Pack Hunting

A hallmark of North American brain slug hives is coordinated activity. In pre-industrialized settings, it is theorized that this allowed the hive to effectively undertake community projects like rearing structures, digging wells, and managing factory-line style physical labor. In the wild, it allowed sophisticated pack hunting and foraging for resources. Even today, these instincts and behaviors remain.
—National Geographic Field Guide to Extraterrestrial Species of North America, Chapter 1

Mel was thinking of hot dogs and ramen, right up until the moment they got to the apartment door. Soong, who should have turned left to 502, instead followed Jordan into 501. He blinked, not sure where this was heading. Well, that was a lie. A part of him, poking out of his underwear and straining against the waistband of his pants, knew where he wanted it to head. Nor was Mel disappointed when, after he closed and locked the apartment door, Jordan and Soong began to take off their clothes.

He let his shoulders lean against the door for a moment, his eyes lowered to the floor. Watched as their shoes came off. Then their socks. Naked feet pattered on the floor. He could see the last time Jordan had painted her nails, over seven weeks ago; the coat chipped here and there. Mel wondered if the brain slugs even knew about cutting toenails. They had to, right? He had seen the girls shave each other. That spoke to basic maintenance, didn't it?

Or did they shave it for me? Mel wondered, remembering how Jordan had stared at Slug Fucker Monthly, the women and transwomen inside all having those slim, honed physiques he associated with gym rats, models, and porn stars. Yet that didn't make sense, either. Mel had never been able to bring himself to really look at their pussies. It had felt intrusive—

Reality intruded on his ponderings. Two sets of feet, side-by-side, right in front of him. Then, entering into his field of vision, a hand—and a small square of plastic containing the last condom.

Mel raised his eyes. Slowly, deliberately. Soong held it in her outstretched right hand. The fingers of her left hand entwined with Jordan's right. The two women stood before him, their brain slugs peeking over their right shoulders, hair draped over their left. Features placid, undemanding. Waiting patiently.

For a moment, Mel let himself study them. Were the nipples ever so slightly swollen? Or a faint blush on their cheeks? The pupils were dilated; he could see that. Their nostrils flared in perfect synchronization, as if drinking in his scent. As he took the condom, Mel wondered if they had been aware of his erection all the way home. If they had been waiting for this, with whatever passed for impatience in an organism so vast.

He undid his jeans, and he watched their eyes as they dropped toward the hard shaft. It was his third time putting on a condom, and he took his time with it. Mel's dick wobbled a little, the built-up pressure of the last few hours already generating a sense of need and urgency. Yet as they studied him, Mel studied them.

They weren't porn star bodies. They were women. Skinny, pale, with that softness that comes from not really focusing on building muscles or strength, just the wiry muscles needed to walk miles, carry groceries, lift boxes of product, and push the swifter around. Yet for all that, he felt his heart leap as he dared to let his gaze linger on where their sternum was visible on the skin between their breasts, the little dimple of their navels, where their hip bones showed—and yes, down there, the small slits.

There was nothing magical about a vagina. Mel had stared at enough anatomical drawings in his more **** teenage research moments to know that. Yet here were two of them, so close to him that he could almost smell them, and the very thought of that sent a shiver up his spine that had nothing to do with the pornographic acts in Slug Fucker Monthly.

The condom wrapped his prick like a second skin. He had their complete attention now, as he began to stroke. His thumb played over the glans, again and again, and a part of Mel wanted to draw this moment out, to see if they would react, or—

Behind him, in the hallway, he heard the door to 502 open and close. Antonio was back from work. Mel's pulse quickened suddenly. He would notice Soong wasn't here. He would think she was here, knock on the door—Mel's hand moved faster, suddenly agitated at the ancient, primordial fear of being caught masturbating—and something else, something deeper and murkier. The worry about what Antonio might do if he found Soong like this.

He needed to finish more quickly. Needed something to drive his imagination.

Mel raised his eyes, but they were still staring raptly at his swiftly moving wrist.

"Can you," he said softly, dread and anticipation mingling into something that almost felt like courage. "Show me your pussies a little, please? The inside, I mean."

They didn't look at one another. There was no indication of silent communication. Their free hands simply moved, in unison, between their respective legs. Two fingers spread their labia. Soong and Jordan acted as if his request was the most natural thing in the world, and as he saw the pink of a pussy, a real pussy, spread right in front of him for the first time, hot white seed surged up from Mel's prick and exploded into the reservoir tip of the condom.

His last few **** strokes made his butt feel clammy and ache from how hard he squeezed his cheeks. Hips thrust into open air, manhood dancing in his grip as he sought to wring out every single drop into the pendulous balloon.

Was it as much as last time? Mel wasn't sure. He sagged against the door and carefully pulled it off. Panted a little as he held it out to them.

Jordan and Soong didn't move. They still held that same position, labia spread. The pink seemed to glisten wetly, though Mel wondered if that was his own imagination.

Then Soong opened her mouth. Tongue extended.

Mel's heart skipped a beat.

"You want me to—" he said.

Jordan's left hand came away from her labia. She gave a thumb's up.

Mel couldn't get hard again that quickly. Yet a part of him wanted to. He stepped forward to the young Asian woman. She was still a little taller than him; he had to go up on his toes to pour it onto her tongue, as he had watched Jordan do last time. Her face betrayed nothing, except maybe a slight pinkness that crept into her cheeks, but the nipples were definitely erect. Mel's hands shook a little as he emptied the condom, careful not to get his fingers in her mouth, on her lips.

When it was done, the two turned to one another. Jordan opened her mouth. Soong's head tilted. The two met, eyes staring at nothing, so close that Mel could see their breasts touch. Could watch the motion in their cheeks as their tongues worked to divide his load. Saw them swallow.

A kind of pleasant exhaustion ran through him, and Mel's stomach rumbled.

"I heard Antonio across the way," he said. Yet it was needless. The two women turned and went, Soong to dress and leave, Jordan to fetch food from the fridge for dinner. Mel took a moment in the bathroom to relieve himself; by the time he had the ramen started on the stovetop, Soong was gone, and Jordan was looking for a program.

Sea cucumbers, tonight. Mel had never seen a sea cucumber, had a vague idea of them like something long and green, like in the grocery store. Instead, they learned about an order of life he had never guessed existed. Mel added "detrivores" to his vocabulary. When he finished, as he washed his pot, Mel thought of this morning when Jordan had hovered over him. The brief touch of her tongue.

Would she have gone further? he wondered then, as he set the pot in the dishwasher to dry. Will she come tomorrow?

Weirdly, it wasn't the invasion of his personal space that upset him. Lately, it had felt like whatever delineation of zones that had existed in the apartment, maybe only in Mel's mind, was shifting. Or maybe disappearing. He had been operating under orphanage logic, where you had your bunk and your locker and people defined their own space, made it their own however they could. Constantly defining or redefining who owned what. Here it was...the chest of drawers belonged to both of them. The couch, the TV, and the fridge were communal property. What was left that Mel truly owned?

His toothbrush. A pot and a spoon. Some clothes. Not much.

A part of him thought that should bother him. Instead, he lay awake for far too long, wondering what the darkness might bring.

That night, Mel left his bedroom door open.