Alienness Notwithstanding - SCP Foundation

"Have you ever thought about what it would be like if you were free again?"

I looked up from the paper I was drawing on. It wasn't anything good, being composed of little more than lazy spirals and hatching, but doodling was better than staring at the plain white walls.

"Of course I have. Who hasn't?" I responded, my eyes falling back to the paper as I twirled my pen in my fingers. "Is this some kind of psychological experiment or something?"

The scientist pursed her lips together. "Perhaps it's a type of experiment, but not the psychological kind."

"So what kind is it?"

"Look at it this way, SCP-7513. You're a pretty normal guy, all things considered, right? The only real reason we keep you here is because of your statistical anomaly; even then, it's only for your own protection."

I nodded, remembering the long spiel they'd gone on when I'd first gotten here. In reality, it was never needed, as I'd given up trying to fight the minute I'd noticed the armed guards blocking the doorway they'd brought me in through. These people really didn't skimp on security.

"But," she continued with a bit of sombreness in her voice, "we haven't been oblivious to the condition you've developed under containment."

My fingers gripped the pen harder. If it had been the kind with a spring, I would have no doubt been clicking the end cap rapidly.

"The shrink tattled on me, huh?" I asked.

"It's not like that," the scientist sighed. "Their job is to let us know when you're not doing alright. Besides, you've just been a bit… depressed. We see it happen a lot in containment, especially with sapient creatures."

"How could someone not be depressed, with all of this?" I swept my arm in gesture to the room around us. "Look, I appreciate that place to stay, but there's as much stimulation here as watching paint dry. At least it got my blood pumping to be chased around by aliens."

"Yes, yes, that all makes sense. I'm not trying to be an antagonist here— you have every right to feel the way you do about your current circumstances."

"So why are you here?" I asked, my eyes raising to meet hers.

"I'll ask again. Have you ever thought about being free?"

It turned out that there were a hell of a lot of strings attached.

Firstly, I would have a new name and identity, and wasn't allowed to talk to anyone or go anywhere with people who previously knew me. Apparently, they all thought I was dead, or had moved out of the country; so much for catching up on old times with my friends.

Second, I had to carry around this little GPS tracker everywhere. They told me it was for my safety, in case I got abducted by another 'Georgie', but I wondered if it was so that they could keep tabs on me like a rat running through a maze. The good news was that they probably wouldn't put electrodes in my brain to see if they could steer me down their intended path.1

It was winter, cold and desolate. My boots slogged through the half-melted sleet on the ground as I trudged along the sidewalk, watching the fresh snowflakes falling on top and melding with it. The whole thing became an amalgamated mass, which slowly coagulated into a slippery, icy surface as the sun set over the horizon.

I was struggling not to lose my footing on the slick ground when I heard a quiet noise just around the corner. With the aid of the raised wall belonging to the house beside us, I made my way around and came face to face with someone who apparently hadn't won that struggle.

"Hey… uh… you okay?" I asked, inching towards the person as he rolled onto his side and curled up onto himself.

He didn't say anything, and I began to worry that he was injured. As I knelt in the snow beside him, the knees of my trousers became soaked, and the biting freeze nearly burned my skin. It occurred to me that he was fully laying in it, so that must have been awfully uncomfortable.

"Do you need help?" I asked, trying to figure out how to move him if he did. He looked pretty small, but I wasn't exceptionally strong, and I didn't want to overestimate my capabilties and cause both of us to go careening back onto the ground.

With a notable slowness, he rolled himself onto his front and pushed himself up away from the snow. My hands hovered at his sides in case he collapsed back down. His eyes looked all wrong, at least from the small glimpses I could get with his barely-open eyelids; his face was terribly pale, virtually the same shade as the snowflakes that coated his hair and eyelashes.

"Some…" His lips trembled, and he seemed to be struggling to form any kind of speech. "Somewhere… warm…er…."

"Yeah, you're soaked in snow," I agreed. "I was just taking a walk around the block, there's a place nearby I can take you."

I offered my hand to him, but he didn't seem all too aware of it, so I changed strategies and pulled him upright. It took a lot of fumbling for him to get his feet under himself, and even once he did, I decided not to let go in case he would fall over.

