Our Little Secret

Consent means many things to many different cultures across many species. From the sparse historical records available, it seems clear that some cultures were willing to sell people to the brain slugs to use as hosts; others sent condemned criminals to the brain slugs as a form of execution, or incorporated brain slugs into their culture as a sacred office with severe limitations on who could become a host, or as a part of their life cycle, the next stage of their being. On Earth, brain slugs incorporated BDSM enthusiasts, and their concepts of consent quickly became the standard moral framework—with some practical adaptations.
—Anastasia Massimi, Slugnomicon: A Guide To Brain Slug Spirituality (unpublished draft)

"I fucked my cousin once," Ha-Yoon volunteered.

The day had begun with a hole in Mel's memory. For once, he hadn't remembered his dream. That there had been a dream, he was fairly certain. He had awoken in a sweat, the cage tight around a throbbing not-quite-able-to-get-hardon, with Jenny wrapped tightly around him. Her eyes were shut tight, normally placid face screwed up in a look almost of pain, and her eyes were glowing so bright he could see the light through the closed lids as a kind of reddish-orange glow.

Jordan had come in then, and laid her hands on Jenny's bare arm and back, and the tension had slowly drained from the other brain slug host. She stopped squeezing Mel so tightly, and then her eyes opened; the look of pain faded back to the calm neutrality that was Jenny's resting expression.

Exercise. Shower. Dress. Mel worried when he saw Jenny with the knife, filling the smaller cup in the terrarium with more blood. Mel had asked Jordan before they left: "Is she okay?"

On the fridge, Jordan had spelled out in magnetic letters:

BAD MEMORIES

That was all Mel was getting from her for now.

The thought stayed with Mel throughout the morning shift. He wondered if brain slug hosts could get PTSD. If the incident with Antonio had scarred her psychologically, and if maybe the brain slug budding had re-triggered those memories. Mel still wasn't sure exactly how brain slug memory worked. That they were individuals and yet part of something greater, he was sure, but how much trauma an individual could have—or inherit—from their brain slug and the hive mind, Mel didn't know yet. Maybe he never would.

The afternoon was slow, however, and Ha-Yoon's eyes grew distant and dreamy.

"Did you know they were your cousin?" Mel asked, more out of the feeling that he was expected to say something.

Ha-Yoon sighed. "Yes. Her name is Himiko, now. At the time, it was—well, I don't want to deadname. She hadn't come out to her parents yet. They were Japanese-Korean, still pretty socially conservative. Coming to Seacouver was supposed to be about scoping out universities to attend, but we ended up—well, it was a short relationship. Seen each other a few times since then, but she'd gotten married, and nothing happened."

Mel digested that. "Is that why you were asking me about incest?"

She scrunched up her face. "Different conversation, similar thread of thought. I guess I was just thinking about your answers. The lack of connection. I never really felt that because Himitsu was my cousin, it made what we did wrong."

"Did it make it better?" Mel asked.

Ha-Yoon tapped her nose. "That's what I'm wondering. Like, at the time, it was our little secret, and that was hot. We were spending all our free time together, asking each other's opinions on everything, I was taking her to every place I knew, and making out every time we could. Like, I know my mom and her mom wouldn't approve, and that just made the relationship more forbidden, more special because it was always so tenuous, so short-lived, but—I wasn't really excited about her being my cousin as much as I was about her being my friend."

Mel let that roll around in his head. He wasn't sure what else there was to say. So he said nothing, but offered her a smile and went to clean the men's room. They didn't say anything else for the rest of the shift.

Home to grab a quick, cold hot dog, change his shirt, and grab his books. Jenny was wearing his hoodie, with nothing on underneath it. He gave her a smile and a kiss before he hurried to catch his bus. It felt weird, riding on his own. That strange knot in his stomach of traveling on his own, hoping he had gotten on the right bus, that he would get off at the right stop. Not sure what he would do if he overshot—but he didn't. Rachel was there, in black jeans, the Hello Cthulhu t-shirt, and a brown corduroy coat. She had come straight over from her last class of the day.

High school had prepared Mel to expect individual desks, sometimes with a built-in tablet for lessons. This room was built as a kind of mini-auditorium, with three ranks of seats and rows of tabletops that rose from the floor and went up toward the back, so everyone could see and hear. The older woman and the young man from the sign-up session were there.

"Hello," she said, her long grey hair in a braid over her left shoulder. She had that thinness that Mel associated with age, and wore an ankle-length grey skirt and black cardigan. Her wrists were thin, but the long fingers were animated, and she signed as she spoke. "I am Angelika McKinney, of the local American Sign Language Society. I was born deaf, and began to learn to sign at age 3 at a special school in Manitoba. For the last thirty years, I have been teaching people to talk with their hands. And this is my colleague, Angus."

