Strange occurrences on the third rock from the sun
Title: Strange occurrences on the third rock from the sun
Rating: G
Genre: Crack, Elementary AU
Characters: Donghae, Eunhyuk, Yesung
Summary: Fourth grade is anything but normal for Donghae.
Strange occurrences on the third rock from the sun
“I mean it, Donghae. If I have to call you again one more time there will be severe consequences.”
Ignoring his mother, Donghae squinted through one eye looking through transparent glass; the other closed tightly turning the right side of his face into a squishy mass of skin. She cleared her throat and Donghae sighed loudly. Did she have to be so impatient?
“Donghae.”
Uh oh. It was her serious voice. Time to take out the boys. Making his lower lip sag pathetically and thinking of when his dad had accidentally run over his first puppy dog, he sighed again, this time making his voice wobble. Turning around, his SpongeBob slippers scratching against the carpet, Donghae whined, “But ummaaaaa, the meteor shower is tonight!!”
His mother smiled softly and Donghae began to sing his victory. But then she shook her head and crossed the room, and after closing the blinds and obstructing the view to his telescope, she guided him towards his bed. Donghae grumbled, cursing himself for whining. He should have gone for the tears but he thought that might be over doing it.
“The meteorologist on the news said the meteor shower lasts for the rest of the week. Tomorrow you start school, Donghae. You can’t be up late.”
Tucked in his bed, fishy comforter up to his chin, his mother ruffled his hair playfully. “Excited to start fourth grade?”
Donghae nodded then shrugged, wiggling under the covers trying to find his sleeping spot. His mother placed a kiss on the top of his head. “Goodnight, sweetie.”
“Night,” he called after she’d closed the door, eyes already closed. Biting his lip, he counted until he reached one hundred four times. Figuring enough time had passed Donghae threw the comforter off and jumped out of bed. At the window, he opened the curtains just enough to fit the telescope and pressed his eye to the lens and looked up to the sky.
-*-
“And then, I almost missed it. Because I was falling asleep against the wall. But then I opened my eyes and there it was. I almost cried when I almost missed it but then I was so excited, I forgot why I was gonna cry in the first place.” Donghae paused to take a breath but was interrupted.
Interrupted by a pudgy finger pressed to his lips. “But weren’t you afraid the aliens would take you away?”
Swatting the hand away, Donghae rolled his eyes. “You can’t get abducted by just watching a meteor shower. Didn’t you read the book I gave you, Jongwoon?”
Jongwoon shook his rather large head. Donghae sighed in disappointment.
It had been this way since kindergarten when Donghae was drawing a picture of the universe for show and tell and had run out of green. Jongwoon, who had been sticking crayons up his nose, saw his classmate’s desperate situation- the art department had been suffering a shortage of green that year- and had pulled out the green crayon that was in his nostril and gave it to Donghae, who’d taken it without second though to where said crayon had been. They’d been friends ever since.
Tugging on Jongwoon’s hand, the one that hadn’t been trying to poke his mouth, Donghae led Jongwoon the rest of the way to school, impatient to get a seat by the window.
-*-
The first day of fourth grade was uneventful, Donghae decided as the final bell rang. He’d managed to get a seat by the window but was sitting behind this boy who had a tendency to fart at the mention of the words ‘test’ ‘quiz’ and ‘rope climbing’. He had to take gym class with that annoying Choi Siwon who was adamant on proving to Donghae that aliens didn’t exist by talking non stop about God. Unluckily for Donghae, this year he and Jongwoon didn’t share gym so he couldn’t scare Siwon away by asking Jongwoon to creep Siwon out and man handle his lip. And fourth grade science did not cover astronomy; his teacher had informed him when Donghae had asked.
Donghae walked down the front steps of school sulking and thinking he might be better off back in third grade.
“Watch out!” Someone yelled in his direction and Donghae looked up from the patterns his school shoes made in the grass. A boy from one of the other classes-Donghae thought his name was Junsu or something- was peddling a red bike at fast speed. But that’s not why Donghae stood frozen; mouth hanging open like Tiffany had done when Donghae had spit his milk all over her during the field trip to the zoo last year near the monkey cage.
On the bike’s handle bars, sat a boy Donghae’s age. Jet black hair, almost translucently white skin and the oddest jaw Donghae had ever seen. Mouth open wide in a ridiculous smile that was all gums, the boy gripped on for dear life as Junsu peddled faster and faster. Over the school uniform he wore a red jersey, the hood pulled over his head.
At nine years of age, Lee Donghae had fulfilled his life’s mission.
He’d found an alien.
-*-
“Guess what! Guess what! Guess what!!” Donghae exclaimed the next day as Jongwoon appeared at the fork in the road where they usually met on the way to school. Jongwoon, looking quite forlorn-even for him- kept walking, crunching fallen leaves as he went. Donghae pouted at this, but waved it off to getting up so early made him cranky. “Guess whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!?”
Still no answer and Donghae was growing impatient. “Aren’t you going to ask me what? Jongwoon! Come on! You know you want to ask!” he yelled when Jongwoon folded his arms across his chest and slumped his shoulders. “It’s something important. Jongwoon!!”
“Argh,” having enough of Donghae, Jongwoon stopped and frowned at him. “You didn’t wait for me yesterday. And because of you I walked home alone and I missed my idol show!”
“But Jongwoon,” Donghae pouted, because pouting almost always worked. “Something important happened!”
Jongwoon rolled his eyes and started walking again. He sighed, stopped and dejectedly asked, “What?”
Donghae smiled and excitedly starting whispering in his ear incase anyone heard them, Jongwoon’s eyes opening wider and wider and wider.
-*-
“Are you sure?” Jongwoon asked from underneath the big oak tree in the middle of the playground, their usual recess spot.
“Well,” Donghae sucked on his straw, brows deeply furrowed in thought. His tongue slid out to wipe a drop of juice from the corner of his mouth. “Not a thousand percent. But you can’t deny, the signs were there in the first encounter,” he said using the explanation his favorite scientist on Discovery Kids used.