He appeared to be struggling to take steps, and a gnawing worry at the back of my mind made me wonder if I should call some kind of emergency service to see if someone had drugged him. But the police would just escalate the situation, and I didn't want to put him into lifelong medical debt by calling an ambulance.2

I came to the conclusion that it wasn't that far, and it was better to take it one step at a time and keep him from getting frostbite before making any big decisions.

"The heating's kinda busted, but I have a shittier, smaller heater," I explained as I brought him inside. The place that the Foundation had given me to stay certainly had its problems, but none of them made it unlivable, just a bit inconvenient; besides, it was expected of a one-person flat that I wasn't even paying for myself.

I guided him to the couch and set him down on it, then grabbed a towel from the bathroom and wheeled the portable heater out from my bedroom. I plugged the device in and turned it on, then started patting his side dry where he'd fallen into the snow.

The low hum of the heater felt oddly comforting despite the whole ordeal, and I started to calm down slightly. If there really was something medically wrong with him, I could drive him to the hospital downtown once the roads got plowed in an hour or two; it was a nonprofit, so if he was too broke to pay, they would probably just excuse the fees. Thinking through it made me feel a lot better, less frantic. Maybe helping someone would be good for me, and it would also show the Foundation that I didn't only meet aliens whenever I went outside.

I took off his jacket and set it beside us on the couch to dry. My movements shifted the couch cushion, and he sort of slumped into me; I smiled to myself and started wiping some of the melted snow off his hair where it had soaked through the hood of the jacket.

Then I noticed his ears.

Somewhat in disbelief, I touched the pointed tip at the top. It twitched and he pulled away, and my mouth went dry at the realisation that they weren't just extremely good prosthetics.

What was more, his skin had begun to take on a blue tinge, which I was pretty certain wasn't because of the lighting. He rubbed one of his eyes and then opened it, looking over at the heater. I was simultaneously mesmerised and horrified at the appearance of his eyes, the expanded irises and copper rings encircling them.

"You're an…" I exclaimed, mouth gaping in surprise.

He pressed a hand to his temple and frowned, as if I'd brought a headache upon him with the sudden noise. I felt a little bad, but mostly was overcome with astonishment, and also anger at my misfortune of coming into contact with yet another alien.

I got up off the couch and stormed into my room, nearly slamming the door behind me before grabbing a pillow off my bed and punching it squarely in its middle.

So I wouldn't be able to take him to the hospital after all— not unless I wanted the Foundation to freak out and immediately confine me to that sad white room.

A while later, after I'd calmed down, I decided to venture back out of my room.

I opened the door to find the alien curled up on his side in a similar position to before. I'd changed out of my trousers, but he was still dressed in the same mostly-wet clothes.

"Hey, don't lay on that side, you're getting the couch damp."

He sat up, not looking at me. "I'm sorry."

"So you can talk, huh?" I asked, crossing my arms as I walked towards him. "Was that just a show before? You were pretending?"

"No," he responded quietly, tucking some hair behind his ear. The strands looked quite soft, and I partially regretted not taking the chance to touch them before I got up. Then I stomped that thought down and got back on track.

"So someone did really drug you? Did you run away from him? Or her? Them?"

"No," he repeated. His face was turned down, and he wrapped his arms around himself protectively.

I sighed. "Then what is it? 'Cause just so you know, you're not welcome to come in here, get my couch wet, and play stupid to try to get me to date you."

His face had been turned down, but my statement finally made him look up at me. I was momentarily surprised by its aesthetic elegance before reminding myself that I was angry with him.

"I'm not trying to date you."

"Oh yeah? Well… um…" I watched him blink up at me, eyebrows raised expectantly as if I were going to provide some kind of insight as to where I got that from. "Are you sure?"

"I am very sure," he said with a nod.

"Huh." I thought about this for a moment. Was it possible that an alien really wouldn't want to date me? I considered asking him about what his sexual intentions with me were, but from the already bewildered look on his face, I decided it might be too much.

I walked over to the couch and stood in front of him, looking at the still-damp side of his body. The thought crossed my mind that maybe it wouldn't even be that bad if he did, seeing as he was considerably more human-shaped and apparently capable of intelligent communication, completely unlike that massive hornet thing that had abducted me. And he also hadn't yet tried to court me in any of our interactions, which was another big bonus.

