Misplaced Sense of Sibling Obligation

The physical brain slug on the back of the host's neck is its most vulnerable spot. Some members of the Tokyo Hive go so far as to implant a retractable armored shell to protect it, although this restricts the slug's senses and is uncomfortable. Direct contact with the slug is not recommended. No matter what you read about "licking the slug," you will not get high. There are no psychoactive compounds in the slug's outer integument or the thin layer of protective mucus.
—Anaïs Nineveh (trans.), Your Brain Slug Lover and You

"You want to have sex with your sister?"

Rache's voice hit a frequency that made Mel's head dip and shoulders rise. He stared down at the water in the pot as if he could will it to boil faster. The ramen noodles were ready, the spinach, onion, and sausage chopped and ready.

"It would mean a lot to her," Mel said, not sure what else to say.

The blonde had swept in after class with a boxed chicken salad sandwich and iced tea, just in time for dinner. Which also involved a conversation that they needed to have. Jordan and Jenny listened silently, chewing on stalks of raw celery with loud crunches.

"I know," Rache said, stabbing at a cherry tomato. "After class, she told me all about it."

Mel watched little bubbles form on the bottom of the pot. Almost.

"And what do you think?" he asked.

"I think you need to answer my question," Rache said. "Do you want to have sex with your sister? Because if you want to punch her v-card out of some misplaced sense of sibling obligation, you should not."

Mel looked up from the water. "Misplaced . . . what?"

Rache leaned against the counter, chewed, swallowed, and put her fork down.

"There is nothing mystical about a hymen. As much as our culture puts pussy on a pedestal, I can tell you from personal experience that losing my virginity was not some life-changing psychological event or key sexual experience that defined my entire life. It's a membrane that doesn't grow back. Jordan accidentally gave her virginity to a hairbrush handle, and Mom never let her forget that she was 'damaged goods,'" she explained. "Molly doesn't just want a dick. She wants to know that you care about her."

"Of course I care about her!" Mel said. "She's my sister. That's what made it weird. I wouldn't be thinking about this if I didn't care."

"No, you wouldn't have fucked Lucie if you didn't care," Rache pointed out. "Mel, babe, you do a lot of things because people ask you to. If I ask you to drop to your knees and eat me out, you will. If an alien crab-stick-insect wants to suck you off and Jordan is okay with it, you will. When a single mom really needs your dick for a friendly tit-fucking video, you're hard and ready. I love that about you. But this isn't some casual sex. This is someone you want to have an ongoing relationship with. She's sexually inexperienced, insecure, and watched you maybe impregnate her mom. Molly needs more from you than a good hard dicking. She wants intimacy. You need to decide if that's what you want."

Mel glanced back at the water. It was roiling now, the surface rising on invisible convection currents as the hot water rose from the bottom of the pan. He chewed over Rache's words as he transferred noodles, meat, and veggies into the pot, and set the timer.

"How did you do it?" he asked. "With Jordan? How did you decide it was time to have sex with your own sister?"

Jordan and Jenny's eyes and faces shifted to Rache, as if watching a particularly intense tennis match.

Rachel sighed. The tall blonde stabbed at a chunk of chicken, then stabbed again to catch a spinach leaf underneath it.

"We were both intimate with you," she said, voice softer now. "And she'd made those . . . advances. It was clear there was openness there, if not outright interest. That freaked me out at first. It wasn't what I thought Jordie would do. We'd never even joked about that when we were younger. I never saw her in that way. Except now, she's like . . . a different person. Or the same person, but grown to be a stranger. It felt so weird when she kissed me that first time."

Her loaded fork rested on the edge of the box.

"And the thing is? The world didn't end. A lightning bolt didn't burn down from Heaven to smite me for my sin. People on the street didn't shun me. I didn't even feel any fucking different. I learned that you can kiss your sister on the lips, with a bit of tongue, and the rest of the universe doesn't even care," Rache said. "And that was freeing. So I let myself go further. And when I finally found that I could see her as a sexual being—as someone sexy—I realized I wanted to be with her, the same way I wanted to be with you and Jenny. I could give you all the arguments I told myself, about how it was fine since we were women, that Jordan was different now, that it was part of sharing you with her, but those are just excuses. I wanted her, then I was. The world didn't end."

