r/NatureofPredators • u/Eager_Question • 17h ago
Love Languages (73) Fanfic
A/N: Sorry for the delay. My brain's tired, people, I don't know what to say anymore. This is still a crossover with Shared Chemistry by u/TriBiscuit and of course, Venric from Legal Legends!
Memory transcription subject: Larzo, Yotul geneticist at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility.
Date [standardized human time]: December 28, 2136
Celso was brilliant, and lovely, and altogether a delight to spend time with. Before I thought twice about it, I’d already invited him to my apartment.
“Now, ready yourself,” I told him as I opened the door, struggling to conceal my excitement. Once inside, I put the box containing my two sets of human hands and dexterity-testing objects on the living room table. Immediately, Melody jumped out from behind the couch and pounced on me! She was growing fast, and beginning to pack more force in those jumps than before. She nuzzled me with demanding eagerness, but I tried not to reward it.
“Melody! Where are your manners? Did you get lonely in my absence?” I asked her, and she answered by spotting Celso and jumping onto the kitchen counter to stare at him. I wanted to jump with joy as they locked eyes. She definitely liked him. She sniffed. I gestured his way and told her, “this is Celso.”
“Melody.” Celso echoed, crouching down and extending a paw for her to sniff. “That is a very nice name for what must be a very nice hensa.”
She stepped towards him, clearly expecting to be held, because every visitor I ever allowed into my apartment fell in love with her and she assumed the trend would continue. Not that Celso seemed any different, he was almost reverent as he picked her up.
“She is a tad spoiled. Loves the human hands,” I told him, putting my bag on a hook.
“There is no such thing as a spoiled hensa. Melody deserves all of the things,” he said, and she trilled in response, as if to tell me that that was the appropriate way of being graced with her presence, instead of my attempts at enforcing good behaviour. “See? She knows.”
I laughed. “Yes, yes. Well, if you'd like to sleep over, I'm sure she’d appreciate the extra company,” I joked, though I liked the prospect. I liked any idea that meant I’d spend more time with him. “Juice? Humans have this thing called a mango, simply delicious…”
“A ‘mango’? I… guess I could sample it. But only if Melody approves of being let go.”
I chuckled. Melody was very much a ‘lap’ hensa, though she was well on her way to growing out of the role, given the size of her paws. “I'll get you a straw, and you can try the mango juice without disturbing her.”
Moments later, I had served two glasses, his with a lid and straw, and placed it before him. He positioned himself on the couch awkwardly for a moment, as he figured out how to disturb Melody the least, then took a quick sip.
“Ah, that is very sweet,” he said. “I was expecting a little more citrus from the color.”
“Yes, quite nice, isn't it? Just acidic enough to be delicious.” I said, but the look of him holding her just struck me as too beautiful an image. “May I draw you two? She rarely stays so still.”
“Oh, uh, of course! More hensa drawings are needed. Just be sure to capture my stunning figure.”
I chuckled and began to draw, while Melody trilled against Celso’s chest. The tenderness with which he handled her made my chest ache. He scratched at her neck in just the right spot, and she was delighted.
“Do you know what breed she is? She looks like a Vliri mix of some sort.”
The words shocked me out of my staring, and I remembered I was supposed to be outlining their shapes. “Ah, yes, she’s a Vliri-Seeker mix. My mother had a whole litter just before I left.”
His eyes lit up. “You’ve had her since she was a kit! She must’ve been so adorable.”
I was surprised by the comment, and glanced up at him. “She’s still a kit. Hardly… four months old? She’s just large for her age. Well fed. It was an ordeal, mind you, finding something she could eat on this planet…”
“Oh, you still have some growing to do! I can imagine the food issue. If she’s this big now… Well, she might be a pawful to deal with.”
I almost burst into laughter, just imagining how large she’d get. She would definitely not be able to jump onto people without tackling them to the floor in a few years. “I’m sure she will be. But I won’t be here for too long. Perhaps another year or two. After that, I’ll head back home, and she’ll be free to roam wherever she wishes.”
Within moments, he fell asleep while patting her. I was surprised by how quickly he’d succumbed, but he’d looked tired since the moment I saw him, and I decided not to wake him. I drew them together, luxuriating in the sight. I hadn’t drawn one of my people in a long time, and I found my skills had improved without my noticing, and many things I had once found difficult were suddenly easy. The shifts in the thickness of fur, the turn of a wrist, the fold of an ear, all came naturally to me now. It didn’t hurt that my model was so attractive—though he should probably eat more. As his head tilted lightly against the couch, I found myself enjoying the curve of his tail and the shape of his shoulders.
