Close Encounters 05: of the 8th Kind

Hi! This is the fifth chapter of this story, which is why I named it "Close Encounters of the Eighth Kind" because that makes perfect sense. :) Do read the earlier stuff if you want to be able to understand the plot. Or don't. Don't let anyone tell you how to live your life!

Content warning: bit of angst, bit of pain, smut aplenty

We've left off in an abandoned building in Tulun D'tel, where we finally found our lost Dryth sheep... in a compromising position...

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My brain takes exactly one second to go through all the idiotic scenarios -- Bane, naked female, hanky-panky, caught in the act, tears, screeching, it's not what it looks like, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, let's stay friends, blah, blah, blah.

Then the rest of reality filters into my head.

The naked woman -- female, rather, because this clearly isn't a human (skin's too gray, claws are too long, and are those feelers?) -- is not straddling him sexily, cowgirl style, but rather perched on Bane's stomach like an oversized bird of prey, or a medium-sized gargoyle on a cathedral roof. The claws of her feet are digging into his body armor -- and, depending on how long and sharp they are, through his armor, through his hide and possibly into his intestines. One of her hands is pressed against his face like she's trying to gouge out his right eye with her 4-inch-nails, but he's holding her back with his free hand clamped around her wrist, just barely. His tail is curled tightly around the other, and also hooked around her shoulder, keeping her from leaning forward and sinking her dagger teeth into him.

There is a shiny short sword next to Bane's right hand, the hilt just a couple of inches away. His fingers are clawing at the air like he's trying to reach it but unable to.

And there is blood spattered on the floor. A lot of it. Pooling, in some places. Around Bane and underneath him.

I don't think before I find myself moving very quickly, which is probably the only reason why Rune doesn't stop me; my brain doesn't give him (or me) any warning.

My chain barely slipping out of Rune's grip, I clutch the slick silver links in both hands, leaving some slack between them -- just enough chain to sling around that female's neck and pull as I run past her.

It has already been established that I'm not strong or hardy, but I'm also not exactly a featherweight, and gravity and momentum, combined with a desperate fire in my gut and a generous helping of Batshit-Crazy, can and do have a marked effect on females who try to kill one of my alien boyfriends.

The female gives a strangled hiss like an angry cat as she notices that she has company, and a pretty new necklace, and then the hiss cuts off abruptly when my leash knots up and pulls tight against her throat. She's bodily whipped off Bane, flying a couple of feet through the air. My force even breaks the hold Bane has on her with his tail. She crashes sideways to the broken-tiled ground and slides along a bit.

I somehow manage to stay on my feet, the chain clutched tight even as it bites into my palms.

"Leave him alone!" I holler dumbly at her, momentarily flashing back to 2000-something when life was easy and consisted of faintly amusing YouTube videos of hysterically weeping Britney Spears fans. My greatest battles back then were fought against acne, bad hair, lacking make-up skills to accompany a very slim make-up budget, and an unfortunate attraction to Chad Kroeger. My existence was uneventful, boring, and sedentary and it made sense(ish).

As it is, I'm completely dazed with adrenaline, and I proceed to give a mighty war cry -- it comes out closer to a war warble, but who the hell cares? -- and yank on the chain with all my might even if it makes my palms burn with the friction and rip open, hauling her physically away from Bane as far as I can.

For the next few moments, she fights blindly, winding and twisting madly around on the floor and pulling the noose around her neck tighter all by herself, making the most unholy of screeching noises and reminding me uncomfortably of Gollum fighting against the elven-made rope.

I always felt real sympathy for poor, pitiful Smeagol in that scene.

Then she finds her feet -- her all fours -- refocuses and dashes towards her new opponent.

That'd be me.

Well, there goes my pity.

"Shit!"

I try to duck away, but we're literally tied together through my leash, and the thought occurs to me that I should maybe have taken off my collar before rushing at her. Then again, there wasn't time. There wasn't time for pulling one of the small knives I have on me, either.

(You are the least competent fighter ever, Val.)

"I'm more of a lover!" I shriek in panic, replying to my inner voice -- didn't mean to talk out loud, but the fear elicited by having a berserker alien lunge towards me at crazy speed with her two-inch talons extended and about to sink them into my eyeballs loosens my tongue as well as my bladder. Warm wetness spurts down the insides of my thighs and calves.

