Chapter Text
Aliens.
He lets out an aborted laugh. Tommy can hardly believe his luck. Aliens.
Fuck.
Admittedly, Tommy hadn’t thought to put “alien abduction” on his bingo card for the year. He was rather convinced “World War III” would’ve been ticked off instead, right next to Joey Marthon the youtuber dying to a parachute malfunction. Alas, now he’ll never know.
He’ll never know.
…
Because. He’s been abducted by aliens.
For what feels like five minutes to an hour, Tommy ruminates over this, replaying the several different ways he could die in his head while he’s at it.
Frankly, Tommy is undecided on whether to laugh, or cry.
On one hand, reasons for crying are abundant. He’s higher than he’s ever wanted to be, and not in the cool drug way. On the other; he’s been abducted by aliens, like a fucking cow.
Ultimately, Tommy chooses laughter, because he is not a pussy bitch, and he also doesn’t know when the next time he’s gonna get water so he’s trying to conserve that.
If he knew Earths’ local aliens were getting low on their fucking kidnapping quota he would’ve stayed inside that day. Maybe he would’ve apologized to his foster mum, instead of slamming the door in her face. Maybe he would’ve steered clear of the forest, where no one would be there to hear him scream. In anger. In fear. He’d meant for it to be the former. In hindsight, his dumbass forgot to fucking scream anyways, so perhaps he was destined to die in outer-fucking-space.
His neck isn’t sore from where they’d shot him, with what he thinks must’ve been a blow dart, of the tranquilizer kind to be exact, and yet he can’t stop rubbing at it. Tommy hates needles.
( Tommy wakes up.
His vision swims.
Oh, god. )
Tommy rubs the space between his nape harder.
Restless energy buzzes beneath his skin, which makes him want to bang his head into the wall. Or raise his hand from his neck to his hair, and pull until there’s no hair left to pull.
It is to be known, that Tommy typically does quite well under pressure. Usually, when faced with a stressful situation, Tommy will find a healthy coping mechanism, one that doesn’t hurt himself, advised so by a counselor. Tommy had reckoned it was solid advice, and had taken up various methods, such as starting arguments with the nearest guy who was shorter than him, which wasn't very hard. He had to admit, it did wonders for his mood.
As of right now, there is quite literally nobody shorter than him nearby that is not an alien. And currently, that particular alien has been disturbingly MIA, to Tommys’ displeasure.
Alien. Tommy can't find it in himself to care when he pulls his hair a little too hard and feels a sting that makes him wince.
Alien. Because that's what it is, and Tommy still can't believe it. The worst part is, with each passing minute, he’s finding it harder and harder to deny it.
Because there’s proof under his fingernails.
There’s proof stuck between his teeth.
( Before now, the last time he’d bit someone had been when he was seven. He remembers many people being quite displeased with him.
Displeasure is what rings across the things face when Tommy finally manages to get a look at it. Displeasure, is what Tommy believes the sharp cry it releases is made of.
Its blood stains his teeth red. It’s disgusting, it’s making him nauseous, but it’s made it let him go.
It’s holding its neck with two hands. Tommy isn’t sure what freaks him out more: the fact that it doesn’t look human, or the fact that it does.
Humans don’t have fins. Humans don’t have thick, matte, grey skin. Humans don’t have jagged, sharp teeth.
Things that aren’t human don’t wear clothes. Things that aren’t human don’t try to keep themselves from bleeding out with hands they aren’t supposed to have. Because barring monkeys, and raccoons, things that aren’t humans typically do not have hands.
The thing in front of him is decidedly, not a monkey, or a raccoon.
Five seconds stretch and then slow into three, crucial conclusions Tommy comes to in that frigid, short time frame.
Humans hold a grudge.
Humans know how to do something about a grudge.
Whatever stands in his way, for all intents and purposes, might as well be human.
Six seconds.
Tommy winds up his fist. )
Recently, Tommy has learned he has a mean right hook. Either he'd been really fucking scared, aliens should better figure out which of them need to be left out of the gene pool, or this alien in particular just really sucked.
He figures whatever it is, this one’s probably on the aliens. Whatever it is, it’s probably in Tommy’s best interest if it doesn’t happen again, because Tommy has half the mind to start punching everything including the walls under the assumption they’re just as fragile.
