Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Two hours outside of Vegas, Ed started to have regrets. Not about leaving — that was the right fuckin’ call. But maybe he should have thought twice before storming out in the middle of the night and taking random turns off the Strip until he found himself headed north-ish with no actual destination in mind. Somehow, Ed had forgotten that Las Vegas was in the middle of the fucking desert. By the time his anger burned off, he had less than half a tank of gas in his Jeep Cherokee and no idea when he’d hit the next exit.

During the day, the Nevada desert reminded Ed of a whimsical Wile E. Coyote backdrop, with its cartoonish and surreal colors streaking by. In the dark, the emptiness of the desert was eerie — more horror than comedy. The road kept stretching out in front of his headlights, with no landmarks or road signs to mark the way. There were stars, though, brilliant ones, and if Ed squinted up past the glare of his own headlights he could swear the arm of the Milky Way was curving above him. . .

FUCK.

Ed swerved back across the double yellow line into his lane. Stay focused, Teach. Eyes on the road.

Ed leaned forward a bit over the steering wheel, shifted his hips and tried to de-wedgie his jeans. He was fighting an uphill battle with his own boredom and exhaustion. Two against one — not fucking fair. Ed rolled down the driver’s side window, hoping the cool desert air would wake him up.

That’s when it started to rain.

Not a cute little drizzle, either — big thumping raindrops dive-bombing through the window and spattering on Ed’s leather jacket. He hadn’t even seen the clouds roll in — but whatever. With his shitty luck, it made sense that Ed Teach would get caught in the only fuckin’ rainstorm in the state of Nevada. He rolled up the window with a sigh and a grunt and flicked on the wipers. They weren’t much help. The dark expanse of nothing in front of Ed’s windshield became a dark, blurry expanse of nothing. He thought about pulling over, but there wasn’t much of a shoulder, and he didn’t relish the idea of an 18-wheeler ramming into him from behind. Ed set his jaw and kept driving.

It was Izzy’s fault he was out here in the first place. Who did that fucker think he was, anyway? It was one thing when Izzy was just talking shit, telling Ed they needed to “modernize,” attract more L.A. moguls to the craps tables and give the geriatric slot machine ladies the boot — it was quite another for him to go over Ed’s head and bring in foreign investors to talk about selling the Queen Anne.

He was getting distracted again, and it was harder and harder to see that double yellow line. Even worse, the steady patter of the rain and the rhythmic thumping of the windshield wipers were starting to make Ed drowsy. He yawned. Fuck, he needed to wake up.

Ed fumbled with the stereo while trying to watch the road at the same time. He punched the FM radio button with a finger — fully expecting to find nothing but static and weird religious talk shows — but after a minute of fiddling around with the scan button he heard familiar power chords. Oh yeah, if anything could jumpstart Ed back into consciousness, it was Whitesnake. He joined in on the verse and the chorus, belting out “Here I go again on my owwwwwn!” — and yeah, it was on the fuckin’ nose considering he just walked out on his business partner of twenty years, but it’s not like there was anyone out here to judge him. If he wanted to scream-sing and toss his hair with David Coverdale, then that was his fucking business.

Coverdale was just about to ramp up to the next chorus when the damn radio went all staticky again.

“Hey, come on!” he groaned. So much for his moment of catharsis on the open road. He punched the radio button off and on again, hoping through some sort of technological miracle he could find the rock station’s signal again. But there was nothing. Not even static. He dared a glance away from the road and saw the digital display was effed up — it wasn’t showing real station numbers any more, just a jumbled mess. Dammit, he never should have gone to Ivan’s guy to replace the stereo.

“Well fuck you, piece of shit,” he grumbled as he punched the on/off button again and again. The display flashed 01123, then 5813, then nothing. Useless.

He squinted back at the road. He should pull over. His eyelids felt like lead, and he could hear a buzzing in the back of his skull. He needed sleep, he needed to get out of the fucking rain and the fucking desert and . . .

“The fuck?!”

There was something in the road. Barely a shadow from here, but there was something standing right on that middle yellow line. No, not something — someone. As Ed’s headlights illuminated more and more of the road ahead, he could see the distinct shape of a solidly-built man, legs a bit more than shoulder-width apart, rain pouring down his shoulders and arms.

