Think Before You Let Someone Suck Your Dick

Most brain slug hosts possess excellent hearing, and brain slugs are fluent in the same languages as their hosts; brain slugs whose hosts are in contact with one another can share understanding or rapidly teach new languages. Initial integration strongly affects the host's ability to speak coherently, as the speech centers are a primary site for neural integration and development. Advanced stages of brain slug integration induce changes in the physiognomy of the tongue, further restricting the ability to speak. Most brain slug hosts prefer sign language for casual interaction, and this book will include a brief introduction to common signs and phrases, as well as basic biochemical markers and intimate massage.
—How To Talk To Brain Slugs, introduction

Sleeping with his wang out did not seem like a good idea, with Rachel on the couch. Jordan still had all of his underwear. So Mel kept his pants on, shucked his shirt and socks, and closed his eyes. It had been a full day, and he had work tomorrow. Another week on the night shift.

He lay awake for a little while, thinking of Rachel. She had come for Jordan. She hadn't had to. When his parents had died, no one had come for Mel. No cousins or grandparents, no one claimed him. Rachel was different. Wouldn't let her sister go. Mel tried to imagine what that was like. To lose someone, find them, and realize that they weren't the same person that they were before. Someone who looked like someone you knew and loved, but who couldn't talk to you, and didn't act like the person you knew.

At some point, sleep claimed him. Perhaps there were dreams, but Mel awoke early, in the dark.

There was a sob from the couch.

Mel shook his head and stepped out into the darkness in his bare feet. There was barely any light, just the tell-tale little LEDs of various electronics, and as his eyes adjusted her made out Rachel's mass on the couch, curled into a ball, hands on her face. The sound came again, louder now, no mistaking it. He glanced at Jordan's bedroom, but the door was closed.

"Rachel?" he said, softly.

She turned and stared up at him. Mel wondered what he looked like in the dark. A looming figure, maybe.

"Are you okay?" he whispered.

He couldn't see the tears. But he heard the broken voice.

"No. I am not fucking okay," she said.

Mel nodded.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asked. "We can talk? Or watch TV?"

Rachel sniffed. Cautious. ****. Probably suspicious that he was going to make a move on her. But at last she said.

"Okay."

One of the daytime channels was running a marathon of classic Universal monster movies. Mel sat on his usual cushion, Rachel on the opposite side, hugging her pillow as The Bride of Frankenstein played, the sound turned down to an absolute minimum so as not to wake Jordan and Soong. They watched in silence, in part because Mel wasn't sure what else to say except to just sit there and be with her.

He was actually getting into the movie when she asked him:

"When did you fall in love with my sister?"

Mel turned and looked at her. In the glare of the television screen, Rachel looked exhausted but no longer crying. She had sobbed herself out. He swallowed hard, not sure how to answer.

"I've never been in love," Mel said, honestly. "I don't know if what I feel is love, exactly. Growing up, things like love and sex and relationships were things I would only ever see on television or read in books. I didn't have any real friends because it felt like my life was on a timer, that when I turned 18 that was it. And now . . . I'm here, and this is all I have. So I don't always have words for how it feels. The first couple of nights, I think I was worried, maybe scared a little. That's why I sleep on my back, so the brain slugs don't crawl on me in the night . . . but I think after a while I just . . . I mean, I never forget that the brain slug is there, but I just got used to it. And I couldn't separate it from her. If I'd known her before the brain slug, I'm sure it would be different, but now . . . it's just a part of her. And when I learn more about brain slugs, about her, it's . . . I like that. I like being a part of her life. I want to help her. I want to be able to talk to her, even as I remind myself it's not just her, it's the whole hive mind she represents."

On screen, Elsa Lanchester came to life. They watched in silence as the Bride saw the Monster for the first time.

"Her last three boyfriends cheated on her," Rachel said after a while. "They lied to her. One of them stole money. The last one was the worst, because he tried to be the nicest around other people, but in private he controlled her, tried to mold her. Made her leave her friends. Put her down and criticized her constantly. The way she talked, how she styled her hair, how much makeup she wore. Threw out books he didn't want her to read. Made her quit college. Picked out the dresses she would wear. And she tried to convince herself that it was love. That this was what it took to be happy. I don't think he actually hurt her physically, but . . . she came home early one day. He was fucking his girlfriend in the kitchen, just railing this other woman in the ass on the floor Jordie had mopped that morning. When Jordie reached out to his mother, the bitch told her that maybe if Jordie didn't want him to wander, she should work harder to satisfy him in bed. Turned it back on my sister as if it was her own fault."

