A Strange and Awesome Cycle of Life

North American Brain Slugs are the most social of the parasitoid species, but often struggle to communicate with individual humans. On their home world, the hive-mind of the brain slugs was active in engaging with similar hive-minds, bartering resources, and cooperating on projects of mutual benefit. On Earth, the hive-mind is more comfortable dealing with faceless bureaucracies or large corporations, whose impersonal nature more closely resembles the hive-minds it evolved alongside.
—National Geographic Field Guide to Extraterrestrial Species of North America, Chapter 1

The hot water had washed away the sweat and the smells of the Cosmic Fill-Up. Unable to get the image, even the glimpse, of the naked roommate out of his mind. It wasn't the kind of thing he had ever expected—or perhaps hoped—for, even in his horniest wet dreams. Mel reminded himself that as much of her looked human, and as aroused at he might be at the very idea of sharing a space with a naked woman, it was just...a miscommunication. An alien being that hadn't understood some human social cue. It wasn't her trying to arouse him.

"Hell," he said as he turned off the water and reached for his towel. "Maybe she'll be dressed when I go out there."

Mel left the bathroom refreshed, clean, hair damp, and arms full of dirty clothes.

Jordan was still nude.

He saw her from behind, in the kitchen. The pale cheeks that came together in a line. The prominent spine, and the semitransparent green shape on her neck. Jordan had pulled her blonde hair over her left shoulder, so he could see all of it. Maybe ten centimeters long, tapered at both ends, as wide as his palm at the thickest bit. Through the translucent skin, he could see vertebrae, muscles, arteries...and something else. Something moved and wiggled there...

Then he noticed she'd set out a cup of ramen for him on the counter. That was a first, but he took the hint, dumping his clothes in his room and returning to make his modest dinner. She had the tofu in her hands. Facing him now. Blue eyes staring ahead, blonde hair just touching her clavicle. The small, soft breasts with the pink nipple as plain as the smooth, hairless crotch with its soft slit just visible, like the cleft of a peach.

Mel pointedly didn't look at her as he microwaved his ramen. She nibbled on the block of tofu. Little dainty bites. His palm was sweaty for long moments as hot water and electromagnetic radiation did their magic on the desiccated noodles and vegetables.

It was such a small thing. He knew that intellectually. A couple millimeters of fabric were all that separated them at the best of times. Jordan always had skin, nipples, a fresh-shaven crotch. There was nothing different now except that almost insubstantial, pointless barrier was gone.

Yet as he carefully carried his dinner over to the couch, and they settled into their respective seats, a full cushion in between them, Mel knew it was the idea that upset him. He was sitting on the couch with his naked female roommate. She picked up the remote as he dipped a plastic spoon inside and took the first slightly oily sip. Salty. Savory. So hot he almost burned his tongue. At the moment, he welcomed the pain as a distraction from the weird reality that was his adult life.

It was so different from thinking about women in the nude, Mel decided, as Jordan settled on a program about whalefalls, showing the strange, almost magical lifecycle that surrounded the slow decomposition of a blue whale's corpse. He had imagined many women nude. Almost every woman in his life he had mentally disrobed at some point or other. Imagined how big Ha-Yoon's breasts were. Had tried to picture Blair as both a woman and a transwoman. Yet now that he had an actual living, breathing, naked woman sitting right next to him, Mel felt that he couldn't bear to look at her.

It would be rude. Intrusive. She doesn't know what she's doing, Mel told himself, as a British narrator dryly spoke about the thousands of organisms attracted by the great beast's ****. It's the brain slug. The real Jordan wouldn't just...

Mel stopped that line of thought. He didn't know the "real" Jordan. The before-Jordan. The one who had willingly let herself be taken over by a small alien and let it basically puppet her about and run her life. Had no idea if the old Jordan was even in there, aware of what was happening to her, or if she was technically dead, or part of some great gestalt slug consciousness.

Twelve years of public school education had not prepared him for this.

