Little Golden Triangle

Brain-slug hosts often engage in mutual grooming activities. Sometimes this escalates into pseudo-mating behaviors.
Human attention to these behaviors is sometimes used to attract potential hosts.
—Brain Slug Infestation: Cause and Avoidance, Chapter 6

Mel felt a little satisfaction as he slid the book into the slot. That was the whole civil contract of the library—borrow a book, and return it. He'd kept his end of the bargain. Been a good patron. The same old lady with the blue hair smiled at him as he stepped inside the library proper.

It had been a week since Mel had checked his email. It was filled with advertisements offering him investment opportunities, nice young ladies in his area who wanted to meet him, and cures for erectile dysfunction. A dozen responses to his job applications, all negative. More importantly, some emails from the Cosmic Fill-Up, confirming his employment and bank details. Those he saved. Everything else he deleted.

BRAIN SLUG SLUTS NEAR YOU

His hand hovered over the spam email. Mel's jaw worked. This was a public place. Not somewhere he wanted to be caught looking at pornographic advertisements. He deleted it.

The next three hours, Mel spent trying to learn about brain slugs. The questions he really wanted to ask, about sex, he couldn't type openly. People would see, maybe track what he was looking at online. Instead, he worked around it, the old high school porn-searching skills coming back. He sifted through wiki articles, news reports, academic papers he couldn't understand. His high school science course had covered physics, chemistry, biology, and anatomy. Dissecting fogs and playing with bunsen burners hadn't exactly prepared him to try and figure out why a brain slug host might eat human cum.

What he learned, ultimately, was that there was far less solid information on brain slugs than he knew. The hosts themselves didn't communicate openly much; no one had ever seen how brain slugs reproduce, though some dead examples had been dissected, nobody had found eggs, ovaries, or gonads. What they did find is that brain slugs secreted chemicals very close to some human hormones—notably, antiandrogens, testosterone blockers.

Which explained why not all of the brain slug hosts at the Cosmic Fill-Up were women, even though they looked like it. Why the male hosts in Slug Fucker Monthly were so effeminate. Being a brain slug host was like starting a course of hormone therapy. The longer the host was under their control...the more they changed.

Mel logged out, brain afire with that little factoid. Jordan wasn't trans, he knew that. Had seen her naked. And she had only joined the hive six weeks—no, seven weeks now—ago. So it wasn't like she would have magically grown breasts overnight, even if she had been a guy before. Mel sighed, not sure what he should actually do with that information, if anything. It didn't explain what Jordan sucking on his cum-filled tissues, either.

He headed to the Xenobiology section again, where he'd found the book last time. He looked to see what else the library might have. He found the National Geographic Field Guide to Extraterrestrial Species of North America.

The blue-hair at check out smiled as she swiped the book.

"Have a nice day," she said. "See you again soon!"

"Thank you," Mel said, holding the book against his chest as he headed out.

The rain began two blocks from the apartment. Mel cursed and stuck the book up under his shirt. He didn't want it to get wet, damaged. Not just because he couldn't afford to pay to replace it, but because that was part of the contract too—return the book in as good a condition as you found it.

By the time he got to the apartment building, Mel was soaked, cold, and shivering, but the book was dry. He took the stairs, step by step, obscurely glad for the exercise. Counted the numbers on the apartments leading to his and Jordan's. 509...507...505...503...and finally, at the end of the hall, 501.

Home sweet home.

The lock clicked as he swiped his access card, the door opened, and Mel walked in, treated to a view of his roommate with her pants off on the couch. Between her legs, Soong knelt, a small straight razor in her hand. Both of them turned to look at him. Mel swallowed and shut the door behind him.

"Don't, um, don't mind me. All wet. Need to get changed..."

They turned back to the task. Soong was shaving her. The little golden triangle of stubble between her legs was disappearing beneath the blade, one careful swipe at a time. Mel did his best not to look at it as he went into his own bedroom, to change out of his wet clothes. When he emerged, in a fresh t-shirt and jeans, he found their positions reversed. Now it was Soong on the couch, her legs spread, as Jordan carefully shaved the small labia clean, the black stubble disappearing beneath the blade.

Neither of them showed any fear, any hesitation. So quiet that Mel could hear the soft scrape of the blade against the skin, a soft, delicate shiiick, shiiick.

Mel went to the kitchen, carefully not looking at a scene that would probably dominate his dreams for months to come, as he got himself a glass of tap water. Grooming. Mutual grooming. He thought that meant combing each other's hair or whatever, but that's what this had to be.

A part of him thought of Antonio. His slug-fucker comment. What if he was fucking Soong? What would Jordan do if her pussy had still been full of his spunk? The thought of her mouth open, placid eyes staring straight ahead as she pressed her lips against that pussy and sucked like she had his jizz-filled tissues...

Mel's erection throbbed, terrible and immediate. Something he would have to take care of. Later. Maybe. His temples pulsed as he tried to think about what was the right thing to do in this situation.

When Jordan was finished, Soong left. Not a glance at Mel. Not a word, though he was used to the silence now. Jordan went to the fridge and retrieved a package of raw mushrooms; Mel got the idea and prepped another cup of ramen. On the couch, she got to the remote before her did.

Click. Click. Click. Jordan clicked past nature documentaries about the Amazon rainforest, coral reefs, the Australian Outback, and the volcanoes and hot springs of Iceland. What she landed on was Marvellous Mollusc Mating Rituals, a documentary in which a breathless Canadian woman narrated the reproductive habits of various slimy critters.

Mel rubbed his chopsticks together nervously. Jordan stared at the screen from the other end of the couch, in the same position she'd been in when Soong had shaved her. Popping small pale mushrooms into her mouth like popcorn. Her roommate sighed and tried not to slurp his noodles too loudly, his balls aching for release.

They brushed their teeth, one after the other. There, on the left, what he had started to think of as Jordan's side of the sink, lay a small handtowel with blonde and black hairs intermingled. Resting on it to dry was the small, functional straight-razor, cleaned and stropped. It was an object that Mel had only ever seen in movies and television shows, yet there it was. Real as life.

Mel waited as she went back to the couch. Not knowing what exactly to say, but needing to say something.

"Hey," he started. Her head turned toward him, expression blank.

"I, uh, didn't mean to intrude, earlier. If you ever need your privacy or whatever, just, um. Give me a sign. Maybe leave a sock on the door? I don't want to be a creep or anything."

Which, in Mel's own ears, probably sounded creepier than if he had said nothing at all.

"Okay?" he gave a thumb's up, hoping for some gesture of recognition. He knew the brain slugs were supposed to be intelligent, but actually talking to Jordan was so difficult when she gave nothing back.

Slowly, she raised her left arm. Her hand formed a fist, thumb up.

"Okay," Mel said, with relief. "Good night, then."

He went back to his room. Jordan sat on the couch, fist still curled into a thumb's up gesture as it lay by her thigh.