I'm Not From Earth - 20. Twenty

t w e n t y

Warmth. Thick sheets beneath his fingers. Drowsy and heavy eyelids. Feeling safe.

Gentle fingers, silky and fleeting, traced his bare back. They stopped at this point and that, resting on each hill of his spine; skipping butterflies pausing to visit a line of flowers. A wave of pleasant chills shook his body. Then, a warm liquid touched a numb spot on his thigh. Rover squirmed, then froze at the smell.

The iron stench of blood.

A sight of a body being gored through the torso, pinned to the ground by a shard of crystal punctured through Rover's mind. The colours and the sensation of falling exploded through his limbs, and he was back in the ship, on his knees and fighting for his life. Pain, fear, adrenaline. Hands stained with crimson. Blood that was Slade's, and blood that was his. Blood that was his as he lay face down in his bedroom. Dust and scabs clogged his nose. Numbness; the thumps that were fists and feet breaking his body.

The thumping that was his heart, beating in his throat.

Rover gained ground, and he was suddenly back on the soft bed, cradling his throbbing head. Suddenly shaking so hard he could barely breathe.

"Hey, hey. It's alright." A soft voice near him.

Strong arms gathered him close, and Rover could not find the will to make a protestation. He kept his eyes shut tight, sucking in ragged puffs of air. Indoor air, touched with the fragrance of rich wood. Touched with the faint aroma of some unnamed flower, touched with the smell of sea salt and honey; the scent of nervousness, and boy.

The thumping that was Slade's heart, so close it was Rover's heartbeat too.

How Rover wanted to turn and return the embrace.

Instead, he moved to pull himself away, and Slade quickly retracted his arms. He scratched his head, and for a fleeting moment, looked sheepish. But then his expression had cleared, and Rover was the one left feeling embarrassed as Slade looked at him intensely. Rover was suddenly aware of his own nakedness, and he pulled the covers higher, wishing he had a shirt. Before he could ponder about why he was in his current state of attire, Slade handed him glass of water. Rover gulped it down gratefully.

"Better?" Slade asked.

Rover wiped his chin with his forearm. "Yeah. Thanks."

"Do you... feel any pain?"

"No. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

Slade chuckled, a warm ripple of sound deep in his throat. "Passing out twice, in the span of two hours. That's really something."

Rover scowled, but before he could think of a suitable retort, he remembered.

"Oh hell, what about you?" He reached forward towards Slade's stomach, but his friend gently redirected Rover's hand into a pillow.

"I heal fast," Slade assured him.

"But," Rover started, as images of his friend being speared down to the ground through the torso filled his mind again, "you were..."

With a flourish, Slade raised his foot onto the bed. "See," he said, smiling. "As good as new."

It was true. There was a lighter patch a skin where the wound used to be, but his flesh was unbroken. Slade wriggled his toes to show that he was pain free, and raised his other foot onto the bed for proof. It was beyond surreal, beyond weird, but it was also utterly, amazing.

"How about..." Rover began, and Slade turned around and lifted the back of his shirt in response. It was hard to focus on the site of damage, naturally, as the hard planes of his back caught Rover's gaze more than anything else. In the dim light, the tapered muscles in his waist, and the strong tease of muscles, hidden beneath the fold of fabric, were shaded in deep contrasts. Rover looked down as Slade pulled his shirt down and turned back around.

"See? Nothing to worry about."

Rover nodded absentmindedly, struggling to annihilate the picturesque image in his head of Slade removing more important articles of clothing.

"So, uh," Rover said, a little too loudly, "what happened?"

Slade shrugged, a little too nonchalantly. "Oh, the ship collapsed. Well, it more or less imploded, but because I wasn't pinned down, I was able to get us out."

"How?" Rover stared wide eyed.

"I jumped on a few shards of falling framework with you on my back. You were pretty damaged, but now you're fine." Slade sniffed. "The ship's totally gone, though. The bottom of the crater split, and it sank in a sea of lava."

Rover took a few minutes to digest all the information. Slade saved him. They were alive. The ship imploded. He wasn't hurt. Hell, the ship was gone. Rover didn't know what to say, and the more he thought about it, the more he knew that the ship meant more to Slade than he thought. It was the only reminder of Slade's own past; the only remnant of a homeland he wished to remember, but never knew. Rover cast his mind for some reassuring comment, but when he came up with nothing, he settled for a lame apology.

"I'm... sorry."

There was a silence. Slade's expression was mainly indecipherable, but wherest it was readable, Rover saw that there were no traces of hate or blame written upon his features.

"Fuck, it wasn't your fault," Slade said softly.