Jongwoon nodded, but looked skeptically at Donghae while pulling out a cupcake from his ninja turtle’s lunch box. “But he doesn’t look like an alien.”
“That’s what he wants us to think,” Donghae explained, eyes watching across the playground carefully. There, on the monkey bars, what Donghae was sure was an alien. “We must be very sloth.”
“Don’t you mean sleuth?”
“No,” Donghae shook his head, grabbing half of Jongwoon’s cupcake and eating it in one bite, getting cream all over his nose and upper lip. “I’m pretty sure it is sloth.”
“But-”
“Never mind that. Save the vocabulary quiz for later. What’d you find out about the U.U.G.O.?”
“The what?”
Donghae sighed. “Focus Jongwoon. U.U.G.O. Unidentified Ugly Grounded Object.”
“Isn’t it UFO?” Jongwoon asked puzzled.
Donghae sighed, again. “That’s if it’s flying. And not ugly. Obviously he doesn’t have a space ship.” Suddenly his eyes brightened up. “Unless he parked his spaceship somewhere here on Earth!”
Before Jongwoon finished plotting out how to find a spaceship-they’d need some metal detector thingy and a net of sorts-, Donghae had already gone back to his original question.
Jongwoon flipped out a notepad he ‘borrowed’ from the principal’s office and began reading from his squiggly writing. “So far this is all I got: He goes by the Earth name Lee Eunhyuk. He just got here from the country. His birthday is in April so he’s Aries. He’s crazy over strawberry milk and doesn’t like his lips to be touched.”
Not even wondering how his friend knew all that and in less than a day, Donghae licked his lip of remaining frosting, completely oblivious to the blob on his nose. “Eunhyuk,” he repeated slowly, thinking that’s an awfully nice name for an alien to have. Too nice.
Eyes locked on twig like arms swinging from bar to bar, legs hooking around the final bar with ease, Donghae smiled. “Jongwoon, it looks like we got our work cut out for us.”
-*-
It was after gym class. Siwon had been especially persistent that day, telling Donghae how impossible it was for there to be creatures on other planets when in the Bible it clearly said God had only created people on Planet Earth. When Donghae had given his rebuttal-he never said there were aliens on the other planets, but in other galaxies- Siwon had said that only proved his point further. The Bible never said anything about other galaxies.
Dragging his hand across the lockers as he walked-more like skipped- Donghae made his way to the lunchroom when he saw him.
The alien. And he wasn’t alone.
“Hi ya Donghae!” Junsu waved enthusiastically, Eunhyuk-the alien- trudging a few feet behind him. “They gave an X-men marathon on t.v. yesterday? Did you see it? Did ya, did ya? It was the one where Magneto- Oh right! Forgot you existed. Well not really, but I forgot you were there. This is Donghae. Donghae’s the one who likes soccer, remember? Donghae, this is my best friend in the whole entire universe even though he has stinky feet, Eunhyuk.”
Shooting Junsu a look, Eunhyuk turned to Donghae and smiled, shyly showing off his gums. “Hi.”
Donghae didn’t say anything back. Shinning eyes and the brightest smile Donghae had ever seen directed his way, Donghae felt like he was being hypnotized. His chest constricted, his stomach did this weird flippity floppity thing and he couldn’t breathe. Donghae staggered a few steps backwards until he was against a locker and threw his head back, banging it against the metal. ‘OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD’ he screamed in his head, clutching at his stomach. The alien must have done something to him!
Unknown to Donghae, he was actually screaming his head off out loud. Junsu and Eunhyuk were taken a few steps, backing up slowly away from the yelling boy.
“What’s wrong with him?” Eunhyuk asked.
“Ahh, he’s always like that.” Junsu waved it off, pushing Eunhyuk down the hall, Donghae’s yells decreasing in volume but not intensity. “Not the screaming thing. The weirdo thing. But he always switches snacks with me after soccer practice cause my mom and his mom never send us stuff we like so he’s an okay kid deep down.”
-*-
“So he really is an alien, huh?”
“Yup! If Junsu hadn’t been there, I think he would have tried to suck my brains out.”
“Wow!”
“I know!” Donghae whined as if missing the chance to have his brain sucked out was highly disappointing. Sprawled on the floor of Jongwoon’s bedroom, Donghae ate the last of the cookies Jongwoon’s mother had baked that afternoon.
Feeding his turtles-making sure Big Turtle got more of the little pebbles than Little Turtle- Jongwoon plopped down next to Donghae, sighing when he saw Donghae had eaten all the cookies. Again.
“So now what?” Jongwoon asked, swiping with his finger the crumbs left on the plate. He gathered a good size, and sprinkled them on Donghae’s head.
Oblivious that his hair was now crumb filled, Donghae concentrated on the book in front of him: ‘My life on the spaceship: What the government doesn’t want you to know’. “Now we have to be extra careful. Aliens are more powerful than we thought” he shuddered remembering the hypnotic eyes and his lack of breathing.
Jongwoon wiped his hand on the back of Donghae’s t-shirt and nodded, wondering if the next time he runs out of turtle food he could feed them cookie crumbs.
-*-
“That Lee Eunhyuk is one weird kid,” Donghae mumbled the next day from somewhere inside his platypus costume. It had been his costume for the second grade Nativity pageant, so it was tight and the head part was squeezing his skull. Donghae rolled his eyes and scowled when he remembered how Choi Siwon and his mother had been appalled when Donghae and his mother had arrived with the beak and tail in tow. They claimed platypuses had not been present at Jesus’ birth, but unless Siwon and his mother were secretly two thousand years old and had been there, Donghae refused to agree with them. Donghae didn’t know much about Jesus, but he seemed like the type to want cool animals at his birth and you couldn’t get cooler than a platypus.
From behind a bush in the park, Donghae peeked through the leaves using his binoculars from his spy kit. He watched as the suspected alien leaped off the monkey bars and ran back to the start and climbed on again. How could someone be so obsessed with the monkey bars? Donghae much preferred the swings or the slide. He could always feel closer to the sky from the swings and he liked screaming bloody murder as he slid down the slide.
