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Jay didn't find it necessary to come out of his room, more like a closet, on the ship PG "acquired" once they left Earth. All the alien ever did was pilot the ship. Jay wondered if PG even needed to sleep.
Any attempts at conversation were met with a terse silence.
PG had started off small with his so-called "tour of the universe". Showing Jay planets with Earth-like atmospheres and climates. Sometimes it was a barren, deserted rock. PG would take him out, show him a lizard, and left him to his own devices for a day or so before announcing they were leaving.
He hadn't gotten to even meet another proper alien yet, for Christ sake.
Though, he couldn't blame PG entirely. He had, after all, tricked PG into this agreement, and likely PG would want to get the ordeal over with as soon as possible with indulging Jay as little as possible. But still.
Jay padded out of his room with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He didn't know if PG's race preferred it cold, or if he was trying to spite Jay once more.
He sits in what he assumes is the co-pilot seat, and firmly keeps his hands to himself. The last thing he needed was for PG to snap his arm if he thought Jay was going to mess with the controls.
"Where are we going next?" Jay asks. It was one of the few things PG would actually respond to.
Something rumbles deep in PG's chest. "A market. We are low on supplies, unless you wish to engage in cannibalism."
Jay perked up. "No, that's fine." Something lit up inside Jay. A market. Something back on Earth he wouldn't have gotten excited about. But markets meant people. Aliens. That he could meet, and talk to.
Glancing at him from the corner of his eye, PG speaks up. "You will not stray from my side. The Templars know I am free, and will stop at nothing to find and destroy me. The Aelucian market is frequented by some of the most wretched and depraved denizens of the universe, but will allow us the anonymity we need while procuring what we need. You would be abducted and sold to the highest bidder within an hour on your own."
"Wouldn't that be good for you if I was taken away?"
"Yes, but the gem of Praxidike has bonded itself within you. I cannot tear it out, others would have no such issue. While you do not know how to wield it when you wish, the same cannot be said for the Templars if they get their hands on it."
"I see, I see." Jay rubs his chin. "Maybe if you tried to train me properly, I would actually be able to make use of it. I mean, I'm just a human, compared to you or the Templars or really anyone else, I can't exactly do much."
"And I would prefer to keep it that way," PG snaps. "You are a miserable pile of excrement, barely worthy of being allowed to live. If it were not for my unfortunate fondness for Mimi and Luke, I would have voided the ship of oxygen as you slept instead of entertaining your whims."
"Geez PG, tell me how you really feel," Jay grumbles, tucking his knees to his chest. "You can't like Mimi or Luke that much to not kill me."
There's a moment of silence. Jay almost thinks PG is back to ignoring his existence until he speaks up.
"Though it was forged through trickery, we made a deal. I do not enjoy the circumstance, it is little more than an inconvenience. I see no point to not honor our agreement."
Blinking a few times, a small smile creeps across Jay's face. "That's... almost sweet of you."
"I am not 'sweet'."
"Sure you aren't." Jay gets up, patting PG's shoulder on his way back to his room. "How long until we arrive?"
"Approximately 5 of your hours."
Jay lets out a hum and closes himself off into his room.
-
Aelucian market was pretty much exactly what Jay expected it to be. Dusty, dark, and crowded. It took a lot of effort on his part to not gawk at the dozens of different species passing by.
For once, PG actually wore clothes. Nothing more than trousers, a tunic and vest, boots, gloves, and a heavy hooded cloak, all in some shade of brown or beige. He had materialized his own, but Jay was left to find something among the effects of the original owner. To, as PG said, blend in with alien culture.
The style of clothing looked like the standard stuff that someone from the slums of a sci-fi movie would wear: vaguely antiquated but with an alien flair. A bit grimy, but that was to be expected from someone who PG had described as a "scavver".
PG kept Jay close as they walked through the market, a hand wrapped tight around his upper arm. As if he was a child a teacher was dragged to the principal's office.
"Why're you wearing clothes?" It wasn't a topic Jay had ever really brought up before, but he was curious about the alien's nature.
"My race of people, the Gigaxian, are few in number and hated by the universe," he said in a voice low enough that only Jay could hear, leaning his head down ever so slightly. "A gigaxian could walk freely through Aelucia, but even here it would raise suspicion and the Templars would likely be summoned."
"You have no one to blame but yourself for that one. You're a psychopath bent on genocide, so they probably think all gigaxians are like that," Jay muses.