Rover shook his head. "As soon as... I put my hand on the thing, it... the whole place --"

"I know," Slade said, "but that doesn't prove anything. And even if you did... do whatever you did, you didn't mean to do it."

Rover bit his lip, staring at his feet. The more he thought about it, the more terrible he felt. This is all my fault. "Do you..."

"Do I what?"

"... Do you, like, uh, hate me for this?"

Slade stared for a second, then rolled his eyes, exasperated. "You saved my ass Rover. Why the hell would I hate you for that?"

"You saved my life like right after I saved yours," Rover rationed. "That's why I'm still here."

"And I wouldn't have been able to save your life if you didn't save mine."

"So I like, saved my own life. But I still messed up --"

"Rover!" Slade laughed. "Do you want to stop being apologetic, or do I have to heal your head back to it's angry self, sir?"

Rover glowered at him, and Slade smiled mischievously. They both looked at each other, silent in their gratitude.

Making use of the pause in their conversation, Rover turned to better inspect where he was. A single sweep of his eyes told him that they were upstairs, in what looked like a forest cottage. Rich, honey marbled wood plated the walls, and the ceiling was woven with rafters. Although the shelves that hung from the wall directly ahead of Rover's bed presented nothing but an assortment of unlit candles and were overall devoid of decoration, the lamps that hung from the walls flickered with soothing light, warming the atmosphere. A small window in the wall to the left was veiled behind faded drapes, a gentle hum of the wind escaping from the edges of the shutter.

The room was nowhere as luxurious as his own house, but Rover felt much more at ease. This was somewhere he could spend the rest of his days in -- no matter if it wasn't adorned with expensive statues or wide stretches of Plasma TV's.

"I chopped up every plank," Slade said proudly, his eyes gleaming.

"How long did it take you?"

The corners of Slade's eyes crinkled as he wrought his mouth in thought. "An hour to chop up all the planks. A long time to figure out how to build it!"

"It's... great," Rover said lamely, and cringed inside. He loathed himself for his inability to better express himself with words, but Slade didn't seem to mind, and smiled nonetheless.

A lapse of quiet sank between them, like the many periods of silence that they shared. It wasn't that they had run out of things to say; it was that they had too many things to say to each other, and neither of them knew where, when or how to begin.

When Rover finally voiced a question, he spoke it in a whisper.

"How did you like... how did you know?"

Slade inclined his face towards Rover. "How did I know what?"

"That you aren't from..."

"Earth?"

"Yeah. Earth." Rover rolled the word around his tongue. It sounded so weird, to be using the word outside of a science class. "It's not like I doubt you or anything," he added quickly, "it's just that I..."

"I understand," Slade said quietly. He closed his eyes, and said, voice a murmur, "I knew that I wasn't from here because... I remembered it."

"Remembered what?"

"The crash."

Rover blinked. "Oh."

"Yeah. I believe I was... four, when it happened."

Slade's mouth twitched as though he was trying to control his emotions. "I feel kinda dumb talking to you about this," he said, "I mean, I don't even look like any alien or anything, so I know it's hard for you to believe me and --"

"I believe you," Rover said firmly, then asked, "do you believe that?"

Slade smiled. "Yes. I believe that you believe me."

"Uhm, so like, will you talk now?"

Slade nodded, but seemed hesitant. "Yes," he said slowly, cautiously, cradling each word as if they were made of glass. "It's just... well, it's really stupid."

"What's really stupid?" Rover pressed.

"The crash." Slade raised both hands to his head, talking more to himself than Rover, "The crash was stupid. It even sounds pretty damn stupid enough to myself when I say it, and when I try to remember it, I feel even more stupid, because I can remember nothing but the crash. Nothing else, but everything about it. Every single detail. Totally clearly. Like I was there yesterday."

He paused, seeming to gather his thoughts. Rover nodded in encouragement, and Slade continued.

"I mean... I could tell you how many collisions there were every few seconds, and in which section of the ship rocked and shattered. I could tell you which lights went out, and I could tell you that the colours shining from out the window turned from rainbow to a neon red. I could tell you... the amount of bodies that fell in front of me in that room from the falling crystals, and the times that I fell from the quake and hit my head because the security locks didn't function.

"But you know, I couldn't remember my parents' faces. I couldn't remember their voices. I couldn't even remember that I fucking interacted with them at all. Neither could I remember why I was there on the ship in the first place, or anytime before that, or how my home looked like... or anything. It was like I didn't even fucking exist until the crash. I mean, fuck, now that I think about it... amnesia isn't very far fetched."

