Good to see you.

Humans are social animals; most humans need some level of social interaction for their continued mental health. Isolation is one of the key punishments in the human justice system for this reason. When the first criminal human hosts were supplied to brain slugs, the hive minds were appalled at the cruelty of solitary confinement. Brain slug justice is not about removing the offender; it is about correcting the offender. Through ****, if necessary.
—Slug Sutra, Chapter 6

Mel held up his index finger and traced a Z in the air, as the ASL book showed. Next to him, Rachel did the same thing. Jordan and Jenny didn't make a face or shake their heads in disapproval, but they held up their own hands and demonstrated the correct movement. Rachel and Mel both tried again.

"Zed," Rachel pronounced the letter. "This is going to take some practice."

"Well, at least we have a couple of ASL speakers to practice with," Mel said.

Mel and Jordan had stopped by the co-op to pick up bread, milk, and hummus. Rachel had shown up in a grey, long-sleeved tunic over blue jeans, with a rotisserie chicken, which mostly she and Mel ate. This time next week, the two non-ASL speakers will be going to their first class, so after-dinner turned into a brief cram session on the floor, reviewing the materials for next week. So far, they had gotten through the alphabet signs.

"So how was your day?" Mel asked Rachel.

They chattered as they cleaned up. Books put away, dishes washed and set out to dry, teeth brushed—Rachel told him about her new shifts at the library, her classes this semester (Modern Canadian Literature, Calculus, Digital Archiving, and Introduction to Xenobiology, the latter a last-minute change that had nothing to do with her major). Mel, in turn, told her about the ghola. That raised a few eyebrows.

"Wow. A glory hole. You know, I've never seen one," she asked. "Have you?"

Mel shook his head. He was aware of what they were, but had never seen one in real life. They always seemed quasi-fantastical, like something horny people wanted to believe existed, spots for anonymous sex, totally divorced from having to deal with actual people and dating.

"Want to?" Rachel said with a shy grin.

Mel was confused. Then Rachel took Jordan and Jenny aside to the fridge and whispered to them. The brain slug hosts moved the magnetic letters around, but their bodies hid whatever message, and before the huddle broke, Rachel made sure to muddle the letters again. Her grin was nervous but excited as she left the apartment.

"Wait right here! I'll be back in a bit."

Jordan and Jenny closed in on Mel as she left. He didn't resist as Jordan unbuckled his pants and Jenny pulled up his shirt. There was a time not so long ago in his life when Mel would have felt strange getting stripped by his roommates, but now it felt almost natural. Yet none of them reached for him, already at half-mast.

Rachel wasn't gone long, but she knocked instead of barging in, and poked her head through the door instead of just entering.

"Hey, Mel? Do you mind if Anastasia sees you naked?" the blonde said, her accent a bit thick, as it walways as when she was excited.

Mel blinked at that.

"Um. Why?" he asked.

"She says it's unfair that she's the only one in the apartment who hasn't seen your dick," Rachel explained.

Mel considered this. "No touching, right?"

"No touching," **** confirmed.

Mel looked at Jordan and Jenny. "Any objections?"

The brain slug hosts shook their heads in eerie unison, then raised their hands to give a thumb's up.

"I guess it's fine, then," Mel said, not as confident as he sounded.

Rachel swung the door wide and stepped inside, carrying what looked like a heavy black shower curtain. Anastasia, in black leggings and a white blouse, stepped in after her and swiftly closed the door.

Mel immediately covered his crotch with his hands, or tried to. Jordan and Jenny slapped at his hands until he raised them in self-defense. Their neighbor raised an eyebrow and smirked as she ogled Mel.

"Hi, 'stasia," Mel said, wiggling his fingers and smiling nervously.

"Evening, Mel," the dark-haired woman said, her eyes not rising to meet his. "Good to see you."

"This was Antonio's," Rachel said. "But Anastasia didn't want it, and when I told her what I wanted it for, she agreed as long as she got to watch."

