Archive of Our Own

Wen Kexing was not made to be a nurturing creature, but somehow he became one. He raised a girl to adulthood without making her entirely monstrous, cutting her apart only enough to keep her alive. He fed a failing body, refusing to let it die. He feels, Zhou Xu knows, pride in himself for these things—and a kind of pride, also, in uglier things he has done.

Zhou Xu, who was once Zhou Zishu, is both more and less of a monster now than he has ever been before.

He curls on his side, lying at the bottom of the pool which has been his home through the weeks since his body changed, the days since he awoke. The water flows slowly, shifting his hair. His limbs ache—call it growing pains. They strain to follow Zhou Xu's thoughts, to mold themselves to suit his desires—but they don't yet reliably have the strength.

A-Xu, Wen Kexing says. Slides into the pool, into the depths. The billow of his tendrils softens the overhead lighting, shades it from bright sun-white to a dim blue-green. A-Xu, it's time to wake up.

Zhou Xu stirs. I'm already awake, he says.

Wen Kexing coils around him, squeezing all his limbs.

To eat, then, he amends.

Lifts Zhou Xu from his resting place, and out into perfectly climate-controlled air.

He can breathe it again now, so long as the humidity is right, and the range that he can tolerate increases by the day. When Wen Kexing sets him down, his legs only shake momentarily. He can walk unassisted. Pull the loose house robe he's been wearing when not underwater around himself unassisted—though Wen Kexing still adjusts it fussily for him, taking care not to damage the fabric with his claws.

He can squabble silently with Wen Kexing as they eat, laughter spilling back and forth between their minds.

Let's go outside, he says. Aren't you tired of being in an aquarium?

Wen Kexing catches his hand, licking traces of food from it. Nips at his finger with those sharp teeth. Licks across his palm, licks his wrist. Bites him there as well—although not hard. The possibility of violence is there. For a moment, they both feel vividly what it would be like—the scrape of teeth against bone, the heavy flow of blood.

Alright, Wen Kexing says.

✥

The air outside is dry, but the lake is close to the clinic. Putting his robe aside and sliding down into it, Zhou Xu feels that days of convalescence are washing off of him. Underwater, he doesn't shake. His throat doesn't feel raw. The world moves around him in complex eddying ways. Fish dart, weeds sway.

They chase through the water. Zhou Xu's hands and feet splay obediently, shifting shape to propel him faster, as they're meant to. Wen Kexing is expansive, the membranes of his body at times sail-like.

They grapple, kick apart, chase, clash. Zhou Xu feels alive, alive, alive—even as, or because, exhaustion makes his body burn.

Wen Kexing catches him, pulls him close—their bodies press against each other, full length. Zhou Xu is engulfed.

Wen Kexing holds him tight. His tendrils touch every part of Zhou Xu, first outside and then inside too. Press into the crevices of his mouth, into the inside of his cock, into his hole. Down into his stomach. A single tendril digs into his navel—and, when Zhou Xu offers no cautioning thought or gesture, becomes briefly sharp. Piercing.

He arches and twists in Wen Kexing's hold. Tries to take a frantic breath through his mouth like a human, is prevented from choking on water only by Wen Kexing expanding hurriedly inside his throat—and that stretch makes him thrash. Wen Kexing is in his intestines. Is in his flesh, twitching slightly under his skin before spiking in deeper.

He will change my body again, Zhou Xu thinks, with a wave of relief. I can still grow stranger.

Wen Kexing fucks this throat with gentle thrusts, each thrust in deeper than the pull back out, until he can feel Zhou Xu growing uncomfortable with the fullness on top of having eaten—eases back, to Zhou Zishu's regret—to their mutual regret. Behind Zhou Zishu's navel, his insides feel hot and painful—but the pain is, he thinks, clean. Not sickly, not threatening. He is only being unmade and remade a little more, away from even benevolent observation.

Zhou Xu finds he's deeply aroused. The arousal has come to him quite unexpectedly; these last days, Wen Kexing has been inside him often, but it hasn't felt like sex. His pleasure has been an accommodating response to stimulation, has been an appreciation of intimacy. There are many reasons for bodies to intertwine, many ways. But now—

Wen Kexing hurries to open Zhou Xu up. It happens very easily. Zhou Xu, wanting to be fucked, goes embarrassingly loose, his body picking this moment for obedience.

