He stood near the door, silent, one shoulder pressed against the wall. He had not wanted to come, but - it hadn't been a choice. Emmet had handed him the invitation with such a wide smile and Wyldstyle had looked at him so fiercely that, feeling trapped, equally afraid of her uppercut and his hugs, he had accepted.
B now wished he hadn't.
In all the years of his work with President Business, he could not remember ever having been around so many happy people at once. Robots did not show much emotion, after all, and Business—- There had always been something hard, something sharp, in his smiles.
But here, everyone B could see was grinning. Even the one person whose face was hidden was clearly having a good time: the astronaut that had built Emmet that spaceship on TAKOS Tuesday had his helmet on as per usual, the tinted glass hiding his expressions, but he bounced and floated and laughed, his voice tinny and strange, as though it had been filtered through auto-tune several hundred times. Over the music, B could hear friendly conversation, jokes, stories. He joined in with none of it. All those smiles made him painfully conscious of his own frown.
He checked all the entrances and exits to the room for the hundredth time. One door. Three windows. Emmet's apartment was four stories up, so it was unlikely anyone would be climbing in from outside. Or out. If something were to go wrong, the only way out of the apartment would be through that one small door in the living room. People would push and shove and shout. And, more likely than not, they'd end up trampling each other. Shaking his head, B pressed little divots idly into his soda can. The place was a fire hazard.
Nothing'll go wrong, buddy. G's voice in his head was soft, reassuring. Relax. It'll be fine.
"I don't trust 'em," B muttered. His eyes turned back to the people gathered around him. There was Emmet, Wyldstyle, Batman, someone who looked suspiciously like L. Frank Baum's Tin Man and spoke with a pirate's accent, and others he did not recognize. The staff of the old blind prophet, Vitruvius, had even been propped up in a chair next to a mug of tea. B almost winced when he saw that.
They're not trying t'make you feel bad. They just want t'remember their friend.
"Hm."
Pieces of conversations floated towards him, disjointed, like the voices on the police radio as B flipped through the channels. He focused on their words, feeling G joining him. If they were not going to join in, they might as well listen in.
By the cooler, Emmet was talking loudly about a new, creative approach to 'Where Are My Pants', and Bruce Wayne was listening, occasionally throwing out suggestions for music ( his own ), color schemes for the set ( all black ), and additions to the plot ( large speakers, Batmobiles, and 'bat-pants' ).
Across the room, the pirate-cyborg was plying the spaceman with sweets. "Oh, no, I shouldn't," the astronaut protested. Then, a moment later: "Well. Maybe a few." He raised his gloved hands and tugged at the airlocks, preparing to pull his helmet free.
Straightening up, B watched, eyes fixed on the pair. He had never seen the astronaut's face before - and while it should not have mattered, he found he was suddenly interested in what he looked like.
There was a hydraulic hiss as the clasps came undone beneath the astronaut's quick fingers. He pulled up, and the cops caught a glimpse of a long, dark neck and impossibly black curls. Then the helmet was off, tucked beneath the astronaut's arm.
B's soda hit the floor. His hands found his gun, readied it, leveled it at the figure by the kitchen table, the one he had thought was an astronaut.
Someone across the room muttered, "Shit," and someone else gasped.
"Hands up!" B barked.
The astronaut did not move.
Carefully, the pirate-cyborg stepped back. "He means you, Benny me lad," he said.
"Oh." The astronaut perked up. He turned on his heel, brushing crumbs off the front of his spacesuit, and looked at B mildly. "Sorry." Without the helmet, his voice sounded stranger, more modulated, high and loud and soft and low at once, as though many people were speaking through one mouth.
If it could be called a mouth.
B's finger tightened on the trigger. The astronaut was - not human. Not alien. Not recognizable in any way. Its skin was as dark as space, flecked with stars and nebulae like finely inked tattoos that moved and spun. The shape it held gave the impression of a chin, of a nose, of hair, but there was nothing to distinguish one inch of it from the next. Its eyes were white, pure white, and empty. It did not blink. Where its mouth should have been was a thin line of light, twisted into what seemed to be a worried frown.
One door. Three windows, G reminded his counterpart. We can get out th'door before he does anything.
"I don't think he'll give us time for that."
"Give you time for what?" the astronaut - the thing - asked. It titled its head. "Weren't you told about me?"
Emmet looked suddenly guilty. Wyldstyle's elbow dug into his ribs, and he winced.
B shook his head. "No," he said sharply. "We weren't."
The creature's skin darkened several shades. The cops tried to ignore it, tried not to dwell on what that might mean. "Well," it said, almost sadly, "now you know. D'you think you could put the gun down? You'll hurt someone, and it won't be me. You can't hurt me. And I promise: I'm not intending on hurting you."