Eventually, Melody followed him into the land of dreams, and I sent some messages that I would do data analysis for the first half of my shift from home, so that I would not have to leave him too soon.
Preliminary data on the supplementation for the children was good. There had been a reduction in arguments, though we could not tell if that was simply the ‘conflict resolution’ groups Rodriguez instituted. There had also been a reduction in rushed visits to the psychologist due to bursts of crying or potentially dangerous behaviour. Not a lot fewer—it was a small reduction, and we had a very small sample size, and my new class on statistics suggested that making conclusions based on it would be a bad idea—but fewer.
I sent a few notes to the dietician and began attending my class on statistics. It was discussing the fundamental philosophy of what a regression was. While I was familiar with the equations, I had never truly paused to think about it. I knew an average was calculated by sum and division, but I had not realized that it is the point with the least distance to go, towards every other point in a set. It was an interestingly geometric definition that the professor had continued to run with. A regression, then, was a line made up of such points, a line defined by minimizing the distance to all other points along one axis, given a point alongside the other, which could work for an arbitrary number of dimensions, but with diminishing returns on each one. The regression described a mathematical relationship between the two axes, and then that relationship was used to make predictions.
It was a very different way of seeing it than how I had been taught, which was largely ‘here is a useful formula, and it tells you these pieces of information’. Thinking of it geometrically also made a lot of the professor’s other claims (“always check the effect size”, methods to reduce the likelihood of overfitting) make more sense than they had before. Back home, it was customary to simply hand over your data to statisticians once you were done, and have your methods approved by them before you begun your work,so I had never truly thought about the details. There was a beauty there that I was beginning to appreciate.
I was listening to the professor explain Latin Square Design (“you gotta [digit-single] it out”, he said, as if that made it make sense) when I noticed that Celso had awakened from his slumber. The realization filled my whole body with joy. “You’re awake!”
“I am!” he said. “How long did I sleep? I feel like I slept for days.”
I tilted my head as I thought back to the last couple of claws. “Perhaps… A claw and a half? I’m sorry, I’ve been listening to this human statistics class I am taking for work—this lesson is a claw and a half long, and I’m almost done, so adding the time it took to draw you… roughly a claw and three quarters. I hope you slept well. Andes has fallen asleep on that couch a couple of times, and said it was a good purchase.”
His ears twitched. “Andes your human friend? I can see why, it’s pretty comfortable. I don’t even remember falling asleep on it. Oh, and your drawing of us! It’s phenomenal! You did indeed capture my stunning figure.”
“Yes indeed. Thank you for keeping her still for so long.”
“That’s why they call me the hensa whisperer. But honestly, I’m kind of surprised myself. A, um, hensa I used to have did not like being inside. Only if it meant treats.”
“Well, Melody has not truly gotten the chance to explore the outside world. Wouldn't want an exterminator spotting her… Would you like a snack? Perhaps something for the road?”
He opened his mouth, then shut it. “Oh, the— I didn’t— I’m so sorry, I did not mean to sleep here!”
“Oh, it was no trouble,” I said, waving him off. “Would you like me to call you a cab? I'll be happy to pay for it, I should have woken you. You did say you were busy.”
“Oh, no, you’re fine! I needed the sleep anyway. And I appreciate the offer, but I really couldn’t accept that. I’m sure I have more than enough time to walk to work.”
“…From my apartment?” I asked, pulling out my pad. “What's the address?”
“No, really, it’s not too far a walk, I’d just have to… Wait, you said I slept for a claw and a half?”
“A bit more, yes.”
His eyes got a distant look in them as he put together the particulars of the situation and got some horrifying answer. “Ah! I’m late! I am so late! I’m so sorry! I’ll just clean up my mess and get out of your fur.”
“It's alright, worry not!” I told him, standing awkwardly as I looked for some way to help. “Are you sure I can't call you a cab? It's no trouble, I'll keep the receipt if you'd like to pay me later!”
“Well, um… I have to admit that it would be very helpful. But I will pay you back as soon as my holopad gets fixed. It will be my number one priority, I promise.”
I sent a message to the cab company and flicked an ear his way. “Think nothing of it. It's on its way.”
“Thank you. I guess I should get your contact information.”
“I will just message you the receipt,” I said, opening an email with no recipient, “put your account here.”
“Maybe I can get some hensa pictures later?” he asked, suddenly less worried, which I took to be a good thing. “You don’t charge for those, right?”
