Chapter Text
Really, Seonghwa’s latest bout of insomnia was to blame for all of it.
If he hadn’t been awake at such an ungodly hour, he never would have heard the sounds. He wouldn’t have ventured outside to investigate, and the seemingly solid foundations of his perceptions of life itself would have remained intact.
But alas, he was awake when the hours on the clock crept from double digits back to single ones, and everything that happened afterwards was a product of that one single fact.
Seonghwa wandered into the kitchen, his bare feet padding over the tile as he raised his arms over his head, a long yawn rolling out of him like the slow trickle of honey from a jar. When he blinked, his eyelids refused to open back up all the way, remaining half-lidded with exhaustion. That was his problem, lately - he was so tired, but whenever he laid down in bed and tried to fall asleep, his mind refused to quiet down.
So instead, here he was in the kitchen at almost three o’clock in the morning, his lower lip caught between his teeth as he debated which kind of cereal he was in the mood for. A difficult decision, and one that he was still in the process of making when the sound of a loud crash came from behind his house.
He snapped his head in the direction of the noise, his heart pounding against his ribs, a sharp inhale catching in his throat. Never in his three years of living in this house alone had he encountered any sound remotely close to that one, and his thoughts leapt straight towards a break in. What if someone was here to murder him, or steal everything he owned? Though his house was small, it was neat and styled to his liking, a clear indicator that he made decent money.
But this was a small suburb, more rural than urban, a town where everyone knew everyone else. Crime was rare around here, and if someone was trying to break into his house, why would they make such a loud noise to begin with?
Inhaling a deep breath to clear his mind, Seonghwa crept down the hall towards the back door, his craving for cereal now forgotten. Once when he was a lot younger, growing up in this same town, he had watched as a car drove right through the front of the convenience store near his school. He still remembered the loud sound it had made, wood and glass and metal splintered all over the place. This crash sounded just like that one.
Swallowing down his nerves, Seonghwa braced himself to see the back part of his house completely destroyed, but it looked exactly the same as it always did. Wood paneled floors, cream colored carpets, beige walls and furniture. He walked past a hanging plant, and a leaf brushed over his shoulder, nearly making him jump out of his skin. Nothing was amiss, and a frown pulled at his lips as he reached the door.
His back door was made of thick glass, and with his hand braced on the handle, Seonghwa peered into his backyard. It was too dark for him to see anything, so he flicked on the light switch right beside the door frame, the twin lamp posts by his back porch blinking to life.
And just like that, his heart stopped.
Seonghwa’s backyard was a decent size, surrounded by wooden fencing that separated his yard from those of his neighbors. It was mostly barren, aside from the small garden beside the porch and the simple shed further out towards the fence. He didn’t keep anything important in the shed, just garden shovels for the spring and summer, rakes for the fall, and snow shovels for winter. Which was a good thing, because the shed was destroyed.
Splinters of wooden planks were strewn all over the grass, the waterproof roof cracked into pieces. The entire structure had been rendered into a fractured heap, like an explosion was detonated from inside. Hongjoong had spent several days building the shed for Seonghwa a few months earlier, and now all of his hard work was ruined.
However, Seonghwa had no time to mourn the loss of his shed, because there was something far more concerning that captured his attention as soon as the lights illuminated his yard. There in the middle of the destruction was something… strange. Something foreign, and he blinked hard, hoping that his sleep deprived mind was playing tricks on him.
When he opened his eyes again, the object was still there, wisps of smoke curling upwards from around it. Taking a deep breath to gather his courage, Seonghwa slid open the back door, stepping outside and closing it again behind him. The wooden porch was warm against the bare soles of his feet, a cool breeze blowing through his hair. Spring was turning to summer, and a firefly buzzed past Seonghwa’s nose, glowing for a second before disappearing back into the night.
Rushing down the few short steps of his porch, Seonghwa hurried for the shed, realizing belatedly that he should have worn shoes as he dodged the sharp chips of wood lost in the sea of grass. He stepped over a large plank, the ball of his foot sinking into the soil as he weaved his way through the larger pieces of debris, eventually coming to a stop right beside the original foundation of the shed.
Now that he was closer to the strange object, he was even more lost as to what it was. The outside was silver and so shiny that it appeared almost molten, a massive sphere that was almost as tall as Seonghwa himself. Was it made of metal? He couldn’t tell, and he leaned a little closer, stretching out a hand to touch it.
When his fingers were a few centimeters away, he jerked them back, his heart leaping into his throat. The air surrounding the sphere was warm, like heat was radiating directly from it. And as he stared at it, he noticed that it was… pulsating. A soft hum filled the air around it, and it swelled and retreated just a millimeter or two, such a small movement that he almost missed it entirely.
Was it alive?
That couldn’t be possible, but Seonghwa couldn’t fathom any other explanation when he had never seen anything like this before. What was he supposed to do, call the fire department? The police? How had this giant sphere gotten here, and what the hell was he supposed to do about it now?
“Okay, Seonghwa. Relax,” he muttered to himself, running an agitated hand through his hair. “You’re not losing it, you're just - you’re assuming the worst. There is a totally logical explanation behind this.” He exhaled slowly through pursed lips, and then he stretched his hand out again, ignoring the warm aura surrounding the strange orb.
He winced as his fingers touched it, expecting for his skin to be burned away at the contact, but that didn’t happen. The outside of the sphere moved, depressing around his fingers like he was pushing into something soft, like a pillow or a plushie. It wasn’t hot at all - the odd material was just warm, and it hummed under his touch.
Maybe it was some kind of massive ball, then. Maybe some silly kid had created it, or ordered it online somewhere, and somehow it had wound up in Seonghwa’s yard. It looked like an overgrown beach ball, the size of a fully grown human. Aside from the molten silver exterior, and the warmth that seemed to emanate from it. And the fact that it had crushed his shed - no beach ball was capable of destruction like that.
A shiver spread over Seonghwa’s skin, and he was about to pull his hand back and call the police when something else happened.
The orb popped.
Not in a quick explosion of sound like a balloon, but in a slow hiss of air, the spherical walls shrinking and caving in. Seonghwa couldn’t tell if he had accidentally popped it, or if the orb was doing this on its own, and he took a quick step backwards. He almost tripped over a piece of the shed, but even then he never tore his eyes away from the sphere as it deflated.
