Chapter Text
Spock did not enjoy breaking his daily routine.
Almost every aspect of his day was thoroughly planned, his time split evenly between studying, meditating, and doing rudimentary errands for his father. Though his sense of curiosity was not limited, he preferred to read about new elements than experience them directly. It wasn’t in Spock’s nature to go off planet, much less participate in what would be considered a useless flight in a shuttle. Such activities took away time from his studies.
This was an excuse he would use whenever Sybok would pester him to go out on such adventures. Though Vulcans could not lie, both he and his brother could see the twisted truth in that statement; Spock never needed any academic help. He was always farther ahead than where the tutors expected him to be, which in turn made Sybok push him even further to avoid his work.
At times, Sybok seemed to be the exact opposite of Spock, constantly telling him he needed to leave the grounds of the palace and explore to get a new experience. Sybok’s arguments were never logically sound, so Spock could easily best him. His brother favored the ancient ways of expressing emotion rather than controlling it, which made him a peculiar up-and-coming ruler of the House of Surak.
Perhaps this is why Spock—though a great deal younger than Sybok—felt the need to behave more properly than his brother.
Sybok had come to excepted this aspect of him and normally didn’t push Spock that hard. He knew Spock’s limitations, just as Spock knew Sybok’s. Though they were sired by the same father, they were born by different women, and it was clear their differences went further than just biology. Still, they were raised together by the same nurses in the same palace, and lived with mutual respect.
And while Sybok was known to uphold that respect, it never stopped him from testing Spock’s patience.
“Little one!” Sybok calls from the hall. Spock can hear his heavy footsteps approaching the study, and chooses not to look up from his writing as the door slides open. “Ah. I have found you.”
“I was not hiding,” Spock tells him dryly. Sybok makes a noise like a snort, and strolls deeper into the study.
“Behind the scrolls, you are. Hiding from your people.”
At this, Spock looks up and shoots an irritated glance at him. One corner of Sybok’s lips quirk up. “They do not wish for me to be in their sight,” Spock shoots back.
Spock knows only too well the taboo of his existence. True, his blood stems from a royal line, but the fact that his mother had been a servant has forever blemished him in the eyes of Vulcan society. He is the bastard son of an ancient line of rulers, only around because Sybok insisted to his father that he wanted a brotherly companion to go hunting with.
But Spock doesn’t do very much hunting.
“They will soon have to become accustomed to you,” Sybok points out, leaning on the side of the desk. “You are nearing the time of your coronation! A young crowned ruler of the House of Surak all of Vulcan will hold adoration for.”
Spock quirks an eyebrow and finally puts down his stylus. “You are clearly mistaking me for your other brother.”
“I have no other brother.”
“Then you have a poor conception of my personality.”
Sybok laughs once, the booming sound filling the air around the small room. This was how it often was: Sybok being loud and boisterous, Spock being quiet and cautious. Spock was often all-too aware that his every movement was watched carefully by those who believed he shouldn’t be part of the royal house, especially now that he was on the edge of his adolescent years.
But Sybok has always held a refreshing viewpoint, and though his methods were often unconstitutional when it came to their father’s wishes, he made caring for Spock a priority. He spoke to Spock like a person, not like an afterthought of society. Their bond was strong, something that Spock has been grateful for on more than one occasion.
Sybok puts his hand on Spock’s shoulder and says wistfully, “What a great benevolent leader you will make, little brother.”
Spock frowns. “Are you forgetting you are firstborn? I doubt I will be able to have the ability to rule at all.”
What Spock doesn’t say is that he doesn’t want to rule. At least, not on Vulcan. If he could, he would be able to travel to different galaxies, acting somewhat as a diplomat like his father, but more as a researcher, cataloging the diverse cultures and sciences of other worlds. However, the likelihood of that happening was very slim, as it was not often he was permitted to leave because of his age and tainted heritage.
