Let Sleeping Dragons Lie Part Three
Part Three
Authors Note: Very close to the end of book 1 now. Book 2 will be coming out for Big!Bang 2022!
The day following the discovery of the alien went slowly. He didn’t want to leave the cabin at first should the alien wake up. Then as the morning progressed he ventured out into the yard for short periods of time to do any minor cleanup he could before going back inside to check on his otherworldly guest. He had gotten some water and broth into the alien with no bad results except that all the liquid had caused a minor accident. This caused Jensen to go digging around in the cellar after lunch thankful he hadn’t tossed much of anything of his grandparent’s personal items.
At the very end of their lives, they had both needed all day care and some precautions for if he wasn’t immediately at hand. To put it politely his grandmother had said it best, you came into the world a mess dependent on someone to take care of all your needs, and if you were lucky to live a long life you would go out the same way. He had been very embarrassed at first when he had to help his grandmother to the bathroom, then at the end to change her when she needed a diaper after becoming bed bound. It didn’t take long to get over the embarrassment because she needed him and it was useful for his grandfather too in the end. Since he didn’t get into town much and most companies couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver to his remote cabin everything was bought and stocked in bulk generally. The diapers had been no exception, and while he had gotten rid of most of the hospice and medical items, he had not gotten rid of the smaller accoutrements of long-term personal care. There had to be at least one box or pack of diapers left that he had brought out with his grandfather’s toiletries. Sure enough, he found a single pack of diapers which was blessedly unopened and he took it back inside.
He rolled the alien around on the bed pulling up the sheets and bedding from under him after each move. The mattress wasn’t damaged and was only minorly damp. He scrubbed it with a soapy damp towel and remade only half the bed so the wet spot could dry. With that done came the hard part.
While he had gotten over the embarrassment of helping his grandparents he was struck anew with hesitation and nervous embarrassment. ‘Think of it in medical terms just like you were taught’ he chided himself before squaring his shoulders and fortifying himself to get down to the important business. The…patient…was not anything he was used to. Yes, he was a male which made things a little easier, but he was a stranger, and just looking at him resting in the bed he looked like an ordinary human. A very sexy human. A sexy human who happened to be his type. But once he got past the fact he would be putting a diaper on and most likely changing said diaper on a sexy male stranger there was another aspect. The alien’s penis. Not human at all. He couldn’t help staring at it as he held a fresh diaper in one hand and a fresh damp cloth in the other hand a blush spreading across most of his body.
Jensen could admit to being a tiny bit of a size queen when it came to male lovers but this was something else. Everything was proportionate to size and a bit more which meant that unaroused the alien's penis matched the aroused lengths of some of his bigger lovers. The base had a small bump and extra skin folds surrounding it and looked as if a third testicle had been mostly removed. The head was surrounded by small scalloped skin folds making it look like a closed flower head. The slit was also enlarged. Jensen closed his eyes and shook his head “get your shit together man” he muttered. Opening his eyes, he quickly but efficiently wiped down the alien’s groin area and dressed him in the diaper. Covering him back up he disposed of the washcloth, washed up, and went back outside to continue cleaning up the yard. He did not visit the spaceship until he put Molly in her stall for the night.
It sat on the ground and was quiet but Jensen could sense it as he got close. It made the hair on his arms raise and he shivered thinking that it sensed him as much if not more than he sensed it. He again wondered if it was somehow alive like the bands on his wrists and ankles. They had behaved themselves today when he had interacted with the alien and he wondered if it was because the ship had fed. Did it need food now? He went to his workshop to see what he could get. He didn’t want to go through his nice, expensive supplies so instead, he rummaged around in his scrap bin. He ended up bringing a box of mixed metals back to the ship to see what it would take.
The scrap pieces were small and he didn’t want to throw them at the ship so he picked the biggest piece, a jumble of thin copper wire in a ball like a steel mesh sponge, and approached slowly. Just because it seemed inactive and hadn’t attacked didn’t mean he could be careless. It had reached out and lassoed him and sucked some poles into itself. He didn’t want to be sucked inside for holding a handful of metal or for wearing bits of it. “Okay, now I have something good for you so don’t eat me. Eating me is bad, no more food for you if you’re bad.” Jensen talked to the ship as if it were Molly or Pauly or a skittish animal since he decided it must be somewhat alive. No way to know if it had a brain and could hear him and process his meaning but what else was he going to do. He held the copper at the edge of his fingers and brushed it against the side of the ship. Nothing happened for a second then the side seemed to ripple and a small circle sucked inward while the middle of the circle flowed outward and around the copper. Jensen let go and jerked his hand back as the copper was drawn into the ship and the side smoothed out. Jensen waited but nothing else happened so he took out a finger thick, palm sized triangle of iron from the box. “Well, you like copper how about something else, this is iron” he held one pointed edge and pressed the long flat edge to the ship. Same reaction as before which made Jensen feel more comfortable and confident. He fed it two more bits of copper and a piece of lead before it wouldn’t take the next bit offered. He tried different pieces of metal but it seemed to be done. Putting the box aside he gently ran his hands over the ship. It was cool but not cold to the touch and he could swear he knew it felt happy and content. He lost himself for a moment running his hands over it as his mind wandered over the events of the day. Molly’s hee-hawing drew him back to the present. “Well good night” he addressed the ship before slowly going over to Molly’s stall and giving her a pat as she stuck her head over the door. “You too, don’t keep each other up gossiping all night” he left the barn and went back to the cabin.
By dinner time the alien had not woken up and he fed him and changed his diaper. While he was eating his own dinner the power came back on. The first thing he did was check his messaging service to hear that Ellen had made it to her destination just fine. She had heard about the power outages in the area and hoped he was doing well and he should call her when he was able. A second message was from Mrs. Rhodes enquiring if he was still on schedule for finishing the sculpture. He made a note to call both of them back in the morning. That out of the way he turned on the local news on the radio to hear about the storm and if anyone had seen anything unusual such as a spaceship. If the government was coming to his door looking for his guest he would need to know. He’s seen and read plenty of science fiction themed stuff to know the government always came after the alien. He just hoped that despite his predatory-like features his alien would be one of the peaceful ones. There was nothing like being killed by the very thing you were trying to help and protect.
He listened for almost three hours, staying up late to hear the last report of the night before bed. There had been nothing about a spaceship or aliens, just a lot of storm damage and clean up. A few warnings about how the storm might affect the landscape of the area for the next few days and people in certain areas should be cautious. This was nothing new to Jensen and most of the locals, but over the last few years the number of people moving out of the cities and settling in the areas around his town had grown and the newcomers weren’t as savvy about the nature they lived in as the long-time locals were.
He again slept on the couch, but was fairly certain his visitor would not wake in the night and he could relax into a deeper sleep than the night before. He had a lot of work to do tomorrow and he needed the energy. He was going to go to the outer property to clean up and to start to harvest the wood he would need to heat the cabin in the winter. His dreams again were of dragons and strange metal animals and an alien planet that looked like paradise and of being in the company of something or someone comforting and protective.
********
Mark Sheppard was frustrated with how slow things were progressing on their first day of searching. The storm had made the parts of the mountains where the spaceship was most likely to have crashed unstable and more problematic than he liked. Mudslides had made looking for a cleared or mass tree broken landing or crash path difficult. There was also the fact of the local wildlife, specifically the fact that the bears in their search area were getting ready for winter and were roaming around and becoming aggressive if disturbed. Any water source was swollen with rain from the storm too making rivers and flat valleys hard to cross and might aid in covering a small ship if it had landed in the water. He had managed to have his team and the borrowed men set up repeater towers for communication despite all the obstacles. The base camp was well established and communications there were well set up and running. His team back in D.C. was not able to pinpoint a smaller landing area than what he already had. The storm had made more precise monitoring and calculations impossible. The storm had contained a massive amount of electric and magnetic energy that had interfered with all satellites and radar. The team was monitoring the area however in case any new activity came up or came down. He had been in contact with the local Federal law enforcement of Walkerville and Centerville and a few other local towns. He had given a twofold reason for their presence on the mountain. First was the training exercise and the second was to be on the lookout for an engineer who was AWOL with a new training vehicle. A new experimental short-range surveillance aircraft that turned into ground transport which was not dangerous but was wanted back. Next, he looked at all the towns in the surrounding area they had on their search grid to see how many other state and local law agencies and personnel he would have to contact. He also looked into all the heads of these departments to see what kind of men he would be dealing with. There were no illegal or crazy militants in the search area and he was both relieved and just ever so slightly annoyed. You could get the type of men in a militia to do the work for you if you manipulated them just right. But getting what you wanted from them once they had it was the hard part, especially if a cover-up of bodies was needed. But he didn't have to deal with that here, just the small town local yokles.
He often found that small towns in the middle of nowhere had either a lack of law enforcement, corrupt law enforcement, or law enforcement run by former military men. The former was of no use while the latter meant they were or could be corrupt or militant and distrusting and extremely harsh, or those willing to work with him to feel important and like they weren’t stuck in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere.
Centerville was the bigger town and had the bigger law enforcement office and most manpower. Walkerville had a sheriff and a part-time deputy that reported to Centerville and relayed any request for assistance if the sheriff decided they needed help. The Sheriff in Centerville appeared to delegate his work to his three full-time deputies so he would be useless. The deputies included one pre-retiree with a military background, one middle-aged family man who had a BA in criminal justice, and a fresh out of school police academy woman who had a certificate in forensics. A part-time disabled ex-soldier was their secretary and occasional backup when the extreme need arose. None of them would be helpful except to keep the locals away and to answer questions about the area.
Walkerville was more promising all around. The deputy was no good, but the sheriff was a man he could work with if he applied the right leverage. The man, also named Mark was middle-aged, had served in the marines and had come away with a barely honorable discharge, and was bitter about it if the discharge interview in his file was accurate. Rumors of bullying, kickbacks, and “possible” predatory behavior towards new recruits and young female civilians during his service overseas were repeated throughout the file and indicated by minor disciplinary action notes. Nothing was ever proved and he had a small group of men who would stick up for him and he returned the favor when their behavior came into question. He had his men in DC look more deeply into Mr. Mark Pellegrino and confirmed his thoughts as well as the fact that Pellegrino’s superior officer had even though he had committed a murder. But the officer couldn’t get enough to connect him to it for an official investigation. He could either get Pellegrino on his side by bribery or threat or even possibly friendship if Pellegrino could read people well enough to think them alike as indicated in his file that he was preceptive of human behavior. That skill helped him pick his targets and avoid serious trouble with those who didn’t like him. It was a trait that was in a surprising number of military members. Or at least the higher ranking officials.
