I licked my lips and cautiously met the devil’s-theturoch’seyes.They were yellow, and almost sparkling with eagerness.
“You can understand me?”I croaked out.He nodded and lifted the little piece of metal he’d tried to hand me before.That was probably the translator.
I hesitated a moment, torn between instinctive fear and the desperate need to know more.
“You have to stick that in my ear?”I clarified, noting the grime and blood spattered over his hands and arms.“Like pierce the skin?”
He nodded again and flicked on long, furry ear toward me, showing off the matching glint of metal hidden in the curve of cartilage.
“Okay,” I slowly reached out and plucked the tiny object from his calloused fingertips.“Let me just-”
I stared down at the slightly rusty translator and looked back at the filthy male who’d handed it to me.
“I’m going to disinfect this really quick.”I said.There was a jar of alcohol wipes on my work station and I grabbed a handful.Ripping open the first packet, I laid the wipe down on the table in front of me and used another wipe to clean the tiny translator as well as I could.
Hopefully the rust wouldn’t give me tetanus.
Was I really doing this?The moment I could properly talk to this alien, any delusions of normalcy would be toast.Already I knew more about the outside world than I had five minutes ago.
I knew what aliens had invaded Earth, which were friendly, which were not.I knew other humans had escaped the initial attack, I knew I could leave and talk to someone other than myself.
Did I want that?Could I handle the new reality past the safe bubble of the spa?
I didn’t know.But for some reason I kept moving.Laying the (hopefully) sterilized translator on the clean wipe, cleaning my own hands and then thoroughly wiping down my left ear.Once I was confident I’d killed as many germs as I could, I looked back at the translator, noting the semi-sharp end of the metal post.It was almost as thick as a small screw, way more painful than the needle that had pierced my lobes as a child.
There was no way I could force myself to shove that through my own ear.Hell, I was still standing akimbo because my unfinished Brazilian stung like a bitch.
“Can you help me?”I asked, hesitantly.It felt weird to let a total stranger stab me, let alone an alien I couldn’t understand.
The red guy nodded and reached for the translator.
“Wait, wait!”I yelped, watching as his blood and dirt covered hand paused an inch from my recently cleaned translator.“Let me wipe you down.”
He froze and darted a confused look at me as I snatched another packet, ripped it open and flapped the thin wipe open.I grabbed his thick wrist and held his hand between us as I quickly scrubbed the grime from his brilliant skin.One wipe wasn’t near enough surface area to cover his huge hand, and I had a small pile of dirty wipes and scattered wrappers by the time I was confident I wouldn’t get some terrible infection if he touched the translator.
I swiped a clean wipe over his knuckles one last time just to be sure and realized what I’d just done.I was touching an alien, I’d grabbed an alien, and manhandled his huge hand like it was nothing.
My throat tightened for a moment as I stared down at his hand.He had five fingers, just like a human, and short, blunt nails over dark red nail beds.There were dozens of tiny scars over his boxy knuckles, and tiny speckles of purple dotting the back of his hand.His skin was hot and smooth despite the scars, and he felt bizarrely normal compared to how he looked.
I looked up at him through my lashes and felt my face flush when he grinned lazily at me.
“Sorry, that was...aggressive,” I muttered.Both his ears perked at my words and I spotted his short tail lashing excitedly behind him.There was a little tuft of black hair at the end of it, and for a brief moment the hulking male looked cute?
I really had lost my mind.
I dropped his hand and pushed the translator across the table toward him.
“Just use your clean hand to touch it,” I mumbled, reluctantly moving around the table to stand next to him.My hair was already tied back, because waxing yourself with loose hair was just asking for a disaster, and I pulled the ends over my shoulder and tilted my head to the side to give him access to my sacrificial ear.
He said something in reply, his voice a low rumble that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle with something that wasn’t quite fear.
I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself.“I’m ready.”
The alien laid a heavy hand on the back of my neck and tilted my head slightly, his skin burning against mine.A tiny gasp escaped me at the contact and he rumbled something else I couldn’t understand before grabbing my ear and quickly forcing the metal through it before I could flinch.
I yelped and instinctively pulled away, almost falling before he caught my arm.
“Over quickly,” a cheerful male voice reassured me.
