see you down in history

by Lake (beyond_belief)

Summary:

It was just an ordinary night on patrol for NYPD Officer Nick Jonas - until he got in a foot pursuit with an alien. Now he's being recruited into a mysterious agency that claims to police alien activity on the planet Earth. And a new job means new rules, new weapons, new perps, and most of all a new partner - one who is quickly knocking down all of Nick's defenses. Band of Brothers RPF crossover; Men in Black AU.

Something isn't right here. This guy's running way too fast. It's taking all of Nick's strength to keep up with him, and Nick has run the New York Marathon the last two years in a row. Thwap-thwap, thwap-thwap go his all-black, regulation Nikes on the pavement, his breath hot in his throat. "Freeze!" he yells, "NYPD! Freeze!"

The guy doesn't stop. They never do. Nick is starting to question his career choice. Chasing guys in the middle of the night through creepy side alleys isn't exactly living the dream. "Freeze means stop!" he hollers.

The guy jumps off a bridge, lands on his feet. "What the," Nick mutters, then backs up, takes a running leap, and jumps too. He lands with a thud on the top deck of a bus full of tourists, who all shriek and try to scramble out of his way. "Not every day the cops come outta the sky!" he shouts, and leaps off the bus, belt jostling. This can't be good for his knees.

The perp zooms around a corner, way ahead of him, so with a mighty heave and a muffled curse, Nick grabs the corner of a delivery truck as it speeds past and hitches a ride in the guy's direction. It takes just long enough that he can sort of catch his breath. Then he flings himself off it and on top of the dude. "Don't you know what 'stop, police!' means, jerkwad? It means you quit running!"

The guy bucks him off and something goes clattering across the sidewalk; it looks like some kind of weapon, but Nick gets barely a glimpse before it disappears in a hot flame and a puff of smoke. He starts to demand the guy tell him what the heck it was, but the perp twists out of his grip with some crazy up-the-wall move, and takes off running again.

A bus cuts off Nick's pursuit, come on, come on, come on, long enough that the guy's disappeared when he gets across the street. With his gun drawn, he starts checking all the corners, the stairs, the spaces the guy could have disappeared into. Then there's a whoosh and a roaring noise, and the perp is leaping straight up into the air and - what in God's name is happening here? - starts scaling the building.

Straight up.

Nick aims, but it's no use. The guy is climbing a wall that doesn't have any sort of grips at all, just running up it like a bug would. His hands aren't holding on to anything. In a few seconds, he's all the way up and over the roof.

Nick looks around, judging his options, then knocks out a glass door with his baton and starts through the building, running up the sloping hallway around and around and around until he's aiming his gun at the roof exit door.

It swings open, revealing the crestfallen expression on the perp's face. "He's coming," the guy says, making an expansive gesture. "He's coming and I failed him, I failed!"

"Yeah, you're just making everyone mad today, huh? Maybe it's all that repeating you do when you're taking," Nick says, keeping his gun aimed straight at the guy's face. The guy's walking backwards. Nick walks forwards.

"You don't understand," the guy pleads. He weaves from side to side a little. "Your world's going to end." Then he starts to smile, like something is funny, like there's a joke that Nick is missing. It makes his face look strangely un-human. The guy blinks. He blinks wrong.

Nick lowers his gun slightly. "What are you?" he asks. The guy keeps walking backwards. "Hey, the ledge. Watch the ledge. Come on, if you're scared of whoever's coming, I can help you. I can help you. Come on, you don't need to do this-"

The guy spreads his arms and jumps.

Nick runs to the edge and looks over. Then he groans and shoves a hand through his hair, wonders how on Earth is he going to write up this report, because the guy is gone. Totally gone.

The lieutenant's gonna kill him.

He takes it a little slower going back down, pausing to wince at the damage he'd done to the glass doors. He catches a bus back to the precinct, washes his face and changes out of his uniform. Then he gets a cup of coffee and sits down in front of a free computer to write his report.

He lays it out exactly like it happened, but still. It sounds absurd. And when he turns it in, his Lieutenant and the night Sergeant both tell him it's absurd. "He blinked twice?" LT demands, slapping Nick's report down on the table.

"No, Sir, he blinked two sets of eyes. Eyelids."

"What, like - high beams and low beams?" Sarge asks, the sarcasm practically dripping from his voice.

Yeah, this is crap. Nick slinks down a little lower in his chair, curls his hand around his paper cup of coffee a little more protectively. "No. Two sets of eyelids. Like a lizard."

The Sarge makes a disbelieving noise. The LT lays his hand flat on the table and leans in towards Nick. "I know what it's like to get a little thin around the edges when you're pulling a double, but there's tired and then there's crazy. You've only been off probation for six months, Officer."

"I know, Sir."

"How come no one else saw this perp climb a twelve-story building in ten seconds flat, Jonas? Huh?"

"Because no one else could keep up with him, Sir," Nick says flatly. Wincing because he has to say it, and also because it's true. He's pretty sure he might get busted back to directing traffic for having to say it, since the Sarge was one of the guys he'd had to leave in the dust.

LT and Sarge leave in a huff, and Nick starts to stand up, but then a woman he's never seen before walks into the room, wearing a slim suit and looking like a lawyer. "I believe you," she says without preamble, and Nick feels his jaw drop. "Dr. Selena Gomez, deputy medical examiner."

Coroner. Oh.

"You want proof, find me in twenty minutes, at the morgue on 26th. I'll show you," she continues, then hurries back out of the room like she knows she shouldn't have been there in the first place.

"Hey, wait," Nick starts to say, and then there's a weird flash of light from the hallway, and yet another person he's never met - this one a dude in a black suit, white shirt, and black sunglasses - steps in. He's a little unshaven and his brown hair is sort of a mess, like he's pulling a double, too. "What is this, meet and greet?" Nick asks. "They let just anybody into the building these days?"

Suit & Sunglasses ignores him. Instead, he shuts the door, walks over to the camera in the corner of the room, unplugs it, and then slips his sunglasses into his jacket pocket all in one long fluid motion. Like something choreographed, Nick thinks. Suit & Sunglasses turns to him. "Some night, huh?" he asks, smiling brightly.

Everything about tonight has been weird and this guy is no exception. "Yeah, you could say that again," Nick allows, pushing his coffee away and leaning back in the chair a little. Maybe Suit & Sunglasses here is a Fed. He looks like he could be a Fed, with the whole crisp black suit thing going on. He also looks sort of forgettable, like what they always want out of UCs, so maybe that's his game.

Nick knows this train of thought doesn't make any sense, but he should have been out of here forty-five minutes ago. He'd like to sleep. He'd also like to ignore the urge to start humming "Sunglasses at Night".

"They were gills, not eyelids," Suit & Sunglasses says quietly. "Gills. He was out of breath, you see. Like a fish?"

Nick feels his jaw drop. Gills? He forces his mouth closed, bites at his lower lip for a moment. "Who are you?"

The guy purses his lips and ignores the question. "Did he say anything?"

"Yeah. He said - he said our world was going to end."

Suit & Sunglasses sighs. He suddenly looks tired, as opposed to simply forgettable. "Did he say when?"

Nick shrugs.

"Would you recognize his weapon if you saw it again?"

"Absolutely."

"C'mon. Let's go for a ride." Suit & Sunglasses opens the door.

"Wait, hold on," Nick protests, standing up. "I've still got tons of paperwork to do -"

"It's done."

Nick sputters, just as the Lieutenant comes past, a folder in his hands. "Good work, Jonas," he says, and Nick sputters some more.

"You really ran this dude down on foot?" Suit & Sunglasses asks, reaching out to clap Nick on the back. "That's tough, kid."

Nick feels like he's missing a whole lot here. "I'm not a kid."

"Let's go, time's a-wasting," Suit & Sunglasses says, and maneuvers him out of the room. Nick continues to protest; he should have been home in bed at least half an hour ago now, but part of him still wants an explanation as to how that perp had been able to scale that building, and maybe Suit & Sunglasses here is the person who can provide that.

So he rides in the passenger seat of Suit & Sunglasses' beat-up old car as they go uptown to the place Suit & Sunglasses says will have the gun that Nick saw disappear. "So who do you work for anyway?" Nick asks as Suit & Sunglasses drives. "FBI? NSA? Secret Service?"

"I'm part of a bureau that licenses, monitors and polices alien activity on the planet Earth," Suit & Sunglasses replies, in a no-nonsense voice.

Nick scoffs. Whatever.

The car stops. "We're here."

Nick looks around. He knows this place. He's arrested people here before. "Here? This is those Sprouse dudes' shop. They traffic in stolen goods, yeah, but they don't sell guns."

"Really?"

Nick glances at Suit & Sunglasses out of the corner of his eye, then sighs. "Fine. But I'm going in alone. I don't even know you, dude, all right? When I come back, you're giving me some answers."

"Fine."

Nick strides into the shop, where one of the Sprouses - he doesn't know which one is which, and he's learned that it doesn't matter - is hunched over a tray of watches. Probably stolen. "Officer Jonas!" the Sprouse says, looking slightly terrified. His blond hair is combed almost entirely over his eyes. Nick's not sure how he manages to see what he's doing most days. "How did these watches get here? I don't know."

"Look," Nick says sharply, "I've been awake twenty-four hours now, and I just don't have time for your crap. The way I hear it, you're into something hotter than some stolen Rolexes."

Sprouse shrugs, a jerky movement in his Hawaiian shirt.

"Guns," Nick pushes, putting his hands on top of the counter, leaning towards the Sprouse. "Weird ones."

"What you see is what I got, Officer."

"Right."

The door jangles open. "Why don't you show him the imports, Cole?" Suit & Sunglasses asks, looking bored with the whole situation. He leans against the door frame, raising his eyebrows. "Well?"

The Sprouse straightens up immediately. Nick notices his hands start to shake. "Hey, hey, R. How's it going?"

"Show him the imports right now."

For at least the third time tonight, Nick feels like he's missing a whole lot.

"I got out of that business," Cole insists.

"Why are you lying to me, Cole? I hate it when you lie to me," Suit & Sunglasses - R - says sadly, and then Nick sees the large, strange-looking gun in his hand.

It's not pointed at the Sprouse, but Cole is positively quaking. Sweat is beading on his temples. "Just hold on a second, okay? Okay? Here."

R lifts the gun. "I'm going to count to three."

Nick looks from Cole to R and back again. "He'll do it," he says. Might as well go along with whatever this is, right? Go along with it, and not get shot by the weird guy with the weird-looking gun.

"One," R says nonchalantly.

"You should do what he says," Nick says to Cole.

"Two."

"You're so tense, R," Cole says. "You need a massage. Take a cruise. I can recommend some boats. Top notch."

"Three," R finishes, and fires. The Sprouse's head explodes in a shower of green slime - whoa, green slime? That's not right - and then Nick is pointing his own weapon at R and telling him to drop his gun.

"I warned him," R says with a shrug. He lowers the weapon.

"You're such an asshole," a goofy high-pitched voice says, and Nick turns again. "Do you have any idea how much that stings?" Cole says, shaking his newly regrown head, blond hair flapping all around. "Jerk."

"What," Nick gasps, stepping backwards, his heart speeding up in his chest. This isn't happening. He's dreaming. He's got to be dreaming. He pinches himself. He doesn't wake up.

"Show us the merchandise or I'll do it again, Cole," R snaps, gesturing with the gun.

Cole scrunches his face up and rolls his eyes around a few times, then reaches down and pushes something. All of the displays turn over, revealing weapons unlike anything Nick has ever seen before. Except for one.

Definitely not a dream. His heart starts to hammer even harder, and he knows the pulse in his neck has to be visible by now.

"Officer Jonas?" R asks.

Nick points. "That one there, in the middle."

R glares at Cole, who looks ashamed, and takes a threatening step forward. "You sold a reverberating carbonizer with mutate capacity to an unlicensed cephlapoid! Sprouse, you piece of -"

"He looked okay to me," Cole mutters, shifting from foot to foot and pushing his hair back from his face.

Nick doesn't think he understood any of that. "A reverberating what? Who are you people?"

"Quiet, kid." R gestures at Cole. "It had to have been for an assassination, Sprouse. Who's the target?"

"I don't know."

"Damnit, Sprouse, don't fuck around!" R aims the gun at Cole again, right at his nose. "Who's the target?"

"I don't know!" Cole wails.

Nick stands back as R and the Sprouse stare at each other for a long minute.

"Fine," R snaps. "All your goods are confiscated. And I want you on the next transport off this rock, or I'm gonna shoot you someplace it doesn't grow back." He stalks over to the door and holds it open. "Kid, let's go."

"I'm not a kid," Nick mutters, and follows him out.

On the sidewalk, he reholsters his weapon and stares off down the street, trying to process everything that had just happened. It's at least a minute or two before R steps up behind him, lays a warm hand on his shoulder, his thumb landing on Nick's bare upper arm. "Searching for a handle on the moment?"

"Something like that," Nick murmurs.

"I'm sorry I can't help you. Not yet. But at least I can promise that tomorrow morning, you won't remember a thing."

"What?"

R is putting his sunglasses on again. It's dark out. Nick stares at him in disbelief. "That's not something a person can easily forget, dude. And what do you mean, you can't help me? You have to explain what just happened in there-"

There's a bright flash, and then Nick is in a Chinese restaurant and some guy he's never seen before is sitting across from him in a crisp black suit, telling a story about a place in France that must be funny, because he's laughing so hard Nick's worried he might puke. "Get it?" the guy asks. "It's funny, right?"

Nick blinks in the odd neon light. Maybe the guy looks a little familiar, but Nick can't place him. Maybe they met in a bar. He can't remember the last time he picked up a guy in a bar. "Yeah," he says slowly.

The guy glances at his watch and immediately stops chuckling. "I gotta go. But hey, thanks for the egg rolls, kid."

Nick glances down at a plate he doesn't remember ordering. There is indeed half an egg roll. There are also several empty Tsing Tao bottles. But he doesn't normally drink and not with people he's sure he doesn't know. "Did you drug me?" he asks abruptly.

