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.

Chapter Text

All five of the Extra Ter-REST-rial motel room trailers were furnished the same way: Queen-sized bed, writing desk, slightly uncomfortable chair, TV/VHS player, thrifted table lamp. Stede always intended to move out of Trailer 3 and into more permanent lodgings, but somehow he’d never gotten around to it. Truth be told, Stede didn’t really mind the spartan accommodations, especially since they left enough room for his VHS collection.

“And this,” he told Ed, “is the auxiliary video collection.” Stede pulled aside a curtain and revealed his closet, which contained floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked to the brim with videos of Bigfoot, Nessie, and his favorites — UFO sightings.

“Wow.” Ed said, in a breathless way that seemed — well, definitely surprised. Maybe impressed? Probably not.

As Ed turned around in a tight circle, inspecting the whole of the trailer, Stede braced himself for the familiar sting of rejection. Everyone else had had a go at Stede Bonnet over the years — boys at school, his ex-wife . . . and even though the crew were kind enough, Stede always had the sense they were indulging him. He let them borrow his tapes of old movies, of course, but he’d never told them about these tapes. Not one of them, not even Olu, could truly understand what they meant to Stede. These grainy, shaky videos were evidence that the world didn’t have to be boring and gray and flat. There were still things that defied explanation, things that had to be seen up close, things that had to be experienced.

Stede honestly wasn’t sure why he’d decided to share all this with the stranger who’d wandered into reception. But there was something about him — despite the incredibly cool leather jacket and boots and the intimidating number of tattoos — something that made Stede feel he could trust Ed.

Ed had seen something on the road, something that had shaken him to the core. Stede recognized the look in his eyes — the terror and the wonder rolled up together. Stede once felt those things, too. He couldn’t let Ed sit with those feelings alone.

Ed completed his little circle and gestured at the cluttered desk. “Do you have two ham radios?”

“I know, it’s overkill.” Stede sighed.

“I love it,” Ed said, eyes wide, “You’re a lunatic, and I love it.”

Stede couldn’t help smiling at that, even as he tried to brush off the compliment. “Well, it’s just a hobby. . .”

Ed picked up a pen from the media console. It was Stede’s favorite pen, it had a little flying saucer inside that floated back and forth when you tilted it. Ed watched the saucer slide back and forth with deep concentration, like he was working up to something.

“Mate, this hobby of yours — is it . . .” Ed looked sidelong at Stede through his eyelashes, shy and vulnerable and — oh hell — devastatingly handsome. “Is it just smoke and mirrors for the tourists? Or is what I saw — what I think I saw — real?”

Stede hesitated. He didn’t want to push Ed too far, too fast. “Do you want it to be real?”

Ed straightened and got that deep furrow going in his brow again. “I want the truth.”

“I want to show you something, if you don’t mind. . .”

Ed nodded eagerly, “Yeah, ‘course.”

Stede could have found the VHS tape he wanted even if he was blindfolded. The corners of the yellow cardboard box had gone soft from being handled too much. Stede had labeled every possible side of the tape with “DO NOT ERASE” in black sharpie.

“This,” Stede tapped the box thoughtfully. “This was the first time — the only time — I saw them with my own eyes. I haven’t watched it in a long time, actually . . . ”

Stede trailed off, not sure how to explain that this tape both brought him incredible comfort and made him desperately sad at the same time. Anyway, he needed to get to the VHS player behind Ed. There wasn’t usually a second person in this space with him, so he did an awkward shimmy around Ed, their chests brushing together as they switched places, both of them muttering apologies for invading the other one’s space.

Ed smelled like leather and rain and something not altogether of this Earth — and immediately Stede felt like he’d crossed a line by just thinking about what Ed smelled like. He tried to hide his blush as he popped in the video.

Immediately, there was another problem — the best (and only) way to see the TV was from the bed. They both stared at the burgundy duvet, as if trying to work out a complex math function.

“Ah, um, make yourself at home?” Stede said in what he hoped was an inviting and not at all lascivious tone.

But Ed just kicked off his boots and jumped onto the bed ass-first, swinging his legs in front of him and propping himself up with a couple of pillows. Stede giggled and did the same, taking the spot next to Ed.

“Alright, before we watch this—“ Stede began, feeling suddenly like he’d invited a perfect stranger to read his diary.

“Don’t tell me, you are an alien.” Ed leaned in so his loose hair touched Stede’s shoulder.

“Ha, no.”

“You’ve managed to capture aliens fucking?” Ed’s voice was light, teasing — but not mean.

“Never!” Stede said in mock offense.

“Well then, that’s enough warnings for me — on with the show!” Ed gestured to the remote in Stede’s hands.

Stede took a deep breath and pressed play. There was a long lead-up to the bit he wanted to show Ed — first the static at the start of the tape, then several bits and pieces of video that he’d recorded over — a Campbell’s soup commercial, a snippet of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and, embarrassingly—

“Mate, is this your wedding video?”

“Oh, ah — forgot that bit was on there.” Stede winced. “The wife was none too pleased that I recorded over that.”

“Wife?” Ed asked, picking at the edge of a pillow.

“Well, ex-wife.”

Ed chuckled and let out a low whistle. “I’d think so after you recorded over your own wedding.”

Stede smiled weakly and looked down at the duvet. “That wasn’t the reason.”

Ed didn’t ask anything after that, and Stede wasn’t in the habit of blurting out “I’m gay!” all over the place, even if Frenchie kept saying, “it’s the nineties, Stede” whenever the topic came up. Stede knew he was enough of an oddity to people as it was. No need to add another layer.

“I’ll just fast forward a bit. . .” Stede raced past the minister droning on about a lighthouse until — “Aha! Here it is.”

The picture changed again to an inky blue-black. The time and date in the right corner read: AUGUST 14, 1988, 4:37 AM.

The picture jiggled and there was a lot of rustling in the background, and then Stede’s face came into the frame. Stede watched himself on screen, silently noting that there were fewer lines on his face five years ago, but that his haircut — shorter, more conservative — hadn’t suited him at all.

The Stede on the screen narrated to the camera as he fished around for a flashlight and an appropriate trekking jacket and hat, explaining that he’d been awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of a hard rain pounding on the tent.

Stede remembered waking from an uneasy slumber on his woefully inadequate camping mattress. At first, he found the sound of the hammering rain soothing, then he found it a bit strange — and then he had a momentary, terrifying vision of being washed away in a flash flood. But almost as soon as the rain arrived, it stopped. And that was weird. It could be a quirky meteorological phenomenon, or . . .

The camera swiveled around and went in and out of focus, but it was clear that the tent was flapping in the wind like it might take off any moment.

“Now, outside, there’s a really strong wind. A gale, it sounds like. So I thought I’d get the camera out and I’d record this, just in case. Just on the off chance that it really is something . . . weird. I’m gonna take a look outside.”

The camera jiggled again, and on-screen Stede unzipped the tent.

Stede remembered how hopeful and terrified he’d been as that strange wind blew into the tent, how he’d shivered, despite the jacket and the hat. He wanted to reach out to that man behind the camera and tell him to buck up, have a bit of courage. Then again, Stede didn’t think he knew much more about courage now, five years later. He just knew more about regret.

“It’s really windy.” The shaky camera mostly showed the sandy campground as Stede took his first step outside. Not Stede’s best cinematography.

Stede watched Ed watching the tape. Ed was transfixed, not moving a muscle.

“Oh my!” Stede exclaimed on the tape, “Oh my goodness!”

The picture swiveled skyward, revealing a strange shimmer of light. In real life it had been shockingly clear that the thing in the sky wasn’t a low-flying plane or some other mundane, terrestrial thing. It was more like a rip in reality, like a peek backstage into a part of the universe Stede could barely comprehend.

“I don’t know if the camera is picking this up, but there’s something in the sky. Lights! I’m just gonna zoom in. . . What’s that?”

The picture jerkily zoomed in and panned left and right. And then, it found the ship.

Ed sat up suddenly, eyes nearly popping out of his skull. “That’s it! That’s what I saw!”

His face lit up and he grinned at Stede, eyes full of wonder. He looked like a weight had come off of him, his limbs loose and his hands gesturing wildly. It was the same feeling that Stede had had five years ago. Stede had believed his whole life that there was something more in the universe, that there was a world beyond his father’s expectations and his dull marriage and the endless rat race. He’d had no evidence of his own, but he believed it. That night, alone in the desert, he was proven right. And for an all-too-brief moment, Stede Bonnet was on top of the world.

“I can’t believe it, mate! We saw the same ship!” Ed said.

“That’s. . . wow. What are the chances?” Stede replied. There was a ringing in his ears. They came back. After five long years of waiting, they came back.

Ed gripped Stede’s shoulder, and Stede felt his stomach swoop.

Stede paused the tape. His face was getting hot, and there were tears welling up in his eyes, threatening to spill down his cheeks.

Ed caught his gaze and stopped smiling. He didn’t release Stede’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve missed them. I’ve missed my chance, again.” Stede didn’t cry, he wouldn’t cry — not til he was alone again in his trailer.

Ed shook his head in confusion.

“Just watch,” Stede said, miserably. He started the tape again.

A strange purple light was emanating from the saucer now, slicing across the screen. The picture went staticky a few times. The technology available at Radio Shack hadn’t exactly been designed to capture the scene, but Stede remembered the prickly feeling on his skin, the vibration emanating from the ship, and moreover, the sense of wonder he had, taking in the enormity of this vessel from another world.

“It’s huge! Oh my gosh!” Stede on the screen couldn’t stop exclaiming over the ship.

The saucer moved closer, grew larger in the frame. Its metallic surface rippled, shifted, and symbols appeared. Stede had researched them all in the intervening years. Some were human languages from the world over — some must be languages of far-flung planets. Every single one said the same phrase — the phrase that a harmonic, eerie voice was now speaking aloud:

“COME WITH US.”

Stede hated this part. He looked at Ed, who seemed to be tensing every muscle in his body. “Fuck, they didn’t say that to me, mate.”

On the tape, Stede’s voice was high and pleading. “I don’t understand. Who are you?”

The metallic surface rippled again, like it was shaking off Stede’s question.

“COME WITH US,” the voice repeated.

“I can’t just. . . I can’t!” Stede called back, a sob stuck in his throat.

Stede heard his own voice wavering in fear, and wanted to kick himself in the ass. Why couldn’t his sense of wonder have won out over his cowardice just this once?

The ship rippled once more, and the symbols disappeared. The saucer grew smaller in the frame, and the camera shook as Stede foolishly tried to run toward it — as though he hadn’t already made his choice.

“No, no, please! Don’t go!” he cried out. “Wait!”

There was a flash of light, and the ship was gone. Stede’s panting breath was the only sound on the tape. The camera briefly swung around and the cold little light illuminated Stede’s crestfallen expression. Then, without warning, the hard rain started up again, spattering Stede’s face and shirt, the droplets on the lens blurring the image.

“Oh fuck! Shit!” Stede shouted on screen as he shoved the camera under his jacket to protect it from the downpour. Then the static returned, followed by some weird sequence of numbers, then the screen went blue. End of tape, end of encounter.

Stede tried to read Ed’s expression. His eyes were still glued to the screen.

“Wow.” Ed exhaled. “That’s—“

“You must think I’m a coward.” The words came out of Stede in a rushed confession.

“What? Mate, that took some fucking brass balls to say no to aliens from outer space. I would have been terrified. I was terrified when I saw what you saw. I was gripping the car like it was a fuckin’ life raft.” As though in demonstration, Ed squeezed Stede’s shoulder, then released his hands back into his lap.