Wen Kexing's cock shoves into him, too fast, perfect. They both dissolve, briefly, into incoherence. Wen Kexing's cool body fills Zhou Xu's. It's such a relief, and the relief only grows as Wen Kexing sinks deeper. The temperature of him balances well against the hot twisting of Zhou Xu's insides.

Wen Kexing presses a tendril against Zhou Xu's rim. Hooks it inside, worms it deeper until he finds Zhou Xu's prostate—flicks it sharply. Zhou Xu would wail if he was breathing air. The water vibrates around them.

Wen Kexing turns half-gentle again, then—to call it entirely gentle would be absurd, as thoroughly as Zhou Xu is being pushed beyond his old limits. But he fucks Zhou Xu slowly, rubs deliberately at his prostate, pulses in his throat. The pain of Wen Kexing piercing his stomach dulls, becomes a steady throbbing feeling which fits itself into the waves of Zhou Xu's arousal.

Sometimes, Wen Kexing's eagerness to soothe away small hurts is really just absurd, Zhou Xu thinks—remembering Wen Kexing holding him in his arms in a storage room, a bathroom, a tank. Singing to him, feeding him.

His stomach twists again.

Wen Kexing pets him from the inside until he relaxes.

He's very tired, now. He could just allow himself to go lax, allow Wen Kexing to use him as an object to satisfy himself with.

Mild dissatisfaction from Wen Kexing. The image of Zhou Xu's unconscious body, quickly snatched away.

Zhou Xu pats the side of Wen Kexing's face, strokes it.

Wen Kexing rubs against him, pleased by the touch. Pulls himself out of Zhou Xu's throat, so very carefully, until Zhou Xu's mouth is empty and he's breathing through his gills again—and then his mouth is covered by Wen Kexing's.

How needy.

Zhou Xu kisses him back, guides him through the emotion which is trying to swallow him. Guides him through the physical act, which is somewhat awkward for them—sharp as they are.

Exhausted though Zhou Xu is, he doesn't feel drowsy. His body is alight. Since Wen Kexing needs it, he can easily kiss and grasp and throw his arms around Wen Kexing, let Wen Kexing's sharp places bite into his skin. He feels heavy but not blurry. Wen Kexing is giving him what he needs, and he gives in turn.

Lake bottom. Rock slants smoothly downward, and Zhou Xu is pressed against it.

How is it that Wen Kexing feels abruptly larger inside him, simply because he's being fucked against a solid surface?

Wen Kexing, interested, makes himself solid and very heavy on top of Zhou Xu—

Zhou Xu is so full. He's so full. Wen Kexing is pushing on his abdomen from all sides. His stomach will be stretched from the size of Wen Kexing inside him. He opened up so easily for Wen Kexing's cock that he forgot how it had been, before. To struggle to fit everything into himself.

The thought carries a small pang. Wen Kexing pushes another tendril into him, like an apology.

When Wen Kexing comes, he does it so far inside Zhou Xu that Zhou Xu feels it will never leave his body. It'll just render him full forever. He'll grow more full every time he's fucked. Somehow Wen Kexing will make it work, and Zhou Xu will grow fat with it.

Wen Kexing thrills at the thought. The tendril piercing Zhou Xu's navel jerks as though excited—and that's how Zhou Xu comes, to a sharp and perfect moment of pain and with his mind full of Wen Kexing's desire.

✥

What will we do, after this?

They're in the pool again. Drifting. Zhou Xu aches horribly—almost like old times. The medicine he takes at night is harsh, and his stomach is still hot where Wen Kexing pierced him. His insides are opening and changing, he thinks.

Travel, he tells Wen Kexing.

Wen Kexing's mind turns to vast open spaces. Grass plains, deserts, glaciers, the gulf between planets—the gulf between stars. Then lakes, rivers, oceans. Their surfaces, their depths. To sink through layers of water into the cold dark, to have one's body provide all the light one needs.

But Zhou Xu is thinking of other things, beyond these. A summer market in a small regional capital, a famous temple thick with incense, to grow warm in the sun while drinking together and listening to gossip.

Wen Kexing doesn't chide him for having unrealistic dreams. Perhaps he shares Zhou Xu's quiet belief that anything, now, must be possible.

He wraps himself around Zhou Xu, tighter than before. He strokes Zhou Xu's tender stomach, hums soothingly. He slips inside Zhou Xu, down between his legs, and strokes him there too, a single thin tendril sliding deep into him. This, too, is soothing.

