Monster who is incredibly embarrassed to discover that someone apparently misunderstood something when a "seasoned detective" was mentioned

"Hi!" Gruoch warbles nervously, thrusting a bottle of wine across the doorstep from full arms' length, with all the ginger forward lean of someone handing a baby across a trench full of leaping flames.

"Hi," says Emmy-the-human from Gruoch's stats class, smiling a little confusedly. "Come on in, let me take your coat. Dinner's nearly—"

"Oh uh I can't after all!" Gruoch says in a high-pitched rush, snatching back her empty hands to hide them in her coat pockets so Emmy can't see them shake. "I, uh, I missed our class together this week?" (After Emmy had delegated her housemate to deliver the invitation to "a little casual dinner get-together.") "I had a cold and I uh don't want to give it to anyhone? And I have to catch up with the classwork—"

Emmy is making a careful humouring-Gruoch-nerves face. "Come on in," she says gently. "If you need to catch up, I'll lend you my notes."

"Oh," Gruoch says, flinching. "Yes. That makes sense," and drags her feet helplessly over the threshold into Emmy's flat, hunching into her coat at the sound of unfamiliar voices in the living room.

"That's just my sister — you met June that one time, remember? — and Mia's girlfriend," Emmy says kindly.

Gruoch leans back against the front door, and trembles.

"Tell me what's wrong," Emmy says, still kindly, and Gruoch snuffles and says nothing. "All right, you don't have to," Emmy adds, softer. "At least take some food—"

"I'm a vegetarian!" Gruoch squeaks, and yanks the neck of her hoodie up to cover as much of her face as she can, staring wild-eyed over the top of it, because that was a stupid thing to say—

"No you're not," Emmy says, slowly, blinking at her as she mentally unpacks what's bothering Gruoch. "You're an obligate carnivore. What's up?"

"I can't—" Gruoch mumbles through fabric, pleading with her gaze. "I — I guess it must be a thing that people know but they don't talk about, but I know there's no legal way to source — and it's probably fine for you, but if I — and, and Mia said it's a police detective? How do you even — that's got to attract—"

"Gruoch," Emmy says.

"And it's not fine for me," Gruoch says, voice climbing again, "it won't be, and it — the last time they burned a kelpie at the stake in this country was twenty-three miles from here, in 1986. 1986! And they already had the forensic evidence to prove they hadn't eaten anyone, and nobody was ever charged with anything for just, for just killing them—"

"Gruoch." Emmy touches her shoulders. "Gruoch, I wouldn't — when I asked Mia to invite you, I told her to phrase things very carefully, because I know you get worried and spiral easily. Can you—" and she stops herself. "Please wait here for me?" she says instead. "I'm going to check something with Mia."

Gruoch slumps against the door while Emmy goes into the living room, and says something low and furiously hard; and Mia says something back that swings upward in a blare of outraged bluster, and Gruoch is cradling her head between her hands, ears pressed under her palms, when Emmy comes back, jaw set and eyes murderous, and coaxes Gruoch's hands down.

"Let's step outside," Emmy says, and pauses on the threshold, hand on the small on Gruoch's back, to yell sharply back indoors: "Lasagne's in the oven, get it yourselves!" She bangs the door closed, takes a deep breath, and slides her arm all the way around Gruoch, to pull her into her side. "Beef lasagne," she says. "Mia's girlfriend is a police detective, who we had over for dinner, as a guest. Which I'm not entirely cool with, but I don't think she'll put up with Mia for long, anyway."

"Oh," Gruoch says. "Oh. Not—"

"I did not invite you over to entrap you into eating people meat," Emmy says, holding onto her firmly.

"I didn't," Gruoch says, lightheaded and flushed with shame and relief and several kinds of entirely new dread, instead: "I didn't think you—"

"You did, a bit," Emmy says. "Because — 1986." She tilts her head to rest it against Gruoch's shoulder for a second, and Gruoch can't help sniffling. "Listen, next — well. If you can ever stand to come to dinner again, which you don't have to, and I wouldn't blame you — and you don't ever have to meet Mia's girlfriend, either, if you don't want, because I knew you'd be nervous about a police officer, which is why — I didn't trust myself not to mouth off about her when I asked you, which is why I thought I'd get Mia to do it, because I didn't want to be the reason you got stressed about it, and I should have known better—"

She halts herself.

"I'm really sorry for scaring you, Gruoch," she says, and Gruoch breathes and breathes and very cautiously leans into her. "I'm going to take you round the corner for fish and chips, instead of back indoors, if that's okay. And if you're okay with ever being invited again — which I won't do unless you tell me it's okay — I'll do it, and I'll make sure to tell you about it very carefully. I can't stop you from worrying, but I can make sure you only have realistic worries."

Gruoch laughs wetly.

"Generalised anxiety disorder knows no realism," she says.