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“Are you...frightened?”
The answer should have been yes. Arthur was lost underground, in the pitch dark on top of the pitch dark his sight had been for days, and a whispered voice was echoing from all directions. John shouted between his ears for him to run, but his body stood rooted in place as if paralyzed. He shuddered beneath a layer of cold sweat and took in a slow, shaky breath to answer, but…
“No.”
Because he wasn’t frightened. His fear had been bottled up, cast aside. It tingled only subtly at the back of his mind, like a phantom limb—like one of those pieces of him John had already taken.
“Arthur!” John snapped, as if his name itself were an obscenity. “Get us out of here!”
Maybe that’s why John sounded so upset, Arthur thought. Maybe he had taken over Arthur’s fear. Well, good riddance, that.
“It’s all right,” said Arthur, breathing in the cool, sweet air of the cave, so soothing compared to the unrelentingly dry desert above. It tickled his sinuses like fresh-cut mint. Little butterflies fluttered about in his stomach. It was so nice, in the cave. He wanted to stay. In the cave. “I’m not frightened.”
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” John continued to rail against his uninterested mind. “The moss is growing—it’s moving up our legs! Can’t you feel that?”
“Uh-huh.” It tickled. It was nice. The cave was so...nice. Arthur breathed in and sank to his knees among the moss and it’s tiny, waving tendrils, letting them creep directly from his ankles to his thighs. They welcomed him so happily.
Something slapped and scratched at his left knee. “Arthur, wake the fuck up! This thing is hypnotizing you, or drugging you, or—”
“It’s fine, John,” Arthur tried to reassure him. “I’m not frightened.” He relaxed into the warm, wiggling fingers of soft moss. They were still growing, stretching up between his knees, between his thighs. He could feel John swatting at it, dislodging it in chunks, but it was growing more rapidly, now. It pressed insistently up against his groin, and startled by the contact Arthur took in a quiet gasp—drawing more of that tantalizing scent into himself.
“Stay,” whispered his host. “Won’t you please stay?”
“Yes,” Arthur breathed in reply, and the mossy fingers stretched higher as if rewarding him. The heat and the weight of the spongy growth traced his cock beneath his trousers, and he felt...tender little prickles along the length of it, as if the moss’s roots were seeping through the fabric. The moss beneath him seemed to be growing denser, too—forming a protrusion from the earth that wormed greedily between his thighs.
God, it had been a long time, even before his life had turned to utter shit again. The moss undulated beneath and around him, its teasing now turning to arousing. It took only the slightest shift of Arthur’s hips for him to rut against the growing mass, so he did. The moss churned, enticingly, yielding just enough to feel like a body beneath him, arching eagerly into his every movement. Encouraging him—wanting him. The fluttering in his belly swelled into lust and in moments he was hard and panting, spurred on by the sparks of light in his brain.
“Arthur!”
John sounded so quiet now, so far away. Arthur wondered, distantly, why he was so distressed; it was certainly embarrassing, but hardly worth so much fuss. But then John cried out, not with angry curses but a gutteral shout of pain. It rippled across Arthur’s consciousness like a rock in a pond. “John?”
“It’s fucking eating us!” John bellowed, and Arthur’s nerves shifted, like the crackle of a radio coming to life—some of the moss had crept under his pant leg to attach to his ankle. Through his clothing its caress had felt like gentle kisses, but the moss clinging directly to his bare skin pierced with needle-like teeth. Blood had begun to trickle down his leg.
Arthur gasped, and his brain clouded over again. The spores in the air threatened to drown him another wave of false euphoria—the whisper was closer now, deeper somehow—but John growling in pain kept him from being swallowed completely under. He scrubbed at his face, struggling for some kind of clarity. It was so hard to think straight. Stay, his lizard brain said, echoed by his warm belly and straining erection. Finally, something feels good—just stay.
“If you don’t get up right now,” John demanded, “it’s going to chew your fucking dick off!”
That did the trick. The words spiraled through Arthur’s gray matter, awakening him to panic. When the moss bucked against his groin again, trying to coerce him back into movement, it instead surged through him utter terror. The sweet, sick groping of a fleshless creature he couldn’t see—his body betraying him, aching to grind into its squirming, organic mass—it was overwhelming. He was lost underground in the dark, in the voice, its breath on his skin and in his lungs, and he was helpless, and he was terrified and he couldn’t move and oh god John was right, any moment and—
John groaned again, strangely. “Up!” he growled, and all at once Arthur’s restraint sloughed off and he could move again. “Up, get up, Arthur, fucking move!”