She brought the fork up to her mouth.

Mel stirred the ramen.

"I know, intellectually, that incest was forbidden for a reason," he said. "I've seen kids that were abused. The damage that causes. I know, intellectually, there's the potential for recessive genes, the whole inbreeding thing. Yet we're both adults, nobody's abusing anyone, and even if we do it, I'll be wearing a condom. So it's just sex. So why am I getting so hung up about it?"

"Because it's not just sex," Rache said. "It's sex with her. With Molly. You've caught feelings, Mel Arkwright. That's okay. It happens. It doesn't mean you're a bad person, or a bad brother. You're not trying to cheat on us. You're trying to be honest with everyone. Which is why I want you to be honest with yourself. Do you actually want to fuck her?"

The timer beeped. Mel turned off the stovetop, moved the pot to a cold element.

He thought about the expressiveness of those dark eyes. How Molly had held her mother's hand during that final insemination. The big, soft chest that pressed into him with every hug. The way she looked so pensive, as if holding in what she wanted to say until she was about to explode.

"I think I do," Mel admitted, and that admission made his chest feel strange, like that time in the bathroom when Jordan had guided him inside of her for the first time.

They finished dinner on the couch, watching a documentary about the Golden Mean in nature. There was something weirdly comforting about seeing bright yellow mathematical spirals overlaid on snail shells, flowering plants, and horns. It was narrated by a woman with a French accent, dry and somehow hitting that balance between art historian curating a gallery and an excited mathematician describing the perfect curves of the universe that show that beauty is encoded in everything.

It reminded Mel of the one part of his math classes he had enjoyed, the graphing applications. Playing with equations, watching the curves and shapes of new variables and permutations find expression in visual form. Something about the whole experience spoke to him, the way mathematics modeled reality, but also how maybe mathematics was real and everything else was just an expression of some complex set of equations no one, not even the extraterrestrials with all their spacefaring science, could completely grasp.

"Can I lick your pussy?" Mel said and signed, after they'd washed up and brushed their teeth. Jordan had taken an unusually long time in the bathroom, but when she had emerged, the four of them sat cross-legged, facing each other, for ASL practice. Rachel's movements were smoother than Mel's, and he struggled sometimes to follow the sign-conversation. His vocabulary was still highly limited, but they were working on the sex lesson.

Jordan held up three fingers in a W and made a circle.

"Wednesday," Mel translated aloud, remembering the list. "I know. It's still your day."

Jordan nodded.

"You know, we made a list for you," Rache said. "But what about the rest of us? If I want to have sex with Jenny or eat out Anastasia, do I need a schedule?"

"No," Mel said. "I mean, I've got a refractory period to deal with, and the brain slugs need my sperm, so it makes sense to, um, ration me fairly. But I don't see why that should limit you."

He tried to sign some of that, but they had not covered "refractory period," and he gave up. Jenny reached over and patted his knee. Rache's face lit up with a smile. Her right hand came up, thumb and forefinger meeting, three fingers raised. Perfect.

Jordan tapped Mel's knee. She had a different kind of sign for him. A condom. He got the message and leaned back as she unbuckled his belt. Across from him, Jenny kissed Rache, her hand slipping down the blonde woman's pants. Language lesson was over, apparently.

Before his pants were even off, Jordan was on him. Pressing the condom over his hardening shaft. Guiding him to her opening. She wasn't ready yet, however. Mel felt the resistance. He tugged her hips and looked into her eyes.

"Let me eat you out a little," he said. "I don't want it to hurt."

Jordan relented. It was better when she was wetter, and they both knew it.

There was a cozy domesticity to their coupling. Mel stroked himself with one hand as Jordan squatted over his face, letting his tongue flick rapidly over her clit, hands on her knees as she balanced on the balls of her feet, body slowly warming up in anticipation. Jenny and Rachel became less interested in the show as their own session became more involved, Rachel's shirt and pants coming off, the two women's tongues finding each other, their hands rubbing at each other's clefts with slowly growing heat and eagerness.

