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John Watson - a relatively good man, young. Bisexual. Under a bit of stress - he was taking a half-forced break from med school because of his sister, Harry.He was working too hard, Harry had said. “Take a break, Johnny,” she’d advised him one night, (while he was driving her home from the bar, after she’d tried to talk up seven women and three guys), “you’re too ssssssss… straightlaced.” She’d giggled. “I can’t even… do a speak. Whassit called? Talk. Tal-king. Tall king. Noope! You’re a short king.” She’d giggled again, and he’d rolled his eyes at her before pausing at a red light.“You’re drunk, Harry. You tried to feel up a woman. A human woman. You tried to grab her breast.”“She was cute!”“She was also the bartender! And, it wasn’t the type of bar for that! She could have… I dunno, pressed charges or something serious!”“She wouldn’t haf. Have. Wouldn’t’ve.” Harry giggled again. “Anywayss, Johnny, this is what I’m mentioned. You need tooooo… takeabreak.” Her head lolled.He’d rolled his eyes again. “You’re drunk as hell, Harry. Now get out, we’re here.”
But her slurred, drunken words had really hit home with him. He was really getting good grades, but his personal life was suffering. But, he’d reminded himself, over and over again, he’d been wanting to do this since forever. This was his dream come true. So what if he couldn’t hold a girlfriend, a boyfriend, or a job? So what if he wasn’t really eating? It didn’t matter.Until it did.When Mr. Trump was elected, the world really fell apart. John finally realized how much he’d been ignoring everything except his studies. Especially when he was asked how he felt about the campaign in class by an acquaintance, and his face was blank.“Well, John,” Mike had said with a frown, “what do you think of Trump?”“Who?” John asked absently, reading through his notes.After Mike had finished yelling and laughing, he explained. About the gross sexual comments, the homophobia, the racism, et cetera. John was shellshocked. He’d had a total shutdown for the next two days. Thank god it was a weekend. He’d gone through Trump’s entire twitter feed. He’d consumed the news articles like candy. He’d raged and sobbed and felt numb and died a bit on the inside, just as we all did. After forty hours of all this, he got up and decided. Med school could wait. He was going to disappear for a while. - - - He’d packed three duffel bags, stuffed them into his (self-considered) awesome red pickup truck, and driven off. His plan was to figure out what the hell he was going to do in a country that apparently hated him and every other bisexual, pansexual, gay, and otherwise non-straight person. And non-white person. And non-male person. He supposed it was going to take a while.He flicked on the radio, tuning in to a modern rock station, filled with songs such as Nirvana’s entire collection, a few classic rock jams, the best of the 80s (weirdly soothing), and some other not-well-known bands, or obscure bands. To John they were obscure - he had never heard of this genre.
Back in high school, John had been a certified ladies’ man. All the girls wanted him. But John wasn’t so sure - some of his teen-hormone-fueled fantasies involved men one way or another, and being the white boy he was, he only thought there were two sexualities. He barely even knew what the word ‘sexuality’ meant. So when Harry introduced him to her queer friends, John had learned a whole other world existed right under his nose, and he was technically part of it. That year he stopped using the word ‘gay’ as an insult and started an LGBTQIA+ Awareness Club at his school. It was, surprisingly, well taken. He had always thought it might have helped that he was one of the most popular people in school.“(Tell me your weakness) Oh I keep it a secret,” crooned the radio, pulling him out of his reverie. He realized it had been an hour or two since he’d started driving, and since then, it’d gotten dark and his tank was almost empty.He pulled over at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by tall grass (wheat fields, maybe? He didn’t know.) and darkening sky. He smiled up at the winking stars, his first real smile in a while, and got out of the car to fill it.The summer night breeze rustled the grasses, whistling through the tall stalks like thread through a needle. John hummed a tuneless tune as he riffled around for some change for the gas. He paid the man standing in a little booth, reading what appeared to be a truck magazine. In reality, it was Playboy stuffed into the cover of a truck magazine - a clever ruse that had worked many times for the man in the past. John, blissfully oblivious to this, handed the man what was due, said “Have a good one,” and was on his way. Soon, of course, John couldn’t keep his eyes on the road. He was drifting off while driving. Seeing what looked like a little motel up ahead, he pulled up to the small parking lot of the place, and rented a room for the night. It was dirt cheap, which was a little suspicious, but John wasn’t really in a position to care, seeing as though he’d nearly fallen asleep in his front seat while the car was in motion. He made sure his