Arthur clawed himself up. He felt numb in the wrong places and his sanity paper thin, but he dragged himself to his feet and ran. The moss fell off in juicy clumps, leaving damp spots on his trousers and painful lacerations around his ankles and calves. He bruised his hands against the ragged stone of the cavern walls as he flew through random openings. The whispers rang through his ears.
“J-John,” he wheezed, afraid to breathe, afraid to stop. “John, I-I can’t, I—”
“Just go,” John encouraged him. “Keep moving—it’s only when you stop that it—wait, stop!”
Arthur didn’t heed him, and he hit the wall ahead of them at nearly full speed. The impact rattled his every bone and threw him to the ground of the cave again. For a moment, he had the strange clarity to wonder if he’d knocked himself unconscious. Then something brushed his arm, and in panic he slapped and shoved at every part of him. “Get—get it off me!” He vaulted to his feet and continued to rake his nails over his arms, chest, and thighs. “Fuck! John!”
“Arthur, calm down,” said John, but Arthur could hear an uncharacteristic degree of strain in his voice, and because of that alone calm was nowhere near an option. After a few more attempts that Arthur could barely register, new words broke through his frantic stupor.
“There’s light,” John was saying, and Arthur straightened up as if he’d been struck. “Arthur, there’s light—to your right!”
Arthur lurched to the right and fled, one hand on the wall and the other stretched out in front him to keep from colliding with another dead end. “Stay, stay,” the cave hissed in ears, but he could suddenly taste the hotter, drier air of the desert in each heaving gasp, and he rushed for it. He tripped over an incline in the stone but kept going. The wasteland sun hit his face and shoulders but he kept going—kept running until his lungs burned and he thought his heart might explode.
“Arthur, that’s enough,” John was saying, though for how long he had been saying it, Arthur had no idea. “Arthur, stop, we’re far away now—you can stop.”
“God…” Arthur finally slowed and then stopped, heaving and shaking, bent over his own knees. “God, fuck,” he spat, saliva thick and choking, his eyes watering. “God fucking damn it!”
“Easy,” John continued, much more measured than Arthur expected. “Easy, Arthur. We’re all right now—we’re out. Catch your breath.”
Arthur tried, at least. He quaked all over with adrenaline, and even once he’d managed to jerk upright, he tottered dizzily on weak knees. His body was still buzzing with frenzied energy he couldn’t expel, burning and chilled at once as if he were in the grip of a fever. “There’s...there’s still something wrong with me,” he croaked, and he began brushing down his legs again in search of clinging mold. “Something’s wrong—did I miss some? Is it still on me?”
“There’s no more moss on us,” John said, but with uncharacteristic reservation. “I think what was left burned off in the sun.” He hesitated. “Just...try to stay calm, Arthur.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” Arthur demanded. “Why do you sound like that? Do you see something?” He continued to pat himself down, his anxiety mounting. “Is there—”
He reached between his legs, hand shaking as he imagined finding more of the moss clinging to his traitorous cock. There was a tiny moment when elation washed over him, as he discovered no spongy stowaways, no pulse of hot blood. Then he realized. “John…?”
“Don't overreact,” said John.
Arthur felt out the length of his cock, still flush with unwanted arousal against his leg. It was intact, and yet...numb. He couldn’t feel any of it.
“John,” he said hoarsely, as that shudder of panic returned to his unsteady limbs. “I can’t…” He swallowed. “I can’t feel my…”
“Arthur, calm down. Just take a—”
Arthur pinched the head, and hearing John hiss in response solidified it. “You,” Arthur growled, and he could have sworn the insides of his eyelids burned red. “You son of a bitch.”
“I didn’t do this,” John said defensively. “You know it doesn’t—”
Arthur threw his hands in the air. “You took my fucking prick!?”
“It doesn’t work that way! You know that!”
He knew that, truly. It didn’t matter. “You bastard!” Arthur raved, pacing angrily with no enemy to take his fists to. “What the fuck is the matter with you!?”
“I’m not the one who stormed right into that thing's lair,” John shot back angrily. “Or the one who tried to fuck a lump of moss!”