“Uhhh, Donghae?”
UH OH! The alien! How did he loose track of it? Donghae’s head shot up, getting the platypus head stuck with the branches. He yelled when some of his hair got tangled. Donghae swore he’d give Jongwoon a piece of his mind for leaving him to spy on his own. Never mind the reason Jongwoon hadn’t come with him was that he’d tripped over his shoelaces during gym and busted his lower lip and immediately rushed to the hospital.
Struggling, he felt two arms tugging on the tail, trying to pull him out. “My head’s stuck!!!” Donghae yelled.
“Sorry,” the alien, Eunhyuk, said. He reached over and untangled Donghae’s hair, yanking rather carelessly; he got the platy-head unstuck and yanked Donghae out the whole way.
Donghae rolled over onto his back and ripped the head of his costume off. Heaving for air, his chest expanding with each new precious drop of oxygen, he blinked up at the alien.
Eunhyuk was looking at him in shock, confusion and his mouth turned into a funny twist. Maybe from trying to not laugh. “Is,” he paused, scratching his forehead “is your head okay?”
Donghae nodded, since he couldn’t speak. The alien probably had some power that prevented Donghae from working his brain.
Eunhyuk looked relived and gave a small smile, his gums showing a little.
Donghae passed out.
-*-
Donghae never found out how he arrived home after that, but he figured Eunhyuk had teleported him home and then brainwashed his parents so they’d forget-in reality, Donghae’s older brother had found him two minutes after he’d passed out. Eunhyuk had explained what happened and his brother had rolled his eyes and carried Donghae home but thought it’d be funny to not tell Donghae and let him believe he’d been teleported or whatever-.
After the debacle in the park, Donghae decided this was harder then he’d thought.
“Aren’t aliens afraid of garlic?” Jongwoon had asked when Donghae had asked him why he’d come to school wearing a necklace made of garlic cloves.
“That’s vampires.”
That had led to a five hour marathon of ‘Spiderman’ to instruct Jongwoon on the different type of evil alien creatures that existed.
-*-
“How will this prove he is an alien?”
“You’re the one who came up with it.”
“Ohh. Right!”
Donghae rolled his eyes, jiggling with the volume control on his music player. He tested it out and immediately pulled it out of his ear, rubbing it and whimpering. He looked at Jongwoon. “It’s ready.”
“It’ll work,” Jongwoon said confidently. “Just like the Symbiote on Spiderman. The alien will hear the music so loud, he’ll explode into a million gooey pieces.”
“There he goes,” Donghae said when he saw Eunhyuk crossing the playground.
Jongwoon smiled and headed off.
-*-
Aliens were a tricky thing.
After getting severely scolded for almost causing severe damage to Eunhyuk’s hearing, they had to lay low for a while.
But nothing worked. Nothing Donghae had seen or read that proved an alien was an alien had any effect. It had gotten to the point he was starting to doubt whether or not Lee Eunhyuk was an alien.
Donghae didn’t like that possibility. Finding out that your supposed alien was not really an alien could really put a damper on a fourth grader’s life.
-*-
Despite Eunhyuk’s unresponsiveness to full proof alien tests, there was something ‘other-worldly’ about him.
He got over getting his ears almost exploded rather quickly and he always smiled. Not just at Donghae but in general. Now, Donghae smiled a lot, usually when he was off lost in his own world and completely ignoring whatever lesson his teacher was giving. But Eunhyuk seemed to smile different. It really shined too bright, like brighter then the sun after Donghae stared at it too long, little black spots dancing in front of his eyes for a while after. But Donghae didn’t see black spots after looking at Eunhyuk’s smile for too long. It was more like he was left with a fuzzy feeling, like when he ate cotton candy at the park, the same color as Eunhyuk’s gums, soft cotton candy pink.
“What’cha got?” Junsu asked Donghae, taking out his lunch box after soccer practice was over.
“Chocolate snow cone,” Donghae gagged, wondering why his mother refused to buy him snacks he liked.
“Twinkies.” Junsu squeezed the wrapper making some of the filling ooze out. “Switch?” he asked.
Donghae didn’t really like Twinkies but liked snow cones even less so he nodded. He stared at the package in his hands, sighing. He was hungry but the Twinkies looked especially gross today, like Junsu had sat on his lunch box and smushed them to death.
“Hi,” Eunhyuk greeted him, dropping his lunch box on the bench and sitting next to Donghae. “I saw you guys practicing. Did you see me? On the bench? It looks like you guys have fun. I wanna join the team next year so I’m going to practice real hard all year so the coach picks me.”
Donghae watched Eunhyuk go through his lunch box as he chatted. Usually, Donghae would be very observant to notice any alien like actions but today he was too tired and too hungry to care.
“What happened to your Twinkies?” Eunhyuk asked, pouting as he took out his snack.
Donghae pouted as well and shrugged.
Face brightening in a smile, Eunhyuk turned back to his lunch box. Donghae noticed it had Curious George painted on the front of it and a bunch of bananas bordering the sides. Smiling, Eunhyuk handed Donghae a wrapped snack much like the one on Eunhyuk’s lap.
Donghae took it, looking at it funny. It was round and pink, kind of mushy but firm.
“It’s a strawberry moon pie,” Eunhyuk explained, opening his and taking a bite.
Opening the wrapper, Donghae sniffed it wondering how stupid it was to take food-or anything- from an alien. But it smelled good and he was hungry. Plus, maybe the alien wasn’t trying to eat his brains and all he wanted was to take Donghae back to his spaceship to study him. Donghae could live with that. Famished, he took a bite.
It was an explosion of chewy, fruity, marshmallowy goodness in Donghae’s mouth. He took another bite, bigger this time, smiled at Eunhyuk and with a full mouth said “Thanks Alie-,” he stopped himself in time. “Eunhyuk.”
Eunhyuk smiled as well, pink marshmallow on his bottom lip.