But he didn’t need to leave. He was secure in the logic of this. His dream was just that, a dream, and it was a waste of his time to spend unnecessary time dwelling on it.
“Father is on a diplomatic mission,” Sybok tells him, abruptly changing the subject. “He will be obtained for the next few sun cycles.”
Spock raises an eyebrow. “I am aware of this. I’m not naïve.”
“Then let’s take a voyage to the next star system,” Sybok says, his eyes bright at the idea. “It would not take too much time. Father would not have to know, and it would get a worldliness into your head.”
Spock stares at him, debating whether he is serious or not. When he concludes that Sybok’s excitement is indeed genuine, he frowns. “Are you suggesting we steal a starship?”
Sybok looks to the ceiling, almost annoyed. “All starships belong to the House of Surak. We are not stealing if they belong to our family.”
Spock wants to point out this is probably the tenth scenario of Sybok trying to get him to go off planet in such a manner, all of which were unsuccessful.
“I know you believe that such an excursion is illogical,” Sybok continues as if reading his thoughts, “but consider how you have yet to have an experience off planet that isn’t directly related to diplomatic intentions. Is there not some part of you that wishes to explore the galaxy and make discoveries on your own? Where is that side of you, brother?”
Spock purses his lips. He knows Sybok is pulling the strings he believes can provoke a response. Still, Spock is aware of his place and is ready to tell Sybok no when his brother counters with, “This might be your last chance to explore without the eyes of the council watching you.”
He was right, Spock realizes. And perhaps there is a weak moment in his logic, or he has finally succumbed to the same emotional madness as his brother, but Spock considers it even further.
Then, he agrees.
~*~
Commandeering a ship is as surprisingly as easy as Sybok said it would be. In another reality, Spock can pretend he has the authority to be a high-ranking member on such a starship. Not a captain necessarily, but something close. But Spock shakes his head to quickly rid himself of a yet another thought that was illogical and would never become anything more than a fantasy.
The ship Sybok leads him to is a small one with only two decks; one for cargo, the other for a handful of passengers. It is labeled as a science vessel. Spock raises an eyebrow at his brother’s choice, but doesn’t question it.
“For you and your studies,” Sybok teases, climbing into the vessel’s top deck and settling in the pilot’s seat. Spock nearly gratifies Sybok with an eyeroll, but he is able to quell the emotion before it’s able to rise to the surface.
Sybok launches the ship, and Spock feels the pull of shifting gravity in his lower belly. The uncomfortable feeling is overtaken by the sight of his planet, shrinking away and becoming a small dot in the vast darkness of space.
Once they escape the gravity of Vulcan, Sybok begins tampering with the computer. “Where would you venture, brother? The Beta Quadrant?”
Spock shoots Sybok a wary look. “You know very well that is center of Romulan territory.” He pauses, then says, “If you intend to start an intergalactic war, I wish to have no part in it. Return me immediately.”
“I am not starting a war,” mutters Sybok, turning back to the computer. “You are too hesitant. Just like Father.”
“I am logical,” Spock shoots back. “You do not think through all of your decisions.”
Sybok ignores him and punches in coordinates Spock doesn’t see. The ship’s engines hum and it begins steadily speeding up to warp. Spock wants to ask where they are going, but is once again taken aback by the sight of the stars just outside the ship.
They travel for a few minutes in silence. Spock glances down at the computer, finally noticing the coordinates for the first time, and he feels a spark of anxiety.
“Sybok,” Spock says, keeping his voice steady, “this area of the galaxy is uncharted.”
“Then we shall be the first to discover it,” Sybok counters easily. “You can have a whole planet named after you, little one.”
Spock knows that Sybok knows that’s not how treaties between planets worked, but Sybok is trying to grate on his patience. Spock keeps his mental shields high, determined not to let his brother have the satisfaction of pulling emotion out of him.
“You are being—“ Spock starts to say illogical, but the thought escapes him when he glances out the window. They are approaching a planet of a color Spock had never seen before. Sybok seems to take notice of his interest, and he pilots the ship closer.
