Chapter 5
Robin
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I have an alien in my house.
I have an alien in my house and my dad would lose his mind and I am only eighty percent sure that I am not hallucinating.
The alien— Na’Ren —reminds me of a military officer, with his straight-backed posture. I can feel him behind me as I lead us into the kitchen. Rigid and restrained, like he’s holding back something very powerful.
Tater Tot growls at us from the corner of the kitchen, but her heart isn’t in it. She must be tired. When I shoot an exasperated look her way, she huffs and lowers herself to the floor. She doesn’t stop staring at us warily, but at least she’s stop making noise.
I look over my shoulder to evaluate Na’Ren again—
—and, God , he’s hot. I keep forgetting that he’s hot.
Na’Ren is easily half a foot taller than me, his biceps thicker than my thighs. He lifted me out of that trench like I weighed nothing, and that fact has absolutely no right to turn me on as much as it does.
I need to sit down. I need a liter of coffee. I need to get control of my head again, because what am I even doing?
Instead of anything sensible, I pull out a chair and gesture for Na’Ren to sit down. He does, and he looks far too big for any of the furniture in this old house. The spindly legs of the kitchen chair only emphasizes the breadth of his body.
When did it get so hot in here?
I force my gaze away from his striking black eyes. Down to the gash on his stomach. It looks both new and old, fresh and half-healed. Cautiously, I let myself reach out and touch the cool, sheening, red-black skin around it.
A jolt of static shocks through my fingertips.
Na’Ren’s stomach muscles twitch, but he doesn’t pull away from my touch. Instead, when I look up, I find him looking down at me. His lips are parted on rapid breath, and I have to shake the buzzing out of my head.
“What happened?” I ask him, using my voice because apparently, sometimes I don’t have to do that. A mystery for future investigation, since I don’t think I can confront the idea of telepathy quite yet without breaking down into a sob. Did I say coffee? I think I meant vodka.
“A shrapnel wound obtained upon landing,” Na’Ren says, and it sounds like a military debriefing. Then he sighs, his broad shoulders lifting and falling, and he corrects himself. “Upon crashing.”
I look up at him. “Crashing? You weren’t trying to land here?”
Na’Ren looks up at me. His chin is strong and defiant.
“No.”
So the alien isn’t much of a talker. Which—
“How are we able to speak?” I ask him. “Surely your people can’t know our language.”
“Ah,” Na’Ren says with a nod, “it is another distortion field, much like the cloaking mechanism which did little to prevent your notice.”
“But the...translation field works?”
He watches me. “Perhaps you want it to work.”
My cheeks blaze. It is a ridiculous reaction because, surely, the hulking extraterrestrial in front of me is not flirting . He’s probably not even calling out my own attraction. While it might be obvious to another human, Na’Ren can’t have any context for it. He can’t know what it looks like for a human to be tempted.
Then he says, his voice quiet and deep, “I believe you intend to inspect my wound. I assure you, it is not fatal.”
When I risk a glance at him, I find the corners of his mouth upturned just slightly. A hint of a smile. Humor, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
I clear my throat. “Yes. Sorry.”
My dad keeps his first aid kit in a kitchen cupboard, closest to the front door. Running a farm, even such a pathetic one as ours, is dangerous work, and more than once one of us has come into the house with a fresh injury. So, we keep the bandages and antiseptic close.
I wash my hands at the sink and return to the table with supplies.
On his chair, Na’Ren widens his legs, his thick thighs spreading for me, and despite the raging blush on my face, I step into the frame of them. Nothing about this seems odd to him. Nothing uncomfortable. He is, after all, a sir. Probably a military officer, judging by his rigid composure. A soldier?
I don’t know but he lets me stand between his spread legs as I study the wound.
I try to calm my stammering heart enough to speak.
“So, here, we would clean a wound with water,” I explain, “and then treat the area with an antibiotic ointment. After that, we would cover the wound with gauze and tape. But I don’t know how your, um, biology works.”
Na’Ren stares at the items on the table, considering.
“We are also unsure,” he says after a while. “The atmosphere on Earth makes breathing difficult. We must use respiration devices if we leave the ship.” He waves his hand in front of his face and the air shimmers. “I am using another distortion field to cloak the device from your sight. I did not want to alarm you further.”
I manage a weak smile. “I guess this one is working.” I release a shaky breath. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get a doctor here? My friend works in the medical field.”
Doubt creeps in. I don’t know if I should be treating him. I don’t know if I should have let him into my house. What am I thinking?
Na’Ren considers for a moment longer, and then he shakes his head. “No,” he says resolutely, “only you. Please administer medical care. I...trust your judgment.”
It probably says something about me that I will do just about anything for a little bit of praise
But I can psychoanalyze myself later. For now, I will treat Na’Ren’s wound.
I work with clean water and soap. I have cleaned my own cuts and scrapes for years, and I expect the metallic tang of blood in the air, but instead all I smell is...honey? The air smells like the afternoons I’ve spent helping my dad with the hives. And I know I should be frightened because alien in my house but instead, I am only comforted by Na’Ren’s presence.
As I reach for the antibiotic, I pause. Already, his wound looks less severe than when I had started. I think the gash has closed further.
“Na’Ren?”
But Na’Ren isn’t listening to me. He’s looking at the table, where Julian had left one of his “artifacts” this morning. His brows are drawn together, and he reaches for the hunk of rusted metal.
“Why do you have this?” he asks.
I tilt my head as I examine the item in his hands.
“My dad and his student found it. In all of those, you know, totally normal trenches outside? I think it’s part of an old plow or something. My dad’s got a whole closet full of the stuff.”
Na’Ren holds it up to the light that streams in through the kitchen window. He turns it side to side, scrutinizing every surface. Finally, he places it back onto the table, rust flaking off onto the wood.
“This is a condenser unit for a propulsion system,” he says. He looks up at me. “It is not an Earth object. It is one of ours.”
My hand flinches as I lay the gauze over his wound. Na’Ren hisses.
“Geez, sorry, sorry.” I press the tape down around its edges, hoping his kind isn’t allergic to Earth adhesives. “Um. How is that possible?”
Na’Ren stares down at the object, shaking his head slowly. “I do not understand either.” Then he frowns. “My ship responded to a beacon. The beacon brought us here.”
“A beacon?”
He pushes away from me suddenly, standing upright. Once again, I am startled by his size. My eyes are level with his collarbone, the strong frame of him filling my vision. The lightning in my blood tells me: Lean in. Lean in.
“I must return to my ship,” Na’Ren says. He places one broad hand on my shoulder and guides me out of his path. “I will confer with my crew. Please await further instruction.”
Then he’s striding to the door and out of it, his silhouette making its way down the driveway. He stalks toward the shimmering nothingness in the middle of the field. The tall, dry grass brushes against his thighs, and I’m fantasizing about how they felt pressing into the sides of my legs when Na’Ren disappears entirely.
The air wavers, wavers, and closes. A glint of glass on the beach .