He had called into the Walkerville headquarters and made an appointment to meet at noon. Until then he had maps to go over and search quadrants to plot. He would get the visitor if he had to go out bushwhacking for it himself. Time flew by and before he knew it he was heading out to a tiny town that seemed like a set from a forties drama film. The main street was full of shops with old-time storefront displays. All the merchandise was modern but that was it. There was a café on each end and an independent coffee shop in the middle. No Starbucks™ for these folks. A grocery store, a pharmacy, two clothing shops, a post office, a car and farm equipment repair garage, an animal feed store, and a farm supply shop took up the rest of the street. On a side street, he could see the steeple of a church. A sign at the end of the main street said the side road there lead to a drive-in theater open from April if the weather was good to October again if the weather was good with a special Christmas Eve and New Year's showing if weather permitted. On the opposite side of the street, another side road had a sign for the police department if you could call the tiny squat building that was behind the café named Shepherd’s Pie.
When he got out of his jeep he saw a man had come out of the building and was waiting by the door. He recognized Sheriff Pellegrino from a photo in the file he’d had his men gather. At forty-one he still looked to be in his early to mid-thirties and with his just over six-foot height and lean frame he exuded an air of seriousness and confidence that bordered on cocky. With light brown hair that had probably been blonder when he was younger, a straight nose even though it had been broken at least once, and high check bones he could see how people could have been drawn to him when he was younger without him putting in much effort. He might have to work harder at it now since he had gained a sheen of hardness but a lot of women found that attractive. He had never been into men but he could see how the look and attitude might work on younger, more unsure men.
“Sir,” Pellegrino’s voice was sharp as he nodded his head in recognition of his rank as he approached.
“No need for all that here” he replied wanting to get Pellegrino to relax a bit. He had decided to go the friendly route, to get him to see that they could work together to achieve a goal and that whatever was going on here in Pellegrino's little fiefdom, because there had to be something with a man like him, it would be ignored. He wanted to convey that while he outranked Pellegrino in every way he would choose to put Pellegrino at the top and defer to him while he was in town as a guest.
Pellegrino held the door to the station open for him allowing him to assess the interior without judgment of his thoughts or impressions. The interior looked just as small inside as the exterior looked outside. But it was military precision orderly with everything in its proper place for maximum efficiency with nothing frivolous left about to clutter up the desks. Two desks sat perpendicular to each other to view the door and the only window. File cabinets along the wall with the door and low bookshelves on the windowed wall. A door leading away was open and he could see a hall and open doors in it leading to a kitchen, a bathroom, and where at least one old time jail cell was. No extra papers were laying about and there wasn’t any dust to be seen and the wooden desks and chairs shone with polish. There were no personal effects to be seen anywhere, but a bulletin board did have a few fliers that looked to be about local news and events. A large map of the area was in a frame next to it. There was a red pin in it at the coordinates of his base camp. Mr. Pellegrino was watching over his territory and didn't care who knew it. He moved to sit in a chair facing the desk that had to be Pellegrino’s before said man moved to sit in his own chair even if he no doubt would have preferred to stand and get things over with and get him out of his town. “I’m sure Mr. Booth informed you about us and what we are up to” it wasn’t a question.
“I may have heard something about it” Pellegrino just barely kept the contempt for the man he would consider, and to be fair was, inferior to him.
“Right,” he gave a nod, "then let’s not beat around the bush with what is going to happen. There is someone in the area I want. He has something of interest to us. I don’t care about your town and anything going on out here. This person is a stranger to you and yours so I won’t bother with anyone here. What I want is your help with the lay of the land. Where might a person on the run with a vehicle the size of a tank hide out? What kinds of areas might be helpful in the long run of things? If anyone new in town shows up I would like to know. If you feel included to help out on a closer intimate level you know where to find us. We would, of course, make available to you the use of our latest equipment to help the search. Of course, I understand it would be difficult even for you to keep track of it all while hiking through such tough terrain as I have seen on the mountain so far so don’t worry about losing or damaging some of the equipment.” He was as open as he was going to be with anyone not official on the project to put them on an almost even level and offered a partnership with the extra offer of government equipment that a man like Pellegrino would find useful to have. Pellegrino pretended to mull it over for a minute but he knew he had the man.
“I’ll mark up a map for you and bring it to you tomorrow morning. Say seven o’clock after the men have eaten?” Pellegrino’s answer wasn’t a question, he would be there even if he had to wait or was late for his own regular duty assignments. He could keep his own schedule since he was a civilian but would still chip in at military standards in return for the equipment. He knew the score on favors traded within the military.
“That’s fine” he stood to leave and Pellegrino stood too but he waved him off. “I will see you tomorrow and we can trade things off” with that he left and getting into his jeep drove back to the base camp without looking around further. He hoped that he would only be here for another few days at most.
The rest of the day was fruitless in finding his quarry but his men had gotten a fair-sized area searched. With luck, tomorrow would be better hunting with the help of a local guide.
********
When Jensen woke his head was filled with the images of dragons. He had been going to start harvesting logs for winter as he cleaned up the last of the storm debris but he was energized with ideas for work. He checked on his visitor who was sleeping away before starting breakfast. In between cooking and eating he had brought out a drawing pad and began sketches for future projects. After breakfast, he fed and cleaned up his visitor with a washcloth and changed his diaper. The bracelets didn’t show any signs of action while he worked and he finished quickly his embarrassment having faded with each change. But he did linger for a moment looking at the handsome alien. After all this was over he might need to find himself a hookup for the summer. He was still a young hot-blooded man and seeing another fit male body had stirred his feelings and hormones. He would not take advantage of the alien, not even a quick grope of his more interesting anatomy. But looking at and admiring the alien's fit body wasn't as bad he supposed as long as it was a quick look. He would need a release at some point for his body but not yet, he could stand the build-up. Maybe he'd find a one-night stand in New York when he went to deliver his dragon statue.
He went out and fed Molly before putting her out in the pasture, Pauly happy to try to get her to play since he didn’t have time at the moment for a round of fetch. The ship wasn’t hungry and just sat quiet and restful like its owner. He would give the alien one more day and if he didn’t show signs of waking, he would call in Jim and swear him to secrecy so he could get the alien well if it was possible. If not…well he didn’t want to think about it at the moment, there was lots of work to do.
He went into his workshop and started up the forge. While it heated, he continued to draw but the images in his head were hazy now. It didn’t matter, he had a few good sketches that he was sure he could do something with later. In the mean time, there was a sculpture to finish. For the next few hours he worked hard and got a lot of work finished. In fact, he was mostly done, just a few small details and polishing were needed. He might not have stopped for lunch but Pauly had wandered into his workshop at some point and had decided that Jensen should know that even if Jensen wasn't hungry for lunch he wanted his lunch with a series of loud barks.
He had been so focused on working he had lost track of himself as well as the time. He was hot and tired and his clothes were sticking to his body with sweat. He turned on the hose he used to fill his cooling water barrels and stuck his hands underneath the nozzle to gather water to splash on his face and arms to cool down and wash some of the ash and grime off from working with metals. As his hands and arms cooled he noticed that his bracelets were warm. They were some kind of metal he didn’t know and possibly alive thus organic at the same time but they were still a metal fundamentally and it made sense that they had warmed while he worked, but they stayed warm even as his hands and arms turned numb as he held them in place under the stream of icy water from the hose. He dried off and tried to think about what it could mean that they weren’t cooling down. Were they not supposed to get that hot? He had exposed them to some intense heat from the forge. They were living things somehow, had the heat hurt them? Had he killed them? Or did they like the heat and that was why they retained it? Did the heating of the bracelets affect the ship? The alien?
He rushed out to the ship since it was closer, bigger and the bracelets had come from it and laid his hands on it but it was still the same cool surface he had felt before. It didn’t try to connect with him or his bracelets and didn’t make any noise or show any sign that it was anything other than a large hunk of metal. If the ship was fine that was half his worries eased. He turned and hurried back to the house. The alien had matching bracelets and if the ship wasn’t affected, he, with a matching set of bracelets still might be affected. When he entered his room, the alien was still asleep in the same spot Jensen had left him in hours ago. He walked over and sat on the bed next to the alien and put a hand on his wrist over his bracelet. It was cool but his skin wasn’t, it was warm like Jensen’s bracelets. He tried to lift his hand to feel the alien’s forehead for signs of fever but couldn’t move his hand. Looking down he saw that the bracelets had merged and become one band flowing around their hands and wrists keeping them connected. It began to thin out quickly and the thin thread-like tendrils crept up the alien’s arm. The bracelet on the alien’s other arm began to do the same only a bit slower since they had less material to work with. Then the tendrils crept over his chest and met in the center where the top of the breastbone would be. Jensen felt a shifting of weight on his other wrist and saw his other band had begun to thin out now and head up his arm. He soon felt it moving across his chest and down the opposite arm leading to the alien.
They stayed locked together that way with the metal flowing in tendrils over the alien's chest for about fifteen minutes before they slowly went back to what Jensen was beginning to think of as their natural shapes around their respective wrists. He could tell that the bracelets were cool again and that made him feel a bit better. They didn’t seem to be damaged since they were still working, doing what he didn’t know, but working all the same. When he could let go of the alien’s wrist, he did but he didn’t get up to leave immediately. He leaned over and felt the alien’s brow for fever. Not that he was an expert on alien biology but aside from some small differences in looks and one very important body part they didn’t seem to be that different. At least on the outside, for all he knew the alien could have two hearts, three lungs, and no liver. The alien’s temperature was raised a little, his brow warm like the bracelet had been but not high enough to be a fever. To be sure he went and got a thermometer and a damp cloth from the bathroom. The thermometer was the old fashion kind with mercury inside. He didn’t know how he would get it to stick under the tongue long enough for an accurate read so instead, he slipped it into the alien’s armpit and held the pressure on by leaning against him as he used the cloth to wipe away any sweat produced on the alien's forehead which wasn’t really anything.
When he pulled the thermometer out it only showed a temperature slightly warmer than his own normal. He would have to keep an eye on the time and come back to recheck him though out the day for fever. He left the thermometer on the nightstand and put the cloth in the bathroom sink for later use before going out into the kitchen. Pauly was by the fridge and when he saw Jensen, he gave a whine and his best sad puppy eyes stare.
“You hungry boy? So am I” he reached out to open the fridge loading his arms with food stuffs. Pauly moved with him as he began setting up the ingredients to make a turkey sandwich. As he worked, he tossed bits of turkey into Pauly’s bowl and they were instantly gobbled up. He ate, cleaned up his plate, then warmed up some broth, and took said broth in to give to the alien. After that, he put on the watch he rarely used and went out to his workshop. He had left in a hurry and needed to clean it up. After that was done it was time to finish any last clean up of debris outside that he had neglected all morning. He took his makeshift sled and piled on anything he could use for fuel in the winter and took it back to the barn. Then he took an ax and went out to get wood for splitting for the fireplace. All the while he kept an eye on the time and went back to check on his guest ever so often. The alien’s condition didn’t change, it didn’t get worse but it didn’t get better. He did notice a bit more of the bruises and scrapes were gone. He wondered if with the healing progressing quickly he was returning to what passed for normal for him and that included the higher temperature. Some people were naturally warmer than others so it could just be the way he was. He remembered from some science program he had watched a long time ago that space was beyond cold. Maybe the higher temperature was to combat the cold even if the alien had a ship to fly in. The rags the alien had been in that he guessed one could call clothes if they were being generous wasn't much. They were in the small trash can in the bathroom. He'd decide what to do with them when his guest woke up.
