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Their detente was a fragile thing, less than a day old, when Arthur said, “John, what you did at the Order….”
They'd snuck into a little stone barn to escape the ceaseless rain. The mound of loose hay they’d found within was as soft as a cloud, as far as Arthur‘s aching back was concerned. He'd nestled himself down into it, and warmth finally lingered around him instead of rushing away with the wind. It smelled sweet and earthy and safe.
“What I did?”John asked, and it was good to have a normal conversation again, one where he was neither seething nor pleading.
“The thing Yellow did, too. He sort of left Larson's body, and you did the same from mine.”
“Not ‘left,’ exactly. I was still inside you.” He seemed to be struggling to find the words. “I guess you could say I projected a part of myself outside.”
That sounded right to Arthur. It had all been so chaotic, but he couldn’t recall feeling the terrible emptiness he’d felt in the snow outside Addison. He still shuddered at the memory. Of course, that meant it was something new and different, and therefore something they needed to understand. “Do you think you were able to do that because Yellow was there? You'd never done it before. And you said you felt drawn toward him.”
John considered a moment. “No,” he said firmly. “He showed me it was possible, sure. Gave me the idea. But then I just… pushed. Stretched, maybe. I don't know.”
“Could you do it again?”
“I don't know.”
“It might come in handy sometime. We should know if it's an ability you can call on at will. One of the tools in our toolbox.”
“You want me to try it.”
“Only if you want to,” Arthur said quickly. The last thing he wanted was another argument. “You sound hesitant. Was it difficult, or uncomfortable?”
“No. No, it actually felt rather good.”
He chuckled. “A bit of room to spread out?”
“I suppose.”
John was holding something back. Something about the incident didn’t sit right with him, perhaps – or perhaps he’d liked it too much. A taste of freedom, making the captivity of Arthur’s body that much more painful. Arthur knew better than to push for truths he might not want to hear. Instead, he said, “Seems like a good opportunity, is all. We're alone and safe. We can rest afterwards, if it turns out to be strenuous. But, as I said, it's your choice.”
“All right,” John murmured; then, with resolve, repeated, “All right.”
Arthur took a deep breath of anticipation. “Do you need me to do anything in particular?”
“Just be quiet. Relax.”
Easier said than done, when his body hummed with curiosity and excitement and a tingling edge of fear. Starting with his neck and shoulders, he willed each muscle to slacken, one after another – arms, back, hips, thighs. He breathed in and out steadily, and that was the only sound aside from the soft drone of the rain on the roof. Should something have happened by now? How long would this take?
He’d just opened his mouth to ask, when suddenly the air pressure around him shifted, and his stomach dropped the way it did when he missed a step. He gasped, “John–?”
There was an oscillating hum around them that Arthur could feel in his teeth but not hear, and a smell like a lightning strike. John was still inside him, but… strained. His voice trembled. “I… I did it. I’m here. Outside.”
“Brilliant,” Arthur marveled. “You’re a wonder! But tell me, what does it look like? What do you look like?”
John chuckled. “Not much, I'm afraid. A shade. Dark and indistinct. The form is abstract, the mere suggestion of head, arms, torso. Like your shadow pulled itself up from the ground and stood over you.”
“I still hear you in my head.”
“And I still see with your eyes. It's dimmer than usual. But I think… Arthur, close your eyes.”
He hardly thought of them as his anymore, but the eyelids certainly still were. He let them fall closed.
“Yes. This form doesn't have eyes, per se, but I can see from it anyway. I can see – oh, Arthur, I can see you.”
What a picture he must make: exhausted, bedraggled, weatherbeaten, scarred. He laughed weakly. “My condolences.”
“You do look worse for wear. Like a hungry, wet cat. But…”
“But?”
“You're smiling.” The tenderness in John’s voice – the awe – took Arthur’s breath away. “I – I don't think I've ever seen you smile.”
Arthur’s throat went tight. John had an unerring instinct for exactly what to say to melt away his defenses. It was too much, too soon; the latest hurt was forgiven but still fresh. Arthur made a show of scoffing. “That can't be right. What about…”
He trailed off, distracted by a brush of air against his cheek. A draft? The place had seemed snug before. The tickle grew stronger, somehow only on the one cheek, and perhaps down along his jaw–
They gasped together.