"I suppose that may be true. I never truly thought on the matter. I went wherever I desired, everyone knowing I would slaughter them eventually. I've never had to do this sneaking around before."
"So why don't you normally wear clothes?" Jay asks, rubbernecking at a salesman peddling crystalline trinkets.
"I find most clothing to be restrictive of my movements and anatomy. And we gigaxians produce a mucus to keep our skin from drying out. Clothing will absorb it, and I find the sensation of mucus soaking clothing to be disfavorable." PG stops in front of a stall. "I will only be a moment, do not go anywhere."
PG starts conversing with the alien behind the stall in some language Jay doesn't recognize. He only lets up his arm go when he needed both of them in his dealings.
And that was all it really took for Jay to slip away. He'd heed PG's warnings, but he wasn't some frail waif who needed to be watched over.
PG didn't seem to notice when Jay mingled in the crowd. The street they were on wasn't densely packed, but there were enough people to mask him going back to the merchant with the trinkets.
The merchant's skin was a dark blue, its body shaped like a blob, and its head three thick stalks each tipped with an eye. "Welcome traveler, welcome, may I interest you in any of my wares?"
Jay gives a polite smile. "Oh don't mind me, I'm only browsing."
The merchant wiggles its stalks. "If I may ask, where are you from? I cannot say I have seen many of your kind."
"Ah, I-I'm from... I'm from... Terra! We don't really travel off our planet, like, ever. I'm probably the only one you're likely to see."
The two of them continue on chatting for a few more minutes before Jay hears a scuffle from down the street.
It's not really that surprising for Jay to see PG getting into an altercation with someone else. Thankfully it wasn't the merchant. But from what little he could understand of the other merchant's body language, nothing good was coming from this.
The other alien was easily the same size as PG, and gripping something in his hands and gesturing with it wildly.
PG's head whipped around, before landing on Jay. An unfamiliar expression crossed his face, but if Jay had to take a guess, he would assume it was something akin to relief.
The merchant Jay had been talking to hastily packs away his trinkets into a metal box.
Before Jay can question him, a bright beam of light comes from the gadget in the alien's hand, and a stone building nearby them explodes. The shockwave knocks Jay off of his feet, and soon everything in the vicinity is covered in a thick cloud of dust.
Jay chokes on it, struggling to get up with his head spinning. "PG!" he screams, voice hoarse. He whips his head to the merchant. "What the hell was that?!"
The merchant pulls themself up, making a clicking sound. "A mugging. Those filthy silicron can shrug off any damage, so they run around with plosion cannons, threatening to destroy everything unless they are paid."
From what Jay knew, PG was pretty damn tough. Or, at least he could gather from the news, and the stories Mimi and Luke told him. But there was no ethereal, otherwordly light coming from the pile of the rubble, nor was anyone emerging from it.
"My-my friend, he's gigaxian, would he have-"
"A gigaxian, ugh, I don't know how you could travel one of those monsters. But I doubt he would have survived. Plosion cannons are popular not just for their destruction, but their ability to cancel out magics in the area. Even the Archduke of Nightmares would have a difficult time surviving that!"
Well, Jay didn't need to be told twice. He bolts towards the pile of rubble that was once been at least half of a city block.
He wished he would have taken up PG's offer on gloves, because his nails and skin were getting shredded as he hauled chunks of rubble large than his torse out of the way. "PG! Are you in there?"
No response came.
Jay looked around, and was puzzled to see no one coming up to help him. Most shopkeepers were trying to clean up their stands, and shoppers were leaving the area.
But the longer he stood around gawking, the less likely PG was to survive. He didn't understand much of the universe's strange magic, but he could feel static in his teeth, and the gem buried somewhere inside him weighing down like a lead weight.
He only stopped once more to rip off his shirt, and wrap strips around his bloody hands. Jay wouldn't have ever considered himself to be the type to be exactly fit, but hauling around boulders to landscape during the summer did wonders to the body.
He knew his arms should be hurting, that his chest should be hurting, but everything was numb. As he dug further and further down, he could hear a rattling breathing that could only be PG. The only thing that stood in his way was a chunk of rubble that was easily bigger than he was. But he couldn't slow down now.
Jay dove in without really thinking about it. Lifting from the bottom, he managed to lift the stone above his head, and roll it down the other side of the rubble pile.