She wasn't crying, but it the anger was muted. As if she'd pushed all the pins into a voodoo doll she had, and whatever was left was just the dregs of a bitter rage. Mel had seen older teens like that at the orphanage, the ones who had stopped believing their birth parents' promises that they would come back for them.

"The apartment was in his name. She owned almost nothing at that point. Jordie had sacrificed almost everything she had to be with him. And he was bored with the relationship. Bored with trying to hide the cheating. Like he'd gotten what he wanted and was ready to trade up. Which eventually he did. Another woman. Rich family. Better opportunities. He turned her out. Just changed the locks, threw her stuff out, and ghosted her."

Rachel didn't say anything to that. The marathon went on. After Bride of Frankenstein came Son of Frankenstein. At some point during that, Rachel began to nod off. She shifted to the middle cushion and leaned against his shoulder.

"Don't get any ideas," she said, and he couldn't tell if she was serious or joking as she lay her head against his shoulder. On screen, Ygor laughed.

"She tried to pick up the pieces, but it was like something went out of her. She lost interest in life, in eating, in everything. I wanted to get her to a psychiatrist, treated for depression—and then she started disappearing. Hours at a time. Out in the city. Then back at home, to sleep and spend hours online. I didn't know, then, anything about brain slugs. You can't just walk up off the street and join. They run a physical, and there's a government-mandated psychiatric exam. She told me about that. I thought she was getting help."

Rachel told Mel about the letter. She'd memorized it over the last few weeks. The blonde head rested against his shoulder, and he tried to picture Jordan as she had been before the brain slug. Someone who had been hurt so badly that offering herself to be a brain slug host was preferable to being an individual.

At some point, her breathing slowed. Deepened. Mel felt his eyelids grow heavy. Long, slow blinks. Her body was warm against his. There was something deep and primal comforting about that. Once, one of the attendants at the orphanage had brought their cat in, and Mel had felt it jump up on the bed and settle next to him, its small butt pressed against his body. It had been a kind of trust that Mel had never experienced, and now something like that was happening again, only with another human being. That simple faith that he was safe to fall asleep next to.

Mel's eyes closed for a long moment, which stretched into peaceful hours.

When he opened them again, it was to the faint sound of a zipper unzipping, a sudden sensation of freedom, and then a warm mouth closing over the swollen tip of his morning wood. Mel's eyes opened, painfully aware of the sleeping Rachel who snored softly next to him. Jordan was kneeling on the floor between his legs, her lips wrapped around his glans. Soong was on her right, one hand on her shoulder, eyes fixed on Mel's tumescence. The brain slug on Soong's neck stretched a little, which Mel took as a good sign.

Jordan's head began to bob, taking Mel a little deeper each time. Mel himself did his best not to move. He didn't want to wake Rachel. It was bad enough she had seen him and Jordan yesterday; he had no idea how she would react waking up on an unfamiliar couch where her sister was sucking off the guy she was sleeping against.

His palms itched as Jordan continued. Pushing deeper and deeper. Her tongue slid down the sensitive underside of his shaft. The brain slug on her neck had its sensory tentacles fully extended now, and Mel was aware of the smell—strong, sticky-sweet, almost fish-like—and he wasn't sure how much of that was him needing a shower, and how much of that was Jordan and Soong needing a shower. He did his best to control his breathing, fighting the urge to moan, to move.

Rachel's soft snores were loud in the anxious silence. Mel felt sweat trickle down his ribs, armpits clammy. His fingers tugged at his pants, and he strained as Jordan worked harder, that hot mouth now pushed as far as it could go, a hot dribble of saliva oozing down into his jeans as she held him.

Don't wake up, he thought to himself, holding his breath until his lungs began to burn. Don't wake up, don't wake up, please, not now, not now . . .

When she felt him start to twitch, she pulled back in one long, slow draw—

—and that was when Rachel opened her eyes and screamed.