—
They ended up at an ice cream parlor.
It had found them in the hallway that afternoon, slipping out of Emmet's apartment as quietly as they could. When it tapped them on the shoulder, they had almost jumped out of their skin. A few months had passed since their first meeting but the sight of it - him - whatever it was still sent shivers along the cops' spine.
But it floated in front of B and looked at him with those wide, all-white eyes, and after a moment it had asked him if he was afraid.
"Yes," B said, because he saw no reason to lie.
Its colors dimmed.
He's sad, G offered.
"You're reading too much into it, buddy," B muttered back.
The creature only paused for a minute, studying the cops. Then it said, "You're afraid because I'm not like you."
B did not respond.
It dimmed a little more. "What if I'm afraid of you because you're not like me? I'm not, but it's a possibility."
And it had sounded so thoughtful, so lonely, that B had blurted out the first thing that came to his mind: he invited it out for ice cream.
So there they sat, tucked into a booth. A neon sign fizzed and flickered on the wall next to them. It was just a one-time thing, the cops told themselves, just an apology for the way they had reacted to the creature - to Benny. That was all. But something about the way Benny had looked at them had touched them. They thought they had heard an echo of their younger selves in the way he had said, "You're afraid because I'm not like you."
Maybe that was why he had proposed going out for ice cream: it was an old, familiar cure for an old, familiar pain.
—
Once became twice. Two times became three, then four, then seven, and after that, G and B started to lose count.
Benny ordered a different flavor every time, and by the time he had eaten his way through every sort of ice cream offered, the cops had admitted to themselves that these meetings were no longer an apology. They liked Benny. They even invited him over to their apartment more than once, and found to their pleasant surprise that sometimes, when they came home from work, Benny was sitting on their couch, having slipped in underneath the door or through the window. It made the ragged apartment feel somehow less lonely to have someone in it. Even if that someone wasn't human.
But the nights at the ice cream parlor were still the best. They traded stories as they ate, enjoying each other's company. B answered all of Benny's questions about humans, but Benny never talked about his home. All he would ever say was, "I miss it," and all the nebulae and stars across his skin would fade.
—
On the day he met G, Benny ordered butterscotch ice cream. There were spots of it on his nose - or, at least, on the part of him that was meant to resemble a nose - but the cops were too nervous to notice.
But when they told him, Benny only smiled. He pulled a hand out of his glove and extended it, saying, "Nice to meet you, G."
G stared at the hand, amazed. A thin webbing of stars spanned Benny's fingers like veins, delicate, intricate as a spider's web.
Benny started to pull it back. "That is what you do when you meet someone, right?" he asked, uncertain.
Before his hand could get far, both of G's were wrapped around it, his rough palms pressed against the cool dark expanse of Benny's hand. "It is," he said, and smiled. "It is."
"Good. Thought I'd got it wrong for a minute there."
Wordless, G shook his head, then looked down. Benny's hand had disappeared entirely beneath the cops' broad palms. Blushing, G pulled his hands back, aware of the way Benny moved to brush his knuckles against the fleeing fingers.
The cops did a double take. Everywhere their hands had touched, Benny's hand was bright with light, shining as though a thousand stars had exploded beneath his skin. G blinked and rubbed at his glasses, as though he thought the light might disappear.
Benny laughed. His entire body brightened, glowing gently. "Don't worry," he said, "it'll fade."
"I don't know that I want it to."
B recoiled at the frankness of the statement. Don't—-
But G had already reached out again, pressing his thumb gently against the place where Benny's wrist met his hand, watching the light grow beneath his touch.
Benny turned his arm. The long, thin fingers began to melt and smooth into a broad disk. "There you go," he said, what had been his hand against the tabletop, "more room. You could probably draw on me, too." G must have gaped, because Benny's smile faltered. "Sorry. This human shape's just a formality, really. I can change it if I want or need. I thought if you wanted to touch—-"
"No, it's fine, buddy." Running a hand through his hair, G gave him a crooked smile. "But I think I like the hand better."
The dark expanse gathered, coalesced, resolved itself into the same, slim hand that Benny had had before. "There. Fixed it." He lifted his wrist, offering the delicate surface of his palm to G. "It's all yours, man."
—
But it wasn't all G's, or B's, either, because Benny had pulled away and left them far too soon. The cops tried not to think about the emptiness growing in their chest as they watched him go. They tried not to think about any of it. Everything was simultaneously better and worse than it had been before, and considering it for too long made their heart ache.
Everything was better because on Thursday nights, they met that impossible, wonderful creature for ice cream and conversations. It was better because neither G nor B had smiled that much in years. It was better because when Benny rolled up his sleeves to let G or B draw spirals across his arm, the breath caught in the cops' throat, and their heart sped up. They felt alive again. They felt human.
