hair and her deep brown skin and her clever eyes and her mind, always dancing around his, the only thing even remotely capable of keeping up with him. He wants her hands on his, now and when they’re both old, and he wants to see children with his eyes and her nose, his smile and her cheekbones. Tao wants Kenesha, to kneel by her, to rest his head on her lap, to follow her wherever it is she goes, to listen to her every command, faithful, loyal. No longer a kicked puppy, but a loving lapdog.
Tao wants these worlds, these two things, and he knows in that moment that the world he imagines – the world where he stands on the ruins of the universe with her hand in his, where they usher in a world of chaos, a world free from doctors and needles and tests and modifications and scientists, a world where life is wild and terrifying, as it should be – that world is a dream, just out of his reach.
Someday, he knows, he’ll have to choose between his world and her. The two are not so dissimilar in importance to him.
But, of course, he can’t tell her that. So, he sighs, raises his eyebrows, and plays at thinking for a moment.
“I suppose. It’s louder than I anticipated. There are so many things I have yet to do. It’s rather like… I’ve read all about it. The world. I knew what to expect. But knowing what to expect and actually experiencing it are divided by a gulf deeper than the Marianas Trench.”
Tao drums his fingers on the table, and then decides to tell her the truth – what he had said was the truth, of course, but in a roundabout sort of way. This was honest. It was open.
“I didn’t imagine anyone as wonderful as you could exist in the world.”
Kenesha goes quiet, resting her cheek in her hand and staring at Tao with a fondness he isn’t quite sure he could fully comprehend. She’s smiling, an expression somewhere between bliss and sadness. She reaches one hand across the table and when Tao takes it, she rubs her thumb over his knuckles.
“I never thought I’d meet anyone as wonderful as you, either,” she says, and the honesty of that is more than Tao knows how to handle – it’s true, so true. Not an empty platitude meant to stroke his ego, but an honest, open declaration of admiration. Admiration he had earned, not supplanted into her mind.
Something warm bloomed in his chest, crowding out the darkness. For a moment, this is all he wants. The universe be damned – something far better sits in front of him, her suit glittering softly, brighter and better than every star in every sky.
The drive home is mostly uneventful, with the two of them laughing vaguely about the day, how stupid they were to think that they would want to go somewhere fancy, and how ridiculous they looked all dressed up in a pizza parlor like it was some sort of fine dining experience. The whole night was light and carefree, and Tao had never felt so alive in all his years.
That was what Kenesha was to him – she was life. Not surviving, but living, really and truly. All the city lights and pizza parlors and music he had never heard before blaring from the radio of a car he was driving down the interstate, fast enough to kill, wind whipping in his hair. He knew for that day that Kenesha held in her a thing bigger than the universe, worth infinitely more. She made him feel like something of substance – warmth in his chest replacing the massive hollow space that had filled him for as long as he could remember. Hate and anger and bitterness forgotten in the wake of her golden yellow presence. She brought a feeling like the sun peeking through the clouds after a terrible day, warming him right through his skin, down to the bone, to the soul.
He lays with her in bed that night, staring at her. Her eyes are closed, face halfway buried in the pillow, hair spilling across it.
“Kenesha,” he whispers.
“Mmm?”
“Are you awake?”
“I am now. What?”
Tao scoots closer. He presses his forehead to hers, eliciting a little giggle from her.
“I love you,” he says, and he means it. No ulterior motive, no lying. He’s as honest as he ever could be, heart wide open. She sighs softly, pressing a kiss to the side of his mouth.
“I love you too, Tao. Now go back to sleep.”
“Okay.”
This time next month, Kenesha will be bleeding from a gunshot wound inflicted by Cole – a shot meant to hit Tao. This time next month, Kenesha’s love for him won’t have lived past the gunshot wound – not most of it, anyway. There’ll always be a scrap of it, but the hatred will cover it, making it invisible. He’ll be on his way to conquer the world, and she’ll be angry, and scared, and hurt, just like he is.
But that is next month, and this is now. And now, Tao sleeps with his head against hers, his arms around her waist, all elbows and sharp points. He dreams of good things, and for the first time, he knows that he is loved, loved, loving, every bit of him.