-*-
“What?!!!” Jongwoon yelled.
Donghae winced, unused to Jongwoon yelling at him.
Jongwoon stopped walking and started pacing. “What do you mean no more?”
“Nothing works. Maybe it’s time to throw up the towel.” Donghae really was starting to believe maybe Eunhyuk wasn’t an alien.
“But I had plans! Maps!” Jongwoon threw his hands up in the air. “I even got around to reading the book on aliens. All those hours of Spiderman and Superman for nothing!”
“Not nothing,” Donghae defended, appalled at the thought that Spiderman and Superman were useless. “We finally reached the episode where Spiderman defeats Green Goblin. And you never would have believed Superman and Kent Clark where the same person if I hadn’t made you re-read the first issue.”
“True.” Jongwoon stopped pacing for a second, then started again. “But still! You can’t let the alien fool you, remember?”
“But,”
“No,” Jongwoon stopped and grabbed Donghae by his upper arms and shook him, the charms on his backpack jingling. “The alien has taken over your body hasn’t it?! Let Donghae go, alien!”
Donghae started getting dizzy, his head bobbing up and down. “Stop it, Jongwoon. It’s still me!”
“No. You may have taken my friend’s brain, alien, but you won’t take mine!”
“I’ll prove it but stop shaking me!”
Jongwoon did stop and sucked in a big breath. “I’m going to ask you a question only Donghae would know the answer to.” He paused for dramatic effect and Donghae tried to not roll his eyes. “What are my two turtles’ names and how many turtles do I have?” Jongwoon pouted thinking there was something wrong with how that sounded.
Donghae sighed. “Big Turtle and Little Turtle. Two.”
“You are Donghae!” Jongwoon exclaimed before crushing Donghae in a hug. Donghae felt suffocated but bared it. Pulling away, Jongwoon looked at him seriously. “I have a plan for the alien.”
Deciding to just agree, he asked, “What is it?”
Jongwoon smiled in a way that would scare most people. Donghae was used to it. “We’re going to catch it.”
-*-
That’s how they ended at the park wrapped from head to toe in aluminum foil, metal pots on their heads, spatulas as weapons and Lee Eunhyuk scared and tangled in a huge fishing net Donghae’s father had in the garage.
“What are two doing?!” Eunhyuk cried, trying to break free.
“You can’t fool us any longer alien!” Donghae yelled.
“Alien? What are you talking about?” freezing all movement, Eunhyuk looked up at them confused.
“We’re not gonna let you eat our brains!” Jongwoon warned shaking his spatula in Eunhyuk’s face. He nudged Donghae.
“Yeah!” When Jongwoon gave him a blank stare, he added “You almost took over once and we’re not gonna let you attack our planet!”
Eunhyuk shook his head. Well, as much as a person could when tangled in a net. “Junsu was right. You two are nuts.”
Making sure he couldn’t get free, Jongwoon turned to Donghae and whispered, “Now what do we do?”
“I don’t know.” His brows knotted in concentration. “No one in any of the books or shows I’ve seen ever caught an actual alien” He’d go down in history, Donghae realized. The first ever alien catcher. He would remember to include Jongwoon in his thank you speech when he received the key to the city.
“I’m not an alien!”
“That’s what they all say,” Jongwoon said.
Eunhyuk rolled his eyes. “I’ll prove it.”
Sharing a look, they decided to hear him out, this could be a prefabricated lie that all aliens used. It’d be handy in the future.
“Metal is supposed to keep aliens away right?” Donghae and Jongwoon both nodded. “What are the monkey bars made out of?” he lifted his hand as much as he could towards the monkey bars where they’d caught him a few feet away.
“Oh.”
-*-
So it turned out that Lee Eunhyuk was not an alien after all.
Donghae and Jongwoon’s parents had profusely apologized to Eunhyuk’s for their sons having tied up theirs. They’d been punished for a whole month and Donghae’s telescope got put away to the attic for an unidentified period of time.
Jongwoon went back to only watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and quickly forgot the whole alien debacle. Donghae took a little more time, but became more and more interested in marine life. His parent’s decided it was okay since the chances of Donghae accusing one of his classmates of secretly being a mutated octopus or a giant oyster were slim.
“Sorry for tying you up and thinking you were an alien,” Donghae said almost two months later when Eunhyuk saw him and didn’t try to run away for the first time. “And for almost exploding your ear drums.” He smiled sheepishly and offered him a box of Strawberry Moon Pies.
Eunhyuk sighed. He really did like strawberry Moon Pie, and a whole box to boot! Plus Donghae was wearing a t-shirt with a monkey on it and liking monkeys was a quality Eunhyuk highly valued. “Okay.” He smiled and took the box. “But don’t do it again,” Eunhyuk warned.
Donghae grinned and nodded. He definitely wouldn’t do it ever again.
-*-
That is, until a few years later.
Realizing they had a lot in common. Eunhyuk and Donghae became friends. They spent their hours dancing or practicing soccer, sleeping over at each others houses, sharing a love for strawberry marshmallow pie and staring at the stars in the sky.
It’s the day before their last year of middle school. They’re sitting on Eunhyuk’s back porch naming constellations, inventing outrages names for them and connecting the stars upside down and backwards. They’re laughing and Eunhyuk turns and looks at Donghae. He smiles, his eyes shining and his gums showing more than ever. And Donghae’s laugh dies abruptly, eyes widening in their sockets like in an old black and white cartoon. It’s exactly like it was all those years when they met and Eunhyuk smiled at him for the first time. Donghae’s chest constricts, his stomach flips and he can’t breathe.
He calls Jongwoon immediately when he gets home after racing to his house from Eunhyuk’s, leaving a completely flustered and confused Eunhyuk staring after him.
“I think Eunhyuk is an alien.”
“I’ll get the net.”
-*-
a/n: Title taken from the 90's t.v. show "3rd Rock from the Sun". Because Donghae and Yesung being bff makes sense if you think about it and Eunhyuk would so love Strawberry Moon pies if he tried them.