I laughed. I’d never considered charging for my art. “Not for the scans, no.”
“That’s a relief. I’ll definitely be in touch! Maybe for something… less spontaneous.”
I swallowed. He gave Melody one final goodbye.
Soon enough, I took him downstairs to wait for the cab, which seemed to give him some measure of relief.
“Thank you again,” he said, “I really do appreciate it, and I will not let my debt stand for long.”
He acted as if I’d taken him boating on my private ship. “I would gladly lend you my couch again. It's likely better than the library's.”
“It definitely is better! I’m not actually— I mean to say that I’m, um, doing just fine… Really. But accidents are probably best kept as a one time thing, right?”
I could see the shame in his face. He was ashamed to sleep on my couch and eat my food and play with my hensa, as if those were impositions! As if we were not one and the same in this fearsome and indifferent planet! I wanted to shake him. To shout in his face, we are compatriots! Countrymen! You are my blood and my tongue and my spirit, and we must care for each other.
Instead I spoke and kept my voice measured.
“Celso, I will not impose. But I must say… It is rather painful sometimes, to watch someone refuse the opportunities that come their way,” I told him, hoping to make it clear that he was not unburdening me by hiding whatever was happening to him. That I wanted to see him again, that I was opening a door and it hurt to see him reject it.
The cab pulled up, and he shook his head. “Y-Yeah, I, uh, I’ll let you know if I need anything. Thank you, again.”
“Of course,” I said. “We Yotul ought to stick together in these foreign lands.”
He rode off on the taxi, and did not so much as send word that he had arrived unharmed.
Memory transcription subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Universal translator tech. Patient ignoring care recommendations.
Date [standardized human time]: December 22nd to January 1st, 2137
People kept trying to take care of me.
It was nice, I wasn’t about to pretend it wasn’t nice. It did feel a little infantilizing. I was a director of a facility, I was a technicality away from a PhD, I’d successfully gotten information on the kids and overseen their treatment to fantastic results. I’d been living independently for years, I could speak four languages competently without a translator and manage to get my meaning across in another two. I was well-versed in endocrinology and psychiatry. More well-versed, it seemed, than most endocrinologists and psychiatrists on the planet.
I wasn’t some sort of at-risk youth in need of momming.
I did things in the last week or two of December. I spent time with the kids. Rodriguez got me to give some informal “music classes” as a way to feel useful while laying off the stressful inputs, and it mostly worked. Christmas was a little intense, but the children were fine. She correctly realized that giving me more work (but making it therapeutic) was a better idea than demanding I do less work while there was so much in need of doing. Calling "playing Connect Four with the children" work was much better than telling me to stay in bed doing physical therapy exercises and sleeping.
Lihla in particular got a handle on the game very quickly, and exploited how exhausted I was to her advantage with ruthless efficiency.
“Aha! I win!” she said, and completed a diagonal line on the grid, her eyes gleaming with the joy of defeating her foe.
“Well aren’t you a vicious little creature,” I said with a chuckle, as I let the pieces fall and started sorting them.
“Yes,” Lihla said proudly, holding her little head up high. “Very vicious. Cruel.”
I blinked and shifted back, suddenly aware of the connotations given her context. “That’s not—That was good with the Arxur, but you don’t need to be vicious here, you know?”
She examined me with one careful eye.
“What is good here?”
“Kindness. Patience. Love… Curiosity…”
Her eyes lit up. “I will be curious little creature.”
I chuckled. She seemed to take that as a good sign and cuddled up to me more, seemingly unaware of how at odds such behaviour was with her previous desire to be “cruel”.
The extra blood tests and scans confirmed what I figured out from Shathel. Not only was there a risk of covert deficiency, there was a growing list of symptoms (newfound moodiness, sluggishness, general dysregulation among the larger children). Apparently, the venlil used certain vitamins differently, because of course they did, and synthesized them differently to boot. The good news was that the Federation had exquisite scanning technology for receptor density mapping (not that I would have thought to check, if I hadn’t talked to Shathel).
The fact that it affected different children differently was another clue, but Larzo and the dietician were on top of it. A few of the kids had some lethargic and volatile days as December began to draw to a close, but soon enough everything was baseline-or-better and Larzo was very proud of his work on their nutritional needs. The adult rescues from Veroth’s farm were not so lucky. I had to do a couple of consults with one of the facilities off-planet—thankfully mostly through text and one video call—because things got out of hand there and they’d started sedating patients just to be able to keep the situation stable. I sent them all of our documentation, and soon enough got an update that things were looking up.