A gust of air from the inside breezed past Seonghwa’s face, and he gagged as he inhaled, pressing a shaky hand to his throat. For a moment he couldn’t breathe at all, but then the warm night air entered his lungs again, and he gasped for it. By then, the sphere had deflated all the way, a glimmering silver skin left behind.
Seonghwa dared to step closer again, and he found the puncture in the material. A small hole, no bigger than a coin, courtesy of a sharp splinter of wood sticking upwards towards the sky. It hadn’t ripped through the orb, though - the orb had parted around it, the edges of the hole completely smooth. The chrome material didn’t pulsate anymore, but as Seonghwa stared at it, he noticed that it wasn’t lying flat against the debris like it should have been. Instead, it almost looked like there was something inside.
At that point, he should have gone inside and called someone. He really should have - it would have been the smart thing to do, and Seonghwa was generally a smart person. He was a successful veterinarian, an owner of his own practice, the only one around for miles on end.
Maybe it was the sleep deprivation that kept his feet rooted against the grass, but Seonghwa didn’t think so. He didn’t know exactly why he stayed there, but in the end he chalked it up to a feeling. A gut impulse, telling him that something was wrong, that he needed to know what was inside of this otherworldly deflated orb. Which, when put in plain terms like that, should have been obvious.
But Seonghwa maintained no suspicions as he shoved both of his thumbs into the hole in the material, once warm but now rapidly cooling. He pulled his hands away from each other, and the orb pulled apart a lot easier than he expected. The hole widened, but it didn’t tear. It just grew bigger, parting like water away from his hands. When he touched it, the material was solid, but it moved like a liquid, and the more he tried to understand it the more his head hurt.
The orb parted in half, and both sides fell away over the debris on the ground, and only then did Seonghwa finally realize that he was dealing with something his mind hadn’t even considered.
On the ground in front of him, surrounded by fragments of wood and strange silvery material, was an alien.
Seonghwa could think of no other way to describe what it was. It looked remarkably like a person, more so than he would have expected, but there were plenty of staggering differences. His mind filled with static as he stared at this strange creature - its skin was green, the same shade as the inside flesh of a kiwi. Vibrant, and far from human. That was the first glaring abnormality that he noticed, his jaw going slack.
It had three stubby fingers on each hand, and it was smaller than Seonghwa - around the size of his four year old cousin, though it was difficult to tell when it was lying on the ground. Some kind of full body spacesuit molded to its body, made from the same material as the orb. Though its eyes were closed, they were clearly massive, tilted upwards at a slight angle. The nose and mouth were more normal, and the creature did actually have hair that grew from the root in a shade of lilac and stopped at the ears.
However, two green antennae stuck out from the creature’s hair, and that was Seonghwa’s final straw. He couldn’t try to explain this away once he saw the antennae. This was a fucking alien, and he stumbled back a few steps, fisting his hands in his hair. What the hell was happening? Aliens weren’t supposed to be real, so why was one of them passed out in his backyard?
Unless if it wasn’t unconscious - what if it was dead?
Biting down on the inside of his cheek, Seonghwa lowered his hands back to his sides, taking a few deep breaths before he decided to approach the alien again. He moved quietly, afraid that it would wake up and hurt him, but it didn’t move at all. Now that he considered it, the alien really did look dead, and some of his panic diminished.
It didn’t look scary, truthfully. It looked like a little kid, aside from the… obvious quirks. And the longer Seonghwa looked at it, the worse he felt for the little thing.
He coughed into his fist, crouching down beside it. “Hey, little guy,” he said softly, his voice suspended in the quiet of the night, accompanied by the chirp of crickets. Seonghwa assumed the alien was a boy, based on his features, so he decided to just go with that. “I don’t know where you were headed when you crash landed here, but maybe I can help you. If you’re even alive. Um, can you hear me?”
The alien didn’t move, even when Seonghwa waved a hand in front of his giant, closed eyes. “Okay, then,” he mumbled, his hand still hovering over the body in front of him. “This is bizarre. This is crazy. I’m losing my mind. I’ve really fucking lost it, haven’t I?” The alien didn’t answer, of course, and Seonghwa sighed. “If you aren’t dead, then… I’ll try to help you. So that you can rebuild your weird orb thing, and get out of my yard. If you are dead, I guess I’ll bury you. I’m sure someone would miss you somewhere.”
That made him a little sad, and he frowned as he poked the alien with his index finger. Still he didn’t move, and Seonghwa shifted his finger to brush against the green skin of his neck. “Well, your skin is warm, so maybe you’re not dead,” he commented, talking to himself so that his thoughts wouldn’t spiral into a panic. “And I don’t see any injuries on you. The impact must have knocked you unconscious, then… I mean, you did destroy my whole shed, so you must have hit the ground really hard.” In fact, Seonghwa would be willing to bet that an orb-sized crater from the impact hid beneath all of the debris.
He tried to check the alien’s pulse, but he didn’t feel anything. Did aliens have pulses in the same places as humans did? Probably not, so he didn’t take it to heart. Did this thing even have a heart, or lungs, or any other vital organs? Did it even have to breathe? These were all questions that he didn’t really want the answer to right then, so he shoved them aside, staring down at the little alien instead.
“Well, I guess I’ll bring you inside,” he decided, for he wasn’t eager to sit out here any longer, and the shattered pieces of the shed couldn’t have been comfortable to lay on. “I’ll be able to look over you better in there, and make you a little bit more comfortable.” Seonghwa slid one arm under the alien’s back and the other under his legs, lifting him up easily. His feet dangled towards the ground, covered by the silver spacesuit, and his head lolled backwards. In that moment, he looked more like a little boy carried off to bed in footed pajamas than an alien.
Seonghwa should have been more terrified, but as he walked back up the porch steps and into his house, he began to calm down. The alien in his arms was awfully cute, and he didn’t look particularly deadly. His hands were small, and his three fingers had no nails, or claws, or anything of that nature.
As Seonghwa slid the door closed behind them, his grip almost slackened when the alien shifted in his arms, turning further into his chest. He seemed to be seeking out warmth even while unconscious, and Seonghwa brought him right over to the couch, laying him down carefully with a throw pillow under his head. Reaching for a throw blanket, he tucked it over the alien’s body in hopes that it would keep him warm. Maybe he came from a planet warmer than this one - why else would he be cold in the summertime here on earth?