"Well… that thing about catching a cold if you're cold temperature-wise might not be true, but you still probably want to get out of those wet clothes, yeah?"

I'd picked out an old shirt and some basketball shorts, both hopefully small enough not to be falling off of him. I offered him my bedroom to get changed into them— it would be more private than the living room, at least— and then stood outside the door as he did so.

First I stuffed my hands into my pockets, then I stared at my watch, and finally I resolved to go wash dishes in the kitchen in order to seem like I wasn't waiting for him to come out. It wasn't like I really cared that much how he looked in them, it was just that… it was my room! And I wanted to make sure he wasn't up to any funny business!

I was rinsing off a fork when I heard the bedroom door open. I dried off my hands and went around the corner to see him standing in the doorway with one hand grasping the drawstring of the shorts, and the other holding the balled-up front of the shirt.

"I'm sorry, but could you help me with this?" he asked, eyes averted.

"Uh… yeah, sure."

I walked over and leaned down, taking the drawstrings into my hand. He held the shirt out of the way as I tightened them around his waist; I spent more time looking at his stomach than the shorts themselves. Even though a small amount of colour had returned to his skin, it still looked like unpainted china, and that was coming from a ginger. Not to mention that it was unnaturally smooth, lacking even the fine hair you would find on a woman's body.3 The absolute strangest part was the long indent in the centre of his abdomen, going straight though the area where a navel wasn't.

If I was braver, I might have let my fingers trail a few inches higher and feel it. But I wasn't that brave, so I tied the drawstring into a bow and stepped back, suppressing a frown as he let go of the shirt and let its hem drop to his mid-thigh.

"Sorry those are so big, I didn't have anything smaller," I explained as I rubbed the back of my neck.

He managed a small smile and folded his hands together in front of his lap. "It's okay, I'm used to things being too big for me. They are always like that on my home planet."

"So you really are an alien, huh?"

"I feel like it would be pointless to pretend that I am not." He bowed his upper body to me. "But thank you for everything you've done for me. My body does not make heat so I become slow and die in the cold, that's why I appeared unwell. I do not have any currency to compensate you with, but if there's anything else I can do to express my gratitude, I would like to do so."

A long moment of silence passed between us before I managed to form a response. "Look… I'm… sorry for getting angry earlier."

After I didn't say anything more, he peeked up at me and stood back straight. "I can leave, if you want."

I looked out the window to the road. "It's not any warmer than it was when you first got here; I might not like aliens, but I'm not just going to send you out to freeze to death."

He considered this for a moment. "Is it alright if I make a call?"

"Yeah, sure, just put it on speakerphone so I know you're not calling your mothership or something." I took my cell phone out of my pocket and swiped open to the dialling pad, then handed it to him. "Do you know the number?"

He took it and thought for a moment before tentatively typing something in. It rang for quite a while, but eventually someone picked up.

"Hello? I am rather busy right now, who is this?" the voice on the other end said. It sounded to be a man, deep-voiced and serious.

"Doctor?" the alien asked quietly.

"Who— wait, 6118, is that you?"

"Yes, I'm sorry for interrupting, but—"

"I've been looking all over for you! I've been so worried! Where are you?"

"I'm at the house of someone who found me outside, because I got really cold and fell down. I'm sorry for worrying you."

"Oh, sweetie, don't apologise. Don't apologise. Just give me the address and I'll be right there, okay?" There was some rustling on the other side, likely the speaker gathering his things so that he could rush out of wherever he was.

The alien looked up at me, and his face was so pleading that I relented and told it to him.

Some time later, there was a heavy knock on the door. By instinct, I immediately went over to open it, and then immediately wished I hadn't.

Our visitor was clad head to toe in black robes, and had a strange beaked mask on his face, like something straight out of the middle ages. He paid me little mind as he stepped into the house, heading straight for the alien on the couch to keel beside him.

He was all frantic gestures and worried exclamations for a good minute or two before the alien could even get a word in.

"It's— I'm— I— Doctor!" He pushed away a hand that was trying to take his temperature for the third time. "Please! I'm okay, really."