Rating: G
Genre: Crack, Elementary AU
Characters: Donghae, Eunhyuk, Yesung
Summary: Fourth grade is anything but normal for Donghae.
Strange occurrences on the third rock from the sun
“I mean it, Donghae. If I have to call you again one more time there will be severe consequences.”
Ignoring his mother, Donghae squinted through one eye looking through transparent glass; the other closed tightly turning the right side of his face into a squishy mass of skin. She cleared her throat and Donghae sighed loudly. Did she have to be so impatient?
“Donghae.”
Uh oh. It was her serious voice. Time to take out the boys. Making his lower lip sag pathetically and thinking of when his dad had accidentally run over his first puppy dog, he sighed again, this time making his voice wobble. Turning around, his SpongeBob slippers scratching against the carpet, Donghae whined, “But ummaaaaa, the meteor shower is tonight!!”
His mother smiled softly and Donghae began to sing his victory. But then she shook her head and crossed the room, and after closing the blinds and obstructing the view to his telescope, she guided him towards his bed. Donghae grumbled, cursing himself for whining. He should have gone for the tears but he thought that might be over doing it.
“The meteorologist on the news said the meteor shower lasts for the rest of the week. Tomorrow you start school, Donghae. You can’t be up late.”
Tucked in his bed, fishy comforter up to his chin, his mother ruffled his hair playfully. “Excited to start fourth grade?”
Donghae nodded then shrugged, wiggling under the covers trying to find his sleeping spot. His mother placed a kiss on the top of his head. “Goodnight, sweetie.”
“Night,” he called after she’d closed the door, eyes already closed. Biting his lip, he counted until he reached one hundred four times. Figuring enough time had passed Donghae threw the comforter off and jumped out of bed. At the window, he opened the curtains just enough to fit the telescope and pressed his eye to the lens and looked up to the sky.
-*-
“And then, I almost missed it. Because I was falling asleep against the wall. But then I opened my eyes and there it was. I almost cried when I almost missed it but then I was so excited, I forgot why I was gonna cry in the first place.” Donghae paused to take a breath but was interrupted.
Interrupted by a pudgy finger pressed to his lips. “But weren’t you afraid the aliens would take you away?”
Swatting the hand away, Donghae rolled his eyes. “You can’t get abducted by just watching a meteor shower. Didn’t you read the book I gave you, Jongwoon?”
Jongwoon shook his rather large head. Donghae sighed in disappointment.
It had been this way since kindergarten when Donghae was drawing a picture of the universe for show and tell and had run out of green. Jongwoon, who had been sticking crayons up his nose, saw his classmate’s desperate situation- the art department had been suffering a shortage of green that year- and had pulled out the green crayon that was in his nostril and gave it to Donghae, who’d taken it without second though to where said crayon had been. They’d been friends ever since.
Tugging on Jongwoon’s hand, the one that hadn’t been trying to poke his mouth, Donghae led Jongwoon the rest of the way to school, impatient to get a seat by the window.
-*-
The first day of fourth grade was uneventful, Donghae decided as the final bell rang. He’d managed to get a seat by the window but was sitting behind this boy who had a tendency to fart at the mention of the words ‘test’ ‘quiz’ and ‘rope climbing’. He had to take gym class with that annoying Choi Siwon who was adamant on proving to Donghae that aliens didn’t exist by talking non stop about God. Unluckily for Donghae, this year he and Jongwoon didn’t share gym so he couldn’t scare Siwon away by asking Jongwoon to creep Siwon out and man handle his lip. And fourth grade science did not cover astronomy; his teacher had informed him when Donghae had asked.
Donghae walked down the front steps of school sulking and thinking he might be better off back in third grade.
“Watch out!” Someone yelled in his direction and Donghae looked up from the patterns his school shoes made in the grass. A boy from one of the other classes-Donghae thought his name was Junsu or something- was peddling a red bike at fast speed. But that’s not why Donghae stood frozen; mouth hanging open like Tiffany had done when Donghae had spit his milk all over her during the field trip to the zoo last year near the monkey cage.
On the bike’s handle bars, sat a boy Donghae’s age. Jet black hair, almost translucently white skin and the oddest jaw Donghae had ever seen. Mouth open wide in a ridiculous smile that was all gums, the boy gripped on for dear life as Junsu peddled faster and faster. Over the school uniform he wore a red jersey, the hood pulled over his head.
At nine years of age, Lee Donghae had fulfilled his life’s mission.
He’d found an alien.
-*-
“Guess what! Guess what! Guess what!!” Donghae exclaimed the next day as Jongwoon appeared at the fork in the road where they usually met on the way to school. Jongwoon, looking quite forlorn-even for him- kept walking, crunching fallen leaves as he went. Donghae pouted at this, but waved it off to getting up so early made him cranky. “Guess whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!?”
Still no answer and Donghae was growing impatient. “Aren’t you going to ask me what? Jongwoon! Come on! You know you want to ask!” he yelled when Jongwoon folded his arms across his chest and slumped his shoulders. “It’s something important. Jongwoon!!”
“Argh,” having enough of Donghae, Jongwoon stopped and frowned at him. “You didn’t wait for me yesterday. And because of you I walked home alone and I missed my idol show!”
“But Jongwoon,” Donghae pouted, because pouting almost always worked. “Something important happened!”
Jongwoon rolled his eyes and started walking again. He sighed, stopped and dejectedly asked, “What?”
Donghae smiled and excitedly starting whispering in his ear incase anyone heard them, Jongwoon’s eyes opening wider and wider and wider.
-*-
“Are you sure?” Jongwoon asked from underneath the big oak tree in the middle of the playground, their usual recess spot.
“Well,” Donghae sucked on his straw, brows deeply furrowed in thought. His tongue slid out to wipe a drop of juice from the corner of his mouth. “Not a thousand percent. But you can’t deny, the signs were there in the first encounter,” he said using the explanation his favorite scientist on Discovery Kids used.
