Just Watching

On their original homeworld, hive minds bred their hosts for a variety of reasons, both to increase their numbers and to enhance specific traits. Hive minds sometimes competed for especially prized studs and breeders, or developed sharing arrangements. It wasn't until the brain slugs came to Earth that they encountered the concept of jealousy.
—Slug Sutra, Chapter 2

How do you date a brain slug?

The question had been on Mel's mind the entire trek to the Cosmic Fill-Up. Spring still hadn't arrived yet, and the cold wind was bitter. Mel shivered in his red shirt, even though he'd worn his one long-sleeve shirt underneath it. His foot still hurt, but worse than that, it was cold, the ventilated shoe leaking warmth.

First, I need to learn how to talk to her. Them, Mel said. Has to be a course I can sign up for, if I can afford it. Then . . . what? Date nights? Maybe learn to cook tofu. Something romantic.

It felt absurd. Yet as Mel clocked in, nodding at Tomie and Bobbie, he realized that whatever his relationship with Jordan and Soong was, it felt like more than casual sex or a biological need for semen. At least, he hoped so. When he was in high school, he'd read stories by Lovecraft about Cthulhu, from an old musty paperback in the school's library. Even did a book report on it. The idea of some god that wasn't a distant name, alternately benevolent and wrathful, but here and present, and which saw people like ants, sort of resonated with him. He'd never thought about worshipping Cthulhu, any more than he'd thought about worshipping Godzilla. The cultists had been insane. Imagining themselves in a relationship with something vaster and more ancient than they could comprehend.

Yet Mel was living with a vast alien intelligence. It had sucked his cock.

He spotted Ha-Yoon as he checked the schedule to see what he had to do.

"What do you do in a relationship when you want to show appreciation?" he asked. "Like, somebody does something nice for you, what do you do nice for them?"

"Oral sex," Ha-Yoon said, her voice loud enough that it startled Amelia, who nearly dropped the carton of milk she was getting out of the refrigerator. The pregnant woman's stomach looked enormous, and Mel realized that it must have dropped. She was going to deliver soon.

"I'm serious," Mel said.

"So am I. Look, you know bonobos?" she said as she pushed a button, and Mel saw he now needed to scrub down the men's room. "Kind of a monkey. Primate. But oral sex is like the social lubricant of their entire society. Most humans only give head to get head, but primates get it. There are a lot of big romantic gestures in the world, but almost nothing you can do has the immediacy of putting your mouth to work and brushing your teeth after."

Mel wanted to deny this. Instead, he **** himself to stop and think about it. Ha-Yoon, after all, had a lot more experience with relationships than he did. She was in a threesome. That was relevant. Sure, it didn't match the kind of romance he'd seen on television, but that was television. He didn't have any real-life role models for how a relationship was supposed to look like.

"Yeah, okay," he said. "Thanks."

"Any time," she said with a smile.

Mask. Goggles. Glove. Swifter. In the augmented reality offered by the goggles, the men's latrine looked like a crime scene. Someone hadn't just missed; they'd suffered some sort of event. Maybe a kidney stone had passed. Or tried to install a genital piercing on their own.

Mel was very glad of the mask as he ran the swifter over everything. It wasn't intellectually demanding work; it didn't make anything, but a few minutes of diligent work later, the men's bathroom was clean and ready for business once again. A sudden biological need saw Mel lean the swifter against the wall, turn off the goggles, and unzip his fly, standing with feet apart to christen the freshly-cleaned urinal.

Which is when Tomie stepped in.

She had the same placid expression that Mel associated with brain slug hosts. Thin, face a mix of features. Broad nose, epicanthic folds, a skin tone that was pale but could have been a light-skinned example of any dozen races; scattered races over nose, cheeks, and forearms suggested a lot of time spent out of doors in the sun, at some point. There were small puckered scars on the lips and eyebrows that Mel recognized as the leftovers from piercings, no longer present. The head of her brain slug poked out on the right side of her neck, the markings on the back hard to see from this angle.