“That—” Arthur burned all over. “I was hypnotized! Or—or drugged, you—you said it yourself!”
“You do this every fucking time,” John ranted on. “Throwing us into danger for your own pointless curiosity. You nearly got us killed and you're worried about your cock, of all things?”
“You’re damn right I am!” Arthur hollered, continuing to pace. His every remaining ounce of flesh was drawn tight with anxiety, as if expecting that at any moment the beast inside him would open its maw again, and swallow another piece of him whole. The panic he’d felt in the cave clawed its way back into his chest. “Why the hell are you doing this to me?”
“I’m not doing anything except trying to keep us alive. And you know that!” John growled with frustration and...hurt. “How many times do I have to tell you, I didn’t ask for this!”
“I…” Arthur grimaced. He couldn’t pretend that he didn’t know, that he didn’t feel John’s guilt and resentment twisting in his own stomach. But another piece of him was missing, gone, nothing he’d ever expected to be taken from him. His most intimate and unhelpful organ that John had no business with or advantage to draw from. Something he might never gain back.
“Fuck,” Arthur wheezed, and he started walking.
“Arthur?”
“Shut up,” Arthur snapped.
“Slow down—where are you going?”
“Away from here!” Arthur scraped his palm across his face. “Away from you.”
John scoffed loudly, because of course that was ridiculous. “Fine. March us both right back down there—go ahead.”
Arthur stopped mid-step, and the memory of the oozing, creeping moss up against his balls made his stomach lurch. He swallowed back a taste of bile, turned in a different direction, and started walking again.
“Now you’re going back the way we came,” said John.
“Fuck!” Arthur kicked at the sand, only to then hiss at its tiny particles stunning his wounded ankle. He wobbled back and forth for a while indecisively, but the wind in the dunes was starting to sound like the whispers in the cave, and he suddenly felt desperately, devastatingly alone. The few minutes that John left him alone to stew had him shivering.
Arthur gulped. “Which way?”
“You’re facing east, as far as we determined from the ship,” said John evenly. “Turn all the way around. I’ll let you know when the blue sun passes overhead.”
Defeated, and simmering in resentment for his defeat, Arthur turned as instructed and started walking again. He tried to keep his mind off it. He told himself they were lucky to be alive at all after an encounter like that—that they had to keep moving, so they could find a safe place to rest, and clean whatever wounds were on their ankles, and figure out what came next. But with every step his attention was snapped away by the feeling of his cock against his thigh, without feeling it at all. Like a piece cut out of a canvas that left only an outline.
“Christ,” Arthur muttered, face turned straight ahead as if he could stare determinedly into the horizon. “Can’t you at least calm it down?”
“I don’t exactly have control over that, any more than you did,” John retorted moodily. “I think whatever spores that thing was giving off are still in our system.”
He was right; Arthur still felt flushed, and a little dizzy. A little overly sensitive, the print of every grain of sand and drop of sweat hard on his skin. He tried to dry his brow against his sleeve. “Our system, huh. You unbelievable prick.”
John sighed heavily. “This isn’t my fault.”
“Yes it is—it’s been your fault since the beginning.”
“I can’t do anything about that now.” The heat in his voice helped—Arthur was still much more ready to be angry than he was for anything else. “We’re stuck here, and like it or not, we’re together on this. Next time just listen when I tell you to do something and maybe you’ll stop making things worse.”
“So this is my fault?” Arthur snapped back. “You agreed we should go in, too, you know.”
“And if you hadn’t been fucking around, we might not have gotten lost right away. So yes, this one is on you.”
“Insufferable,” Arthur muttered under his breath. “As if you’d even still exist if not for me.”
He could feel John rippling under his skin. “What was that?”
“I said, go fuck yourself, John,” Arthur said loudly. “It’s easy for you to order me around, blaming me for the near constant mortal peril we end up in, when I’m the one doing all the work! I’m surprised you wouldn’t just go for my arms and legs, so you can do all of it yourself! Then we’ll never be in any danger at all!”
“I don’t. Get. To choose,” John growled, and the sound of his voice, so low and tight with restrained anger, twisted something in Arthur’s stomach. “Because if I could, I absolutely would have taken something useful.”