Stede watched those hands, strong and tattooed and capable. Then he looked at his own. They were soft when he first moved to the desert. He had calouses now from helping out with various repairs and cleaning rooms when Frenchie and Wee John couldn’t (or wouldn’t). Five long years of hard work, and still, there were days when he wondered what it was all for. He sensed that, perhaps, Ed knew that feeling well.

Stede heaved a sigh big enough to make the bed squeak. “When I was a little boy, I daydreamed a lot. And I loved space — just the idea of going on adventures, visiting new worlds.”

Ed settled in against the pillows, propped up on one arm, as though he was readying himself for a bedtime story. So Stede continued.

“When I was six, I started having these dreams. I was on a ship, flying through space faster than light. And I felt . . .” Stede paused to remember the feeling of being cradled in light, speeding across the galaxy, his mind and his body perfectly in sync with the universe, far from bullies and homework and his parents’ judgment. “I felt calm. At peace.”

Stede never saw the faces of the ship’s pilots, but his dreams always ended the same way. A hand with two long, purple-gray fingers — decidedly not human — reached for Stede’s. And then he woke up. When Stede told his mother about the dream, she said, “that’s nice, dear.” His utterly unimaginative Hungarian nanny told him he was eating too much junk food before bed. And he didn’t dare tell his father. But to Stede, these were more than dreams. They were prophecies. They were signposts for where Stede was meant to go.

“When the dreams stopped, I was devastated. But it only made me want to find proof that there really is alien life out there. I was, well, I am a bit of an odd duck, I suppose. It was nice to imagine that somewhere out there I’d find a place where I fit. Even if it meant living with tentacled monsters or sentient clouds of gas.”

Ed chuckled in recognition. “So the ham radios. . .”

“My first foray into communicating with our neighbors among the stars.” Stede grinned at the memory of building his first ham radio. He remembered the joy he felt when it actually worked — well, he didn’t find any extraterrestrials, but he found the next best thing: A loosely connected network of UFO enthusiasts, all sharing info on sightings, tips on tuning in to number stations, and theories on top-secret government plots to cover up evidence of alien visits to Earth.

Then, a less fond memory sprang to mind. “My father, however, informed me that scientists had already determined that space was a barren wasteland — and that we humans were simply alone in the universe. I didn’t accept that. Never have.”

“Seems like it would be an awful waste of space,” Ed said, wistfully.

“Carl Sagan.” A smile crept across Stede’s face.

“Love that guy.” Ed’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Never missed an episode of Cosmos.”

Something fluttered in Stede’s chest. He tamped it down, for now. Surely everyone liked Carl Sagan — bestselling author and all that. And Stede was so often called out for being too enthusiastic about his interests. He let the feeling settle, and continued.

“At any rate, I put away childish things for a time. Got the degree my father expected. Had a so-called ‘normal’ career. Married, of course. And then, one day, on a whim, I booked a camping trip in the Nevada desert. Mary was, well, more than a little put out — so I decided to make it a solo excursion. And then I saw — well, them.”

“But you didn’t go with them? Why not?”

Stede leaned back into the pillows, suddenly feeling like his clothes were too tight on his skin. “I wasn’t ready. I still felt obligated to the life I’d built. I hadn’t come out as gay. I hadn’t let go of the person everyone expected me to be.”

Stede realized he’d outed himself, and glanced sideways at Ed, expecting that the man might make a run for it. But he didn’t. He just looked thoughtfully at Stede, molten brown eyes full of concern.

“Would you do it now, if you could?” Ed’s voice was whisper-quiet.

Something in Stede’s heart twisted. The longing was palpable in his chest, a yearning that ran through his whole body. When he sighed next, it came out with a little sad squeak. “Yes, I would. In an instant. I built this place — this entire business — hoping they’d come back. And then they did, and somehow I missed it.”

“What if you didn’t.” Ed was sitting up now, more awake than he’d looked an hour ago. His eyes twinkled with mischief. The fluttering in Stede’s chest came back, and this time he made no effort to rein in his excitement.

“What are you thinking?”

“So, these bastards show up in August 1988. And then nothing for five years.”

“Right?”

“And then I saw you get abducted, except it couldn’t be you, right?” As Ed spoke he hopped off the bed and started pacing.

“I’ve been here all night, unfortunately,” Stede sighed.

“So I saw a . . . hallucination. A vision? A dream? There has to be something we’re not seeing. A pattern. . .” Ed paused, then spun around to face Stede, eyes bright. Stede could almost hear the gears turning in Ed’s brain. “Hey, do you have any more VHS tapes like this one? Other people’s encounters?”

“Do I ever!” Stede jumped off the bed as well, already thinking of several they could watch immediately. He hesitated before he pulled the first tape off the shelf. “Why are you doing this, Ed? Why are you helping me?”

Ed put his hands on his hips and looked skyward for a moment (or ceiling-ward, Stede supposed). “I dunno, mate. I guess — it’s hard to find someone doing something original out here. Everything in my world is just a fuckery.”

“Surely not!” Stede couldn’t believe that someone as kind and genuine as Ed was capable of fraud.

“I run a fucking casino. I know when shit’s fake. The magic shows aren’t magic. The gold fixtures are just painted on.”

“The slot machines are rigged?” Stede asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“How fucking dare you! I run a respectable business.” Ed frowned, then leaned in and confessed, “Yeah, ok, they’re a little rigged. But you! You’re trying to grab hold of something real. That’s a rare thing.”

Stede blushed. He couldn’t help it. He fiddled with the VHS tape, unsure how to take such a wild, sweeping compliment from a near-stranger. But then, Ed wasn’t really a stranger any more, was he?

“Thank you, Ed.” Stede said, quietly. “You’re a good man.”

Now Ed reddened and looked at the floor. He quickly grabbed the remote and settled into his nest of pillows again. “Ready?”

“Ready!” Stede said as he popped the first tape into the slot and sat down next to Ed on the bed again. It felt easy, now, sitting here with Ed, sharing the tapes he’d collected by trading with other UFO enthusiasts and rifling through grimy bins at thrift stores.

Ed pressed play on the remote and did a little shoulder roll that audibly popped something in his back. Then he planted his hands behind him on the duvet. It was a perfectly normal thing to do, he was obviously just trying to keep himself upright while Stede bored him with endless camcorder footage that may or may not reveal a single clue. But now Ed’s left pinky finger was touching Stede’s right pinky finger on the burgundy duvet.

And suddenly, Stede could think of nothing else.

Stede glanced at Ed out of the corner of his eye. Ed’s eyes were still locked on the TV. But then, to Stede’s surprise, Ed curled his pinky finger around Stede’s, tightening the connection between them without so much as a word. Stede felt his heart beating faster. Did he do that on purpose? Stede searched for some kind of sign in the sound of Ed’s breathing, in the warmth radiating from his skin like a signal from a distant star.

Ed must have felt Stede tense up because he asked, barely above a whisper, “This okay?”

“Mmhmm,” Stede said, because if he said anything else, it might have been something like it’s incredible, or you’re incredible, and he was pretty sure that was too much for someone he’d met a few hours ago.

Stede must have been perseverating for quite a long time, because before he knew it, the VHS tape had come to an end, and fuzzy static took over the screen. Panic started to set in as Stede realized the next question he asked could easily be: “Want to watch another?” or “May I kiss you?” He didn’t know what Ed wanted him to do — he didn’t know what he wanted to do! But he needn’t have worried, because when he turned to look at Ed, he was already fast asleep, half propped on a pillow, pinky finger still wrapped around Stede’s.

Stede didn’t dare move. He watched the rise and fall of Ed’s chest for a long time, let the sound of static give way to the sound of Ed’s light snoring. He told himself he’d get up in a few minutes, take out the tape, let Ed have some peace and quiet alone in the dark. But soon enough, the steady rhythm of Ed’s breathing and the warmth radiating from his sleeping body lulled Stede to sleep, too.

Ed woke in an unfamiliar bed. That in itself wasn’t unusual (and no, not in a sexy way, in an “I’m so burned out I’m gonna pass out in my own hotel-casino” way). But Ed wasn’t in a Queen Anne hotel room. He was lying on top of a burgundy duvet, covered by a knitted yellow blanket with a pattern of black — mothmen?

Stede.

Ed heard light snoring next to him. He rolled to one side, already imagining the way the sunlight would catch on Stede’s golden hair.

Instead, he came face-to-face with a very large, very startled white cat with orange-tipped ears. He blinked awake, and remembered the sign on Frenchie and Wee John’s door.

“Mmm. . . Klaatu, I presume?” Ed said to the cat.

Klaatu immediately uncoiled from a very comfy-looking napping position, hissed in Ed’s face, and used Ed’s crotch as a trampoline to launch himself out the open window.

Ed groaned. Not exactly the world’s best wake up service. But he didn’t have any other complaints about his stay at the Extra Ter-REST-rial.

Bits and pieces of the previous night were hazy and out of order, but Stede’s voice rang clear as a bell in Ed’s mind.

“Do you want it to be real?”

Ed was used to being asked what he wanted: “What color carpet should we put in the lobby?” “Should we move the high roller to a penthouse suite?” “Should we put umbrellas in the frozen margaritas?” He made a few hundred decisions a day at the Queen Anne and he had hundreds of employees relying on him to keep the damn ship afloat.

At work, Ed made decisions at lightning speed: Red carpet in the lobby so the guests feel like celebrities. Move the whale to a penthouse suite so he’ll wager more at the tables tomorrow. Serve margaritas with a crazy straw so the tourists down them faster and order another round.

But Stede was asking something different. Something deeper. And Ed realized, with a start, that his brain had already decided what he wanted.

He did want it to be real.

He wanted everything Stede told him to be true — and not just because he wanted a universe where this charming madman got everything he wanted — but because Ed wanted, for once, to find out that the magic trick wasn’t a trick at all. He wanted to believe.

He also wanted a fucking shower. Hours of angry driving plus stress sweat plus a night sleeping in his tightest jeans added up to a fairly disgusting feeling. There was a neat little pile of useful items laid out at the end of the bed — a set of dark teal towels, mini toothbrush and toothpaste, and a pair of teal sweatpants and a tie-dyed T-shirt, both of which were emblazoned with the motel’s name and signature alien logo. Tragically, the sweatpants didn’t have little alien hand prints on the butt. Ed always thought he could pull off that look.

Ed hauled himself out of bed and made his way to the tiny bathroom. For all he’d gone on about solar showers the night before, Stede’s own bathroom was fairly luxe. A little glass shelf held dozens of tiny, expensive-looking bottles of face lotion and hair cream and cologne. Ed couldn’t help snooping. He was fascinated by this man and the bundle of contradictions he presented. He was warm, but guarded; brave, but anxious; proud as a peacock, but flustered by a simple compliment. And Ed definitely had a little crush. He’d always gone in for the artsy outsiders — and this man was from another realm entirely.

Ed just knew what Izzy would say if he were here. “You fancy the fuckin’ UFO guy? Did you hit your head or something?” But yeah, Ed did fancy the UFO guy, and his knicknacks, and his weird little business in the middle of nowhere. Ed met all sorts of people in his line of work — and most of the people he was supposed to like (prominent politicians, celebrities, anyone Izzy declared good for business) were usually fucking boring. And yes, it was objectively insane to feel this way about someone he met last night, someone who was doggedly pursuing an alien spaceship while running a very bizarre small business in the Nevada desert. But Ed didn’t care. He learned long ago that the strangest person in the room is quite often the only person worth talking to.

Ed tossed off his grubby clothing and stepped into the shower. He picked up a clear bar of glycerin soap — there was a little green alien figurine trapped inside.