Tomie's chest had small bumps that could have been small breasts or just an ill-fitting shirt. A collar hid Tomie's throat, so he couldn't tell if there was an Adam's apple. Mel remembered what Ha-Yoon had said about some of the brain slug hosts being trans. He still tended to think of them all as female, but maybe Tomie wasn't?

His bladder wanted to go. The pressure was there. Actually going wasn't about to happen. Mel had never been able to go when someone was looking.

Tomie was definitely watching. Her eyes were fixed on Mel's. Without breaking eye contact, she reached back and locked the door. Mel swallowed hard, a pit opening in the bottom of his stomach.

From her pocket, Tomie fetched out a condom. She held it out to him. Exactly the way Jordan had done that first time.

"I, uh," he mumbled, utterly unprepared for this conversation. "I really appreciate the offer, but I'm not . . ."

Tomie pulled open the condom with both hands. The wrapper went back into her pocket. The clear latex in her right hand. Mel couldn't move, frozen with indecision. She stepped behind him, very close. Pressed her chest into his back. Through the shirt, he could feel her.

Okay, definitely tits, Mel admitted.

Her hands came around from behind him. He tried to wiggle his hips, but she was faster than he was. In the blink of an eye, the now-familiar sensation of latex covered his sensitive glans. Mel took a deep breath. This wasn't good.

"Look, I don't want to do anything to hurt you, but we're at work. You could get us both fired," Mel tried.

Tomie didn't stop. He could feel her breath on his neck. She was shorter than he was, unlike Jordan and Soong. Her eyes were level with the base of his neck. The latex unrolled to the base of his prick, and he could feel the warmth of her fingers on him.

"I'm kind of in a relationship. With Jordan and Soong. We haven't really had a chance to talk about the details . . ." Mel said. His body tense. A small, wet, warm thing touched the back of his neck. He really hoped it was a tongue, although Tomie would have to get up on her tiptoes to kiss him there. Her fingers started to stroke.

"Please stop," Mel said, finally. Not loud, but with more emotion than he intended. "I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want to betray them. You understand, right?"

Tomie's fingers paused. Her whole hand held his limp length in her palm, and the warmth and pressure made Mel's prick start to swell. His heart hammered in his chest, not sure what he would do if Tomie persisted. He didn't want to become a statistic like Antonio, but if he did nothing, how would Jordan and Soong react to that? Mel was aware that there were differences between the two types of brain slugs, the two hive minds. He felt pinned between them. His mind raced through what he had read.

There had to be a way out of this . . .

"Look," he said. "If all you want is my sperm, I'll jerk off and give you the condom, okay? Just let me handle it myself."

Three heartbeats. He could feel his dick pulse in Tomie's hand. There was a time, only a few weeks ago, when Mel would have been thrilled to be in this position.

The wet thing disappeared from the base of his neck. The hand uncurled from his half-hard shaft. She stepped back.

Not touching anymore. Just watching.

Mel took a deep breath. He might not be able to take a piss while someone was watching, but he had done this before.

Not betraying her. Them, Mel told himself, as he took himself in hand. He closed his eyes and tried to think of Jordan and Soong. That hot mouth. That flash of pink as they spread their labia. His body reacted to the imagination, to the stimulation as his thumb ran over his glans. Mel had his back to Tomie, couldn't see the expression on her face, if she had one. But his imagination drifted into picturing his eyes dilate and her nostrils flare as the scent of him came to her. His heart pounded harder as he stroked, suddenly and intensely aware of a need for release he hadn't had since he'd left the apartment.

The grunt was soft. He kept stroking as the shudder went through him. To squeeze out every drop. Carefully, he peeled off the condom. Without looking, he held it out behind him. Warm fingers brushed his. Took it.

There was a clunk of a door unlocking. The swish-click as Tomie left.

Finally, with no eyes on him, Mel could go. It burned a little, like it always did after an ejaculation.

The wet spot on the back of his neck felt oddly cold, and sent a shiver down his spine.