The Serpentine Bodyguard

"Mrrrrrrgh..."

When Clark awoke, it was to the gentle feeling of being squeezed as he lay in a king-sized bed. The covers were pulled up all the way over his head, keeping him shrouded in a warm blanket of darkness, and beneath them, he felt a scaly tail wrapped snugly around his body from his midsection to his ankles. Instead of a pillow, his head rested comfortably on a soft, scaly belly, rising and falling with each breath his serpentine lover took. "Good morning, handsome," a soft voice called from over the covers, and Clark could feel the coils around his legs loosening.

He flipped over onto his belly, then crawled out from under the covers to see a beautiful, serpentine face gazing back at him. "Good morning, gorgeous," he sighed as he scooted forward just a bit, putting his head level with her smooth, plump chest. "You sleep okay?"

"Yeah..." As her human planted a brief kiss on her clavicle, Hssara gently ran her fingers through his hair, relishing the silky texture like it was their first time together. "How about you? Thought I felt you wake up for a bit..."

"Ah, it's nothing," Clark replied, only half-lying now that the nightmare had faded to a vague fog of dread. "Just... weird dreams."

"Really? Weird how?"

"I, ah... I can't really remember," he sighed, "Something about rabbits."

"Hmm." Hssara gently began uncoiling herself from around her lover, flexing from her shoulders to the tip of her tail as her mouth split in a fanged yawn. She then scooped up her phone from beside a massive lube bottle on the nightstand, scrolling through the daily assortment of notifications from her calendar and news apps. "Looks like that interview's today," she murmured, "The... AABC one?"

"ADVENT American Broadcasting Network?" The lengthy title had always been another facet of the same inscrutable TV conglomerate that ADVENT ran, just something you got tweets from every so often to tell you the news or to give you a laugh. He'd never imagined that he'd be going on as a guest, much less with a viper as his companion... but times just seemed to get stranger every day. "What time?"

"Yeah... at nine in the morning." A brief glance at the top of her phone revealed that it was currently about eight, giving them just enough time to get in a regular breakfast while still giving them a good buffer for show prep. Hssara slithered out of bed and over to the spacious walk-in closet, where she took her armor off its rack and began fastening it around her body. Clark wasn't far behind in getting dressed, donning a grey suit and black shirt while keeping the jacket draped over his arm, a look pre-approved by the ADVENT propaganda machine as "clever and classy." The sheer size of the space let them both go about their business in tandem, though both human and viper helped each other with the harder-to-reach parts of their garb.

Once clothed, the pair moved over into the open space that hosted both the living room and kitchen. Back in their old apartment, such a fusing was the product of limited floor space, but in this new penthouse that ADVENT had them in, it felt more like a haughty architect's rejection of walls. While Clark deposited his jacket on the back of a chair and pulled a carton of eggs from the top-of-the-line smart fridge, Hssara coiled herself up on the couch and turned on the TV.

"-bombing this month, claiming the lives of Dr. Aaron Truscott, Simona Philip, and Denis Sawyer." The picture on-screen was an aerial shot of a gene therapy clinic, one with a scorched hole blown in the roof and ADVENT troopers maintaining the perimeter. "Due to the nature of the attack, civil security has few leads as to the perpetrator's identity, though investigators believe there may be a connection with the terror group known as-"

Before the reporter could finish, Hssara switched the channel, this time landing on what looked like a documentary. "-forces operated without government oversight," a wizened narrator explained, "Acting as a highly-funded global militia. In addition to numerous pre-emptive strikes on the Elder's spacecraft, they carried out gruesomely unethical experiments on-"

Hssara switched the channel again once it showed a picture of an alien splayed out on an operating table, pinned in a spread-eagle pose like a dissected frog. In the brief moment where the TV changed channels, he could see Hssara's reflection flinch in disgust, and even though it wasn't his species being vivisected, he understood how she felt.

Thankfully, the next channel was quite a bit lighter in tone, showcasing wildlife camera footage of a pair of tiger cubs playing. "Of course, twenty years ago, tigers were on the verge of extinction," a soft-spoken narrator said, "But thanks to breakthroughs in both genetic research and poaching prevention, the species has made a resounding comeback."