“Poor little guy,” Ed said as he waited for the water to warm, “We gotta get you outta there.”

The diner was buzzing this morning, and so was Stede. He’d been awake since dawn. He’d listened to the birds and watched the light on Ed’s face as he slept (not the same as watching him sleep, mind you!). When he couldn’t stay still any longer, he crept around putting together a little welcome kit for Ed, and then made his way to the diner. Roach was surprised to see him, but put him right to work.

Now, there were three ranch hands at the counter finishing an early breakfast and a pair of elderly tourists sharing an “egg in a black hole” (made with rye toast). Jim sat in the corner with their big ranger hat covering most of their face, doing their best impression of a desperado (Stede would bet his buttons that they were reading a book about rare desert flowers under that hat).

Stede loved busy mornings when the diner was full of people. He didn’t mind waiting tables — it gave him a chance to use all the lingo he’d studied!

“Roach! Fry two, let the sun shine, and burn the British!” Stede shouted over the hiss of the stovetop.

“I don’t know what the fuck that means, man!” Roach shouted back as he expertly flipped a pancake.

Stede rolled his eyes. He’d have to send Roach some pointers later. “Two fried eggs and an English muffin.”

Stede ripped off the guest check to reveal a fresh page. He’d custom ordered his own pads after he discovered that the paper texture on regular guest check pads was abhorrent. Also, he learned that he could buy them in the exact same shade of teal as the diner’s formica countertops.

Speaking of countertops, they weren’t going to wipe themselves down! Stede was about to get a damp rag when Frenchie and Wee John intercepted him.

“Uh, Stede — about the new arrival. . .” Wee John began.

“Not to be rude or anything, but he hasn’t exactly, you know, paid for a room,” Frenchie said, a bit shiftily.

Stede looked back and forth between them. “Well, he shouldn’t have to pay for one, as he was a guest in my room last night.”

Frenchie and Wee John were momentarily stunned speechless, which seemed a little dramatic to Stede.

“Gentlemen, what’s this all about?” Stede had a philosophy on his team—if one of them had a problem, then they simply talked it through as a crew.

“Look, I didn’t go to hospitality school. . .” Wee John said.

“Oh, actually, I did,” Frenchie interjected.

“Did you?” Wee John said with sincere surprise and delight, “Well, good for you, man!” Stede cleared his throat, and Wee John continued. “As I was saying, I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to get the customers to pay for the rooms.”

“Yeah, that’s normally how it works, innit?” Frenchie folded his arms and nodded. “Especially if most of the rooms have been unoccupied going on six weeks.”

In Stede’s view, these two were awfully cut up over nothing. “I don’t see the problem with offering a little extra hospitality.”

“Olu told us the business is nearly flat broke.”

Ah. Well, Wee John had cut to the quick of it. And as much as Stede very much believed in talking it through, he also believed in people-positive management. Which, to Stede, meant staying positive for his people — even if the ledger told a slightly different story.

“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Stede replied. He noticed Olu trying to sneak around the corner and avoid the conversation entirely. “Olu!”

Olu stopped and slowly turned around, a sheepish expression on his face. “Look boss, I didn’t say we were out of money. I just said that maybe the ledger was looking a little bit red.”

“The ledger is hardly red. It’s . . . it’s a salmon pink at most!” Stede sputtered.

“Also, wasn’t gonna mention this,” Wee John interjected, “But I think it’s a bit unfair that I’m not allowed to have my mate Sully crash here, but Stede picks up some drifter . . .”

“To be fair to Stede, your mate Sully is on the FBI’s most wanted list . . .” Frenchie said.

“Ed isn’t a drifter!” Stede exclaimed, “We can trust him. He’s . . . well, he’s lovely.” Ed was lovely. Stede hadn’t spoken about his failed encounter with the aliens in years, and Ed had just . . . listened. Ed cared. When was the last time Stede had felt cared for? Felt heard?

An argument was breaking out amongst the crew, Frenchie, Wee John, and Olu all talking over each other — with Roach hollering from the kitchen that another order was up and he needed someone to brew a pot of coffee.

Customers were beginning to stare. The ranch hands hunched their shoulders and moseyed out the door. The tourists started motioning for a check.

“Hey!” Jim stood up and pushed their hat back. No one was listening, save Stede. They stood up on the diner chair and wolf whistled. “Hey! Pendejos!”

Everyone turned toward Jim, crew and tourists and ranch hands and all.

“That guy who came in last night — was he about six feet tall? Long hair? Tattoos?”

“Um, yes?” Stede squeaked.

“I think he’s good for it, you idiots.” Jim waved the glossy magazine they were reading, and handed it to Olu. It was a copy of Nevada Monthly, and there, on the cover, was Ed. He looked . . . well, quite handsome — but nothing like the man Stede met last night. The photograph had been taken from a low angle, emphasizing Ed’s height, the stark black of his suit looking sharp as a razor against a clear Nevada sky. A red and gold sign for the Queen Anne Hotel and Casino sparkled behind him.

Olu read aloud: “Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach, celebrated hotel magnate, builds his empire on the Las Vegas strip. How’d you know it was him?”

“He’s, like, right outside.” Jim pointed out the window, and the whole crew crowded over to see, climbing over each other to press their faces to the window. Stede squeezed his way to the front of the pile.

Ed was standing outside, wearing the sweatpants and tee that Stede had set out for him. He was freshly showered, hair up in a bun. Stede felt a little pride seeing him looking so well-rested. Ed was also squinting at a hand-drawn map of the property, which he was definitely reading upside-down.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Stede said softly, feeling a little flutter in his chest.

Everyone started talking at once again, and the commotion must’ve been loud enough for Ed to hear because he turned toward the window, squinting against the glare of the sun.

“DOWN!” Stede yelled and the full crew crouched beneath the window sill, ending up in a Twister-like pile on the floor.

Ed looked at the window again. Yep, he was definitely being watched. And probably not by aliens. Ed weighed the pros and cons of entering the diner. Pros included coffee and more time with Stede. Cons included facing the band of nosy motel employees currently hiding out underneath the windowsill. Ed sighed. He already knew what he was going to pick.

The bell above the door chimed as Ed entered the diner. Stede was sitting on one of the teal barstools and spun around with a very unconvincing “oh, fancy seeing you here!” look on his face. Yeah, okay, Stede had been watching him out the window, too. Which was a tiny bit flattering, actually.

“Good morning, Ed! Did you sleep well?” Stede beamed at him.

Look, Ed had a pretty weird night last night — and he wouldn’t have been surprised if Stede (warm, sensitive, pinky-holding Stede) was just as much of an illusion as rain-soaked-on-the highway Stede. Or at least he couldn’t blame himself if Stede was actually somewhat less handsome in the light of day. But no, Stede was improbably, immorally, impossibly handsome in the morning light, the dimple in the corner of his cheek deepening as Ed met his gaze.

It had been a minute since Ed had had a crush like this — and all they’d done was hold hands. Ed’s palms were embarrassingly sweaty and he seemed to have lost command of the English language — but he decided he could definitely pass it off as caffeine withdrawal.

“Great, but uh. . . could use a cup of joe.” Ed ran a hand through his hair.

Stede blinked up at him, still smiling, until the diner employee next to him nudged his arm, and he seemed to remember he was the proprietor of an establishment that served coffee. “Ah! Of course! How do you take it?”

At work, Ed drank his coffee black — faster that way, and harder for his underlings to screw up. But today, Ed didn’t need to be anywhere, didn’t need to follow a strict schedule dictated to him by Izzy Hands. So why not indulge, just a little?

“Milk and seven sugars?” Ed mumbled, not really sure what Stede would make of his order. God knows Izzy would tell him he sounded like a teenage girl.

“Coming right up!” Stede said, brightly. He turned to the cook behind the counter. “Roach! Ed will have a hot blonde in sand!”

“Uh, boss?” The cook was staring at Stede with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Roach — it’s coffee! Just make it light and sweet!”

Stede gave Ed an apologetic look as he got up to confer with the cook in the kitchen.

Ed sat down on Stede’s abandoned stool and took in his surroundings. Like the office last night, the diner was full of alien and cryptid-themed tchotchkes. Now that Ed had spent time with Stede, he could imagine him picking out each little item — maybe at local antique stores or yard sales — and placing it in just the right spot. There was so much of Stede in this space — in every nook and cranny — from the bright teal countertops and stools to the little Sasquatch hidden in a potted fern. Ed had never really tried to make the Queen Anne feel like him - it was just a reflection of what other people wanted to see on their Vegas vacations. Or, he supposed, what Izzy said that the marketing team said about what people wanted. Honestly, lately, it felt more like Ed was working for them than the other way around.

Ed’s musing was interrupted by a quiet voice from the man on the stool next to him.

“Uh, Mr. Blackbeard, sir?” Ed hadn’t met this guy last night. He wore an earring that matched the teal countertops.

“You can just call me Ed.” Ed extended a hand.

“Olu, Oluwande.” They shook, and the man visibly relaxed. “Just wondering, if you aren’t too busy that is. . .”

The person on Oluwande’s other side leaned over. “He wants your advice on merchandising the gift shop.”

“I was working up to it, Jim!” Olu said, flustered.

“Sometimes you just gotta be direct.” Jim shrugged. Olu looked at them for an extra long moment.

“Oh, you don’t want my advice on —” Ed tried to deflect, but he was interrupted by Frenchie and Wee John on his other side.

“Mr. Blackbeard, Ed, sir, didn’t want to trouble you, but Frenchie and I had this idea about bunk beds.”

“I heard bunk beds are really making a comeback!” Frenchie added.

“Really, I’m not an expert on —”

“Gentlemen, really! Let’s all give Ed some space. He’s had quite an evening.” Stede was back, two steaming mugs in hand. “Let him have his coffee and a square meal.”

The crew reluctantly dispersed. Ed took his first sip of coffee — damn, that hit the spot. “Mmf. Good stuff, Stede.”

Stede grinned. “Milk and seven sugars, as requested.”

“Wouldn’t be the same with six.” They clinked mugs, and Ed took a sip of oversweet coffee. It tasted like bliss.

Stede clicked his tongue and leaned in a little conspiratorially. “Now, if you do have thoughts about the bunk beds . . . Wee John’s been rather insistent . . .”

Ed chuckled. “Mate, I don’t need to advise you on this stuff. You’re — well you’re doing better than me.”

Stede winced. “Mmm, the bank might think rather differently.”

Ed waved his arms to take in the full diner, tchotchkes and all. “Look at this place! It’s fuckin’ cool. You have a vision. Sometimes that’s better than a boatload of cash in the bank.”

“Do you really think so?” Stede’s hazel eyes were wide, searching Ed’s expression for a lie, for a telltale sign that he was pulling Stede’s leg. Even if Ed had wanted to, he didn’t think he could lie to Stede.

“You believe in something,” Ed said, and then suddenly feeling shy, he dropped his eyes to the swirl of milky coffee in his mug. “You make me want to believe in something.”

When Ed looked up, Stede’s face was pink as a sunrise. “Well, that’s just . . . wow,” Stede said.

“What about this lot? Are they into the alien stuff, too?”

“A bit,” Stede sighed, “Frenchie certainly has a penchant for the unexplained. But I think mostly they’re just humoring me. Half expecting them to mutiny on me any day now.”

Ed looked around at the crew, all in various states of kind-of-sort-of working. Wee John was crocheting something in the corner. He said something to make Frenchie laugh, and Olu threw a bar rag at him.

“Give Olu a break, guys!” Jim laughed. “He was up all night worrying ‘cause I got caught in one of those freak storms and didn’t call him like the first second I got to the ranger station.”