"Of course not," the guy says, but he doesn't sound too offended. Then with an easy smile, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper, saying, "I'll see you around."

"Who are you?" Nick demands. "Wait a minute, who are you?"

"See what I mean about tequila? You're a bright young man, Nicholas, but you need to give the bottle a break. I'll see you bright and early tomorrow, nine o'clock sharp." He hands over the paper, which turns out to be a business card that's embossed with MIB and nothing else. "Be there or be square, kid."

He's out the door before Nick can ask what it is this guy expects him to show up for tomorrow morning, or even ask anything at all. Slowly, he turns the card over. On the back, in pen, someone has printed 504 Battery Drive.

Nick looks at his watch. It's three in the morning. The last time he'd looked at the clock in the station, it had been just past midnight. He wonders what the heck happened to the last three hours of his life, and who the guy in the suit was.

There's one way to find out, though. He looks at the card again, taps it against the table. Then he tucks some money under the edge of his plate and leaves the restaurant.

 

*

The sun is way, way too bright. Nick isn't used to being up quite this early, much less dressed and halfway across town from the apartment he shares with two of his brothers. Not that he ever sees them, with the strange hours they work. He squints up at the bridge and finishes his Red Bull. This can't be right.

He goes inside, where a lone security guard is reading a newspaper. "Can I help you?" the guard asks, rustling his paper.

"Yeah, this guy gave me this card..." Nick holds it out, but the guard just gestures him forward.

"Elevator."

"Um, okay. Elevator it is." The fans whir loudly as he punches the button. The doors slide open and he boards, feeling apprehensive. There's only one button on the inside panel. He presses it, and the elevator slips downwards. At least, it feels like the elevator is going down. He's not entirely sure.

The door on the back of the elevator opens. "You're late," someone says, in what sounds like a British accent, "so hurry up and sit down."

Nick turns, confused. There's a guy in a black suit, but it's not his guy. This guy's got red hair and a pale face and he's looking at Nick expectantly, like he's waiting, so Nick steps into the room. There are a bunch of weird-shaped chairs. Like eggs almost. All of them are taken except one, which he figures must be his. The other guys are stiff-backed military types, uniforms and all.

"Uh, hello," he says, and sits down in the weird egg chair.

"You gentlemen can call me Lewis," the red-headed guy says. Definitely a British accent, maybe a little dampened by time spent in the States. "You're all here because you're the best of the best - Marines, Air Force, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, NYPD; you name it. And we're looking for one of you. Just one, no more. What will happen here today is a series of simple tests, things like motor skills, concentration, stamina."

Nick raises his hand, because he's still confused.

"Yes?" Lewis asks.

"Maybe you already went through this part, Sir, but - why are we here?"

The military guy next to him raises his hand immediately. "Go ahead," Lewis tells him.

Military man stands up and rattles off his name, rank, and a bunch of other stuff that Nick assumes must be the way you do it at West Point. "We're here because you're looking for the best of the best of the best, Sir," he finishes crisply.

"That's helpful," Nick mutters. West Point smirks at him and Nick tries not to laugh in disbelief. Maybe this is a dream, too - he's half convinced that he dreamed the bit at the Chinese restaurant, except how he couldn't have, because then he wouldn't be here.

He thinks he sees the corner of Lewis' mouth twitch in what might be an attempt to smile. "All right," Lewis says, clapping his hands together. "Let's get down to business, boys."

There's a booklet next to the chair he's tucked into; it looks like a test. The uniformed guys are all settling down to it, flimsy paper against their knees, circling answers with No. 2 pencils. Nick opens his packet and tries to get comfortable in the chair, but it's impossible. No way these things were designed for comfort. He reads the first question, but his pencil stabs through the thin paper when he tries to answer. This isn't going to work.

He glances around again. Everyone else seems to be having the same problem, which makes him want to laugh again. There's a table in the middle of the room, coffee-table height. No one else seems to have claimed it, so Nick shrugs to himself, gets up, and hauls it over to his chair. It makes a horrible scraping noise. "Sorry," he says, and sits down again. He thinks he sees Lewis' eyebrow quirk up.

It's much easier with the table. He keeps working through the test, until a buzzer sounds and Lewis opens the door. The uniformed guys troop out. Nick trails behind. They go into a shooting range. Everyone dons earmuffs and picks up a gun.

The gallery is full of hideous-looking monsters and cutouts that are supposed to be crackheads. Nick ends up getting off one good shot, and it goes through the forehead of a cutout of a little girl clutching a stack of textbooks. Everyone stares at him like he's crazy. He tilts his head at the cutout, then steps back and looks at the whole scenario. Wait. Something's weird about it. Something's off. He's not sure he's done something as horrible as everyone is thinking.

"Jonas," Lewis says in a questioning voice.

"Sir, if you'll - you see this monster here, and this one here? How come they're bad, just because they don't, uh, smile like humans? But this girl..." he pauses, looking at it one more time. "I'm sorry, Sir, but what eight-year-old carries around a textbook for Quantum Physics? I mean, I went to college and stuff, but I sure as heck don't know anybody even my age who knows Quantum Physics."

Lewis arches an eyebrow. Nick schools his face into the most innocent expression. Lewis shrugs. "Good point. Next test is the last one. An eye exam; come on, folks."

In the hall, Nick sees his suited guy from the Chinese place. "Hey, hey," he says, catching up to him. "What is all this?"

Suit & Tie hands him a folder. He looks even messier today than last night, like he still hasn't slept. The stubble on his face is more pronounced. "In the mid-1950s the government started an underfunded agency with the hilarious purpose of establishing contact with a race not of this planet."

"That's a terrible way to start a joke," Nick replies.

"Not a joke. Everyone thought it was, though, except for the aliens."

What? "Aliens?"

"Aliens. They made contact on March 2nd, 1961, outside New York."

Nick flips open the folder. It's full of pictures. They look fake to him. "A ten-year-old could Photoshop better than this."

Suit & Tie shrugs and keeps walking. "It's the real deal, kid. There were nine the first night. Seven agents, one astronomer, and one dumb-ass kid who'd gotten lost on the wrong, wrong back road." He veers to the right. Nick looks up from the supposed first contact pictures just in time to see which way he'd gone and jogs a few steps to keep up. "They were a group of intergalactic refugees, mostly fleeing their home planets due to various political and theological disagreements. They wanted to use Earth for an apolitical zone - you know what means, Jonas?"

"I know what 'apolitical' means," Nick mutters, scowling.

"An apolitical zone for creatures without a planet." He glances sideways at Nick. "You've seen Casablanca, right? Same thing, no Nazis."

Nick actually hasn't ever seen Casablanca, but he's not going to tell Suit & Tie that, because all of this is crazy.

"We agreed and concealed all the evidence of their landing." A tiny smile pulls at Suit & Tie's mouth. "By having a fair."

Nick looks down at the pictures again. "So... you're telling me that these are real flying saucers, and the World's Fair that got held in Queens was just a - a cover-up?"

Suit & Tie grins. "Why the hell else would we hold it there?"

Nick starts to laugh. He can't help it. "Aliens, dude? For real, aliens?"

"Aliens. Just like the two you saw the other night."

"Wait, what?" Nick can feel his jaw drop as he stares at the guy.

Suit & Tie keeps walking, and after a moment, keeps talking. "More nonhumans arrive every year. They live among us in secret. Or, as you might come to find, just barely passing. But they're here."

"When was the last time you had a CAT scan?" Nick demands, because seriously, he's trapped in Bridge & Tunnel with crazy people.

"Six months. It's company policy, actually. You'll have them, too."

"Look, uh - I'm going to go. Tell Lewis it was real or whatever, I had fun, everyone can jump out from behind couches and yell 'surprise!' now if they want. But I'm getting out of here. If uh, you'll show me how to get out of here first."

He hands Suit & Tie the folder. Suit & Tie looks down at it briefly and sighs. "All right, Jonas. I'm going to get some coffee first, though. You want a cup?"

"No, I'd like to get out of here-"

"You need a cup of coffee." With that Suit & Tie turns on his heel and strides through yet another door. Nick looks around for a second, but he's lost. And this guy will eventually have to let him out of here, right? He follows.

Inside, there are worms with legs drinking coffee and smoking. Nick blinks. He backs out of the room again. Then he steps back in. Suit & Tie is conversing with the worm-things, asking about coffee creamer, asking how their day is going. Nick rubs his eyes. He looks at Suit & Tie, who is flat-out grinning at him, looking delighted. "I told you," Suit & Tie says. "Sure you don't want some coffee?"

"Uh," Nick manages.

"Come on. I'll show you how to get out of this place."

Suit & Tie leads him out of the building and back into the gloomy, familiar New York air. They walk a few blocks without talking, Nick still feeling like his mouth is hanging open, and then Suit & Tie sits down on a bench and gestures for Nick to join him. "So."

"Um."

"Here's the deal, kid. At any given time, there are about fifteen hundred or so aliens on the planet. Most of them are actually right here in Manhattan, trying to make a living, just like any other ordinary decent person on this island. And not all of them are driving cabs, either; I can see where your mind is going." He pauses to finish the coffee he'd been holding onto and crumples the paper cup in his palm. "The human population, for the most part, doesn't have a clue. They don't have any reason to. They go about their daily lives. They're happy. They think they know how the world works."

Nick leans back against the bench and rubs at his face. "So why the big secret, huh? Most people - they're smart, they can handle it."

"One person individually is smart." Suit & Tie holds up a finger. "But people as a group? Dumb. Panicky. Dangerous. You've done crowd control, you know how it is. But the things people know - they can change. Paradigm shift, kid. Fifteen minutes ago, you knew we were alone on this planet. So imagine - imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

Nick looks at the cardboard cup, slowly dripping the last few drops it had held, from between Suit & Tie's fingers. Then he looks at his own hands. "What's the catch?" he asks heavily.

"The catch."

"Yeah. Because there's got to be one. Even I can figure that out."

"The catch is you give up the entirety of your old life," Suit & Tie says quietly, looking out at the bay. "You give up your job. People you know. People you love. And we delete who you used to be."

Nick's heart thuds in his chest and he can feel his pulse all the way to his fingertips. "What about my family? They're the most important people in my life, I can't just..."

"Well, in your case, that might - that will be less of an issue than you think. I think, at least. But I need to know that you can at least live with the idea of giving up everything to do this. Can you live with no one knowing you exist, ever again? Ever?"

Nick stares down at his sneakers, at the gum ground into the pavement. He picks at his thumbnail for a second. Then Suit & Tie bumps their shoulders together. "You passed all the tests, but I wanted you for my partner even before that," he says quietly. "I'll give you until sunrise to think it over."

"Who are you?" Nick demands, but Suit & Tie just shakes his head.

"Say yes, and I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

Then he stands up and walks away, leaving Nick to stare into the bright sun. "Hey!" he calls out after Suit & Tie. "Hey! Is it worth it?"

Suit & Tie stops and looks back, most of his face in shadow. "It's worth it, kid. It's amazing sometimes. But only if you're strong enough."

Then he keeps on walking. Nick watches him go, until he blends away into the crowd, just another nameless blur of secrets, just like everyone else in this place.

He goes home and tries to sleep, but the apartment is too empty and quiet with just him and his thoughts. Kevin and Joe both work odd hours in some office that Nick doesn't even know the name of. They'd been here in the city before he joined the NYPD, and while it had been a given that he'd move in with them, between his night shifts and their strange hours, he hardly ever sees them. When he does, they're usually bone-tired and moaning about how they're going to sleep like the dead for the next day and a half.

 

He dozes off for a few hours but it's crappy sleep, and when he wakes up, he can't make himself go back to bed. So he eats a peanut butter sandwich, gets his iPod and a bottle of water, and goes out for a run. Up and down cracked sidewalks, dodging drunken tourists and message-spouting hobos, trying not to think about anything that Suit & Tie had said. But he can't get any of it out of his head at all. Every person he passes, he wonders if they're really a person or if they're some alien refugee. Try as he might to ignore it, now that he knows, he wants to know more.

 

He wasn't really going anywhere in the NYPD, anyway. Last evaluation he'd had, his supervisor had noted that while he knew the job and how to do it, he wasn't any good at connecting with the public. Nick knows he sucks at putting people at ease, that they can't relax around him because they can't decide if what he was saying is real or a joke. "You got a real alien sense of humor there, Jonas," Tommy had told him once.

 

Maybe it was a sign.

 

*

Nick's on his third cup of coffee by the time he pushes through the door, raising a hand in greeting to the same security guard who'd been there the day before, once again reading the Post. He pushes the button for the elevator and the door slides open to reveal Suit & Tie. In what looks like the exact same suit and the exact same tie; Nick wonders if his closet is just row after row of identical black-as-night suits.

"We can't start out this way," Nick says. "Don't you have a name?"

Suit & Tie raises an eyebrow. "You can call me R, for now."

"...right."

"For now. So?"

"I'm in," Nick says, rocking back on his heels. "This is the craziest thing I've ever done in my life, but heck, I've seen some crazy stuff just running down regular human beings. Bring on the bizarre, man. I'm cool."

"All right."

"Just - just don't forget that you picked me. And could you stop calling me kid?"

The corner of R's mouth quirks up. "All right. You think you've seen some crazy shit, huh? I hate to break it to you, kid, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

The elevator stops and the back doors slide open, revealing a huge room full of people and aliens, all of them shouting in various languages, bustling up and down corridors. Today, somehow, Nick manages to keep his face in check and just tries to take it all in.

"Customs," R says.

"Okay."

"Let's go."

Nick follows him across the room, dodging weird-looking aliens and some weird-looking humans. "It's like Mos Eisely in here," he mutters under his breath.

"Lucas got it so wrong," R chuckles. Nick tries to wish away the color he knows is rising in his cheeks.

"So what branch of the government do we report to?" he asks.

"None."

"What?"

"Government nowadays asks too many questions," R says patiently. "We broke away in the mid-eighties."

Nick looks around again. "But who pays for this?"

"We confiscated some stuff from the visitors, a couple gadgets here and there. Got some patents. Microwave ovens, spray cheese, LCD TVs, Post-Its, that sort of thing. This place really does pay for itself, you know?"

