A shake rattled through his body, his fingers twitched, and he whispered, “Time… food…”
“That’s it?” No unicorn tears or some healing herb that could only be found on a remote island in the Pacific?
He grunted, and I wanted to cry. I had to strain to hear him grit out, “Don’t… betray me.”
Like I hadn’t just dislocated my arms and given myself a bulging disc pushing him into my house while trying to help him.
This weird, weird feeling suddenly filled my stomach, but it was totally different from the one earlier. It wasn’t dread…
But it made me really, really wary. “I won’t. I promise.”
The Defender slightly opened those glowing eyes and stared at me through the crack of them for a moment, and I was pretty sure I felt hot all of a sudden. The Centurion could shoot lasers from his eyes, but I’d never heard of The Defender being able to. Could he?
But before I could wonder over it any longer, his lids lowered again and he was out.
His head dropped back against the pillow as another shake rattled through that athletic frame.
I reached forward and found his slow, pumping pulse.
“What the hell did you get yourself into?” I wondered out loud before leaning back onto my heels, worry, dread, and confusion battling it out in my chest.
Slowly lowering his hand back to his thigh, I took in the width of his wrist. The bones there were big but not abnormally huge. His skin had a deep golden tan to it that was lighter than mine. And as I looked at his fingers and then visually swept up his arm, I noticed his bones were the same all the way up. Sturdy. His shoulders were broad, just like they seemed on television. With most of his chest exposed thanks to the torn suit, I could tell the bones at his sternum were thick and his chest was padded with muscle.
He was unreal. A wet dream in the flesh. Perfection.
A very fit, athletic-looking man. He didn’t have diamond skin or a third eye. Maybe he had a third nipple, but I wasn’t going to look for it.
Part of me had expected him to look… different—inhuman, maybe, whatever that meant. But he didn’t.
He was normal.
But what the hell had happened to him?
Where had he been?
Should I have put him in bed or the couch instead?
Could I move him?
I was in over my head. Taking care of my elderly grandparents was one thing. Taking care of all… this… was something totally different.
But he was already here, and I didn’t believe in fate, but he was here. Of all the millions of fucking places he could have landed in, it was with me. And out of all the things he could have asked for, it had been time and food he’d brought up.
How could I let him down?
My stomach twisted, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose.
Was this what the hell my stomachache had been about?
It didn’t matter.
First things first. He’d said he needed food, and even though I had groceries, it wasn’t enough for both of us, but I’d worry about that tomorrow.
Did he want to be fed now? Or had he just meant in general?
Struggling to my feet, I hobbled toward the fridge in the corner of my little kitchen. I pulled out the soup I’d eaten with my sandwich and tried to think while I warmed up a bowl in the microwave. He’d asked for food and hadn’t said it in a passive way like let’s wait until I’m awake. Hadn’t he?
I poured the soup into the blender and waited until the potatoes were pureed and figured it couldn’t be so bad. Baby food it was going to be, because I wasn’t willing to risk him choking on chunks if he didn’t wake up to chew. Because that would be my luck, finding one of the most well-known people in the world and then having him die in my house immediately afterward. I’d bury the body and a cop would come by, find his bones, and then I’d go to jail for murder.
Or The Primordial and The Centurion would search to the ends of the world for me, rip me apart limb by limb, and toss me into the ocean as a shark buffet.
I knocked on the cutting board I’d left on the counter.
It took me a minute to set up a workstation. I dragged the coffee table from the living room and set the cup on it. I’d never fed a baby before; I’d never even been around a baby in more than passing, but I’d fed my grandparents. I could feed him.
If I had good luck, he’d wake up and muster up enough energy to chew and help me out, but I didn’t. So I opened his mouth a little by pressing on the hinge of his jaw—a dull buzz ignited over my fingers, but I was also going to think about that later—and reached over to spoon a bit of soup between his lips. They were a pretty dark pink color. His mouth was perfect.
And I had no business helping him.
I pushed that thought aside and focused on what I was doing. Fortunately, he didn’t wake up, but his throat bobbed, so maybe I wasn’t totally shit out of luck. Slowly and surely, I spooned more and more soup into his mouth while soaking up the angles and bones that made up his face.
The urge to poke at his cheek and feel its texture was right there, but I held back. Better not. My thumb felt a little weird where I was touching him already.
I stopped after about ten spoonfuls, not wanting to overdo it until I knew he could keep it down. I’d give him a little more later.
With a towel under his chin, I poured a little bit of water into his mouth, and he didn’t let me down then either; he swallowed that too. Convenient. And weird, but I wasn’t going to overthink it.
I had to help him. Whatever I had to do, I would. If anyone deserved it, he did.
It was the least I could do. The least anyone could do.
And, hopefully, this superbeing wouldn’t shit himself, even if that was at the bottom of the list of things for me to worry about—at least until I knew how he’d ended up like this. How he’d ended up here.
I rubbed my face and turned to eye the atlas still sitting there on the table. Sorry, Grandma, I thought. I’ll get out of here as soon as I can.
CHAPTER
THREE
He didn’t wake up. Not that day or the next or the one after that.
But it wasn’t the sleeping part that scared me; it was the fact he didn’t pee or poo. For three days. I would’ve been headed to a hospital. I wasn’t exactly crazy over the way I had to go about checking him either, but I wasn’t about to go prying at the remains of his suit, trying to look at more than what was already exposed. I’d spent enough time staring at him, but I figured it wasn’t every day that a being some people referred to as a god sat in an old wheelchair in my house, injured and in what seemed like pretty close to a coma with a Hello Kitty blanket draped over his chest.
I fucking hoped it wasn’t a coma. I was trying to be positive and call it a nap. A nice, long, regenerative nap.
What I had done was poke at his calf. The material there was thick and almost felt like really flexible crocodile skin. It was textured and cool to the touch. The Defender didn’t smell, and there was no wet spot anywhere on the material beneath his butt, and that was my scientific proof that he hadn’t pooped or peed. He ate, so he had to digest his food somehow. Did beings like him even go? Did they have… buttholes?
I had so many questions.
Questions I had no business having in the first place, but curiosity was my second greatest flaw, after running my mouth.