“Look, I’m allowed to worry! You said there was flash flooding in Tickaboo Valley last week, then up near Badger Mountain . . .”

“You gotta relax, man.” Jim chuckled.

Everyone here seemed . . . happy. It was such a stark contrast with the Queen Anne, where the staff were always efficient, always courteous, but clearly hated to see him or Izzy coming around the corner.

“I don’t know about that, Stede. My crew, they’d mutiny on me in a second.” Ed thought back to Izzy’s attempt to sell the casino. “Actually, they kind of did.”

“Is that why you’re out here?” Stede asked.

Ed told him about Izzy, the fight, the drive . . . And then he found himself giving Stede his whole (abbreviated) life story. The guy was ridiculously easy to talk to. He lit up at everything Ed said, even the really dorky shit. Hell, especially the really dorky shit. Somewhere around the time Ed was confessing to a deathly fear of spiders, a whoosh sounded from the kitchen. Ed turned just in time to see a column of bright orange flame nearly singe off Roach’s goatee. Instinctively, Ed reached out his arm in an attempt to shield Stede from danger. But Stede didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the inferno. In fact, he was clapping.

“Well done!” Stede cheered. “Ed, just wait til you try Roach’s specialty.”

Roach, miraculously unharmed, plated up the dishes and delivered them to Ed and Stede. “Crepes Soyuz-ette!” he announced.

Ed, whose heart rate was now somewhat regular again, realized he was ravenous. He took a bite of the sweet, thin crepe. It was citrusy, boozy, and solidly decadent. “Mmmmf,” he groaned. “It’s perfect.”

On his way back to the kitchen, Roach called, “It better be, I used forty ounces of Grand Marnier!”

The scent of burnt sugar lingered in the air. It smelled familiar. It smelled like. . . last night, on the highway — just after the rain stopped. He frowned and shook his head. That couldn’t be right, could it?

Stede stopped mid-bite and put down his fork. “What’s wrong, Ed?”

“I want to help you. I want to figure out what I actually saw last night. But it’s . . . muddy. None of it makes sense.” Ed considered himself fuckin’ clear headed, even on his worst days. Maybe the aliens had done something to his brain.

“It’s alright, Ed, I’m not going to push you.” Stede put a friendly hand on Ed’s knee. Maybe Stede had done something to his brain, because now his thoughts were muddied in a completely different way.

“You should ask Frenchie to help!” Olu called from the gift shop. Not a lot of privacy with this lot, was there?

Frenchie was putting clean mugs back on the shelf. He paused and smiled nervously. “Oh, you don’t want me to do that.”

“Do what?” Ed was intrigued.

“He’s psychic.” Wee John said, matter-of-factly as he sorted the silverware.

“I’m not psychic. I can just do a little hypnosis. It’s not a big deal.” Frenchie was clearly trying to wriggle out of this. That was perfectly fine with Ed — he didn’t exactly relish the idea of someone else digging around in his brain right now. But Stede’s jaw dropped and his eyes twinkled as he turned toward Ed.

Shit.

Ed was definitely getting hypnotized by Frenchie.

By now, all the tourists were gone and the sun was high over the diner. The air conditioning unit was working overtime, its mechanical buzz the loudest thing in the room.

Ed sat on one side of a booth, Frenchie on the other. Stede stood at the end of the table, hovering nervously. The crew were gathered around, keeping a respectful distance while also leaning in to hear every word.

Stede wanted to squeeze in next to Ed, hold his hand, reassure him. But he also didn’t want to disrupt the vibrations or however this worked. He settled for a light touch on Ed’s shoulder.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“I know.” Ed said. The look Ed gave him was both resigned and determined. Ed was on Stede’s side, and he had been since the moment they’d met.

“I need a pocket watch,” Frenchie said.

Everyone looked at Stede. Goodness, did the entire crew think he was that much of a posh knob?

“I left all of that behind when I moved out here, as you all know.”

“Would a wallet chain work?” Wee John offered, already detaching a thick silver chain from his (in Stede’s opinion) outlandishly oversized jeans.

Frenchie nodded and took the chain, testing the weight of it in each palm.

Olu pulled up a chair for Stede, probably to stop him from pacing a hole in the linoleum floor. When Stede sat, a hush descended over the diner. Roach’s kitchen was silent, the air was still. All eyes were on Frenchie and Ed. Even Klaatu seemed to have decided this was an important gathering. He’d hopped up on the countertop (absolutely forbidden behavior under normal circumstances) and was waving his tail expectantly. Stede hardly wanted to alert Frenchie that his sworn enemy was lurking behind him, so he gave Klaatu a warning look. He stared back at him and defiantly stretched out on the countertop, cleaning a paw.

“Close your eyes, and just listen to the sound of my voice,” Frenchie said. “I’m going to take you back to last night.”

Ed gave Stede one skeptical glance out of the corner of his eye before he refocused on the wallet chain that Frenchie held aloft between them. Stede wasn’t a complete fool. He knew that Frenchie had a previous life as something of a huckster, and it was likelier than not that his “hypnotism” skills were honed largely as a way to fleece unsuspecting rubes. But Stede had to know what Ed had seen — what he had really seen. Anything was worth a try.

Frenchie slowly counted backwards from 20, and to Stede’s surprise, a noticeable change came over Ed. His breathing slowed. His hands relaxed where they rested on the table.

“What can you see?” Frenchie kept moving the wallet chain, even though Ed’s eyes were closed.

“Rain. A storm,” Ed said.

“There wasn’t any rain last night,” Wee John said, and Jim shushed him.

“The radio’s fucked. The dash keeps flashing these numbers . . .” Ed said, hazily.

“Ask him about the numbers!” Stede attempted to whisper, and was immediately shushed by Jim, Wee John, and Olu.

“Can you see the numbers?”

“Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight.”

Jim’s eyes lit up. They grabbed a paper napkin and motioned for Olu to hand them a pencil. They wrote down the numbers and frowned at them. But Ed was already speaking again.

“There’s a man in the middle of the road . . . he’s . . . gorgeous. Blond, I think. Legs for days.”

Stede knew everyone was staring at him, Stede knew he was turning seventeen shades of crimson, but he kept his eyes on Ed — his eyebrows all knotted together in concentration.

“He’s also naked.”

Now everyone was really staring at Stede.

“Okay, can you look up?” Frenchie cleared his throat. “Away from the naked man, please?”

“Fuuuuuck,” Ed breathed. “There’s a silver ship — and it’s got this. . . tractor beam. And they’re taking him . . . He says he’s ready to go . . . he says he’s ready, but . . .”

Stede’s heart was racing. He couldn’t help it - he stood up suddenly, and his chair clattered to the floor.

Ed took a sharp breath and blinked rapidly, his hands clenching again. He was awake.

Ed’s eyes fluttered open.

“Fuck! Did it work?” Ed looked between Frenchie and Stede. Frenchie looked like he’d seen a ghost, and Stede was pacing back and forth again.

“I would say so, mate,” Frenchie said.

“You did splendidly, Ed.” Stede said. “I just . . . got a little over-excited, I think.”

“That’s a fibonacci sequence.” Jim said, tapping the napkin putting the pencil behind their ear.

“A fibby-what?” Frenchie asked.

“Fibonacci sequence, it’s when the next number is the sum of the previous numbers.”

“When did you learn this stuff?” Olu said, astonished, “It’s like I don’t even know you.”

Jim blushed a little and looked away. “It’s just like the building blocks of nature and the universe and shit.”

Stede stared at the napkin. He’d know those numbers anywhere. “Those are the numbers at the end of my tape.”

“Tape?” Wee John arched an eyebrow.

Stede worried his bottom lip with his teeth, not answering. Stede was wound up so tight that he couldn’t see what Ed saw: A bunch of friendly, concerned faces, waiting for their Captain to make the next move.

“Hey,” Ed said, putting a hand over Stede’s. “I think you can trust them.”

Stede’s chest rose and fell. He squeezed his eyes shut and let it all out in one breathless sentence: “I saw aliens here five years ago, and I’ve been trying to find them again ever since, and I built the entire Extra Ter-REST-rial hoping they’d come back.” He heaved another breath and opened his eyes. “And also I’m gay.”

“Wow. That’s. . . a lot.” Roach blinked.

“But you coulda told us.” Frenchie said. “We’re pretty good at weird shit.”

“Well, we’ve gotta help our Captain get his ship back, yeah?” Olu looked at each of the others, and every single one nodded in agreement. Ed watched Stede’s shoulders relax and a goofy grin take over his face. Ed had never been happier to be right about a group of people. This was Stede’s family, even if he didn’t quite believe it himself.

“Also we knew about the gay thing already,” Wee John added.

Ed was about to revisit that point when Jim leaned on the table, all business.

“So this tape. You have evidence of this shit?”

“Yes. I’ve watched it hundreds of times, and it ends with a string of nonsense numbers. I thought there must be something wrong with the tape.”

“Okay, so this focaccia sequence. . .” Olu began.

“Fibonacci sequence.” Jim corrected, gently nudging Olu’s shoulder with theirs. Jim started drawing a spiral on the spare napkin. “See, like a seashell. . .”

“Right.” Stede squinted at the napkin. “Does that help us figure out when the aliens will come back?”

“Maybe not when but definitely where.” Ed scrambled out of the booth and plucked a map from the rack by the door. He unfolded it and spread it out on the counter and the crew gathered around him. “Look — Jim said there were all these weird storms lately. They started in the Tickaboo Valley, right?”

“Yeah, uh, here.” Jim marked off three spots on the map. “Then southwest of Badger Mountain, and again a bit east of Mount Irish Wilderness and. . . oh shit.”

Jim leapt back suddenly, dropping the pencil as though it had caught fire.

“What? What is it?” Stede looked at the map, too frantic to see what everyone else had simultaneously realized.

Frenchie took the pencil with trembling fingers, and connected the dots between X’s Jim had drawn on the map. It was a perfect spiral.

“And if you keep going. . .” Ed said, nodding to Frenchie.

Frenchie extended the spiral, landing on the highway just down the road from the Extra Ter-REST-rial motel. The exact spot where Ed had encountered them the night before.

“Fuuuuuck,” breathed Roach. There was a crackling energy in the diner. The whole crew stared down at the map, and back up at Stede.

“Okay, so we know where they landed.” Olu frowned. “But why last night? Why September the first?”

“September the first is my mum’s birthday,” Wee John offered.

“Ok, but last night was September the second, so . . .” Ed interjected. Ed knew, for a fact, that he’d left Las Vegas on September the second. He remembered the botched meeting with Izzy — remembered him complaining about the electric bill being one day overdue.

“It was September the first, actually. Today’s the second.” Frenchie said. There were nods all around.

Ed heard a ringing in his ears. That couldn’t be right. “Dickfuck, no it’s not!”

“I’m afraid it is, Ed.” Stede spoke gently, as though he sensed Ed’s rising panic. Ed tried to take a breath but his lungs wouldn’t cooperate. The map on the counter blurred in front of him, yellows and greens running together. Shit.

“I am so fucked.” Ed turned from the group, heart hammering in his chest. Everything felt wrong. He was missing a day — or he had an extra day? Which way was it? Ed’s feet carried him out the door, bell tinkling behind him. He found himself standing outside the diner, staring at the sun, totally dazed.

How was it September the second again? Unless . . .

The bell tinkled behind him again. Ed tensed up, instinctively.

“Ed,” Stede said softly, “Are you alright?”

Ed turned toward him. And Stede was just . . . there – standing like a solid rectangle of reality against the swirling anxiety in Ed’s brain.