Up ahead, a few scientists - at least, Nick assumes they're scientists - scurry around in white lab coats. One pulls a door open and holds it for them. R is still naming off technologies that were apparently alien in origin. He picks up something that looks like a jumble of metal. "And this here Universal Translator. We're not even supposed to have it. You know that human thought is considered to be so primitive that it's looked upon to be an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies?"

"What?" Nick sputters, once again feeling out of his depth. He leans over to look at a glowing peach blob suspended between some silvery bars.

"Don't touch that," R says sharply, coming up behind him, so close Nick can feel his body heat. "Caused the 1977 New York blackout. And here it was supposed to be a practical joke. Real funny."

"Oh." He moves away from it.

R squeezes his arm. "Come on." He tugs Nick back out of the lab. "Next, observation. Starring two people I'm assured that you know very well."

"Joe," Nick gasps, stumbling a little. "Kevin!"

"Hey, bro," Kevin says, beaming. "Welcome."

"We heard you were gonna be joining the family business here," Joe adds.

"What," is all Nick can manage, "what?"

Kevin reaches out to give him a half-hug. "Sorry we never told you."

"Sorry we kept it a secret. But now you know!" Joe grins widely. "Like Kev said, welcome."

R gestures at the huge screen that Joe and Kevin are seated in front of. "This map shows the location of every registered alien on Earth. As I said before, there are usually about fifteen hundred floating around. Your brothers here keep an eye on all of them - A shift, of course."

"David and Lorenzo have the B shift," Kevin says.

Joe does something to the keyboard in front of him, and various screens pop up. "Some of these beauties are under constant surveillance. See all those people you think are people? Every one of them is an alien."

"Elvis Costello is an alien?" Nick asks weakly.

Joe casts him an apologetic look. "Sorry, dude."

"In public, they're all as normal as you are," R continues, "but in private, well... you'll get the idea. Next up, kid: the boss."

"Catch you later, bro," Kevin and Joe chorus, and R leads the way to an office at the back of the control room.

The red-headed guy from yesterday's tests - Lewis - is hunched over a stack of papers on the desk. He looks up when R knocks on the doorframe, announcing their presence. "Jonas! You signed up?"

Nick shrugs. "I did, Sir. Although I'm so confused I pretty much feel like this is still a weird dream."

"Nonsense. It's all real. Welcome aboard. Let's get you into the uniform." He spins in his chair, picks up a suit bag, and spins back around. "Here it is, buddy."

"Here's what?"

"The last suit you'll ever wear." Lewis holds out the bag like Nick's just graduated from the Academy and the Chief is presenting him with his diploma and badge. "You'll show him the locker room, right?" he asks R, who nods. Lewis points down at his stack of papers. "I got work."

He waves a hand, dismissing them, and Nick again follows R down yet another hallway into yet another room.

"Here it is. Your locker. There's shoes in there. Your size."

"Why do I get the feeling it's all the right size?" Nick asks, unlatching the door. The locker says simply "N".

"Maybe because your brothers were only too eager to provide me with the information." R leans against the bank of lockers and grins. Nick decides not to ask if R is just going to stand there the whole time he's getting changed, because he can guess the answer.

He trades his jeans for the pressed black slacks, his favorite white sweater for the white button-down and tie, his sneakers for the shiny wingtips. They're comfortable, at least. He says as much to R, who hasn't moved.

"They have to be. Sometimes we do a lot of running." He holds out Nick's jacket, caught on one crooked finger. "Did you like Lewis' little 'the last suit you'll ever wear' speech? I think he practiced."

Nick slips into the jacket. It fits perfectly. A pair of sunglasses are tucked into the pocket. "It seemed just a bit rehearsed," he says, and then smiles.

R claps him on the back, grinning. "I think you're going to fit in here, kid, I really do. Come on, let's go get the fingerprint removal over with."

"Finger... fingerprint removal?"

"It only hurts for a second. Didn't you notice neither of your brothers have fingerprints?"

"I guess I didn't." Nick closes the locker. "I feel like all I'm doing is following you around."

"You'll get used to it. It'll only be for a while, though, until you learn the ropes."

R leads him over to a strange metal device and instructs him to put his fingers on the indentations. Nick does. R slaps a button on the wall, holding it down, and Nick feels a sharp, burning pain. "Ow!"

"You're done." R flashes a sharp smile. But it reaches his eyes for once, making the corners of them crinkle, and Nick does notice. "Welcome to Men In Black."

"That seriously stings," Nick mutters.

"C'mon, I gotta run something by Lewis quick, then we'll get to work."

They walk back to the control room - Nick is already calling it Mission Control in his head - and R asks him to wait outside Lewis' office for a second. Nick nods, leans against the wall, and watches his brothers scan through the surveillance pictures popping up on the screen. He doesn't mean to listen in on the conversation happening inside the office, but the door is still slightly ajar. "Promise me you'll stop looking her up," he hears Lewis say.

R's voice is sharp, a little wounded. Like he's offended Lewis would suggest - whatever it is they're talking about. "You can't ask me to let go of that."

"You can't go home, Ron," he hears Lewis say, so softly that Nick almost misses it.

A long moment passes without anyone talking, just the low chatter of the control room, and then R says in a rough, broken voice, "I know."

"You need to let her go."

"I know, Damian." That's not the first name Nick was expecting for Lewis. He'd been half-convinced that Lewis was the guy's only name, like Prince. Or Beyonce. "I have, I swear," he hears Ron say.

"Look, I know you need someone…"

The rest of what Lewis is saying is cut off by the blaring of an alarm, Joe's shout of "Lautner is violating the terms of his passport again!", and a general commotion. Nick flattens his back even further against the curved wall.

"He's right outside the door, Ron," he hears Lewis say, then R shouts,

"Kid! Quit eavesdropping and get in here."

Nick sighs, puts on his blandest expression, and slides over to the doorway. "I wasn't eavesdropping, Sir." Lewis just gives him that look, the one that's a perfect visual rendition of a scoff, and waves a hand, gesturing him inside.

"Time for assignments. Let's see," Lewis says, striking a few keys on his keyboard. Nick can see the video feed of several other agents on the computer screen. "L, M, I see you're still out on the West coast, and I've got the deposed sur-prefect of Singalee touching down in the forest outside Portland tonight. Go meet him."

"Humanoid?" one of them asks.

Lewis shakes his head. "About as far from it as you can get. Now, you two -" he looks at R and Nick, "go see what the deal is with Lautner, all right? Looks like he's still stuck on the New Jersey turnpike. It'd be a good one for the kid here to get his feet wet with. On. In. Whatever it is. Take him and go. But then you should come back. He needs in-house training."

R gets up, flicks an invisible piece of lint off his suit in Lewis' direction, and then pushes Nick back out of the office by his shoulder. "C'mon, kid, let's go check out what Lautner is up to."

In R's beat-up company Ford, Nick taps his foot and looks out the window for a few minutes before blurting out, "What's your first name?"

"Excuse me?"

"You know mine. Even if you do call me kid all the time."

R gives him a measured look that says clearly, Kid, do you really want to go here?. Nick lifts an eyebrow, refusing to back down, and R gives him the shock of a lifetime by grinning, full-out.

"All right. It's Ron. Actually, it's Ronald. But if you call me that I'll have to shoot you with something that won't leave anything behind for your brothers to bury."

"I won't," Nick promises. "But only because they'd be sad."

Ron snorts. "Kid, I knew about you before I knew you," he says, "and thankfully, by some act of a higher power, I'm sure, everything that your brothers promised me about you seems to be true." This statement is accompanied by another measured look, but this one makes Nick shiver a little, in a good way. I knew you before I knew you, he hears in it.

"So what's with the car?"

 

"Hm? It's a classic."

 

"It's a piece of junk."

 

"That's the point. The whole idea is to blend in. People don't remember this car because it's a total piece of shit. People don't remember my face because it's boring. People won't remember you because you're young. Time to go a little faster."

 

He pushes harder on the gas and the car picks up speed. A lot of speed. Nick's jerked backwards against his seat. He feels just like he did on the first day of field training on the Force, except his training officer had about thirty years and fifty pounds on Ron. Ron's, like, Brad Pitt in comparison to Tommy. "So fill me in," he shouts over the roar of the engine, "what's the deal with this Lautner guy?"

"I guess we'll find out."

Nick frowns. He looks out the window, watching buildings and pedestrians zoom by. Finally, he asks, "What did you do before you joined MIB?"

"This is all I've ever done." Ron stomps on the brake, angling the car in front of a late model sedan that's pulled to the side of the turnpike. They get out of the Ford.

The guy in the front seat looks human to Nick. Maybe a little nervous. Nick hangs back as Ron leans in by the window. "Let me see your license and registration, please," Ron's saying to the guy, who reaches for his wallet. "Your other license and registration, Taylor."

"Oh, oh, sorry," Lautner says. He doesn't look any older than Nick.

"Where you going in such a hurry?" Ron asks.

"My lady," Nick hears Lautner say, and everyone turns to look in the back seat, where a blond, human-looking woman appears to be in labor. "Taylor, baby, just hold on."

"Oh, no," Nick groans. "Not a pregnant lady in the back of a car again."

"Delivered many babies in your time with the NYPD, Jonas?" Ron asks, looking surprised.

"Three. I was starting to get a reputation."

"Well, I guess we're making it four today. Lautner, out of the car with me; kid, you're in charge of this here."

"Come on, this isn't cool."

"It's easy," Ron says, leading Lautner away by an elbow, "just catch."

Nick groans and opens the back door of the car. The woman barely notices him, she's so busy shrieking and halfway pushing. "Um, breathe, ma'm," Nick says. "Breathe. Little puffy breaths; yeah, like that - oh, shit!"

"Aaaaugh!" Taylor - they're both named Taylor? - screams. Nick's ears pop from the volume, there's a wet and squishy noise, and then he's holding something slimy and wiggly and trying not to start shrieking himself. "Thank you," the woman sighs, and faints.

Nick looks down. It's got tentacles. "Ron!" he shouts. "Why is it like an octopus?"

Lautner runs over and scoops the octopus baby out of his arms. Nick knows he's making a completely terrified face. He looks down at his brand-new suit. It's covered in slime. "Gross," he sighs.

"Mazel tov!" Ron squeezes his shoulder, careful of the muck.

"I don't suppose I can quit," Nick moans.

"Too late for that. Let's go."

"What about the Taylors, and wherever they were going?"

"They're not going any more. I hope. He heard a couple rumors that got him all freaked out; I told him to relax, that we'd check into it." He nudges Nick in the direction of the Ford again, and Nick sighs and gets back into the passenger seat. Ron passes him a handful of crumpled fast-food napkins. "Here."

"I don't know if this will help."

"Slime is part of the job. And before you ask - no, you still can't quit."

"So tell me what's going on."

Ron starts the car. "He was fleeing. Going to take an unauthorized transport back to his home planet. Rumors got him spooked enough that he was willing to take a warp jump with a newborn."

"How do we find what's got him spooked?"

"Check the hot sheets," Ron answers, and yanks the car back out into traffic with a screech. Nick's prepared for it this time, though, and holds on.

Ron's idea of hot sheets turns out to be the kind of tabloids Nick usually ignores in the grocery store. The ones with Bigfoot Was My Husband and JFK Reincarnated? for headlines. "Are you gonna tell me aliens built the pyramids, too?" Nick asks skeptically, paying for the stack of papers.

"Pyramids. Easter Island. Disney World."

Nick snorts. "Figures."

"Come on, we'll go over these back at HQ. I think Lewis wants you to get the full rundown. Which aliens are which, which guns will kill you and which will just knock you out for a little while, various intergalactic customs. That sort of thing."

"It's good there's training."

Nick spends the rest of the day taking notes and having things explained to him by various scientists, while Ron sits at a table and reads the entire stack of tabloids from front to back. Nick gets a glimpse of him from time to time and thinks he might even be circling things.

Then a buzzer sounds, and people start streaming in and out of the room. "Shift change," Joe says, coming up behind Nick. He points at a gigantic clock. "We're on Centaurian time here and technically, it's what passes for the Centaurian weekend. We've got the next forty hours off, but then we're back for twenty straight. That's how it works here. You lucked out, only coming in at sunrise."

"No wonder I always thought you guys worked some bizarre hours," Nick mutters.

"Now you work them, too. Stop thinking about days as morning, noon and night is what I recommend - and think about investing in Red Bull, bro."

"You'll get used to it, or you'll have a psychotic episode," Ron says, appearing out of nowhere and smacking lightly him on the shoulder. "I'll see you on Monday, kid, rest up. We'll start tracking down what had Lautner so freaked out, if Lewis doesn't find something better for us to do."

"Hey, Agent R, why don't you come watch the Phillies-Dodgers game next week at our place?" Joe suggests. He bumps into Nick on purpose, jostling him sideways. "Since we'll be off-shift for it. We'll get pizza. You can bring beer. I bet I could even sweet-talk Kevin into making some cookies, the frozen kind out of a package."

"What?" Kevin asks, bumping into Nick's other side. "You're making me work the oven?"

Nick sighs. "If someone would have told me you guys worked here, I never would have taken the job." He looks at Ron. "Really, you should have warned me."

"Sorry."

"So, the game?" Joe presses.

"You know I shouldn't, Middle Jonas. Fraternization rules and all that."

Joe scoffs. "Like anyone has cared about those since L and M started hooking up. C'mon, it'll be fun. We'll teach you all the best ways to get under Nick's skin." He pokes Nick in the side, and Nick squirms away and glares at him. "See, it's super easy."

"Shut up, Joe." Nick shoves him away and glances at Ron, who's watching them with a look that Nick can't read. "The game will be on regardless, it's up to you if you want to hang out with these morons," Nick tells him, and pushes Joe in the direction of the door. "Come on, Danger, let's go. I need food."

 

*

Nick sleeps straight through the majority of his time off, and is a little disgruntled with himself for wasting the time in bed, but he feels immeasurably better when he gets on the bus with Joe and Kevin. Ron's already at MIB headquarters when they get in ten minutes before the start of shift, and Joe and Kevin start trading data with the Henries while Nick goes to put on his suit.