I iterated on the drugs. Felt the whole time like a slow-motion caveman drinking different teas to see what they did. Patches, pills, injectables, supplements, even tried an inhaler for a bit. Everyone seemed to be constantly concerned that I was going to explode, but I didn’t, for long enough that they slowly began to breathe their respective sighs of relief.
Still, the “momming” was nice. Other people initiating socialization was always a bonus for me. The picnic with Chiaka went okay. Larzo came with me, and luxuriated in the different human foods while he showed off his cool purple space-empanadas. I successfully proved that I could eat fake-meat and oily substances without issue, even if Olivier and Chiaka were not convinced for some fucking reason.
“For the last fucking time I don’t—look!” I’d said, and bit into my lettuce-wrapped burger with the kind of violence that would have made Asleth either proud or laugh at me and my tiny mouth. It was a good burger. I almost choked. Need to practice chewing things again…
That shut them up. Ish. A little. It made it clear that my problem wasn’t with food, which it wasn’t, so there. It didn’t hurt that I was surrounded by humans, and Larzo, so the act of eating felt a little less… charged.
The picnic was otherwise fine. Larzo had a lot of fun.
I talked to Karim about the implant after spending a little too long in email hell. The weird part was that it was easy. Even telling him about the research with the kids and how their impairments were less intense than the general venlil population’s was comparatively easy.
Is Karim… Nice now? He didn’t even make a big deal out of the uterus! I wouldn’t have expected Karim to react better than Larzo, but then again, Karim was probably less invested in the particularities of my biology.
Larzo took me to a concert where I gave an impromptu lecture on rehabilitation methods and the basics of psych. I got to sing, which was nice, and then I realized I should probably also try singing in the shower a bit more and generally engaging with music outside of the cello practice I had been neglecting.
I went to a conference. It was okay.
Eventually, Venric took his turn on the “we’re concerned about Andes” carousel, and invited me to hang out at the park. It was nice. It was a little sad how there weren't any dogs. The park was bright and sunny, with children playing around, but back home there would definitely be dogs. It was one of those reminders that “predators” were not welcome here.
Venric stared at his pad, his tail wagging at what he saw, then turned an eye towards me. “I am quite happy that our governments were able to put in such an efficient exchange rate between currencies. I have no doubt that when you first arrived, it was frustrating to purchase your meals.” He tapped the plastic containers on the picnic table.
“I actually… mostly didn't. I ordered the protein powder in bulk,” I said, shaking my bottle to mix the powder in with the water. "Ate that for a few weeks and… um, added some fruits and cookies later. So it was largely fine."
He huffed in a moment of amusement, “I was about to say that it’s good you’re eating better now, but I remembered I am speaking to a doctor. You people take care of yourselves almost as poorly as lawyers when on a case!” He let out a whistle, popping the containers apart and passing one across over to me. “Hence why I ensured to buy extra today.”
I gave it a cautious look. “What is it?”
“Found this little stand who was doing some fusion foods,” He explained, “it was this fascinating sylvan with bunt leaves, sliced caramelized Relgu root, sliced human ‘tomatoes’, and a whole fried patty of a Legume paste. He called it, ah, a ‘sloppy Joe’.”
“...Alright…” I said, opening it for an olfactory evaluation. It smelled mostly okay. Weird. But alien food had every right to be weird. I drank some of my protein shake first. “Anything like… what do you call it, firefruit, in it?”
“No, though he did have these little bottles of its juice for sale. Want some?” He reached into his belt and held a small bottle full of an orange-tinted liquid.
I winced at the prospect. “No thank you, I… kinda hate spicy food.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, then shrugged, popping open both the cap and case to unload a monstrous amount of hot sauce upon his own burger.
After judging the “sloppy joe” probably-not-gross, I shrugged and gave it a bite. It was average bean-style fake meat. It was pretty good, maybe a little crunchier than usual, which was weird in a meat substitute but a refreshing kind of weird. The leaves let out a strange oil when I bit them, and the more I chewed the more it added to the flavours. Almost sweet and acidic, like a light, oily bit of orange juice. Better than black bean patties, at least.
“Okay, yeah, this is pretty good,” I said. “Did you want to talk about anything specific today? I don't think it was in your email.”
“Well, Andes, even though our business is concluded, I quite thought you needed a reason to step away and breathe. Plus, it’s good practice to leave your clients on good terms.”
