Chapter Text
I swung open the door to the cafe with red eyes and tears streaked on my cheeks. Immediately I felt the gaze of half the affini in the room on me and I shrunk into my oversized hoodie some more. I… I was hoping I could just snag a chair in a dimly-lit corner to lick my wounds and remember how to pretend to be a human person. Standing in the threshold, I didn't know what to do. This, right now, was my first time being so close to one of these aliens and... suddenly I felt like a deer stumbling into a den of wolves.
Under the weight of all those stares, it felt more awkward to leave than stay. If only barely.
A week ago, a ship of theirs parted the cloudy night sky and laid claim to Aulis. There was no resistance. There could be no real resistance when they came here with such overwhelming force. What would be the point? They razed the financial district downtown and started building the heart of a new city in its ashes. Shorts of the nova-Modern glass bank buildings and cathedrals getting atomized were all I could find on the internet for a few days.
This cafe was part of the first wave of construction, just finished a day or two ago. Sunlight streamed in from almost floor-to-ceiling windows. A colorful network of semi-opaque tubes snaked its way through most of the cafe area, big enough for two of me to fit in side-by-side. A half-naked person slept in a haphazard plushie pile and— wait does she have a tail? I tore my eyes away lest I stare for too long and kept looking around the room. Framed art and posters with... unconventional affirmations littered the walls. Things like good pets ask for scritches or a well-fed kitten is a happy kitten. It was... harder than I'd like to say to tear my eyes away.
I — I blinked and suddenly one of them was right up in my face. I don't know how. I could have sworn she was just on the other side of the room?
Some floral scent I couldn't place suffused the air and made me feel a little light-headed. This affini was a riot of colors, smells, and textures so loud that it was hard to parse what I was even looking at. I wasn't the right kind of nerd to recognize any of the colorful flowers all over her body. The ones on her sternum were the most eye-catching — objectively, and not for any other reason. Her face was wrong in some way, but… her four eyes that sparkle like the moon captured all my attention. She was too tall. By which I mean, I had to keep craning my head up so as to not have her tits at roughly eye level.
She was a spectacle. She was horrifying. She — she was speaking to me? "Hello, petal~ What a pleasant surprise to see you here. You might be our first local visitor."
oh god what do i say now i didn't plan for this
Thankfully she continued: "Welcome to the Pampered Paws cafe. The owner's in the back taking care of something, and I offered to greet you, cutie. My name is Amaranth Datura, Third Bloom, she/her. What brings you here?"
Okay. Just be polite and talk to the otherworldly fae being. I could do this. Don't overthink it, or it won't seem earnest. "Hi! Please call me Iph, and... I've been trying on ae/aer pronouns! I..."
I was silent for a few seconds, trying to figure out how to answer the rest of her question. What could I say? Oh, no reason. I just love making stupid impulsive decisions while emotionally compromised! I thought this was a normal fucking coffeeshop but now I'm in too deep and can't leave! That'd be dumb. That would be weird. I had to think of something better. But I didn't want to take too much time and annoy her.
I deflected. "Could we sit down? It was kind of a long walk to get here."
"Oh, of course! Thank you for saying something, dear. Let me show you to a table," she said before gliding across the floor to one of the shorter tables. — Wait, is that a tail? No, don't get distracted and don't look at her ass, what the heck. — Even the smallest table was still uncomfortably tall. As I started wondering how I was going to climb up onto a chair, Amaranth asked: "Would you like some help up?"
Nod. Faster than I thought possible, vines wrapped snugly around my torso. It wasn't a bad feeling. But that didn't stop me from squeaking loudly as she lifted me onto the seat. Thank stars that the hoodie was hiding my face a little, or she might have seen me blushing. Maybe she did anyways; an errant vine pet me softly before retracting politely again.
My legs clenched shut for a moment, and I paled. No, no, don't do this right now. Get a grip. Don't do this right now. My self-control's usually better than this; don't freak out the hot monster woman with a predatory glint in her eyes by being... like this.
If she was put off by the storm raging inside me, she hid it well. Her serene smile was almost... intoxicating? That smile and her faintly iridescent eyes — when I looked at her, I felt a little calmer.
Amaranth broke the silence first: "Now, I would love to hear what brought you here. I'm afraid that you got here right in the middle of nap time, if your goal was to see the pets. Most of them are resting in the quiet room out back, or curled up in the corner. They should wake up before long~" Here her eyes narrowed and her lips curled up into a fiendish smile. "Or are you interested in seeing what boarding here for a few days is like, brave darling~?"
FATAL ERROR: system <Iphigenia> has run out of memory. Dump core and restart.