The planet is a little smaller than Vulcan, and it has one moon in caught in its gravity. It holds color of green and white, but the surface is filled with bodies of blue which Spock can only assume is water. It looks so much different than the dark orange and reds of Vulcan’s desert landscape.
It’s…beautiful.
“Wouldn’t you want this all the time, Spock?” Sybok asks softly. “To explore and discover new worlds on your own rather than be hidden behind your texts?”
Yes, Spock immediately thinks. But he doesn’t have time to respond before their ship suddenly rocketed to the side, the force of the impact tossing both Spock and Sybok out of their chairs.
They both scramble to get up, but another blast causes the ship to shake and Spock topples back down. He hears Sybok curse colorfully enough to make their father’s ears bleed.
“Rihansu,” Sybok spats. Spock heaves himself back up and watches with wide eyes as a Romulan warbird slowly shimmers into existence in front of them.
Ice shoots into Spock’s veins. He can hear Sybok working quickly at the control panel, but he is too afraid to turn his eyes away from the ship.
“Do you believe they followed us?” Spock asks.
Sybok shakes his head, raising the ship’s shields. “They would not have been that brash. They must have been stationed at this edge of the quadrant in a camouflage and were waiting for one of our ships.”
The warbird fires again, and the ship’s shields hold, but Spock can tell they’ve already taken a considerable amount of damage. He also is aware that out of all the ships for Sybok to steal, he took a science vessel, which holds very little energy toward shielding and weaponry to begin with.
Sybok hisses bitterly, “This ship was not designed for facing conflict.” Sparks begin to reign down from the malfunctioning machinery above, and Sybok turns to him. “Spock, I do not know if they are aware we are the sons of Sarek, but if they do and they overtake this ship, we cannot be captured together.”
It takes a beat for Sybok’s words to sink in. Spock feels a new kind of chill run down his spine. “What?”
“We must separate,” Sybok says almost calmly. His face is different, his expression and tone of voice more serious than Spock has ever seen from his lighthearted brother.
“I—" Spock shakes his head in shock. “I will not leave you.”
“If the Romulans capture us, what would happen to our culture? They could use us to entice a war.”
Spock feels as if his mind is slowing down and everything else is happening very, very fast. “I cannot pilot a ship,” he points out.
Sybok stands, pulling Spock up shakily as well. “You do not have to. Each shuttle is wired with an automatic piloting system that will take you back to Vulcan.” Sybok more or less shoves him down the ladder to the lower level, where there is a small excursion shuttle crammed onto the tiny deck.
Suddenly, the situation they are in becomes very real, and Spock feels his heartrate increase tenfold.
“What about you?” Spock asks, alarmed. “You must leave, too. This ship’s shields will not hold.”
As if in response, the ship shudders once more. Spock can hear an alert going off from the computer system above them. Sybok doesn’t answer him immediately, grabbing Spock by the upper arms and manhandling him into the shuttle.
“I will lead them away from you,” Sybok tells him, still maintaining cool confidence despite Spock’s obvious panic. “This ship holds little weaponry, but it has speed. I can outmaneuver them and circle back into Vulcan space. By that time, you should have landed.”
Spock can only stare at his brother in disbelief. Despite everything, Sybok offers him a calm smile. “I will be fine, little brother. We will see each other again.”
Spock can’t find his voice and can only nod. Sybok offers his hand and Spock presses their fingers together. A wave of comfort and calmness washes over him through their bond, and Spock can only revel in it for a second before Sybok pulls away. Sybok closes the door of the shuttle, then hurries back to the ladder and disappears.
Spock barely manages to turn on the shuttle’s engines before it’s shot out of the ship. The pod’s computer comes online with a small beeping which gets drowned out by the thrumming of Spock’s heart in his ears. He punches in the settings for the autopilot, but instead of the vessel rocketing away, he has the strangest sensation of falling.
