You’re leaning against the doorframe, a bag of groceries heavy in the crook of your arm, watching Adrian. He’s perched on the edge of the old sofa, the one with the scratchy wool blanket you both fought over last winter, and he’s staring at his own abdomen with the wide-eyed, terrifying wonder of a man who has just discovered a new fundamental law of physics.

“So,” he says, and the word hangs in the quiet room, a single, fragile note. He doesn’t look up. His fingers, usually so sure and steady whether wrapped around the grip of a pistol or the handle of a coffee mug, are splayed over the flat plane of his stomach, trembling just slightly. “The doctor… the one who isn’t really a doctor… he said it’s… adapting. Using my… my biology. As a… host.”

You push off the doorframe, the floorboard creaking a familiar protest under your weight. You set the groceries down on the rickety kitchen table, the sound of the cans thudding dully in the quiet. Your heart is a frantic bird beating against your ribs. This wasn’t in the handbook. There was no chapter on your vigilante boyfriend, the man you’ve fought beside and bled with and dragged back from the brink more times than you can count, being… pregnant. By a fucking alien butterfly.

“A spawn,” you say, your voice softer than you intended. It’s not a question.

He finally looks up, and his eyes are a stormy sea of confusion, fear, and something else, something so profoundly out of place it steals your breath. Awe.

“He called it a ‘gestational symbiosis’,” Adrian murmurs, the clinical term sounding absurd in his mouth. He gives a shaky, breathless laugh. “I wanted… I wanted to know what it was like. To create a life. To be… a parent. I just didn’t think the application process would involve getting speared by a psychic moth.”

You cross the room and sink down onto the blanket beside him. The wool is rough against your jeans. You sit in the space he’s occupying, feeling the strange, new energy radiating from him. He’s looking at you now, his gaze searching your face as if trying to memorize it.

A slow, dawning realization breaks over his features, smoothing the lines of confusion and replacing them with a kind of delirious, sparkling clarity.

“Wait,” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper. He shifts on the couch to face you fully, his knee brushing yours. “Babe. If I’m the… the mother…” He lets the word hang there, monstrous and uncanny. “Then does that make you the father?”

The world tilts. Father. The word doesn’t fit, it’s a suit you never tried on, but the way he says it—with such unadulterated, terrifying wonder—makes it feel… possible.

You manage a weak nod, your throat tight. “I… guess it does.”

His eyes widen, the storm in them clearing to reveal a sky full of stars. “Are you the father of my child?” he breathes, the question a sacred, ridiculous vow. “Am I the mother of your child?”

And then, the final, glorious connection snaps into place in his brilliant, ridiculous mind. A grin spreads across his face, so wide and unguarded it makes him look like a boy. He lets out a short, disbelieving bark of laughter.

“Hey—!” he exclaims, his voice lifting with giddy excitement. He grabs your hand, his grip firm and warm, and presses it against his stomach. You can feel the firm muscle beneath his thin t-shirt, the familiar landscape of his body that now holds an impossible secret. “Did you know that male seahorses get pregnant? They carry the babies! The female gives him the eggs and he… he grows them!” He’s practically vibrating now, his laughter bubbling up, infectious and pure. “We’re like seahorses!”