Silence.

Rover waited a bit before suggesting tentatively, "maybe... maybe it was because you hit your head or something, like when the ship fell, and that's why you can't remember anything. I mean like... for example, I know my mom dropped me on my head in preschool, so I think that that's why I can't remember anything before I was four."

Slade nodded thoughtfully. "That might explain a lot of other things." He laughed and shielded his face when Rover whipped a pillow in his direction.

"What did you remember next?" Rover asked, when he reloaded his hands with another pillow.

"My old caretaker's face," Slade said, a subconscious smile tickling the corners of his lips. "I was in the hospital, completely bound up, and the first thing I saw, with a throbbing head, was a wrinkly thing with a red glass eye. Scared the living shit out of me."

"How did you get to the hospital, though? Didn't the caretaker find out about the ship?"

Slade shook his head, his eyes downcast and in deep thought. "My caretaker told me that I walked out from the forest and right in front of the road in where he was driving." He smiled. "Said it nearly gave him a heart attack. So, I think I must of walked a distance away from the ship -- out from the forest, at least."

"You walked all the way into civilization, when you were four, and survived without getting eaten by some wild animal?" Rover said, wide eyed.

Slade grinned. "Yes."

A sudden image of toddler Slade throwing a monstrous Grizzly bear off a cliff filled Rover's mind, and he suppressed a whimper of awe and terror.

"So did you like, live with him afterward?"

Slade nodded. "Along with fifty other kids. His name was Vanis. He ran the orphanage down in the South. At first I puzzled him, for I was four and I couldn't speak a single language, but he taught me English and he never asked me any questions about my origin, even when I was older. He was always kind to me, but the other children definitely weren't. I was the youngest one there, so they always picked on me. When I first came, as soon as the caretaker named me, introduced me, and left, they crowded around me and they spat."

"They what?"

"They spat." He laughed. "It was totally nasty. I was fucking drenched. They continued to go out of their way to make me feel miserable whenever they could. Stealing my dinner, setting me up for tricks, putting rats under my sheets... I think it was because Vanis favoured me, that they hated me."

Rover pulled a face, appalled that anyone could ever wish Slade ill will. "Well, didn't you have supernatural strength when you were young, too? Did you like, beat them up or something?"

Slade chuckled, but this time the sound was humorless and empty. "Yes I did. Once, and that was enough. I wasn't actually strong at first, so I think that my strength was something... dormant within me. I was as normal as anyone else there, even weaker than most because of my stature. So one day, when my caretaker wasn't there to defend me and two of the older kids had me by the arms and were threatening to throw me off the balcony... I snapped."

Slade frowned, and Rover leaned nearer towards him, waiting for him to continue.

"I don't really remember how it happened," Slade muttered, "but the next thing I knew was that I was staring down at the two boys, one of them was ten and the other thirteen, and they were both screaming in agony. I'll never forget the looks on their faces. The look of total... fear, and..."

"Hate?" Rover offered quietly.

Slade thought about that for awhile. "Not hate," he said, and his voice shook, "worse. It was the look of repulsion, as though I was something deadly, disgusting and contagious. As though I was a freak. As though I shouldn't exist. Hate, in my opinion, is easier to accept. But repulsion is something cold and just..."

His voice faltered, and for a moment it sounded like tears were breaking their way to his tough demeanour, but he quickly coughed to clear it. "Anyways," he said, "I later found out that I had broken their arms, but that was way after I was taken away from the orphanage. It was when I was already enrolled in some stupid Specially Inclined Students school. I overheard the Principle discussing it with one of the staff. Shortly after that, I was put into a foster home shortly after when I turned six, but I took them to court and shit and now I'm on my own." Slade made a face. "Don't know why I ever put up with them so long. The parents were never home, and my foster uncle was a fucking pedophile."

"You took them to court?" Rover asked, dumbstruck. "How old were you? Fifteen?"

"Thirteen," Slade replied. "And yeah. I gathered a webcam video of my sick uncle molesting my poor foster sister, got them all in deep shit and jail, my caretaker came and took over and..."

"Why aren't you living with him now?"

Slade thought about that for awhile, his eyes downcast, eyelashes brushing the hands he had head rested on. Rover waited until he continued.

"I told him," Slade said, reminiscing, "that I needed to be free. That I had faced whatever that I needed to face, and that I needed to leave. And Vanis nodded, and let me go -- and he said this thing to me, just before I went. He told me he understood, and that he hoped that I would find my freedom soon, but though it would require more things that me, myself, had to face, before I could become totally free. The look in his eyes..." Slade's expression took on a faraway look. "The look was like an X-ray, as though he could see exactly what was going through my head, and that I was different. As though he could see that I wasn't... wasn't like any of the other kids he had raised. I didn't even know what exactly he was talking about at the time -- I still don't know, but I had the impression that he knew more than I knew about myself.