It was just becoming dusk when he heard a car coming up his road. It wasn’t Ellen, she wasn’t due back for a few more days and she would have called if she had come back early. It wasn’t a delivery truck because they didn’t usually come out this far even if he did order something, which he hadn’t. He moved towards the front of the house to see the driveway better and saw a big red truck. It was Sheriff Mark Pellegrino’s truck. It wasn’t his official patrol jeep so it wasn’t professional business he was coming up for. He sighed; he really didn’t want to deal with Mark at the moment.
Mark had been very persistent in trying to get Jensen to go out with him and no doubt he would try now. Mark had become more aggressive about it since his grandfather had died. If it kept escalating, he didn’t know what he was going to do because it wasn’t like he could go running to the police seeing as how Mark was the police around here. He supposed he could file a complaint with Sheriff Booth in Centerville but he wasn’t really known there and it wasn’t like Walkerville. They might not take too kindly to Jensen being bisexual and being harassed by a cop. They might not like that a local cop was bisexual but they would take Mark’s side over his simply on the kinship of work principles he was sure. Mark might get some kind of trouble from them after on his own. And if he took offense at being outed there by him Mark could make life very difficult for the foreseeable future. He would not put it past Mark to do that if he had the notion. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place that was getting smaller with each trip into town he took it seemed. He waited while the truck pulled up close to where he stood and shut off. Pauly stood next to him barking at the truck and he put his hand down to pet him as Mark stepped out of the truck.
“Evening Jensen” Mark smiled at him before giving an annoyed look at Pauly.
“Hello Sheriff Pellegrino. What brings you out here?” He didn’t move to greet him and kept petting Pauly who had stopped barking. It was both a good thing and a bad thing since the barking would show Mark he wasn’t wanted or welcomed but it might have made him ask to go inside to talk away from Pauly who could be shut out.
“Just checking on you after the storm, I like to make sure everyone farther from town is okay when the weather gets bad.” Mark kept smiling but began shifting from foot to foot. No doubt he wanted an invite inside.
“The storm is over” Jensen pointed out the obvious. If Mark was truly making sure everyone was fine with the storm he could have come out during or right after when there hadn’t been any power.
“Yeah, and it’s caused a bit of trouble in places for a few of the new folks” Mark nodded as he got Jensen’s point. “Plus, I came up to ask if you’ve seen anyone around you don’t recognize. There’re some military guys up here looking for a deserter. You should be careful when you are out and about if you haven’t seen him just in case.”
Jensen did his best to keep a natural face at this news, “I haven’t seen anyone.” He had suspected that someone or some organization like the government would be out looking for the alien but he didn’t expect it so soon or so close.
“Well if you do see a stranger don’t approach him and if he sees you and you can pretend you don’t see him get home and call me as soon as you can and I’ll come out after him.”
“Will do. I’m sure you have others to deliver the message to while you check on them and I have to go get Molly.” He hoped Mark would take the hint and leave. He could not let Mark into the cabin because he would see that Jensen had been sleeping on the couch and want to know why and that would most likely lead to him finding the alien.
Mark looked a bit taken aback for a moment then he nodded “the old mule.”
Now it was Jensen’s turn to be startled until he remembered that it was common knowledge that Molly belonged to Ellen and Mark might have either known she was gone or checked Ellen’s place on his way to Jensen’s and seen her gone. Jensen always took care of Molly when Ellen was gone so it was an obvious conclusion. Mark hesitated a minute longer but when Jensen didn’t say anything else he slowly got back into his truck and drove off.
Jensen was relieved that Mark was gone but his brain began working on what to do in the near future. If he had to get Jim to come out for the alien things were going to get complicated. Mark would find out Jim had been by and come back and would defiantly want to come inside to talk. If the alien woke up and was not friendly there was going to be a problem, or if he woke up and was stranded there was going to be a few problems. But those could wait until something actually happened, right now he had something immediate to take care of. Ture to what he had said to Mark he started towards the pasture to retrieve Molly for the night. Pauly ran ahead of him but he didn’t pay attention to him. He was trying to think of different things to do about the alien. And he really did have to give him a name until the alien could provide one, granted he didn’t kill Jensen upon waking. Calling him the alien or the visitor or his guest was getting annoying and it was so impersonal after Jensen’s intimacy in taking care of him. He decided he’d call the alien Bob for now. Not original or flattering but it was something and better than nothing.
If Bob woke up, didn’t kill him, and was stranded he would try his best to help Bob get his ship in working order if at all possible. He wasn’t an engineer or a scientist or the kind of person who worked on any kind of airships but he would do his best. If Bob was stuck here permanently there were a few ways to hide his odd features from a distance. Nothing to be done about his height, but his hair was long enough that if styled right or if he wore a hat his ears would be covered or in an extreme case cut to resemble human ears. As for his eyes, sunglasses or special effects contacts could be used as a cover or excuse. His teeth, well there was hoping he wouldn’t talk much if he could learn English. A trip to the dentist to get them filed down was probably not going to happen for a few reasons. The best case was that Bob woke up, got in his ship, and flew away.
As Jensen thought about all this, he gathered Molly from the pasture and brought her back to the barn. He gave her a quick brush, gave her fresh food, topped off her water, and went to see the ship.
“Hey I hope you’re okay and can still fly” he began talking to it as he picked up metal bits to feed it. “If you’re passenger or partner or whatever he is wakes up you should consider leaving. There are some nasty people after you and I don’t think you want to meet them. If you feel pain they will hurt you and if you don’t they will try to take you apart which I don’t think you’d like.” It pulled in a few pieces of metal and made a soft humming sound as it rose and floated a few inches off the ground while he talked to it. “If you can help wake him up that would be best for everyone.” After the ship stopped eating Jensen ran his hands over it with the same motions he used when brushing Molly. His bracelets became fluid and he held his hands flat against the ship as they flowed together for a while. When they had settled on his wrists solidly again he gave the ship a final pat and went back into the cabin. He checked on Bob first and while he was still warm to the touch nothing else had changed.
Jensen made himself and Pauly dinner and they ate together in the kitchen. He took the last of the broth to Bob. He’d have to see if Bob could take milky oatmeal tomorrow and he’d have to make more broth. He read for a while, then listened to more news but didn’t hear anything about UFO sightings in the area, military men, or a deserter. Before bed, he cleaned up Bob and changed him, and went through the ritual of the healing bracelets because that was clearly what they were doing. Bob looked a lot better than when Jensen had found him, at least on the outside. He wondered if the bracelets were healing his insides from the outside or if at some point they might make their way inside him somehow to fix any internal damage if that was even possible. He came out of his thoughts to find himself stroking Bob’s hair and quickly jerked his hand back. He had no idea what had come over him but he would be careful not to let it happen again. Bob may be hot, but he was leaving, he hoped, in the near future and Jensen didn’t need a man around right now. He was too busy fending off Mark. He got up and took the broth bowl back to the kitchen and cleaned up the dinner mess. After the cleaning was done he took a quick shower before settling in for the night.
********
Mark Sheppard was pleased with the maps Pellegrino had brought for his team. He hadn’t been one hundred percent sure that Pellegrino would come through, although the odds were high. The minute reaction he'd seen when he'd mentioned the equipment Pellegrino could potentially have had been confirmation enough. The maps had been marked and annotated in the military fashion. It must have taken Pellegrino some time to compile them so he doubted he had done it over night. More likely it was a copy, if an incomplete one he was sure, of maps Pellegrino had made for himself when he had moved to the area. A man like Pellegrino had secrets and needed places to hide them. A giant mountain forest fit the bill nicely. He also doubted that this was the only copy or that all the hiding places had been marked. Pellegrino had been living in the area for a while and he had had plenty of time to explore and make his own maps for his own purposes. He was a man with desires and needs that society probably didn’t understand and he would need a place to go out and live them if he didn't have a place in town. He would need to find places to play and places to hide the results. No, Pellegrino had kept a few choice places to himself but he had given Mark what he needed to find someone or rather something new on the mountain. It narrowed the field of search considerably. Not that they wouldn’t search every nook and cranny to find what they were looking for, they would just concentrate on the more likely ones first. The best quadrants to search would be to the north and west of Walkerville. He made up the new assignments and sent his men out to search immediately. He let Pellegrino have a look at some of the equipment they had and let him pick out a few pieces to take. The man knew what he wanted and it was top-notch stuff. He had no doubt it would be put to some illegal and dark purpose. But that wasn’t his concern. As long as Pellegrino worked to help him reach his goal and stay out of the way when he captured his target anything Pellegrino took and anything he did with it wasn’t his concern. He didn't want to know any more about Pellegrino's transgressions than he already did and could guess at. He of course kept a log of what Pellegrino took just in case it would need to be retrieved later or for deniability. Pellegrino had agreed to go with one of his units to search for part of the day. If they didn’t find what they were looking for he might go with them again or think of more places to search if he could take another walk through their supply tent. The arrangement was working out well for both of them, but he felt he was getting the better deal. He would have the visitor before any other agency started sniffing around. It wouldn’t be long now he was sure of it.
**********
Pellegrino was furious. The last few days had been trying for him and he needed to blow off some steam. Things were happening that he couldn’t quite put his finger on but were likely going to mess up his plans for the near future. He had a feeling in his gut that something was going to change in the near future, and not for the better. So, he had to be vigilant and nip whatever it was in the bud by whatever means necessary.
The recent storm had knocked out the power and dislodged a few of the cameras and sensors he had monitoring the Ackles property. But he couldn’t go out and fix them until the power was back on. In the meantime, he had duties in town to take care of. Mainly all the newer residents to the area who were unprepared for the occasional severe weather living in the mountains brought. Of course, there had also been the local drunk, the local thief, and a few misbehaving teens to deal with as well. He had taken some of his anger out on the drunk and he had a feeling that the teens wouldn’t be causing any trouble for a while either. Then yesterday a bit of fortune came his way. Mark Sheppard, a Sergeant of the Air Force, had shown up in town. The man claimed to be looking for a deserter who had stolen some new kind of technology from them and was hiding out in the mountains. He didn’t believe the story for a minute. There probably was a man, there probably was some kind of technology, most likely a weapon, and he probably was on the mountain. But for that man to be a deserter? Not a chance. As for the weapon, it was probably something the man had created and didn’t want to share with the government. Why he was on the mountain he had no clue and he didn’t care. After the storm, they had had the man was most likely dead and the weapon lost. But he didn’t say that to Sheppard. Instead, he had agreed to help find the man and the weapon. For a price of course.
For his help and his silence, he would have access to military grade surveillance technology and survival supplies. Things he could use in his pursuit of his hobbies and pleasures. Mainly Jensen Ackles at the moment. The young man was just his type and his personality made for a good chase, his will and feisty spirit would make him put up a good fight which would make his victory and conquest all the more exquisite when he finally broke Jensen and took what he wanted. Then he could take his time to play for a while until he decided what to do with him. There were people out there who would be willing to take his broken toys. All for a price of course or sometimes they had something good to trade with. Imported toys could be just as much fun to play with if not more than the local domestic ones he had to choose from.