The young man with the receding hairline and the smartglasses stood up. His sleeves were rolled up, showing circuit-patterns beneath his forearms. He, too, signed as he spoke, but his voice was more clipped, American—upstate New York, maybe, though to Mel a lot of American accents tended to sound the same.

"My name is Angus McBride. My twin sisters became deaf at age eight, due to a bacterial infection. So from the age of 6, I was raised in a signing household," he said. As he spoke, implants under the skin activated, colored lights that highlighted his movements. On the screen behind him, a visual presentation began to play. Following his movements, spelling out the words and letters as he signed them.

"This course is an introduction to American Sign Language," Angelika said. "Simply attending this course will not make you fluent. You will need to practice at home. Work on your skills, perhaps for the rest of your life. For these first few weeks, we will focus on the basics—alphabetic and numeral signs, common greetings and phrases—while we build muscle memory. It is our hope that when we are done in twelve weeks, it will be the beginning of your education with sign language, not the end."

There were others in the class. Some people Mel rememebred from the sign-up. One he recognized from elsewhere: Dawn, the old Black woman from the co-op, with her close-cropped white hair. After half an hour of lecture, the class was split up into pairs to practice. Mel and Rachel, already seated next to each other, made their alphabet signs. Angelika and Angus moved through the class, observed, corrected.

Somehow, Mel didn't feel self-conscious about it. He wasn't here alone. All these people had shown up for the same reason he and Rachel had, regardless of their age or their education. When Angelika watched them, she smiled, nodded her head, and moved on. Mel saw Rachel smile, and found himself smiling as well.

They went home together, hand-in-hand. Dawn rode the same bus as them, but got off at a different, earlier stop. By the time they got back to 501, it was getting late. Rachel gave Jordan a hug and Jenny a kiss, and was about to say her goodbyes when the brain slug hosts grabbed Rachel's arms. She froze in place, and Mel gave a smile.

"I think," he said as he walked forward and touched her belt. "They think you need some attention."

"I should get some sleep," Rachel said, though she wasn't struggling as Mel undid her thin black belt.

"You'll sleep better after," he assured her, pulling down pants and panties. Mel laid a trail of soft kisses down from her navel to her crotch. Ran his tongue over her lips, not trying to penetrate, just moving it over and getting it a little wet. Tugged her pants down farther so she could spread her thighs a bit. Rachel's breath came a little faster as his lips closed on her clit, the little nub not stiff—not yet—but under the soft suction it began to swell.

His mind drifted to the condom on the fridge as his tongue found her taint. She hadn't had time to wash her pussy, and the smell and flavor were stronger than last time. Not unpleasant, the way sweat by itself wasn't unpleasant, just stronger, with just the merest hint of old laundry. Rachel bent her knees, letting the other women support her via the arms so Mel could press his face in deeper, his cheeks against her thighs. tongue exploring the inner lips now in slow circles, always returning to her clit, then delving down and doing a little swirl around the entrance of her hot tunnel.

Mel could taste when Rachel began to get more excited. His jaw felt that familiar twinge that came with such work; the first couple of times he had gone all in on the three of them, he had been sore afterwards—but that soreness had with it a kind of pride attached. His jaw had hurt because he'd eaten pussy. Now here he was again, determined to make Rachel shiver before she left.

Yet Rachel's moan was muted, even as he felt her grow wetter, and she began to grind her pussy against his face. Mel sucked softly on her clit, not wanting to go too hard and hurt her, but slid one fingertip up into her slit, at the very base. She didn't pull back immediately, but clenched hard. His tongue flicked rapidly over her swollen, sensitive nub as his fingertip tugged gently from side to side, and Rachel's thighs quivered, slapping him on the cheeks, her pitch rising and rising until it became a kind of muffled scream . . . and then she sagged and pulled away.

He looked up, then, from his knees. The trapped prick ached inside its cage. He saw that Jenny's mouth was locked with Rachel's, their cheeks shifting as tongues moved. Jordan's mouth was on the back of Rachel's neck, sucking hard.

When Rachel stumbled, wobbly-kneed, across the hall to sleep, Mel saw the beginning of the hickey. Marked, as Mel had been. Jordan pulled his hand up to her mouth, sniffed his finger, and then stuck it into her mouth, and he could not be sure, right then, what the hive mind's intentions for Rachel were.

In the terrarium, the brain slug drank its fill of blood. Waiting.