( His heart jackrabbits in his chest.
The alien falls.
He doesn’t know if he believes in God, but for some reason, in that moment, he is hoping to God that it isn’t dead. )
Some hopeful part of him crosses its fingers, and prays. Prays that he’s simply finally lost his marbles.
Perhaps this is even an elaborate trick of the light. Maybe that strange, suspicious lemonade (?) in the fridge his foster mother asked him to toss out had not been safe to drink after all. Maybe he’s dead!
Tommy's hopes of being crazy, poisoned and dead are dashed when he waits for a few moments only to feel explicitly not crazy, poisoned or dead.
Fact is, he’s not crazy enough to get himself to believe this is somehow a hallucination.
Fact is, he’s also not crazy enough to believe in aliens, but now he’s beginning to think he was just stupid instead of rational for believing otherwise. He stares out the window. It’s impossible not to.
He’s never given much thought to the stars before.
It’s a big world.
( There were two.
He didn’t want to think about just how many more there could be, but he knew. He knew there were two.
As he stares down at the collapsed form of an alien he can’t even begin to feel sorry for, he wonders where the other one has gone.
One punch had been enough to take out this one. He’s expecting half a punch to be enough for the little guy. If not, Tommy has already planned ahead. His back-up is to thrash around wildly until he breaks something, or dies. Before he can get probed or whatever.
Frankly, Tommy is hoping it doesn’t come to that. Or maybe he is. He can’t decide how badly he wants to beat someone right now.
They would definitely deserve it, considering they kidnapped him.
But one time this weird gangly kid he accidentally made believe was his friend showed him a video of something definitely not meant to be played on a school-issued chromebook, and said something about liking violence; because blood and shit never bothered him anyway or something nerdish like that. And it was super cringe because the kid definitely couldn’t hold his own in a fight and it ruined Tommy's love of violence forever and now he feels like a fucking loser whenever his fist finds its way to somebody’s face.
They always deserve it, but then he thinks about what that dweeb said and the whole vibe is just ruined.
He wonders what that kid is up to now. Probably doing better than him. On Earth. Watching live-leak videos. Living it up. Not abducted. Lucky freak.
And Tommy is here. Trying to find an exit, before something else finds him.
But here’s the situation: There were two.
And Tommy finds the second one. )
Tommy’s never wanted to go to space.
Space travel; ultimately, something at the back of most peoples’ minds. Talk of colonizing Mars, of reaching further than the stars, of finding other life, are the interests of people who don’t work a nine-to-five in the hopes they won’t be homeless in three years.
Nobody Tommy knows gives a fuck about space. Clara from work had emphatically told him last week that she’d blow up both Mars and the Sun if it meant their manager would give her Thanksgiving off. It probably wouldn’t, because Pete was a dick, but he didn’t tell her that.
The only people that care about space travel anymore are the people in Tommy’s phone, who have dinners at restaurants regularly. And have podcasts. And love bitcoin.
Tommy was much more concerned about global warming, or climate change—he guesses? He doesn’t know which is the right one. Admittedly, he doesn’t know much about it. He lets smarter people than him handle knowing about it. He handles recycling, like a good citizen. When he remembers to.
Also, the rockets they send into the sky explode forty-percent of the time.
So no, Tommy has never given space much more than an afterthought.
He imagines someone other than him would be much happier here, in his place. Maybe they would think it was cool. The antennae, the shark tail, the most technology he’d ever seen in one place—which was saying something considering one of his buddies had four monitors just to play Overwatch all day.
Tommy recalls when his appendix burst. He remembers laying in the hospital bed. He remembers telling the nurse he felt like he was about to die. He remembers her asking if he was serious.
They said he got a blood clot. The doctor had clapped him on his shoulder, laughed and told him he was a “lucky duck”.
Tommy remembers that now, when he finds a window, and instead of awe, there’s only that feeling.
That feeling like he’s about to die.
( This alien is nearly smaller than a middle schooler. Tommy isn’t fooled.
Considering it’s wearing the same uniform (albeit stupid and not really uniform looking) as its taller counterpart, he’s right to assume they’re coworkers. Presumably working for the same kidnapping gig.