Ed took a deep breath.

He could trust Stede. Probably. Definitely. As much as Ed could trust, you know, people.

“This is just. . . I don’t know how to explain this. I know what day it is, and I know what I saw — even if it was a hallucination or a dream or whatever.”

“Ed, I believe you.” Stede’s hazel eyes were earnest. “And I am a bit of an expert on this topic.”

“Okay, I’m listening.” Ed felt his panicked heartbeat slow.

“Ed, I don’t think you had a dream. I think you saw . . . what you saw, and then the aliens sent you back in time, by exactly one day.”

“That’s . . .” Ed’s thoughts were racing. It wasn’t enough to just encounter aliens, he was also traveling through time? Kind of a hat on a hat, wasn’t it?

“It’s not uncommon for abductees to experience loss of time,” Stede explained. “So, it stands to reason that these visitors have some way of hopping around through time and space.”

Fuck. Ed had wanted to get out of Las Vegas, get away from his whole boring-as-fuck life and his stick-up-his-ass business partner, but he’d expected to maybe get shitfaced and go fishing in Tahoe. He hadn’t bargained on this.

Then again, he hadn’t bargained on meeting Stede Bonnet, either.

“This isn’t some fucking Groundhog Day situation, is it?” Ed deadpanned, feeling his anxiety lighten as he stepped a little closer to Stede. “‘Cause I am way too good looking to be Bill Murray — and I already know how to play the piano.”

Stede giggled, but then seriously considered the idea. “I don’t think so — you didn’t wake up in the same place as yesterday, did you?”

“Mmm, no.” Ed let himself glance at Stede flirtatiously — not quite sure if it was gonna land. The pink under Stede’s collar let him know that it had landed — and he tucked that information away in the back of his mind. He rocked back on his heels. “Fuck. If I was gonna go back in time, I really hoped it’d be something cooler. You know, like seeing dinosaurs or something.”

“Mmm . . . or visiting the Library at Alexandria.”

“Or killing Hitler.”

“Agreed,” Stede sighed.

“But then that means that the aliens are . . .”

Stede looked at Ed and nodded. He gave Ed a half-smile that highlighted the dimple in his cheek. His face was alight with excitement and fear as he said, “They’re coming tonight.”

Chapter Text

Before Stede moved to Nevada, he never really appreciated sunsets. In his old life, he usually spent golden hour tucked into a cubicle in an anonymous office building, the view entirely obscured by other office towers made of concrete and steel. Some days, on the drive home to the house he shared with Mary, the sun would bore its way into his rearview mirror, blinding him as he sat in traffic, and sunsets became more of a nuisance than a pleasure. Then, once he was home, his view of the sky was hindered by the other gargantuan McMansions on their street. On those days, the sunset slipped past him, entirely unobserved.

Out here, in the desert, Stede could finally appreciate the full bowl of the sky in all its glory. He sat on the bench at the back of his trailer, marveling at each minute change in the color of the clouds and the slow clockwise shift of the Joshua tree’s shadow. At Ed’s insistence, he was taking a brief break from the crew’s preparations for tonight. Tonight. They’re coming tonight!

Soon, Stede would leave all of this behind — not just the claustrophobic offices and cul-de-sacs of his past, but everything he’d built at the Extra Ter-REST-rial, too. Not to mention the planet Earth itself. It was thrilling. So why did Stede feel so melancholy? He made a quick mental list of what he’d miss. Stede supposed he’d never again hear the calls of the rock wrens and black-throated sparrows. He’d never see another first-run movie in an air conditioned cinema. He’d never see another sunset.

And he’d never see Ed again.

Ed’s freshly-laundered clothes were on a line strung between two of the trailers. His t-shirt and jeans fluttered in the wind.

When had Ed landed on Stede’s list of the best things planet Earth had to offer? The realization sent a rush of blood to Stede’s head. He felt dizzy, like he was outside his own body. As he often did when his nerves got the best of him, Stede decided to make a list.

He ticked off reasons to be excited for tonight: Having proof — at last! — that aliens exist. Learning to communicate with creatures from another world. Seeing the galaxy. Making his childhood dreams real and sticking it to his old man at the same time. Making Ed proud.

Ed.

Stede’s brain wouldn’t let him get past Ed. Ed’s drowsy but attentive gaze as Stede told him about his ham radios, Ed’s exuberance when he came up with a new idea, Ed’s soft voice as he asked for a cup of far-too-sweet coffee, Ed’s beautiful neck framed by loose tendrils of his dark hair . . .

Stede barely registered that Olu was there until he was standing directly in Stede’s light. He was pushing a cart full of clean towels.

“Uh, Stede?” Olu said, hesitantly, “I want you to know that what you saw earlier was completely unprofessional and I promise it won’t happen again.”

Stede squinted at Olu. “You mean catching you pashing Jim in the supply closet?”

Olu shifted, looking anywhere except at Stede. “Yeah . . .”

“Olu, do you seriously think I’m upset about that?” Stede had been startled, to be sure. He was looking for the eucalyptus spray and instead encountered his most reliable employee and his favorite customer half-dressed and locked in an amorous embrace. After a bit of screaming on both sides, Stede kept his eyes on Jim’s ranger hat (which was, incredibly, still on their head) while he grabbed the spray bottle and backed out of the closet. The only part of the ordeal Stede really hadn’t appreciated was when Jim yelled at him to close the door. Really, he could have figured that out on his own.

“I’m not that repressed, Olu. I can tell when two people are in love.”

Olu breathed a sigh of relief and sat down next to Stede on the bench. “Yeah, shouldn’t have underestimated you, Cap.”

There was silence between them as they both watched the sky turn amber. A question was itching at the back of Stede’s brain. Finally, he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“What’s it like?”

“Cap . . .?” Olu looked at Stede with curiosity. Stede loved that about Olu: He was always curious, rarely judgmental.

“Being in love. What’s it like?”

Olu raised his eyebrows nearly to the brim of his beanie. When he realized Stede was serious, he let out a long breath and shook his head. “Can’t say I’m an expert — I’m sort of feeling things out as they go? But, it’s kind of like my whole life I’ve been a boat on the ocean, just getting tossed about, not really having a direction, not really sure of anything. And suddenly there’s this . . . anchor. Jim keeps me steady, and I think maybe I do the same for them.”

“I don’t know if that’s how anchors work,” Stede said, and then realized he was well and truly putting his foot in his mouth. The image of a tempest-tossed boat settling peacefully on the waves was beautiful, even if it was inaccurate. “That’s actually quite lovely, Olu. Thank you.”

“I hope you get to have that, Cap.” Olu was looking over Stede’s shoulder as he spoke, and Stede turned to see Ed coming around the corner of the trailer. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Leave the towels, Olu. After all, I have the eucalyptus spray right here.” He lifted the bottle and shook it.

Olu chuckled and shook his head as he got up, but he left the laundered towels. He gave a nod to Ed, and wandered out of sight.

Stede watched Ed walk toward him, those warm brown eyes squinting a little against the sun. In the fading light, silver strands of his hair took on a golden hue and his skin seemed to glow.

“Mind if I join you?”

At this moment, everything about Ed was soft: The sweats he still wore, the mellow sound of his voice, the affectionate expression on his face. Stede felt an overwhelming ache in his chest. He was going to miss this man terribly.

Stede smiled at him and patted the seat that Olu had vacated. Ed made some overly dramatic old-man-stretching noises as he sat down, making Stede giggle and breaking the tension a bit. Because there was tension between them, a brewing thunderstorm of things they hadn’t said and might never have the chance to say.

“Can I help you?” Ed indicated the pile of towels. “I’m pretty good at folding.”

“Oh, are you?” Stede raised his eyebrows and shifted a little in his seat, leaning into the game of it all, leaning in to Ed.

“Yeah, won a bunch of folding awards in my teens. Then I had to retire.”

“So young?”

“Folder’s elbow. Tragic story, really.”

They laughed together, easy as breathing. They started a little assembly line, Stede picking up the towels and spritzing them with the eucalyptus spray, Ed folding them and putting them in a pile on the seat between them. They made a good team.

“Everything’s ready for tonight,” Ed said.

“That’s. . . that’s good.” Despite the lingering heat of the day, Stede felt a chill. He put down the spray bottle and the fluffy towel. His hands were shaking. Maybe he was getting sick. That would be bad news, wouldn’t it? Can’t possibly meet aliens from another planet if you’ve got the sniffles!

“Hey.” Suddenly Ed’s hands were blanketing his on top of the stack of warm, folded towels. “Are you okay?”

“I. . .” Stede felt frantic. He had spent five years regretting the moment when he turned down his chance to meet people from another world, and now that he had a chance to undo it all, he was terrified. He was such a coward. Stede dropped his gaze to their hands.

Ed’s thumb stroked the top of Stede’s hand in a slow, soothing motion. “Are you scared?”

Stede let out a shaky breath. “Yes. I know that after all this waiting and hoping, I shouldn’t be, but. . .”

Ed gently squeezed Stede’s hand, and Stede looked up to see Ed’s sweet half-smile bathed in the last rays of a rose-red sunset.

“It’s okay to be scared. S’cool that you get scared, but you just go ahead and do it anyway. That’s bravery, in my book.”

Ed thought Stede was brave. And Stede was finally starting to believe it, too. He just had to put one foot in front of the other now, and not let his wildly pounding heart lead him astray.

“Thank you, Ed.” Stede slid his hand from Ed’s and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with a eucalyptus-scented washcloth. Ed lifted his hand and for a split second it looked like he might be reaching out to cup Stede’s cheek. But he grabbed the eucalyptus spray instead.

“I’m nicking this, by the way. Smells fucking amazing.” Ed winked, and Stede laughed.

They folded laundry as the sun slipped away from them, streaking the sky in shades of lavender and the softest pink. When they were done, Ed rested his hand on top of the stack of folded towels.

Stede so rarely craved physical touch. He’d never been good at hugs, or knowing when to affectionately slap someone’s back, or god forbid when to kiss someone. He’d stopped trying, after a certain point.

But he wanted to touch Ed, be nearer to Ed.

Stede slid his hand right into Ed’s again and interlaced their fingers. Ed let out a contented sigh that thrilled Stede down to the marrow. They watched the clouds and listened to the sound of Ed’s laundry rippling in the wind until the sky turned indigo. They sat there together, hands intertwined, as the constellations appeared one by one by one.

The whole crew had dinner together in the diner in Stede’s honor. Roach made enough to feed an army, and even let Jim hop behind the counter to help out. They pushed all the two- and four-tops together to make one big communal table, and everyone loaded their plates with lamb meatballs flavored with Roach’s mom’s secret spice blend, and tostones fried up just the way Jim’s Nana taught them. They ate and drank and drank some more. Ed was seated right next to Stede. Stede thought he might enjoy Ed’s company even more when he was sharing a laugh with the whole crew, telling war stories from the hotel business in Vegas and listening intently as they told him about the adventures that had led them to the Extra Ter-REST-rial.

When the plates were cleared, everyone lingered at the table. Stede broke out a bottle of brandy he’d been saving for a special occasion. He hadn’t given up all of his posh things when he moved out here. Roach poured a dram for each of them, and then Olu cleared his throat and stood up, brandy glass raised. “To Stede. Strangest boss I’ve ever had. Long may he roam!”

“Speech!” Jim shouted, and then everyone was slapping the table and chanting, “Speech! Speech! Speech!”

Stede flushed and glanced at Ed, but Ed grinned and gestured for him to stand up. Stede didn’t exactly need encouragement to ramble on a bit, but it was nice to get it.