Amaranth waited patiently for me to get my words together. Was she... humming? I swore that beneath the low-grade buzz of people talking, I heard some faint melody right on the edge of perception. My eyes teared up against my will. What the fuck? Begone. I rubbed them with my hands trying to get the tears to stop. I thought I got all of this out of my system on the walk here.
I mean, obviously not, but.
Her eyes caught mine. It hurt a little at first. I flinched and tried to look away, but— Small glimmers of color were forming in her silver, lustrous eyes. The inchoate spirals were... captivating, and drew me in. Amaranth clasped one of my hands in her own. "Oh... you're having an even harder time than I realized, aren't you darling? You're safe here, petal. Thank you for being so brave for me. When you're ready to talk, I will listen and it will be okay."
I shut my eyes before I fell in Amaranth's tide and drowned. Momentarily emboldened, I started talking before my wits caught up with me.
"It was exciting when the overnet launched. A little scary and overwhelming, but really easy to learn. I was curious at first about what y'all were like. 'What does Affini society believe in? Why do you do what you do?' It sounds so pretentious now that I say it out loud, stars.
"So almost immediately, I started learning about florets. I devoured so many blog posts and videos and stupid shitty memes that... in retrospect maybe hindered more than helped me? It was so much — an overwhelming tide of happy, blissed out pets in every shape and size. I… I was really captivated. Especially by all the body mods~ ✨ I wanted to learn about them. I wanted to have them; I was this raging maelstrom of jealous dysphoria for days.
"I couldn't hide how I was feeling for very long, even if I'd wanted to. We lived in a shitty studio together. We'd been together for five years. We're both trans and fucked up; they'll get what this feels like, right?"
My voice kept getting faster, though my throat was getting hoarse. Maybe I was crying? I don't know. It was hard to talk about this part. I was picking at a fresh wound, raw and bloody. Yet I kept going out of the inexplicable conviction that I'm safe here. Amaranth tried very hard to exude this aura of calm and safety, waiting until I got everything out of my system, but... it wasn't helping. Or maybe it was, and it helped too much; there was a roiling tide inside of me and the farther I fell into her song, the less I could self-censor.
"It was our date night last night. We've both been on edge lately and wanted to take it easy. We were about to load up the shitty shooter that they play to de-stress, but I wanted to talk first. I was scared their game would just take over the whole night. It was so stupid. I told Cal — my girlfriend — how I've been feeling, just because... I don't know, I wanted a hug? They freaked out. Cal had been on edge and unwilling to talk about it for days; I didn't realize they were freaking out over the invasion this whole time.
"What are you doing connecting to their networks unprotected? was one of the first thing out of their mouth. They asked a lot of questions like that, and none of my answers made them happy. For a second, I thought they were going to hit me? Cal was still upset when I wanted to go to bed and told me to sleep on the couch. They woke me up earlier and told me to get out. I'm the only one on the lease. Get the fuck out. Go beg the weeds for somewhere to stay. I... I didn't get it? It came so out of nowhere! I asked them what brought this on. They said… a bunch of things I don't want to repeat. And then I left."
It was time to stop talking, but I couldn't dam the flow of words. I couldn't breathe. I tunnel-visioned, watching my hands stim frantically on the table like they belonged to someone else. Can… can I not even make it through a single conversation at this point without freaking out?
"I sat on the stoop of our" — I flinched. A beat came and went. — "I sat on the stoop of their apartment building browsing my phone while I tried to figure out what to do. Where to go. I felt gray and empty. I was spent. None of the jokes or shitposts I scrolled through made me feel anything. Only this pit of molten dysphoric jealousy remained?
"I walked around town for a while. Cafes are pretty good for killing time. You just pretend to work for a few hours and usually they leave you alone til it's time to head to the next friend letting you crash on their couch. But none of the Terran coffeeshops have opened back up yet, so I thought that maybe I could stay here for a while and clear my head?" I looked around at all the decorations — the plushie piles, the fairy lights, the bright and colorful tunnels snaking their way through the room, the cat trees, the eye-catching colorful posters that at all times threaten to swallow my attention. "Except that I didn't really expect any of this. I... I'm here now. I'm here now, and… oh stars, why am I here?"
Amaranth was giving me a firm look. She'd been kind and patient, waiting for me to stop, but... I mean. Persistence hunters chase their quarry to the point of exhaustion and pounce upon them at their weakest. I — I don't know why these metaphors keep coming to my head here. Am I being too horny on main? (Does my running stream of consciousness really count as main?)
"I— I think that maybe I should leave? T-this is so embarrassing, honestly. I really hope that I haven't wasted your time too badly, Miss Datura."
I expected the oversized chair to screech as I tried to push away from the table, but I guess that the Affini conquered even the most minor of inconveniences. They could do anything, and I'm... I'm nothing in their shadow. I tried to jump off the chair to leave but a firm vine kept me from leaping off.
