The sound is so close now he’s marveling that his ears haven’t blasted clear from his head. Or that his eardrums haven’t imploded through his skull, if that’s even possible. The last time he sat in a human anatomy class he was too busy watching her hair to pay much attention. It was silver threads of spider’s silk, drifting lazily on a current exhaled by the classroom AC that could barely cool the sweltering room. He can remember her fingers, twisting into the long strands, spinning through their web absently. She was immersed in paying attention. She was always paying attention. He liked it best when it was to him. She’d done exceptionally well in that anatomy class. And in the ones that followed. She was the top, he was somewhere in the middle. They always met at his level for lunch.

Now she’s looking back at him, her eyes wide, almost pleading. Her mouth is opening and closing, lips rounding and spreading over words that he can’t hear. His head is awash with the noise, a whirring static sound, familiar and alien and devastating. Her words are lost, overpowered by the noise, but he knows what she’s saying. She’s telling him that it doesn’t have to be that way. That she loves him. That he could survive there, without leaving.

Above them the lights start flickering through foliage, bouncing off her skin, her spider silk hair glowing. She is radiant, her image enhanced by out-of-this-world strobes and the thought occurs to him for the first time since he told her the truth about his origins. They might not be coming for him. He arrived a clean canvas, brimming with potential, but he’d gotten sidetracked, distracted. All the while she was there, in his proximity, both attentive to him and diligent to her learning, to her becoming better.

They wanted better. They need better.

And now her lips are burning through his and his stomach is dropping and the sound and light engulf them both, though it will be her who is star-bound.