Kneeling down on the ground beside the alien, Seonghwa frowned. He wasn’t sure what to do now, so he figured he would check him over quickly and then wait for him to wake up. The office was closed tomorrow, so he didn’t need to worry about sleep as long as he could take a nap at some point the next day. Hopefully the alien would be gone by then, and Seonghwa would be able to get some much needed rest.
For now, he scanned over the alien’s exposed skin, looking for any scratches or bruises, but he didn’t see anything. Just green skin, smooth and vibrant, purple strands of hair brushing over his closed eyes. Holding his breath, Seonghwa carefully lifted up one of the alien’s eyelids, intending to check his pupillary reflex.
He gasped, letting go of the eyelid and watching it fall back closed. The alien’s eye was entirely black - no iris surrounded by the white of the eye, just black. Like the cartoon pictures of aliens that people drew, with the giant black eyes and green skin. Seonghwa had never been one to believe that aliens were real, but he figured that if they were, they would look nothing like the silly cartoon imitations.
But now he had a real alien lying on his living room couch, and he began to understand that perhaps the silly human perception of aliens wasn’t so silly after all. He wondered if there were certain people who knew more about aliens than they let on, who had created those cartoon images based off the real thing.
Chills broke out over his skin, and he shuddered, stomach twisting. This was really happening. There was really an alien lying on his couch, unconscious after obliterating his shed with the strange orb that had probably fallen all the way from space.
Seonghwa dropped his head into his hands. “I’m only twenty five,” he whispered to himself. “And I'm already going through a nervous breakdown.” He squeezed his eyes shut, taking a series of deep breaths, but when he opened them again and peeked through his fingers the alien was still there.
What was he supposed to do with it? What if the orb was destroyed forever and now this alien was trapped here on earth? What if it tried to kill him, or probe his brains, or something equally as terrifying?
But he didn’t look scary. Seonghwa tried to focus on that, though looks could very well be deceiving him. He stared at the alien for a moment longer before rising to his feet and heading for the kitchen. The tile was cold against the soles of his feet, but he was far beyond the point of caring about that, for he had much greater concerns at the moment. He stood in front of the knife block on the counter and pulled out a regular kitchen knife, the blade recently sharpened.
With a frown, he put it back. If the alien saw a knife as soon as he woke up, then he definitely wouldn’t be friendly. Instead, Seonghwa reached into a cabinet and pulled out a frying pan. It was cast iron and quite heavy, perfect for bludgeoning if need be. But if the alien seemed friendly, Seonghwa could just as easily claim that he had been about to start cooking breakfast.
It was a horrible plan, but he had never been great with violence. So he held the frying pan to his chest and went back into the living room, sitting down on the floor with the alien directly in his field of view. Thanks to the adrenaline coursing through his veins, Seonghwa’s former fatigue was now completely forgotten. All he did was wrap his arms around his legs and rest his chin on top of his knees, waiting for the alien to wake up.
He would figure out the rest then - he would only drive himself insane trying to put it all together in the meantime.
~
The alien woke up when the first warm rays of morning sunlight came in through the windows, the beige tones of the living room turning to peach in the sunrise.
As the hours passed along, Seonghwa’s eyelids had started to sink again, and his forearm was covered in small red patches where he had pinched himself back into awareness. Of all times, he really couldn’t afford to sleep right now - what if the alien was gone by the time he opened his eyes again?
He managed to keep himself awake though, and he blinked sluggishly at the small form on the couch, the light from the windows warming his exposed skin. When the alien first opened his eyes, Seonghwa didn’t even notice. One moment, his eyelids were still closed, and the next they were open, inky black eyes staring up at the ceiling.
Only when he blinked did Seonghwa startle out of his trance, sitting up straight and choking on his own sharp intake of air. The frying pan clattered right out of his grip, shattering the silence in the room, and he winced as the alien’s head snapped right in his direction. Those black eyes did nothing but stare at him, the strange spacesuit still covered up by the throw blanket.
For a moment, they just looked at each other, and a cold sweat broke over the back of Seonghwa’s neck. The alien didn’t move, his head resting against the pillow as he blinked again, and those wide eyes reminded Seonghwa of an owl. Massive and sparkling with curiosity, but nothing worse than that. Nothing dangerous.
Swallowing to lubricate his dry throat, Seonghwa parted his lips to speak, clearing his throat softly. “Hi,” he said, a slight rasp to his voice from disuse. He cringed at himself, because this alien obviously wouldn’t understand him. That brought about a whole new concern, because aliens definitely spoke some strange language of their own, and now he would have no means of communicating with the one currently lying on his couch.
“Hi,” the alien said back, and Seonghwa’s jaw fell open. What the fuck…
For perhaps the first time in his life, Seonghwa was truly speechless, the spiraling concerns inside of his mind dispersing at once. Static buzzed in his ears, and the alien blinked at him again, the antennae on the top of his head moving as he shifted into a seated position. The throw blanket gathered around his waist, that strange silvery material of the spacesuit still clinging to his form.
Seonghwa instinctively shifted back at the movement, but the alien didn’t come any further, just sitting there and staring with those massive eyes. “My name is Seonghwa,” he eventually said, finding his voice again. “Um, who are you? Why did you destroy my shed?”
“My name is Seonghwa,” the alien repeated, tilting his head, and then it all made sense. He didn’t actually understand what Seonghwa was saying - he was just mimicking the sounds. Which came as both a relief and a disappointment, because while the thought of this alien understanding the language was somewhat terrifying, it would have made this a lot easier.
Now he had a random alien in his house, and no way to communicate. As if that weren’t bad enough, he needed to sleep soon or he would really start losing his mind, and his stomach had started to rumble too, still craving the forgotten cereal from earlier. A perfect storm of problems, all of which contributed to the dull pounding that had begun to gather at his temples. “Um, are you hungry?” he asked, though the question was useless.
“Are you hungry?” The alien asked back.
“Yes I am, thanks for asking,” he answered with a sigh, getting to his feet and leaving the frying pan there on the floor. He didn’t think he would be needing it, for the alien seemed to be more of a nuisance than a danger, following Seonghwa with his eyes as he moved. Which didn’t really make sense, because he didn’t have irises or pupils, but Seonghwa could feel his gaze anyway.