It’s then that he realizes they had flown too close to the green-and-blue planet, and the shuttle was caught in its gravity. One of the last things Spock sees before the ship starts careening toward the world below was the science vessel warping away, the Romulan warbird following close behind.
~*~
Jim Kirk wakes up to the house shaking. A sound like a bomb going off accompanies the phenomenon, and Jim jumps out of bed, immediately on alert.
The fighting was over, but that didn’t mean that the war had ended. The people around Riverside were the paranoid kind, brawl-first-ask-questions-later type, and Jim is no exception.
Hurrying down the stairs, Jim grabs the shotgun on the fireplace mantle and heads over to the door. Normally he wouldn’t bother with going for the gun first, but he’s been home alone for a few days and Frank is God-knows-where, so Jim figures he’d better be safe than sorry.
Not that Jim had actually ever shot a gun before; it’s more of as a prop in their house than anything. It belonged to his dad, and his mom kept it around because she could use it to frighten off the neighborhood vandals when Jim or Frank wasn’t home.
Cautiously peeking out the front door, Jim glances left and right before stepping out onto the porch, holding the gun out in front of him. He doesn’t see anything that looks out of the ordinary. But then the smell of burning metal and smoke wafts up to Jim’s nose, instantly making him gag. He steps off the porch and circles to the other side of the yard, and sees flickering red light with rising smoke in the neighboring field.
“Shit,” he mutters, a new kind of panic taking over. Commies or no commies, a fire in a cornfield is definitely worse than whatever kind of bomb they tried to drop. Jim wastes no time as he runs back into the house, dropping the gun and grabbing the fire extinguisher from the kitchen before running back outside.
Following the trail of smoke into the field, Jim slows as he quickly realizes this was not a satellite. The hunk of metal looked different than anything Jim had ever seen before. It was small and red, and shaped like a weird triangular prism than a circle. The front was completely crushed, smoke gently rising from that area.
Jim comes closer and raises the nozzle of the extinguisher, because weird satellite or not, a fire was still a fire and it would only be a matter of time before it caught. He hears a weird bang, but ignores it and sprays the front until it’s no longer smoking. The bang noise sounds again, and it isn’t until Jim notices a hand gripping one side of a hole in the wreckage does it hit him.
It wasn’t a satellite. It was a spaceship.
“Holy fuck!” Jim shouts, jumping back and dropping the extinguisher. There was a spaceship right in front of him. An actual, real live ship from outer space.
And something was climbing out of it.
Dimly, Jim realizes that he should probably be running away and calling the police or FBI or doing something other than just dumbly standing and staring, but he can’t look away as a foreign creature carefully untangles itself from the wreckage. It has two arms, two legs, and a generally human physique. But even in the dark, Jim can tell its torso a little too long and it’s skin a little too pale for it to look exactly like a human.
“Jesus Christ,” Jim breathes. Halfway out of the wreckage, the thing freezes, and suddenly whips its head up, its black eyes locking on Jim.
Jim feels every hair on his body stand on end and his mind races. Should he run now? Should he try to fight it? It was still half in the ship, so Jim could probably get a pretty good running start before it would come after him. But if it had some kind of alien super speed, it would probably get to Jim before he could even get to a phone—or the gun. He should have brought the gun. Why didn’t he bring the gun?
But instead of making a move to attack, the thing’s eyes suddenly roll back and it falls the rest of the way out of the ship, slumping facedown on the ground in a heap.
Jim waits a full three Mississippi’s before he rushes over.
Kneeling next to the creature, Jim reaches out, then hesitates. Maybe this was how it lured it’s pray before attacking. Pretend to be benevolent but actually be preparing to spring to action. But this creature just survived a freaking spaceship crash, and Jim probably would have passed out too if he was in that situation.
Sucking in a breath and hoping for the best, Jim gently pushes its shoulder, rolling the creature onto its back. Up this close, Jim can tell that there is something dark pouring out of its side, and with a start Jim realizes it must be blood.