Ed slowed. The rain was finally letting up, giving Ed a clearer view of the man — who was standing stock still about fifty yards ahead. Ed flicked on his high beams. The man was facing away from Ed’s car, and — holy shit? — entirely naked. The man was so still that Ed momentarily thought he was looking at a statue of some kind. Roman, maybe? His skin was pale in the cold light of the high beams and the muscles in his arms and legs looked like marble. But the longer he looked, the more he noticed, There was a slight twitch in his fingers. The wind ruffled his hair, even as the rain matted it down again.

“What’s this idiot doing?” Ed felt a little hysterical, because of course this whole thing was a hallucination. There was no naked man in a freak rainstorm in the middle of the Nevada desert, he was just fucking delusional. He was going to turn around now, go back to the last exit, wake up tomorrow, and have a good laugh with Izzy.

Izzy. Shit. Ed wasn’t going back now, was he?

He put the car in park and set the e-brake. The probably-hallucinated man’s shoulders shook a little as the wind picked up. Shit, he must be freezing.

Ed unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car, rain spattering his face. Ed knew the rain was real, at least — he could feel his hair starting to frizz unevenly, and in his dreams his hair always looked fantastic no matter the weather. Still, he couldn’t be sure what this was — maybe the start of a nightmare, maybe he’d crashed the car and he was hovering between life and death. In his half-awake logic, Ed decided if he held on to the car door he couldn’t be fully swept away into the hallucination.

Ed called out to the stranger. “Hey mate, you alright?” The man made no response, though Ed swore he saw a muscle in his shoulder twitch. “Mate, it’s the middle of the night and you’re — ”

Ed wasn’t sure how he was going to finish that sentence: “You’re naked?” Yeah, he’s probably fuckin’ aware of that. “You’re alone?” So are you, Edward. Way to make this poor guy feel safe. “You’re gorgeous?” Good grief, get a grip, man, it’s route 93, not fuckin’ single’s night at Jackie’z.

But it turns out it didn’t matter what Ed was going to say, because the next thing that happened eradicated every normal thought from his brain.

First, the rain stopped. Not gently either - it stopped with force, as though someone had turned off a tap. There was a change in the air, a dry staticky pressure, not quite warm or cold, but some other electric sensation on Ed’s skin that made all the hair on his arm stand on end. Ed smelled what he thought might be burnt sugar. Ed heard an electronic whine above him.

He looked up.

SHIIIIT.

He shouldn’t have looked up.

A thing, an enormous shiny silver thing, was hovering in the sky — centered on the spot where the naked man stood. And, okay, Ed had lived in Nevada long enough that he’d heard stories about things like this one. When you run a hotel/casino/bar on the cheaper end of the Strip, you meet someone who’s had an “experience” about twice a month. As far as Ed was concerned, it didn’t matter if the little green men themselves walked into his casino — so long as their money was green, too.

But now, Ed flashed back to all the stories he’d heard about dark nights in the desert between Vegas and Reno, far from the neon of the Strip. People who had gone on a camping trip or a late-night drive and come back changed.

Ed didn’t want to be changed. Not here, not now, and definitely not by a silver flying saucer.

The wind picked up and blew Ed’s hair back as he craned his neck to try to take in the full shape and size of it. The saucer itself was eerily quiet, aside from the high-pitched alternating frequency that seemed to be coming from a central point on its silver shell. Ed was so dumbstruck by the size of it — how could it be so big and come out of absolutely nowhere? — that he nearly forgot about the man on the road until Ed heard him cry out.

“I’m here!” The man raised his arms to the sky in supplication. His voice broke a little. “I’m ready! Take me!”

Take you? Take you where? Ed felt off-kilter, the buzzing in his brain and the static in his arms seemed to change pitch along with the sound from the saucer.

“Please?” There was something so desperate in the man’s voice — something hopeful and lost at the same time. Ed’s heart broke for him, even though he had no fucking clue what the fuck was going on.

The electric whine from the ship amped up. The silver surface seemed to ripple, or maybe it was folding back into itself like four-dimensional origami. A purplish beam of light radiated out of its center, but the center was all around them and light and sound were one and the same. Ed tasted time on his tongue. The man’s arms were still raised to the sky, shaking with effort now — or maybe Ed was shaking and the man was holding still. They stood there for both an eternity and negative 12.3 seconds, and then. . .

He was gone.