Ron, in shirtsleeves, is watching something on one of the back-room monitors as Nick approaches. It looks like some sort of surveillance video: a brunette, digging in a garden. Flowers bloom all around her. Nick can't see Ron's face, but his back is ramrod straight, his fingers tight around the curved mouse.

Nick clears his throat, redirecting his gaze to the front of the room while Ron closes the window. "What's up with only brothers running the surveillance up there?" he asks, specifically not asking what Ron was doing. "Does MIB only hire siblings to run it, or what?"

"We've found that the best teams for it are people who're closely related," Ron replies, swiveling the chair around. "Are you ready to go?"

"Where are we going?"

"Lewis got a report of alien abduction out in Pennsylvania. We've been assigned to check it out."

"Is this a normal occurrence?"

"Actually, it is. That's why it's another good one for you to cut your teeth on."

"As long as there's no octopus baby," Nick sighs.

Ron swings his jacket off the back of the chair, chuckling. "Can't promise that, kid."

Nick waves to Joe and Kevin and follows Ron out to the car. "Does the radio work in this thing?" he asks.

"Nope." Ron turns it on and off as if to prove that it's useless. "Cassette deck's a piece of shit, too."

"Does anyone even have cassette tapes anymore?"

"I think I've got some in a box somewhere. Couple mix tapes from high school, all ex-girlfriends and sunny love songs."

Nick loosens his tie a little. "So, about where we're going…" he says finally.

"Just like interviewing a witness." Ron taps his fingers on the steering wheel, then angles himself towards Nick a little. "Let them tell their story, ask a couple questions. Most of the time it's nothing that actually has anything to do with us. Most of the time it's just somebody that needs a person to talk to. So we let them talk, which is usually the one thing that everyone else in their life doesn't let them do, and they feel better about whatever it is that their problem really is."

"Do you wipe their memories?"

"I ask. People usually say yes."

Nick stares at him. "Excuse me?"

"I ask if they would like to forget what happened to them. Most of them say yes." He shrugs. "Half of these folks are repressing something much more traumatic than what they believe happened. I think I'd want to forget, too."

Nick finds himself nodding.

"To sum up," Ron says quietly, "only a handful here and there are anything we really need to worry about - only a couple species out there who'd even care to have anything to do with humans like that, and they sorta stay away now that MIB's in place - but better safe than sorry, I guess is the feeling."

Nick figures he's right. He clears his throat. "So how did you end up working for MIB? Joe and Kev told me how they'd gotten hired, but they said you'd already been there a zillion years by the time they signed up."

"Maybe a zillion in Galactic Standard, but only – well, I guess I'd been an agent twenty years when they came along."

Nick gapes at him. "Twenty?"

"Let me ask you something – how old do you think I am?"

"Definitely not old enough to retire."

"You think I'm fifty years old?" But Nick can see the smile on Ron's face, so he knows he's being messed with.

"Forty-eight?" he estimates. "Jeez, I'm no good at guessing someone's age."

"That's closer," Ron chuckles.

"What's retirement like here anyway? It's not like I got a packet from Human Resources or anything."

Ron slows down for a turn. "Twenty-five years gets you a pension and a head full of new memories, if you want them."

"People ask for that?" Nick finds he's surprised. The sun strikes through his window in a hot beam, and he turns in towards the center of the car to avoid some of it.

"Yeah. Most of them."

"Will you?"

"That's sort of a personal question, don't you think, kid?" Ron asks, but before Nick can apologize, he says, "I don't know yet. I'm not ready to retire. And really, you can't be trying to get rid of me this soon."

"I wasn't," he protests.

Ron chuckles and pats his knee briefly, just once. "I know." Then he guides the car onto a narrow driveway. "All right. Let's see what Mrs. Howey has to say."

Sarah Howey is all bronze and gold, tucked into a wingchair that's tucked into an airy, open home, hidden from the road a ways by a few stands of poplars. She offers them coffee, then curls her hands around her own mug and looks at them steadily. "My own husband thinks I'm crazy," she says. "But I know what happened to me."

"Why don't you tell us what happened." Nick sets his coffee on the table that's between them and Mrs. Howey. "Be as descriptive as you can."

"I want you to know I wasn't afraid," she says firmly. Nick nods, waits for her to continue. "Often, after Steve and I finish dinner, I'll go for a walk in the woods out back. That's where I went that night. It was barely sunset, so still light enough - I could see where I was going, no problem. There's a clearing maybe half a mile out that I walk to and then come back. That night, I went to the clearing."

Ron's taking notes on what Nick assumes is some fancy MIB version of a Palm, stylus moving soundlessly over the screen.

"What happened in the clearing, Mrs. Howey?" Nick asks. He warms her cup from the carafe, adding a splash of milk and a single spoonful of sugar, the way she'd made it up when they'd all sat down.

"Thank you," she murmurs, stirring. "The clearing was the same as ever when I stepped out from the trees. The birds were making as much noise as usual, but then they stopped. I got goosebumps on my arms when they stopped."

Nick sees Ron glance up. "Nature devoid of nature is an odd thing."

"Yes. Then the lights started. It was like the sky got dark too fast, and then these lights started swirling like crazy. All through the clearing. Bigger than fireflies. Around me, whirling at incredible speed. I remember wondering if it would hurt if they collided with me, if I'd be burned."

"But you weren't afraid?"

"It was too beautiful to be frightening, or maybe it was frightening because it was so beautiful, I don't know. My feet were lifted off the ground - it was like the lights encouraged me to lean back. So I did. And the lights held me up. One flew into my mouth and back out again. It was very warm. Then they let me down and lined up, all in a row, and shot off into the sky."

Nick leans forward slightly. "How long were you out there with the lights?"

"I thought it had only been about five minutes, but when I started back to the house just after they left, it was dark. I looked at the clock when I came in and I'd been outside for an hour, much longer than I'm normally gone."

"Was there a feeling of time-stoppage, or a slowdown in time?" Ron asks.

"I felt dreamy and loose when they were swirling around me, so - yes, I'd agree that it felt like time slowed down." Mrs. Howey looks down at her coffee, then sips it. "So what do you think?"

Ron tucks the Palm into his jacket pocket. "We're not at liberty to speculate, ma'm."

She looks disappointed. "But you believe me that something happened."

"Yes." Ron looks at Nick. "Mr. Ford?"

"Sarah, do you want to continue to remember this, or would you like to forget?" Nick touches his pocket with two fingers, making sure he has his sunglasses just in case. "It's up to you."

"I think I'd like to remember."

Ron slides a business card across the table towards her. "If at any time you'd like to add to the history you just gave us, or should you change your mind and no longer want to remember it, there is a number on the card that you're free to call."

She picks up the card and stares at it for a long moment. "Thank you. Could you see yourselves out?"

"Sure. Thanks for the coffee."

Ron is close behind him as they walk out to the car, one hand light on the small of Nick's back. "You okay, kid?"

"I was expecting little green men, medical experiments, that sort of thing."

"That sort of thing is more from the people who are repressing something else, covering it up with a story they saw on television. Mrs. Howey sounds more like she had an encounter with the Prillians - they look like exceedingly oversized fireflies, and they're attracted to things that smell sweet. Did you notice her perfume?"

"Sugary."

"Exactly."

Nick hums and slides into the passenger seat, buckles up. "Was I all right?"

"You did great." Ron flashes him a smile. "Asking how long she was out there, that was good."

"Do the Prillians have that ability to slow down time, or was she just all zoned-out?"

"If they fly fast enough, there is a time flux that can occur. It always seemed like a rare thing to me, but it sounds like it happened. I guess they liked her perfume a lot. But there's no way to tell for sure - enough time had passed that the electron trail was gone." He pats the pocket where the Palm is.

Nick can't stop his chuckle. "Sneaky."

"You know it." Ron aims the car in the direction of the city, taking them out of the quiet woods and back towards chaos.

 

*

It's fifteen minutes before the baseball game when there's a knock on the apartment door. Nick shuffles to answer it, still in his pajamas, thinking it's a little early for the pizzas Joe had ordered online to be delivered. Instead, it's Ron. Nick blinks at him, unsure of what to make of the man not in a dark suit and tie. "Um, I didn't think you'd actually come over."

"Neither did I. But here I am."

Nick shoves a hand though his hair, still staring at Ron and the case of beer he's holding.

"You gonna invite me in, kid?"

"Whoa, Agent R!" Joe cries, thudding into Nick from behind. "Come on in, dude. I think Nick thought you were pizza. We got pepperoni, a veggie, and a Hawaiian, because Kevin likes it." He reaches out and takes the beer from Ron, carries it away into the kitchen.

"You're staring," Ron whispers in Nick's direction.

"You're not wearing the suit. It's sort of weird."

"It's my day off." He steps into the apartment. "You don't like my pizza and beer uniform? Yours isn't any better, Little Jonas."

"Technically, I am not the youngest brother," Nick protests. He takes in Ron's worn jeans and plain navy t-shirt, trying not to be obvious. In regular clothes, Ron doesn't look like he's an INS officer to a thousand aliens. He just looks like a guy. A decent guy. Nick snaps himself out of it.

"There's another one of you?"

"Frankie," Kevin pipes up from the couch. "He's still in high school, though."

"Oh, so I won't have to worry about him for a few more years."

Nick can't help but laugh at that, and he doesn't miss the grin Ron aims in his direction, like he was just trying to make Nick laugh. The doorbell rings again and Nick goes to answer. It's Kevin's girlfriend. Danielle blinks at Ron for a full minute. Nick feels like he's missing something, yet again. "Kevin, are you trying to get me deported?" she asks. Nick can't tell if she's kidding or if she's serious.

"Relax, Miss Deleasa, I'm just here to watch the game," Ron says with a wave. "And eat the pizza I've been promised is coming."

Danielle sits down next to Kevin on the couch, still looking skeptical. Kevin looks up at Nick. "Er, sorry I didn't tell you my girlfriend's from Jupiter?" He says it with a shrug and a goofy smile.

"Um," is all Nick manages.

Ron tugs on Nick's gross t-shirt so that he's forced to sit down on the tiny loveseat opposite the sofa. He slings a casual arm around Nick's shoulders, patting his back. "Just let it sink in there, kid. Remember: yesterday, you knew aliens were real. Today, you know your brother's dating one."

Nick leans his head back and drapes his forearm over his eyes. "Imagine what I'll know tomorrow," he mumbles. Ron laughs so hard that Nick can feel the cushions shaking. He opens his eyes to see Joe and Kevin staring at them. "What?"

"We're just not used to seeing Agent R laugh," Kevin says, trading a glance with Joe that Nick can't pin down.

"I never thought you were the funny one, Nicky," Joe adds. "I'm supposed to be the funny one."

Kevin shakes his head. "I didn't want to believe those rumors about Agent D not having a sense of humor, but Agent R never, ever laughed at anything he said."

"Your predecessor," Ron says smoothly in explanation, but he's rubbing his palm on his thigh and Nick can recognize that for the nervous gesture it is. He'll ask what's up later, he decides, and then the doorbell rings yet again, announcing their pizza.

Joe runs out of the kitchen, yelling, "I got it!"

"Are you paying for it, too?" Nick yells back.

"Shut up, I have cash for once!"

He comes back with pizzas and his girlfriend Demi, who immediately introduces herself to Ron as they all crowd into the kitchen to grab food. "I'm Nick's partner," Ron says, shaking her hand.

Nick's too busy trying to stop Joe from touching the entirety of the pepperoni pizza to process the introduction. "Just because you try to touch all of it doesn't mean you can have it all," he snaps. "We did get two of them, after all. Don't be a child."

"But I like pepperoni."

"Learn to share."

"Yes, Mom," Joe sighs. Nick gives him a stern look and goes back to the television, where a school choir is singing the National Anthem. For the first two innings, he doesn't think about anything except pizza and the fact that the Dodgers are playing completely lousy, much to Joe and Kevin's delight. Then he gets a totally onion-covered bite and realizes he'd never gotten anything to drink.

Demi's in the kitchen, looking skeptically at what pizza is left. "Why are you still in pajamas?" she asks him, putting a slice on her plate. "You have company."

"But it's my Dodgers t-shirt," Nick replies, looking down at his chest automatically, like he's got to make sure he's wearing the right thing. "And the Dodgers are playing."

"You live in New York, dorkface, why do you root for the Dodgers anyway?" Demi rolls her eyes as she says it and pushes past him to go sit on Joe's lap. Nick gets a water from the fridge and grabs another beer for Ron, since he's up anyway. It's not until he's sprawled on the loveseat again, his knee knocking into Ron's, that he notices the way they're spread out in the room. Kevin and Danielle are stretched out together on the couch, taking up the whole thing; Joe and Demi are cuddled up on the floor; and Nick is – there's not exactly a whole lot of space between his body and Ron's.

He's pretty sure his brothers are too stupid to actually come up with this on purpose and that they're too clueless to try and hook Nick up with anybody, much less his new partner. Ron's arm is still draped over the back of the cushions and Nick can feel the heat from his skin through the thin material of his t-shirt. The living room smells like pizza and beer and Demi's perfume. It's way too hot all of a sudden. He can't make himself unaware of the body next to his and his skin prickles in a way that's not entirely uncomfortable, but is definitely awkward.

"Careful, it's going to explode if you keep squeezing it," Ron murmurs.

"What?" Nick gasps.

"Your water."

"Oh." He relaxes his grip on the bottle.

Ron pops the tab on his can. "You don't drink?"

"Not often."

"Bad experience? Religious reasons? Don't like the taste?"

"A combination of those three, I guess," Nick replies with a shrug. He sees Ron take a swallow of his beer. "Why?"

"It's the kind of thing a guy likes to know about his partner."

Nick turns the water bottle between his palms, fiddles with the cap. "I was under the impression that you - that you weren't, um, very into the social thing?"

"Let's be correct here: I wasn't in to spending time with my previous partner. I sort of, uh, checked out mentally a lot at work because of it, I think. And it's not like the surveillance twins ever invited me over to watch a game, but I'm getting the idea that that's what comes with choosing their little brother."