The surveillance equipment he could use right away, the supplies he would have to haul up the mountain to his hidden playground. He had spent most of the rest of the day working up a map for Sheppard of locations a decently skilled local might hide out in. He marked places that an amateur might stumble upon more prominently and marked places where someone who knew nothing of the heavy forests might think were okay, and end up dead in. He also made lists of items that Sheppard might make available to him based on what he had seen in his military days. He ranked them from most desired and valuable to least wanted or useful. He thought up what he might use them for, where he might put them and how to keep them up to date. He was relieved when the power came back on in the evening.
The morning had been productive as he delivered his map to Sheppard and even volunteered to go out with some of his men. It was a way to keep an eye on what was going on and pick up any information he might use to his advantage later. Also, he could steer the men away from his own hiding place better this way. He couldn’t make it too obvious but he could help them skirt the area he used for his own hunting grounds. He was also very pleased with the selection of technology and supplies made available to him. He took surveillance cameras, a radio jammer, a tracking device, and listening bugs. He avoided the laptop and software and GPS transponder just in case it had a backdoor that Sheppard could use to spy on his activities. Not that he thought it all that likely if he stayed out of Sheppard’s way when it came to their wanted man. He also had a feeling that they were alike in a lot of ways. The man was devious and would do what it took to get what he wanted. He would have to watch his step around Sheppard. Once he had cleared a search grid and offered to help out again tomorrow, he had taken his new equipment and headed for the Ackles property.
The cameras he had been using were top of the line for civilians without having to prove you were a PI. He had some PI and police grade equipment as well that he had gotten on the black market but he was more careful with these pieces. He hiked around the property replacing or resetting up old equipment and reestablishing their connection to the repeater tower he had set up to relay the feeds back to his home in town. Once within sight of the cabin, he set up his first microphone close to and facing the workshop. He wouldn’t be able to reset or replace the one camera he had in there until Jensen came into town. He’d add a microphone this time to enhance his surveillance inside the workshop. From past footage, he knew that Jensen probably sang or at least talked to himself while he worked. Without audio, he just stared at Jensen's plush lips. They would be wonderful to kiss and would feel even better wrapped around his cock. Cock sucking lips his type of lips had been called by all the men in the service, although those men usually referred to the women they wanted, the lips were the same type.
As he approached the cabin, he saw that Jensen had cleaned up the property from the storm and was sad that he had missed some of it. While the weather was cool now and Jensen would not be working shirtless or in a tank-top, he still might dress down when he got hot from the exertion. Occasionally Jensen would borrow a horse or a neighbor would board one here for a few days and watching Jensen ride was a pleasure. With his slightly bowed legs and natural gait that swayed with each step, he was a natural in the saddle and he like to fantasize about those legs wrapped around his hips as Jensen rode his cock instead of a horse. Jensen had natural legs for riding or spreading wide while being fucked.
With that in mind, he decided he’d pay a visit since he was up here already. He might ask Jensen out again or offer to help him out to get a dinner invitation for his effort. He and Jensen had been playing a game of cat and mouse for a while now but Jensen didn’t know just how high the stakes were. It was annoying that Jensen kept blowing him off but he also knew that his persistence and Jensen’s refusal kept him from seeking out other companionship elsewhere. It was also a test of endurance to see how long they could both hold out, and he liked what it meant for the future battle of wills and bodies to come. He hiked back to his truck and came up the drive as if he hadn’t been there for almost the last two hours.
When he pulled up Jensen was in the yard, but so was that mutt he was so fond of. He had considered getting rid of it but it might raise some suspicions and it might be used as a pawn later to get Jensen to do what he wanted. It would be of no use to him otherwise much to his disappointment. During his overseas military days, a contact he's made on his pleasure hunting trips had a dog that had been trained to fuck the entertainment that didn't cooperate or displeased his guests. He had made an arrangement to see the dog perform on one of his discarded toys before he went back stateside. It was a pity he didn't have the time to train Jensen's mutt in the same manner. It would have been interesting to keep Jensen in line with the promise of the dog for company, only to see the look of horror and betrail if he had the dog fuck Jensen before he was broken completely. It barked at him as he got out of his truck but Jensen kept it by his side which meant he had to stay back. He gave the dog an annoyed look as he greeted Jensen, thinking about ways to kill the mutt. Or train it quickly enough to cause Jensen pain he could get off on while watching as it mounted Jensen like a bitch in heat.
Jensen’s greeting was not warm and he wasn't invited inside away from the mutt to talk. When his attempt at small talk about the storm to offer help got rejected he switched tactics. Maybe he could scare Jensen into having him around, or inviting him over. He told Jensen the cover story about the deserter. He offered his help with the implication Jensen could call anytime. He would take care of Jensen, and he really did want to, just not in any way Jensen would imagine. He was again rejected and then Jensen had the nerve to dismiss him! Jensen had told him to leave, but he had done it in a way that both insulted him and raised an internal alarm. Something had happened in the few days he didn’t have surveillance on Jensen. And it was still happening if his feelings were right about the dismissive and furtive way Jensen wanted him off the property. He had been annoyed that Jensen had Ellen’s mule as an excuse. He had been very careful when he had broken the leg on Jensen’s horse the past year. Getting rid of the horse had been one of the last steps in isolating Jensen. If Jensen’s grandfather hadn’t been so ill and died recently, he had a plan to hasten the old man’s death as well. The only thing really standing in his way now was Ellen. That bitch had been a thorn in his side from the beginning. He doubted Jensen knew just how much trouble she had been for him since he didn’t come into town all that often and Ellen wouldn’t want to upset him. Getting her out of the picture without raising the alarm was going to be almost as much fun as the final hunt for Jensen would be.
He was finally forced to leave and he did so slowly, watching in the rearview mirror to see if Jensen did anything that would have him parking and hiking back to see. But Jensen had turned towards the back part of his land where the horse pasture was. He headed home to see just how well his new surveillance equipment worked on his large screen tv. Maybe he’d unwind with an old video of his last conquest. It had been the rare female, but her pleas and screams had been music to his ears and she’d had a set of lungs that let her go on for hours. Last he knew she was still entertaining with that voice at some farm in Arkansas. In exchange for the cash she'd been worth he's had a fun night with one of the newest young ranch hands. He didn't have a tape of that night but he wished he had. But he would have Jensen soon enough and the tape of the woman would have to do for tonight.
**********
Jared dreamed. He dreamed of hands soothing his pain and a grounding voice calling to his beast. It soothed the beast as much as the hands soothed his pain. He felt the reassurance of peace from his symbiont, and something he didn’t expect. Joy. He dreamed of home, his forests, his mountains, the cool refreshing rivers and lakes, and flying free on the wind, the sun warming his scales. He wanted to do that, he wanted to see his home. He wanted the comfort that was being offered to his body. His beast wanted to take it under his wing, wanted to curl up with it and protect it from anything that might take away its joy. He wanted to wake from his dreams to see if reality would be just as good. In the darkness he had been in, he now saw a faint weak spark of light that seemed far away but present all the same. That light was the peace and joy. He needed to get to the light, to make it stronger, brighter, to let it banish the darkness. He would do whatever it took to wake and make the source of the light his. He would offer his whole world on a platter if it would make him whole. Because the being of the light had to be the missing piece of his soul. His soul mate. When he had been a child there were stories his mother had told him about such things. About such beings. All the peoples of all the worlds had once had soul mates. Someone with opposite traits or gifts or forms from your own who would balance out your own and make a harmonious household. Someone with whom your symbiont could bond with and theirs to you giving great strength and protection to both. Legends of past rulers who had been almost gods, who had lived millennia, visited worlds of wonder no longer within reach, and had symbionts large enough to protect whole families and heal whole armies. He had listened to these tales when he was very young and believed them, wished them to be true so he would someday be such a leader, but he eventually grew to know they were only myths. There was no such thing as a soul mate, and symbionts were rare and didn’t care for many beyond their host and the host's blood relations or partners. But now with the light, the voice, the hands he knew he had been wrong. His mate waited for him to wake. And so wake he would.
**********
This planet was young and full of life, but it was also very sick. The magnetic fields sang of the glorious past and its new terrible pain. The beings it loved and the beings that hurt it. The potential of this planet and its beings were great. The being that had found its host was a perfect example. Its genetic material was compatible with its host and its own. It created a tentative bond with the being and soon learned about its species. The human male called Jensen was a kind being who took care of its host without the expectation of something in return. Its bond with the human Jensen grew stronger by the hour and it decided that it would allow the bond to continue. The human Jensen’s genetics were malleable and already a partial match to its host. They could be true mates with a little help, so it would help his host make it so. It wouldn’t take much to transform the human into a Drakcon. The human Jensen had been providing minerals and nutrients to it and it had been busy growing and for the first time in centuries reproducing. It would provide the human Jensen with a symbiont of his own to help him with his transformation and allow him to protect himself when his host took him home. It could feel its brethren approaching, and with them the brethren of its host. In the early morning hours before the sun star of this galaxy poured its light over the land it sent out its young to the human Jensen. The baby symbiont was soon settled around the human Jensen’s lower appendages known as legs. They would grow over the next few days and it could remove itself and become one with its own host again. His host and the human Jensen would need its help and protection when the galaxy makers came. It had sensed their presence for the first time since it had begun bonding to only the Drakcon as hosts. They had sensed its presence in return and they exchanged information and history. They had not been pleased and were coming for a meeting. But it would be a while yet and it had other things to do first while it still could.
**********
Jensen woke feeling that something was different. He looked around and listened but he couldn’t see or hear anything out of place. Pauly didn’t show any signs that something was wrong. As he got up and put his feet on the floor his legs felt heavy. He looked down to see very thin dull grey bands around his ankles below the thicker silvery bands. He didn’t know what it meant but right now he didn’t have the mental capacity to think too deeply about it. He would do so after he had his first cup of coffee. Jensen scrubbed his hands over his face and yawned and Pauly got up and shook before looking back at him and whining. Jensen got up and let him out to do his business before going to the kitchen to make breakfast. It would be oatmeal all around this morning. Plain for Pauly, berries in his, and extra thin and milky for Bob. The oatmeal didn't take long to cook and he and Pauly ate together in the kitchen. He had a second cup of coffee as he made breakfast for Bob. He debated if he should crush up some raspberries in the oatmeal or maybe add some cinnamon, but went with plain milk as he didn't know how Bob would react to the fruit or spice. With oatmeal in hand, he went in and sat on the bed and reached out for Bob’s head to prop him up to feed him. Before he could make contact, his arm was seized in a hard vice-like grip causing him to cry out and instinctually flinch away. His heart rate sped up and the fight or flight mode kicked in and not being a fan of sudden scary things, he wanted to flee. He looked down at Bob’s face and saw unnaturally bright cat-like slit eyes looking back at him, a silent snarl from a grimacing mouth showing sharp teeth and he froze hardly daring to breathe. Bob was awake.