"So," Slade continued, drifting out of his reverie, "I went to get a job at some florist for about four years, then quit my job last week."

"Why?"

"No reason. I can hunt and cook my food here. I just didn't feel like working anymore when there's nothing to work for."

Slade leaned forwards and rested his chin near the edge of the bed. A painful wave rolled through Rover, and he had to almost physically restrain himself from reaching out to stroke the dark tufts of cropped hair. Fluttery breaths tickled the back of Rover's forearm.

"I'm sorry." Rover said quietly.

"Fuck, nothing was your fault," Slade murmured into the mattress. "Stop apologizing. It's freaking me out."

"I didn't know that you liked it better when I'm all, like, angry." Rover quirked an eyebrow, then added in his most placid tone, "Sorry."

Slade straightened up, retrieved the thrown pillow and chucked it back. Rover caught it, threw it harder, then grew serious.

"What do you think... like happened, like when I put my hand on that crystal ball?" He asked.

Slade shrugged, stretching himself like a cat in his armchair. "I haven't got no clue. I also don't know why nothing ever happened when I placed my hand there in the past. I think we somehow activated it or something, but then the ship broke down." He stared thoughtfully at his hands. "Or then it self-destructed."

"Maybe it was a distress signal."

A pause.

Then Slade leapt up from his chair so fast that Rover yelped.

"What makes you think that?" Slade asked, eyes narrowing.

Rover bit his lip, and pondered what to tell him. His thoughts were so scattered and broken, he wasn't sure whether he could justify his guess or not. All that was left in his memory were a few fragments of images, and feelings. Feelings that could not be described through words. The loudness of the ringing from the crystal ball. The sense of being the different creatures touched by the song. The sense of just knowing that everything in the universe could feel it.

No, he wasn't sure that it was a distress signal. He was far from sure. It was indeed a guess, but it wasn't a random one.

Nonetheless, it was all too complicated to explain so Rover just shrugged and said. "I don't know."

Slade stared for a few more seconds, then relaxed and sank back into his chair. "What I wouldn't give..." Slade's shoulders fell, and he uttered a quiet sigh.

Rover watched him for awhile, then asked, "what... would you do, like if you knew that the people from wherever you came from were going to come here in a day's time?"

Slade smiled. "Oh that's easy. First, I would walk down this mountain, and right into the midst of your friend's birthday party. And then I would throw everyone who was smoking a joint off their stupid balcony. And second, I would put you into a potato sack, tie you up, and take you with me to wherever I came from."

"Why bag me up in a sack?" Rover asked, an eyebrow raised. "How do you know I wouldn't be wanting to go like, willingly?"

"Well," Slade reasoned, "I would think you wouldn't want to leave everything behind and travel to a faraway unknown place with a guy you just met for a few days."

Rover bit his lip. "No," he said quietly. "I guess I wouldn't want to leave everything behind."

What was there to leave behind, in this world, though? He asked himself, coming to a realization. Now that he really thought about it, there wasn't much to leave behind. His father? His Abercrombie friends? Somerset? A view of a city? His empty house? The memories of his dead mother?

Rover would leave behind this everything any time. Because his everything was his nothing. It didn't matter if he had to leave to a faraway planet with a guy he had just met for a few days.

Especially if this particular guy was Slade.

"Are you alright?"

Rover sniffed. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" Slade asked, his eyes carefully observant. Painstakingly beautiful.

"I'm sure. Stop asking me that. I just need some sleep."

"Alright." Slade smiled, standing up and making his way to the door. "Well, I'm just going to take a shower. I already cleaned you up, so just sleep tight."

"Okay. Sure."

Rover pulled the blankets around him, utterly exhausted. A minute later, when he was in the midst of rolling onto his stomach, Slade's words sank in. He sat back up and raised his arms to smell his armpits. Soap, and that hint of an unnamed flower hit his nose. Then he lifted his covers, dreading what he'd see.

Pink briefs?!

"Wait!" Rover called after him. "You... cleaned me up?"

Slade's cocky voice echoed from the halls. "I wasn't going to let you in my bed when you were all blood and muck! Just chill. I made sure to give you an extra thorough sponge bath."

Rover flushed far brighter than his attire, and sank underneath the covers. A moment later, he cursed under his breath.

What he wouldn't have given to have been awake during that!

    *