Chapter Text
“Hey, I’nignokt!!”
Shake skipped over. He hopped across the cracks in the sidewalk and skid to a stop just before the alien.
Scratching the nape of his neck, he sang, “So… This is for you.” He held out a little white envelope in one hand. It had crude drawings of hearts and candies and flowers in colorful crayon. “I guess I’m your messenger, now,” he said with a display of sarcasm.
The alien looked down at the object and back up at Shake with an unimpressed expression. “Ok.”
“I-I—“ Shake waved his hands out frantically, “it’s not from me! I just… someone I know wanted me to give this to you and I said ‘Sure, ok. I can do that’.”
Ignignokt remained silent and uninterested.
“So, yeah… not from me... just… a messenger. That’s all.”
“…Ok.”
He returned to his objective and stepped up the walkway back to his ship. He wasn’t in any sort of hurry. He just planned on rewatching a show with Err since a new season was coming out. It was really the only thing on his mind. It wasn’t even very good, from what he’d remembered.
"Wait! Aren’t you gonna—" he gestured the envelope out, “—take it?” Shake called out.
Ignignokt sighed lightly, “Is there money in it?”
“No…? Ah—well—I don’t know. Maybe? You’ll have to find out.” A few seconds passed. “B-because I don’t know, of course… I di-I didn’t write it.”
“Ok, Cup.”
The nickname was almost endearing now. It started as a sort of joke on how Shake always had a beverage in his hands. Usually a milkshake, but anything could’ve been in the fast food cups he’d always had on his person.
Ignignokt had the habit of not referring to humans by their given names. He really didn’t like them much. He wasn’t aware of Shake’s ‘real’ name—as everyone just called him ‘Shake’—so he decided ‘Cup’ was sufficiently demeaning enough.
Shake smiled. Ignignokt frowned, defeated, and took the note from him. He returned back up the stairs and activated the sensor to open the door to the ship. It opened with mechanics foreign to anything on Earth and seemed to move at a lower frame rate than the human eye could see. Everything about the mooninites’ ship was peculiar. Shake had never been in it, but he could see glimpses inside when the door bestowed it to him. He could’ve sworn it had an entirely different atmosphere in there. The walls were illuminated with color and there were cool pieces of artwork adorned on them. He managed to squeak a few words before the door shut him out from Ignignokt’s hearing.
“T-tell me what you think! Of the letter!” he yelled out, “…I’ll relay it! To the—guy!”
The door had clasped itself shut and whatever audio coming from inside had been nulled.
Shake stood in his own silence.
"Th-that wrote it. The guy that—" he caught himself, “Ugh, why’d I say guy… God damn it.”
“Dude, what’s this?”
Err wiped his wet hands on his pants and held up the envelope sat on the kitchen island and forgotten.
“Junk mail.”
Err examined the wrapping. “It don’t look like it.”
“Eh…”
Ignignokt waved off Err and returned to the television. There had only been advertisements on the screen but Ignignokt really didn’t care about whatever mail Shake wanted to give him earlier that day. Err shrugged and ripped it open, asking not for permission.
Err recited—broken up by stifled chortles and snickers in a way that was intended to be insincere;
“My Dear Ignignokt, if I could only accompany you in the loneliest darkest night amongst the stars, I’d have no need for air.
—anonMS”
The television seemed to mute itself abruptly, only proving inanimacy as Ignignokt turned with the remote in his hand. He tried feigning a stone expression but he couldn’t help but appear almost mortified.
“What the fuck are you getting into, dude!?” Err wailed from the floor, waving the written note around in the air above him. He rolled onto the cold tiles, laughing directly into the ground.
Ignignokt stuttered in response, “I-I… I… tch…” He rubbed his eyes and got up from his seat with a vigor. He turned the corner and plopped onto the ground next to his raucous friend. Not needing to ask, he snatched the paper and read its words.
He read them multiple times. Multiple different ways. Every way he tried read a message of vulnerability. From whom, he wasn’t entirely sure.
“Holy shit. Holy shit.” Err finally wound down by laying on his back, staring up at the fluorescent light overhead, and heaving. “I told you man. That guy is capital ‘G’ gay.”
“What guy?”
Ignignokt looked down at him with genuine wonder. Err couldn’t even bring himself to poke fun.
“The fucking—the dude. The backwards hat, white trash, hood rat? The—”
“The tall one? Stocky, loud—" Err nodded, Ignignokt continued regardless, "—whiny, light dusting of facial hair, kinda se—?”
“Uh—yeah. Sure—yeah, man.” He shook off Ignignokt’s amorous descriptors and returned to his point, “But, yeah. He wrote this about you! That’s why I said, ‘man, that boy is gay.’ And, shit, he’s gay for you!” Err thrusted his hand out, pointing intensely at the alien beside him.
Ignignokt tilted his head like a lost dog. “How do you know that?”
Err took the letter from Ignignokt’s loose grasp. “Look!” he pointed at the moniker written near the bottom, “‘MS’… he calls himself 'Master Shake'. That’s gotta be him.”
The green alien shook his head, “No, no. He only delivered it... The envelope, I mean.” Ignignokt frowned and looked off to the side, saddened that they still were unknowing of the author, yet proud of Err for coming up with a good theory.
Err looked at Ignignokt the same way he does when Ignignokt says stupid things. He waited like that until Ignignokt came to his own conclusion.
When that didn’t occur, he gave in. More accurately, he gave up.
“Okay, man. Then, I guess I don’t know.” He got up and brushed off the back of his pants. “I gotta piss, good luck with your secret admirer, dude.” Err patted his friend roughly on the back before heading off to the restroom. Ignignokt stared, solemnly, at the tiles on the floor with the feeling of impending doom.
It had only been one day, yet the mooninites were back.
Err was a skilled debater. If only to confuse or enrage his opponent. It usually worked out for him. Even still, his vocal argumentation wasn’t going to help him when Frylock came back with his gun.
The mooninites scurried out of the building before Frylock had time to retrieve the various collectibles they had tried to grift and his weapon of mass harm. They took whatever fit in their hands and Err’s bag—which wasn’t much, it was intended for cigarettes only.
After yelling some expletives, Err hopped back into the ship. Ignignokt followed, stopping to pick up whatever his friend had dropped on the way.
“Hey, uh, Ignokt?”
Ignignokt turned to the voice. Shake stood a few feet behind him. He appeared rather polite. His hands were tucked tightly into his hoodie pocket. He looked very tense. The sight was a tad surprising, but Ignignokt had come to terms with the fact that Shake was a very peculiar human.
“Hm?” He grabbed a little figurine off the ground, still in good condition.
Shake gave eye contact intermittently, “Did ya get around to… uhh… reading that thing?” There was a rasp in his voice.
Ignignokt figured he meant the note. “Oh, yes. I did.” He started moving towards his ship, not expecting the human to follow.
“Cool! Cool…” Shake smiled, “anything you wanna tell me? To-to relay to the author, of course.”
He thought about it. Then he looked up at Shake’s hopeful eyes. Shake’s large, black pupils darted between his own.
The alien noted many things down in his mind. A lot of it was about Shake. About the things that intrigued him. Like his expressive facial muscles. Or his cheeks, desperate to smile. He compared notes sometimes with whatever Err had to say in passing. There were discrepancies in their findings but Ignignokt decided it must be because he knows more about human behavior than his alien companion. Enough to differentiate Shake from the rest of them.
He scanned the awkward man in front of him and replied coldly, “No, not really.” He then shut the door and disappeared into wherever the ship was programmed to go.
“… Ah.”