car was locked, his room door was locked, and promptly tumbled into bed. He dozed off within seconds of his head hitting the pillow. - - -John woke up with a quiet intake of breath that he was the only one to hear, his golden hair - just recently grown out of its buzz cut - splayed out along the pillow and catching the sunlight like a small halo. His blue eyes blinked in the early-morning beams as they struggled to adjust.He was slightly disoriented, but put things together rather quickly, and pulled himself up for a questionable shower in the motel bathroom. Luckily, he’d brought his own soap, so he didn’t have to deal with soap that smelled like rats and daffodils in winter. (Yes, that was what it smelled like - John was privy to believe that another man’s jizz was in it. If not, some other foul bodily fluid. He wrinkled his freckly nose.)He walked out to his car, not jingling his keys. He wasn’t a cliche, he thought to himself, then wondered why he was thinking that. Nobody was going to judge him here, especially not for being a cliche, because there was nobody watching. Just him and the morning sun, the big fluffy clouds brushed gently with sunlight, and the grass. He should have been happy. Except.Except there was him, the cheeto of a man who was now president. And we made so much progress with Obama, he thought miserably. His momentarily-peaceful mind was turned into an inner political debate as he started the car and drove in silence. After about forty-five minutes of heated inner conversation, he said aloud, “I can’t take this anymore.” He flicked on the radio to the same station as yesterday and listened to the cohosts babble on about railroads or something. It was really quite soothing to hear something that wasn’t political opinions. And then one of them said, “About Trump…” and that was all he needed to flip to another station. This one was smooth jazz. Okay, he thought, I can deal with jazz. Jazz is nice. And then the host came on and was apologizing for something mentioned earlier about Trump.Right, then. The radio went off.John opened a window instead, and listened to the noises of the country as he drove through, on his way to nowhere in particular. He speculated on writing a book, or perhaps reading a book on birds. He didn’t know why birds. He grumbled to himself about going insane, and then his stomach growled.The blonde was on the highway. There was nothing to be done. He groaned, resisting the urge to slam his head on his steering wheel.In around an hour, John had reached a small town. He drove into the nearest restaurant and got some very late brunch. The waitress, a tall smiley woman with curly hair whose name was Sunny, smiled at him and clicked her pen. “Can I take your order?” she asked politely, as waitresses do, and he smiled back (after getting over Sunny’s ironically sunny demeanour) and ordered something cleverly-named, involving eggs and ham.Outside, clouds began to gather in the sky, turning the landscape darker, but not really noticeably.After he’d paid - maybe he should get a job here somewhere? - John went back to his truck. Sunny had appealed to him, surely, but that wasn’t really why he was out here. He was out here to forget things for a while, you know. Vacationing, in a way.He drove a while more, out of the small town, away from people. Eventually he came to a stretch of land with nothing on it other than an old barn and cracked highway. Not a person or car in sight.Perfect, John thought, then parked his truck outside the barn. It was huge and red, like the stereotypical barns. John loved it immediately. He entered, surprised to find that the inside wasn’t too broken down - maybe the outside was just weathered. In fact, inside one of the large spaces he found a blanket. He smelled it suspiciously, but he couldn’t really smell anything other than old wood, and fibres of the cloth. Something tapped against the roof. Then another something. Then the roof was being bombarded by somethings and John dropped the blanket to try and get his truck out of the sudden rain, which, as he had not observed, was not so sudden. He drove it into the barn, closing the huge wooden doors behind it. Okay.He was staying the night in a barn. - - -When the rainstorm had abated a bit (he’d been playing Candy Crush on his phone for two hours, like an idiot who had forgotten he couldn’t charge his phone in an abandoned barn. After he’d run out of battery, he’d started on a novel), John reached into his backseat for his ukulele. He’d been trying to learn a bit - he’d even written his own song a few weeks prior. It was a cheap enough instrument, a cheap enough hobby, and besides, it was really quite beautiful if you were good. The blond climbed up onto the loft, then found a ladder leaned up against a hole, which led to the roof. John being the reckless, vacationing fool that he was, climbed out onto the roof of the barn and strummed his ukulele into the quiet stillness of the air. He licked his lips and readjusted, then played a solid C major chord, and began.“Are you sick of me yet?
I know I’m just your plaything
So let me know I’m your only threat
And destroy the god I’ve been worshipping.” he sang softly to himself.
