Just for the Joy of It

Brain slug hosts cannot speak, but they can still talk to you. They want to communicate with you. Set up a series of signs. For example: A knuckle-rap for stop. Two taps for slower, three taps for faster. One finger drawing a circle on the skin for cuddling. Three fingertips in a triangle for "I have to pee." Two fingers dragging for anal.
—Anaïs Nineveh (trans.), Your Brain Slug Lover and You

At the orphanage, when you caught measles or something else highly contagious, you were sent to sleep on the sick beds. A nurse would take your temperature and bring you a tablet with the schoolwork you were missing. No one held your hand or came to check on you when the fever brought nightmares. Some of the kids talked about how their parents had stayed up all night with them when they were sick.

The thought came to him as they walked home, because Jenny clung to Mel's arm and wouldn't let him go. Her palm in his, but sticking as close as she could, matching his steps. Jordan walked in front of them, her brain slug clear as green glass, the eyespots no doubt watching them.

Somehow, Mel didn't mind being watched, or clung to.

An unfamiliar beep interrupted his pleasant thoughts. It was his new phone. He'd gotten a text. Mel reached into his pocket and flicked through the security screen. It was Molly.

Jenny's elbow caught Mel in the ribs. She was still staring straight ahead as they walked, but he got the hint and stuck the phone back in his pocket.

"It was Molly," he said, as their apartment came into view. He hoped Molly could wait. Jenny seemed impatient—and, he supposed, it was her day, and she had been waiting long enough for some one-on-one time.

That was why when he saw someone standing outside their apartment door, he frowned. She had a thin, triangular face framed by jaw-length purple hair, and was dressed in a knee-length coat that was covered in patches for bands he had never heard of, and tall, scuffed black boots. She turned, and Mel recognized the artificial eyes, three small rotating lenses in each socket, and he recognized her.

"Kayce O'Bannon," he said. "You changed your hair."

"I change my hair like, once a week," she said with a smile, the lenses adjusting their focal length. "Can we talk?"

Mel considered. He looked at Jenny.

"I sort of had plans tonight," he said.

Kayce smiled wider.

"Are these your girlfriends? Jennifer Soong, Jordan Carmichael? You recently took on a sublessee; are you in a relationship with Béibhinn O'Malley, too? Is she a brain slug slut?" the journalist asked.

Kayce did not hear the door open. It was almost silent. Yet the widening of Mel's eyes as Béibhinn stretched her arm out of the apartment must have warned her, because she almost turned around before the ghola's hand gripped the back of the purple-headed woman's neck.

"Ghola, actually. Let's not have this conversation outside," Béibhinn said. "Come in."

It wasn't a yank. Yet the fingers tightened, and Kayce went, head-first, into 501. Mel, Jordan, and Jenny followed. Mel closed the door as Kayce sat on the couch, right in the middle, the ghola standing behind her, still holding her neck. The head didn't turn, but the eyes seemed to take in every detail of the room.

"Not exactly welcoming," Kayce said, managing a weak smile.

"Sorry, you're our first journalist," Mel said. "How did you find out where we live?"

"It's all publicly accessible data," the journalist said. "If you know where to look. Employment records, leases filed . . ."

"Fair enough," Mel said as Jenny let him go. Jordan was already peeling clothes off. Home time was naked time, guest or no. "Are you recording right now?"

"Yes?" Kayce said, an odd, questioning lilt at the end of the word.

"No," Béibhinn said firmly. "Turn it off. I can wipe and overwrite your implant's memory, but the process has side effects depending on how wired you are. You don't want that."

Kayce sighed. "Fine, fine. This interview is off the record."

"Interview," Mel said. "Is that what this is? Why are you here?"

"My editor," Kayce said. "Was intrigued by your story. Very few humans have sexual experience with multiple extraterrestrial species, and you've got a very public video making the rounds, Guy Hugh Mann."

Mel frowned. "Guy?"

"That's the name on your second video. The one with Pine Fresh Pussy, the camgirl and escort. You remember? Big milky tits?" Kayce said.

"She did say she was going to give me a porn name," Mel said. He felt like he should sigh theatrically, but that was never something he'd been good at, so he decided to skip it. "Yeah, okay. Hugh Mann, Guy. That makes sense. So you want . . . what?"

"Your life story! Details! Sexy ones!" Kayce said. "How does K'lur'k pussy compare to human pussy?"

"Incredibly acidic. She told me that she accidentally dissolved the last human dick that was pushed inside of her," Mel said with a frown. "She only gave me a blowjob. With an acid-proof condom. It was . . . different."