"It's below freezing outside! I know you think you are, but you're not invincible, 6118. And the coat you took was barely—" He paused and placed his hands on the alien's shoulders. "Whose clothes are those?"

"Mine," I said.

The man immediately stood and turned around to face me. His companion offered an apologetic half-smile-half-grimace as he looked me up and down with a glint of something in his eyes.

"Is there a problem here?" I asked, trying to come across as calm and collected despite the cold sweat that had begun to form on my palms.

"Not unless you've done something you shouldn't have," he responded.

"Excuse me? What exactly are you accusing me of?" I crossed my arms. "I could have just left him in the snow, you know, but I didn't. I helped him."

"I'm not accusing you of anything, it was a simple statement." His voice was strained, like the muscles of his body were overly tense. I was just guessing, though; all I could see was a dark mass with eyes that bore into me with great anger.

6118 tugged on the man's sleeve as if to pull him back to the couch. "Please don't argue. This person didn't do anything wrong, I think this is just a misunderstanding. My clothes were wet so he gave me some of his to change into."

He squinted at me for a moment before turning back to the alien and kneeling beside him again. "Alright, if you say so. Are you cold at all still? Or uncomfortable? I brought a blanket in my bag if you would like it."

The change in demeanour almost gave me whiplash. I wiped my palms on my jeans as I watched them talk, trying to calm myself down. It was an awfully sweet display, but something about it got on my nerves; I honestly would have rathered that it was me kneeling there, but that just seemed wrong. Why would I care about an alien, much less want to be that affectionate towards one?

Eventually, the man picked up 6118 and walked to the door. "Well, thank you for the use of your heating and all that, but we have to be going now. The snow is letting up, and you never know when it'll get worse again."

I looked out the window and saw the emergence of sunbeams that reflected off the snow, making it shine. It would probably be melted soon, which was good news for anyone who had places to be. "Yeah… yeah. You're right. Safe travels home, guys."

The alien gave me a small wave as he was carried out, and I smiled back despite myself.

A day later, I heard another knock at my door. This time it was much quieter, to the point where I wondered if I'd imagined the noise, but I went to open it anyways; what greeted me outside was the same person as before, holding a pile of folded clothes as he shifted from foot to foot.

"Hey, I'm sorry if I interrupted anything." He hugged the clothes to his chest with one arm in favour of freeing his hand to fiddle with the drawstrings on his hooded sweatshirt.

I looked down at him as I shifted to leaning against the doorframe. "So you came back, huh? You couldn't get enough of me?"

"I wanted to return your clothes, and also collect mine," he clarified.

"Oh. Um…" I stepped to the side and held my hand out to the living room. "Yeah, yeah, that. Feel free to come in."

He slipped past me and stood in front of the couch as I closed the door behind him. After a moment of consideration, I locked it as well, just in case that bird guy was going to try barging in again.

"Don't be a stranger, sit down," I said with a point to the couch. He did so without a word.

I went into my room and picked up his clothes from where I'd been letting them dry over the top of my standing hanger. When he'd changed, he'd left them in a neatly folded pile, and I attempted to replicate the folds; it came out sloppier than I'd intended, but I decided it was good enough and headed back out with them in hand.

He was sitting on the couch with his hands placed in his lap, his posture much straighter than when I'd rescued him the day prior. If it weren't for the sweatshirt and joggers, he would have seemed downright formal.

"Hey, is something wrong?" I asked. I set his clothes down on the console table right outside of my room, a slight buffer so that he couldn't just grab them and leave.

"No, it's alright, don't worry." He didn't even look up at me, as if his knees were more captivating than anything else in the room.

"Are you sure..?"

He was quiet for a moment before responding. "Well… the Doctor hasn't exactly been happy about this whole thing."

"And why is that?"

He sighed. "He says this is dangerous, and he's definitely right. You know about us now, and that's unsafe. You could easily report us to the police or something like that, especially with me being— at least, to you humans— an alien."

"So why did he let you come here?" I put my hands on my hips, looking him up and down. He was awfully small, and, while I didn't say it as not to scare him, I could easily just hold him down until the cops arrived and took him away to Area 51.