"Petal, you haven't even had a chance to eat breakfast yet. Your hands are trembling" — they are? — "and you're breathing heavily. Please let me get you something to eat."
I nodded meekly and her smile lit up the room. "Thank you very much, my dear. What can I get you?"
"Is there a menu?"
"There can be, if you'd like. Although for such a lovely and brave little sophont, just say the word and I'll get you anything you want~"
My stomach growled. Amaranth smiled a little, probably restraining herself from saying I told you so. My mouth watered and for a second all I could think about was that I would kill for a good empanada. It's been years since I've had any; not since running away from the biofamily. I tried to accept the offer, but instead what came out of my mouth was "…why?"
Why did I say that?
"There is no reason aside from the fact that it's the right thing to do. You're here and hurting. From your own words, you've had a very harrowing few hours at the hands of someone you love. All I want is to get some food in you, after which we can talk about what to do next."
It probably shouldn't be this surprising that she says she wants to help. She's so consistent about it. Everything about her voice, her face, her posture tried to convey that if I just went along with her, she could make me feel safe. Fragments of a song I'd never heard before but knew by heart played in my head, trying to get me to calm down.
"…are you just going to suggest that I get domesticated?"
For half a second, the song in my head sped up and became frantic before regaining composure. Somehow I knew that if I were any less of a complete wreck, Amaranth would barely be able to restrain herself from unabashedly flirting with me? Her eyes still glimmered for a second before she said, "Would you like me to?"
What kind of answer is that?
Except that the only thing I can say back is, "…I don't know."
I expected her to back off, to give me more space. It's what she's done this whole time. But this conversation has been a hunt, and she decided now was the time to pounce. "Are you saying that after spending so much time researching what domestication entails, you've come away from it all without a single thought of what it would be like? I have a hard time believing that, considering the glimmer in your eyes as you talked about the impressive and adorable amount of research you've done. I hope that you don't consider this too impolitic a question, but part of me is just dying to know. Darling Iph, why come here — why go anywhere — as opposed to a domestication center?"
I— I, umm. I—???
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"Would you like the honest or palatable answer?" Amaranth raised an eyebrow at me and started playing with an errant, gleaming thorn. Is she stimming or is that a threat? Stop that. I wondered what xenodrugs could dribble out of it. Stop! Shoving that thought down caused my eyes to tear up more for some reason. Frantically I continued: "no, but really, I'm... I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm just... Please give me permission? I— I need..."
I get loud when I get anxious and part of me is worried that the entire cafe is becoming privy to this stupid, sordid anxiety attack of a conversation, but that just— Triage. Triage, Iph. Stop being like this and just obediently answer the scarily hot alien's questions.
"Petal, you have my full permission to be as honest as you can be."
This train would only stop when it crashed. "I… I thought about it. I can't say that I didn't. I found the address and I almost went there, except…" Who'd want me? "It's not like I'm clever or special. I can't do anything. I fuck up every relationship I'm in by wanting too much."
Finally, a reaction. Amaranth's voice came out stern and aggrieved: "Flower, don't talk about yourself like—"
Part of me wanted to break down further just to see some emotion on her face and mar that patient, serene face. I lost control of my emotions a while ago, swept up in some unknowable musical tide. Let's fucking dig into it harder. "Why not!? It's true! And don't– don't give me that look! I'm a black hole of desire whose hunger can't ever be sated, no matter how hard anyone ever tries! I'm horny all the time and I can't fucking stop, no matter how gross and unclean it makes me feel! Cal was right about me! I don't deserve to be anyone's floret!!"
"Stop, petal!"
My body went limp and I fell against the back of the chair. For a second, I forgot to breathe as I took in Amaranth. For just a second, her eyes shone like embers of hell. The sclera of her simulated eyes were black and the elliptical irises became bloody, stormy shades of red. I couldn't flinch — I had to stop — and so their gravity pulled me into the abyss. Even though they changed back almost immediately, I'd still seen it. In another genre, Amaranth would have been an avenging angel.
I fucked up.
I fucked up so bad. It wasn't safe. My thoughts kept getting pulled so many directions by every stimulus until all my self-control evaporated with it.
I tried to get away, but my body wouldn't obey me. It wasn't mine anymore. I couldn't get enough air. My brain was thoroughly in deer in the headlights mode, and I didn't know what to do. What thoughts were left were all over the place. My brain and body felt completely disconnected; random tremors started to travel up my hands into my arms. The jaws of the wolf hung ready to pierce and rend the deer's flesh.
I had to get away. My lungs burned for air. The sudden hunger in the alien's eyes felt inescapable. Maybe if I really tried hard, I could fall off the chair mid-tremor and start crawling away—
A needle pressed into my thigh, gentler and more tender than I expected. Everything went black.