And even if it were a middle schooler…
Tommy doesn’t think he’d feel bad hitting a middle schooler. Not if they shot him with a tranquilizer like a horse and scootered him off into fucking space. Middle schoolers are assholes anyways. And also only like three years younger than him. )
There’s banging on the door beside him: the second alien, as it had started up again. It had stopped for maybe ten minutes. For those ten minutes, Tommy was worried it had found another way in.
Those resounding, metallic bangs had filled his lungs with dread at first. They were loud, and they echoed, and he was horrified that soon enough more of them would come running to their allies' aid.
But, nobody else ever came.
So now, Tommy sits against the wall, wondering for how long he can sit there before the alien finds a way to break in and turn him into meat soup, with his legs splayed out in front of him. One of his shoelaces is untied. Idly, he bumps the tips of his shoes together.
A bead of blood tickles Tommy’s face as it caresses his cheek. The asshole had claws.
Tommy stares down at his dirty, half bitten nails. Something like flesh is stuck beneath them. Apparently, so did Tommy.
Tommy sighs, staring up at alien ceilings, breathing in alien air, probably and unfortunately digesting alien blood. He guesses he’s never breaking that two year Foster house streak. She probably thinks he ran away. He thinks what pisses him off the most. These aliens made him look like he couldn’t handle a measly fucking argument about curfew and ran away. He’s so pissed he could die.
Tommy stares at the unfamiliar planet, millions of miles away behind a glass pane, and still closer to him than home is.
Die.
Huh. With a quick heartbeat, and an impending sense of doom, he thinks: He just might.
( This alien doesn’t bleed the same as the first. It doesn’t bleed at all. )
The situation is this: Tommy has managed to lock himself in a room. There’s an alien on the other side of the door, extremely pissed off if the way it's yelling at him in a language he can’t hope to understand is any sort of tell.
Directly in front of him, there are what must be hundreds of buttons and levers all on one control panel lining the entire wall. Behind that, a window spans across the entirety of that wall.
Behind that, is where he needs to be. It’s not where he wants to be, but Tommy thinks, if he wants any chance at getting off this godforsaken UFO, that’s where he needs to go.
The planet is a large splatter of white, with dottings of red that break up the endless canvas of white. White swirls with an icy, sky blue. Is it water? Is it the atmosphere? Tommy doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care.
All he needs from the planet is to have suitable levels of oxygen, and places to hide.
He tries not to think about the fact that he doesn’t know what to do after that.
The alien on the other side of the door has gone quiet once more, though not entirely. Tommy can still hear it rummaging around. It must be trying to figure out another way to get the door open. He hears incomprehensible mutters coming through the wall.
Tommy’s gaze drifts down towards where his hand is gripped around a lightly glowing, rectangular object. A key-card. The aliens’ key-card. He’d done his best to not get any blood on it. It’d been a challenge, considering he had to all but rip it away from its owner.
There’s words on it. A name. A picture. It’s Tommy's way out.
( It tried tasing him. It looked scared. It looked confused. It looked angry. It looked human. )
Suddenly, Tommy is getting up.
That bone-deep fear that had kept him in place isn’t gone, but out of nowhere it had flipped on its head. He doesn’t want to be caught. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if that door opens.
In the blink of an eye, he’s before the mass of buttons and words he can’t understand, staring down at it in hopes of somehow changing that. It proves futile. But it doesn’t matter. His eyes don’t know where to land, but it doesn’t matter. His heart is beating out of his chest, but it doesn’t matter.
Because this is his chance, and he doesn’t know if he’ll get another one after this.
( It didn’t matter, because this was his chance. In its confusion, it left itself open. Tommy doesn’t know if he’ll get another chance after this. )
The key-card slots into a keyhole in the panel easily. Tommy was worried for a second he’d jam it in and break it.
The planet is getting bigger. Tommy doesn’t know what he pressed. Maybe, he’s doomed all of them to crash. Tommy can just barely see his reflection in the window, no longer dwarfing the planet, because it’s getting even bigger. Closer.
The ship moves, without him having to touch a single other thing. There’s no wheel, or anything resembling one, but Tommy doesn’t think he’d be able to get himself to grab it anyway if there was.
His ears are ringing. The ship rumbles beneath him as it moves, whirring, vibrating, a low thrumming. It feels like fireworks in his ribcage.