“No! Wait! Where are you —” Ed whipped around, hair flying in all directions, trying to see the man in the darkness, but the brightness of the purple beam had left him night-blind and somehow Ed knew he hadn’t just fucked off into the desert. He turned his gaze back up to the ship, which retracted the purple beam. Its surface rippled once more. “What are you —”

And then Ed was in the driver’s seat of the car, rain pouring down on the windshield, wipers fighting to keep up. He started breathing again. Fuck, how long had he been holding his breath? Ed had the distinct sensation that he had followed the Roadrunner right off a cliff and made the terrible mistake of looking down. He shivered as he sucked air back into his lungs.

The radio snapped back on of its own accord, scaring Ed half out of his skin. The display whipped through a series of nonsense numbers, blasting out random staticky sounds. Shit, maybe Ed hadn’t hit the bottom yet. Maybe he was still falling. He bit his lip and pushed the scan button, hoping he could will the universe (or at least the radio) back into normalcy - or at least get the thing to turn off. For once, Ed’s prayers were answered — the rock station came back, Whitesnake was still walking the only road they’d ever known. Ed let out a long shaky breath and rested his forehead against the steering wheel. Relief washed through his body in waves.

The universe made sense — the universe was fine. It was Ed who was fucked up, Ed who was out here having delusions fed by adrenaline and loneliness and too many nights listening to Jack regurgitate whatever he’d read in the National Enquirer.

Unless —-

Nope, Ed wasn’t gonna go there. Not gonna give it another thought until he’d had a full forty winks.

Ed turned over the engine and started down the road again. He slowed imperceptibly when he reached the spot where the man had stood. It wasn’t real, he wasn’t real, Ed told himself.

“I need to fucking sleep,” he groaned to no one — especially not to whoever was driving that fucking thing in the sky that he absolutely did not see.

He hadn’t gone more than a mile before a road sign flashed in front of his headlights.

This way to the

Extra Ter-REST-Rial

Motel, Campground & Diner

Visit our gift shop round the back!

NEXT EXIT

Ed tried to absorb the words but his brain was sluggish. There were four icons at the bottom of the sign: A bed, a tent, a fork, and a little alien head.

Bed. Bed bed beddy bed.

The exit wasn’t so much of an exit as much as it was a right turn off the highway. Ed had never been so relieved to see neon lights on the horizon.

The Extra Ter-REST-Rial motel, campground, and diner (with gift shop round the back!) was, in reality, just a circle of prefab double-wide trailers with a few saucy custom modifications, plus a scattering of fire rings that delineated the campsites in the hard-packed desert sand. A bright green neon sign blinkered over the main trailer, which housed the diner and gift shop. Stede had tried three times to get the full name of the business spelled out in neon letters, but the damn sign came back wrong every time. He finally compromised on a cartoon green alien giving the peace sign. It didn’t matter. The few visitors who made their way to the motel had usually learned about it by word of mouth. And the visitors that Stede most fervently hoped for . . . well, they weren’t the type to follow neon signs off the highway.

“I’m just saying, boss,” Roach said as he loaded beef chuck into the grinder, “You could make a lot more cash if you just set up an RV hookup out there.”

“And I have told you,” Stede raised his voice as Roach turned on the noisy meat grinder. “RVs are for antisocial, planet-burning narcissists.”

“Suit yourself!” Roach shrugged, and returned to extruding tomorrow’s burgers.

Stede grimaced. He ate meat — and he loved those burgers (though Roach refused to reveal his recipe for the diner’s secret “Flying Sauce-er” - some sort of green, spicy condiment the texture of ketchup) — but he was a bit put off when he had to see how the sausage—er, burgers were made.

“Doesn’t the work ever . . . bother you, given your former vocation?” Stede asked, wincing a little.

“You mean the vet thing?” Roach looked up from his work with surprise. “Some animals are cute — some animals are tasty! Besides, knives are knives—“

“Meat is meat, yes, I know.” Stede wrinkled his nose at his cook’s favorite aphorism. “I’ll, um . . . just check in with Olu then, shall I?” Stede didn’t wait for a response before exiting the diner trailer and ducking out into the cool night air.