Alien blood.
Throwing caution to the wind, Jim crouches down lower and wraps the alien’s arm around his shoulders, using his other hand to grip its waist. This was probably the stupidest idea he has ever had, but if this thing is hurt he can’t just stand by and let it die.
The creature weighs more than what Jim anticipates, so he more or less drags the thing through the field and back to the house. After hauling it up the porch and through the front door, Jim is sweating. There is no way he can get this thing up the stairs, and he probably shouldn’t even put it in a bedroom if it’s bleeding. He has no idea if this kind of blood can even come out of clothing, if not bedsheets.
Instead, he drags it to the bathroom, and drops it in the bathtub with his last bit of energy.
Jim sucks in a few pants, collapsing on the toilet. He goes to rake his fingers though his hair, but realizes he has that blood on his hands. Flipping on the light in the bathroom with his elbow, Jim starts when he notices the blood is dark green. His skin prickles as he quickly scrubs the blood off his hands, watching as the water turns a shade of olive before going down the drain.
Turning back to the alien, Jim can see it so much better now that it’s in light. It has black hair, cut straight in a bowl cut. Its clothes are gray and black, contrasting sharply against its pale skin in the artificial light.
The non-panicking part of Jim’s brain tells him that the creature’s robes look vaguely like a Jedi’s.
Jim shakes his head. Yep, he was definitely hysterical. He should go lie down.
But it’s hurt, Jim reminds himself, and he should probably work on stopping the bleeding. Not really knowing anything about how to stop wounds from bleeding other than what he has seen on TV, Jim goes to the closet in the hall and finds an older, slightly ratty towel. He goes back to the bathroom and wraps the towel around the creature’s too-thin waist, pulling tight and knotting it. The creature let out a soft huff of breath, and Jim jumps back in case its woken up, but relaxes when he sees it’s still unconscious.
This was…weird.
This was so, so weird. How was he going to explain this to his mom? What would happen if Frank came home and found this thing in the bathtub? He’d probably lose his shit.
Jim’s mind starts to run in circles, his anxiety peaking and dropping, until finally he collapses on the couch, completely exhausted. Not having the energy to trudge back upstairs, he closes his eyes, and lets himself fall asleep in the living room. He can deal with everything once the sun comes out.
~*~
When light begins to peer through the living room’s windows, Jim slowly begins to wake up. He’s confused as to why he is on the couch. Then for the second time in twelve hours, he jolts up, suddenly alert.
Last night—no, this morning—an alien ship crashed into the field next to his house. And an alien was inside of it. And it was alive. And it was the bathtub.
Jim scrambles up off the couch, and dashes the bathroom. Was it all a dream? He swings open the door and it met with the sight of a knocked-out alien still in a heap in his bathtub. Nope, not a dream. He’s unsure if he should feel relieved or frightened by this.
Jim sighs. He needs coffee before he can do anything further. Turning around and heading into the kitchen, Jim bussies himself with brewing a pot before coming to another realization.
He has no idea what this thing liked to eat. Or if it even needed to eat at all.
Biting his lip, Jim moves to the fridge. It wasn’t as stocked as it probably should have been, but then again, it was never very stocked. Frank was literally never home except for one or two days at a time, and his mom was in Montana helping with some scientist guy with an engineering project she had been commissioned for, so Jim had pretty much been self-sustaining for the whole summer. It changed things, however, when he had a visitor from another planet he needed to feed.
But maybe Jim can just ask what it likes to eat? Would it speak English? Maybe it had some kind of translator that would make it easy for both of them to communicate. Or, maybe it couldn’t even talk and communicated through clicks, like a dolphin.
But what if it didn’t eat physical food? What if it wanted to eat him, or a cow or something?
Jim closes the fridge door. He really needed coffee.
The pot finished brewing and he poured a cup, finally feeling awake after his first sip.