His flippancy had Arthur seeing red again, though it also tore deeper into him than he wanted to admit—the idea that any part of him could be considered that disposable had him sweating all over again. “The hell do you even know anyway? You’re a—an abomination from another plane of existence. You don’t even know what it’s like to have a cock.”
John laughed then, and the rich condescension of it tightened Arthur’s throat. “Oh, Arthur,” he taunted. “You have no idea.”
Arthur walked faster as if he could escape. “Sure, John. Whatever you say.”
“Your little human brain can’t even imagine,” John continued to chide, each syllable a separate finger dragging across Arthur’s frenzied brain, “what gifts an ‘abomination’ like me was granted.”
Arthur shuddered from head to toe. “Well, good,” he snapped. “Then you’ll know exactly how this feels.” And in a desperate act of petty vengeance, he slapped himself in the dick.
“Hngh!”
Hearing all John’s arrogance turn sour might have made Arthur feel a little guilty, if not for the jolt of triumph that smothered all other emotions. “Ha!” he crowed, childishly pleased with himself, as John groaned as if between clenched teeth. “Aren’t you so glad now that you—”
Arthur didn’t actually feel the hand they shared grab him by the balls, but the rest of his body certainly did. Pain shot up through his torso, cramming his stomach up into his chest and collapsing him into a heap. He gagged and shook over his knees and was helpless for long moments of unexpected agony.
As he hunched there, once again defeated, he could hear John between his ears, hissing curses and seemingly in just as much pain. “You,” Arthur choked, furious. “You stupid...bastard…!”
“Fuck,” John grunted, as if in agreement. That he hadn’t thought through his retaliation at all did nothing to assuage Arthur’s temper. “Fuck you, Arthur.”
“Fuck me?” Arthur sputtered as he struggled to rein his breath back in. He felt absolutely mad with anger, and frustration, and humiliation, and all he could think in that moment was that he had to get back at John somehow. Before he could consider what he was doing any better than John had, he fumbled his fly open. “We’ll see about that.”
John was cradling “their” balls protectively; Arthur smacked their hand aside. “What—”
Arthur tugged his cock free with trembling fingers. The absolute nothingness of it terrified him; the weight against his palm was so familiar, but when he squeezed, it might as well have been a stranger. Before that horror could take root, John’s startled groan swelled between his ears. It was sharp like fangs, digging in between his shoulder blades. It was the itch and the scratch put together, and Arthur’s brain rolled over in its skull.
“Arthur,” said John, sounding wholly unlike any time Arthur had ever heard him. “This isn’t—”
Arthur pumped his fist, and John’s protests dissolved into a roiling murmur. “What?” Arthur taunted, drunk on this new, fiery euphoria of sudden power. “It’s yours, now, after all. You might as well enjoy it.”
He squeezed hard from root to tip—heard John huff and hiss in response. How an eldritch spirit lodged in his brain could breathe Arthur had never figured out, but he could very nearly feel it on his skin, hot against his sweat. As he began to stroke in earnest, he felt only the echoes of real pleasure fanning out from his numb groin: his heart, pounding against his ribs like a beast in a cage; his palms slick, breath hard and lips tingling. God, it’s been a long time, whispered his lizard brain. Stay. Stay.
“Ffuuck, Arthur…!” John groaned, his voice choked by a low, animalistic snarl.
“What's that, John?” Arthur continued to prod, mad and mad and fueled by both. “You like this? Knowing how it feels to get fucked over for once?” He gave a rough bark of laughter and then licked his lips, savoring John’s guttural murmurs of outrage and arousal. “That’s right, you arrogant asshole! This is me, fucking you, do you understand?” He felt their left hand spasm, nails digging into his thigh, and he yanked the arm behind him for fear that John was about to go for his wrist. He sat on it to keep it pinned and resumed stroking his leaking erection, faster and harder.
“You just take it, then,” Arthur ordered, even as something hard clenched in the back of his throat. “I’m still the one in control here!”