The bright motion-detector lights outside the trailers were a concession Stede had made to guest safety — though he’d much rather have had an unobstructed view of the stars. They felt so much closer here than back in his hometown, where the stars were only on display at the planetarium, or, if he was lucky, at the second-run movie house. As a kid, Stede regularly blew his allowance just to see a B-movie featuring mothman, or Godzilla, or, best of all, alien invasions. His father, of course, thought this was a ridiculous use of “capital,” as he called it. He didn’t object, however, when Stede wanted to use his meager savings to invest in a ham radio kit. Engineering was an appropriate, grounded profession for a young man to pursue. He didn’t know that Stede had no intention of staying grounded — not if he could help it.

Stede sighed at the memory of building that little radio in his childhood bedroom, thousands of miles from here. He’d come so far, and yet . . .

Stede shook his head and brought himself back to the present — the night air on his skin, the knowledge that invisible stars shone above, just outside the flood lights. The earth beneath Stede’s boots was dry and cracked — it hadn’t rained in weeks. Even the Joshua tree at the center of the ring of trailers looked parched. Stede regarded it with concern.

“Jim says it’s fine, Cap!” Olu emerged from the gift shop trailer with a dolly piled high with boxes. “Don’t worry about Karl. He’s a desert tree. He belongs out here.”

Stede bristled — much like his beloved Joshua tree. “Never said he didn’t!”

Olu ignored him. He dragged the dolly down the ramp and rolled it in front of where Stede stood in a pool of light.

“Just got in these new soaps — thought we could put samples in the rooms. Might encourage customers to take home a little piece of paradise?”

Olu pulled a box cutter from his pocket and opened the top cardboard box. A whoosh of lavender hit Stede’s nose. Inside, there were little clear glycerin soaps, each with a tiny alien figurine trapped inside.

“These will do nicely, Olu, thank you.” Stede said, even though some part of him was distressed by the little figures trapped inside each bar of soap. How long would they have to wait to be freed from their glycerin prisons? How many showers? How many baths?

Stede tried to stay positive for the crew, but he knew the business wasn’t doing well. He came out to the Nevada desert five years ago with a plan (well, fine, not a plan, but definitely a dream!) and now . . . now that dream felt further away than ever before. The lot of them were trying — they all contributed ideas on how to keep the business afloat — and Stede loved a good group brainstorming sesh — but he knew that if things didn’t change soon, he would have to shutter the Extra Ter-REST-Rial. And if that happened . . . well, all Stede’s other dreams would probably die, too.

Olu hesitated a moment before making his way to the guest rooms, his hand hovering over Stede’s shoulder like he wanted to give him a squeeze. Stede wouldn’t have minded that, even though it was surely inappropriate for his employee to comfort him. But Olu put his hands back on the dolly.

“Have a good night, Captain. Maybe get some rest, yeah?” Olu regarded him for a moment, his expression full of kindness, and perhaps a touch of concern. Stede nodded back, knowing that in reality he was unlikely to get much rest tonight. Olu heaved the dolly back onto its wheels and made his way to the converted trailers that housed half a dozen modest motel rooms.

Stede counted himself lucky to have Oluwande. He was lucky to have the whole crew, really. Each one had stumbled into his life almost by accident. Olu was the first — he’d gotten a flat tire on his way to see a friend, an ecologist working in a nearby state park. Stede came to his aid. Well, Olu changed the tire, but Stede provided some very helpful advice on lugnuts as well as half a turkey sandwich. Over lunch, Olu explained that he planned to road trip back and forth from Reno every weekend to see this Jim person — though they weren’t together, apparently. Stede was gobsmacked that the young man would make such a commitment (while driving a Toyota Corolla, no less!) for someone he seemed to care about very deeply. He offered him a job and lodgings that very afternoon.

Frenchie and Wee John came next, fleeing a poorly-planned psychedelic arts and music festival. They were a very friendly duo, although every time Stede tried to ask about their pasts he got a shrug from Frenchie and a “the less said, the better” from Wee John. The two of them were terribly resourceful, though. They’d sewn the curtains for all the rooms themselves and had a knack for finding salvaged furniture on the cheap. Stede offered them each separate lodgings, but they were apparently just as happy to share a room in the trailer that served as reception for the motel.

Roach was their most recent addition — the veterinarian had come in a few times for lunch after tending to the cattle on a nearby ranch. He complained about Stede’s “weak-ass cooking” so much he finally jumped behind the counter and never left.