There’s a screen on the panel. A console. It looks strikingly similar to ones he’s seen before, on Earth. But he can’t mistake them for the same. The language is yet again one entirely alien to him. It’s rectangular, in ways Tommy can’t remember any human language being. Not to this extent. It looks a little Arabic, he thinks, but…not quite.
Yeah definitely not. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Words flit across the screen, telling Tommy things he is entirely ignorant to. There could be a “system failure, exploding in five minutes” on that screen or something, and Tommy would be none the wiser.
For the first time since getting kidnapped, Tommy's hand inches towards his pant pocket, towards the metallic weight that rests inside.
( Tommy slams his back to the door as it closes shut.
His heaving breaths nearly stop when he sees it.
A planet. It’s not Earth. )
They don’t crash. Whatever Tommy did or whatever had been done before Tommy got ahold of the control panel—it must’ve saved them from a fiery death. The ship seemed to have an auto-pilot. Like a Tesla. Kind of cool until he remembered where he was and what he was doing.
Kind of cool, until Tommy realized that outside the window was now a flurry of white.
He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s looking at. Possibly, imminent death.
Possibly, freedom.
…
But also just as likely imminent death.
Tommy makes a fist around the cold metal of his pocket knife.
The sound the window makes when he hits it with the hilt of his knife is dull, but so very loud. His arm reverberates painfully, feeling fuzzy for a second. Tommy knows, he knows it was a long shot in the first place—it’s space grade windows, whatever they’re fucking made out of, probably titanium and steel or some fucked up shit like that, but he still can’t help but swear under his breath when there’s not a single crack in it’s defenses. Frankly, it’d done more damage to him by doing nothing at all.
Tommy grinds his teeth.
He swears again, wiping the blood off his face, even if he effectively just smears it further.
Tommy turns to the door. It seems to taunt him with its silence. Tommy’s grip around his knife tightens, until he’s white-knuckled.
With shaky hands he doesn’t acknowledge, Tommy reaches for the key-card, and walks to the door.
His hand hovers just in front of the panel on the wall. The key-card seems to buzz as it gets closer, like it knows where it’s meant to go. It makes Tommy want to drop it. What are the chances the alien really has no way to get in here? What are the chances Tommy can just live here? Forever?
Problem is, Tommy does not want to live here. He doesn’t want to stay here for another second. And yet, his hand doesn’t get any closer to unlocking the door. What the hell is wrong with him?
Tommy is resourceful. Tommy is independent. Tommy is insanely charismatic and good-looking. Tommy hasn’t needed people to come save him for a long time now, not when he really needs it. Tommy is six-foot-one. Somehow, these facts do little to soothe him.
( What is he going to do?
Tommy feels all the adrenaline leave his body at once. He slumps down against the wall.
Tommy had barely felt like he was out for more than an hour when they sedated him.
But, he— he had to have been.
The planet. It’s not Earth.
This isn’t any planet in the milky-way.
He can’t take his eyes off of it.
What is he going to do?
What can he do? )
There’s a gentle beep when the key-card makes contact with the panel. It lights up in soft blue light, just as it had done when he’d slapped the key onto it the first time.
He’ll do what he can. Or he’ll have died useless, afraid, and frankly, a loser. All things he isn’t, so.
Tommy steps out, and resigns himself to either freedom, or death. He tries not to think about it too hard.
The halls all look the same. The atmosphere is a low deep gray-blue, due to minimal, sleek ground lights making themselves the only reason the halls aren’t pitched into pure darkness. There’s a barely there whirring active in the background at all times, coming from somewhere Tommy can’t place.
Small blessings; his sneakers do not squeak against the floor. In fact, they’re practically silent. He figures soon enough that it’s because the soles of his shoes are practically smooth, worn down easily because they fucking sucked. What once was a sign of poverty now aids him in stealth on an alien spaceship. Awesome. It’s the little things.
He’s throwing these pieces of shit out the moment he gets out of here and replacing them with Versace with the check he will be getting from the Government for letting him get alien abducted on American soil.
Tommy is suddenly broken out of his thoughts when he rounds a corner, and suddenly the hallway is different.