Part One
https://angelzfurys.livejournal.com/36410.html
Part Two
https://angelzfurys.livejournal.com/36710.html
Authors Note: Very close to the end of book 1 now. Book 2 will be coming out for Big!Bang 2022!
The day following the discovery of the alien went slowly. He didn’t want to leave the cabin at first should the alien wake up. Then as the morning progressed he ventured out into the yard for short periods of time to do any minor cleanup he could before going back inside to check on his otherworldly guest. He had gotten some water and broth into the alien with no bad results except that all the liquid had caused a minor accident. This caused Jensen to go digging around in the cellar after lunch thankful he hadn’t tossed much of anything of his grandparent’s personal items.
At the very end of their lives, they had both needed all day care and some precautions for if he wasn’t immediately at hand. To put it politely his grandmother had said it best, you came into the world a mess dependent on someone to take care of all your needs, and if you were lucky to live a long life you would go out the same way. He had been very embarrassed at first when he had to help his grandmother to the bathroom, then at the end to change her when she needed a diaper after becoming bed bound. It didn’t take long to get over the embarrassment because she needed him and it was useful for his grandfather too in the end. Since he didn’t get into town much and most companies couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver to his remote cabin everything was bought and stocked in bulk generally. The diapers had been no exception, and while he had gotten rid of most of the hospice and medical items, he had not gotten rid of the smaller accoutrements of long-term personal care. There had to be at least one box or pack of diapers left that he had brought out with his grandfather’s toiletries. Sure enough, he found a single pack of diapers which was blessedly unopened and he took it back inside.
He rolled the alien around on the bed pulling up the sheets and bedding from under him after each move. The mattress wasn’t damaged and was only minorly damp. He scrubbed it with a soapy damp towel and remade only half the bed so the wet spot could dry. With that done came the hard part.
While he had gotten over the embarrassment of helping his grandparents he was struck anew with hesitation and nervous embarrassment. ‘Think of it in medical terms just like you were taught’ he chided himself before squaring his shoulders and fortifying himself to get down to the important business. The…patient…was not anything he was used to. Yes, he was a male which made things a little easier, but he was a stranger, and just looking at him resting in the bed he looked like an ordinary human. A very sexy human. A sexy human who happened to be his type. But once he got past the fact he would be putting a diaper on and most likely changing said diaper on a sexy male stranger there was another aspect. The alien’s penis. Not human at all. He couldn’t help staring at it as he held a fresh diaper in one hand and a fresh damp cloth in the other hand a blush spreading across most of his body.
Jensen could admit to being a tiny bit of a size queen when it came to male lovers but this was something else. Everything was proportionate to size and a bit more which meant that unaroused the alien's penis matched the aroused lengths of some of his bigger lovers. The base had a small bump and extra skin folds surrounding it and looked as if a third testicle had been mostly removed. The head was surrounded by small scalloped skin folds making it look like a closed flower head. The slit was also enlarged. Jensen closed his eyes and shook his head “get your shit together man” he muttered. Opening his eyes, he quickly but efficiently wiped down the alien’s groin area and dressed him in the diaper. Covering him back up he disposed of the washcloth, washed up, and went back outside to continue cleaning up the yard. He did not visit the spaceship until he put Molly in her stall for the night.
It sat on the ground and was quiet but Jensen could sense it as he got close. It made the hair on his arms raise and he shivered thinking that it sensed him as much if not more than he sensed it. He again wondered if it was somehow alive like the bands on his wrists and ankles. They had behaved themselves today when he had interacted with the alien and he wondered if it was because the ship had fed. Did it need food now? He went to his workshop to see what he could get. He didn’t want to go through his nice, expensive supplies so instead, he rummaged around in his scrap bin. He ended up bringing a box of mixed metals back to the ship to see what it would take.
The scrap pieces were small and he didn’t want to throw them at the ship so he picked the biggest piece, a jumble of thin copper wire in a ball like a steel mesh sponge, and approached slowly. Just because it seemed inactive and hadn’t attacked didn’t mean he could be careless. It had reached out and lassoed him and sucked some poles into itself. He didn’t want to be sucked inside for holding a handful of metal or for wearing bits of it. “Okay, now I have something good for you so don’t eat me. Eating me is bad, no more food for you if you’re bad.” Jensen talked to the ship as if it were Molly or Pauly or a skittish animal since he decided it must be somewhat alive. No way to know if it had a brain and could hear him and process his meaning but what else was he going to do. He held the copper at the edge of his fingers and brushed it against the side of the ship. Nothing happened for a second then the side seemed to ripple and a small circle sucked inward while the middle of the circle flowed outward and around the copper. Jensen let go and jerked his hand back as the copper was drawn into the ship and the side smoothed out. Jensen waited but nothing else happened so he took out a finger thick, palm sized triangle of iron from the box. “Well, you like copper how about something else, this is iron” he held one pointed edge and pressed the long flat edge to the ship. Same reaction as before which made Jensen feel more comfortable and confident. He fed it two more bits of copper and a piece of lead before it wouldn’t take the next bit offered. He tried different pieces of metal but it seemed to be done. Putting the box aside he gently ran his hands over the ship. It was cool but not cold to the touch and he could swear he knew it felt happy and content. He lost himself for a moment running his hands over it as his mind wandered over the events of the day. Molly’s hee-hawing drew him back to the present. “Well good night” he addressed the ship before slowly going over to Molly’s stall and giving her a pat as she stuck her head over the door. “You too, don’t keep each other up gossiping all night” he left the barn and went back to the cabin.
By dinner time the alien had not woken up and he fed him and changed his diaper. While he was eating his own dinner the power came back on. The first thing he did was check his messaging service to hear that Ellen had made it to her destination just fine. She had heard about the power outages in the area and hoped he was doing well and he should call her when he was able. A second message was from Mrs. Rhodes enquiring if he was still on schedule for finishing the sculpture. He made a note to call both of them back in the morning. That out of the way he turned on the local news on the radio to hear about the storm and if anyone had seen anything unusual such as a spaceship. If the government was coming to his door looking for his guest he would need to know. He’s seen and read plenty of science fiction themed stuff to know the government always came after the alien. He just hoped that despite his predatory-like features his alien would be one of the peaceful ones. There was nothing like being killed by the very thing you were trying to help and protect.
He listened for almost three hours, staying up late to hear the last report of the night before bed. There had been nothing about a spaceship or aliens, just a lot of storm damage and clean up. A few warnings about how the storm might affect the landscape of the area for the next few days and people in certain areas should be cautious. This was nothing new to Jensen and most of the locals, but over the last few years the number of people moving out of the cities and settling in the areas around his town had grown and the newcomers weren’t as savvy about the nature they lived in as the long-time locals were.
He again slept on the couch, but was fairly certain his visitor would not wake in the night and he could relax into a deeper sleep than the night before. He had a lot of work to do tomorrow and he needed the energy. He was going to go to the outer property to clean up and to start to harvest the wood he would need to heat the cabin in the winter. His dreams again were of dragons and strange metal animals and an alien planet that looked like paradise and of being in the company of something or someone comforting and protective.
********
Mark Sheppard was frustrated with how slow things were progressing on their first day of searching. The storm had made the parts of the mountains where the spaceship was most likely to have crashed unstable and more problematic than he liked. Mudslides had made looking for a cleared or mass tree broken landing or crash path difficult. There was also the fact of the local wildlife, specifically the fact that the bears in their search area were getting ready for winter and were roaming around and becoming aggressive if disturbed. Any water source was swollen with rain from the storm too making rivers and flat valleys hard to cross and might aid in covering a small ship if it had landed in the water. He had managed to have his team and the borrowed men set up repeater towers for communication despite all the obstacles. The base camp was well established and communications there were well set up and running. His team back in D.C. was not able to pinpoint a smaller landing area than what he already had. The storm had made more precise monitoring and calculations impossible. The storm had contained a massive amount of electric and magnetic energy that had interfered with all satellites and radar. The team was monitoring the area however in case any new activity came up or came down. He had been in contact with the local Federal law enforcement of Walkerville and Centerville and a few other local towns. He had given a twofold reason for their presence on the mountain. First was the training exercise and the second was to be on the lookout for an engineer who was AWOL with a new training vehicle. A new experimental short-range surveillance aircraft that turned into ground transport which was not dangerous but was wanted back. Next, he looked at all the towns in the surrounding area they had on their search grid to see how many other state and local law agencies and personnel he would have to contact. He also looked into all the heads of these departments to see what kind of men he would be dealing with. There were no illegal or crazy militants in the search area and he was both relieved and just ever so slightly annoyed. You could get the type of men in a militia to do the work for you if you manipulated them just right. But getting what you wanted from them once they had it was the hard part, especially if a cover-up of bodies was needed. But he didn't have to deal with that here, just the small town local yokles.
He often found that small towns in the middle of nowhere had either a lack of law enforcement, corrupt law enforcement, or law enforcement run by former military men. The former was of no use while the latter meant they were or could be corrupt or militant and distrusting and extremely harsh, or those willing to work with him to feel important and like they weren’t stuck in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere.
Centerville was the bigger town and had the bigger law enforcement office and most manpower. Walkerville had a sheriff and a part-time deputy that reported to Centerville and relayed any request for assistance if the sheriff decided they needed help. The Sheriff in Centerville appeared to delegate his work to his three full-time deputies so he would be useless. The deputies included one pre-retiree with a military background, one middle-aged family man who had a BA in criminal justice, and a fresh out of school police academy woman who had a certificate in forensics. A part-time disabled ex-soldier was their secretary and occasional backup when the extreme need arose. None of them would be helpful except to keep the locals away and to answer questions about the area.
Walkerville was more promising all around. The deputy was no good, but the sheriff was a man he could work with if he applied the right leverage. The man, also named Mark was middle-aged, had served in the marines and had come away with a barely honorable discharge, and was bitter about it if the discharge interview in his file was accurate. Rumors of bullying, kickbacks, and “possible” predatory behavior towards new recruits and young female civilians during his service overseas were repeated throughout the file and indicated by minor disciplinary action notes. Nothing was ever proved and he had a small group of men who would stick up for him and he returned the favor when their behavior came into question. He had his men in DC look more deeply into Mr. Mark Pellegrino and confirmed his thoughts as well as the fact that Pellegrino’s superior officer had even though he had committed a murder. But the officer couldn’t get enough to connect him to it for an official investigation. He could either get Pellegrino on his side by bribery or threat or even possibly friendship if Pellegrino could read people well enough to think them alike as indicated in his file that he was preceptive of human behavior. That skill helped him pick his targets and avoid serious trouble with those who didn’t like him. It was a trait that was in a surprising number of military members. Or at least the higher ranking officials.
He had called into the Walkerville headquarters and made an appointment to meet at noon. Until then he had maps to go over and search quadrants to plot. He would get the visitor if he had to go out bushwhacking for it himself. Time flew by and before he knew it he was heading out to a tiny town that seemed like a set from a forties drama film. The main street was full of shops with old-time storefront displays. All the merchandise was modern but that was it. There was a café on each end and an independent coffee shop in the middle. No Starbucks™ for these folks. A grocery store, a pharmacy, two clothing shops, a post office, a car and farm equipment repair garage, an animal feed store, and a farm supply shop took up the rest of the street. On a side street, he could see the steeple of a church. A sign at the end of the main street said the side road there lead to a drive-in theater open from April if the weather was good to October again if the weather was good with a special Christmas Eve and New Year's showing if weather permitted. On the opposite side of the street, another side road had a sign for the police department if you could call the tiny squat building that was behind the café named Shepherd’s Pie.