“Well!” Stede said, grinning from ear to ear, feeling warm from the brandy and the good food. “I am so grateful to you all for helping me with my, er. . . quest. And for believing in me. I’m so pleased that the Extra Ter-REST-rial is going to carry on with such wonderful co-captains at the helm.”

“Co-captains?” asked Roach.

“Well, yes, I’m leaving the motel to all of you, of course.” Stede thought it was the most generous thing he could do. After all, they really were a crew. Strangely, though, the crew just stared at Stede like he had three heads.

“Um, well, that’s lovely, Stede,” Frenchie said, “but we figured the place was going to shut down. John and I thought we might head East for a bit.”

“Me and Jim, we’re kind of thinking we might head to New Mexico,” said Olu. “They’re hiring for seasonal workers at White Sands National Park and. . .”

“But we’re a crew!” Stede’s heart was pounding. He simply hadn’t considered the idea that the hotel wouldn’t continue in his absence.

Roach patted him on the shoulder. “It’s been fun, man. But, we all know this place is toast once you’re gone.”

Stede looked around at the teal vinyl booths, the carefully collected polaroids and posters and figurines. They weren’t worth a damn, not really. But then he looked, really looked at his crew: Roach’s cocky sideways lean, Olu’s easy smile, Wee John’s gentle eyes, so easy to miss if you only saw the tattoos and his intimidating height. Stede had missed so much. For five years, he had a singular goal. And along the way, he made friends. He made a family. What else had he missed?

The little party was breaking up, and one by one the crew offered handshakes and hugs, saying goodbye and good luck. Finally, only Ed and Stede were left behind in the empty diner. It was time.

“You ready?” Ed motioned toward the door. His face was in shadow, and Stede couldn’t quite see his expression.

“Yes, I think so,” Stede said. Ed opened the door and held it for Stede, and then they were out in the cool night air once more. Stede leaned against the railing of the front porch of the diner. The aliens had taken five years. He could take a moment or two.

Stede could hear Frenchie picking out the first verse of “Dancing in the Moonlight” on an acoustic guitar. The neon alien sign buzzed along with a chorus of insects. In the distance, a nightjar clucked and called to its mate.

Ed came up behind Stede and leaned on the railing beside him. When Stede looked up, he could see the bittersweet expression on Ed’s face. His hair was up, and the wind toyed with the little wisps that escaped his bun. In another life, maybe Stede could smooth those wisps back, cup his cheek. But Ed had already seen Stede’s future, and Stede couldn’t change it now. He was going to get what he always wanted — the connection he’d craved nearly his whole life.

But then, there was the glimmer of a connection here, wasn’t there? Ed was giving Stede his space, but his whole body leaned at an angle toward Stede’s. When the wind picked up, Stede could breathe in the smell of fresh laundry and soap on his skin. Stede could lean right back, if he wanted to.

“You gonna say goodbye to the crew?” Ed asked.

“Nah. I hate goodbyes.” Stede wrinkled his nose. It was true. He never knew exactly what to say, whether to hug or shake hands.

“Me too,” Ed said, and there was weight behind it, a heaviness that pulled Stede closer.

Ed’s eyelashes caught the green neon of the alien sign as he looked up at Stede, but Stede’s gaze was caught on the pink of his lips. He could kiss Ed right now. He could ask him to stay. He could let the flying saucer come and go and never give it another thought. If he did it now, he wouldn’t have to think, he could just let it happen. Ed’s eyes fluttered closed, his lips parted slightly. . .

A rush of panic flooded Stede’s brain. He didn’t know what he was doing with his hands or his body. He didn’t know what Ed was doing here, with him. Sure, Stede was a gay man, but his sexuality was like a Morris-Thorne wormhole: Perfectly believable in theory, and impossible to demonstrate in practical terms. And even if Stede had any moves, even if could be as cool and smooth and moltenly sexy as Ed — Stede knew where he had to be in two hours’ time. It was fated. Ed had seen it.

Stede caught his breath and pulled back, making a throat-clearing noise that was far louder and more abrupt than he intended.

Ed took the hint far more readily than Stede expected. He stretched his back and stood up, one hand awkwardly tracing the railing. Stede had wasted the moment, as per usual. So much for human connection.

“Can I ask you something?” Stede squeaked.

Ed eyebrows shot to the top of his forehead, and he settled his limbs into an unconvincingly casual pose. “Yeah, mate. Uh, sure.”

“Would you. . . would you take Klaatu for me? Jim and Olu are likely to move around a bit, and obviously Frenchie can’t take him. . .”

“Absolutely, mate! ‘Course I’ll take good care of him.” Ed smiled, perhaps a bit weakly, and patted Stede on the shoulder. He seemed to weigh whether to say anything more. “So, um, after you get your ride, I think I’m gonna head back to Vegas.”

“What about Izzy?” Stede knew very little about the man, but what he had heard was rather distasteful.

“Izzy can get stuffed,” Ed snorted. “But I probably owe him an explanation for storming out, at the very least.”

“Well, then I hope Klaatu doesn’t give you too much trouble.”

“Nah, we’ll have him dealing Blackjack by the end of the month.”

They laughed together, and the ease between them returned, though now there was also a note of melancholy. Stede felt responsible for that bittersweet thing between them. But he knew his fate was already decided. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t make things harder for Ed by leading him on.

The drive to the rendezvous point was quiet. Ed fiddled with the dial of the radio, but the classic rock station wouldn’t come in, so he switched it off again. He was glad to be the one driving, anyway. Gave him something to do with his hands. He had wanted to kiss Stede so badly back on the porch. But that clearly wasn’t what Stede wanted or needed.

And besides, Ed knew himself, knew how he always fell for guys who weren’t fucking available. Normally, that meant a guy who lived three states away or a girl who technically had a boyfriend already. Falling for a guy on the eve of his long-awaited alien abduction was a new one. And yeah, Ed was falling. He’d been falling since the moment their hands connected on the duvet. Maybe it was earlier than that, maybe it was when he first saw a naked man in the road, a man who was clearly insane but also clearly standing up to a power greater than himself and demanding a piece of the action, reaching out for his place among the stars.

Stede was fidgeting in the seat next to him, smoothing the map out on his lap again and again. Ed glanced at him with concern.

“Oh! Sorry, I must be distracting you,” Stede said, and literally sat on his hands.

Ed laughed. “No, no, mate. You just seem anxious. D’you wanna, you know, talk it through?”

Stede sighed, and released his hands into his lap. “I’m just — I’m excited is all. It’s just so big, isn’t it? I’ve been waiting for years, and we’re finally here. I mean, I’m finally here. With your help, of course. Ed, I couldn’t have made it here without you.”

“‘Course. That’s what friends do, right? If we are, y’know, friends.”

“Oh, Ed!” Stede cried, and Ed dared a glance at him. There were tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Ed had to look away so he wouldn’t start crying, too. “Of course we’re friends. You’re taking my lunatic cat, aren’t you?”

Ed laughed and the tears came anyway. He hid the sadness behind a big honking guffaw of laughter. Was he an asshole for hoping that Stede was hiding a little bit of sadness, too? Was he the biggest fucking dick in the world for wishing Stede had kissed him back at the diner and told the aliens to fuck off? Yeah, probably. Ed was a selfish prick like that, and damn did he want Stede for himself.

They passed . Getting close to the end of the road.

“Something’s been bothering me,” Stede said, suddenly all business, “Why didn’t you see your own car from the road?”

As if on cue, a loud pop and a hiss exploded from the Jeep’s engine. Smoke poured out of the car hood, making them both choke. Ed blindly pulled over to the side of the road and crawled to a stop, his eyes stinging.

The car was fucked, that much was clear. They both got out of the car, and Stede insisted on checking the engine, even though Ed was pretty sure they were getting nowhere without a real mechanic. When Stede yelped from under the hood of the car, Ed ran around the front to find him covered from head to toe in something black and oily.

“I can’t meet them like this!” Stede screamed.

Ed clicked his tongue. Fuck. Stede was absolutely drenched. But it did make a certain amount of sense. “You, uh, remember how you were dressed when I saw you?”

“How I was. . . “ Stede started to protest, but then the penny dropped. He groaned. “Oh, fuck, really?”

Ed didn’t look while Stede stripped down to his Birkenstocks. He kept his eyes firmly on the ground as he handed over the emergency blanket he always kept in the back of the car.

“Ready!” Stede announced.

Ed looked up at Stede, who’d wrapped the silver blanket like a shroud and tucked it in up to his neck. He giggled. “You look like a burrito.”

Stede huffed, clearly irritated as fuck. The grumpy, adorable burrito shuffled past the boulders along the narrow shoulder of the road as Ed grabbed Klaatu’s carrier. They were going to have to hoof it the rest of the way to the rendezvous point. Ed scanned the road for snakes while Stede kept lookout for cars coming up behind them.

“I think we’re close!” Ed said, not really sure if they were actually close. And then, the sky opened up. Buckets of rain poured down on them. They both stopped and looked up at the sky, silver rain spattering their faces. When Ed finally looked at Stede, he couldn’t tell if he was crying.

The sound of the heavy raindrops echoed off the distant hills, filling Ed’s ears with noise. Rain dripped down his nose, soaked into his hair. Klaatu yowled from his carrier and Ed set it down, doing his best to cover it with his jacket.

Stede didn’t move. He was frozen to the spot, and just kept looking at Ed as rain streamed down his face.

“You have to go, Stede!” Ed shouted over the rain. It made him sick to say it, but he wouldn’t let Stede miss out on his dream. Not now.

“I know, I know I do.” Stede shouted back, but he still didn’t move, he just clutched the emergency blanket tighter around his body, silver rivulets of water pouring down the shiny surface.

“You have to go,” Ed said again, but this time there wasn’t any urgency in it, and his legs were carrying him forward, his heart was carrying him forward, until he was inches from Stede, until he could see every raindrop as it traversed the planes of his face.

“I know, Ed, I —”

Ed kissed him. He tasted the rain and the salt of Stede’s tears and he knew even before it happened that Stede would kiss him back, that the magnetic pull between them was real, realer than anything Ed had felt in his stupid fucking four-and-a-half decades on this planet.

But he wasn’t prepared for the way Stede kissed him, the desperate heat of his tongue, the fingers that pulled him in at the nape of his neck, the flutter of his eyelashes against Ed’s cheekbone. For Ed, time stood still.

When he finally pulled away, he pressed his nose into Stede’s cheek, not even caring that that was maybe weird and not sexy, just wanting to be close to Stede. “I just had to do that one time before you left. I’m sorry —”

Stede pulled back a little and rested their foreheads together as the rain came down all around them. Stede’s breath was humid on Ed’s lips. “Please don’t say you’re sorry, Ed. I’m not.”

In Ed’s peripheral vision, he saw headlights coming down the highway. Ed knew they were his headlights from last night or five minutes from now, depending on how you looked at it. Their story would end just as it began, and Ed would go back to . . . whatever it was Ed Teach was gonna do with the rest of his life.

“You have to go.” Ed said, shutting his eyes to the rain and trying not to think about what Stede’s expression might be. Ed hoped he would be happy. He wanted Stede to be happy.

Klaatu meowled from inside the carrier, and Stede knelt down to say goodbye. He whispered something to the cat, and when he stood up again, his jaw was set with the same determination that Ed had noticed the first time he saw Stede. He took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m ready.”

Stede kicked off his sandals and whipped off the blanket, which Ed caught before it flew off in the wind. Stede met Ed’s eyes, and his steely gaze slipped into something softer for just a moment. But then, he ran into the road, naked as the day he was born, and stretched his arms to the sky.

“I’m ready!” he shouted, “C’mon! I’m ready!”