Aw nooo.I swear if I survive this, I will kegel the crap out of my pelvic floor. All this peeing myself is seriously getting out of hand!

I screw my eyes shut and fold up like a lawn chair, throwing my arms up in a feeble attempt at protecting my head and bracing for pain.

But then Rune is there. By the sound of it, he plucks my attacker out of the air and slams her to the floor, cracking a few tiles and possibly a couple of smaller bones in the process, then starts wrestling her. I feel my leash go very taut for a terrifying second, then fall entirely slack like it's been severed. Opening my eyes again, I catch a glimpse of the female retreating up the stairs and into the front hall from which Rune and I had come, with Rune very close on her heels.

At this point, I should probably finally take off that collar and the chain dragging on it, or possibly take out the aforementioned knives just in case she comes back, or maybe even wipe the insides of my legs because eww, Val.

But there's a rasping sound, almost like a cough, and I'm instantly at Bane's side, all but slipping in his blood and crashing my right knee into the ground somewhat painfully. None of it matters.

"Bane!" I kneel next to his head, leaning over him, hesitantly touching his face. His skin, speckled with blood and slick with perspiration, is colder than I've ever felt and it freaks me the hell out. "Oh, my god. Bane. Bane."

There are two deep gouges running from his cheekbone, grazing the socket of his right eye, all the way to the back of his head, oozing blood the color of red wine. His teeth are stained pink. His limbs are twitching like someone hooked him onto an electrical current.

There are blood-red specks in the yellow of his eyes and he's not looking at me but past me at the open roof and the sky. His pupils are dilating and constricting erratically.

"Can you hear me? It's me. It's Val. I'm here," I babble frantically, fluttering my wildly shaking fingers over him, over his face and torso and arms, the latter two clad in armor that has clearly been put to the test recently. So many new dents and gouges. The female's toe claws really did pierce one of the plates, and below that, there's a glossy pool of blood and mangled skin. Shit. Shit. Shit. How much blood does a Dryth have? How much does he need? What if she hit one of his vital organs? Do Dryth have vital organs? Blood types? Does donation work? Tourniquets? Compression dressing? Stiches? What?

Again, I am reminded that I know nothing about Dryth anatomy, not really. I only know how to fuck them and love them against all reason, not how to care for them when they need patching up.

Useless again, Val.

I grit my teeth. Now's not the fucking time.

"Bane. I-I'm here, and Rune is also here, fie-fighting with that bitch. It's going to be all right. It'll-It'll be- It'll be all right. There are slugs everywhere outside a-and they might be lah-looking for you, and possibly Rune, a-and maybe even me, and the-the-the chick seemed far from duh-done, but I swear to you, it'll all be oak-okay eventually. It-It will. Yeah?"

It's ridiculous, me making these promises. I know I can't really help him at all. Fuck, just looking at him so badly hurt that he can barely twitch has me on the brink of needing help for myself as well. I've already started stuttering with nuh-nerves, guh-goddamn it.

Bane spasms once and his head rolls a little to the side, exposing the back and side of his neck to me.

There are... I squint. Are those quills sticking out of his skin? Chopstick-sized quills?? They are whitish yellow with grey flecks, there's four of them, and if their girth is any indication, they are embedded at least three inches deep.

I don't think. I just grab one of them and pull.

Bane goes eerily still. His eyes roll around in their sockets until the pupils finally lock on to me.

He sees me, and I swear he hates me at that moment.

Still, I pull, and pull, and pull -- "God damn this shit!" It's more like five inches, and of course there's a wicked-looking barb at the end.

The first stinger comes out with a wet sucking sound that makes the hairs on my neck curl into corkscrews. The swill of blood that follows the giant toothpick stinger seems somehow thinner, almost watery. Should that be disconcerting or is it normal? I don't know. I just don't know. I don't know any fucking thing. I'm like Jon Snow's even more ignorant cousin, Joan Sleet.

I grab the next one and pull, and then the next. It's hard work and I'm sweating and panting by the time the last quill keeps slipping through my wet palm. When it slides out of my grasp the fourth time, I have to stifle a frustrated sob. The thought occurs to me that these are just the visible quills, and that there are maybe several more, so deeply embedded in his skin that they don't stick out at the top, or maybe somewhere else on his body, hell, on his back, or below his mangled armor...