"He doesn't know I'm here," he responded quietly. "I told him I was going for a walk because I wanted some time to think alone. I feel very bad for lying, but I don't want him to hurt you if I tell him I came back here."

"Hurt me? Out of what, jealousy?" I scoffed.

The alien pulled the hood a little farther over his face. "That would imply that you have some kind of intentions with me."

"Me? No, no, not at all!"

"I— I'm sorry. Of course you don't. It was a bad thing to say."

Fuck. "No, it's not like that. I didn't mean it like that." I ran a hand through my hair as a nervous fidget. "That's… I didn't mean to sound like you're repulsive or something. You're not, at all. Look, I'm a guy who hates aliens, and… well, look, I don't hate you. I find you really nice."

"I hope I haven't bothered you excessively." He bowed his head again.

"No, you don't have to… look… I…." I trailed off as I somehow realised the mess I'd made. Maybe I disliked the fact that he was an alien, but I supposed that I'd overreacted with a lot of little things. There was no reason for me to be so aggressive towards him, especially if it ended up making him feel like that; he was an alien, yes, but he was clearly sapient, and I even dared to say that he had humanlike feelings.

I moved the clothes he'd brought aside and sat down on the couch next to him. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel shitty, I'm just acting out of these preconceived ideas I have about what aliens are going to be like towards me. Because, historically, every alien I've met has had this weird thing where they either really want to have sex with me, or really want to date me, or some combination of the two. Not to mention that I meet such a weirdly high number of aliens. It sucks— but it also doesn't make it okay to be mean to you."

He finally looked over at me, though only for a few seconds. "That all makes a lot of sense. I don't mean to try and come in here and change all your beliefs, or disregard all your past experiences with other aliens. You're allowed to dislike me for whatever reasons you do."

"But that's just the thing!" I turned a bit more towards him and put my hand over his on impulse. "I don't dislike you. I kind of like you. Well, okay, not necessarily like like. Well…"

I was trying to sort through my thoughts out loud, and it was definitely not working. The way he peeked at me from around the hem of his hood didn't help.

"Well, anyways, to answer your question from earlier…" I let my hand linger on his for a moment longer before pulling it away like a normal person who wasn't forming confusing feelings about aliens. "Um, the reason I haven't tried to turn you in or anything is because then I would get pretty easily figured out."

"'Figured out' in what sense?"

"Well, constantly running into aliens brings a guy a lot of attention. So much so that I got picked up by this organisation, and they only let me live here as of recently, and under surveillance too. If I turned you in to the cops, they might do some background checks, and maybe find out that my new name only existed until, what, a couple months ago? And some people might even put two and two together and connect me to the recently missing Forrest O’Sullivan. Which is me, by the way, but I'm not allowed to use that name anymore according to the Foundation."

"The Foundation… you mean the SCP Foundation?" he asked.

My eyebrows shot up. "What, you've heard of them?"

He did a little half-laugh into his hand. "Why do you think the Doctor calls me '6118'? It was my designation at that place, where we met. We're kind of running from them right now…"

"What? Really?" And then I laughed, mildly at first and then with my full chest. "Well, that's great, 'cause in a way I am, too. Like, if I told them that I'd met you? An alien, plus another SCP? They'd throw me back in that cell forever."

"So… you won't tell anyone?"

I put my arm around his shoulders and leaned in closer, offering an extended pinkie with my other hand. "Mutual secrecy, okay?"

He looked at it for a while, then looked at his own hand. "Is this… what do humans call it… a pinkie promise?"

"Yeah; the saying goes that if you break a pinkie promise, you have to break your pinkie."

He gingerly touched the little finger of his much smaller hand to mine. "Good thing I'm not going to break it."

"Your reason to stay quiet is at least as good as mine, so I believe you." I wrapped my finger around his. "The only way I can see either of us getting caught is if this house is bugged or something… but I'm sure it's not. I think."

This Tale was written for RomCon. Thank you Capriccio Farce for the use of SCP-7513; his counterpart of this pairing can be read right here!

Footnotes

1. They have for sure done this to cockroaches, but I'm not so sure about mice. The metaphor still stands.

2. This is how the US is, right?

3. Not that being a woman means having little body hair, or that having little body hair means being a woman.