The headlights were getting closer. Ed couldn’t watch what came next. He told himself he couldn’t risk seeing his past self and triggering some sort of time paradox situation, but deep down he knew that he just couldn’t stand to see Stede leave a second time. He picked up Klaatu’s carrier and Stede’s blanket and ran off the road in the rain. He ducked behind a large boulder, too heartbroken and exhausted to check for snakes or spiders. He sank to the ground.

The rain stopped suddenly, and the wind whipped around the boulder. Klaatu howled. Ed took pity on him and unzipped the carrier, cradling him close to his chest. It didn’t make him stop howling, but, incredibly, he didn’t scratch Ed’s face off. He butted his head into Ed’s beard, and Ed buried his face in his fur.

The ship was waiting. It hovered above Stede, its luminous silver surface rippling in and out of time. He’d found them. They’d found him. Finally, after years of missteps and missed connections, Stede was in the right place at the right time. He already felt like he was hovering outside his body. Any shame he might have felt about being outside in the altogether was replaced with awe. The symbols on the ship twisted, melded together, and split apart again. Stede didn’t need to read alien languages to know what they said.

COME WITH US

“I’m here!” Stede shouted, raising his arms up to the sky.

He was aware that Ed’s car was behind him, several yards away. He didn’t dare look back. He didn’t know what he would do if he looked back.

“I’m ready! Take me!”

Ed had taught him about connection. Ed had shown him how to open up the parts of himself that he’d kept so closed off they might as well have been gathering dust. And he was ready, so ready, to meet the creatures from his dreams. He was ready to connect.

Nothing was happening. The ship didn’t call to him. The wind whipped sand across his bare skin. If it was a test, then Stede wasn’t going to fail.

“Please?” Stede asked, hoping he was just enough and not too much. Hoping he’d be accepted just one more time.

The ship rippled and the buzz coming from deep in its belly grew louder. Stede had a frantic thought that it was about to leave him again. And then an aperture opened from the center of the ship, bathing him in lavender light. The ship was coming closer to the ground — no, actually, Stede was moving away from the ground, being lifted up from the asphalt like he was caught in a net. It didn’t feel bad, actually, a little like being massaged by invisible floating marbles. The sensation was frankly more distracting than unpleasant. Stede rose higher and higher, closer to the aperture and the source of the blinding purple light and the deafening whir of engines capable of traveling through time and space. There were wonders ahead that would throw Carl Sagan into a jealous rage, and Stede was going to soak it all in.

Stede twisted a bit in the pull of the beam to take one last look at the scene below, illuminated in shades of purple and black. Everything below him was frozen, still. The highway curved through the desert like a great black snake with a stripe down its back. Above it, there were birds paused mid-flight. He looked for Ed, the one from his timeline, and could only see the silvery emergency blanket frozen as it flapped in the wind. Ed was hidden from view, if he was still out there at all.

But there was another Ed looking up at him, his face frozen in terror and wonder. He stood behind the door of his Jeep, lifting one arm toward the ship, reaching high over his head. Under the beam of light, his tattoos looked ashen and gray and his skin took on a purplish hue. The first two fingers of his hand were stretched out toward Stede. Stede gasped. He’d seen that hand before. It was the same hand he’d reached for in his dreams.

Stede tried to call out to Ed, tried to twist far enough to reach his hand. But then, everything went dark.

When the strange whirring faded and the rain came back, Ed knew Stede was gone. He also knew he had to move, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He squeezed his eyes shut as Klaatu dug a claw into his thigh in protest.

“I know, I know, we’ll get up. We’ll do it. Just. . .”

“Mr. Edward Teach?” The voice was unfamiliar. And the question didn’t seem like a question at all.

Ed looked up. There were two people standing in the rain. One held a large black umbrella. The other held a flashlight and a gun, both trained on Ed. He sputtered out, “What the fuck?” as he squinted in the flashlight’s beam.

“Yep, I reckon that’s him,” said Umbrella.

“Mr. Teach, I’ll need you to come with us.” Flashlight-and-gun holstered her gun (thank fuck) but kept the flashlight in Ed’s face.

“Ok, sure, fine, whatever, but can you get that thing out of my face?” Ed had been held at gunpoint a few times (everyone knows a few wise guys in the casino biz), and he got the distinct sense that these two were cops, not robbers.

“Sorry,” mumbled Flashlight as she holstered that, too. Now that he wasn’t actively being blinded, Ed could see that both women were wearing identical black suits, white shirts, and black ties. Feds.

Ed scrambled to his feet, and tried to look as professional as he could, given that he was soaking wet, holding a cat, and had recently been ugly crying. The agents started ushering him toward a waiting black sedan. Ed started replaying all of his early-career deals with less-than-above-board members of the Las Vegas business community. Fuck. He needed to think fast.

“Ok, look, I run a clean business. None of that shady shit. I know Hornigold’s been yapping his trap to every fucker with a badge, but I’m not . . .”

Umbrella snort-laughed. “Fuck off, man, you think this is about your casino?”

“Mr. Teach, our particular division is not concerned with your little ‘connections.’” She rolled her eyes, looking mildly exasperated as she hustled Ed into the backseat of the sedan. She climbed in beside him while Umbrella got into the driver’s seat.

“I’m Special Agent Zheng, FBI.” She produced a badge from her breast pocket, flashed it at Ed and tucked it away. She nodded toward the driver. “That’s Special Agent Archie.”

“Also FBI!” Archie did a little wave with one hand while she turned over the ignition with the other.

The rain was letting up as they drove down the highway.

“Special as in . . .” Ed was getting the sense this really wasn’t about his casino.

“We’re tasked with investigating cases that don’t fall into, well, typical categories.” Zheng gave Ed a smile that was all teeth.

“We do all the creepy shit, mate,” Archie interjected. She started ticking things off on her fingers, and Ed wondered exactly how she was holding on to the steering wheel. “We’ve had shapeshifters, lizard men, ice parasites, swamp monsters. Oh, one time we had a shapeshifter who lived in a swamp, that was interesting.”

Zheng’s glare could have stripped the upholstery off of the driver’s seat. “And visitors from other worlds, of course.”

“Aliens!” Archie slapped her forehead. “Fuck, forgot about that. We also do aliens.”

Zheng sighed. There was clearly a whole dynamic here, and Ed did not have the energy to process it right now.

“Ed — may I call you Ed?” Zheng didn’t wait for an answer before she continued. “What you witnessed tonight is a matter of national security. You understand, of course, that if the general public were to become aware of contact with these visitors there could be outright panic. And I’m sure you’ll agree that panic is as bad for the country as it is for business owners like yourself.”

Ed wasn’t sure what Zheng’s angle was, but he would have loved to watch her play a few hands of poker. “What do you want from me, then?”

“We want a guarantee that you won’t speak to anyone else about this encounter.”

“And if someone asks about Stede?” It already hurt to say his name. The idea that he couldn’t say it again might hurt even more.

“Say he just had a little boating accident,” Archie said.

“We’re in the desert.” Zheng said through gritted teeth.

“Ok, fine, a little hiking accident, jeez.” Archie rolled her eyes in the rearview mirror.

“But Stede’s not dead.” Ed felt panic rising. Stede wasn’t dead, right? Like, the aliens hadn’t done something to him. He was out there, living his best life, being free. He was happy, he was already so happy without Ed and without his little crew. He wasn’t even thinking about them, wasn’t missing them a bit. Ed felt tears welling up behind his eyes, which was not a great look.

“Stede’s not coming back,” Zheng said, patting Ed’s knee and giving him a highly unsympathetic smile. “Let’s just put this whole thing to bed, and the agency will forget all about the work you did with Hornigold back in ‘86. You can go back to Las Vegas, run your casino, and never hear from us again.”

Ed wasn’t thinking about the casino or his shady past or Vegas. He was thinking about Stede.

“Fine,” he huffed. “Whatever you want.”

“Great choice, mate!” Archie slapped the steering wheel and pulled over to the side of the road. “And, good news, we got your ride all fixed up! We did you a solid and hid your Jeep so your past self wouldn’t experience a weird time paradox thingy. It’s happened before, and trust me, you don’t wanna see it. The brains get everywhere.”

“The FBI is grateful for your cooperation, Ed.” Zheng reached over Ed and popped open the door on his side. Clearly she believed the matter concluded.

Ed stumbled out of the car, clutching Klaatu. He slammed the door, and the agents sped away.

“Fuck them,” Ed said to the cat. The stubborn part of Ed’s brain wanted to fight back. He was gonna run right back to Vegas and tell someone about Stede, the aliens, the whole thing, just to spite those spooks.

And then Ed realized he had no one to tell.

Izzy wouldn’t believe him. Jack might — but then, no one would ever believe Jack. And everyone else in Ed’s life only listened to him because their paycheck hung in the balance. The only person who’d really listened, the person who’d absolutely fucking love to hear about a governmental cover up of contact with alien life was — well, he wasn’t here anymore.

The stubborn part of Ed’s brain stood down. There was nothing left to do but drive.

It was past 3 am by the time Ed reached the outskirts of Las Vegas. In a few hours’ time, the stars would fade. Ed wished he could hold them in place, keep the night from slipping through his fingers. As long as the dark sky stretched overhead, it was still the night he kissed Stede. Maybe he could live in a Groundhog Day situation after all, if it meant seeing that smile every day. But now, it was too late.

The view through the windshield was, at least, familiar. Vegas never truly slept. The flashing lights adorning the oldest casinos drowned out the stars, blinking bulbs fizzing with advertisements for the “loosest slots” and “sexiest revues” on the Strip. Every sign advertised some new fuckery, all flash and no substance. Now that Ed had experienced something real, it all looked cheap: The casino in a styrofoam castle, the fake pirate ship topping his own establishment, the man-made lagoons, the plastic trees. Hell, they were even building a fake Egyptian pyramid out there. He’d forgotten about that one. It was almost done now, scaffolding stretching skyward. Ed had read an article a few weeks back saying the tip of the pyramid would have the most powerful man-made light in the world, a beacon shining straight up into the night. Ed wondered if Stede would be able to see it from wherever he was now.

Klaatu mewled from the backseat.

“Almost home,” Ed said, and then instantly wanted to take it back. This wasn’t home. Not for Klaatu. And not really for Ed, either.

Ed fiddled with the radio. Music, that’s what they needed. Something to fill up the empty space in the car. Ed flexed his fingers, they felt frozen from too much time gripping the steering wheel and being blasted by the AC. He let the scan button slip past some talk radio station and midnight smooth jazz, and landed on a song he didn’t know, echo-pedal guitars backing a moody, deep vocal track:

Sometimes, when this place gets kind of empty

Sound of their breath fades with the light

I think about the loveless fascination

Under the Milky Way tonight

The song rattled around in Ed’s ribcage, shaking something loose inside him. He felt hot tears forming behind his eyes, and he let them come, let them blind him a little as he raced down the highway toward a life he hated, away from the memory of a man he could have loved.

Wish I knew what you were looking for

Might have known what you would find

What had Ed been looking for when he pulled into the Extra Ter-REST-rial? And if he’d known, if he’d been able to say it out loud from the start, would it have changed anything at all?

Ed almost ran the red light. A pair of women were stopped in the middle of the road. They were carrying their heels, leaning on each other. Drunk, probably. Ed sighed.

But then, he noticed that they were pointing up at the sky. Ed leaned forward and looked up through the windshield.

Fuuuuuuck.

And it's something quite peculiar

Something shimmering and white

It leads you here, despite your destination

Under the Milky Way tonight

It was unmistakable. There was a ripple in the sky, and a big, very big, silver saucer was slicing through it.