Again with the choosing.

"But I have been here once before, you know," Ron says, and Nick nearly chokes on his mouthful of water, coughing helplessly. Everyone else turns to look. Ron smacks him on the back a few times.

Nick feels himself turning red. "I don't remember that," he mutters.

"Kevin's Tour de France party. You were here."

"I remember the party. I don't remember you, though. Wait - did you make me forget with the neuralizer?"

Ron shakes his head. "Nah, not that time. I'm just not a memorable person. It's sort of the point."

Nick opens his mouth to protest, then blinks. He stares at Ron in shock. "Whoa, back up. What do you mean, 'not that time'?"

"The three hours before you found yourself sitting across from me at Lee Fong's, you don't remember them, do you?"

"No... you wiped my memory then?"

"Ssssssh," Joe hisses.

Nick ignores him. But Ron doesn't, and murmurs softly, "Let's talk about it later, all right?"

"Fine." Nick distracts himself by drinking a third of his water in one long gulp and then the game comes back from commercial. The Dodgers continue to fall further and further behind, much to Nick's disappointment.

"I told you they sucked," Demi says, tipping her head back to look at Nick upside-down. "Soooooooo bad."

Nick scowls. Then Ron touches the back of his neck, lightly, and Nick looks over at him. Ron smiles. He mouths 'I like the Dodgers too', tugs gently at Nick's curls, and Nick finds himself unable to stay mad about baseball.

Ron leaves when the game ends, reminding Nick in a stern voice that he should go to sleep even though it's early. "I know," Nick insists. "It's taking some time, but I'm getting used to it."

"He's right, though," Joe yawns from the floor. "Welcome to MIB."

Nick does as suggested, and goes to bed. But it's still another hour before he can fall asleep.

 

*

On Monday, there's four hours left of the morning before Nick can go home and sleep when the ever-present stack of tabloids yields an article in which a woman upstate reports that an alien stole her husband's skin. Ron holds it up when Nick walks back into Mission Control after fighting the vending machine for a Diet Coke, a big red circle around the block of text. "Look what I found."

"Is it too early in our relationship for 'I hate you' to be an acceptable response to that?" Nick asks, straightening his tie a little more.

Ron just claps him on the shoulder. "Let's go get breakfast, then pay this lady upstate a visit. Don't want to wake her up too early."

Lewis leans out of his office, looking in their direction. "Did you say upstate?" he yells. "Might have something to do with this unauthorized landing I'm getting notices about!"

"I swear that man hears everything," Ron mutters, then gives Lewis a thumbs up.

Lewis just gives them a skeptical look and shuts the door again.

"Is there a opposite shift version of Lewis?" Nick wonders out loud. "Who's in charge when he's not here?"

"As far as I know, there's only Lewis. What do you want to eat?"

"Let's just grab bagels on the way out of town."

Ron double-parks and Nick runs into Ess-a-Bagel, buys at least twice as many as they will probably eat and two coffees to go, and dashes back out again. "It's sort of a long drive?" he offers, as Ron eyes the bag.

"Did you get a pumpernickel?"

"Yes. Cream cheese?"

"If you wouldn't mind."

The finished sandwich is sort of sloppy, but as Nick hands it over on a napkin, Ron looks pleased. "Couldn't have done it better myself," he says, taking a huge bite. Nick grins and makes up his own. They eat without talking for a while as the city starts to fade away behind them; Nick watches out the window as traffic gets lighter and lighter and the sky brightens into full morning.

They're on some country road lined with trees when he glances sideways at Ron. "Can I ask you something?"

 

"Shoot."

 

"The woman you were watching on the surveillance satellite – who is she?"

 

Ron doesn't answer right away, just keeps his eyes on the road, and Nick's stomach twists. Great, he's fucked it all up. This isn't what he was starting to think it was. He hurries to say, "You don't have to tell me."

 

"No, it's all right." Ron's voice is subdued. "It's the woman I probably would have married if not for this job. We were high school sweethearts in Iowa. But I was always going to do this, and I wasn't fair to her, in the way I left. So I check in on her every so often. It – doing that – it reminds me that I'm still a man, if that makes sense? Reminds me that I wasn't always a drone."

 

Nick's not sure what to say, so he keeps quiet. Ron glances over at him. "You got lucky, Nick; people you love already knew about MIB."

 

"That was why you recruited me." He's mostly figured it out by now.

 

"Had to complete the set, after all."

 

Ron turns on to a crappy back road and guides the car over what feels like miles of bumps and potholes. He pulls up in front of a ramshackle house and turns to Nick, one arm still resting on the steering wheel, the other stretched along the back of Nick's seat. "Ready for this?" he asks, and drums his fingers on Nick's shoulder.

"You got this information from a tabloid."

"I get most of my information from tabloids, and it's usually quite correct. Or it's at least good at leading me somewhere. Like here. There's a big goddamned hole in the ground over there, something could have crash-landed."

Nick looks down into the hole as they walk by. It's jagged. It definitely wasn't made with a shovel and some good old manual labor. A couple chickens peck around the outside.

"Just follow my lead, kid," Ron says as he knocks on the door.

"I'm cool."

The redheaded woman who opens the door regards them coolly for a moment. "Can I help you gentlemen?"

"Yes, ma'm. I'm Agent Donner and this is Agent Washington, with the FBI. We'd like a minute of your time, if you would, to talk to you about your visitor." Ron holds up a badge of some sort.

The woman jerks her chin at them. "You here to make fun of me too?"

"No, ma'm. As you can see, my colleague has no sense of humor whatsoever. May we come in?"

"...sure, I guess."

"Thank you."

"You want lemonade?" She holds the door open for them.

"That would be lovely. Agent Washington?"

"Um, yes, please."

They follow her into the house. She motions for them to sit on a faded, flower-print sofa. Nick leaves his sunglasses on, and looks around at the various things hung from the walls. Horseshoes, deer pictures, Americana. A stack of old magazines teeters in one corner. She disappears into another room for a few minutes, then returns with two glasses of lemonade, which she thrusts into their hands. Nick decides he'll wait for Ron to drink first.

"Tell us what happened," Ron says gently.

"The Chief of Police himself came up to the house," she begins, "and took a whole report, wrote down every single thing I said from A to Z and he didn't believe one thing of it. Asked questions like he was making fun of me. Asked like, if David was murdered, how was he able to walk back in the house? I didn't know how to answer that one, you know? But I do know my husband, and that wasn't David."

Ron sips the lemonade, and Nick follows suit. He has to struggle not to make a face. It's not very sweet.

"It was like something was wearing Dave," Mrs. Schwimmer continues. She presses the back of her hand to her mouth and laughs. "God. It sounds so strange. But that's what it was like."

Nick leans forward and picks up a picture of a guy who must be David Schwimmer that's sitting framed on the coffee table. Dave looks pretty ordinary, a hard-working farm man. He angles it so that Ron can see, and Ron nods.

"Go on," Ron says to Mrs. Schwimmer.

"When he came back in after the boom, he wanted sugar water. And not something like Kool-Aid. Like a cup of sugar stirred in a glass of water. And then he did this thing with his face that I can't explain, Agent Donner, and I fainted. When I came to, he was gone."

"Gone."

"Just gone."

Ron puts his sunglasses on and takes the neuralizer from his pocket. It flashes without warning. Nick's glad he didn't bother to take his glasses off. "All right, Mrs. Schwimmer. There was no alien. The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and refracted the light from Venus."

It's probably wrong that Nick finds that bit of nonsensical misinformation hilarious. Swamp gas from a weather balloon. "What about her husband?" he whispers.

"Right. David ran off with an old girlfriend. It's sad, Mrs. S., but it's true. You should go stay with your mom a couple nights - you're better off without the lunkhead. Agent Washington, time to hit the road."

"Right behind you," Nick says. "These deer heads are sort of creeping me out anyway. Thanks for your time, ma'm."

Outside, Ron climbs down into the hole. Nick watches as he scoops some dirt up into a little silver tube, watches Ron's face scrunch up as little lights flash. "Shit, green spectral trail. Kid, you don't know what kind of alien leaves a green spectral trail and craves sugar water, do you?"

"Um, no, I can't say that was covered in my one day of informational training."

"Shit," Ron says again. He pulls out his cell phone and hits a button. "Lewis. There's a bug."

Then he hangs up again.

"Explain," Nick demands, helping Ron up out of the crater.

"Bugs thrive on carnage," Ron begins as they walk back to the Ford. "They consume, infest, destroy, live off the destruction of other species. They'd like to wipe us out, except for how they don't care much about Earth. One of them, though... he's like a cockroach, okay? But a giant one with unlimited strength, and a really, really short temper, and add to that the complete paranoid delusion that everyone you come in contact with is out to get you."

"All in a Schwimmer suit."

"Yeah. In a Schwimmer suit."

Nick slides into the passenger seat. "So what next?"

"Bugs kill," Ron says as he starts the car, "so we watch the morgues. And we try to figure out why he's here. Because there's a reason." Then he backs down the driveway at great speed, screeches through the turn, and hurtles them back towards the city.

"You never told me about why you wiped my memory before the Chinese restaurant," Nick says, loud enough that he knows Ron will hear him over the car.

"Because I took you with me to mess up a guy selling a shitload of alien weapons. I had to know what kind you'd knocked off the cephlapoid earlier that night."

"The guy I ran down with the weird eyes."

"Yes."

"But - but why did you have to make me forget?"

"So that you could go into the testing process blind, kid. If I'd let you remember, and you'd done horribly, I would have had to wipe a hell of a lot more from you than I did." Ron looks over at him, his expression honest. "You understand?"

Nick nods. It makes sense. "Yeah. I get it."

"All right. You want to get lunch before we both go home and pass out for the next twelve hours straight?"

He looks at the clock in surprise. It's past eleven. Technically, they should have been done at ten-thirty. Nick is starting to understand that 'technically' doesn't apply very often at MIB. "We could finish off those bagels, but... yes, please."

It's still a long ride back to the city, and Nick finds himself relaxing almost completely in Ron's company. They manage to make conversation the whole time - mostly Ron asking questions about Nick's time with the NYPD, about college at Northwestern, about growing up with Joe and Kevin. Nick finds himself talking more than he's talked to anyone in months.

It's nice. It feels good to find himself dry-mouthed from telling a dozen stories by the time they reach the city. But instead of driving to the burger joint that they've been frequenting near HQ, Ron squeezes the Ford into a parking spot it shouldn't legitimately have fit in, and nods at the coffee shop they're now in front of. "We're here."

"This is going to sound all wrong, but I am totally turned on by your parallel parking abilities," Nick says.

Ron taps his fingers on the steering wheel and grins. His hand strays towards Nick's shoulder, and Nick notices, but Ron pulls back at the last second. "It's a gift, kid. Let's eat."

Nick's halfway through his sandwich when both of their cells beep with a notification that the surveillance net is set to go. "That was awfully quick," Nick says, and Ron shrugs.

"Lewis probably put the Wonder Twins on it right away. If there's any sort of electronic communication, or a hard-line phone conversation, or even a conversation caught on a camera somewhere, if it was about a strange body in a morgue, we''ll know it."

"More alien technology?" Nick swipes one of Ron's taro chips.

"Do you really think that the phone companies are run by humans?"

"Ah," Nick murmurs. "That explains why Kevin and Joe won't get a landline."

Ron grins and licks mustard off the side of his hand. "No, that's because landlines are a thing of the past. But I bet they wouldn't let you get cable internet, either."

"Actually, they already had some crazy wireless setup by the time I moved in." He snags another chip and dips it into the hummus on Ron's plate. "I never bothered to ask. This hummus is amazing."

"You're eating my chips."

Nick raises an eyebrow. "Your point being?"

"I wanted those."

"I'll buy you some from a bodega on my way in tomorrow or something."

"I'm gonna hold you to that, Jonas."

 

*

He's dead tired, but he goes for a run when he gets home, instead of passing out immediately like Joe and Kevin both seem to have done. Standing in the quiet kitchen drinking a glass of water, his eyes half-shut to avoid the bright edges of light that beat around the drawn shades on the windows, Nick thinks about his partner.

He's not entirely sure what to make of Ron: the stated anti-social behaviors at odds with the normal guy who'd shown up here for pizza and baseball; the comment about checking out mentally at work not matching up with the fact that Rom seems like he really puts some thought into each strange situation they find themselves in.

"He seems to like you a lot more than he ever liked Agent D," Kevin had said last night when Nick had been rinsing the coffee pot at HQ. "Like, genuinely, Nicky. There was never that offhand banter with Agent D - not with anyone here, really, except Lewis. And I think him and Lewis have been like that always. I don't know how to explain it. He's just... less stiff when you're around."

"Um," Nick had replied, because he hadn't known what he should even think about that, much less actually say to Kevin.

Kevin had grinned at him. "It's good. It's a good thing. Keep doing what you're doing."

Nick sighs, finishes his water, and sets the glass upside-down in the drainer to dry, and goes to bed. Later, he figures he was asleep before his head actually found the pillow, judging from the fact that he'd missed it completely. He shoves it back under his neck and lays there for a while, thinking idly about jerking off, but the walls in this place are thin, and he's not in the mood for Joe's mocking. It's more a vague idea than an actual need, anyway; he's just still sleepy, and the bed is soft and warm. He's struck by the thought that he wouldn't mind, for the first time since he moved in, having someone else in this bed with him.

It's a train of thought he doesn't particularly care to board right now, so he heaves a sigh and drags himself out of the warm wrap of blankets and to the couch. It's a worn, lumpy couch that Kevin had gotten for forty bucks from the previous tenants. Nick drags a blanket up to his chin and watches CNN.

He's been sacked out there for a good hour when a greasy paper bag is dropped on his chest, smelling like French fries. "Cheeseburgers," Joe says, leaning over him. "Cheeseburgers, Nicholas."

 

"You got me cheeseburgers?" Nick opens one eye cautiously. "What do you want?"