Stede was proud of what he’d built. The motel was a little safe haven for fish out of water (well, as much as it’s possible to keep fish safe in the desert). The crew seemed to accept Stede’s penchant for all things extraterrestrial as a charming quirk. The crew was certainly a bit geeky: Wee John and Roach often dragged Stede into their debates about the best retro sci fi films, and didn’t mind when Stede rambled on about The Day the Earth Stood Still for the umpteenth time. Frenchie was interested in the unexplained, but it mostly amounted to an aversion to cats (especially Stede’s cat) and an affinity for crystals. Olu was Stede’s closest confidant among the crew, and probably the most pragmatic among them, but he’d also introduced Stede to the wonders of USENET and the World Wide Web.

Stede had never told the crew why he’d built the motel, or how he’d found himself in the Nevada desert. He guessed that the crew thought of him as a wealthy eccentric who’d abandoned a comfortable life to chase a fairly ridiculous dream. They didn’t know the half of it. If they’d understood the real reason he’d stayed all these years in the middle of nowhere . . . Well, Stede wanted to be a good boss, a good “captain,” as Olu had taken to calling him. And to do that, perhaps it was best to keep some things to himself.

Ed parked in front of . . . ok, well, he wasn’t sure exactly what he was parked in front of. There was a bright green neon sign in the shape of a classic alien — bug eyes, guitar pick-shaped face, the whole bit. The alien was either flashing the universal sign for peace, or some sort of otherworldly sign for “fuck you, Earthling!” — Ed couldn’t be sure. The sign sat atop a large trailer, which seemed to be the king trailer of about half a dozen trailers dotting the landscape. Now, Ed didn’t exactly consider the Queen Anne to be any sort of fancypants hoity toity establishment, but it did have a sign for reception — something that the Extra Ter-REST-Rial seemed to have skipped in favor of a 7-foot-tall pole with various hand-drawn signs nailed to it.

From bottom to top it read:

➡️LAS VEGAS 147 mi

↩️LODGING .01 mi

➡️BRISTOL 5,000 mi

⤵️FOOD .01 mi

➡️BELFAST 5,000 mi 8,000 km

↪️GIFTS .02 mi

⬅️AUCKLAND 7,000 mi

⬅️RENO 339 mi

⬆️MARS 140,000,000 mi

All Ed wanted was to figure out which trailer might miraculously contain a bed and a pillow (or really any horizontal surface larger than the front seat of the Cherokee). He twisted around trying to imagine which way that damn loopy “lodging” arrow was pointing. He tipped his head to the side to get a better angle on the situation (oh fuck, his neck was pissed off from all that driving) and his loose, damp hair dripped on the parched earth.

Just as Ed was about to give up any hope, he heard a voice calling from the trailer to the left of the pole.

“Oi! You looking for something, mate?” A man with a Bristolean accent and a curly goatee poked his head out of the trailer door.

“Uh yeah. . .” Ed realized he hadn’t spoken aloud to anyone since the thing happened, and his voice felt odd and unfamiliar in his throat. “Could use a room?”

“Ah, that’s perfect then!” The man swung the door out all the way. “C’mon in! We’re the room people.”

Thank fuck. Ed sleepily loped over to the trailer. The lanky Room Person held the screen door for him and ushered him inside.

“I’m Frenchie, by the way. That’s Wee John.” Wee John nodded to Ed from behind a too-small metal desk.

There were a few indicators that this might be “reception” for the motel: Keys dangled from a row of hooks on the wall behind Wee John (each one attached to a little plastic alien keychain) and the desk held a blocky computer that Ed assumed was for bookings (impressive for a place way out in bumblefuck — some of the hotels in Vegas hadn’t bought computerized systems yet).

Otherwise, the trailer was all maximalist kitsch: A model of a Klingon bird of prey dangled from the ceiling, posters for sci-fi B-movies competed for wall space with Polaroid photos of the Nevada landscape, some taken during the day, some that looked like amateur attempts at nighttime photography.

“You can have a seat in the sitting nook. It’s only for sitting, mind you.” Wee John pointed at a camp chair in the corner beneath a shelf containing a neglected echeveria plant, a stuffed Loch Ness monster, and a plastic yeti.

“It’s just for sitting,” Frenchie repeated. He held out a plastic bowl full of shiny green-and-gold candies. “Want a mint?”