Seonghwa headed for the kitchen, and the sound of feet impacting the floor stopped him in his tracks. Turning his head to look over his shoulder, he watched as the alien walked closer, until he was standing less than an arm’s length away. Seonghwa almost asked him why he was following, but he thought better of it, because he clearly wouldn’t get a real answer.
Instead he just took another step forward, still looking over his shoulder. The alien did the same, trailing right behind Seonghwa. He blinked innocently, those black eyes reflecting the lights embedded in the ceiling, as if he were waiting for Seonghwa to keep walking.
So Seonghwa did exactly that, and the alien continued to follow his exact steps all the way to the kitchen. When Seonghwa stopped at the cupboard to select a box of cereal, the alien stopped too. When Seonghwa walked over to the fridge to grab the milk, the alien followed along. He had acquired a shadow, albeit a strange one, and he made a bowl of cereal for both of them.
Did aliens eat cereal? Probably not, but Seonghwa didn’t have the slightest idea what an alien’s regular diet consisted of, and everyone liked cereal. He walked over to the table with one paper bowl in each hand, setting them down before pulling out two chairs. He chose paper bowls on purpose, so that none of his nicer tableware would be damaged. “You can sit on that one,” he explained, sitting down in his usual chair. Seonghwa always ate alone, but he had four chairs at his table anyway. This was definitely not the guest he had ever anticipated sharing the table with.
“You can sit on that one,” the alien said, and he plopped down into the second chair, mimicking Seonghwa’s exact posture, one leg crossed over the other. The image was so ridiculous that Seonghwa had to resist the urge to laugh - the sleep deprivation was really getting to him at this point.
He pushed one of the cereal bowls in front of the alien, a spoon already resting against the edge, the bottom half submerged in the milk. Aliens probably did not use silverware, Seonghwa was already aware of this, but he figured if the little guy could mimic everything else he did, he could mimic this too.
“This bowl is for you,” he said, and he pulled his own bowl closer, grabbing the spoon to demonstrate. “And this one is for me. You pick up your spoon like this, and you collect some of the cereal in the bowl of the spoon - the curved part - and then you bring it to your mouth and eat the cereal. It tastes good, I promise. This is my favorite kind.” Seonghwa performed the actions as he recited them, his stomach rumbling happily as he chewed and swallowed.
This time, the alien didn’t repeat his words. He just stared at Seonghwa for a moment before grabbing his own spoon awkwardly between his three fingers. With an unconscious smile tugging at his lips, Seonghwa dipped his spoon back into the milk, and the alien followed along. They both slurped the cereal from their spoons, one practiced and the other clumsy. A thin trail of milk rolled down the alien’s chin.
“You did it!” Seonghwa praised, and he was actually quite proud. It wasn’t every day that you taught an alien how to use a spoon, after all. “Now you can eat the rest, just like that.”
The alien dipped the spoon back into the milk, a strange vibrating sound coming from his throat. Almost like a purr of some kind, but a little weirder. “Just like that,” he repeated, and he promptly began to shovel the cereal into his mouth, hardly coming up for air. Did he even need air, though? Probably not.
Seonghwa continued to eat his own cereal as well, at a considerably slower pace, and he was only about a third of the way done by the time the alien’s bowl was empty. Only milk remained, swirled with cereal dust.
A frown curved the alien’s lips as he looked down at the bowl, like he couldn’t understand why the cereal was gone. “Oh, it’s okay, little guy. I can get you more-” Seonghwa started to say, but he stopped when the alien picked up the bowl.
First he raised it to his mouth and drank the milk - normal enough, so Seonghwa didn’t think anything of it. But then, the alien crushed the paper bowl in his hands and shoved the entire thing in his mouth. “Oh, don’t do that!” Seonghwa exclaimed, dropping his spoon back into his own bowl. “That isn’t edible!”
The alien looked at him, chewed, and swallowed. He then proceeded to eat the spoon as well, which was not disposable, but that went down just as easily as the bowl.
Speechless, Seonghwa could only stare as the alien eyed the other bowl as well, a soft belch passing through his lips. “What the fuck?” he breathed. And after everything this night had entailed - the destroyed shed, the strange orb, the unconscious alien - this was the thing that threatened to push him over the edge.
“What the fuck?” the alien repeated, and Seonghwa dropped his head into his hands.
He finished his own cereal once he regained enough of his bearings to do so, and when he finished he let out a weary sigh, pushing the empty bowl in the direction of his strange companion. “You can eat it,” he ceded, because the alien had been staring at the bowl the entire time, practically drooling. “But you can’t have the spoon. My silverware was expensive, and now the set will be uneven because you ate the one I gave you!”
The alien didn’t acknowledge his words at all, eating the second bowl as well and grinning once he was finished. Seonghwa clenched his fingers around the last spoon standing, getting to his feet and walking towards the sink. Footsteps pattered along behind him, and he quickly washed the spoon before placing it back in the drawer where he kept his silverware. He closed it immediately, not wanting the alien to see the contents.
Some kind of lock would come in handy… but he shook his head as soon as he considered it, because the alien wouldn’t be here long enough for that to matter. He was too exhausted right now to figure out how to get rid of the little guy, though - not until he could actually get a few hours of sleep and wake up refreshed to deal with this absurd problem he had somehow acquired.
But he couldn’t exactly sleep with an alien loose in his house, so that presented a problem of its own, the pounding behind Seonghwa’s skull increasing in strength. “Okay,” he said to himself, turning around to face the alien. “Hey, I need you to come with me somewhere, okay?”
The alien repeated the words back to him, which he had anticipated this time. Even though nothing he said was actually understood by his new houseguest, he felt the need to tell him what was going on anyway. Otherwise, the house was far too silent, and Seonghwa was afraid of being alone with nothing but his thoughts right now.
So he turned to go down the hall that led from the kitchen, and the alien followed behind him. His own bedroom was at the end of the hall, but he didn’t plan on going there just yet; instead, he stopped outside of the room that had once been his home study. Now, however, his monitor and other important supplies lived at his veterinarian office, and only bookshelves and a desk remained in the room.
