Every week, an alien kneels in front of him. Every week, Irvin tells himself it means nothing.
The New Beginnings Program is straightforward: humans provide what their bodies produce naturally. The Vyastil—a species that crossed the galaxy rather than go extinct—get what they need to survive. Both sides sign the forms. Both sides go home.
Irvin signed up the second he turned twenty-one. Not because he had to. Because he's been carrying grief since he was sixteen, and this felt like a way to make it mean something.
Then Carius walks through the door.
He says Irvin's name like he already knew it. He adjusts without being asked—to the silence, to the tension, to every unspoken thing. He listens the way no one in Irvin's life ever has. And week by week, session by session, the careful distance Irvin built between *transactional* and *personal* starts to collapse.
The program has rules for exactly this reason.
Irvin knows all of them. He keeps showing up anyway.
When the world outside the clinic starts asking whether humans and Vyastil should be this close at all—and the answer turns violent—Irvin has to decide what he's actually willing to lose.
He came in to give something away. He didn't expect to find something he wanted to keep.
What happens when the arrangement was only ever an excuse to stay in the same room?
A sci-fi MM romance with:
? Alien falls first (and keeps falling)
? Forced proximity — institutional slow burn
? Grief-driven hero finds unexpected healing
? Parallel B-romance (grumpy human / warm alien)
? Found family + societal tension
? HEA guaranteed