And what happens if I break this last one? What if the tip, or the barb itself, stays lodged inside? Do Dryth get infections? Is there something like penicillin in space? Does penicillin even work that way? I forgot everything about it except that its name literally means 'little penis'.

"Damn it, why did I have to have completely useless jobs before being abducted? Why couldn't I have studied to become a doctor, or a Navy SEAL, or a freaking astrobiologist? I am entirely unprepared for any of this! My one and only skill is googling stuff and overeating on close to zero funds -- I realize those are two skills, but counting isn't one of them, so there!"

I tell Bane all this (stutteringly and through teeth that chatter like crazy) while I further mangle his neck and eventually manage to wrench the last visible stinger out of his skin. God, my palms hurt and throb like the dickens.

And my eyes, too, and not just because I've been crying like a little bitch this entire time without even realizing it, I think.

And my elbows, for some reason?

And my chest.

"Fuck, my chest hurts," is actually the last thing I say with the last bit of breath before I suddenly start drowning in air.

As the light in the world suddenly dims around the edges of my vision, I look down at my hands. My palms, raw and seeping blood from pulling on the chain earlier and now from dicking around with the quills, feel kinda sticky against the makeshift bra I have on when I pressed them against my sternum. There is some yellow-ish goo on my skin which was seeping out of those stingers like resin from trees.

Oh. Uhm.

Poison?

Oh, of course, Val.

Well. Fuck.

You are in su

***

It occurs to me that every out-of-body experience is actually just the inside-of-body experience of physical nuclear meltdown.

Half of your brain is telling itself a soothing little fairytale about body-independent survival in a last-ditch attempt at triage and crisis management.

The other half is running around with its hair on fire.

That must be why I could swear I watched myself actually drowning -- in blood? Or is that wine? It seems a lot darker than it should be -- and then floating -- like I was sitting in my Volvo? Oh, God, are we doing all this crap over again? -- and then gasping for air -- because those assholes forgot to make some holes into my box! Let me out. Let me OUT! LET ME OUT!!!-- and then moaning from the pain in my chest.

Oww, my boobs! Is someone sitting on me again?

Wait. Why would someone be sitting on me? Is that a regular thing that happens?

Actually, it's less my boobs and more my entire ribcage that's hurting. Holy hell. Was I in an accident? Did my stupid car finally croak? Did we end up in a ditch, with the steering wheel sledgehammering my sternum?

I swear I saw a news report about this man who had his entire lower jaw punched off of his face by his steering wheel, and he- uh. Something.

Or did they -- I gasp -- did they put my car into the scrap metal press with me still in it? I used to have nightmares about that exact scenario. I blame the trash compactor scene in Star Wars.

I open my gritty eyes and all I get is bright whiteness.

Huh.

I spend a full minute trying to figure out how the fuck I, Valerie Magdalena Greene, could possibly have ended up in heaven.

Note the absence of gates, pearly or otherwise.

Hm. Okay, so maybe this is limbo? Purgatory? What's the difference between them anyway? Or maybe it's the place where Harry met Dumbledore after his erstwhile death? Or the pre-program of the Matrix? Am I going to learn Kung Fu now?

I've always wanted to learn Kung Fu, I think. Or Krav Maga. One of those. All I know so far is that sitting on people is way more effective than previously thought... although it escapes me exactly how I know this.

I'm trying to think of more pop culture items to make sense of my current situation, and how I know that hell can't be bright white (seriously, how do we know that?), when a darker shape moves into my field of vision.

It's... uh.

I squint.

It's the devil.

Double-huh.

I always thought he'd be red and rubbery, like the shiny demon that shined in that Tenacious D video, but he's dark-gray with a silvery sheen, like graphite, with darker stripes -- scars? -- cutting right across his face. His eyes are a tarnished gold-yellow. His oddly-angled head doesn't have ears, which strikes me as a bit strange. I feel like he should have some.

Okay, so much for heaven or limbo. Pretty sure Lucifer doesn't hang around either of those places.

(Does he? Man, I shouldn't have daydreamed through religion class.)