Ed took the proffered Andes Mint (fuck yes, chocolate), then another, and a third — and finally Frenchie just handed Ed the whole bowl. Ed sat down in the camp chair, which was a bit deeper than he expected. He tried to look cool and not at all like an upturned turtle as Wee John and Frenchie conferred over a new-looking computer.

“So, um, about a room. . .” Ed began.

Frenchie held up one finger sternly and went back to conferring with Wee John over the little computer terminal. Ed would have been more ticked off about the supremely weird customer service, but he really did love Andes Mints. Besides, the chocolate was slowly bringing him back to the land of the living.

Somewhat restored by the sugar pulsing through his bloodstream, Ed took another look around the trailer. There were a few . . . oddities. The door to Ed’s left was slightly ajar, and he could spy two beds inside the next room. He supposed it wasn’t that strange to have the proprietors living on the premises. Ed had crashed in the penthouse suite at the Queen Anne often enough. But the door itself had an enormous “No Cats” sign, which someone had amended to read, “Especially Klaatu.” Perhaps more worryingly, to Ed’s right, there was a stack of boxes labeled “CAUTION: EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE” next to what Ed was fairly confident was a flamethrower.

But what kept drawing Ed’s eye was the collection of Polaroids tacked up just over his left shoulder. What Ed had initially interpreted as landscapes could be better described as skyscapes. In one, a group of blurry purple lights formed a perfect pentagon against a deep black sky. In another, a row of puffy clouds were interrupted by a startlingly regular, smooth shape, as though someone had dented the sky with the edge of a butter knife. Yesterday, Ed would have dismissed the subjects of these photos as low-flying planes or swamp gas or outright insanity — but now. . .

“What — what are these?” Ed stuttered, touching the white edge of one of the photos. It was labeled “July, 1993” in a neat hand — just a couple months ago.

“Oh,” Wee John said with a dismissive click of his tongue, “That’s more the boss’s thing than ours.”

Ed turned around, “The boss?”

“That’d be Stede,” Frenchie interjected. “And, look, if you’re here for. . .” Frenchie whistled and pointed skyward, “the you know who’s from you know where — I don’t judge.”

Wee John gave Frenchie some serious side eye and mumbled, “Maybe you don’t. . .”

“Stede’s not so bad, is he? Four week vacations, health insurance, free lodging. . . “

“Yeah,” Wee John replied, “but in my last job I got to set shit on fire.”

Frenchie took a moment to consider this. “Yeah, that’s a fair point.”

Between the sugar and the exhaustion, Ed couldn’t do much except watch this conversation play out like a television program. He wasn’t sure how to hit the pause button and ask, again, for one of the rooms that these alleged Room People had control over — but as he was about to speak, the trailer door opened again and a new voice rang out, familiar Kiwi vowels echoing in Ed’s brain.

“Frenchie! Wee John! Oluwande’s distributing some very yummy soaps around the property, so please don’t mind him — ah, I see we have a new arrival!”

The man turned to face Ed, and time stood still. This man — the swoop of his blond hair, the way his shoulders moved beneath his short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt, the pale marble color of his forearm as he extended a hand to Ed — this man was making all of Ed’s sleep-drunk senses jumble together. It couldn’t be, it was impossible, and yet —

“It’s you!” Ed scrambled to get out of the camp chair, and instead tipped himself (and the bowl of mints) over entirely.

The blond man rushed to his aid, gripping his arm and pulling him up to standing with surprising ease. And then all sorts of new circuits got scrambled in Ed’s brain, because he was practically nose-to-nose with an incredibly handsome man who smelled like lavender and had a dimple as deep as the Grand Canyon.

“You’ve heard of me?” the man asked, smiling bright as a sunrise.

“I — I . . .” Ed tried to get a grip on reality, but it was being a slippery motherfucker tonight. “I saw you. On the highway, about half a mile from here.”

The man frowned in confusion. “You saw . . . me?”

“I saw — look, I don’t know what I saw, mate.” The memories were sliding around Ed’s brain, getting slipperier by the minute. The inside of his skull felt like one of those stupid plastic maze puzzles with the little ball bearings inside. “I saw someone who looked just like you. And there was a storm, and then no storm. And lights and — fuck, this is going to sound insane, but I saw the man get abducted by —”

The motel proprietor’s eyes widened and he grabbed Ed’s arm, pulling him as far from Frenchie and Wee John as the tiny room allowed. He spared a glance back at them, and both very politely pretended not to listen in while they fiddled with the computer.