PG was laying there, immobilized by even more rubble pinning his limbs down. But he was breathing, and his eyes were open, and that was enough for Jay. He was quick to toss the rest of the rubble away, and pull PG up to his feet whether he was ready or not.
All Jay could do was stare at him.
PG found his feet eventually, but was equally as speechless as Jay, though for entirely different reasons.
One was the obvious sight in front of him. Humans are not strong creatures, at least not as strong as most other beings in the universe. But Jay had truly been a sight to behold.
When light finally broke through, Jay was the first thing he took note of. The dim sunlight caressed and illuminated the outline of his body and face until he, with a strength equal to that of PG's own, lifted that giant piece of rubble out of the way.
He was a sight to behold, disheveled and frantic. The hunky boys from his magazines had piqued PG's interest, but they all seemed artificial and distant creatures.
Jay was very much real, chest heaving and covered in a mucus humans called 'sweat'. The contours and dimension of his body were so much more than the flat images printed onto glossy paper.
"Why would you do such a reckless thing for me?" PG asked, whisper quiet amongst the fallen silence of the market.
"Be-because..." Jay stuttered, unable to come up with anything concrete. "We're friends? Or at least on friendly terms. And Mimi and Luke would be sad if I let something awful happen to you."
"I am grateful. The blast from the plosion cannon weakened me substantially." Noticing his eyes, PG could not help but trace a finger along Jay's cheekbone. "Odd, it seems the gem has turned your eyes red. I wonder why the effect has not faded yet."
"I didn't use the gem. I just... I saw the explosion, and I ran and..." Jaw swayed from side to side. "Whoa." He grabbed onto PG's arm for support.
PG tilted his head to the side, finally noticing the state of Jay's hands. "You've injured yourself in your attempt to free me. Why?"
"Like I said, I ran. I couldn't even feel the pain." Jay coughs out a laugh. "I probably wrecked my body pretty bad lifting all of that rubble. But adrenaline's one hell of a drug." Not caring about the torn, dirty, and mucus soaked clothing, Jay leans heavily against PG.
PG had almost forgotten how strong the human pack bonding instinct was. Back then it truly would have been easier for the Hallenbeck father to hand him over to Templar Pandora, injured and dying, rather than flee to safety with he and Mimi.
But as he learned through his magazine, the truly awful entertainment Mimi called "movies", and the news he'd often watched, humans were empathetic to a degree none others in the universe displayed.
Injuring themselves in order to assist others seemed like the norm of human culture. Even towards total strangers. And the ferocity shown by humans when one they had deemed a friend or family was rivaled by nothing.
And now, Jay, whose bones he could see on the tips of fingers, held extensive damage held to his ribs to the point where he was struggling to breathe. All because PG was injured.
"Haaa, yup, there it is. It's fading already." Jay's face crumpled in pain, and he leaned even further into PG to keep himself up.
Unsure of what to do, only having gleaned a bit from human culture, PG rests his hands on Jay's back. He was soft, as humans are oft to be, but it was easy for his hands to find the lines of his muscles and trace them, briefly.
Yes, Jay had quite a satisfactory body. Humans were so unlike many species in the universe. So similar to the structure of gigaxians, yet so foreign. PG couldn't help but take the opportunity to marvel.
"I will take you back to the ship so you may rest while I finish up the rest of the shopping," he states.
Jay couldn't really put up much of a fight, not when it felt like he had broken every bone in his body.
PG laid him down onto his pallet of blankets and cushions, trying not to jostle Jay too much. He left only briefly, soon returning with a med-kit. He took the utmost care in treating and rebandaging Jay's hands. He didn't even complain when PG injected him with a mixture of sedatives, pain killers, a compound that greatly sped up cellular regrowth and healing.
When Jay finally awoke, his body more ached like he had just run a marathon. Peaking under his bandages, he found that his hands had little more than fresh, pink scar tissue on them.
Jay wrapped himself once more in a blanket and shuffled towards the co-pilot seat.
PG hardly glanced his way. "The rest of the shopping went without further incident," PG stated, not looking away from the visor.
"How long was I out?" Jay asked.
"An Earth day or so. You greatly needed the rest."
"Thank you, for that."
PG makes a rumbling deep in his chest again. "You needn't go out of your way to help me out of the rubble, and yet you did anyways. A kindness for a kindness."
Jay sighed and curled up into the chair, staring at PG.