Béibhinn's grip on Kayce's neck relaxed. The right hand continued to rest there, but the fingers traced a needle-thin scar on the journalist's jawline. Her expression seemed contemplative.

"It seems to me," the ghola said. "That we might be able to work a deal here."

"What kind of deal?" the journalist asked, not flinching as the ghola's thumb played with a dangly earring.

"You get your interview. No proper names, no personally identifiable information. Focus on the sensational stuff. Take out a ruler and measure his dick if you want to print that. In exchange . . . I want everything you've actually dug up on our friend here," Béibhinn said. "Every public record, everyone you've talked to, and especially anything weird or sketchy."

Kayce frowned.

"I mean, I need to protect my sources," she hedged. "Can I measure him hard?"

Jenny, now completely naked, dropped into a squat before Mel and began to unbuckle his pants. Mel sighed, face suddenly hot. He wondered when exactly it would stop being embarrassing to get forcibly disrobed in front of strangers.

"I don't think that's a problem," he said, as the jeans dropped to his knees and Jenny unlocked his cage.

It was an odd interview. Béibhinn settled on the couch next to Kayce, her arm around the journalist's shoulder. Even fully dressed in grey karate pants and a sleeveless black t-shirt, she seemed to be hovering around Kayce, invading her personal space, kept touching her. The journalist, for her part, seemed to ignore it, focused on asking Mel questions. Jordan moved the chair so that Mel could sit, and then stood behind him, massaging his shoulders as Jenny worked.

". . . so were you upset when you found out the Greyan whose boob you were fondling was technically male?" Kayce asked.

"Not really," Mel admitted. "I think it was just the novelty of the experience. I wasn't really thinking about it at the time, but even looking back, I can't really say I'm unhappy about it. I mean, it's a boob. Even guys have nipples. Trans women have breasts. Cows have udders. And honestly, I'd never felt a boob that big before."

Kayce didn't nod. She held her head perfectly, gyroscopically still. Mel wondered if that was a habit from her recording implants. Then he wondered if it was due to an implant.

"The way you hold your head still," Mel asked, as Jenny carefully levered his shaft downwards so she could take it deeper. "Is that an implant?"

Kayce smiled. "Yeah. Balance augmenter. A lot of people get the eye implants, try to do homemade porn or whatever, and it's all shaky cam and accidental zooming."

"Must have cost a lot," Mel said.

"I'm still paying off the mortgage on my headware," Kayce replied. "Is this normal? Sitting around and chatting while you get a blowjob from your brain slug girlfriend?"

"Well, we have an active sex life," Mel said, trying to focus as the familiar pressure built. "But things have gotten hectic lately, and I don't want to neglect anybody, so we started a schedule. This is Jenny's day. Whatever she wants. Pretty much whenever she wants."

Kayce frowned. "You let her blow you whenever she wants? How many times a day?"

"Well, this is number two," Mel said. "But not just blowjobs. Vaginal sex, too. And cunnilingus, of course. That's very important."

Kayce blinked. "I understand brain slugs need jizz, but why do you go down on her?"

Mel looked into her eyes, brow furrowed. "Because she's my girlfriend and she likes it. I like to make her feel good."

"That's . . ." Kayce said. "Wait. So if she wants you to lick her pussy, she just points at her cooch, and you go down on her? It's not, like, the capstone of a great date, or an anniversary, quid pro quo for a blowjob, or the prelude to sex so that things are nice and wet? You just . . . eat pussy on call?"

Mel's response was a strained grunt, his fingers digging into his knees and veins rising on his neck. Kayce's artificial eyes could not grow wider, but she seemed to stop breathing for a moment as a hot rope erupted into Jenny's mouth. He let out a breath and sagged back a little as Jenny swallowed, never letting him out of her mouth.

"Pretty much? I mean, if it was in public, we'd probably find a bathroom or something, but when we're at home, that's how it goes. It's not all about biological needs; it's about emotional needs and feeling good too," Mel said. "Sometimes they're on their period and don't want to do anything else, or somebody's had a bad day, or . . . I mean, it doesn't really matter why. I'd say that since they really go down on me so often, it would be wrong for me not to deny them, but that makes it sound like it's repayment, but it's much more . . . I like to do it for them. I like to make them feel good."

Kayce opened and closed her mouth, like a lungfish tasting the air.

"Doesn't your girlfriend eat you out whenever you want?" Béibhinn whispered in Kayce's ear, pressing one of her boobs against the journalist's. "Doesn't she run her tongue over your clit until you can't think straight, just for the joy of it?"

