Hey, guys!
I know it's only been a day, but NaNo and inspiration strikes.
I do have to explain something though. This story is in three parts, but they're all being posted here in this same story, since they're all the same story. But since I will be adding in a pov for the second part, it made sense for me to divide it. I guess you could call it acts instead of parts if you wanted to. But part one is coming to a close. Probably only a few more chapters left, but we'll see. Could be 12, could be 15 or more. It depends on how much filler I want to stick in, lol.
But anyway, with that long rant out of the way, here is chapter eight.
Chapter Eight.
The room was cold and lit only by a handful of fluorescent lights. It burned Lex's eyes, and he shivered from the cold.
Where was he? What was going on?
A small whimper pulled him out of his swirling thoughts, and he spun around. His throat tightened when he found the source of the whimper.
The child.
The child's veins were an awful olive green, his skin a grayish white. His big eyes were bloodshot from tears and his cheeks spotted red from the broken blood vessels he had broken while screaming.
The child was dressed in a thin gown, there were no socks on his feet to protect him from the cold. In his hair were monitors that had been aggressively glued to his head.
The child shivered and his lips were twinged blue from the cold.
Lex banged on the glass that separated them. How had the child ended up back in the lab? He would never allow that to happen!
A scientist with a face that Lex couldn't make out reached down and roughly picked up the child.
The child screamed and the pool of tears began to cascade down his red cheeks in loud sobs.
"Hey!" Lex shouted as he banged on the glass.
The scientist ignored him as he practically dropped the child onto the examination table and restrained him so that he couldn't move.
"Stop!" Lex screamed. "You can't do this!"
"Help!" The child screamed and sobbed as the scientist approached him with knives and needles. "No! No!"
A warm hand on Lex's face jolted him out of sleep.
He jumped back towards the headboard and away from the hand, but stopped when he saw who the hand belonged to.
The child.
He let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. The child was safe. It had been a horrible, awful nightmare.
He cleared his throat, then propped himself up against the pillows on his bed. "You okay, Bud?" He asked.
The child nodded, then tilted his head. "You sad?" He asked.
Lex reached up to his face, and winced when he felt the wet tears that had fallen out of his eyes during his nightmare.
Lex shook his head. "It was just a nightmare," Lex explained. "I'm okay. I promise."
The child was quiet, but then crawled closer to Lex. After a second, he curled up on Lex's chest, then let out a yawn.
Lex smiled softly and gently rubbed the child's back. "Thank you for saving me from my scary dream."
The child smiled and curled closer to Lex, his movements slow and sleepy. Lex doubted that the child knew how much he was helping him calm down from the nightmare.
After a moment, Lex's fingers found their way to the child's hair and he began to gently run his fingers through it. Every once in a while his fingers would catch a tangle, but the child didn't even flinch.
A few minutes later, and the child was asleep. He slept peacefully against Lex's chest.
And a few minutes after that? Lex was sleeping peacefully too.
That afternoon, Lex was sitting at his desk when the door opened.
He looked up, and grinned. "Hey, buddy," he greeted as the child walked up to Lex's desk.
Martha had called Lex that morning, telling Lex that something had happened on the farm and that she would need the day off to help Jonathan with it. Lex had been so tired during the call that he couldn't remember what had happened, but he told her not to worry about it and that he and the child would be fine.
The child peered over the desk at Lex's laptop. "What doin'?"
Lex looked down at the child, then cleared his throat. "Well, I'm working on some budgeting stuff for next year."
"What's that?"
Lex hummed for a second as he tried to think of a way to explain budgeting to a child who had spent their entire life in a lab. "I'm sorting money into different categories to make sure I don't spend too much," he said. "Like when you and Miss Martha sorted all of the billiard balls by color yesterday."
The child stayed quiet, and Lex couldn't tell if he had just confused the kid or if he was just being his quiet self.
Lex began to work again. It was a task that he hated, but it was also a task that he knew how to do by heart. It was one of the first exercises that his father had taught him, and he had the feeling that it would be one of the last ones that he would do.
"What doin'?"
Lex chuckled, but didn't look down at the child as he continued to put in the numbers. "Still working, buddy," he answered.
"Why?"
Lex blinked. When had the child become so talkative? Not that he was mad or annoyed. No, that was literally impossible with the adorable child in front of him. He was just shocked. The child hardly ever spoke, but now he was asking all of these questions.
"Cause I have to," Lex said. "If I don't, then we won't be able to have food, or a nice bed, or a warm house. My job also helps a lot of people have their own houses and beds and food."
The child frowned, seemingly processing the information that his brain had been fed, then tilted his head. "Show me?"
With two words, Lex's heart melted. How was it possible for a child to be this cute? Every child he had known up to this point had been a brat, with the exception of his baby brother.
Lex picked up the child and placed him on his lap. "Can you see?"
The child nodded, then pointed to the computer mouse. "What's that?"
Lex smiled. The child's thirst for information might get annoying at some point, but it hadn't gotten there yet. "Why don't you move it around and see."
The child's face lit up as the mouse moved the cursor across the screen of the laptop. After he was done moving the mouse around, he looked up at Lex with the most wonder-filled eyes he had ever seen.
For the next few hours, Lex spent more time explaining things to the child than actually working, but it didn't matter. He would just stay up late and finish it later. The child had a thirst for knowledge that Lex couldn't help but find admirable and he wanted to help the child find the answers to whatever questions he had.
He answered all kinds of questions involving money, computers, and businesses. It was a miracle that he knew how to explain them, and even more of a miracle that the child seemed to understand them.
"What's a Daddy?"
Lex stopped, his heart skipping a beat and his fingers freezing above the keys.
"Um…" Lex began, even though he had no idea how to explain the question at hand. "It's another name for a father. Someone who is raising a child, whether that child is theirs by blood or by bond."
The child was quiet for a long time, and so was Lex. How could he possibly explain a father correctly? A man in charge with an iron fist? The person who dictated your life from birth? Who beat you senseless whenever you did something stupid at school? The person who had impregnated your mother? None of those sounded right, though they had all been true for Lex.
"You my Daddy?"
For the second time, Lex's heart stopped. This was a different question. One that would change both of their lives forever. Lex knew there was only one answer to this question.
"If you want me to be," Lex said. "Do you want that?"
The child looked up at him and nodded. His big blue eyes shined bright and pleadingly. "Yeah."
Lex hugged the child tightly. Damn the legality of the whole situation. He was this alien child's father now. "Then I'm your Daddy," he said. "And you're my son."
There we go! I hope you enjoyed! Please follow, fave, and review! I would love to know what you thought!
Thanks for reading! Love y'all!