Meanwhile, Clark was busy cracking a couple of eggs into a bowl before scrambling them with a fork. After adding a dash of salt, he then poured them out onto a buttered pan, letting the bottom crispify a bit before scraping them around with a spatula. It didn't take too long for the eggs to solidify into steamy scrambled goodness, and after doling them out onto two plates, Clark sprinkled them both with a bit of salt and pepper. "Are you doing alright?" he asked as he brought the plates over, trying not to sound too clingy. After that dreadful turn of events almost a month ago, things had most certainly gotten better, but every so often, reminders would stain the world around them.

"Yeah, I'm... I'm fine," Hssara replied, popping a piece of egg into her mouth before hastily swallowing it. "Just thinking."

"About?"

"About... I dunno, just the whole rebellion thing. The bombings, the robberies..."

Clark carefully set his own plate aside, then sidled up to his serpentine lover. "None of that's gonna touch us, we've got a dozen ADVENT guards around the building around the clock."

"Yeah... you're right." Though her voice said there was something else a bit beneath the surface, Clark didn't pry as she snuggled up against his side, doing her best to soak up his intimate warmth despite her armor. The two of them continued eating their breakfast in silence, watching the tigers running and leaping about on-screen while each pondering their own concerns. "I love you, Clark," she eventually murmured, listening to the human's heartbeat with her head perched on his shoulder.

"I love you too," Clark replied, leaning down for a quick kiss on the top of her head. Things couldn't go wrong while he had Hssara by his side... or at least, that's what he'd convinced himself throughout the past few weeks.

They sat and ate in silence until the buzzing of Hssara's phone jostled them from comfort, and a quick check revealed that it was time to go. Clark and Hssara quickly gulped down the remainders of their breakfast, donned their suit jacket and pistol holster respectively, straightened Clark's lapels the slightest bit, then headed out the door.

With an armed and armored ADVENT trooper standing just a few feet away, there wasn't much need to lock the door, and thanks to the snazzy penthouse's layout, the trip from the foyer to the elevator took about four seconds. The guard said something into his communicator in the alien language, but Clark and Hssara tried not to pay him any mind, instead focusing on getting into the elevator. After coiling neatly around Clark's shins, the viper pressed the button for the ground floor, then slithered around to drape herself over his shoulders. "Nervous at all?" she teased, trying to cut through the elevator's quiet whirring.

"I mean, yeah," Clark replied with a grin, "But even if we screw up, they're just gonna fix it in post. Can't have their newest figureheads spewing coffee in front of half the nation."

While the memory of him choking on his coffee and spitting it halfway across the room on camera brought a smile to both their faces, Clark's mention of figureheads kicked up clouds of smoggy worry. First, it had been the interview on the attack, then the rather prying call on the "xenosexual debate," then the fabricated viral story about them smooching in public, and now this... probably something else concerning alien-human relations. The Elders were using good old commiefornia as a testing ground for their latest strategy, and their relationship was their prototype.

Once they arrived at the ground floor, the elevator's doors slid open with a quiet ding, revealing the back of an ADVENT trooper standing right in front of the doors. Once he stepped aside, Clark navigated his way out of his lover's coils, then took her by the hand as he led her out of the lobby. Here, there weren't any tenants to run in fear, and the only other souls in the expansive room were a matching set of ADVENT troopers, one of whom radioed something else as human and viper headed for the door. Before they'd even made it out of the foyer, Hssara could hear their van pulling up to the curb, already parked with the back doors open when they reached the sidewalk. One of the two troopers in the front seats gave what Clark assumed was a glance, and the human took it as a silent indicator to move it along.

He and his viper companion quickly climbed into the back, which now had two plush vinyl couches installed on either side. Hssara didn't coil and loop herself onto Clark's lap like they did at home, but she still leaned up against his comforting shoulder, and though his jacket kept him from comfortably lifting his arms, he still took her scaly hand and gave it a good squeeze.

With both passengers secure, the "drivers" manually punched in their destination, starting the van off toward the TV studio. "ETA: 6 minutes," the autopilot declared, their new apartment deliberately placed close to the studio for convenience's sake.