 

Trading in fast-food is usually how Joe cons Nick into sharing his clothes, his shoes, his accessories, and, once, the car he still has at their parents' house in New Jersey. Nick's still not entirely sure how he'd given in to that one; maybe it had been the fact that he'd been halfway across the country at the time and was more worried about his relationship with Miley than the car he saw twice a year.

 

"I just want to talk," Joe says, tumbling over the back of the couch to sit cross-legged next to him.

 

Nick opens the bag and passes Joe one of the paper-wrapped burgers. Still skeptical, he asks, "About what?"

 

"Your crush on Agent R," Joe mumbles, so fast it takes Nick a couple seconds to process.

 

He opens and closes his mouth a few times, completely clueless about how to respond, and finally takes a bite of his cheeseburger so he can avoid talking for at least another minute. Joe continues to eat but also continues to glance at Nick with a raised eyebrow every other bite.

 

"We have to go to work in a few hours," Nick says finally, "and I don't want to talk about it."

 

"Except you totally do."

 

"Joe-"

 

"I'm not stupid," Joe says quietly. "They never would have recruited me if I was. Just because I didn't go to college like you did doesn't make me any less smart or intuitive, or you know, blind to how hard you're falling for him. Unless – hell, Nick, did you not even realize it until right now?"

 

There's ketchup on Nick's thumb. He looks at it for a moment before licking it off. Joe keeps talking. "And it's not like I didn't pretty much figure out before now that you're not entirely straight, you know. Grand romance with Miley notwithstanding or whatever. I'm not gonna judge you, bro."

 

"Stop talking," Nick says. These are all too many words coming out of Joe's mouth.

 

Joe digs another cheeseburger out of the bag and just looks at him.

 

"Even if I did, it wouldn't matter," Nick allows himself to say, confirming without actual confirmation. Joe's face still twitches into that I knew it! look, though, and Nick frowns at him. He repeats firmly, "It wouldn't matter, Joe."

 

"Because you work together? Dude, haven't you figured out yet that MIB isn't like working anywhere else? It's not just a job. It's basically your life. It's your - what would Mom call it – oh, support network."

 

Nick groans and sinks down further underneath the blanket. "Please tell me that you didn't just mention our mother and how it's cool for me to hook up with my partner all in the same pep talk."

"I did."

 

"Joe."

 

"Nick," Joe mimics, grinning at him.

 

"It would be a complete mess," Nick insists. "The chances of the – it being mutual are like, one percent."

 

"Wrong. At least eighty."

 

Nick looks at his brother sharply, knowing his expression is ugly. Joe crumples up his wrappers and sticks them back into the bag before saying quietly, "I know it seems sudden. But the way he looks at you… More people should feel that. The world would be a better place." Then he gets up from the couch, taking the garbage with him, and leaves the room.

 

Nick stares at the blank television and tries to repress everything he's feeling, ignore all the things running through his head. His stomach twists and he squeezes at the blanket. He hears Joe moving around in the kitchen, and then Joe walks through the room again, towards his bedroom.

 

"Think about it," Joe says over his shoulder. "Everybody needs somebody, especially in our line of work."

 

Nick flips him off and tries to hide under the blanket, but his cell picks that moment to ring. "Hello?"

 

"It's me, kid. We're starting early today, surveillance picked up on a couple strange stiffs at the coroner's office. Might be the bug. Get ready and I'll pick you up."

 

"Ugh, fine," he groans, and hangs up.

 

Ten minutes later, he's getting into the Ford. Ron looks messily unshaven but mostly awake. He points at the cupholder. "I got your favorite."

 

Nick thinks about how he'd been about to tell Ron he was the last person Nick had wanted to see for at least another five hours, but now wants to profess his undying love as thanks for the huge iced coffee. He settles for holding the cup close and drinking almost half of it without taking a breath, watching Ron out of the corner of his eye as he does. Ron's fingers dance over the steering wheel like he's totally overcaffienated, which wouldn't be a surprise. "Did you sleep at all?" Nick asks finally.

 

"I did."

 

"Enough?"

 

Ron looks over, the corners of his mouth quirking up. "You worried about me?"

 

"Don't want you to have a psychotic break or anything," Nick replies, biting on the straw. Then he wills his pulse to stop racing and adds, "Sorry if you think it's too early in our relationship for me to care."

 

It comes out less tentative than he feels, which is good, and even better is the look on Ron's face. "No, kid," he murmurs, and the car speeds up a little, "it's not."

Nick hides his smile by taking another long drink of his coffee.

 

Then the car stops. "Coroner's office," Ron says.

 

"Right."

 

They walk into the building with purpose, pushing through the 'Authorized Personnel Only' doors without missing a step. There's a dark-haired woman in blue scrubs seated at a desk, dictating a report. She looks vaguely familiar to Nick, but he can't quite place her. She stares at them in surprise when they stop in front of her.

"I'm Dr. Bannister, Department of Public Health," Ron says. "This is my associate, Dr. Lincoln. Have you seen anything unusual lately, ma'm?"

"I'd say so," she replies. "I've got a triple homicide cooling right now."

"You don't say?"

"The first body was pretty normal, except he was broken in half." She gets up from behind the desk and walks towards the rows of drawers. "But when I opened up the other two, well... let's just say I've been waiting for someone to come looking for these. I'll show you."

She opens one of the doors and slides out the drawer. Nick takes a half-step backwards, but he's stopped by Ron's hand, discreet on his lower back, making him stay where he is. The coroner doesn't seem to notice. "There's a skeletal structure unlike any I've ever seen before," she says, pulling the sheet back from the corpse's head. The body is so tall that his feet are still inside the drawer.

"I'll have a look at this one," Ron says. "Dr. Lincoln, why don't you and Dr. Gomez check out the other body?"

"This way," Dr. Gomez tells him. Nick is again struck by the feeling that he's seen her before.

"This one's even stranger," she continues, walking to an autopsy table. "I did a full laparotomy - started with the stomach, but we can start with the gastroesophageal junction, whichever you prefer."

"Um, however you did it will be fine." Nick takes the rubber glove she offers him. The body on the table looks like an ordinary, elderly human male. Something bumps his leg and he looks down. An orange-colored cat is rubbing itself against his leg, getting hair all over the lower half of his slacks. "City health department lets you bring your cat to work?"

"Came in with the body. Won't leave his side. You can go ahead." Dr. Gomez gestures at the incision along the abdomen. Nick tries to hide his wince and tentatively pushes in his gloved hand as Dr. Gomez says, "You know, you look sort of familiar to me."

"You kinda do, too." He pretends to move his hand around. He has no idea what he's supposed to be feeling for. This might be the grossest thing he's ever done, and that's including all the baby deliveries. He's definitely not buying Ron any sort of snack after this. "Feels all right to me," he guesses.

Dr. Gomez gapes at him, blinking rapidly. "His internal organs are all missing."

"Well, of course," he says hurriedly, wondering how he can hurt Ron in a way that will look like an accident.

"You want to know what I think? But don't tell Dr. Bannister, he looks sort of stressed out." Dr. Gomez leans in, her voice dropping to a whisper. "See, I don't think this body is a real body. I think it's some kind of transport unit for something else altogether."

"You do?" Nick feels completely out of his depth. He glances over his shoulder towards Ron, but Ron seems engrossed in the other victim.

"The question is, what is it transporting?" she asks, her face a mask of confusion. "Am I freaking out you? I'm sorry if I'm freaking you out."

"No, no, um, sounds good -"

"Dr. Lincoln," Ron calls.

Nick excuses himself and hurries over to Ron, flinging the rubber glove away. "What do you think?" Ron asks.

"I think Dr. Gomez thinks there are aliens," Nick says seriously.

"About the body."

"This is like, my second week of work, dude. It's weird? That's all I got."

Ron gestures down at the body in front of him. "Do you recognize this guy?"

Nick starts to say no, but then takes a closer look. "My first day, wasn't there a guy that looked like this guy at one of the customs counters?"

"Yes. What do you think killed him?"

"How am I supposed to know that?" Nick asks, incredulous.

"Dr. Lincoln!" Dr. Gomez is calling, "Dr. Lincoln!"

"Your girlfriend needs you," Ron intones, and Nick grimaces at him.

"Look at this," she says when Nick goes back to the body without a stomach. She points to the guy's ear, where there are four little metal prong-type things, like the way bottom of a staple looks when it's been crimped. He reaches out to touch them, and there's a sudden hiss and stream of air, and the guy's entire face lifts up and off.

"What is this, the Terminator movies?" Nick mutters. They both lean in further. The cranium is filled with electrical things, and a tiny, tiny alien is attached to them. Dr. Gomez gasps and grabs his arm, hard.

The tiny alien moves. Nick waves his free arm behind him, trying to get Ron's attention. "Must..." the tiny alien gasps, panting for breath. "To prevent... contest..."

It sounds like it's dying. It probably is dying. Nick can't help but stare.

"To prevent..."

"Struggle? War?" Dr. Gomez suggests.

"War... the galaxy is on Orion's..." It heaves again. "Starts with b... help."

"Um, bed? Back?" Nick guesses. "Belt? Orion's belt?"

"Yes, Orion's belt," it breathes, and the head falls to the side and it doesn't move again. One by one, the tiny lights on the electrical things go out.

"What the heck," Nick says, and walks over to Ron. "Doctor, um, Doctor -"

"Bannister."

"Bannister!" He pulls Ron over to the tiny alien.

"Wait," Dr. Gomez says sharply. She looks back and forth between them. "Hey. You guys aren't really from the Department of Health, are you?"

Ron looks down at the tiny, dead alien and ignores Dr. Gomez. "Shit. The Arquillians are not going to like this. He was one of the royal family, I'm pretty damned sure. I've got to call Lewis."

Dr. Gomez points her finger at them. "I knew it! I knew this guy was an alien from the start. And you guys are from some government agency trying to keep it a secret, like Roswell."

"Roswell was a weather balloon, ma'm," Ron replies, slipping on his sunglasses. Nick follows suit. Dr. Gomez keeps talking about aliens and coverups until the neuralizer flashes.

"He said to prevent war, the galaxy is on Orion's belt." Nick leans in close to murmur it into Ron's ear so that Dr. Gomez, in her suggestive state, won't hear. He has to tell Ron before he forgets.

Ron looks at him evenly. "'Galaxy on Orion's belt' doesn't make sense, kid."

"That's what came out of the mouth of the tiny dude in the bigger dude's head," Nick insists, pointing.

Dr. Gomez sways a little and then blinks at them. "Whoever you guys are, I need you to show some I.D. if you're gonna be in the morgue."

"We're on our way out," Ron assures her. "Thank you." His fingers curl around Nick's elbow and stay there until they're outside, like he thinks Nick is going to run.

"I'm not going to bolt," Nick says when they're out. He blinks up at the bright afternoon sun. "I'm in this, all right?"

"Oh." Ron drops his hand. "Sorry. Special Services will be here any minute to clean this up, give Dr. Gomez a new afternoon. They'll take the aliens back to MIB. Lewis will have the awesome task of notifying the Arquillians that their sub-prince has been murdered."

"So it's murder."

"Yeah. That was definitely the work of a bug in a Schwimmer suit."

Nick snorts, pressing his hand to his mouth. "That shouldn't be funny, but it totally is."

Ron just smirks at him. Seconds later, the black Special Services truck is pulling up in front of them. "Two dead aliens and a Deputy Medical Examiner who needs some help remembering what she's done so far today," Ron tells the techs. "Thanks, guys."

*

At HQ, Nick is stirring a packet of sweetener into his coffee when Lewis comes up next to him. "Don't you ever sleep?" Nick asks.

"Not often."

"Huh."

Lewis aims a remote at the screen in front of them, bringing up a picture of several stars in a row. He points at one of them. "So here's Orion. And here's Orion's belt."

"That's what the tiny alien said," Nick replies. "'To prevent war, the Galaxy is on Orion's belt'."

"Did you skip astronomy, buddy? There are no galaxies on Orion's belt. It's just these three stars," and he waves the remote back and forth like Nick was missing the picture part of this lesson, "and galaxies are made up of billions of stars. Are you sure that's what he said?"

"Nick's got a good memory for stuff like that," Kevin interjects.

Nick nods. "I know what I heard."

"All right. Then it's up to you and Agent R to figure it out."

Ron's looking at tabloids again. Nick starts to pull up a chair, but Lewis calls out to them. "Guys. Look at this." He points at the surveillance screen.

"They're all leaving," Ron murmurs. "What is this?"

"Looks like - twelve have jumped in the last hour," Lewis says. "I guess the Taylors were just the first."

Nick looks at the information scrolling over the screen. "At that rate, next week there won't be any aliens left. What do they all know that we don't?"

"Joe, get me Lem Sat 4 with a proton induction thermoscan, please," Lewis says. Joe pushes some buttons. It's a view of the Earth. There's nothing else in the frame. "Let's try 18." Still nothing. "Hm. Try the four thousand."

Lem Sat 4000 shows an alien ship advancing towards Earth.

Next to Nick, Lewis puts his head in his hands. "That's an Arquillian battle cruiser, and we've got a dead Arquillian prince, and why in the name of God did I leave London to take this job?"

Some sort of radio transmission starts, sounding strange and garbled to Nick's ears, but Lewis just tells Kevin to start the translator. Then he turns to Ron. "Take the rookie and check out Rosenberg's jewelry store. We'll see what we can come up with here."

"Rosenberg?" Nick whispers to Ron as they walk quickly towards the exit.

"The big guy with the little guy in his head."

"Oh."

"And Ron!" Lewis shouts from behind them. "Give the kid a weapon!"

"You got it." Ron veers to the right, through a set of doors, and Nick half-jogs to keep up, reminded of his first time in this building. Ron stops in front of a cabinet and slides open the doors. He holds up a gun the size of an M-16. "Series 4 de-atomizer."

"Awesome."

"It's mine. Here's yours." He hands Nick a shiny something no bigger than a water gun. "Noisy cricket."

Nick stares at him. "Are you messing with me?"

"I'll mess with you later if you want, but for now, the noisy cricket is much more powerful than it appears." Ron takes off again, but this time Nick's prepared, and easily falls into step beside him. "Here, you can drive," Ron says, tossing him the keys. "It's Independence Day, baby."