It's hard to rest. He dozes off for half a day sometimes, but then at night he might be so restless that the idea of sleep repels him. He is alive, and he has so much to do—

But Wen Kexing holds him in place. Between their minds, a distant coastline glitters in the orange-red light of a setting sun. Boats on the water, fish drying in rows on lines near the beach. The bright electric lights hanging over tightly packed rows of food stalls.

It is a place Zhou Zishu has been to. It was on the edge of the only open war he ever fought in. But the evenings spent there were good.

He wouldn't mind going back as Zhou Xu.

✥

Dressed, Zhou Xu sits under an open sky with old friends and drinks tea.

It is absurd. The sight of his transformed skin against delicate teaware.

He concentrates, and his skin begins to look marginally more human—but it isn't easy to maintain. He will have to practice, and be sure to work out the best ways to apply cosmetics as a reserve measure.

For now, he lets it go. He is distracted, anyway, by his awareness of Wen Kexing, who is somewhere below the surface of the lake. The urge to chase after him, fight with him.

"—essentially recovered," Wu Xi is saying. "The speed is impressive. You don't need more support from me."

Beiyuan has a polite smile on his lips. Zhou Xu would like to do something annoying to him, to make him drop his mask—but, ah—never mind.

Never mind.

"We'll be leaving soon," Beiyuan says. "You should too. We'll provide passage, of course. On world or off."

Zhou Xu considers this. His urge to keep moving, to explore every corner of the galaxy. His urge, also, to remain within a few hours of deep water for now. His urge to see if he can learn to walk unseen among humans.

"I'll think on it," he says.

✥

On the floor beside the pool, they try grappling on dry land, tumbling and kicking and digging fingers into one another's flesh. Zhou Xu still has a fairly human shape—feels the vulnerability of it, of his in-betweenness. His largely exposed genitals, his meager spines and spurs. But he is strong, and growing stronger every day—and Wen Kexing is not so agile on land as in the water.

I'll best you like this some day soon, he thinks—

And is rolled by Wen Kexing, suddenly, over the edge of the pool and down into the water.

The billowing expanse of Wen Kexing's limbs blankets him. It makes the pool feel deeper.

Zhou Xu offers no resistance as Wen Kexing's cock pushes into him. He has grown better at not trying to gasp in air with his mouth in these moments.

Wen Kexing pushes and pushes, and still there's no resistance—Zhou Xu's insides don't seem to need coaxing. But, ah, Wen Kexing so thick at the root—changed though Zhou Xu is, an ache remains.

Wen Kexing fucks him in a lazy rolling way. The feeling of it shudders through Zhou Xu in waves.

He reaches between them—not to touch himself but to explore Wen Kexing's body. The slit his cock emerges from, the still only half-familiar shape of his body there. He pushes his fingers into Wen Kexing, into the slick depths of the sheath of his cock. Remembering a not-dream, he holds Wen Kexing open there. Takes hold of his own cock only to be able to slide it in, angle it right to lay it alongside Wen Kexing's.

Wen Kexing is tight around him like this. With his cock buried inside Zhou Xu, there isn't much space around the thick base of it. Wen Kexing's body clutches at him. Wen Kexing shudders violently.

Wen Kexing is feeling strange, isn't he—not in a way that alarms him in this moment—but he does not always understand the things his body does. The ways it reacts.

They claw sweetly at one another. Wen Kexing's tendrils stroke Zhou Xu's skin all over—but stroke his stomach most of all. The tip of one nestles into his navel, only pushing lightly against skin which Wen Kexing, a few days ago, pierced.

Zhou Xu is willing to be pierced again.

But Wen Kexing focuses on fucking him. Slides tendrils in alongside his cock when he doesn't feel Zhou Xu is overwhelmed enough. Curls and spreads them, touching unpredictable places. Zhou Xu feels, also, unpredictably sensitive. He is at times very aware of the precise places he is touched, although many of them should have few nerve endings.

Wen Kexing's body squeezes Zhou Xu's cock harder. It hurts, brilliant and sparking. Wen Kexing's cock is swollen at its base now. Does that mean—yes, it does—

Wen Kexing is beginning to come.

There's no room for Zhou Xu inside Wen Kexing. Wen Kexing understands, vaguely, that Zhou Xu is desperate to be engulfed by him again—Zhou Xu can feel the awareness. Wen Kexing wraps his cock up, twines tendrils and broad fronds around it. Squeezes hard—

His whole body jerks against and inside Zhou Xu as he spills into him. The pulse of Wen Kexing's come into Zhou Xu's body is heavy, and there is a curious ache inside Zhou Xu as it spills into him. Zhou Xu feels flooded with it, overfull, and it hasn't stopped yet. It isn't usually this much—is it—

Wen Kexing is thinking the same thing. He feels out of control of himself. Slightly afraid now—? Yes—maybe—or simply exhilarated in a way that is like fear—no, it is fear—partly fear, and partly something else. It might be joy.