It’s different, because it’s ended. The hallway ends here. Because there’s a door that stops it. Tommy immediately zeroes in on the familiar panel that sits beside it. And then, what suspiciously looks a lot like a security camera above it.
Tommy flips it off, and takes five long strides directly towards the panel. It lights up with that familiar glow and it invokes the closest thing he’s felt to joy in the last twenty-four hours.
That joy is not long-lived.
“Oh, fuck me.” Tommy’s own voice nearly startles him, but he can’t find it in himself to think about it further, because there, where he’s pretty sure he needs to be, is that stupid fucking bug alien, and Tommy is mad. All of a sudden, Tommy is mad for the first time since finding himself on this stupid ugly hunk of metal. A record for him.
He’s mad, because this alien is way too fucking small to be posing this much of a problem for him, and yet it is, and it has. He’s mad, because his cheek still stings. He’s mad, because his arm still hurts from trying to break open the ships’ window with his knife he bought for twenty-bucks. He’s mad, because he’s probably already fired for not showing up for his afternoon shift he had today, because Pete is a piece of shit who hates Tommy for being the man he could never shape out to be. Shape, because he’s big fat and tubby and a piece of shit who he hates and—
The alien is on the ground, holding its jaw, shouting expletives at him, holding something— Oh, fucking— Jesus Christ, that’s a gun.
Shit.
Tommy’s backing away before he can think to do so, hands up. The back of his shirt is soaked with sweat.
“Hey man— no hard feelings, just— shit.” Tommy rambles, looking down the barrel of a gun that looks like it’ll turn him into gelatin. Or a gory mess against the metal.
The alien is very clearly not listening to him. It’s muttering to itself, mandibles clicking in a freaky bug way, but still managing to be so, so human. Tommy tries not to think about the human gun violence problem as the aliens’ finger plays around the trigger. It holds the place Tommy had hit tenderly, and Tommy almost feels like a piece of shit.
Almost, but he doesn’t. Because he is not a doormat.
So focused on the gun, Tommy almost doesn’t notice how the alien is looking at him less afraid now, and with something more marveling in its eyes. The thing has eyebrows, or something resembling them, and they’re furrowed. He thinks, its compound eyes are on his hands, that are still up in surrender.
The gun, ever so minutely, lowers.
It’s distracted.
In the next second, two things happen.
The gun goes off.
It puts a dark, messy hole in a console Tommy hadn’t noticed before now, before sliding across the ground to the other side of the room.
Tommy still has a hold on the alien's gunslinging arm, though not for long, because it’s shoving him off to scramble after the scattered weapon.
They’re in a hangar, Tommy realizes. A garage. There’s a giant door encapsulating an entire wall. It’s twitching open and closed in jerky, dangerous movements. He catches glimpses of that bright, inscrutable white from the outside peaking through. The console smokes, sparks flying off of it. There’s a voice on the intercom, robotic, and alien. There’s a flash of red light. Then, another flash. And another.
The room is flushed into a dark, rhythmic red pulsing as sirens flood Tommy’s ears.
That bright, white light catches his eye again. It almost looks like salvation. In that moment, it looks more like freedom than it ever has before.
Tommy hits the ground running.
Tommy runs for his life. He’s never ran faster. Jesus, he doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to live more.
The sound of his own heavy breaths in his ear are almost the only thing he can hear. Something cold crunches beneath his shoes — snow, he realizes belatedly. Whipping wind bites at his cheeks, and threatens to give him a headache. Unlike the sterile, still air he’d been breathing on that blasted ship, this air is fresh, icy, and extreme.
Each crunch beneath his feet leaves a trail for them to find him, and so Tommy has to keep running.
He has to keep running, until…
He doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know, because Tommy doesn’t know where he’s going. He doesn’t know where he is. The light bouncing off the snow is hurting his eyes. And he's definitely not wearing enough layers for this weather.
He has to keep running, because he thinks if he stops, he might start to realize just how cold it is.
Tommy begins to realize, that it’s not just wind nipping at his face. There’s snow. It’s snowing.
He doesn’t stop running. When he spares a glance backwards, he can no longer see the ship.
He can’t see anything.
A white blanket surrounds him. All encompassing, it is. Warm, it is not.
Tommy thought it couldn’t get worse than being trapped in a spaceship with alien, human traffickers.
Turns out, it most certainly can.