Out of all the locations within his house, this was the one where the alien was least likely to break something or start a fire and burn the entire house to the ground, so Seonghwa twisted the knob and opened the door. “Come on, let’s go inside,” he said, walking into the room.
“Let’s go inside,” the alien agreed, following along. Books lined the shelves, and several old notebooks sat on the desk, but Seonghwa didn’t care if the alien ate those.
“I need you to stay in here,” he said, wincing at his own words. This was probably a cruel thing to do, but spending a few hours inside of this room couldn’t be any worse than being confined within that strange orb. “I have to sleep, and then figure out what I’m supposed to do with you. Just, um, read some books, or something.”
The alien blinked at him, and guilt made Seonghwa’s chest clench, even though he had interacted with this creature for a grand total of about thirty minutes. “I’ll be back,” he said, wishing that the alien could understand. “I promise.”
“I promise,” the alien echoed, standing in the center of the room as Seonghwa shuffled back towards the door. He tried to follow, but Seonghwa escaped into the hallway before he could make it to the door, closing it gently and holding the knob in place in case the alien tried to turn it. But he didn’t, and after a few minutes, Seonghwa retrieved a chair from the kitchen and propped it under the knob to wedge the door completely shut from the outside.
Maybe he was being a bit cruel, but he couldn’t leave an alien to have free rein of his house, especially not when said alien had already eaten multiple paper bowls and a metal spoon from Seonghwa’s matching silverware set. With the door barricaded shut, Seonghwa was able to breathe a bit easier, exhaustion weighing heavy on his bones as he slunk towards his bedroom.
His phone started to vibrate from his back pocket, and he jumped at the sudden sensation, pressing a hand against the wall to keep his balance. “Jesus,” he breathed, pressing a hand to his racing heart. He pulled the device from his pocket, and his heart only beat faster when he saw who the incoming call was from.
Kim Hongjoong, Seonghwa’s neighbor. His extremely sexy neighbor, whom he always tried his absolute hardest to impress, but he was not in the right state of mind for that right now.
Wishing he could just dissolve into a puddle on the spot, Seonghwa pressed the green accept button, bringing the phone to his ear. “Hello?” he said, wincing as his voice cracked. This phone call was already going about as terribly as he had expected.
“Seonghwa? Is everything alright over there?” Hongjoong asked, and of course his voice sounded lovely, even at the crack of dawn. A bit gravelly, as if he had been sleeping not too long ago, but that only made the butterflies in Seonghwa’s stomach flap their wings with increased vigor. “I thought I heard some kind of crash earlier, but I was half asleep. But there are some odd fragments of splintered wood in my yard…?” His voice trailed off, and Seonghwa really wanted to hang up and let the alien eat his phone to avoid this conversation entirely.
He was an adult, however, so he didn’t do that. “Oh, that,” Seonghwa said, a nervous chuckle escaping before he could stop the sound. “Um, I was just trying to… redo the shed. It was looking a bit lopsided these days.”
“In the middle of the night?” Hongjoong asked, and Seonghwa winced.
“Um… yeah. No time like the present, you know?” Well, now he would never have a chance with his hot neighbor, that much was for sure. The man was a god, incarnated on this earth as a high school art teacher. He had only moved into the house next door less than a year ago after securing a job for the start of the most recent school year, but Seonghwa had been entranced since their first meeting.
Hongjoong laughed, and Seonghwa’s knees weakened. He walked the rest of the way into his room and shut the door, collapsing onto his bed as he kept the phone against his ear. “Well, if you need any help redoing your shed, I’m always around. From the sound of things, and the evidence in my yard, it seems like you might be a bit out of your depth.”
Forcing out an awkward laugh of his own, Seonghwa slid under his covers. “I’ll call you if I need help. And, um, I’m sorry about the wood in your yard.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Hongjoong replied easily. “It gave me a good excuse to call you. But you should really get some sleep, Seonghwa.”
Murmuring an agreement, Seonghwa hung up the phone, his face so hot that he had to press it into the cool surface of his pillow to calm himself down. No man in a small suburban neighborhood should have any right to be that attractive - it wasn’t fair. Seonghwa’s heart was still beating frantically, and he took a few deep breaths to slow it down once more.
Only then did he remember the alien in his house, and he flopped over onto his back, staring at the ceiling. He was in such deep shit - how was he supposed to keep a fucking alien hidden from his next door neighbor, much less the rest of the town?
Smothering himself with his pillow, Seonghwa groaned, shutting his eyes. He needed to sleep before he could deal with that. If this was an insomnia induced hallucination, then he would wake up to a quiet house, his collection of spoons still fully intact and no alien in his study.
Comforted by that thought, Seonghwa drifted off to sleep at last, forgetting that the call from Hongjoong alone about the splinters of wood in his yard proved that the alien had to be real.
~
When Seonghwa opened his eyes once more, he was still in his bed, the covers pulled up to his chin. He blinked a few times, clearing the sleep from his vision, before sitting up and brushing his bangs out of his eyes. A few hours of sleep had rejuvenated him enough for his thoughts to function properly, and his heart skipped a beat when he remembered the events that had occurred in the middle of the night.
“Fuck,’ he said to himself, shooting out of bed and into the hallway. There was no fucking way an alien was in his house right now. He refused to believe it, and quite frankly he found the idea to be completely ridiculous, but he skidded to a stop when his eyes fell upon the chair in his path, wedged beneath the doorknob just as he had left it the night before.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Seonghwa bit down hard on his bottom lip, pacing the length of the hall before returning to stand outside of the door to his study. He couldn’t hear any sounds from inside, but that didn’t bring him any comfort. What if the alien was dead? Or worse, what if it had escaped, and was now terrorizing the entire neighborhood, eating spoons and mimicking human speech?
A shiver spread down the length of Seonghwa’s spine, and he gripped the sides of the chair, taking a deep breath before pulling it away from the door. He pushed it to the side for now, resting his hand on the doorknob and closing his eyes. Gathering his bearings, he twisted it, squinting into the room as he opened the door a crack.
The alien was gone.
He couldn’t see anything other than the wooden panels of the floor, the desk, and the books lining the shelves. Several of them were now on the floor, evidence of the alien’s presence, for Seonghwa hadn’t put them there. But he didn’t see the little creature, even as he stepped fully inside and checked every corner of the room.