Jongwoon nodded, but looked skeptically at Donghae while pulling out a cupcake from his ninja turtle’s lunch box. “But he doesn’t look like an alien.”
“That’s what he wants us to think,” Donghae explained, eyes watching across the playground carefully. There, on the monkey bars, what Donghae was sure was an alien. “We must be very sloth.”
“Don’t you mean sleuth?”
“No,” Donghae shook his head, grabbing half of Jongwoon’s cupcake and eating it in one bite, getting cream all over his nose and upper lip. “I’m pretty sure it is sloth.”
“But-”
“Never mind that. Save the vocabulary quiz for later. What’d you find out about the U.U.G.O.?”
“The what?”
Donghae sighed. “Focus Jongwoon. U.U.G.O. Unidentified Ugly Grounded Object.”
“Isn’t it UFO?” Jongwoon asked puzzled.
Donghae sighed, again. “That’s if it’s flying. And not ugly. Obviously he doesn’t have a space ship.” Suddenly his eyes brightened up. “Unless he parked his spaceship somewhere here on Earth!”
Before Jongwoon finished plotting out how to find a spaceship-they’d need some metal detector thingy and a net of sorts-, Donghae had already gone back to his original question.
Jongwoon flipped out a notepad he ‘borrowed’ from the principal’s office and began reading from his squiggly writing. “So far this is all I got: He goes by the Earth name Lee Eunhyuk. He just got here from the country. His birthday is in April so he’s Aries. He’s crazy over strawberry milk and doesn’t like his lips to be touched.”
Not even wondering how his friend knew all that and in less than a day, Donghae licked his lip of remaining frosting, completely oblivious to the blob on his nose. “Eunhyuk,” he repeated slowly, thinking that’s an awfully nice name for an alien to have. Too nice.
Eyes locked on twig like arms swinging from bar to bar, legs hooking around the final bar with ease, Donghae smiled. “Jongwoon, it looks like we got our work cut out for us.”
-*-
It was after gym class. Siwon had been especially persistent that day, telling Donghae how impossible it was for there to be creatures on other planets when in the Bible it clearly said God had only created people on Planet Earth. When Donghae had given his rebuttal-he never said there were aliens on the other planets, but in other galaxies- Siwon had said that only proved his point further. The Bible never said anything about other galaxies.
Dragging his hand across the lockers as he walked-more like skipped- Donghae made his way to the lunchroom when he saw him.
The alien. And he wasn’t alone.
“Hi ya Donghae!” Junsu waved enthusiastically, Eunhyuk-the alien- trudging a few feet behind him. “They gave an X-men marathon on t.v. yesterday? Did you see it? Did ya, did ya? It was the one where Magneto- Oh right! Forgot you existed. Well not really, but I forgot you were there. This is Donghae. Donghae’s the one who likes soccer, remember? Donghae, this is my best friend in the whole entire universe even though he has stinky feet, Eunhyuk.”
Shooting Junsu a look, Eunhyuk turned to Donghae and smiled, shyly showing off his gums. “Hi.”
Donghae didn’t say anything back. Shinning eyes and the brightest smile Donghae had ever seen directed his way, Donghae felt like he was being hypnotized. His chest constricted, his stomach did this weird flippity floppity thing and he couldn’t breathe. Donghae staggered a few steps backwards until he was against a locker and threw his head back, banging it against the metal. ‘OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD’ he screamed in his head, clutching at his stomach. The alien must have done something to him!
Unknown to Donghae, he was actually screaming his head off out loud. Junsu and Eunhyuk were taken a few steps, backing up slowly away from the yelling boy.
“What’s wrong with him?” Eunhyuk asked.
“Ahh, he’s always like that.” Junsu waved it off, pushing Eunhyuk down the hall, Donghae’s yells decreasing in volume but not intensity. “Not the screaming thing. The weirdo thing. But he always switches snacks with me after soccer practice cause my mom and his mom never send us stuff we like so he’s an okay kid deep down.”
-*-
“So he really is an alien, huh?”
“Yup! If Junsu hadn’t been there, I think he would have tried to suck my brains out.”
“Wow!”
“I know!” Donghae whined as if missing the chance to have his brain sucked out was highly disappointing. Sprawled on the floor of Jongwoon’s bedroom, Donghae ate the last of the cookies Jongwoon’s mother had baked that afternoon.
Feeding his turtles-making sure Big Turtle got more of the little pebbles than Little Turtle- Jongwoon plopped down next to Donghae, sighing when he saw Donghae had eaten all the cookies. Again.
“So now what?” Jongwoon asked, swiping with his finger the crumbs left on the plate. He gathered a good size, and sprinkled them on Donghae’s head.
Oblivious that his hair was now crumb filled, Donghae concentrated on the book in front of him: ‘My life on the spaceship: What the government doesn’t want you to know’. “Now we have to be extra careful. Aliens are more powerful than we thought” he shuddered remembering the hypnotic eyes and his lack of breathing.
Jongwoon wiped his hand on the back of Donghae’s t-shirt and nodded, wondering if the next time he runs out of turtle food he could feed them cookie crumbs.
-*-
“That Lee Eunhyuk is one weird kid,” Donghae mumbled the next day from somewhere inside his platypus costume. It had been his costume for the second grade Nativity pageant, so it was tight and the head part was squeezing his skull. Donghae rolled his eyes and scowled when he remembered how Choi Siwon and his mother had been appalled when Donghae and his mother had arrived with the beak and tail in tow. They claimed platypuses had not been present at Jesus’ birth, but unless Siwon and his mother were secretly two thousand years old and had been there, Donghae refused to agree with them. Donghae didn’t know much about Jesus, but he seemed like the type to want cool animals at his birth and you couldn’t get cooler than a platypus.
From behind a bush in the park, Donghae peeked through the leaves using his binoculars from his spy kit. He watched as the suspected alien leaped off the monkey bars and ran back to the start and climbed on again. How could someone be so obsessed with the monkey bars? Donghae much preferred the swings or the slide. He could always feel closer to the sky from the swings and he liked screaming bloody murder as he slid down the slide.