Okay. Wounded alien in his bathtub. What the hell is he supposed to do now?
Like all Americans when met with an impasse, Jim turns to the world-wide web. He feels pretty stupid Googling What To Do When An Alien Lands In Your Backyard, but he’s sure the internet has seen weirder questions. He finds this site that doesn’t look totally crazy, and reads through the article.
The website tells him things he already knows: don’t scare it, be friendly, try not to give it a bad impression of Earth. Jim sits back in the chair he’s in and a wave of nervousness washes over him.
He’s the first thing this alien will have direct contact with on Earth. He could singlehandedly give a positive or negative impression for the whole human race. It’s a lot to ask of a seventeen-year-old, that’s for sure.
Jim spends a little more time on the computer, but it’s overall just a bit of a waste. These people pose hypothetical theories about aliens and what they would do, but Jim is actually in one. There isn’t going to be a guidebook for this, which makes the pressure to do something right become even more overbearing.
Noticing that a few hours have passed, Jim decides it’s probably a good idea to check back on his guest. Trailing back to the bathroom, Jim still finds the alien unconscious. Or maybe it had died?
Anxiety prickles at his skin. He spent all this time trying to figure out what to do with it when it was alive, he hadn’t even considered the possibility that it could have died. The longer he stared at the alien, the stiller and dead-ish it looked. Jim knelt on the side of the bathtub and touched the thing’s chest.
No heartbeat.
Jim’s mouth goes dry, but instead of immediately panicking he tries to find a pulse point on the thing’s neck. Its skin is cold—which doesn’t seem to be a good sign—but sure enough Jim finds a thumping pulse. It’s faster and shallower than what a human’s would be, but could be part of the whole not-from-Earth thing.
Up this close, Jim can see the soft rise and fall of the creature’s chest. Definitely alive. It’s then that Jim notices the alien’s ears; they curve upward into a pointed tip. Its eyebrows are pointed also, slanted up in what makes the creature’s face appear to be in a constant state of disapproval.
And maybe Jim’s still tired, but he thinks it’s kinda cute.
Because Jim’s curiosity is never satisfied, he reaches forward and pulls open one of the alien’s eyelids. He’s surprised to see what looks like a purplish membrane rather than the black eyes Jim remembers. It’s probably like a second eyelid or something like cats have—or at least that’s what he tells himself.
He’s about to move back when the alien’s second eyelid opens. Jim jerks away, staring an extraterrestrial in the face for the second time.
~*~
It takes a moment for Spock’s eyes to focus. He predicts he was be taken by a Romulan fleet, probably being held captive and used for ransom to start a war with his own people. Instead, when he opens his eyes, he was not greeted with instruments of torture, but rather something else.
A creature of a race Spock had never seen before was leaning over him. Its eyes are a startling shade, staring at Spock with wide bewilderment. Spock stares back, confused until he suddenly remembers.
His shuttle had crashed into this planet’s surface. The creature currently starting at him must have been the one to rescue him. And Sybok had either made it back to Vulcan, or perished in the Romulan attack.
Sybok. He needed to find Sybok. While this creature had not yet attacked him, Spock was uncertain if it would harbor hostile motives. This was classified as a primitive planet, too young to experience intergalactic intelligence. The creature staring at him could very easily be considered a savage.
Spock glances down. He seemed to be in an oddly constructed vat that looked vaguely similar to the stone baths on Vulcan. He places his hands on both sides of the vessel, and moves to sit up.
Two things happen at once: the creature staring at him leaps into action, speaking at him in a language Spock did not understand, waving its extremities around hastily; and a pain, burning like a fire, made itself known at Spock’s side. Hissing, Spock looks down at the area to find that area of his robes singed and wrapped in a new kind of fabric which was white but quickly staining green.
The being above him puts its hands on Spock’s shoulders and gently urges Spock back down into the tub. Spock grits his teeth, determined not to show pain to what very well could be a captor. It continues to talk, jabbering off syllables that makes Spock’s head swim.