Beginning to panic now, Seonghwa looked up at the ceiling to gain control of himself before he had a complete mental breakdown, only to see a three-fingered green hand dangling from the very top of the bookshelves. Breathing a sigh of relief, Seonghwa called up to the alien. “Come down here, please. I came back, like I said I would.”
The hand disappeared, and those owlish eyes peeked down from the top of the shelf instead, his purple hair flopping forwards. Clearly pleased to see Seonghwa, the alien’s expression lit up, and he jumped down to the floor. “Wait, you’re too high-” Seonghwa started to protest, panicked at the alien’s reckless behavior, but he landed lightly on two feet a second later, a giant book in his hands.
“Do not worry,” the alien said, and Seonghwa stumbled backwards, unable to catch himself this time as he crashed to the ground without a touch of grace. He clutched at his chest, eyes flying open, for the alien hadn’t mimicked him this time. Those were words of his own choosing, and they actually made sense in the context of the situation - but how?
Head spinning, Seonghwa could do nothing but gape at the creature, shaking his head belatedly. “How did you know to say that?’ he breathed, not sure if he wanted to know the answer. “You couldn’t speak when I tried to talk to you before! Unless if you could, and you were just pretending not to be able to…” he trailed off, terrified of the alien’s intelligence either way.
“I read your word book,” the alien said, and Seonghwa understood then that the big book in his hands was a dictionary. “More books, too.” He pointed to the ones stacked on the floor. “I learn your words.”
“You - you learned how to speak my language?” Seonghwa spluttered, so shocked that he was struggling to fathom the implications of that. He had only been asleep for a few hours, hardly enough time to read one book, let alone several of them including an entire dictionary. “How is that possible? You’re an alien, for fuck’s sake!”
The alien stared at him, blinking once. “I am alien,” he repeated, as if committing this new word to memory. “Now I understand. You… are scared. You do not understand.”
“I definitely don’t understand,” Seonghwa agreed, astounded by the fact that he had just agreed with the words of an alien. What the hell was going on here? “What are you? How are you able to - to eat silverware, and learn languages in a matter of hours? Don’t you communicate differently up in space, or wherever the hell you came from?”
“Yes,” the alien said. “Alien language different from human language. But I learn your words.”
Exhaling a long breath, Seonghwa nodded, pretty certain at this point that he had gone completely insane. “Okay. You’re an alien, and you’re absurdly smart, apparently. Do you have, um, a name, at least?”
A series of strange clicking and whirring sounds came from the alien’s mouth, and then he stopped, as if to think for a moment. “You do not understand alien language. In human language… I am Wooyoung.”
“Wooyoung,” Seonghwa repeated, the name forming easily, now that Wooyoung had translated it into his language. Whatever those strange sounds had been… Seonghwa would absolutely never make an attempt to replicate those. Now the alien had a name, and something about that settled his nerves a little bit. “So, did you read that entire dictionary?”
Wooyoung looked down at the open book in his hands. “Three times,” he said, before closing the front cover and setting it down on top of the stack of the other books he had apparently read. Amongst the pile was a veterinarian’s encyclopedia, and Seonghwa was sure that Wooyoung probably now knew more about his own job than he did, if he had read that one as well.
“Three times,” Seonghwa said, his voice hollow. Now he was the one mimicking Wooyoung’s words, but he couldn’t help it. He was so dumbfounded that his brain had short circuited completely, and he couldn’t manage anything else. “Why am I even still surprised?”
“You are unfamiliar with Wooyoung. Surprise is normal,” Wooyoung explained, and Seonghwa covered his face with his hands. Now the alien was assuming the role of his therapist as well, how delightful. This was exactly what Seonghwa had wanted from his Sunday morning.
Getting back to his feet at last, Seonghwa braced his palm against the wall until his legs felt strong enough to support his weight, looking at Wooyoung as he chewed the inside flesh of his cheek. “Where did you come from? How did you wind up in my backyard?”
“Space,” Wooyoung said, which really narrowed it down. “I crash - an accident.”
Perking up at the sound of that, Seonghwa grinned. “Oh, well, great! If it was a mistake, then you can just go back to where you came from, right? If you’re so smart, then you can probably repair the orb that you came in.”
But Wooyoung shook his head, picking up on human mannerisms the longer he interacted with Seonghwa, it seemed. Which was a bit concerning, if Seonghwa thought about it too hard, which he was trying very hard not to do. “No,” he said simply.
“Why not?”
“You…” Wooyoung trailed off, as if searching for the right word to convey his meaning. “You are… family?”
Reeling back in surprise, Seonghwa held out his hands, shaking his head immediately. “Um, no. Definitely not family. I’m a human, and you’re an alien, right? I don’t even know anything about you, all you did was crash in my yard in the middle of the night. You’re cute and all, but I’m not your family.”
Wooyoung stared at him for a long moment, and then those massive black eyes began to fill with tears, which made Seonghwa feel like a complete asshole. “No, wait, don’t cry,” he backpedaled, lowering his hands and taking a step closer to the little alien, who looked so upset that Seonghwa wished he could take all of his words back. Not because they weren’t true, but he could have at least been more gentle in his delivery.
“You hate Wooyoung,” he sniffled, but he didn’t back away when Seonghwa impulsively reached out to grab his hand. His skin was unnaturally smooth, and touching a hand with three fingers instead of five was definitely weird, but Seonghwa tried to ignore that for right now.
“No, no, that’s not true,” he reassured, patting Wooyoung’s hand awkwardly. “I just… don’t really know you? So family isn’t really the word I would use to describe, um, our relationship.”
Wooyoung seemed to consider this before nodding and blinking a few times. He moved away from Seonghwa to grab the dictionary again, flipping through the pages with purpose. Perhaps he had been looking for a different word, then, and family wasn’t the one he had meant to say at all? Seonghwa sure hoped so, because he really didn’t want to make him cry again.
Finding the word he was looking for, Wooyoung recited a definition directly from the page. “Imprinting: to come to recognize another animal, person, or thing as a parent or other object of habitual trust.” He looked up at Seonghwa, tilting his head slightly, his antennae swaying. “You are ‘parent or other object of habitual trust’ for Wooyoung.”