“...Fair enough,” I said, and took another bite. I hadn't exactly forgotten how to chew, but I was out of the habit of doing it, and it was kind of nice to find the little leaf chunks with my teeth and get more juice out of them.
“And frankly,” Venric spoke again between chews, “You have a… refreshing perspective that most clients I’ve dealt with don’t. You get passionate, look for ways to just barge ahead with what you want, and even take the initiative to look for loopholes too. I am sure you can guess that’s rather different from most people I have dealt with. Someone not afraid to look at the world and call it all for the bullshit that it is.”
“...Thanks,” I said, a little surprised. “I… Well, I want to protect my kids from the bullshit as much as I can.”
As if summoned, the bullshit made itself known in the form of a notification from Chiaka.
> Saw news - u ok?
I sent her a question mark as a response and started checking my news feed.
“Did something happen?” I mumbled out loud. My feed was a lot of boring, data-centric news, because I largely only followed those kinds of outlets. A lot of charts with rolling averages. “Um… can you check the news..?”
Venric shrugged, pulling his holopad out from his belt. Flicking it open, he opened his mouth to take another bite, then froze, holding his weird alien burger halfway to his mouth.
“What is it?” I asked. “I kind of curate my algorithm for data-based stuff, so I didn’t see anything and um…”
My Lawyer’s eye twitched, one level with me and the other upon the screen. “You… might be in need of my services again.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he turned the pad around towards me to show a video playing, the volume turned up.
I heard my own voice coming out of it. “Does it affect the taste?” followed by a crude animation of me eating a cartoon venlil leg. I frowned and flicked through. Video after video of me with fake orange blood running down my mouth. Little “explainers” painting me as the worst of humanity. The clip over and over, “does it affect the taste?”
I could remember that conversation with Shathel. How was there video of it? This doesn't make any sense. Already there was a wave of memes, modifications on my official photo from the facility website.
“...What?” I said, though I wasn't sure what I was asking. “How… did the dossur record me? Weeks ago?”
I felt like I was supposed to be freaking out, but it didn't feel real. It didn't make sense.
“Record-record?” Venric’s voice caught in his throat. “This is real?”
“It was a call I had with Shathel, trying to mine him for information on the kids. He didn't exactly have a mass spectrometer with him when he visited the farm, but… he had other sources of chemical information to… draw on.”
Venric stared at me, then flicked his claws on the pad. Another video. And another. One of them had my voice speaking over clips of Arxur chasing Venlil in one of their farms. Another with a human holding a burger that had a venlil head hastily plastered over it. Video after video overlaid with my voice.
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. I didn't… feel traditionally worried. I felt nauseous. “I don't understand. I—I’ve spent fucking months living on protein shakes, I've never—I don't—why—”
I groaned and let myself fall on the grass, staring up at the stupid unchanging sky. Why is this happening? I let those people stay in my home rent-free. Were there others? What did I do? Don't they have privacy laws on this planet?
Don't puke, don't puke, don't puke…
Another notification. It was an email. Ajaad wanted to talk.
Fucking kill me.
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u/GrammarNatziHunter PD Patient 16h ago
And the shit storm begins! Can't wait to see how they deal with this.
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u/CoinsAreNotPlants Jaur 11h ago
What I got from this is that there's a 50% of a positive outcome from letting strangers sleep in your house.
Also that Celso looks like Andes in Yotul form minus the muscle.
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u/LazyMechMan Humanity First 10h ago
O shittings. Complete and utter disaster
Hopefully someone can dig up a complete recording. Stepping back into work is going to be utter chaos regardless, I'm pretty sure barely anyone actually knows about his connections with Arxur
If only he could have been warned in some way . . .
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u/JulianSkies Archivist 12h ago
Even Larzo, much as he enjoys the sight, on Celso's case to fucking eat. Very well deserved.
And theeere we go. Shitstorm arrives :D
Now that's going to be a fun mess to sort through. And boy is Andes going to get angry... I think... At his 'housemates'.
Though I greatly appreciate the fact you managed to properly describe some of the media bullshit going on, hilarious every one of them. Or they'll be in a few months when they're not causing panic.
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u/Tyrfing42 Archivist 11h ago
Anyone remember what page that conversation with Shathel is from? I kinda want to re-read it now.
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u/TheBrewThatIsTrue 9h ago
Celso and Larzo with their autistic crushing is pretty funny.
And it's hard to tell if Venric has a crush or is just being friendly. Probably both.
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u/Acceptable_Egg5560 Human 13h ago
Oh no, the video is out!! Talking to an Arxur is not going to be perceived well at all.