He shifted uncomfortably, unable to find a spot where his erection wasn't obvious. It felt ridiculous. They were both grown adults. In their own apartment. There were times not long ago when Mel thought he would commit grievous bodily harm to spend time alone with a naked young woman. Yet now it was happening, and he was doing his best not to look at her. Even when he stared at the television, where a species called Oseodax was excreting acid to dissolve whale bones, Mel could see out of his peripheral vision the soft, rounded shape of Jordan's breast, the pink nipple a mere dimple in a slightly puffy areola.

Dinner finished before the whale's corpse hit the ocean floor. Mel dumped his cup in the trash and washed his spoon as Jordan brushed her teeth. Already thinking about what he would do. He could, of course, just go to bed. Or wait and jerk off late at night. Except he didn't want Jordan digging through the trash again. Something about that disturbed him more than the casual nudity.

The solution came to him in the bathroom as he brushed his teeth. His crotch pressed against the edge of the sink. Just around hip-height. Mel leaned into it, the pressure increasing until his tip popped over the edge of his jeans.

Spit. Rinse. Unzip.

Mel leaned in, the hard base against the base of his prick. He didn't have any porn, but he didn't need it. Taking matters in hand, eyes closed, mind's eye filled with sights and scenes from the last few days, let his fantasies run wild. Jordan naked on the couch, spreading her legs for him. Blank eyes staring at the screen as he explored her with fingers...then his tongue. The color rising in her cheeks, puffy nipples stiffening, and for the first time, a soft, delicate moan came from her lips...

For a few minutes he tugged, **** to keep his breathing from being audible. Pent-up as he was, it erupted too hard, too fast. Thick ropes splattered across the bowl of the sink, one drop even hanging white and pendulous from the spigot.

In the aftermath, Mel felt immediately sheepish. Relieved, but embarrassed at his lack of control.

"What the fuck am I doing?" he said to his reflection, as he tucked himself away and reached for the roll of toilet tissue to clean up his mess.

He froze as the unlocked bathroom door opened. Jordan stood there, still naked. Nostrils flaring. Eyes fixed on the warm white goo on the sink. She stepped inside, and she snuffled like an animal. This close, Mel could see the brain slug on her neck undulate, its gelatinous body gently swelling and shrinking, shifting colors from green to black.

Mel stepped back as she moved forward, a sick feeling in his stomach accompanied by a terrible fascination, knowing what she was going to do and unable to let himself interfere. She bent at the waist, lowering her face down to the edge of the sink, to where his cock had been pressed mere moments ago. A small, pink tongue slid out of her mouth and over the cool marble. Gathering up the thick goo.

She was swift, but methodical. Used her fingers to scrape the seed that had run down the edge of the sink. Mel felt an aching tension inside of him, despite having just relieved himself. Something about the willful, shameless hunger was both unnerving and erotic. It wasn't how human women were, at least he didn't think so. Yet there was more to it than mere animal hunger, or at least it seemed so.

Because after his roommate had sucked the last drop off the end of the spigot, Jordan turned to him and her left hand rose to give him a thumb's up.

They stood there, awkwardly, just for a second. He could see the veins beneath the skin in her breasts, the soft pulse of her throat, the small black head of the slug with its antennae peeking out from behind her neck. Then she turned and left.

Together, they finished the program. The varied worms and mollusks devoured the whale until its remaining bones crashed into the silt at the cold, dark bottom of the sea. In ****, it had spawned and fed an entire ecosystem. A strange and awesome cycle of life that occurred silently and secretly, far away in a place Mel knew he would never visit.

Yet that wasn't what haunted him as he lay down to sleep. It was what he had seen in Jordan's eyes, that moment after she had cleaned the sink with her tongue. For a moment, those blue eyes had focused on him, and an actual expression had come across her face, not just the slack indifference she'd always shown. The lips had quivered. She'd run her tongue over them. Her eyes had dropped to his crotch.

Like she was hungry for more.