“Oh.” Beryl glanced at the tin, then gave me a wry smile. “I don’t think I will tonight, but soon. Don’t want to experience everything at once, right?”

I nodded, moving to put the tin back in my pocket. “Sure. I won’t—”

“No.” She grabbed my arm to stop me, making my breath catch. “You can still smoke. It doesn’t bother me.”

I swallowed and mumbled, “’Kay,” still frozen in place as I fought the urge to lean into her. God, why was I such a slut for touch?

Beryl seemed to notice, because she removed her hand and said, “Sorry, I shouldn’t’ve just grabbed you like that. It won’t offend me at all if you don’t want me to touch you in any way. You know, like nudging you or grabbing your arm or…”

No! No, do all of that! Grab me all you want!

“I don’t mind,” I croaked. “I’m not touch-averse. It’s—I actually… I don’t mind,” I repeated.

“Okay.” Beryl nodded, leaning her shoulder against the back of the couch and tucking her legs tighter under her. “Me neither. So casual touching is okay.”

“Yes,” I said quickly, fumbling to open my tin and pull out a joint I’d rolled the day before. “Are you sure you don’t mind me smoking? It’s just, it makes me enjoy my food more.”

She let out that husky laugh, and my gut clenched. “I don’t mind at all. It’s your house, Greid.”

“I know, but you live here too now. I mean, assuming you want to stay.” I stuck the joint between my lips to shut myself up.

Beryl grinned, watching as I lit a match and held it to the end of the joint. “I like it here so far.”

“Good,” I said, my voice tight as I held in the first blessed lungful. After exhaling a stream of white smoke, I added, “Tell me if the smoke starts to bother you.”

“I will.” She watched as I took another drag and relaxed back into the couch. “It smells good. Kinda sweet. I’ve smelled weed before in the city, and it doesn’t smell anything like that.”

I nodded. “Smells like toasted marshmallows.”

“Does it? I’ve never had them.”

The shade was quick-working, and it was already taking effect, loosening all my tense muscles and allowing me to roll my head along the back of the couch to smile at her. “We’ll get some and toast them over a candle in here one night.”

“That sounds fun.” She briefly touched my arm with her small, dainty fingers. “Hey, can we watch TV while we wait for the food?”

“Oh, sure.” I leaned forward to grab the remote, picking up the ashtray at the same time to put it in easy reach on the armrest. “Anything you want to watch in particular?”

“Anything but the arts channels,” Beryl said with a grimace. “It was all we got at the compound. Those super-long demiurgus operas.”

“Ew. I hate classical music.” I fired up DemiTV, the streaming service that had mostly demiurgus-made productions. Beryl stared avidly as the logo appeared—a yellow demiurgus eye that blinked once before turning onto its side and morphing into a D, while the yellow bled out to form TV in wobbly letters.

I selected the single profile when it appeared. I’d deleted Agma’s profile months ago—she’d always complained about the “mindless drivel” I watched messing up her algorithm, so we’d had separate ones.

“Wow,” Beryl breathed when rows and rows of movies and series filled the screen. “There’s so much.”

“Yeah. Even more on the human streaming service. Which we can get.”

“Do we need to?” she asked doubtfully. “Surely it’ll take us years to watch all of this.”

I huffed a laugh, sucking on the joint between my lips. This was what I did basically every single night—I spent about half my life watching TV—but it felt strangely exciting to do it with another person. A person who seemed as enthusiastic as I was about just vegging out, staring at a screen and eating too much food.

I couldn’t wait to see Beryl’s face when she watched her first action film or cheesy sitcom or period drama. I could already tell she’d be interested in all of it and eager to soak up everything she could.

“What’re you in the mood for?” I asked, although I doubted she’d know.

I started scrolling down through the various genre lists, but then Beryl reached over and grabbed my arm to stop me.

“Wait, that row says, ‘Continue watching’. Is that the stuff you watch? Let’s put on one of those.”

Oh god. I exclusively watched a mix of corny and trashy shit, and Agma had always found it so embarrassing on the rare occasions we did go out with friends and I couldn’t contribute at all to their conversations about the latest climate change documentary or some new indie film about a young demiurgus leaving the fast-paced corporate world behind to find his calling in yak farming.

“Um, okay.” I hurriedly sucked down another lungful of sweet smoke to try and relax as I selected one of my favourite corny sitcoms. “Uh, we’ll start it again from the beginning so you can follow.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t mind.” I’d actually already watched the whole thing at least ten times, but I could easily watch it again. “There’s actually a new season coming out soon, so we’ll be caught up and can watch that together. If you like it, I mean.”

“I’ll like anything that isn’t demiurgus opera.”

I snuffled a laugh, scrolling up through the episodes to the very first one. Beryl shifted to face the TV fully, rearranging the blanket over herself so her bare feet were tucked under it. My fingers itched with the urge to pile several blankets on top of myself as well, but I refrained.

The opening credits started on the screen, cheerful music playing over a birds-eye shot of a typical suburb before the camera zoomed in on two specific houses side by side—one a tall white-washed house with pale green trim and a perfectly manicured front yard, the other a wide, squat building made of black stone, with a wildly overgrown garden filled with Deep Earth plants.

The words Our Neighbours the Humans floated onto the screen in curly letters, before it cut to a reel of shots from the show as the cast was introduced. An all-American family, Mr and Mrs Smith and their two young kids, Angelica and Sam, followed by their demiurgus neighbours, the Aktonars. Lifemates Gimi and Tomar, and their five kids, Biki, Lota, Pakna, Grin and Reesh.

When the credits ended with a full-screen shot of a smiling older demiurgus female with long white-streaked black hair and the words, “And Parin var Gelligar as Jurik Aktonar”, Beryl asked, “Who’s that?”

“Oh, a super-famous demiurgus actor from a few decades ago. She used to be a total babe.” Okay, the shade was definitely loosening me up. “Well, she still is, but she was in this long-running late-night show about a rogue demiurgus cop who goes undercover while off-duty to bust human crime rings. She was his sexy crime-fighting partner.”

Beryl snorted, shooting me a wry look. “Fan of that show too?”

“Oh yeah, it’s awesome. I had such a crush on her.” I tapped the end of my joint into the ashtray and snuck a glance at her. “We can watch that too if you want. It’s pretty dated now, so not, you know, the best representation of modern society’s views, but it’s still good.”

“Sure, but let’s watch this first.” Beryl nodded at the screen. “Can you explain it to me?”

I quickly rewound to the end of the opening credits again and paused. “So it’s about this demiurgus family who moves in next door to some humans. The Smiths. And it’s basically just”—I shrugged—“them figuring out how to co-exist as neighbours. But like, in a funny way. Well, you might not find it funny. It’s, you know, goofy and a little slapstick.”

Beryl nodded. “Sounds fun. Who does sexy crime-fighting lady play?”

My mouth twitched into a lazy smile. “She plays the mom of Tomar—uh, the female demiurgus adult. She’s like the rich grandma who visits from the city and brings the kids stuff, including the human kids. The Smith parents hate it, because they say it’s all really weird.”