John seethed in answer, his voice now nothing but feral growls and senseless panting. He clawed against Arthur’s insides defiantly, twisting and sloshing like a tempest whirlpool low in his abdomen. He was close—they were close—Arthur could feel it, and he reveled in it—pushed John with every milking squeeze. A sensation of fleshy, serpentine tendrils tightened around Arthur’s midsection and thighs, and for a moment he thought he caught a glimpse of what the distant, aliens gods considered pleasure: unfathomable depths and unnamable ecstasies, which coiled, and writhed, and penetrated, saturated, and—
Arthur came suddenly, in a strange rush of tension and release. Warmth washed over his fingers in sticky pulses from seemingly nowhere. John bellowed inside him, and there was a time when that primal expression of rapture alone might have drawn a hard orgasm from him. But as the echoes of euphoria dulled, and Arthur leaned forward against the earth, wheezing and spent, he felt...hollow. Overwhelmed and yet still unsatisfied.
John grumbled and churned like fading thunder. It seemed to take him a long time to compose himself, which Arthur could at least draw some defiant solace from. Then he sighed.
“Well done, Arthur,” said John, and Arthur felt an unexpected flicker at the words, until he continued. “Now there’s red sand crusted all over your cum hand.”
“What?” Arthur jerked up and immediately tried to wipe his hand off against his trouser leg, but like John had said, the red sand of the desert had already stuck all over his palm and fingers. He scraped it hard against the ground and got only the sting of raw skin for his efforts. “Fuck,” he muttered, trying again with his pant leg, his shirt front, but it didn’t seem to do any good. “Fuck!”
“That’s not helping,” John said unhelpfully.
“I know it’s not!” Arthur exhaled sharply in frustration and gave up for the moment, just kneeling there in the sand. As clarity slowly returned to his battered psyche, it brought with it confusion, and shame, and a quieter, more insidious anger that tasted too much like fright. He sat quivering for a while, each emotion too sharp to contemplate. “John, I…”
John waited a moment as if he might finish, but Arthur couldn’t get the words out of his lungs. The emptiness of that pause, with only the whistle of hot, dry wind to keep him company, made him feel very small.
“Are you all right?” John asked.
“No,” Arthur admitted in a rush of air, though he then tried, very shakily, to compose him. “I mean yes. I’m sorry, I know that was… I don’t know what that was, but…”
He started to reach down only to remember the state of his hand. He gulped and instead reached with the left. “Could you…?”
John tucked his—their—cock back into his pants and buttoned the fly again. “Arthur,” he tried again, gentler this time, but that only made Arthur feel more guilty. “Are you all right?”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur said before he knew the words were on his tongue. “I shouldn’t have… Are you all right?”
“Of course,” John replied, taking on an air of embarrassment before shifting back into concern. “Arthur, listen. It doesn’t matter—”
“All right, good, then we’re both fine.” Arthur pushed to his feet, and though his knees wobbled for the first few steps, they held him enough that he could continue walking. As long as he could do that much, he had to do it. The movement would help him think again, he was sure of it. “Let’s keep moving.”
“You can’t do that this time,” said John firmly.
“I’m not doing anything.” Arthur marched on. The lump in his throat was getting worse, spreading to a tightness in his chest and a burning behind his eyes. “I’m sorry about the things I said, but I wasn’t really myself and—”
“It doesn’t matter how many pieces I take from you,” John interrupted stubbornly.
Arthur shuddered. He tried not to let his gait falter but his strength was too frail; a quiet, choked sound came out of him that he tried to dampen against the back of his wrist. “John, don’t.”
“It doesn’t matter, because the goal is still to separate us,” John carried on. “I can’t say I know what you’re going through, but I haven’t forgotten that I’m the invader here. And if there’s a way for me to make that right, I will. I’ve said that all along.”
Arthur kept walking, but slower, his shoulders slumping forward. “I know you have. But what if—”
“‘What if’ doesn’t mean anything now,” John insisted. “It’s you, and me, and we don’t have a choice but to get through it together. But when we’ve figured it out, I have every intention of giving everything back. Whatever it takes.”
Arthur smothered another weak sob against his arm. “You believe me, don’t you?” John pressed. Arthur could only manage a nod in reply, but it seemed enough, and John sighed. “Good. I am sorry about this, Arthur. I need you to know that...in case there’s a next time.”
“Fuck…” Arthur took in a huge breath and at last straightened up. He had to depend on their left hand to scrub his eyes, but John moved instinctually with him, as unobtrusively as possible. “I know,” he said at last. “I know, and...I’m sorry, too.”
“I know.”
They continued on, waiting for the blue star to pass overhead and show them their destination, and whatever new challenges it would bring them.