“John, is that–”
“Arthur, I can–”
“You're touching me. Not with your hand, but–”
“With this… shadow.” Indeed, John’s hand – formerly Arthur’s hand – lay lax by Arthur’s side. John still controlled it, but perhaps using it was more difficult when he was like this. He continued in a rush of amazement, “I reached for you with it on instinct, expecting it to go right through you like a ghost. But it didn’t, and I can feel you, and you can feel me.”
Arthur knew he was smiling again, and his mind raced to make sense of the pressure against his skin. “It's like air, but unmoving. Cooler than flesh would be. There’s no texture to it. I… I've never felt anything like it.” Before he could stop himself, he added, “It's nice.”
John made a soft, surprised sound. Another touch, on Arthur's other cheek, cradling his face like crystal. Almost shyly, he said, “Good. I want to make you feel nice.”
Even as Arthur turned into the caress, his brow knit. If John’s words had been too much, too soon, his touch was a tsunami battering Arthur’s carefully constructed walls. Stupid to have built them, perhaps. Even at the peak of his rage, some small part of him had suspected the cause was lost. However John had hurt him in the past, whatever wounds he’d inflict in the future, could Arthur really shut him out for long? How could he keep out the ocean, when what he wanted most in the world was to ride its swells and surges?
Still, his pride put up a valiant effort. Underneath John’s affection was guilt, desperate and sour, and it made Arthur wince and pull back. “You don't have to do that. You don't owe me penance.”
“Of course I do,” John replied easily. “But this isn’t that. I'm not doing this out of obligation. I want to be kind to you.”
“It’s not–.” His words caught in his throat, stopped by a feather-light brush across his forehead.
With the touch – not a kiss, surely, for if there were no eyes then there must be no lips as well – came a whisper. In his head, but somehow close against the shell of his ear as well. “Arthur. Let me be kind to you.”
A choked-off sob of surrender was the only reply he could give. It might be perverse to accept comfort from the one who’d caused the injury, but that didn’t stop him needing the comfort like air. He yearned forward, and once again those hands ( were they hands, when they seemed to have no fingers?) cupped his face. Though the pressure was cool, his skin warmed beneath it.
John gave a pleased hum. He skimmed over Arthur’s cheekbones and closed eyelids, and smoothed the tension out of his brow. The touches traveled up onto his scalp, then, in and among the roots of his hair like rivulets of water, leaving tingles in their wake. The pressure increased at the base of his skull, until the sore muscles there ached sweetly and he could no longer hold in his sigh of contentment. John could doubtless feel him turning to putty anyway.
Gentle strokes down the sides of his neck; at the same time, something began stroking his arms, as well. That… that made four points of contact. Arthur sputtered, “John, what – how many–”
John sounded smug as he replied, “As many as I want, it seems.”
That stood to reason. If John could manifest this immaterial form, why not shape it to his liking? And it seemed his liking involved touching Arthur everywhere, all at once: there were pushes on his lower back now, and squeezes around his calves, as if an entire team of masseurs had dedicated themselves to unraveling one battered, half-starved man. It was all John, though, wrapping him in a cocoon of sensation. Arthur had never felt so enveloped, and he was torn between the instinctive panic of a trapped animal and the preening satisfaction of a beloved pet. His heart raced while all his other muscles melted.
Belatedly, he realized the touches were all direct contact to his skin, even though his arms and legs and back were covered by fabric. “Are you just reaching right through my clothes?” he asked – and Christ, his voice was low and rough, like they’d been–
“I believe so,” John mused. “Clothing, the straw you're lying on, even the stone walls around us, are nothing to this form. Or perhaps this form is nothing to them, insubstantial as smoke. The only thing that's solid to me, the only thing I can grasp and feel… is you.”
That idea settled low in Arthur’s belly, and he had to press his lips together tight to stifle a whimper.
Now attention was shifting to more tender areas. Delicate lines traced on the backs of his knees and insides of his elbows. A slow, soft drag along his collarbones. His earlobes, his throat, the ridges of his spine – did John know the human body so well, or was it accidental that he’d found all the most sensitive nerves? Well, not all the most sensitive. Arthur was growing keenly aware of the spots that remained untouched. Lips, slack and damp. Thighs, trembling slightly. Nipples, stiff against the shirt that might as well not exist. And that throb at his center that he wanted desperately to deny. This was too close to fantasies he'd had even before John upended his life (blindfolds, strangers, hands everywhere); and then there were the fantasies after John, which made him burn with shame. Did John understand what he was doing to Arthur? They were well past “nice” now; every touch sent pleasure rippling out like a pebble dropped in still water. He couldn't stop the rumbling “mmmms” and throaty “ahhhs” that spilled out of him more or less constantly. He couldn't still his restless hips. He couldn't shake the sense that they were hurtling toward something terrible.