"Ooookay," Mel said, painfully conscious of Anastasia's eyes on him. He was at full mast now. He hadn't planned on that, but couldn't stop it. Something about everyone looking at him just sent the blood rushing in, tissues swelling in anticipation. "Watch what?"

They hung the curtain in the shower. A pair of scissors created a fist-sized hole at exactly the right height for Mel to insert himself through. A few strips of black electrical tape smoothed over the rough edges.

Which left the naked Mel standing inside the tub, the edge of the hole about a centimeter below his perineum. Four women were crammed into the bathroom, eyes focused on the one part of him that they could see.

"So stiff," Anastasia said. "Is he always so hard?"

"Whenever we need him to be, yes," Rachel said, and Mel could imagine her unable to stop smiling. Jordan and Jenny would, very likely, be holding hands, just staring intently, wondering when the action was going to start. Mel wondered at that himself.

For a moment, as nothing happened, Mel wondered if this was just a lark. A game. When he was a freshman, some girls pulled his pants down to see his underwear and make fun of him. He well remembered how beet-red his face had been, the embarrassment palpable, and just thinking of it now, he felt the heat creep up to his ears, and on the other side of the curtain it seemed to quiver, ready to explode at any moment.

Except these weren't teenage girls, and this wasn't a game.

A hot mouth kissed Mel's ballsack. Opened wide to hungrily suck on a testicle. Another mouth licked the sensitive underside of his shaft, all the way from the base to the tip. There was no titter of laughter, no playful gossip. The air in the crowded bathroom suddenly grew close. The curtain rustled, and Mel had to hold his hands behind his back, there being no place else to put them. All of his senses focused on the one part of him being stimulated right now.

The mouths moved in eerie unison. Up and over. Coating his quivering staff with saliva, tasting each part of him. Ignoring only the tip, perhaps afraid Mel would go off too soon, and Mel bit his lip as he felt the pressure start to build inside of him. The excitement, the anticipation. Normally, when they fed, it was an exercise in how fast he could shoot, but now he deliberately tried to hold out for longer, to wait.

Because he had an audience.

A tongue slid around his glans. His prickhead was clean, but the strong, hot little muscle scraped ruthlessly under the swollen, rubbery helmet, as though to make absolutely sure not a spot had been missed. The heat and suction engulfed him as the lips sealed behind his glans. The tip of the tongue played with his slit, and for a moment, there was nothing to hear but the wet sucking slurps and Mel's little stifled moans.

His testes squeezed tight. Mel's eyes shut so hard that they left spots in his vision. He could scarcely breathe, every muscle in his body contracting as the pulse pounded in his perineum, the urgent need to fill that mouth fighting against the need to hold on a little longer.

"I'm going t—" Mel started, and the mouth pulled off him with a wet lurch. Another pushed onto him, sucking hard, taking him deep, deeper than before. It had to be Jordan or Jenny. Rachel had never tried to push that much of his shaft into her mouth before.

Which told Mel it was safe to let go.

His heels lifted off the floor of the tub just a centimeter as the dam burst. Mel's biceps bulged as he held his arms behind him, testes jumping as rope after sticky white rope erupted into the hungry void that held him. Hips brushed the curtain, which began to sway as Mel humped the air. Such a thin barrier between them, and yet it made all the difference, psychologically, anyway.

Until finally, Mel let out a long, ragged breath, silver stars dancing before his vision, muscles releasing. On the other side of the curtain, cool air touched his wet prick as an attentive mouth licked it clean.

"Wow," Anastasia said. "That was . . . fascinating. You'll have to call me over for the next show."

Rachel gave a throat chuckle. A warm, dry finger slid under Mel's shaven balls to stroke the soft skin there, reaching all the way through the hole in the curtain.

"Give him a few minutes," she said. "He's good for an encore."

Mel almost laughed. His chest heaved, his toes clawed at the edge of the tub. The pole, already wilting a little, was not allowed to shrink. Hungry mouths, eager hands, were showing off what their boyfriend could do for their inquisitive neighbor.

He wondered how 'stasia would write this up in her book.