I nod a little. The internet had turned up about that much too. “If I’d have known, I would have worn protection.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Elbow-pads.”
“Ah.” He nods, though it seems even with clarifying, my joke didn’t land.
I scoot down a step, inching closer. I want to know more about this, what bonding means to Orcs. If it really is the same as getting married or if it’s more just like a relationship. And like, even humans get married and divorced a number of times over their lives.
“So, you can just end up married to anyone that breaks your nose?”
Khent gives me a look, like I’m a silly human for not knowing something so simple, so obvious to him.
“It doesn’t happen every time you get into a fight. It’s something of a rare event in your life,” he shrugs.
“Oh,” I say, because, shit. Fuck me.
So like a more important than marriage kind of thing? Like a once in a lifetime thing?Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“How rare?”
I cringe at the way my voice catches on the words, but I’m far more preoccupied with hanging on every micromovement of his face, waiting for the answer.
He shrugs again, runs a hand through his hair. “Not everyone gets a chance to have it happen to them.”
I wince, like I could crumble inwards on myself and out of existence.
Maybe it’s not rarer than winning the lottery, but I can only imagine growing up, wondering whether or not you’d find a mate this way, and then some idiot human elbows you in the nose?
It makes me want to square up with whatever cosmic beings are out there deciding these things, to break their noses and tell them Khent didn’t deserve to have his one chance at a mating bond ruined with me.
I want to tell him it’ll probably happen again, with someone important to him. Someone he’s probably completely head over heels for. I doubt he would believe me though, since I am clearly no expert.
“Do you know why it happens?” I venture, even though this is getting a little too fraught and way more personal than I ever intended to get with Khent. I don’t know what kind of answer I’m hoping there is.
He shrugs again. “I couldn’t tell you why you get hiccups either.”
I nod. That’s fair.
I don’t really know how to apologize for being the person who robbed him of this once in a lifetime opportunity and got tangled up in his personal life in the most intimate of ways. ‘Sorry’ feels wholly inadequate.
I watch him for a moment, and there’s something in the little ways his eyes track the movements of his hands as he unbuttons his shirt at the wrists, rolling up his sleeves.
It’s not the first time I’ve thought he was attractive, Evil Overlord knows my hormones have taken care of that, but it is the first time I’ve felt on the level with him. The tousled hair and his shirt less than perfectly buttoned up, he looks like he’s been having a rough time of it as well.
Maybe I don’t hate him, despite my feelings about his emails. Maybe I was just mad that I was stuck in this situation and wanted someone to direct my anger at. Because as much as this sucks for me, from my recent education, it sounds like it is colossally worse for him.
I think desperately for a moment for something to get out of this personal conversation, some conversational parachute that will pull me out of this stairwell. He had mentioned in his email something about handing over my laptop to get it looked at for malware.
“Out of curiosity, where would I go to download a virus?” I ask after a moment, and then wish I’d just searched it on the internet. Still, it’s the only thing I can think to talk about. “So that I know what sites to avoid. And if we’re on the topic of my search history, is it like a three strike system, or is it one and done?”
Khent’s forehead creases as he looks at me again. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you tell my boss immediately or do I have to rack up a few more incidents before Melanie has enough to fire me?”
“Fire you? No, I–” he pauses, and his brow wrinkles behind his thick glasses. “Forget about the search. I'll...if you take the phishing refresher course and pass the quiz at the end, it'll all be good.”
I wrinkle my nose. “That corny training course? Don't we already have a spam filter for that stuff?”