It wasn't a big scream. More surprise than horror. Loud and shocking enough to make Mel jump in his own skin, and spook both Jordan and Soong. His prick slipped out of Jordan's mouth at just the wrong moment, and at that moment, Mel erupted. Three white ropes spat onto Jordan's face before her mouth clamped onto the erupting meat stick. From the far end of the couch, Rachel stared at Mel inside his sister's mouth. Again.

Soong leaned in and began to lick the misfire off of Jordan's face.

Rachel's jaw worked. She wanted to say something. She wanted to say a lot of things. What she did was watch in some kind of morbid fascination as her sister used her tongue to lick Mel clean. The two brain slug hosts rose as one, Soong's hand still on Jordan's shoulder, and they disappeared into the bathroom. After a moment, they could hear the shower.

Mel carefully put himself away.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I woke up as she was unzipping me. I was trying not to wake you, and—"

"I need coffee," Rachel said, and rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she stood up.

Mel got off the couch and started to do his exercises. He watched, while doing crunches, as Rachel retrieved a portable coffee maker from her suitcase, plugged it in, and set it to brew. The sharp smell of roasted beans filled the apartment. She patently didn't look at him as he went through his little workout. By the time Mel was done with his push-ups, the brain slug hosts were done in the bathroom.

"I'm going to take a shower. Then I need to get dressed and get to work," he said. "Um. I'll be gone all night, if you want to stay here—"

"I'm going to leave my suitcase here," Rachel said. "I've got some stuff to do. Leave tomorrow morning."

She shot him a look. Not hurt, exactly, but wary. Then it softened. The left side of her mouth smirked up.

"They really just go down on you whenever they want?" she asked, as he bit into the leftover spring rolls in the fridge. They weren't as good as when fresh, but after a week or more of ramen, Mel wondered if he'd ever be able to make these on his own. Something else to think about.

"Pretty much," Mel said, after he chewed and swallowed. "I mean, I don't ask them to do it, but I'm not really good at saying no, either. Yesterday was the first time I really tried to stop it from happening, because you were here and—"

"—and I told you to do it," Rachel said. "Yeah, I get it."

Mel showered. Shaved. Dried and dressed. Rachel was sipping her coffee as he replaced the bandage on his foot, then slid the sock on over it. She saw the wounded shoe, and he knew she was putting the pieces together, the story he'd told about Tony and the aftermath.

"I don't hate you," she said, as he laced his shoes. He blinked, and his brown eyes registered surprise. "You've been living with this for a couple of weeks. You're used to it. I'm not."

"I mean, I'm trying not to get used to it," Mel said. Then realized how stupid that sounded.

"I'm worried," Rachel said. "That you're going to hurt her."

Blood rushed to Mel's cheeks, a sudden tied of emotion.

"I'm not—"

Rachel held up her hand, and Mel stopped.

"I don't think you mean to. But you've already let three brain slug hosts suck your cock. You don't know where they've been, who they've been with, what diseases they might have. Yeah, Jordie seems cool with it, but that isn't safe behavior, Mel," she said. "And I can't be here for Jordie 24/7. I need to be able to trust you to minimize that risk, okay?"

She looked into his eyes. When she did that, he could see the difference between Rachel and Jordan most clearly. Not in their features, but their expression. Rachel was looking at him, focused. With Jordan, it was always as if something else was looking out through those blue eyes, something always slightly out-of-focus.

"I don't think you're a bad man, Mel. I don't think you're taking advantage. Hell, you're a step up from her last boyfriend. But you're in a profoundly weird situation. You have no real context for how weird it is, and you're adapting to it better than a lot of people, but you've also told me yourself you have no experience with sex or relationships. I already lost her once. I saw her treated like shit until she finally found an escape that killed a part of her just so the hurting would stop. I don't know how much of Jordan is left or if it's just an alien bug piloting around her body. And I know you don't get how that feels, but I need you to know: I love her. Whatever this is. Whatever is left of her. And if you're going to still be here as her roommate or dick-on-tap, you need to care about her, too. Which means you think before you let someone suck your dick, okay? You think about her, you think about the consequences. Can you do that?"

Mel nodded, slowly.

This time, she did punch him. Just hard enough for him to feel it. In the shoulder.

"Now go to work, you don't want to be late."

He nodded and went back out into the evening. The sight of the setting sun was always strange when his body's schedule was off. A walk to work, eight hours, a walk home. Rachel said she would still be there when he got back. After that—Mel wasn't sure what would happen.