While the two troopers in front didn't seem to care what Clark and Hssara did in transit, their blocky helmets behind the seats were a stark reminder of ADVENT's constant surveillance. It took a little while for Clark to muster the courage to speak, even with Hssara's hand clasped firmly in his, and his words came out as little more than a whisper: "What do you think they'll ask about?"

The viper seemed to drink up the warmth from his words, a small smile crossing her lips. "Probably some leading stuff, how we're doing, what we think of ADVENT, our take on the 'conservatives'..." She did air quotes for the last subject, and though it was initially uncomfortable to know people out there detested their relationship, it didn't take long to figure out it was mostly manufactured opposition. Clark had seen enough shitposts and ironic memes to recognize a strawman campaign, and it was comforting in a weird way to know it was just ADVENT's elaborate sock puppet show.

"Maybe if we get lucky they'll ask about our sex life," Clark joked, "It'd certainly get the tweets rolling in..."

"And what're you gonna say?" Hssara purred. "'Oh, yeah,'" she said in her best hoity-toity human voice, "'It's so much fun screwing a giant snake monster that could crush my ribs like an eggshell. She doesn't bite much, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to eat me.'"

"Well, that'd be the truth," Clark candidly replied, "I mean, minus the whole eating thing... don't know how many times you've tried to gobble me up cock-first."

Hssara couldn't help but giggle, after which she planted a quick peck on her human's cheek. "Mmmm... it's only 'cause you're so delicious." Her hand briefly landed on his thigh as her weight began to shift onto his lap, but once one of the troopers said something into his radio, the lusty spark in her chest sputtered and died. However, Clark was quick to give her a kiss in turn, and while they didn't do anything untoward for the rest of the short trip, the armored viper happily snuggled up against her human companion. Despite the steel plates, she was still able to relish his comforting scent, and they remained huddled together until the van came to a smooth stop.

The ADVENT goons hopped out, did a quick sweep of the perimeter, then popped open the van's back doors for their two passengers. "Come along," one of them ordered, and the other quickly gave an update over his radio. Clark and Hssara stepped out of the van and followed the first trooper through the pristine parking garage. The odd pair walked and slithered hand in hand, one guard at their front and one at their rear, making them feel like participants in some bizarre witness protection program as they marched to the glass doors leading into the building propper.

Once inside, however, they were greeted by the semi-familiar face of Dr. Calkins, her crisp smile doing the bare minimum to soothe their nerves. "How're you two doing?" she asked, holding a datapad in one hand as if she'd been working moments previously.

"Fine and dandy," Clark sighed, giving Hssara's hand a tiny squeeze. "Shall we get makeuped-up?"

Calkins seemed the slightest bit perturbed by his dismissive response, but empathy creased her expression all the same. "Sure... right this way." The two ADVENT troopers stayed by the doorway as the doctor led them down the hall and into the brightly lit makeup studio, where both seated themselves at the stations of two frazzled-looking techs. One hastily began applying powder and paint to Clark, getting his face properly decorated with foundation and highlights and shadows, and to Hssara's dismay, the other did the same to her. She'd seen humans do this ritual countless times, plastering themselves to get that invisible edge, but for her, it felt like getting made up like a clown. Her scales had to be coated with a matte finish to keep them from being too shiny, and her eyes had to be traced with eyeliner for a more "humanized" look. A makeup tech had once offered a bit of blood-red lipstick to go along with it, but when Clark burst out laughing, she immediately wiped the slimy substance off.

Despite the embarrassment of having brushes and puffs all over their faces, the application only took about ten minutes, and after the artists retreated, Clark and Hssara couldn't help but admire each other's touched-up appearances. To the viper, her human lover looked every bit as handsome as the movie stars in all the things they'd watched, and though she looked a tad odd, Clark loved the all-too-human sense of enticing mystery the bit of makeup provided. "Shall we?" he murmured, offering the crook of his elbow for Hssara to daintily take. All set up for their latest appearance on TV, they let their white-clad handler lead them out toward the set.

"Just try to be candid," Calkins offered on the way over, "Mr. Yates isn't going to ask anything too prying... at least, nothing he thinks you can't handle. He's just trying to get to know you as people, so-"

"No bootlicking?" Clark interjected, wearing a slightly scornful smile.