"A gun and keys? I can't begin to process," Nick says dryly.

"Just get us there in one piece."

He does, and pulls up snug behind a crappy-looking exterminator's truck that is in the middle of being towed. The jewelry store is a mess, the front door completely busted in and all the cases smashed. "Shit," Nick mutters. "Thieves sure heard he was dead quick."

"Can't be thieves," Ron says. "The jewelry's all still here. Who breaks in and doesn't steal the jewelry?"

They stare at each other for a second and Nick knows they're thinking the same thing. Then there's a loud bang and they both turn towards the street at the same time, Nick raising his weapon. "Move, Ron," he shouts, and fires. The window explodes and he stumbles backwards. "Whoa, noisy cricket," he gasps, and gets up in time to see a weird-looking guy hobbling strangely towards the exterminator's truck. A guy that looks like he's wearing a Schwimmer suit. "It's the bug!"

"No shit it's the bug," Ron gasps from where he'd landed on the floor when Nick blew out the window. Nick looks down to make sure Ron's not dying before leaping over him and taking off after the bug. Having shot the tow truck driver, it's thrown itself into the truck and is flooring it down the street. Nick aims, fires, misses, and is once again thrown backwards by the force of the gun.

"Shit, stop shooting in public," Ron hisses, hauling Nick up from the pavement.

"He's getting away! And you haven't forgotten about the alien battle cruiser just floating above us, have you?"

"Look, Nick - there's always an alien battle cruiser or a Korilian death ray or an intergalactic plague about to wipe out life on this planet." Ron has totally invaded Nick's personal bubble, his breath warm on Nick's face. Nick knows he shouldn't like it as much as he does. Ron's hand lands on his hip, and Nick's body starts thinking things that are entirely inappropriate for public situations, much less potentially Earth-destroying ones.

He forces himself to meet Ron's gaze, because Ron's not done talking. "Nick. The only way people can get on with their happy lives is they do. Not. Know. About. It. Don't you remember what I said when I recruited you? About how one person is smart, but a mob is just a mess?"

Nick glances around and sees all the people standing on the street, staring at them, more coming out of buildings to see what the commotion is. "I remember," he whispers. "I'm sorry."

Ron's hand moves away, but not before his fingers drift across the inside of Nick's wrist. "Don't be sorry. Just don't fuck up. Look, don't worry about the bug, okay? He's not leaving town. I think we've got his ship."

He nods towards the beat-up exterminator's truck that the tow had been here for. Nick sees now that the top is completely ripped open, and that there's a flying saucer sticking up from inside. Like the bug had made it fit.

"Now, c'mon, let's deal with these people," Ron says, pulling out his cell to call for a containment crew.

By the time they get everyone who might have seen anything all rounded up into a group, the Special Services truck is careening around the corner. Nick feels like crap as he slides into the Ford and watches the crowd be collectively mind-wiped. "I'm sorry I messed up," he says again.

"I should have warned you from the start that MIB field training is a little less 'training' and a little more 'do whatever the hell you think you should do' than the NYPD," Ron replies, looking at him calmly. "You didn't do anything worse than I would have expected from you, kid, if that makes you feel any better."

Nick slumps down in the seat, sighing. Then he feels Ron's fingers slide through the hair at the nape of his neck, and Ron is saying quietly, "And I should have warned you that adrenaline gets my blood pumping, and that if I had a type these days, you'd be it."

"What?" Nick blinks at him, shocked.

Ron's eyes are dark and unreadable, his fingers still in Nick's hair. "But if I kiss you right now, we'll have to wipe everybody's memory all over again."

"Then find someplace else we can go." Nick wants it; suddenly, sharply and like a needle's sting, he wants Ron's mouth on his, he wants to close his eyes and forget all his new knowledge except for this man in front of him.

"We can't. Just wait. The battle cruiser," Ron says firmly, like he's reminding them both. "Lewis says that the Arquillians are demanding we hand over the galaxy, and they're holding MIB personally responsible. So before we do anything, we need help, a professional. Somebody with years of experience in intergalactic politics."

"Who's that?"

"Start the car, kid, I'll direct you to where he hangs out. If he hasn't left town like everyone else."

The professional hangs out in a dimly-lit restaurant, it turns out, and Nick and Ron sit together on one side of a small booth and wait for a server to fetch the guy. Underneath the table, the side of Ron's hand presses against the side of Nick's thigh.

After a minute, a pale-faced guy with straggly white hair approaches. He definitely looks like he's not from this planet. He's holding a pug that's wearing an "I <3 NY" hoodie. Nick wasn't aware that there were hoodies for dogs. "Hey," he says to the pale-faced guy.

"Not him," the pug says. Nick feels his jaw drop. "Me."

"Busy, Frank?" Ron asks.

"I really can't talk, my flight's leaving in -"

Ron cuts him off. "Arquillians and bugs, Frank. Tell me what you know."

"Nothing."

"Bullshit."

"Nothing!"

"Tell me, or you're going to the pound, and then you're never getting off this planet. Maybe some little kid will come by, want to adopt you. Little kids, Frank."

"I hate kids," the pug spits. "Rosenberg wasn't some two-bit Arquillian. He was the guardian of the whole galaxy. They thought he'd be safe on Earth."

"The bug had other plans."

"You're telling me. The galaxy is the best source for subatomic energy in the universe. If the bugs get their slimy claws on it, kiss the Arquillians good-bye. Hell, maybe even kiss this rathole goodbye."

"What about the belt?" Nick asks. "Orion's belt. Rosenberg said the galaxy was on Orion's belt."

"Beats me."

Ron leans forward. "Little kids. With sticky hands. And actual food that's meant for dogs. It comes in a can, Frank, and it smells. No more candy, no more hot dogs. I can make it happen."

"He will," Nick adds.

The pug sighs. "It's here, all right? The galaxy is here."

"The galaxy is hundreds of millions of planets and stars," Nick says. "How is it here?"

"Humans," the pug groans in disgust. "When will you learn that size doesn't matter? Just because something's important doesn't mean it's not very small."

"How small?" Ron demands.

"Tiny. Like a marble, maybe. Or a jewel." Frank looks at his human. "Time for walks."

They get up and leave. Ron doesn't protest, so Nick doesn't protest either. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Ron asks him.

Nick drums his fingers on the table and tries not to look at Ron's mouth. "Wait, wasn't there a picture of his cat in his store? Wearing a necklace?"

"A collar. With something on it."

"Like a jewel."

"How many people put jeweled collars on their cats?"

"Filthy rich folks and Arquillian princes, I guess." Nick slides out of the booth after Ron. "The cat was at the morgue."

"Then we go to the morgue too, and hope we get there before the bug."

But the morgue is dead silent and empty. Ron calls in a physical surveillance team, has them stake the place out. "Call us the second there's anything at all," he instructs them.

Nick listens from the car, and knows his gaze is heavy on Ron when he slides back into the passenger seat. "Why are you leaving a team?"

"Because I don't know how long it will be until the bug shows up again, and I don't want to be sitting here for hours."

"So where are we going?"

"We're getting you out of that suit," Ron murmurs, his voice rough. Nick can see the shadows of a beard beginning on his face. "Christ, I shouldn't even be thinking this, but..."

"I want to."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"You can't go back from this."

"Who said I wanted to?" What Nick wants is to lean in, put his hand on Ron's chest, kiss him hard and maybe with teeth, but the surveillance team is twenty feet away. There's no privacy even in the car. "You can't go back either," he points out.

Something crosses Ron's face, something quick and fragile that looks like it hurts. And then it's gone and he's saying, "No, Nicky, I never could."

Nick starts the car and pulls away from the curb, trying to get his thoughts in order and figure out what he wants to say. Finally, he goes with, "There was a girl in college. It was serious. It was really serious. I thought she would move out here with me, but she didn't. And there hasn't hardly been anyone else since then. There weren't a whole lot of people before, either."

"The bug better not show up at the morgue for at least an hour. You gonna be able to drive fast enough to get us to my apartment?"

Ron directs him to a tiny fourth-floor walk-up not too far from HQ. Nick barely notices that it's plain and white and sparse before Ron's hands are on his hips, fingers threading through Nick's belt loops. The first kiss is awkward, a back-and-forth of where to angle noses and chins, but then Nick goes one way and Ron goes the other, and yes, perfect the way Ron's tonguing his bottom lip, like he's tasting. Or experimenting. Nick tries to slide closer.

"What is it about you that I can't shut myself away from?" Ron murmurs into his neck, the words vibrating against Nick's skin. "I swear I wasn't recruiting you into my bed."

Nick's body is so, so happy that he's being touched by someone other than himself that he just laughs. "It's so wrong, but I think I would have been okay with that."

Ron nips at his jaw and chuckles, and thumps them down onto the couch, Nick on his ass in the middle of it with each of Ron's knees on either side of his thighs. Nick tips his head up and pulls Ron's head down for another kiss, pleasure fizzing through him when Ron immediately parts his lips and lets Nick's tongue inside.

It's as far as they get. Their phones start to chime within seconds of each other, and Nick has to bite back a groan as Ron shifts his hips to get his phone from his pants pocket, pressing them closer together for too little time. Ron puts a hand over his mouth and flips open the cell. "Yes?" He listens for a moment. "Thanks." Then he climbs off of Nick, and Nick gets up as well.

"The bug?"

"The bug."

Nick takes a deep breath. They straighten their clothes as they run down to the car. Nick's feeling a strange combination of giddiness and dread. Outside the morgue, the surveillance team is conferring with Lewis via radio. "Sat in his truck for five minutes doing something we couldn't see, but there was a lot of banging, then went inside about two minutes ago," the team leader tells them.

Ron gets his Series Four and they cross the street.

There's no one at the front desk. Something drips from the ceiling. Ron looks, Nick doesn't. "Better off not seeing that, kid," Ron says. They push through the swinging doors. Dr. Gomez is standing with a gurney in front of her. There's no one else in sight.

"Ma'm," Ron says, not even bothering to hide his gun. "There was a cat that came in with a body earlier, perhaps you've seen it?"

"Yes, that's right," she says, pointing very deliberately down at the gurney, her eyes wide and terrified. Nick takes a small step backwards, quickly checking the exits and angles.

"But I only just arrived. I'm not sure where the cat is right now." She points again, and then there's a clatter and a loud hiss, and the cat in question leaps from somewhere higher up down onto the gurney. Nick raises his weapon as the gurney flips over, the bug in the Schwimmer suit grabbing Dr. Gomez around the neck, holding a gun to her cheek.

"Bad move, cockroach," Ron says. "Let her go."

The bug walks backwards, dragging Dr. Gomez along with him, and Nick and Ron move in step towards them. "Listen to me, you piece of shit," Ron snaps.

"No, you listen. Compared to you humans, I'm on the top rung of the evolutionary ladder. Ever pull the wings off a fly? Care to see the fly get even?"

Nick's pretty sure this alien isn't making much sense. "How far you think you can get without your ship, huh, asshole?" he asks the bug.

"Pretty far," the bug says, and then he grabs Dr. Gomez around the waist and leaps through the window behind him.

"Fuck," Ron swears. They can't make it out the window, though, and have to go back through the building. They're outside just in time to see the bug and Dr. Gomez fleeing in a stolen taxi, the driver running after it as they speed away.

"He's not leaving the planet in a taxi," Ron says to Nick, catching his arm before he can even think to run after it on foot. "We need to go back to headquarters."

Lewis is even paler than ever when they enter the control room, standing in front of the surveillance screen. Ron grabs one of the techs by her elbow. "Set up a containment net around Manhattan. If it's not human, it doesn't leave. Lewis, where we at?"

"Same message. Deliver the galaxy." But he barely finishes before an alarm starts to drone. "What the hell is it now?"

"Protonic fusion detection," Kevin calls out, and the screen switches to show the Arquillian battle cruiser. Red-orange things start to glow on it. Nick's pretty sure that even a random dude off the street would call it hostile. The red-orange bits glow brighter and then it fires some sort of beam at Earth.

"Why are they shooting at us?"

"Battle rules, kid," Lewis says. "First we get an ultimatum, then a warning shot, then then we get a galactic standard week to respond."

"And how long is that?" Judging from the expressions on Lewis and Ron's face, not to mention Joe and Kevin's, it can't be very long at all.

"An hour," Ron answers.

"An hour? Then what?"

The alarm drones again, and a new translation appears on the screen. "Deliver the galaxy or Earth will be destroyed," Nick reads out loud.

"There's your answer," Lewis says.

"It's a freaking marble."

Ron's hand lands on his shoulder. "It's not. It's an energy source, and to keep the bugs from getting it, the Arquillians will destroy the it, and us, no question about it." He looks at Lewis. "Are there any ships left in a hundred miles?"

"Frank took the last one."

"Atlantic City?"

"They're gone, too."

Nick looks from the screen, to his brothers, to Ron and Lewis, who continue discussing the bug's flight options even as Ron's hand stays on Nick's shoulder. Then he looks the other direction, at the mural stretching over the customs area. It's a stylized version of first contact, the World's Fair observation towers.

Ships.

"Hey," he says, elbowing Ron. "Hey!" He points to the mural. "Do those still work?"

There's a split second where the entire room stares at them, and then Lewis roars, "Go, goddamnit, go!" and Nick doesn't think he's ever run out of a place so fast in his life.

"You're taking the tunnel?" he asks Ron in the car.

"You know a better way to Queens?"

"We'll never get there in time. It's gonna be packed."

Ron flashes a grin. "Trust me on this, Nick." He cranks the wheel completely to the right and does a U-turn into the tunnel, and Nick gapes at the other cars sliding out of their way. "Now hit the red button."

"You told me never, ever to touch the red button."

"Now, kid, now, do it now!"

Nick pushes the button and Ron drives the car up the wall onto the roof of the tunnel. It feels like craziest roller coaster Nick has ever been on in his life. He puts his hand down on the roof of the car to brace himself and finds his palm is slick with sweat.

"Time?" Ron yells.

"Twenty-six - no, twenty-five minutes!"

"When we finish saving the planet, you're still having sex with me, right?"