“Yeah, I’m familiar with what imprinting means,” Seonghwa sighed, fisting his hands in his hair. As of yesterday, he had thought himself far too young for a midlife crisis, but he was changing his mind by the minute. “But you aren’t an animal. You’re an alien. I’m not your parent, you have to know that. Animals imprint when they’re really young, also.”
“I am young,” Wooyoung protested. “I am a young juvenile.”
“...Okay,” Seonghwa said slowly, still not convinced that this alien had imprinted on him like a fucking duckling, of all things. But, as he considered it, he started to realize that perhaps it wasn’t as ridiculous of an explanation as he had initially thought.
From the moment Wooyoung had woken up, he had followed Seonghwa’s every move, from walking to eating cereal to mimicking his words, which was… well, exactly how baby ducks behaved towards their mothers.
Shit.
“Is it common for aliens to imprint?” Seonghwa asked, scared of the answer. Wooyoung nodded, and he bit back a groan. “Okay, but it still doesn’t make sense for you to imprint on me, when we just met a few hours ago. That phrase ‘habitual trust’ in the definition says it all; it means that you have to imprint on someone that you trust to guide you safely through the world. You don’t know me well enough for that.”
Now Wooyoung shook his head, gaining more confidence in nonverbal human mannerisms by the minute, it seemed. “I trust you,” he said simply. “I imprint on you. You are family.”
Communicating with this alien was impossible when he only spoke in those odd, disjointed sentences, and Seonghwa was too frazzled by all of this to protest any further. Instead, he just sighed, his shoulders slumping. He had no idea what he was supposed to do now, if this alien was convinced that they were family and that Seonghwa was his pseudo-parent in some strange way, but he didn’t want to be the cause of any more tears for now.
“Fine,” he ceded, rubbing his thumb and forefinger over his temples. “Whatever you say. You can stay for now, I guess, unless if you do want to go home after all?” That was wishful thinking, and Wooyoung shot down the idea immediately, shaking his head. “Thought so,” Seonghwa sighed.
He turned to leave the room, and a loud thud came from behind him as Wooyoung dropped the dictionary and scuttled after him. “I have to use the bathroom now, but then I’ll see if I can make us something to eat,” Seonghwa said, heading for the door to the bathroom on the other side of the hallway. He stepped inside, the tile floor cold against the soles of his feet, and small alien feet padded in behind him.
“Um, no,” Seonghwa said, pointing back out into the hall. “I know that you want to follow me everywhere, but I need privacy while I’m in here. Surely you learned that word along with all the others?”
“Privacy: the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people,” Wooyoung recited, and Seonghwa sighed.
“Yeah, that’s the one. So, I need privacy right now, just for a minute. Wait for me outside the door, okay? I won’t be far away, just over here using the toilet.” He didn’t wait for Wooyoung to respond, closing the door gently and locking it before doing his business. So far, having an alien in his house was like taking care of a cross between a human child and a puppy, and he was already exhausted despite having just woken up for the day.
He washed his hands, wiping them dry on a clean towel, and then he opened the door once more to find Wooyoung standing in the exact place where Seonghwa had left him. At least his behavior had been alright so far - he hadn’t trashed Seonghwa’s study, and he seemed more curious than anything else.
“Come on,” Seonghwa beckoned as he headed for the kitchen, although the words weren’t really necessary when Wooyoung was dead set on following him everywhere anyway. The two of them exited the hall, and Seonghwa contemplated what he wanted to eat. Nothing that required any kind of cooking beyond the microwave, for that seemed like a recipe for disaster.
His stomach growled, and the light streaming in from the small window over the sink indicated that it had to be midday at least, which made sense considering how late Seonghwa had fallen asleep. Briefly, his mind wandered to Hongjoong, and he blushed as he opened the door of the fridge.
Wooyoung peered around his legs, looking into the fridge as well, holding onto the fabric of his pajama pants with one three-fingered hand. “Cold box,” he said, and Seonghwa had no idea what he was talking about at first.
“Huh?”
“Cold box,” he said again, pointing at the fridge, and Seonghwa’s thoughts clicked.
“Oh. It’s called a refrigerator, or fridge for short. I keep all of my food inside of it that needs to be kept cold.” He scanned the contents before reaching for a loaf of bread. “I’ll make you a peanut butter and jelly. Every kid I know likes those.”
Wooyoung stared at the bread in interest while Seonghwa grabbed the rest of the ingredients and moved to the kitchen counter. Quickly, he covered both slices of bread in peanut butter first, before adding some jelly to the center and combining the pieces into one sandwich. He cut it in half diagonally, and then he placed the sandwich on a paper plate. After a moment of thought, he decided to just make one for himself too, and then he brought both plates to the table.
Following Seonghwa’s lead, Wooyoung sat in the same chair he had used last time, staring at the sandwich in front of him. “You just pick it up and take a bite,” Seonghwa encouraged, and he demonstrated with one half of his own sandwich. “I cut them into triangles, because it just tastes better that way. Don’t ask me why.”
He watched as Wooyoung picked up one half of the sandwich with both of his hands, staring at it for a moment before taking a small bite from the corner. At first, he chewed a bit tentatively, but then he swallowed the bite and his lips curved into an adorable smile. Having an alien in the house was definitely odd, but Seonghwa couldn’t deny that Wooyoung was really quite cute.
Wearing a soft smile of his own now, Seonghwa watched Wooyoung go for another bite, only this time he stuffed the rest of the half into his mouth at once. “Wooyoung!” Seonghwa exclaimed, brows shooting upwards. “You’re supposed to eat it slowly, not all at once. You’ll choke if you do that.” But Wooyoung just stared at him before shoving the other half in too, swallowing both within moments.
He began to eye the paper plate as well, and Seonghwa sighed. “You can eat it, if you want,” he allowed, and Wooyoung wasted no time devouring the plate as well.
Seonghwa finished his own sandwich, and then he let Wooyoung have his plate too, still entirely clueless when it came to alien nutritional groups and digestion. Wooyoung had eaten a metal spoon, after all, but he seemed completely fine. As long as he stayed that way, Seonghwa would gladly remain in blissful ignorance.
If Wooyoung wasn’t going to be going back to whatever planet he came from anytime soon, then Seonghwa would need to at least get him some supplies to pass him off as a human child. The two of them couldn’t stay cooped up in the house forever, not when Seonghwa had work tomorrow, and he already knew that his new shadow would insist on accompanying him wherever he went. Luckily, the veterinarian’s office was Seonghwa’s own practice, so no one could fire him for bringing Wooyoung along, but he wasn’t exactly pleased at the idea either.