He’d written the song about an abusive boyfriend he’d had that he really loved, but unfortunately the feelings weren’t quite returned - his boyfriend had broken up with him within two weeks. All for the better, he told himself, but he still missed him.It was less a song, anyways, than a little poem in music form. He didn’t really like it, he told himself, but he was lying for some reason.Then a shooting star glinted in the sky, and John smiled to nobody, and started to wish. But he didn’t get further than the second word when the shooting star shot closer, and bigger, and brighter, and suddenly John was scrambling down off the roof because the shooting star wasn’t a shooting star at all, it was a -Spaceship.Breathing hard, John watched from his new position on the ground as the shape of a shiny metal… thing(? Disk? Shape?) came flying out from the nighttime heavens and crash-landed not ten metres from John.Dimly lit by moonbeams and starlight, he could make out ruined foreign metal, something glowing silvery leaking across the grass, and… something moving. Oh god, something was moving in there, it was moving and getting up and extending legs and as though John wasn’t hallucinating enough, the figure of a man stepped out of the smoking wreckage of the ship.He sniffed, straightened his back, brushed himself off, held out a gun towards John (who instinctively put his palms up), and some noises came out of his mouth (facehole?).“I-I’m sorry, what?” the blond asked breathily, terrified out of his skin.The creature(? Man? Thing? Was it human?) cleared its throat. “I am… in searching of your leader,” it said clearly, albeit in broken English. Its voice sounded decidedly male to John, although he could be biased. After all, the only planet he’d ever known was Earth. And he was still panicking - he couldn’t even see the thing’s face, and it was pointing a gun at him that didn’t really look like a standard human gun and was it even human?!Luckily (unluckily?) the thing seemed to sense this, and, seeming to realize he was not a threat, lowered the vaguely gun-shaped object. “I am not… meaning to be hurting you,” it said clearly (John appreciated the clearness, but he didn’t believe the over pronunciation was necessary). “Simple-y looking for your leader.”And that’s when John fainted. - - - When he came to, he was staring at the stars in a grassy field miles from nowhere, with a clueless, curious alien leaning over him. Well, he thought incoherently, at least I know he’s got a face. Then he was out again. - - -When he came to for the second time, he was vaguely aware of grass around him. He sat up fast. Then he regretted that decision as he put a hand to his own head and groaned. “Jesus Christ above,” he murmured to himself. The alien, situated a few feet away, squatting over some grass, heard him and whipped around excitedly.For the first time that he could remember, John saw the alien’s face - pale, bony. Beautiful. Fuck.He leaned away from the suddenly-too-close extraterrestrial, and flopped back onto the ground with a sigh. He suppressed a giggle. “So,” he started, “you’re an alien.”The thing nodded sagely. “Yes, if you are to classify us as what you call us. And you’re… as you call yourselves… hyu-mans.”“Nice.”“Do you mind - I have never been on Earth - do you mind so much telling me where we are on your topographically-challenging sphere?”“Ah, that. Yes. Sphere. We’re in a state, or another.” He giggled. “This is insane. You’re an alien.”“Focus. Could you be more specific in terms of the… ‘state’?” The alien sounded annoyed.“Right. See, I don’t exactly know where we are, because I came here to escape.”“From your medication schoolings. I know.”John opened his mouth to reply, but shut it quickly, narrowing his eyes. He sat up to look at the alien. “How do you know that?”“Your clothes. Your coverings indicate that they have been tucked away someplace for a longer time than humans usually do, which might be referencing your red, wheeled thing in there,” here the alien pointed to his truck, “and why would you go for a long time in your truck? There is no person or animal or other carbon-based life form chasing you, so it must be for pleasure. Why would a human, a structured being with little to no appreciation for nature-” here John looked indignant, and was about to say something, but the alien spouted on- “leave its natural place to go to a big red place like that?-” here it gestured to the barn- “To be running away from something. And if not a being, than a situation. So schoolings.” The alien looked proud.“Wow. That was - oh, wow. That was brilliant.” John breathed.The alien’s eyebrows raised a little (it looked so human!). “Brilliant? Really?” It seemed almost shy.“Yes! Yeah! That was fantastic! How did you - can all aliens do that?” John was eager to know.The alien shook its head bashfully, and that was really cute (no, John, no attraction to the space alien please). “No. Just few. And only if they practice. Like humans - you could do that if you practiced.”John, remembering himself, flopped onto the grass once more. “Okay,” he said to the sky, “okay. You’re going to tell me… how you got here, what happened. Everything. And then I’ll explain what you need to know. Okay? And also, are you male?”The alien nodded. “Yes, my sex and gender are both male. You are as well.”John nodded. The alien knew.“My name is Sherlock. And I come from the planet Baskerville.”Over the course of the next forty-five minutes, the alien explained. He came from a remote planet on the farthest contingency of the Milky Way, and he’d crash-landed on Earth because it seemed like the safest option, considering the circumstances. He’d had a falling out with his brother, and, like a madman on a mission, went solo to see if Earth had daisies. Of course, it did, and John told him this. The ali- Sherlock looked exuberant. “I told him.” he murmured triumphantly, then resumed with his tale.He may have miscalculated by a tiny bit and landed with a crash where he thought there would be no humans. Obviously, there was John (not that that was a problem, thought Sherlock secretly). Listening to Sherlock’s tale, John couldn’t believe it. He’d just witnessed an alien crash-landing on Earth, and then the alien had come out and talked to him (it could speak English, for some reason), and now he was lying on the ground listening to a space-alien genius tell him things he shouldn’t have known.God. Okay.He managed a smile. "Do aliens sleep?"