“You’ve seen them,” he whispered. It wasn’t a question — it was a statement, one filled with wonder and awe. Ed suddenly felt reality slide a little to the left, and it didn’t agree with the Andes Mints in his stomach. “You’ve had an experience.”

“Dunno if that’s something I want to have, mate.” Ed regretted the words as soon as they came out. The man’s face shifted into something more cordial and cool, and he took a step back from Ed.

“How rude of me to assume . . .” he cleared his throat. “Well, I haven’t even properly introduced myself. Stede Bonnet, proprietor of the Extra Ter-REST-rial.”

He offered Ed a firm handshake.

“Ed Teach.”

The handshake lingered a beat longer than Ed expected. Stede’s hand was pleasantly cool and the press of his hand felt grounding. It was the most real and solid thing he’d experienced all night. He hoped it was real, anyway, because it felt really, really good to hold — to shake Stede’s hand.

“Uh, we’re just having a bit of trouble with the computer . . .” Wee John interrupted. He poked at the keyboard while Frenchie leaned over the monitor and fiddled with the on-off switch.

“Again?” Stede huffed. “I just bought it!”

“I think it’s cursed.” Frenchie said with absolute seriousness.

Stede pursed his lips and put his hands on his hips. “Frenchie, we’ve discussed this and it’s not—“

Wee John took his hands off the keys and waved them in the air. “If that thing’s cursed then I’m not messing with it.”

“As I have explained before, computers have crystals, and crystals attract —”

“It’s unplugged.” Ed held up the dangling end of the cord, and carefully plugged it back into the wall socket next to the flamethrower as Stede, Frenchie, and Wee John looked on, wide-eyed. “So, about that room?”

Stede let out a sweet, nervous giggle. “Of course! You must be — goodness you must be exhausted.” He leaned over the desk and plucked a key from a peg on the wall. “Follow me!”

Stede ignored Frenchie and Wee John’s protests that they hadn’t checked Ed in properly, and led Ed out into the clear night air.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you back there,” Stede said, looking a bit sheepish as he led Ed around the corner.

“M’not afraid,” Ed mumbled, a knee-jerk response if there ever was one. Ed most definitely was afraid. He’d spent most of the last year in a never-ending loop: Wake up, meetings, argue with Iz about something fuckin’ pointless, more meetings, order takeout, sleep. Ed had meant to shake things up, get out of town, get away from the rat race. But whatever this was, it was earthquake-levels of shaky, and Ed very much wanted to crawl back to his routine.

Stede stopped suddenly between two trailers and turned back toward Ed. The sky was so very clear here, and Stede’s fair hair was framed by starlight.

“You know, it’s okay if you are afraid.” Stede leaned an arm against one of the trailers, tilted his head toward the sky for a moment, and then back at Ed, wearing a half-smile that Ed could just make out in the darkness. “We have a little saying around here. Or, at least I do. We talk it through as a crew.”

Ed swallowed. His mouth was dry. He kept flashing back to the man in the road, the lights in the sky, the smell of rain on the parched earth. The memory was evaporating, little by little, the same way that the dampness in Ed’s hair was fading in the dry desert air.

“The storm — the storm didn’t come through here, did it?”

Stede shook his head knowingly. “We haven’t had rain in weeks.”

Ed nodded, took a step closer to Stede. “And those photos, they’re from other people who saw little green men or whatever?”

“I honestly can’t say whether they’re green, or anything about their stature.” Stede’s voice was light, but Ed heard what Stede didn’t say. He didn’t say Ed was crazy. He didn’t say it was a military plane or a weather balloon. Stede believed.

Ed squeezed his eyes shut and hoped the next time he opened them the world might make sense. Instead, he just saw Stede, his expression a mix of caution and hope.

“I think I am afraid,” Ed said, the words tumbling out like a gambler’s dice. And god, yes, it felt good to say it out loud. “But I gotta know, mate. . . did I really see a UFO?”

“Wanna do something weird?” Stede asked, his voice barely above a whisper. Ed realized he had somehow stepped even closer to Stede, close enough to hear the fabric of his shirt rustle in the breeze.

Before Ed could think, he nodded. If Ed was going to sleep tonight — real sleep — he needed answers, and Stede was the only person in hundreds of miles who might have them.

Stede unlocked the door to trailer number 3, and Ed followed him inside.