And everything was worse because Benny wasn't human. G and B could press their palms against his until the sun exploded and the world ended in fire and flames, but it would never mean to Benny what it did to them.
G considered their dilemma quietly, on his own. B did what he always did when he was in trouble: he called Ma and Pa.
They were convinced from the start of it that their son was already dating this mysterious 'Benny'. G thought it was funny in a sad, wishful way, and it made B flustered. He dodged their questions as best he could and tried to make himself be reasonable. Benny was made of the stars and of galaxies; he would never give his heart to something so fleeting and so small as a human.
He broke down on a lazy Sunday evening, after Benny had surprised him outside the police station and walked him to his car, standing so close their shoulders brushed and fireworks burst across Benny's bare arm.
B's coat and bag had hardly hit the couch before he had the phone in one hand and was dialing his parents' number. When they picked up, he blurted, "I think I - we - love him."
"Of course you do, son." The quiet clicking of Ma's knitting needles could be heard over the hum of static on the line. "Tell him that."
"No." B held the phone between his ear and shoulder, folding his laundry. It seemed such a strange, human thing to do after all those nights with Benny.
"It's the only thing to do."
"No." He shook his head, not caring that they could not see him. "It's —he's too complicated."
"You're complicated, dear," Ma said. "I'm sure he can't be worse."
—
People could be cruel. And words could hurt, no matter how old or strong you were. And when you deserved it, knew you deserved it because of all that you had done, you were not inclined to fight back.
So B took over, shielding G out of habit, and let the man talk. The stranger had gone red in the face from shouting, but still he continued, listing names of friends he had lost and family that had been taken away from him. No one else spoke. The ice cream parlor was empty except for him, the cops, Benny, and the one employee who had the misfortune to be assigned the midnight shift, and apart from the shouting, all was silent.
The employee made no move to stop the man. Dully, B wondered whether the employee had been thinking all the same things the stranger had, but had held his tongue. He did not know what was worse: people pretending not to hate him, or people telling him that they did.
It was a while before he noticed that Benny had begun to move. B turned to watch him, concerned. "Look at me," the stranger across the table shouted, "look at me!" but B ignored him. Benny had slipped on his helmet and gloves as soon as the stranger had entered so as to not draw too many stares, but now he was undoing the clasps, the airlock, the straps. There was a hiss as the helmet came off, followed by a click as it was set on the table.
The man stopped shouting.
B stared.
Benny had gone dark. No stars could be seen on his skin; no nebulae stretched across his shoulders. He was a void, dark, darker than B or G had thought possible. His eyes flashed as he turned to the man. "Leave him alone."
Taking a step back, the man became even redder in the face. "Why? He—"
"Leave him alone."
The man paused, weighing his options, then curled his hand into a fist. In two short steps he had crossed half the distance to the cops, his arm pulled back to swing.
Quick as a dart, Benny slipped from his suit, rising up into the air. Stop him, G thought, and B reached out for Benny's arm, but it was too late. Benny held himself at sharp angles, stretching upwards and outwards. The boyish figure he usually kept was traded for long, scythe-like arms and eyes as blindingly bright as any star. The top of his head brushed the ice cream parlor's ceiling. In place of the familiar, childlike form, there was a beast, long-legged and feral. "Leave him alone," Benny said again. Anger crackled along the edges of his words. "Go away."
And the man did. He fled. The employee, perhaps thinking that the order was directed at him as well, slunk into the back room, looking guilty.
B managed to catch hold of Benny's waist this time. The light that flashed across that dark skin was pale and faint. "Ben, sit down."
"He needed a good scare," Benny muttered. He did not move.
"Please, sit down."
Slowly, Benny shrank, his limbs resolving themselves into hands and ankles and fingers. When he turned at last to the cops, the stars had returned to his cheeks.
He nudged the spacesuit aside and sat without it, as though daring anyone to approach them again.
"What were you going to do?"
"Just scare him. I told you."
B shook his head. "Y'didn't look like that was your only plan."
Benny drummed lightly on the table. "My plan," he admitted, "was to not let him hurt you, whatever that took."
"I pulled a gun on you the first time we met, buddy," B reminded him. "You didn't attack me then."
"It's different."
"It's not."
"It is," Benny insisted. A supernova crackled at the edges of his words, a hair's breath from explosion.
B leaned back, studied the figure across the table, and decided not to push the matter. "Thank you," he said at length, and bit back the urge to kiss him.
—
Flowers began arriving at work shortly after. There were chocolates on his doorstep and pennies stacked neatly on his kitchen counter, fifty, one hundred high. Each gift carried with it a breath of night air, the smell of ozone and attar - a scent G and B had come to recognize as Benny's. The presents were his. There was no doubt of that. But what they meant—- There was no way of knowing whether Benny intended them to be received the way they normally would. He might simply have been confused, or misled, about how friends show affection. He might even be leaving them for some other secret admirer who did not wish to be discovered.