“Uhhh, Donghae?”
UH OH! The alien! How did he loose track of it? Donghae’s head shot up, getting the platypus head stuck with the branches. He yelled when some of his hair got tangled. Donghae swore he’d give Jongwoon a piece of his mind for leaving him to spy on his own. Never mind the reason Jongwoon hadn’t come with him was that he’d tripped over his shoelaces during gym and busted his lower lip and immediately rushed to the hospital.
Struggling, he felt two arms tugging on the tail, trying to pull him out. “My head’s stuck!!!” Donghae yelled.
“Sorry,” the alien, Eunhyuk, said. He reached over and untangled Donghae’s hair, yanking rather carelessly; he got the platy-head unstuck and yanked Donghae out the whole way.
Donghae rolled over onto his back and ripped the head of his costume off. Heaving for air, his chest expanding with each new precious drop of oxygen, he blinked up at the alien.
Eunhyuk was looking at him in shock, confusion and his mouth turned into a funny twist. Maybe from trying to not laugh. “Is,” he paused, scratching his forehead “is your head okay?”
Donghae nodded, since he couldn’t speak. The alien probably had some power that prevented Donghae from working his brain.
Eunhyuk looked relived and gave a small smile, his gums showing a little.
Donghae passed out.
-*-
Donghae never found out how he arrived home after that, but he figured Eunhyuk had teleported him home and then brainwashed his parents so they’d forget-in reality, Donghae’s older brother had found him two minutes after he’d passed out. Eunhyuk had explained what happened and his brother had rolled his eyes and carried Donghae home but thought it’d be funny to not tell Donghae and let him believe he’d been teleported or whatever-.
After the debacle in the park, Donghae decided this was harder then he’d thought.
“Aren’t aliens afraid of garlic?” Jongwoon had asked when Donghae had asked him why he’d come to school wearing a necklace made of garlic cloves.
“That’s vampires.”
That had led to a five hour marathon of ‘Spiderman’ to instruct Jongwoon on the different type of evil alien creatures that existed.
-*-
“How will this prove he is an alien?”
“You’re the one who came up with it.”
“Ohh. Right!”
Donghae rolled his eyes, jiggling with the volume control on his music player. He tested it out and immediately pulled it out of his ear, rubbing it and whimpering. He looked at Jongwoon. “It’s ready.”
“It’ll work,” Jongwoon said confidently. “Just like the Symbiote on Spiderman. The alien will hear the music so loud, he’ll explode into a million gooey pieces.”
“There he goes,” Donghae said when he saw Eunhyuk crossing the playground.
Jongwoon smiled and headed off.
-*-
Aliens were a tricky thing.
After getting severely scolded for almost causing severe damage to Eunhyuk’s hearing, they had to lay low for a while.
But nothing worked. Nothing Donghae had seen or read that proved an alien was an alien had any effect. It had gotten to the point he was starting to doubt whether or not Lee Eunhyuk was an alien.
Donghae didn’t like that possibility. Finding out that your supposed alien was not really an alien could really put a damper on a fourth grader’s life.
-*-
Despite Eunhyuk’s unresponsiveness to full proof alien tests, there was something ‘other-worldly’ about him.
He got over getting his ears almost exploded rather quickly and he always smiled. Not just at Donghae but in general. Now, Donghae smiled a lot, usually when he was off lost in his own world and completely ignoring whatever lesson his teacher was giving. But Eunhyuk seemed to smile different. It really shined too bright, like brighter then the sun after Donghae stared at it too long, little black spots dancing in front of his eyes for a while after. But Donghae didn’t see black spots after looking at Eunhyuk’s smile for too long. It was more like he was left with a fuzzy feeling, like when he ate cotton candy at the park, the same color as Eunhyuk’s gums, soft cotton candy pink.
“What’cha got?” Junsu asked Donghae, taking out his lunch box after soccer practice was over.
“Chocolate snow cone,” Donghae gagged, wondering why his mother refused to buy him snacks he liked.
“Twinkies.” Junsu squeezed the wrapper making some of the filling ooze out. “Switch?” he asked.
Donghae didn’t really like Twinkies but liked snow cones even less so he nodded. He stared at the package in his hands, sighing. He was hungry but the Twinkies looked especially gross today, like Junsu had sat on his lunch box and smushed them to death.
“Hi,” Eunhyuk greeted him, dropping his lunch box on the bench and sitting next to Donghae. “I saw you guys practicing. Did you see me? On the bench? It looks like you guys have fun. I wanna join the team next year so I’m going to practice real hard all year so the coach picks me.”
Donghae watched Eunhyuk go through his lunch box as he chatted. Usually, Donghae would be very observant to notice any alien like actions but today he was too tired and too hungry to care.
“What happened to your Twinkies?” Eunhyuk asked, pouting as he took out his snack.
Donghae pouted as well and shrugged.
Face brightening in a smile, Eunhyuk turned back to his lunch box. Donghae noticed it had Curious George painted on the front of it and a bunch of bananas bordering the sides. Smiling, Eunhyuk handed Donghae a wrapped snack much like the one on Eunhyuk’s lap.
Donghae took it, looking at it funny. It was round and pink, kind of mushy but firm.
“It’s a strawberry moon pie,” Eunhyuk explained, opening his and taking a bite.
Opening the wrapper, Donghae sniffed it wondering how stupid it was to take food-or anything- from an alien. But it smelled good and he was hungry. Plus, maybe the alien wasn’t trying to eat his brains and all he wanted was to take Donghae back to his spaceship to study him. Donghae could live with that. Famished, he took a bite.
It was an explosion of chewy, fruity, marshmallowy goodness in Donghae’s mouth. He took another bite, bigger this time, smiled at Eunhyuk and with a full mouth said “Thanks Alie-,” he stopped himself in time. “Eunhyuk.”
Eunhyuk smiled as well, pink marshmallow on his bottom lip.