Mel would have liked to have watched that, if only to see how they did it. He hadn't fingered the women in his life nearly as much as he should have. Hadn't done a lot of things to show how much he appreciated them. While he had little experience in relationships, Mel had a feeling the average girlfriend would not have talked him through admitting he wanted to have sex with his half-sister. Or having sex with her mother. And the neighbor. And . . .

Do they want me to have sex because it makes them happy, or because they want me to be happy? Mel wondered to himself. Then he thought about his answer to Rache. He didn't want to dictate how she had sex with the people they were involved with. I don't want to control her. I just want Rache to be happy, and that makes me happy. Maybe . . . that's enough.

Jordan was ready now. She straightened up, pulling her pussy away from Mel's face and walking backwards on her knees, to guide his stiffness inside of her. That placid face did not become a mask of ecstasy as her tight folds gripped him—it never did. It was so easy to think that nothing was happening there, behind those eyes.

Yet Mel knew better. Jordan's nipples were stiff as small eraser tips. She moved up and down, slowly. Trying to find just the right spot where he rubbed her just right. His right hand rested with fingers spread, thumb rubbing her stiff little clit with small circles and gentle pressure, as his left gripped her hip. Mel could see her lips part, the hot breath coming a little faster as her excitement grew and grew, and behind her Mel could hear Rachel's soft pants and moans, which broke into unexpected words.

"Fuck her good, Mel!"

That made Mel grin up at Jordan. In this position, she was doing most of the work, able to control the speed, depth, and angle of penetration. Mostly, all he had to do was stay hard and not cum too soon. Yet Jordan seemed content, sometimes rising and falling, then pushing it in deep, the whole of her engulfing him, so that she could grind her clit hard against him. Mel watched her nostrils flare, the color rise in her cheeks, all the unconscious signs of excitement.

Then she brought both hands in front of her and began to sign. Mel frowned, unable to quite grasp what she was trying to tell him, and the brain slug host, never breaking her rising-and-falling stride, had to spell it out, one letter at a time.

T-I-C-K-L-E-M-Y-A-S-S

Mel felt his cheeks burn at the unexpected direction. He nodded, left hand uncertain as it slipped around her hip. Working blind, it crept over the soft swell of her buttocks. Jordan's eyes were fixed on him with a strange intensity as his fingers crept down that cleft. His chest suddenly tightened as his fingers traced down . . . down . . . until smooth skin gave way to an impossibly soft, squishy bit of flesh.

Jordan froze, and Mel stopped, afraid he'd done something wrong. Yet the blonde brain slug host wasn't grimacing or making any motion to get off. Instead, her right hand traced his arm to the wrist, and then over the hand to the finger. She stared into his eyes as she guided him to rub. Not pushing his finger inside, but just making little circles against the tight pucker. After Mel found his rhythm, his thumb began rubbing her clit again. It was a strange kind of balancing, rubbing Jordan's ass and pussy at the same time, but it was evidently working for her. She began to rotate her hips, his dick deep inside of her, lip twitching whenever his swollen tip touched some particular point . . . and Mel felt the ache at the root of himself, the building pressure, the need to erupt.

The shiver began in her hips. The pussy clenched impossibly tight. Her limbs stiffened, her chest puffed out, and Jordan's mouth opened, not making a sound, just a silent exclamation that never reached the rest of her face. Then, as suddenly as it happened, she seemed to melt. All the tenseness fled from her, and she leaned down and lay against him. Her breasts against his clavicles as her lower body moved, not up and down but fore and aft, his right hand unable to keep pressure on her clit, but still rubbing, rubbing, rubbing . . . and when he burst inside of her, a few strokes later, white bursts of seed filling the sperm reservoir of the condom, she was still moving, slowly and already satisfied.

"Can I have that?" Béibhinn asked, poking her head out of the door. Her face looked puffy, voice thick as with sleep. Jordan gave a languid thumb's up. Mel gently lifted her off of him, and Béibhinn pulled the condom off herself. "Thanks. Really need this today."

Rachel and Jenny were still rubbing each other enthusiastically, lost in their little world. Mel's arm stretched out to grab his new phone. He paused as he composed the message he was about to text her. Thinking back to everything that Rachel had said. He made a decision and, working one-handed, tapped out the message:

Rache says okay. But before we do anything, I want to take you out on a date.

Text sent.