In order to go to the store and get some normal clothes for his new alien child, however, he would need to work with what he had at home to disguise Wooyoung well enough for the trip. None of Seonghwa’s clothes would fit him, though, which meant that he would have to bring out the sewing machine.
“Okay, Wooyoung? I’m going to show you something that you can do for a little while, so that I can make you some human clothes. It’s called a computer - I think you’ll like it.” Wooyoung cocked his head in interest, and Seonghwa led him down the hall, grabbing his laptop from his room before bringing it into the study.
He placed it on the desk, and then lifted Wooyoung up from under his arms, setting him down on the rolling desk chair. The alien was surprisingly light, far lighter than a human of his size would be, even while wearing his strange metallic spacesuit. Seonghwa opened the laptop and created a new account login for Wooyoung, giving him access to his own homepage.
“This is a computer - it’s a form of human technology, where you can search for anything you want. Here, this is Google, a search engine that humans use all the time.” He clicked on the app, showing Wooyoung the search bar. “Anything you want to know about humans and Earth in general, you can find here.”
A computer was completely foreign to Wooyoung, so Seonghwa expected him to have questions or hesitations, prepared to walk him through a more in depth explanation of how to use it if necessary. But as soon as he finished speaking, Wooyoung started to eye the keyboard, poking at it with one of his fingers. “Can I-”
“You can’t eat it, if that’s what you were about to ask.”
Wooyoung pouted, the entire computer screen reflected in his giant eyes, and Seonghwa gently ruffled his hair. “You can use it for a lot of other things, though. Go on, give it a try.”
He watched as Wooyoung started to poke at the keys, seeming to enjoy the resulting clicking sound. At first, he typed a load of gibberish into the search bar, but then Seonghwa showed him how to clear it away, and he started over. Already, he was able to type out actual words, and again Seonghwa was awed and slightly terrified by his intelligence. If he was only an early juvenile, then how smart were the rest of the aliens out there?
That was a scary thought, and he chose not to contemplate it for now, instead reading Wooyoung’s first search query.
how shoe gartitue to hujamn
Muffling a laugh, Seonghwa forced himself to gain control of his amusement before speaking. He didn’t want Wooyoung to think he was laughing at him while he was learning something new. “What were you trying to say, kiddo?”
“Fingers too large,” Wooyoung said, holding up his hand. His three fingers were shorter and wider than those of a human, making the keyboard more difficult for him to use properly. “Attempt unsuccessful.”
“Try again,” Seonghwa encouraged. “Just slow down. That button at the top right is a backspace, so you can delete a letter if you make a mistake.” Wooyoung absorbed this information, and then he tried again, focusing hard on the keyboard as he punched the letters he wanted, pressing the backspace button a few times.
This time, his accuracy was perfect, and Seonghwa’s heart softened as he read the query.
how show gratitude to human
“Now you press search,” he explained, still staring at those words, touched by Wooyoung’s intent. He didn’t want to say anything about it, because the alien was so focused that he didn’t seem to realize that Seonghwa could also read what he had written in the search box.
The results of his search popped up, and Wooyoung started to click through them once Seonghwa showed him how to use the touchpad. That required a bit of a learning curve as well, but Wooyoung had proved to be a very fast learner thus far. He clicked on the first result, a list of thirty ways to show gratitude, and Seonghwa took that as his cue to busy himself with his sewing machine.
“I’ll be right back, I just need to get a few things from the living room,” he said, and Wooyoung looked his way, inching towards the edge of the chair with clear intent to follow him. “You can stay here. I’ll be two minutes.”
After a bit of hesitation, Wooyoung looked back at the laptop, tapping at the keys once more. Seonghwa quickly gathered everything he needed and brought it into the study, where he then began to cut one of his old shirts and a pair of ill-fitting pants down to fit Wooyoung’s general proportions.
They coexisted in silence for upwards of an hour, and it was actually kind of… nice. Seonghwa was used to spending his weekends mostly alone at home, so having some company wasn’t such a bad thing. Even if the company came in the form of an extraterrestrial super-genius child.
Wooyoung was completely enamored with the laptop, and once Seonghwa was finished making the clothes, he approached the desk once more. He expected to find Wooyoung still on Google, or perhaps deep into a Wikipedia rabbit hole of some kind, and his jaw fell open as the screen came into view, for his assumptions had been very incorrect.
Somehow, the entire screen was black, and although Seonghwa knew very little about computer technology, he was fairly sure that Wooyoung was coding. “How did you figure out how to do that?” Seonghwa asked, gripping the back of the chair to keep himself from fainting. Perhaps he was being dramatic, but most humans Seonghwa knew had no idea how to understand code - and yet, Wooyoung had grasped it in under an hour.
“Computers and aliens similar.” That was the only explanation he gave, before abandoning the laptop and bestowing his full attention upon Seonghwa once more. He blinked those owlish eyes, and Seonghwa closed his mouth finally, shaking his head to clear it as Wooyoung spoke again. “Thank you for taking care of me, Seonghwa.”
That was the first full, cohesive sentence Wooyoung had said, and Seonghwa was sure he had learned what to say from that first search of his. With his heart full, Seonghwa lifted Wooyoung from the chair and set him down on the ground again, patting the top of his head. “You’re welcome. You aren’t so bad, you know.”
Wooyoung leaned into the touch, his eyes closing in contentment. “I love you.”
Seonghwa’s eyes flew open, and he gaped down at the little alien, who missed the reaction caused by his words completely. Maybe giving him unrestricted access to a computer had been a bad idea, after all - what else had he learned in such a short time?
“That’s very sweet, thank you,” Seonghwa replied after a beat of silence. “I made you some clothes, so you can change out of that spacesuit. What do you think, want to try them on?”
Wooyoung looked up at him and nodded with a small curve of his lips, the overhead lights in the room reflecting in his eyes like glowing stars. And despite the outlandishness of the current situation, Seonghwa couldn’t help but smile back. The little guy wasn’t so bad to have around, after all.
Affection bloomed in Seonghwa’s heart, and although he wasn’t fully aware of it yet, an attachment had already begun to form on his end as well.