Calkins opened her mouth to reply, then shut it before saying, "Yes, no bootlicking. Just be yourselves... but try to be a bit discrete."

With that, they stepped through the doorway onto the set, earning a few nervous glances from the black-clad workers hurrying around, briefly interrupting their ant-like scurrying. Up ahead was the stage itself, a diorama of a haughty living room in front of a swarm of TV screens, and sitting in an ivory-colored armchair was this week's interrogator. Jimmy Yates was the host of AABC's Screenside Chats, a modern talk show talking about modern things that modern people did. The man was most easily recognizable by the fiery red hair on his head, slicked back with gel until it looked like a plastic attachment. Upon spotting Clark and Hssara, he swiftly ended his chat with what looked to be his secretary, then stood to greet them, buttoning his shiny blue suit before extending a hand.

"Hey there!" he said in a toned-down stage voice, "You must be the two I've heard so much about!" He took Clark and Hssara's hands in turn, giving them both a firm doubled-up shake. "Go ahead and take a seat wherever you like, the show'll get started in a moment."

Of course, the only place to sit was the matching ivory sofa, and Clark had seen this same set enough times to know where he was supposed to be. Clark took a seat on the end nearest Jimmy, after which Hssara slithered over beside him, doing her best not to seem too clingy while her tail coiled around to the front of the coffee table. When Clark put a comforting arm around her shoulder, however, she leaned the slightest bit up against him in a show of silent affection.

"You guys know the drill," Jimmy asked as he sat back down, "Right?"

Clark nodded. "Don't look at the camera, don't touch your face..."

"... Don't say anything too outrageous," Hssara finished for him, "We've been onstage before."

Jimmy's smile suddenly strained the slightest bit, a bit of empathy leaking through his cheery mask. "Yeah, I saw... that whole kidnapping thing, just... eugh. Makes me glad we've got cops on the streets, know what I mean?"

Before either of them could answer, a man that must've been the director called out like a general: "Alright, lights in 3... 2... 1..." Suddenly, the lights around the stage dimmed, and a few moments later, the ones on the stage turned up to a spotlight's furious glare. Hssara closed her eyes to bask in the radiant heat for a moment while Clark tugged at his unbuttoned collar a bit, the lights forming a nigh-inscrutable barrier between him and the set crew. Jimmy didn't seem to mind, but judging by the way he almost robotically stiffened into place, he'd been on the receiving end of countless similar bombardments.

"Quiet on set, people! Cameras rolling in 5... 4... 3... 2..." He counted out the last number with his finger as the room grew silent, then directed the cameras to roll with a commanding chop of his hand.

A split second later, Jimmy sprung to life like an animatronic. "Good evening!" he said straight into one of the surrounding cameras, "I'm Jimmy Yates, and this is another episode of Screenside Chats! Tonight, we're gonna be talking about the latest faux pas of our generation, something that's been stirring up controversy with bigots across the nation. With me tonight are two subjects of this little debacle who you might've seen making waves on social media, Clark Hopper and Hssara Samanni!" The last name was something they'd tacked on during their first interview, a meaningless title to make Hssara seem relatable, but she smiled all the same as the camera panned over to her and her lover. "It's great having you guys on the show," Jimmy continued, leaning back and resting his ankle on his other knee.

"Well, it's great to be here," Clark replied, hoping his smile hit that balance between genuine and showy.

"How're you two doing tonight? Drive over here wasn't too rough, I hope..."

"Nah, it was fine," Hssara said with a smile, "And we're doing great..."

"Good to hear!" He shifted forward a bit, elbows resting on his knees. "Now, I hate to get straight to the point, but plenty of people out there have been wondering about those viral pics that have been circling around..." Over on a little monitor that mirrored the massive screen behind him, Clark could see the short series of pictures captured by phone that ADVENT had been pushing around: one was of him and Hssara gazing lovingly at each other, the next was them kissing briefly, the third featured her coils marginally wrapped around his legs, and the fourth was her hugging him close to her armored chest. "What do you two think about all that?"

Clark took a moment to think up a suitable reply, inspired somewhat by Hssara's initial reaction. "Honestly, I think someone out there's a pervert. I mean, taking pictures of a couple from across the street... that's paparazzi stuff at best and stalking at worst."