Kayce didn't answer. Jenny stood up and collapsed next to the reporter on the couch, in Mel's usual spot. The brain slug host was slunk low, legs spread lewdly. She signed one of the signs that they had been practicing:

Lick me.

Mel didn't bother to pull his pants up as he slid off of the chair. He gave Kayce an apologetic smile and crawled toward Jenny. Her fingers combed through his hair as he breathed in her scent. Softly, he kissed her netherlips. Let his eyes close as his tongue pushed out, into her, trailing over the entrance to her hot little tunnel, over her urethra, to the sensitive little clit that wasn't yet outside of its little hood, but soon will be.

Jenny gave a little sigh. Just an almost-audible expulsion of air, soft and satisfied, as if she had been waiting for this all day.

"I think you have enough for one interview," Béibhinn said, and put her hand on Kayce's knee. "Now . . . what have you found on my roommate here?"

Mel wasn't really paying attention to the file transfer. Focused on the task at hand. Jenny tapped the side of his head three times, and he licked faster. They hadn't formally agreed on sex signs yet, but he was willing to bet that she'd been reading Your Brain Slug Lover and You when he wasn't. She was wetter now, and her breathing was faster.

Then he felt Jordan's hands on him. Stroking him from behind. The tired muscle responded to her touch, filling out erect again.

"Don't mind us!" Kayce said. "Just getting measurements. Don't know if we'll actually print these, with all the cyber dicks out there these days, mostly nothing smaller than a donkey dong is newsworthy, but it might add verisimilitude, you know?"

Mel felt Jordan's hands disappear, the tip of his swollen glans slapping against his stomach, and then he felt the cold metal of the tape measure pressed against the veiny shaft. When it wrapped around the thickest part, he couldn't repress a little shudder, a sticky drop oozing down from his head onto someone's hand.

The hand that cupped and hefted his balls felt far less scientific. But it disappeared almost immediately.

"Well, that was . . . excellent. Thank you. Maybe we'll do this again sometime!" Kayce said.

Mel waved vaguely in the direction of the door. Jenny tapped his head again, and he tried to speed up his tongue, thrashing the little clit faster. Jordan, for her part, seemed determined to get her licks in. Mel felt her tongue roll around his head, her scalp bumping against his stomach as Jenny breathed faster and faster, and then all ten fingers dug into Mel's head at once, and that soft little rasp or rattle came from her mouth.

A knuckle-rap let Mel know it was time to stop. The rumble from his stomach told him it was time for dinner. As the water boiled for ramen, Mel finally had time to read Molly's text.

Molly: DATE???

Mel: Sorry, couldn't answer before. Yeah, a date. You and me. Go somewhere. Do something.

A moment later, the response came back:

Molly: WHY!?!?!?

Mel: I don't want this to be like that scene with your mom.

Even as he dumped the noodles in, Mel wondered what he really meant by that. Obviously, going from zero to group sex with four ejaculations wasn't exactly what he had in mind for deflowering a virgin, but also . . . he wanted to show Molly that he wanted a relationship that wasn't just sex. Hang out with her. Make sure they stayed friends after.

Mel: Anywhere you want to go?

Molly: Botanical gardens, Sunday!! I can drive!!!

Mel: Perfect.

Jordan poked her head over his shoulder. Mel held up the phone so that she could read the texts.

"I know you said it would be okay for me to de-virginify Molly," he said. "But even if this is a one-off sex, I don't want this to be like with her mom. Impersonal. I want to stay friends with my sister afterwards. I don't want it to just be sex."

Jordan gave him a thumb's up. Mel smiled.

During dinner, they watched a documentary on lichen. Mel was surprised to discover that the flat greyish-green stuff he had seen on some old buildings and trees was actually two different organisms, symbiotically connected into a mutual colony: a fungus and a photosynthetic algae. It wasn't a perfect description of his own living civilization, but as he slurped down chicken-flavored noodles and spinach, he thought that maybe it was closer to how it should be. Mutual assistance. Each providing something to the other.

Which brought him back to the interview, Kayce's reaction to their relationship. Her little shocked expression. Lucie at the airport, that moment when she had rested a hand on her midsection, their moment together already a jewel in her memory as she looked ahead to what would happen if she didn't take.

Maybe, Mel thought during the wash-up. I should take Jordan, Jenny, and Rache on dates too. I mean, that's what you do with girlfriends, right? Take them on dates? It's not all living together and sex. It has to be more than that.