When he got out of his jeep he saw a man had come out of the building and was waiting by the door. He recognized Sheriff Pellegrino from a photo in the file he’d had his men gather. At forty-one he still looked to be in his early to mid-thirties and with his just over six-foot height and lean frame he exuded an air of seriousness and confidence that bordered on cocky. With light brown hair that had probably been blonder when he was younger, a straight nose even though it had been broken at least once, and high check bones he could see how people could have been drawn to him when he was younger without him putting in much effort. He might have to work harder at it now since he had gained a sheen of hardness but a lot of women found that attractive. He had never been into men but he could see how the look and attitude might work on younger, more unsure men.
“Sir,” Pellegrino’s voice was sharp as he nodded his head in recognition of his rank as he approached.
“No need for all that here” he replied wanting to get Pellegrino to relax a bit. He had decided to go the friendly route, to get him to see that they could work together to achieve a goal and that whatever was going on here in Pellegrino's little fiefdom, because there had to be something with a man like him, it would be ignored. He wanted to convey that while he outranked Pellegrino in every way he would choose to put Pellegrino at the top and defer to him while he was in town as a guest.
Pellegrino held the door to the station open for him allowing him to assess the interior without judgment of his thoughts or impressions. The interior looked just as small inside as the exterior looked outside. But it was military precision orderly with everything in its proper place for maximum efficiency with nothing frivolous left about to clutter up the desks. Two desks sat perpendicular to each other to view the door and the only window. File cabinets along the wall with the door and low bookshelves on the windowed wall. A door leading away was open and he could see a hall and open doors in it leading to a kitchen, a bathroom, and where at least one old time jail cell was. No extra papers were laying about and there wasn’t any dust to be seen and the wooden desks and chairs shone with polish. There were no personal effects to be seen anywhere, but a bulletin board did have a few fliers that looked to be about local news and events. A large map of the area was in a frame next to it. There was a red pin in it at the coordinates of his base camp. Mr. Pellegrino was watching over his territory and didn't care who knew it. He moved to sit in a chair facing the desk that had to be Pellegrino’s before said man moved to sit in his own chair even if he no doubt would have preferred to stand and get things over with and get him out of his town. “I’m sure Mr. Booth informed you about us and what we are up to” it wasn’t a question.
“I may have heard something about it” Pellegrino just barely kept the contempt for the man he would consider, and to be fair was, inferior to him.
“Right,” he gave a nod, "then let’s not beat around the bush with what is going to happen. There is someone in the area I want. He has something of interest to us. I don’t care about your town and anything going on out here. This person is a stranger to you and yours so I won’t bother with anyone here. What I want is your help with the lay of the land. Where might a person on the run with a vehicle the size of a tank hide out? What kinds of areas might be helpful in the long run of things? If anyone new in town shows up I would like to know. If you feel included to help out on a closer intimate level you know where to find us. We would, of course, make available to you the use of our latest equipment to help the search. Of course, I understand it would be difficult even for you to keep track of it all while hiking through such tough terrain as I have seen on the mountain so far so don’t worry about losing or damaging some of the equipment.” He was as open as he was going to be with anyone not official on the project to put them on an almost even level and offered a partnership with the extra offer of government equipment that a man like Pellegrino would find useful to have. Pellegrino pretended to mull it over for a minute but he knew he had the man.
“I’ll mark up a map for you and bring it to you tomorrow morning. Say seven o’clock after the men have eaten?” Pellegrino’s answer wasn’t a question, he would be there even if he had to wait or was late for his own regular duty assignments. He could keep his own schedule since he was a civilian but would still chip in at military standards in return for the equipment. He knew the score on favors traded within the military.
“That’s fine” he stood to leave and Pellegrino stood too but he waved him off. “I will see you tomorrow and we can trade things off” with that he left and getting into his jeep drove back to the base camp without looking around further. He hoped that he would only be here for another few days at most.
The rest of the day was fruitless in finding his quarry but his men had gotten a fair-sized area searched. With luck, tomorrow would be better hunting with the help of a local guide.
********
When Jensen woke his head was filled with the images of dragons. He had been going to start harvesting logs for winter as he cleaned up the last of the storm debris but he was energized with ideas for work. He checked on his visitor who was sleeping away before starting breakfast. In between cooking and eating he had brought out a drawing pad and began sketches for future projects. After breakfast, he fed and cleaned up his visitor with a washcloth and changed his diaper. The bracelets didn’t show any signs of action while he worked and he finished quickly his embarrassment having faded with each change. But he did linger for a moment looking at the handsome alien. After all this was over he might need to find himself a hookup for the summer. He was still a young hot-blooded man and seeing another fit male body had stirred his feelings and hormones. He would not take advantage of the alien, not even a quick grope of his more interesting anatomy. But looking at and admiring the alien's fit body wasn't as bad he supposed as long as it was a quick look. He would need a release at some point for his body but not yet, he could stand the build-up. Maybe he'd find a one-night stand in New York when he went to deliver his dragon statue.
He went out and fed Molly before putting her out in the pasture, Pauly happy to try to get her to play since he didn’t have time at the moment for a round of fetch. The ship wasn’t hungry and just sat quiet and restful like its owner. He would give the alien one more day and if he didn’t show signs of waking, he would call in Jim and swear him to secrecy so he could get the alien well if it was possible. If not…well he didn’t want to think about it at the moment, there was lots of work to do.
He went into his workshop and started up the forge. While it heated, he continued to draw but the images in his head were hazy now. It didn’t matter, he had a few good sketches that he was sure he could do something with later. In the mean time, there was a sculpture to finish. For the next few hours he worked hard and got a lot of work finished. In fact, he was mostly done, just a few small details and polishing were needed. He might not have stopped for lunch but Pauly had wandered into his workshop at some point and had decided that Jensen should know that even if Jensen wasn't hungry for lunch he wanted his lunch with a series of loud barks.
He had been so focused on working he had lost track of himself as well as the time. He was hot and tired and his clothes were sticking to his body with sweat. He turned on the hose he used to fill his cooling water barrels and stuck his hands underneath the nozzle to gather water to splash on his face and arms to cool down and wash some of the ash and grime off from working with metals. As his hands and arms cooled he noticed that his bracelets were warm. They were some kind of metal he didn’t know and possibly alive thus organic at the same time but they were still a metal fundamentally and it made sense that they had warmed while he worked, but they stayed warm even as his hands and arms turned numb as he held them in place under the stream of icy water from the hose. He dried off and tried to think about what it could mean that they weren’t cooling down. Were they not supposed to get that hot? He had exposed them to some intense heat from the forge. They were living things somehow, had the heat hurt them? Had he killed them? Or did they like the heat and that was why they retained it? Did the heating of the bracelets affect the ship? The alien?
He rushed out to the ship since it was closer, bigger and the bracelets had come from it and laid his hands on it but it was still the same cool surface he had felt before. It didn’t try to connect with him or his bracelets and didn’t make any noise or show any sign that it was anything other than a large hunk of metal. If the ship was fine that was half his worries eased. He turned and hurried back to the house. The alien had matching bracelets and if the ship wasn’t affected, he, with a matching set of bracelets still might be affected. When he entered his room, the alien was still asleep in the same spot Jensen had left him in hours ago. He walked over and sat on the bed next to the alien and put a hand on his wrist over his bracelet. It was cool but his skin wasn’t, it was warm like Jensen’s bracelets. He tried to lift his hand to feel the alien’s forehead for signs of fever but couldn’t move his hand. Looking down he saw that the bracelets had merged and become one band flowing around their hands and wrists keeping them connected. It began to thin out quickly and the thin thread-like tendrils crept up the alien’s arm. The bracelet on the alien’s other arm began to do the same only a bit slower since they had less material to work with. Then the tendrils crept over his chest and met in the center where the top of the breastbone would be. Jensen felt a shifting of weight on his other wrist and saw his other band had begun to thin out now and head up his arm. He soon felt it moving across his chest and down the opposite arm leading to the alien.
They stayed locked together that way with the metal flowing in tendrils over the alien's chest for about fifteen minutes before they slowly went back to what Jensen was beginning to think of as their natural shapes around their respective wrists. He could tell that the bracelets were cool again and that made him feel a bit better. They didn’t seem to be damaged since they were still working, doing what he didn’t know, but working all the same. When he could let go of the alien’s wrist, he did but he didn’t get up to leave immediately. He leaned over and felt the alien’s brow for fever. Not that he was an expert on alien biology but aside from some small differences in looks and one very important body part they didn’t seem to be that different. At least on the outside, for all he knew the alien could have two hearts, three lungs, and no liver. The alien’s temperature was raised a little, his brow warm like the bracelet had been but not high enough to be a fever. To be sure he went and got a thermometer and a damp cloth from the bathroom. The thermometer was the old fashion kind with mercury inside. He didn’t know how he would get it to stick under the tongue long enough for an accurate read so instead, he slipped it into the alien’s armpit and held the pressure on by leaning against him as he used the cloth to wipe away any sweat produced on the alien's forehead which wasn’t really anything.
When he pulled the thermometer out it only showed a temperature slightly warmer than his own normal. He would have to keep an eye on the time and come back to recheck him though out the day for fever. He left the thermometer on the nightstand and put the cloth in the bathroom sink for later use before going out into the kitchen. Pauly was by the fridge and when he saw Jensen, he gave a whine and his best sad puppy eyes stare.
“You hungry boy? So am I” he reached out to open the fridge loading his arms with food stuffs. Pauly moved with him as he began setting up the ingredients to make a turkey sandwich. As he worked, he tossed bits of turkey into Pauly’s bowl and they were instantly gobbled up. He ate, cleaned up his plate, then warmed up some broth, and took said broth in to give to the alien. After that, he put on the watch he rarely used and went out to his workshop. He had left in a hurry and needed to clean it up. After that was done it was time to finish any last clean up of debris outside that he had neglected all morning. He took his makeshift sled and piled on anything he could use for fuel in the winter and took it back to the barn. Then he took an ax and went out to get wood for splitting for the fireplace. All the while he kept an eye on the time and went back to check on his guest ever so often. The alien’s condition didn’t change, it didn’t get worse but it didn’t get better. He did notice a bit more of the bruises and scrapes were gone. He wondered if with the healing progressing quickly he was returning to what passed for normal for him and that included the higher temperature. Some people were naturally warmer than others so it could just be the way he was. He remembered from some science program he had watched a long time ago that space was beyond cold. Maybe the higher temperature was to combat the cold even if the alien had a ship to fly in. The rags the alien had been in that he guessed one could call clothes if they were being generous wasn't much. They were in the small trash can in the bathroom. He'd decide what to do with them when his guest woke up.