Maybe hell is indeed my OBGYN's examination room, like I've always hypothesized, and this is my cold-handed doctor's true face? That would also explain why the examination chair -- and therefore my hoo-ha -- looked straight towards the exam room door. Only the absolute devil would configure his room like that.

"Breathe deeply," the devil says in perfectly understandable English through very sharp, white teeth.

"Y'know I always thought you'd speak Latin," I tell him -- very, very slowly because my tongue seems to have had a minor stroke of some kind. "And that you'd have horns and be hideous." Valerie Greene, what's that supposed to mean? "Sorry. I mean. You're really suh... sorta hot. It's cause you've got good she... sheep... shiekbones." Yeah, close enough. "I mean. You're handsome. A... handsome devil. Ha! Ha! Oww," I whine a little and clutch my chest... which is entirely bare?

Huh, again. I'm topless.

Naked, actually. Buck ass nekkid. Is that normal in hell?

"Va'l-ree," the devil says and locks his yellow eyes with mine.

Sssnap!

All at once my recent past hits me full in the face. The recent events come into focus so abruptly and hard it drives the air from my lungs and sends another sharp bolt of pain through my torso.

"Bane!" I gasp, sit up right through the screaming pain, and lift my hands even though they are jittery and weigh a couple of tons each, wanting to touch him just to make sure he's actually there and actually whole.

"Oh, God! You're alright. Are you alright? Please, tell me you're alright!"

I scramble to sling my arms around him, desperate to feel his living presence against me.

Bane has never been a big hugger. Sure, he grabs me when we're fucking and holds me tight and down with that casual ease of his. He likes to physically put me where he wants me.

Embracing for its own sake isn't really a part of his repertoire.

Which is why I almost start bawling when I try to pull back from my awkward hug -- to respect his low-key hug-aversion and also to take stock of his injuries -- and he doesn't let me go but pulls me into him again, both arms around me like steel bands slinging around my back.

He buries his face into my hair. I hear him inhale my scent. It makes my heart clench with a relief so profound that it hurts.

I cling to him as he tightens his embrace even more, making me feel small and sheltered. Safe enough to let myself dissolve into some pathetic mewls and trembles as the residual fear from my recent double brush with death (his and mine) filters through my system. I lay my head on his shoulder, tuck my face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in in turn, and run my hands across every square inch of skin I can reach, caressing it and reacquainting myself and taking stock. This part is still here. And this one. Hello, this patch of skin, this and that scar. Hello, hello. So good to meet you all again. Hey, new bump and graze. I'll put my mouth on you shortly.

"I am so fucking angry with you!" I cry-shout at him, angrily wiping my snot on him like vengeance is mine. "You went away all by yourself and whi-without telling me because you bloody bonehead thought I'd luh-leave you for any random homo sapiens and then you didn't come back and-and-and I was worried sick damn you! And then I saw you there and for a moment I thought you'd die and there was so muh-much blood and I don't know how muh-much Dryth can take be-before they-"

"Ree," he interrupts my rambling, leans back and then in and presses his mouth to mine. I must be half-frozen because his lips feel like a brand, searing my skin, and his tongue is like a literal tongue of fire.

I spend a split-second worrying about how awful I must taste -- I can't even remember the last time I brushed or flossed. Eww -- and how my body is still partially out of commission and really kinda sore from whatever the actual heck really happened to me, but those worries fly out the portholes when he wraps my hair around his fist and tilts his head to deepen the kiss.

If I hadn't realized some time ago that I'm in love with a freaking alien, I'd probably have noticed it this very instance because fuuuuckkkk. It's absolutely mindboggling how good it feels to be kissed by him, how the touch of his tongue to mine warms me up and tingles through me from the dome of my cranium to the tippytips of my toes, smothering all my aches instantly like the strongest, happiest painkiller. It makes me all melty and gooey inside, like caramel and honey and Nutella, and God, I am hungry and thirsty for him like I've never been for any food or drink.

In fact, it's something more than hunger or thirst, something that's more than just physical. More like the worst type of homesickness, if home was a person instead of a place, and that person is more like a limb that's missing on your body, something important, like an eye or your right thumb or your left butt cheek, except even more important than that. I've missed him like I would miss my own name if I ever forgot it. It's pure, distilled yearning.