-*-
“What?!!!” Jongwoon yelled.
Donghae winced, unused to Jongwoon yelling at him.
Jongwoon stopped walking and started pacing. “What do you mean no more?”
“Nothing works. Maybe it’s time to throw up the towel.” Donghae really was starting to believe maybe Eunhyuk wasn’t an alien.
“But I had plans! Maps!” Jongwoon threw his hands up in the air. “I even got around to reading the book on aliens. All those hours of Spiderman and Superman for nothing!”
“Not nothing,” Donghae defended, appalled at the thought that Spiderman and Superman were useless. “We finally reached the episode where Spiderman defeats Green Goblin. And you never would have believed Superman and Kent Clark where the same person if I hadn’t made you re-read the first issue.”
“True.” Jongwoon stopped pacing for a second, then started again. “But still! You can’t let the alien fool you, remember?”
“But,”
“No,” Jongwoon stopped and grabbed Donghae by his upper arms and shook him, the charms on his backpack jingling. “The alien has taken over your body hasn’t it?! Let Donghae go, alien!”
Donghae started getting dizzy, his head bobbing up and down. “Stop it, Jongwoon. It’s still me!”
“No. You may have taken my friend’s brain, alien, but you won’t take mine!”
“I’ll prove it but stop shaking me!”
Jongwoon did stop and sucked in a big breath. “I’m going to ask you a question only Donghae would know the answer to.” He paused for dramatic effect and Donghae tried to not roll his eyes. “What are my two turtles’ names and how many turtles do I have?” Jongwoon pouted thinking there was something wrong with how that sounded.
Donghae sighed. “Big Turtle and Little Turtle. Two.”
“You are Donghae!” Jongwoon exclaimed before crushing Donghae in a hug. Donghae felt suffocated but bared it. Pulling away, Jongwoon looked at him seriously. “I have a plan for the alien.”
Deciding to just agree, he asked, “What is it?”
Jongwoon smiled in a way that would scare most people. Donghae was used to it. “We’re going to catch it.”
-*-
That’s how they ended at the park wrapped from head to toe in aluminum foil, metal pots on their heads, spatulas as weapons and Lee Eunhyuk scared and tangled in a huge fishing net Donghae’s father had in the garage.
“What are two doing?!” Eunhyuk cried, trying to break free.
“You can’t fool us any longer alien!” Donghae yelled.
“Alien? What are you talking about?” freezing all movement, Eunhyuk looked up at them confused.
“We’re not gonna let you eat our brains!” Jongwoon warned shaking his spatula in Eunhyuk’s face. He nudged Donghae.
“Yeah!” When Jongwoon gave him a blank stare, he added “You almost took over once and we’re not gonna let you attack our planet!”
Eunhyuk shook his head. Well, as much as a person could when tangled in a net. “Junsu was right. You two are nuts.”
Making sure he couldn’t get free, Jongwoon turned to Donghae and whispered, “Now what do we do?”
“I don’t know.” His brows knotted in concentration. “No one in any of the books or shows I’ve seen ever caught an actual alien” He’d go down in history, Donghae realized. The first ever alien catcher. He would remember to include Jongwoon in his thank you speech when he received the key to the city.
“I’m not an alien!”
“That’s what they all say,” Jongwoon said.
Eunhyuk rolled his eyes. “I’ll prove it.”
Sharing a look, they decided to hear him out, this could be a prefabricated lie that all aliens used. It’d be handy in the future.
“Metal is supposed to keep aliens away right?” Donghae and Jongwoon both nodded. “What are the monkey bars made out of?” he lifted his hand as much as he could towards the monkey bars where they’d caught him a few feet away.
“Oh.”
-*-
So it turned out that Lee Eunhyuk was not an alien after all.
Donghae and Jongwoon’s parents had profusely apologized to Eunhyuk’s for their sons having tied up theirs. They’d been punished for a whole month and Donghae’s telescope got put away to the attic for an unidentified period of time.
Jongwoon went back to only watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and quickly forgot the whole alien debacle. Donghae took a little more time, but became more and more interested in marine life. His parent’s decided it was okay since the chances of Donghae accusing one of his classmates of secretly being a mutated octopus or a giant oyster were slim.
“Sorry for tying you up and thinking you were an alien,” Donghae said almost two months later when Eunhyuk saw him and didn’t try to run away for the first time. “And for almost exploding your ear drums.” He smiled sheepishly and offered him a box of Strawberry Moon Pies.
Eunhyuk sighed. He really did like strawberry Moon Pie, and a whole box to boot! Plus Donghae was wearing a t-shirt with a monkey on it and liking monkeys was a quality Eunhyuk highly valued. “Okay.” He smiled and took the box. “But don’t do it again,” Eunhyuk warned.
Donghae grinned and nodded. He definitely wouldn’t do it ever again.
-*-
That is, until a few years later.
Realizing they had a lot in common. Eunhyuk and Donghae became friends. They spent their hours dancing or practicing soccer, sleeping over at each others houses, sharing a love for strawberry marshmallow pie and staring at the stars in the sky.
It’s the day before their last year of middle school. They’re sitting on Eunhyuk’s back porch naming constellations, inventing outrages names for them and connecting the stars upside down and backwards. They’re laughing and Eunhyuk turns and looks at Donghae. He smiles, his eyes shining and his gums showing more than ever. And Donghae’s laugh dies abruptly, eyes widening in their sockets like in an old black and white cartoon. It’s exactly like it was all those years when they met and Eunhyuk smiled at him for the first time. Donghae’s chest constricts, his stomach flips and he can’t breathe.
He calls Jongwoon immediately when he gets home after racing to his house from Eunhyuk’s, leaving a completely flustered and confused Eunhyuk staring after him.
“I think Eunhyuk is an alien.”
“I’ll get the net.”
-*-
a/n: Title taken from the 90's t.v. show "3rd Rock from the Sun". Because Donghae and Yesung being bff makes sense if you think about it and Eunhyuk would so love Strawberry Moon pies if he tried them.