It was just becoming dusk when he heard a car coming up his road. It wasn’t Ellen, she wasn’t due back for a few more days and she would have called if she had come back early. It wasn’t a delivery truck because they didn’t usually come out this far even if he did order something, which he hadn’t. He moved towards the front of the house to see the driveway better and saw a big red truck. It was Sheriff Mark Pellegrino’s truck. It wasn’t his official patrol jeep so it wasn’t professional business he was coming up for. He sighed; he really didn’t want to deal with Mark at the moment.
Mark had been very persistent in trying to get Jensen to go out with him and no doubt he would try now. Mark had become more aggressive about it since his grandfather had died. If it kept escalating, he didn’t know what he was going to do because it wasn’t like he could go running to the police seeing as how Mark was the police around here. He supposed he could file a complaint with Sheriff Booth in Centerville but he wasn’t really known there and it wasn’t like Walkerville. They might not take too kindly to Jensen being bisexual and being harassed by a cop. They might not like that a local cop was bisexual but they would take Mark’s side over his simply on the kinship of work principles he was sure. Mark might get some kind of trouble from them after on his own. And if he took offense at being outed there by him Mark could make life very difficult for the foreseeable future. He would not put it past Mark to do that if he had the notion. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place that was getting smaller with each trip into town he took it seemed. He waited while the truck pulled up close to where he stood and shut off. Pauly stood next to him barking at the truck and he put his hand down to pet him as Mark stepped out of the truck.
“Evening Jensen” Mark smiled at him before giving an annoyed look at Pauly.
“Hello Sheriff Pellegrino. What brings you out here?” He didn’t move to greet him and kept petting Pauly who had stopped barking. It was both a good thing and a bad thing since the barking would show Mark he wasn’t wanted or welcomed but it might have made him ask to go inside to talk away from Pauly who could be shut out.
“Just checking on you after the storm, I like to make sure everyone farther from town is okay when the weather gets bad.” Mark kept smiling but began shifting from foot to foot. No doubt he wanted an invite inside.
“The storm is over” Jensen pointed out the obvious. If Mark was truly making sure everyone was fine with the storm he could have come out during or right after when there hadn’t been any power.
“Yeah, and it’s caused a bit of trouble in places for a few of the new folks” Mark nodded as he got Jensen’s point. “Plus, I came up to ask if you’ve seen anyone around you don’t recognize. There’re some military guys up here looking for a deserter. You should be careful when you are out and about if you haven’t seen him just in case.”
Jensen did his best to keep a natural face at this news, “I haven’t seen anyone.” He had suspected that someone or some organization like the government would be out looking for the alien but he didn’t expect it so soon or so close.
“Well if you do see a stranger don’t approach him and if he sees you and you can pretend you don’t see him get home and call me as soon as you can and I’ll come out after him.”
“Will do. I’m sure you have others to deliver the message to while you check on them and I have to go get Molly.” He hoped Mark would take the hint and leave. He could not let Mark into the cabin because he would see that Jensen had been sleeping on the couch and want to know why and that would most likely lead to him finding the alien.
Mark looked a bit taken aback for a moment then he nodded “the old mule.”
Now it was Jensen’s turn to be startled until he remembered that it was common knowledge that Molly belonged to Ellen and Mark might have either known she was gone or checked Ellen’s place on his way to Jensen’s and seen her gone. Jensen always took care of Molly when Ellen was gone so it was an obvious conclusion. Mark hesitated a minute longer but when Jensen didn’t say anything else he slowly got back into his truck and drove off.
Jensen was relieved that Mark was gone but his brain began working on what to do in the near future. If he had to get Jim to come out for the alien things were going to get complicated. Mark would find out Jim had been by and come back and would defiantly want to come inside to talk. If the alien woke up and was not friendly there was going to be a problem, or if he woke up and was stranded there was going to be a few problems. But those could wait until something actually happened, right now he had something immediate to take care of. Ture to what he had said to Mark he started towards the pasture to retrieve Molly for the night. Pauly ran ahead of him but he didn’t pay attention to him. He was trying to think of different things to do about the alien. And he really did have to give him a name until the alien could provide one, granted he didn’t kill Jensen upon waking. Calling him the alien or the visitor or his guest was getting annoying and it was so impersonal after Jensen’s intimacy in taking care of him. He decided he’d call the alien Bob for now. Not original or flattering but it was something and better than nothing.
If Bob woke up, didn’t kill him, and was stranded he would try his best to help Bob get his ship in working order if at all possible. He wasn’t an engineer or a scientist or the kind of person who worked on any kind of airships but he would do his best. If Bob was stuck here permanently there were a few ways to hide his odd features from a distance. Nothing to be done about his height, but his hair was long enough that if styled right or if he wore a hat his ears would be covered or in an extreme case cut to resemble human ears. As for his eyes, sunglasses or special effects contacts could be used as a cover or excuse. His teeth, well there was hoping he wouldn’t talk much if he could learn English. A trip to the dentist to get them filed down was probably not going to happen for a few reasons. The best case was that Bob woke up, got in his ship, and flew away.
As Jensen thought about all this, he gathered Molly from the pasture and brought her back to the barn. He gave her a quick brush, gave her fresh food, topped off her water, and went to see the ship.
“Hey I hope you’re okay and can still fly” he began talking to it as he picked up metal bits to feed it. “If you’re passenger or partner or whatever he is wakes up you should consider leaving. There are some nasty people after you and I don’t think you want to meet them. If you feel pain they will hurt you and if you don’t they will try to take you apart which I don’t think you’d like.” It pulled in a few pieces of metal and made a soft humming sound as it rose and floated a few inches off the ground while he talked to it. “If you can help wake him up that would be best for everyone.” After the ship stopped eating Jensen ran his hands over it with the same motions he used when brushing Molly. His bracelets became fluid and he held his hands flat against the ship as they flowed together for a while. When they had settled on his wrists solidly again he gave the ship a final pat and went back into the cabin. He checked on Bob first and while he was still warm to the touch nothing else had changed.
Jensen made himself and Pauly dinner and they ate together in the kitchen. He took the last of the broth to Bob. He’d have to see if Bob could take milky oatmeal tomorrow and he’d have to make more broth. He read for a while, then listened to more news but didn’t hear anything about UFO sightings in the area, military men, or a deserter. Before bed, he cleaned up Bob and changed him, and went through the ritual of the healing bracelets because that was clearly what they were doing. Bob looked a lot better than when Jensen had found him, at least on the outside. He wondered if the bracelets were healing his insides from the outside or if at some point they might make their way inside him somehow to fix any internal damage if that was even possible. He came out of his thoughts to find himself stroking Bob’s hair and quickly jerked his hand back. He had no idea what had come over him but he would be careful not to let it happen again. Bob may be hot, but he was leaving, he hoped, in the near future and Jensen didn’t need a man around right now. He was too busy fending off Mark. He got up and took the broth bowl back to the kitchen and cleaned up the dinner mess. After the cleaning was done he took a quick shower before settling in for the night.
********
Mark Sheppard was pleased with the maps Pellegrino had brought for his team. He hadn’t been one hundred percent sure that Pellegrino would come through, although the odds were high. The minute reaction he'd seen when he'd mentioned the equipment Pellegrino could potentially have had been confirmation enough. The maps had been marked and annotated in the military fashion. It must have taken Pellegrino some time to compile them so he doubted he had done it over night. More likely it was a copy, if an incomplete one he was sure, of maps Pellegrino had made for himself when he had moved to the area. A man like Pellegrino had secrets and needed places to hide them. A giant mountain forest fit the bill nicely. He also doubted that this was the only copy or that all the hiding places had been marked. Pellegrino had been living in the area for a while and he had had plenty of time to explore and make his own maps for his own purposes. He was a man with desires and needs that society probably didn’t understand and he would need a place to go out and live them if he didn't have a place in town. He would need to find places to play and places to hide the results. No, Pellegrino had kept a few choice places to himself but he had given Mark what he needed to find someone or rather something new on the mountain. It narrowed the field of search considerably. Not that they wouldn’t search every nook and cranny to find what they were looking for, they would just concentrate on the more likely ones first. The best quadrants to search would be to the north and west of Walkerville. He made up the new assignments and sent his men out to search immediately. He let Pellegrino have a look at some of the equipment they had and let him pick out a few pieces to take. The man knew what he wanted and it was top-notch stuff. He had no doubt it would be put to some illegal and dark purpose. But that wasn’t his concern. As long as Pellegrino worked to help him reach his goal and stay out of the way when he captured his target anything Pellegrino took and anything he did with it wasn’t his concern. He didn't want to know any more about Pellegrino's transgressions than he already did and could guess at. He of course kept a log of what Pellegrino took just in case it would need to be retrieved later or for deniability. Pellegrino had agreed to go with one of his units to search for part of the day. If they didn’t find what they were looking for he might go with them again or think of more places to search if he could take another walk through their supply tent. The arrangement was working out well for both of them, but he felt he was getting the better deal. He would have the visitor before any other agency started sniffing around. It wouldn’t be long now he was sure of it.
**********
Pellegrino was furious. The last few days had been trying for him and he needed to blow off some steam. Things were happening that he couldn’t quite put his finger on but were likely going to mess up his plans for the near future. He had a feeling in his gut that something was going to change in the near future, and not for the better. So, he had to be vigilant and nip whatever it was in the bud by whatever means necessary.
The recent storm had knocked out the power and dislodged a few of the cameras and sensors he had monitoring the Ackles property. But he couldn’t go out and fix them until the power was back on. In the meantime, he had duties in town to take care of. Mainly all the newer residents to the area who were unprepared for the occasional severe weather living in the mountains brought. Of course, there had also been the local drunk, the local thief, and a few misbehaving teens to deal with as well. He had taken some of his anger out on the drunk and he had a feeling that the teens wouldn’t be causing any trouble for a while either. Then yesterday a bit of fortune came his way. Mark Sheppard, a Sergeant of the Air Force, had shown up in town. The man claimed to be looking for a deserter who had stolen some new kind of technology from them and was hiding out in the mountains. He didn’t believe the story for a minute. There probably was a man, there probably was some kind of technology, most likely a weapon, and he probably was on the mountain. But for that man to be a deserter? Not a chance. As for the weapon, it was probably something the man had created and didn’t want to share with the government. Why he was on the mountain he had no clue and he didn’t care. After the storm, they had had the man was most likely dead and the weapon lost. But he didn’t say that to Sheppard. Instead, he had agreed to help find the man and the weapon. For a price of course.
For his help and his silence, he would have access to military grade surveillance technology and survival supplies. Things he could use in his pursuit of his hobbies and pleasures. Mainly Jensen Ackles at the moment. The young man was just his type and his personality made for a good chase, his will and feisty spirit would make him put up a good fight which would make his victory and conquest all the more exquisite when he finally broke Jensen and took what he wanted. Then he could take his time to play for a while until he decided what to do with him. There were people out there who would be willing to take his broken toys. All for a price of course or sometimes they had something good to trade with. Imported toys could be just as much fun to play with if not more than the local domestic ones he had to choose from.