One caressing appendage drew a path down his throat. It didn't feel like a hand so much as a tongue, flat and pulsing, sliding over his scar with care. Lightheaded, he followed its progress down his sternum and over his diaphragm, where it made him flinch and laugh breathlessly. It reached his navel, and lingered there a moment, as if hesitating. Then it pushed lower, just an inch before Arthur jolted and cried, “John–!”
All the limbs paused their stroking, although they didn't pull away. John, sincerely curious, asked, “Should I stop?”
Arthur’s breath was coming fast now. Every inch of him felt hot, too hot, and the slowly building ache between his legs could no longer be ignored. Fuck. This was a line they couldn't uncross. He fumbled desperately for the reasons they should hold back – his hurt, John’s guilt, the plain fact that any awkwardness between them could have life-or-death consequences. All that seemed far away, though. Here and now, his skin was alive with need and his cunt was wet and wanting. He inhaled raggedly. With his final shred of good sense, he stammered, “D-do you want to stop?”
John’s voice was hungry and hot. “No.”
Arthur’s restraint crumbled at last. He shuddered and moaned, arching his back and straining up toward John. “Then… then don't.”
John moaned, too. “Arthur. God. Yes.” Everything resumed with new urgency, and the many points of contact – a dozen now, perhaps – coaxed pleasure from every nerve like fingers on harp strings. “Let me give you this.”
As the touch on Arthur's stomach shifted down all too slow, he squirmed eagerly. Christ, what must he look like, now that he’d surrendered? “John,” he whined, "tell me what you see.”
“You,” John replied without hesitation. “Laid out before me like an offering. Your chest rises and falls so fast, and the flush of your skin glows even in the dark. My arms surround you. My tendrils.”
It had crossed the concave belly and reached the upward slope of Arthur’s mound, tickling the coarse hairs and grinding the bone beneath. Then it seemed to flow down into the space created by his spread legs. It spanned his groin, from thigh crease to thigh crease, and cupped the shyly parting outer folds. Arthur barely had time to gasp before it sunk into that cleft, pushing it apart, molding over the hooded shaft and bare head of his cock, making him groan from deep in his throat. So much more flexible than a tongue. The way it undulated and rippled reminded him of a long-ago trip to Coney Island, where he'd watched an octopus grasp at its keeper with its sleek, flexible arms. John had said ‘tendrils,’ but these were tentacles , weren't they? Arthur was pinned below a great creature of shadow and strength intent in exploring him. All of him.
As the pressure slid lower, reaching the greedy entrance that clutched at it helplessly, John purred. “Oh, Arthur, I can feel your heat. I can feel your slick. So wet for me already.”
Arthur whimpered, past caring how pathetic he was. “John. John, please. Kiss me.”
Right away, something smooth and flat pressed against his lips. He mouthed at it desperately, licked it, moaned against it. It seemed to take a more appropriate shape, then, morphing to slot between upper lip and lower, probing in over teeth and tongue. He thought he even felt breath fanning over his face, as if John was panting into the kiss, and he panted back and imagined them tasting each other's air.
He gave a strangled cry as the thing – the tentacle – over his sex seemed to divide and re-form. One piece remained latched onto his cock, squeezing down along its meager length, while another made itself narrow and firm and began prodding his cunt.
“Arthur,” John began.
Arthur cut him off with a cant of his hips and a gutteral “Fuck me already.”
Now it was John's turn to sound choked with desire. He grunted low and fierce in Arthur's head, in Arthur's ear, and split Arthur’s cunt with a thrust that shook them both. Arthur could barely hear his own punched-out cry as they were joined more viscerally than ever.
Whether it was a dozen tentacles or a hundred covering his body, he had no idea. Then there was one more: a whip-thin tip slid between his cheeks and into his hole. It wasn't slicked, but it didn't need to be, for how could a shadow abrade that delicate channel? Once inside, it expanded, stretching and filling and pressing up against the membrane that separated ass from pussy. Too much, too much, he wanted to say at last; the words wouldn't come. Arthur wondered for a second if his eyes were rolling back behind his lids. Sweat clung to his upper lip and his spine writhed and hand clenched at nothing.
“Love you like this,” John murmured from above. “Overwhelmed. Delirious. Because of me.”
“Ngh.”