“I have no translator,” Spock tells it, his voice rough from pain. “I do not understand your language.”
It freezes and immediately moves back, kneeling next to the side of the tub and looking anxious. Spock takes this as an opportunity to observe its physical appearance, and is surprised to find it vaguely Vulcanoid.
Its eyes still strike Spock as being odd, because they are an iris hue he never thought could be formed. They’re blue, like water, but lighter than any shade of liquid Spock has ever seen. Its hair appeared as a strange color as well, yellowish and wavy. The creature’s skin was tan, almost like a Klingon, but not quite. Its ears were round rather than curving to a point, and its forehead was flat and soft.
Not a Romulan, then.
Spock noticed that while he was staring, the being at his side was staring right back. Spock wasn’t sure if he should feel comforted or apprehensive.
He takes a sharp breath and immediately regrets it, the pain flaring to an extreme in his side. A noise of agony escapes him as his hands clap over the wound. He could feel his body’s urge to go into a healing trance, but would he be safe if he did so? This was undiscovered terrain, and a poor choice could lead to his death.
The creature suddenly stands, his movements flighty and bouncing. He exits the room in a flurry, still loudly expressing something in that dialect as he goes.
This, Spock decides, will have to suffice. His eyes roll back, and he lets the trance take over.
~*~
When Jim comes back half a minute later with a glass of water in his hands, the alien has fallen back unconscious. Or maybe it had actually died this time? Anxiously, Jim presses his fingers to its neck and finds its pulse. Nope, still alive.
Jim sets down the glass on the counter, filled once again with curiosity. That thing—no, it wasn’t a thing really, it looked too much like person for it to be a thing—had spoken to him. The language sounded heavy and full of vowels and inflictions, none of which Jim was even remotely familiar with.
Jim scrunched up his nose. Should he really be referring to the alien as an it? Surely it had a gender. Aliens had genders, right? Wouldn’t that be essential in reproduction? Jim tilted his head and gave the creature another glance over. It seemed to have more of masculine features, with a strong jaw and thicker eyebrows. Jim could only guess that his assumption of the alien being male was correct. He’d have to ask later.
Speaking of asking. How would he be able to communicate with a creature beyond his world? Maybe even beyond his galaxy? That wouldn’t be easy.
Jim sighed, then took sight of the towel he had wrapped around the alien’s waist. He should probably change it to keep the wound clean. Also, to save the towel before it became stained too green to ever be washed out. Could alien blood be washed out? Would it react to water and catch on fire or something?
Shaking his head, Jim made work of carefully removing the towel as not to disturb the slumbering being. He replaced the binding with a new towel, and decided he should probably start washing things as soon as possible so the stains didn’t set. He was still in the clothes from last night which had the alien’s dried green blood on his shirt, so laundry definitely had to be done.
Thankfully, the blood came out in water. Jim only thinks it’s a little weird to see the kitchen sink water run green. (He was too afraid to put the towels and shirt into the washer in case the blood effected the water somehow.) But once he had hung everything over a few chairs to dry, he feels satisfied that he handled that crisis well.
Jim spends the rest of the day in a bit of a nervous haze. He keeps expecting the alien to wake up and attack him or something, which he knows is impossible because it’s too hurt to even sit up. But the alien stays unconscious for the entire day, which only adds to Jim’s nervousness about its wellbeing.
To distract himself, he tidies up the house the best he can, hoping it looks more presentable to a creature unfamiliar with Earth.
At the end of the day, Jim is exhausted again. He checks on the alien one more time. Still out. Should he bother going upstairs to his room? What if it wakes up before Jim and tries to burn the house down? Not that he actually thinks that would happen, but it’s still a possibility.
He decides sleeping on the couch again would be his safest bet. This time, Jim grabs his pillow and blanket from his room upstairs before settling on the couch for the night.
He spends the night dreaming of the stars and what kind of creatures lied beyond them.