“What the actual fuck!” Ed shouted. He put the car in park and scooped up Klaatu. Someone behind him slammed on their car horn as Ed opened the car door and stepped out into the street, staring slack-jawed at the oncoming ship.

Why was it back so soon? This couldn’t be right. If there was a chance Stede was in danger, Ed had to reach that ship.

The two women were arguing directly in front of Ed’s car. One curled her hair around her fingers.

“Do you think it’s, like, an ad for a magic show, Shauna?”

“Oh my god, Tiff, for the last time it isn’t an ad. We had bad mushrooms, Tiff! This is a bad trip!”

Ed looked up. The ship was fully visible now, and it was moving. It wobbled, not in a cool spaceship-y way, in a slightly-out-of-control way that set Ed’s teeth on edge. As the ship wobbled, it hurtled down, down, down at an alarming speed.

One of the women gestured with her strappy shoe. “I was having FUN on this trip, Shauna, and now you’re making me sad!”

Ed had no time for this. He walked right up to the pair of them. They smelled of oversweet perfume, hairspray, and tequila.

“Hey, Shauna, is it? Here, hold my cat.” He shoved Klaatu into the woman’s arms. She and her friend shouted something in protest, but Ed didn’t hear. He was sprinting down the road.

The whine of the ship’s engines grew louder and higher pitched, and then there was a percussive sound and a stream of smoke spilled out from the saucer. Ed’s stomach flipped.

“Stede!” he called out as he ran, “I’m coming!”

Ed didn’t know how he knew that Stede was aboard, but he felt it with absolute certainty. Every time feet slammed into the pavement, he heard Stede’s voice in his ears, felt Stede’s presence in his blood and bones, even felt him in that bad knee that was close to giving out. Ed was close enough now that the acrid smoke burned his lungs, but he wasn’t about to stop running. Ed wasn’t gonna let Stede get away again. This time, he was going to hold on to something real.

And then, everything came crashing down.

At first, it looked like the ship might be correcting course, nosing out of its dive. But then, it swerved and careened into the nearly-built Luxor casino, slicing half the pyramid clean off. Ed instinctively ducked and shielded his face with his arm as glass shattered and metal groaned.

“Fuck!” Ed screamed. His heart was pounding, but the shrapnel hadn’t punctured anything (ok, so he had a scrape on his arm, but it hadn’t punctured anything important). He was gonna fucking keep running, his shoes crunching on bits of shattered glass. Stede might still be okay. Stede might still be alive.

The ship was still airborne when its engines sputtered and its lights went out. Ed watched, helpless, as it crashed into the ground. People who had exited the casinos, bleary-eyed, to see what was happening turned and ran for cover. The lip of the saucer turning up the pavement and the ruddy earth like a spade. Finally, the massive saucer ground to a halt in the middle of the road, billows of smoke obscuring its true size and shape. Ed stood stock still in the road as car alarms blared and people screamed. Ed couldn’t hear any of it. Couldn’t process any of it. This couldn’t be happening.

And then, one sound carried above the cacophony: Stede Bonnet’s voice calling his name. It was outside his head this time, real and beautiful and clear as a bell.

“Ed! Ed, where are you?”

Ed’s heart started beating again.

“Stede? Stede!” Ed ran through the smoke, eyes stinging and his heart pounding in his ears. He let himself be pulled toward that voice, and he didn’t even feel the pain in his knee any more.

Through the haze, a figure appeared. Broad shoulders, long legs, hair ruffled by the wind. “Stede!”

Stede turned around, and the sight of his face nearly took Ed out. But then they were running toward each other, stumbling over the rubble — seven paces apart, then five, then two, and then falling into each other’s arms, gazing at each other in absolute wonder.

Stede was wearing some sort of silver jumpsuit, and he had a beard? Shit, turns out he looked fucking gorgeous with a beard and Ed had to kiss him about that—

But Stede closed the distance between them before Ed even had a chance to finish the thought. He kissed Ed like they had been apart for years, his hand sliding up the nape of Ed’s neck to tangle in his hair. Somewhere in the distance, Ed could hear the faint wail of sirens, but he was entirely focused on Stede’s breathing, the soft little “mmf” sound he made as Ed parted his lips and deepened the kiss. Their noses squished together, and Ed’s hair came loose and curtained their faces. When they broke the kiss at last, Ed tightened his arms around Stede, unwilling to let him go. And, incredibly, Stede squeezed him right back. They caught a breath and rested their foreheads together, still locked in an embrace.

Stede’s voice broke as he said, “Ed, I’m so sorry I left. I never should have let you go.”

Ed looked at Stede, those hazel eyes clouded over with regret and anxiety. Ed gently cupped his jaw. “I’m not angry, Stede. I couldn’t let you walk away from your dream. And, I’m glad you came back.”

He put his hand on Stede’s chest, feeling the odd mothwing-like texture of Stede’s jumpsuit and idly wondering whether this was standard-issue space gear or something Stede had gotten tailored just for him. He’d put good money on the latter.

“Well, truth be told, the aliens were dicks,” Stede said ruefully, “Would you believe they tried to make me kiss a horse?”

Of all the things Ed had imagined Stede might experience out there, space pervs was definitely not on the list. “Uh, was it like. . . an alien zoo thing?”

Stede snorted in contempt. “No, I just think they’re assholes. I’m ashamed to say it took me a few months to notice that despite having a very fancy ship with remarkable time and space-bending technology, they really just use it to go around extorting resources from unsuspecting planets and pulling some very rude pranks.”

“They shoulda abducted Jack,” Ed quipped, and then he rewound what Stede had just said. “Wait, months?”

“Oh, yes, well, once I realized I’d taken up with the galaxy’s most insufferable aliens, I hatched an ingenious plan to commandeer their ship!” Stede looked around at the rubble, scrunching his nose. “The plan. . . didn’t exactly come off as expected. Had to improvise a bit at the end there.”

“So you’ve been gone. . .”

“Almost a year. But I had to get back. To this time, to this place.” Stede looked at Ed with a steadiness, a self-assuredness that Ed hadn’t seen before. It was a good fucking look on him.

“For any reason in particular or. . .?” Ed cocked his head to the side and Stede swept in with a kiss, this time all chivalrous and gentle. He even tucked a strand of hair behind Ed’s ear. Ed swooned, just a little.

“Ed, of all the things I’ve seen, of all the sentient beings I’ve met, there is no one in the universe quite like you. I was wondering if we could. . . if we could just have a little more time together. Maybe . . . breakfast? On me?”

Ed’s heart was fluttering in his chest like a hummingbird. His mouth was dry (maybe that was from the smoke, god, there was a lot of fucking smoke). Stede was here from the future, and he wanted to take Ed to breakfast.

So.

Was he really all in on this world-hopping lunatic?

Was he actually gonna take a chance on someone he’d known just 48 hours? Someone who had hotwired a flying saucer just to take him on a date?

And most importantly: Was he going to order french toast with whipped cream or pancakes drenched in syrup?

“Yeah, actually, that sounds fan-fucking-tastic.”

Ed wanted to eat Stede’s smile with a spoon. The man looked like he’d just hit the jackpot, grinning from ear to ear. The sun was rising behind him, casting the billowing smoke from the ship in a romantic pink and gold, Stede’s silver suit reflecting and refracting the changing colors and turning them into a dazzling rainbow.

They couldn’t stand there smiling all day (probably), so they picked their way across the rubble until they heard sounds of plaintive mewling. Klaatu was doing his best to Houdini his way out of Shauna’s arms, but luckily her reaction to the crash was to cling to the poor cat like a life raft.

“I’ll take him, thank you!” Stede gently plucked Klaatu out of Shauna’s arms, and he immediately started purring and nuzzling the weird jumpsuit. Shauna stood stock still, totally dumbstruck.

“Uh, like, what just happened?” squealed Tiff, who looked much more sober now.

“I just came back to Earth for my boyfriend!” Stede smiled back at her, and then whipped around to look at Ed, wide-eyed. “I mean, if that’s alright with you?”

“I fucking love it, actually.” And yeah, it was a fucking speed run of a relationship, this — but Ed was so very there for it.

He grinned at Stede, and Stede grinned back. Yeah, this was exactly Ed’s speed.

They were headed back to Ed’s car when a black sedan swerved onto the road and squealed to a stop in front of them.

“Fuck me, not these guys again.” Ed rolled his eyes.

“Ed, who—who are they?”

Agents Zheng and Archie got out of the SUV and adjusted their black suit jackets.

“They’re spooks. Here to ruin the fuckin’ mood.”

Stede gasped in delight. “Oooh! Men in black!”

“People in black, mate, it’s the fuckin’ ‘90s man.” Agent Archie shook her head as she approached.

Agent Zheng ignored her partner. “Mr. Teach, I believe we told you that this was a matter of national security?”

“I’ve kept my mouth shut the whole time.” Ed mimed zipping his lips.

Zheng sighed and crossed her arms. “And you, Mr. Bonnet. You’ve made a real mess out here.”

Stede straightened, and approached her, standing toe-to-toe with the agent. “I rather think you’ve made a mess of things, actually. My former friends aboard that vessel had some very interesting things to say about this planet. Apparently they’ve had business with the FBI since 1947, trading advanced technology for some of our more precious natural resources? But I’m sure this was all above-board and approved by the proper authorities, of course! Nothing that might get you or your compatriots into any trouble.”

Stede folded his arms and a smug grin crept up his face. Zheng sucked a breath in through her teeth and glared at him. They stared at each other for a moment, and then another, the tension crackling between them. Ed turned to Archie, hoping maybe she’d break this up, but she gave Ed a very clear “Not on your fucking life” look right back at him.

Finally, Zheng clenched her fists and groaned. “UGH! Both of you are irritating as hell. We’ll be watching you, Mr. Bonnet.” She turned on her heel and stalked back to the SUV.

“Welp, that puts me on damage control, then!” Archie cracked her knuckles and turned toward the stunned crowd that had formed on the street. She leaned in toward Ed and Stede. “Better get outta here while the getting’s good.”

Archie faced the crowd and waved her arms: “Okay, ladies and gentlepeople! We really appreciate you coming out for the show tonight. How about those special effects? And our stuntmen really pulled it off. Let’s give ‘em a hand!”

Ed and Stede walked away to a smattering of confused applause.

“So, what’s next?” Ed asked as his boyfriend buckled his seatbelt in the passenger seat of Ed’s Jeep. Kaatu was secured in the back, asleep for now.

“I thought I’d leave the next adventure up to you, Edward.” Stede said, linking his hand with Ed’s.

“Adventure, eh?” Ed already had big dreams swirling in his head. He was gonna make the Queen Anne employee-owned (it would piss off Izzy, sure, but it would be life-changing for Fang and Ivan). And then, he and Stede would head back to the desert where it all began. He knew a few tricks of the trade to get the Extra Ter-REST-rial turning a profit in no time. And when it did, they’d welcome back any of the crew who wanted to join them.

But he could tell Stede all about it later. For now, he was happy to just be together — no fate looming in front of them, just the open road.

“What if we just start with breakfast?” Ed turned the ignition and started back down the road, leaving the smoke and the mayhem far behind them. At the first stoplight, Ed reached for Stede’s hand. Ed didn’t need to turn his head to feel Stede’s smile, brighter than all the lights of the strip, and warmer than the early autumn sunrise.

Stede squeezed Ed’s hand, and Ed squeezed back.

Chapter 3 Soundscape: The UFO Crash

Chapter 1 Soundscape: Ed's encounter

Chapter 2 Soundscape: Stede's secret VHS tape