The surveillance equipment he could use right away, the supplies he would have to haul up the mountain to his hidden playground. He had spent most of the rest of the day working up a map for Sheppard of locations a decently skilled local might hide out in. He marked places that an amateur might stumble upon more prominently and marked places where someone who knew nothing of the heavy forests might think were okay, and end up dead in. He also made lists of items that Sheppard might make available to him based on what he had seen in his military days. He ranked them from most desired and valuable to least wanted or useful. He thought up what he might use them for, where he might put them and how to keep them up to date. He was relieved when the power came back on in the evening.
The morning had been productive as he delivered his map to Sheppard and even volunteered to go out with some of his men. It was a way to keep an eye on what was going on and pick up any information he might use to his advantage later. Also, he could steer the men away from his own hiding place better this way. He couldn’t make it too obvious but he could help them skirt the area he used for his own hunting grounds. He was also very pleased with the selection of technology and supplies made available to him. He took surveillance cameras, a radio jammer, a tracking device, and listening bugs. He avoided the laptop and software and GPS transponder just in case it had a backdoor that Sheppard could use to spy on his activities. Not that he thought it all that likely if he stayed out of Sheppard’s way when it came to their wanted man. He also had a feeling that they were alike in a lot of ways. The man was devious and would do what it took to get what he wanted. He would have to watch his step around Sheppard. Once he had cleared a search grid and offered to help out again tomorrow, he had taken his new equipment and headed for the Ackles property.
The cameras he had been using were top of the line for civilians without having to prove you were a PI. He had some PI and police grade equipment as well that he had gotten on the black market but he was more careful with these pieces. He hiked around the property replacing or resetting up old equipment and reestablishing their connection to the repeater tower he had set up to relay the feeds back to his home in town. Once within sight of the cabin, he set up his first microphone close to and facing the workshop. He wouldn’t be able to reset or replace the one camera he had in there until Jensen came into town. He’d add a microphone this time to enhance his surveillance inside the workshop. From past footage, he knew that Jensen probably sang or at least talked to himself while he worked. Without audio, he just stared at Jensen's plush lips. They would be wonderful to kiss and would feel even better wrapped around his cock. Cock sucking lips his type of lips had been called by all the men in the service, although those men usually referred to the women they wanted, the lips were the same type.
As he approached the cabin, he saw that Jensen had cleaned up the property from the storm and was sad that he had missed some of it. While the weather was cool now and Jensen would not be working shirtless or in a tank-top, he still might dress down when he got hot from the exertion. Occasionally Jensen would borrow a horse or a neighbor would board one here for a few days and watching Jensen ride was a pleasure. With his slightly bowed legs and natural gait that swayed with each step, he was a natural in the saddle and he like to fantasize about those legs wrapped around his hips as Jensen rode his cock instead of a horse. Jensen had natural legs for riding or spreading wide while being fucked.
With that in mind, he decided he’d pay a visit since he was up here already. He might ask Jensen out again or offer to help him out to get a dinner invitation for his effort. He and Jensen had been playing a game of cat and mouse for a while now but Jensen didn’t know just how high the stakes were. It was annoying that Jensen kept blowing him off but he also knew that his persistence and Jensen’s refusal kept him from seeking out other companionship elsewhere. It was also a test of endurance to see how long they could both hold out, and he liked what it meant for the future battle of wills and bodies to come. He hiked back to his truck and came up the drive as if he hadn’t been there for almost the last two hours.
When he pulled up Jensen was in the yard, but so was that mutt he was so fond of. He had considered getting rid of it but it might raise some suspicions and it might be used as a pawn later to get Jensen to do what he wanted. It would be of no use to him otherwise much to his disappointment. During his overseas military days, a contact he's made on his pleasure hunting trips had a dog that had been trained to fuck the entertainment that didn't cooperate or displeased his guests. He had made an arrangement to see the dog perform on one of his discarded toys before he went back stateside. It was a pity he didn't have the time to train Jensen's mutt in the same manner. It would have been interesting to keep Jensen in line with the promise of the dog for company, only to see the look of horror and betrail if he had the dog fuck Jensen before he was broken completely. It barked at him as he got out of his truck but Jensen kept it by his side which meant he had to stay back. He gave the dog an annoyed look as he greeted Jensen, thinking about ways to kill the mutt. Or train it quickly enough to cause Jensen pain he could get off on while watching as it mounted Jensen like a bitch in heat.
Jensen’s greeting was not warm and he wasn't invited inside away from the mutt to talk. When his attempt at small talk about the storm to offer help got rejected he switched tactics. Maybe he could scare Jensen into having him around, or inviting him over. He told Jensen the cover story about the deserter. He offered his help with the implication Jensen could call anytime. He would take care of Jensen, and he really did want to, just not in any way Jensen would imagine. He was again rejected and then Jensen had the nerve to dismiss him! Jensen had told him to leave, but he had done it in a way that both insulted him and raised an internal alarm. Something had happened in the few days he didn’t have surveillance on Jensen. And it was still happening if his feelings were right about the dismissive and furtive way Jensen wanted him off the property. He had been annoyed that Jensen had Ellen’s mule as an excuse. He had been very careful when he had broken the leg on Jensen’s horse the past year. Getting rid of the horse had been one of the last steps in isolating Jensen. If Jensen’s grandfather hadn’t been so ill and died recently, he had a plan to hasten the old man’s death as well. The only thing really standing in his way now was Ellen. That bitch had been a thorn in his side from the beginning. He doubted Jensen knew just how much trouble she had been for him since he didn’t come into town all that often and Ellen wouldn’t want to upset him. Getting her out of the picture without raising the alarm was going to be almost as much fun as the final hunt for Jensen would be.
He was finally forced to leave and he did so slowly, watching in the rearview mirror to see if Jensen did anything that would have him parking and hiking back to see. But Jensen had turned towards the back part of his land where the horse pasture was. He headed home to see just how well his new surveillance equipment worked on his large screen tv. Maybe he’d unwind with an old video of his last conquest. It had been the rare female, but her pleas and screams had been music to his ears and she’d had a set of lungs that let her go on for hours. Last he knew she was still entertaining with that voice at some farm in Arkansas. In exchange for the cash she'd been worth he's had a fun night with one of the newest young ranch hands. He didn't have a tape of that night but he wished he had. But he would have Jensen soon enough and the tape of the woman would have to do for tonight.
**********
Jared dreamed. He dreamed of hands soothing his pain and a grounding voice calling to his beast. It soothed the beast as much as the hands soothed his pain. He felt the reassurance of peace from his symbiont, and something he didn’t expect. Joy. He dreamed of home, his forests, his mountains, the cool refreshing rivers and lakes, and flying free on the wind, the sun warming his scales. He wanted to do that, he wanted to see his home. He wanted the comfort that was being offered to his body. His beast wanted to take it under his wing, wanted to curl up with it and protect it from anything that might take away its joy. He wanted to wake from his dreams to see if reality would be just as good. In the darkness he had been in, he now saw a faint weak spark of light that seemed far away but present all the same. That light was the peace and joy. He needed to get to the light, to make it stronger, brighter, to let it banish the darkness. He would do whatever it took to wake and make the source of the light his. He would offer his whole world on a platter if it would make him whole. Because the being of the light had to be the missing piece of his soul. His soul mate. When he had been a child there were stories his mother had told him about such things. About such beings. All the peoples of all the worlds had once had soul mates. Someone with opposite traits or gifts or forms from your own who would balance out your own and make a harmonious household. Someone with whom your symbiont could bond with and theirs to you giving great strength and protection to both. Legends of past rulers who had been almost gods, who had lived millennia, visited worlds of wonder no longer within reach, and had symbionts large enough to protect whole families and heal whole armies. He had listened to these tales when he was very young and believed them, wished them to be true so he would someday be such a leader, but he eventually grew to know they were only myths. There was no such thing as a soul mate, and symbionts were rare and didn’t care for many beyond their host and the host's blood relations or partners. But now with the light, the voice, the hands he knew he had been wrong. His mate waited for him to wake. And so wake he would.
**********
This planet was young and full of life, but it was also very sick. The magnetic fields sang of the glorious past and its new terrible pain. The beings it loved and the beings that hurt it. The potential of this planet and its beings were great. The being that had found its host was a perfect example. Its genetic material was compatible with its host and its own. It created a tentative bond with the being and soon learned about its species. The human male called Jensen was a kind being who took care of its host without the expectation of something in return. Its bond with the human Jensen grew stronger by the hour and it decided that it would allow the bond to continue. The human Jensen’s genetics were malleable and already a partial match to its host. They could be true mates with a little help, so it would help his host make it so. It wouldn’t take much to transform the human into a Drakcon. The human Jensen had been providing minerals and nutrients to it and it had been busy growing and for the first time in centuries reproducing. It would provide the human Jensen with a symbiont of his own to help him with his transformation and allow him to protect himself when his host took him home. It could feel its brethren approaching, and with them the brethren of its host. In the early morning hours before the sun star of this galaxy poured its light over the land it sent out its young to the human Jensen. The baby symbiont was soon settled around the human Jensen’s lower appendages known as legs. They would grow over the next few days and it could remove itself and become one with its own host again. His host and the human Jensen would need its help and protection when the galaxy makers came. It had sensed their presence for the first time since it had begun bonding to only the Drakcon as hosts. They had sensed its presence in return and they exchanged information and history. They had not been pleased and were coming for a meeting. But it would be a while yet and it had other things to do first while it still could.
**********
Jensen woke feeling that something was different. He looked around and listened but he couldn’t see or hear anything out of place. Pauly didn’t show any signs that something was wrong. As he got up and put his feet on the floor his legs felt heavy. He looked down to see very thin dull grey bands around his ankles below the thicker silvery bands. He didn’t know what it meant but right now he didn’t have the mental capacity to think too deeply about it. He would do so after he had his first cup of coffee. Jensen scrubbed his hands over his face and yawned and Pauly got up and shook before looking back at him and whining. Jensen got up and let him out to do his business before going to the kitchen to make breakfast. It would be oatmeal all around this morning. Plain for Pauly, berries in his, and extra thin and milky for Bob. The oatmeal didn't take long to cook and he and Pauly ate together in the kitchen. He had a second cup of coffee as he made breakfast for Bob. He debated if he should crush up some raspberries in the oatmeal or maybe add some cinnamon, but went with plain milk as he didn't know how Bob would react to the fruit or spice. With oatmeal in hand, he went in and sat on the bed and reached out for Bob’s head to prop him up to feed him. Before he could make contact, his arm was seized in a hard vice-like grip causing him to cry out and instinctually flinch away. His heart rate sped up and the fight or flight mode kicked in and not being a fan of sudden scary things, he wanted to flee. He looked down at Bob’s face and saw unnaturally bright cat-like slit eyes looking back at him, a silent snarl from a grimacing mouth showing sharp teeth and he froze hardly daring to breathe. Bob was awake.
Part One
https://angelzfurys.livejournal.com/36410.html
Part Two
https://angelzfurys.livejournal.com/36710.html