Nick cranes his neck to look at Ron. He hasn't taken his eyes off the tunnel, but he's grinning. Nick feels his whole body flush even more. "Yes! If we do this."

Ron turns the music up loud for the last few hundred feet, and then there's another insane lurch as Ron screeches the car back down and onto pavement, causing a dozen other cars to swerve out of the way. The last few blocks feel like forever. As they pull up to the Unisphere, Nick can see the bug climbing one of the ship-poles, dragging Dr. Gomez along with him. He wonders if she's still alive. Ten minutes.

Ron reaches into the back of the car and pulls out another Series Four. "Be careful," he tells Nick, handing it over.

"You, too."

They spare a second to simply look at one another, and then Ron is shoving open the car door. "Let's do this."

Nick hears Dr. Gomez shout something, then sees the bug fling her away. She appears to land safely in a tree. The bug goes up into the ship, and before they can get to the bottom of the structure, it's lifting up and away.

"Shit, shoot it down!" Ron yells.

"What?"

"Shoot it! One, two, three!"

They both aim and fire. From the flames that erupt, both hits seem to be direct. Somehow, Nick's not entirely sure of the mechanics, the saucer boomerangs around and starts descending back towards them. It crashes through the giant globe, and the sharp edge cuts up mounds of turf as it slides to a stop. Ten feet in front of them. "Fuck, that didn't make sense," Nick breathes, and Ron snorts.

A ramp falls from the ship with a clunk, and the bug staggers down it, roaring about their idiocy and that he's won. Great clouds of smoke and steam billow out after him. "Sure don't look like you won," Nick yells, gesturing towards the ship with his gun. "Looks more like you crashed and burned."

"You don't seem to have gotten the point," the bug growls. His Schwimmer suit looks even worse than before. Nick figures that's what happens when you're wearing a dead guy. "You don't even matter. In fact, in a few seconds, you won't even be matter."

"You're under arrest for violating the Tycho Treaty," Ron snaps. "Specifically sections eight-point-nine, twelve-point-five, and every single one of the laws about kidnapping humans for a mid-flight snack."

Nick keeps his weapon pointed at the bug and says, "So hand over whatever galaxy you're carrying and step away from your busted-up, piece-of-crap vehicle and put your hands on your head."

The bug laughs and keeps walking towards them. "Oh, I'll put my hands on my head."

He does, and rips away the skin of the corpse, revealing his true cockroach form. It's ten feet tall, with mouth pincers and arm claws and might be the grossest thing Nick has ever seen, and Nick had already put his hand in a dead guy today. The mouth pincers flick out and grab their guns, lightning quick, and both Nick and Ron fall backwards. Ron grabs Nick's arm. "Whatever happens, Nicky, keep him on this planet."

"What are you going to do?"

"Keep him on this planet. Destroy the other ships if you have to."

And then Ron gets up and runs towards the bug. Nick scrambles to his feet, staring after him, shouting, "What are you doing?"

"I'm getting my motherfucking gun back from this bastard," Ron shouts, and runs in front of the bug. Nick can hear Ron taunting it, talking about swatting relatives with newspapers, smears on sports pages, and then the bug ducks down and swallows Ron whole. Then its beady yellow eyes focus on Nick's backwards stumble towards the other saucers. Nick freezes. He feels like there's a sudden, gaping hole in his chest, like he'd been shot with his own Noisy Cricket.

Dimly, he hears the bug roar as it advances on him, but Nick is beyond noticing. This thing – it had just swallowed Ron up like nothing, and Ron had let it. Stood there waving his arms, waiting for it to snatch him up, and for what? So Nick could get away, get to the saucers and destroy them – Ron's self-sacrifice had bought him at most three seconds, which Nick has wasted on wallowing, feeling like the only person that he's even wanted to want in the last year, out of everyone on this whole damn rock, is gone.

He turns and starts to run flat-out towards the ships, hearing the bug lumber after him, and then suddenly there's a huge boom and he's covered in alien guts. "What-" he gasps, whirling around, to see Ron staggering out of the mess of what was the bug.

"Told you I was getting my gun," Ron coughs, beaming at Nick, and he kisses the barrel of the Series 4 he's just used to blow the bug out from the inside. He leans down to scoop something up from the muck; it's the galaxy marble, still hanging from Orion's collar.

"I could kill you for that stunt," Nick says, but it's weak with relief. He wants to shove Ron against the Ford and kiss him senseless, even if he is covered in alien slime. But there's a crack and a snap, and then Dr. Gomez falls out of the tree with a shriek.

"I gotta call Lewis," Ron says, "and then we should probably take care of the girl."

Nick leans against Ron as he calls HQ and gives the all-clear. "This was definitely the weirdest night of my life," he sighs once Ron's hung up.

"Give it five years. This probably won't even make the top ten."

There's a roar and they both turn, to see the mangled bug bearing down on them. Then it explodes again in another shower of slime, and Dr. Gomez is standing there holding Nick's gun. "Interesting job you guys have," she says with a smirk.

Nick just wipes more slime from his face and leans his head on Ron's shoulder.

Outside HQ, they leave Dr. Gomez by the car. "Is Lewis going to make us use the flashy-thing on her?" Nick asks.

"Rules are rules are rules, kid."

"And it's been pretty obvious over the last two weeks that we ignore a lot of them. She did help us bust the bug. And who's she gonna tell anyway, she hangs out with dead people."

"That's up to Lewis." Ron looks at Dr. Gomez for a moment. "Well, come on," he calls to her, "you can come inside."

*

"Fifty bucks says Damian is banging Selena by the end of next week," Ron gasps, shoving Nick against the back of the couch and climbing onto his lap.

"Oh my god, can we not talk about our boss and the rookie having sex, and maybe have sex ourselves?" Nick shoots back. He wraps a hand around the back of Ron's neck and pulls him down for a kiss. "I'm so glad we showered at HQ," he mumbles into Ron's mouth.

Ron's tongue flicks out and swipes over Nick's teeth. "Mm, minty."

"And you shaved."

"Don't like the stubble?"

"I'd rather not go into work with your beard burn like some mark of ownership," Nick starts to say, but it turns into a groan as Ron rubs his smooth cheek against his neck, licking and biting his way down to the collar of Nick's faded Northwestern tee. Nick shudders, running his fingers through Ron's hair before tugging hard at his white polo. "Get this off, c'mon."

He knows he's hurrying, that it must seem like he's in a rush, but he hasn't gotten laid in months. He rucks up Ron's shirt, helps him pull it off over his head, strips off his own thin shirt. He runs his hands over Ron's chest, feeling every shiver and hitch of breath.

"Bedroom," Ron mumbles where he's mouthing at Nick's collarbone, "I don't want to do this on the couch, come on." He gets up and grasps Nick's wrists, and Nick lets himself be led down the short hallway to Ron's plain and neutral bedroom. He watches Ron strip the dark gray comforter from the bed, his own hands going to his belt.

"Wait, let me," Ron says, knocking his fingers away and unbuckling the belt. He looks at Nick's face while he does, and Nick looks back, taking in the shadows under Ron's eyes that are forever changing with the sweep of his eyelashes, the pop of his lower lip, the corners of his mouth. Nick leans in and flicks his tongue there, tasting, and feels fingertips press into his waist. There's a tug as Ron undoes the button on his jeans, then a push as he's knocked down onto the bed.

"Oh, that was a dirty move," Nick growls, reaching up and yanking Ron down by his belt.

Ron laughs, ducks in to kiss his neck, and says, "So what do you want to do?"

It's not a question anyone's ever asked Nick before; not Miley, not any of his handful of one-night stands. The sex had always happened without discussion. Ron's looking at him with a raised eyebrow, hair sticking up in every direction.

Nick's turned on, the warm flush giving way to a burning in his veins, the need to touch and be touched building with every lungful of air he sucks in, with every brush of skin against skin.
He doesn't want to get fucked and he's willing to bet that Ron doesn't either, their push-and-pull nowhere close to one of them giving in to that yet. "Jerk me off," he says finally, shoving his jeans and briefs down and kicking them away.

"And what do I get in return?" Ron asks, fingertips dragging over Nick's thigh, scant millimeters from his cock.

"Best blowjob of your life?" Nick offers.

Ron quirks an eyebrow. "This seems like an unfair trade; I'm sure I'd come out ahead."

"So... you're telling me that I'm overestimating what you can do with your hands?" Nick counters. He squirms then, as Ron drops his head to mouth at his hipbone, and a heavy arm is draped across his pelvis.

"You have no idea what I can do," Ron murmurs, the words vibrating over Nick's skin.

Nick moves again, impatient. "Show me."

Ron's hand closes around his dick, tight, and Nick's whole body jerks. But he can't really move, since Ron is holding his hips down on the bed. "When was the last time you had sex with a guy?" Ron asks, voice casual, while his hand on Nick is anything but. His thumb swipes over the head, slowly, then drags in circles.

Nick can't stop his breath from speeding up. "Um," is what he manages to say.

"Surely you can remember?"

Nick swallows. The question wasn't if he'd ever slept with a guy, like Ron already figured out what Nick has tried so hard to keep from everyone else.

"It's not a trick question," Ron continues, his touch on Nick's cock turning lazy and light, all skimming fingertips and barely-there touches. Nick shudders.

"Three months ago," he says. "Just some guy I met in a bar. We gave each other handjobs in the bathroom and that was it."

"Do you ever go home with any of them?"

Nick shakes his head.

Ron's grip tightens again. "Good. From now on, you only come home with me."

Nick nods.

Ron's hand speeds up, the friction generating more heat, and then he leans down and sucks just the head of Nick's cock into his mouth.

Nick clutches at the sheets. "I want to do everything with you," he gasps, and then moans as Ron laughs against his skin.

Ron licks him, slowly, and Nick can feel his eyes rolling back in his head, one hand lifting up to grip Ron's shoulder. Ron keeps stroking at the same time, the two motions going in different directions and making Nick dig his heels into the mattress.

Then Ron pulls off. "Is this enough, or do you need more?" he asks, and Christ, no one's ever asked Nick that before. They'd always just done it until he'd come, sure that he'd get there eventually.

"It's good," he breathes. "But I-"

"What?"

Nick feels himself flush even more. "I want your fingers in me."

Ron lifts his head and Nick sees him grin. "Thought you'd never ask," he says, reaching to open the nightstand drawer.

When Ron starts to touch him, Nick closes his eyes and lets himself go in a way that he's never let go before. Every instinct he possesses is telling him that that Ron won't hurt him. He can't stop the sounds escaping his mouth, and for once, he doesn't have to. This isn't some dorm room or club bathroom. He comes with a half-sigh, half-sob, his cock down Ron's throat and Ron's fingers in his ass.

"You should get a medal for that," is what he says when he can actually talk again.

Ron smirks. Nick looks down at Ron's cock, hard and leaking against his thigh, and wiggles down the bed to take it into his mouth. "Careful, I'm already close," Ron murmurs, his hands touching Nick's hair, his neck, his face.

Nick curls his lips over his teeth and goes down further. Ron's whole body shudders, and over the rush of his own blood in his ears, Nick can hear Ron's breath shaking. It's almost too much, being able to hear that, this room so much quieter than everywhere else.

He hums, smiles, and sucks harder. He feels more than a little emboldened by this new knowledge that he can destroy Ron this way. Ron's hands tighten painfully in his hair; a warning. Nick finds he wants to swallow, and he does. He can hear Ron groaning, feel the flex of Ron's fingers against his scalp. He swallows until there's nothing left, then licks at the underside of Ron's softening cock until Ron pushes him away with a soft, shaky noise.

Nick crawls up next to him and Ron kisses his neck. "Okay?" Nick asks, tugging a pillow underneath his head and curling into Ron.

"Shit, that was awesome."

"I can't feel my toes," Nick groans into the pillow, and Ron laughs so hard the bed shakes.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

Nick turns his head and bumps his knuckles up against the sensitive spot on Ron's lower left ribcage. They're close enough that he can feel the puff of Ron's breath on his temple. "How come I feel like everything in my life has been leading up to this?" he asks.

"Maybe it has."

"But I don't believe in destiny."

"Maybe you should." Ron slings an arm over his hip and drags him closer still, and Nick lets his eyes fall shut again with a happy sigh.

He's looking forward to falling asleep just like this, sweat-slick and sated; he's even looking forward to waking up stuck to Ron because neither of them felt like moving enough to clean up. Maybe some sleepy mid-afternoon sex before dragging themselves out of the bed to go to work.

But he barely gets to think all of this before both of their phones are trilling and Ron's groaning and reaching over him to dig his cell from his pants pocket. The jeans fall back to the floor with a thump of change and keys. There's a series of beeps as Ron hits several wrong keys fumbling to answer. "You've got to be kidding me, Damian," he mumbles into the phone. Nick can't hear what Lewis is saying, but Ron's eyes flick to him. "Yeah, he's not answering because he's right here," he says. "What is it?"

Nick rubs his hand over his face as Lewis fills Ron in on whatever the latest alien catastrophe is shaping up to be. He sits up, then tips sideways immediately, laying his head on Ron's thigh. So much for sleep.

The phone snaps shut and falls onto the bed. Ron slides his fingers through Nick's hair, then tugs gently. Nick retaliates by pinching the soft skin behind his knee. "We have to get up?" he asks.

"Yeah," Ron laughs, and nudges him upright again. "Come on, kid. Time to go to work."

Notes:

I know this whole thing is downright crazy – I thought it was crazy too, when the idea first popped into my head. I swear that one minute I was thinking "that should exist – but I can't write it!" and the next, I was trying to find a copy of Men In Black. You can't just run into Best Buy and grab it anymore, which is nuts. This story owes a giant thanks to Ruth Alderson, who was my willing test subject when I said, "I need someone to read this and tell me if it actually works, or if I should just trash the whole thing," and helped me fix the things I'd messed up on. I also need to thank my writing thread girls, who listened to me whine my way through writing the parts I wasn't sure I was capable of. The title is from The Frames' "Fitzcarraldo", off the album of the same name, which I think I listened to about eighty-five times while I was writing this. Check it out, it's amazing music.