G and B fought over what to do about it all. They argued with themselves, then with Metalbeard and several others, who tried and failed to give them advice.
In the end, they did nothing. There was nothing to be done. Telling Benny would ruin everything. Not telling him was currently ruining everything. And there was a hole growing beneath their ribs that was only filled when that impossible cosmic being was nearby.
After a while, they grew accustomed to falling asleep with an empty ache in their arms and hands.
—
Benny dropped the book onto the table, making no effort to quiet the concussion.
B stared at him from the doorway.
If he had not known better, he would have said that Benny was pouting. He was floating a foot or so above the cops' dinner table, white eyes narrowed, and was gesturing to the collection of flowers and balloons and gifts scattered across the table's surface. Then he pointed at the book he had just dropped. "I don't know what else you want me to do, man," Benny said, petulant. "That thing has seven hundred pages of tips, and I went through all of them, and you didn't say a thing."
Adjusting his glasses, B peered at the book's cover. Yellow and black, it featured a small, smiling man standing just below the words 'DATING FOR DUMMIES'.
"Oh," he said helplessly. "Well, I — I was wondering why there were flowers on my desk at work."
"That's tip five hundred and forty-six," Benny said with something that sounded like a sigh.
"We just didn't know if y'knew what that meant t'humans. If you intended them the way we—" Running a hand through his hair, B looked at Benny. "I guess we're looking pretty dumb right now."
"I had to read a manual," Benny said, stretching out one arm to tap the book, "if it makes you feel better."
"We went to Metalbeard for advice," B admitted. "That was a bad idea. Th'worst idea, actually."
"Wyldstyle threw a shoe at me."
They both laughed quietly, awkwardly, not knowing what else to say. After a minute, B cleared his throat. "So," he said, "before we ask y'to dinner, I have a question."
"Sure."
He twisted his fingers together, nervous. "Back when we met, y'talked a lot about missing home."
Benny unfolded his legs, stretched, stood up on the table. "Yes." He kicked one of the chocolate boxes up into his hands and began opening it, the wrapper peeling away beneath his quick fingers. "I'll be a star one day," he added, mildly. "Did I tell you that? It's like dying, only better, because you light up worlds like this one. We get together, many of us, when we're old, and we get so close together that we glow, then burn, then explode, and it's beautiful. I need to go back home for that, sooner or later."
"N-no. You never told us that." The thought of Benny exploding made something twist sickeningly inside of the cops' chest. "Does that mean you'll be gone soon?"
Looking up from the chocolates, Benny studied them for a long minute. Then he set the box down and slipped off the table. Very deliberately, he walked to them, feet touching the floor with every step. "No."
"We won't keep you if y'want to leave—"
"I don't want to leave. Not anymore."
Relief swept over the cops. Silently, G sighed, and they both relaxed for the first time since the conversation began. "Do y'want to go to dinner, then?"
"Absolutely."
B turned on his heel, grabbing the keys he had dropped on the coffee table by the door. He had one hand on the door and one foot in the hall by the time he noticed that Benny had not moved. "Something wrong, buddy?"
Benny was frowning at him. "Aren't you going to kiss me?"
B flushed.
"That is what humans do, right?" Benny continued, thoughtful. "Kiss? Because that's what Wyldstyle told me: 'Just kiss him'. That was when she threw her shoe at me, actually."
"I don't—"
Do it, man, G urged. Kiss him.
Composing himself, B shut the door. He straightened up, smoothed the front of his shirt, and crossed to where Benny was standing, waiting for him.
"What should I do?" Benny asked.
T'think we used t'hate that voice.
"Just do what I do," B murmured. He raised one hand and laid it gently across Benny's cheek, watching as light danced across the other's skin.
Benny mimicked the gesture. His fingers were cool against the cops' flushed cheek. "Like that?"
B did not answer. Instead, he leaned forward and closed the distance between them, pressing his lips against the white line of Benny's mouth. He could taste ozone and stardust and ash as the kiss was returned tentatively.
Light swept across Benny where their lips met. B pressed closer, wrapped his arms around those thin shoulders, touching skin to skin wherever he could, watching in wonder as the other shone. He wanted to say that if Benny was to burn himself to dust, he should do it now, and take G and B with him so that this moment could last for millions of years. He wanted to tell Benny that he did not need to set himself on fire to become a star, that he was one already. He wanted to admit that he and G had never felt more whole or more human than with Benny was there with him. But he did not have the words and knew he never would, so he and G held Benny tighter and kissed him again, the taste of stardust and flame filling them until they, too, felt like they were glowing.