“I agree.” And then they all began to move.
How many orgasms did John wring out of him? Counting was impossible. They bled together, merging into one roiling rhythm. Arthur rose, he peaked, he began to fall but was caught and driven higher than before. He felt it everywhere, not just in his throbbing cock and relentlessly clutching cunt. It rang through his knuckles and teeth and pounded in his ears and his ribcage. Every breath was pleasure, even as his throat grew raw from shouting. The slide of a tear down his scarred cheek felt as good as the slide of the dark things filling him up.
Just when he’d mustered enough clarity to fear this would go on forever, the touches began to falter, and their rhythm began to slow. “John?” he rasped. “Are you… is everything…?”
“I'm fine,” he replied, but he sounded far away.
Panic cut through the haze. “Come back. Come back inside.”
A feeble grunt of protest, but then, one by one, the touches withdrew. His cunt and ass were abruptly empty, his cock wet and swollen in the dark air. He closed his shaking thighs and curled onto his side. The lightning smell dissolved into mist. That strained feeling inside him eased, and he knew John was back where he belonged.
The rain hammered on the roof. Must have been loud enough to drown out whatever unimaginable noises he'd been making, since no one had barged into the barn with a torch and pitchfork. Arthur didn't think he'd be able to run if they did. The straw cradled his limp limbs. Only the straw.
Somehow, he dragged his hand over to John's, and tapped on the back.
“I'm here,” John said. “I'm all right. What about you?”
“‘All right’ isn't exactly… I don't know. That was–. I'm–.” He blew out a long breath. “I'm here.”
John's fingers entwined with his. It was so little, after so much, but Arthur gave a half-sob of relief at the feeling. It grounded him.
When his head stopped spinning, he wet his dry lips. “Why did you do this, John?”
The thumb drew restless little circles on his skin. “I told you. I wanted to make you feel good.” He sounded whole and unharmed, but tense, like he was walking a ledge.
“Okay, but… what did you get out of it? And don't say, ‘Kindness is its own reward,’ or some other platitude you think I want to hear.”
A long pause, long enough that Arthur wasn't sure John would answer at all. At last, carefully, he said, “What did I do, before squeezing into your world and becoming trapped in a book?”
Arthur frowned. “You were… you were the King in Yellow.”
“But what did I do? What was my calling, if you will?”
“You drove men mad.”
“Yes.”
A cold jolt shot down Arthur’s spine. He swallowed. “Is that… were you trying to…?”
“No, Arthur, I wasn't trying to drive you past the brink of insanity and shatter your mind into a thousand jagged pieces. I'm done with that. It is no longer my calling.” Arthur could almost feel his spreading grin. “But you can imagine how this might have scratched that itch.”
“Fucking hell, John.” He ran a shaking hand over his face. “So, what, you're like the drunk who downgrades from whiskey to beer?”
“Interesting metaphor. Did I seem to be consuming you, Arthur?”
Now it was heat that flooded his body. He bit his lip and squeezed his thighs together. “N-no. Not me. My… my pleasure.”
“That sounds right,” John said thoughtfully. Then his voice darkened with worry. “Was that okay? Did I take something you didn't want to give?”
Arthur’s shame, rising again as the bliss receded, demanded that he say, Yes, you did. Disavow it all. Slam the door. So easy to lay one more wound at John’s feet. Wouldn’t it feel good to hurt him that way? To use a lie to twist his feelings the way Arthur wanted them, instead of the other way around, for once?
“No, you didn't,” he forced out. “I… I’ve wanted that, or something like it, for a long time.”
After a beat, John admitted, “I’ve wanted to touch you like that for a long time, too.”
Arthur laughed softly at the absurdity of it all. “Maybe if we'd been doing this all along, we'd have fought a bit less.”
“Is it really so simple? I fuck you, and you do as I say?”
“As you say?! Now hold on a minute, you–”
John's laughter was rich and warm. Just teasing, then. Bastard. The sound brought a flush to Arthur’s cheeks and a sweet, fond ache to his chest.
And it was that fondness, more than anything else, that told him this had been a terrible mistake. He'd thrown open the gates to the flood – to the seeking, grasping, feeding creature – and knew with absolute certainty there'd be no closing them. It would, sooner or later, destroy him.
For now, though, it simply rocked and soothed him. Well. If he was doomed, he might as well enjoy it. Arthur shook his head, stretched, sighed, and let John's musical laughter wash over him, until sleep pulled him under at last.