[ No one else touches him like this. Like— not furniture, exactly, but where Alicent's earned ease with him manifests in moments of warmth and girlishness (he thinks, unbidden, of the way she'd laughed after attempting to push him, minutes after taking Temp V), Alia regards him in a distinctly different key, like she could look through him if she really wanted to. But he doesn't flinch away, meeting her gaze as she stares up from his knee, hesitating before lifting his own hand, moving a strand of hair, made sticky by water, from the pale expanse of her forehead. ]

She's special.

[ A broader thought, distilled down into two words. ]

Not in the fucking gifted kid way. She's— you know.

[ Everyone knows. It's why they respect her, why they flock to her, why they all want a piece of her for their own. But the stillness of the moment passes in the next beat, as Homelander fixes the pad of his forefinger against the middle of Alia's forehead, touch light. ]

I didn't mean you'd build the thing yourself, anyway. Ask Jonty really nicely, or, I don't know, Wally. Someone with an engineering degree.

[ His finger taps once, twice, still careful. His mouth twists as he looks at her, staring into her head, into her skull. No different from anyone else's, to the naked eye, and yet. ]

—You miss it? Being that quiet?