He clutches harder at Zhou Xu's cock, clutches until it's painful. The sounds he makes are incoherent, vibrating through the water and through the inside of Zhou Xu's skull.

Zhou Xu would thrash from the intensity of everything, the jumbled mess of sensations he's experiencing—but he's held in place too well. He would gasp, open-mouthed, but he's underwater.

He just shakes. His eyes sting. His gills, which he has only newly grown used to accounting for, feel strange. He doesn't know what shape he is, he thinks—doesn't know if he can possibly have a recognisable shape below the ribs—except for the way he does know he has a cock, because Wen Kexing is still squeezing it so tightly.

He can't come—isn't going to come, not like this—is feeling such a vast and heavy desire that it can't find a route out of his struggling body.

Wen Kexing's mind is a flickering and staticky presence against Zhou Xu's, sometimes sharply present, sometimes jerking away. Mostly trying, with uneven effect, to get closer and closer and closer.

Zhou Xu could just pass out for a little while, and let his body change as it will. Drift unconsciously in this huge feeling.

Conscious, he must wonder: Is it the desire that is vast and heavy, or is it he himself?

Both, Wen Kexing tells him. Unsteady, even when his mouth doesn't need to move.

He has almost stilled now. His hips only jerk occasionally. It hurts each time—Zhou Xu's body is tender inside, and Wen Kexing's movements are helpless and harsh. His cock feels thicker, somehow, than usual—or else it's just that Zhou Xu is feeling everything too sharply today.

Zhou Xu wants the surface, and so Wen Kexing helps him—guides him to the edge of the pool, holds him until he's managed to arrange himself. Elbows on the smooth floor surrounding the pool, fingertips in the water. The rim of the pool is a hard line against his spine. Humid air still prickles slightly against his skin. His nipples tighten.

His abdomen feels—well—

Full.

Wen Kexing is still inside him, but doesn't lean against him. He touches Zhou Xu's hands, scraping his claws across Zhou Xu's wrists.

Look, he says. A-Xu, look at yourself.

He is partly anxious, and partly something else.

Zhou Xu, cautious, looks down. His body, as usual, glows faintly in the dim light—but Wen Kexing's is brighter, casting a deep-ocean phosphorescence around them. Wen Kexing's hands, sharp and webbed, wrap around Zhou Xu's hips. Zhou Xu's cock is obscured from view where Wen Kexing is holding it.

And Zhou Xu's stomach is visibly, if only very slightly, rounded.

Zhou Xu sinks his weight more heavily back onto his elbows. He groans, or moans perhaps. With his body arched, the swell of his stomach only looks more definite, more suggestively obscene—and yet he can still see, he thinks, the place where the tip of Wen Kexing's cock is inside him.

I think there's more, Wen Kexing says. He holds Zhou Xu's hips and cock tightly. He doesn't touch Zhou Xu's stomach, although Zhou Xu is lightheaded from wanting it. Wen Kexing is feeling tense. Beyond the moment when it was all pleasure and closeness, was only thrillingly intimate, he doesn't like not knowing. He doesn't like not understanding himself. This is something new. Zhou Xu has taken him somewhere new.

Don't fucking break me, you bastard, Zhou Xu says, feeling hot at the idea. He wraps himself around Wen Kexing's thighs, squeezes. Coaxing.

Tentacles squirm against his legs. But beyond these small reflexive movements, Wen Kexing has forced himself into shivery stillness. He is not wild-eyed—he looks controlled. But the way he shivers inside his skin and the cramped and abortive kicking of his thoughts give a wild-eyed impression.

He is feeling observed. He has shown too much of himself, in this place which is like a laboratory—like an isolation tank. Something is happening that he does not fully understand, and everything around him is clinical.

"Let's go outside," Zhou Xu says, aloud. although he isn't sure how he'll move without making a mess.

Wen Kexing slides his cock very carefully out of Zhou Xu; it doesn't immediately retract into his body, despite the snarled mess which is his mind, but presses against Zhou Xu's belly from the outside. They both shudder. Lean against one another, until neither of them are trembling, and Wen Kexing has closed up, armoured, around that vulnerable part of himself.

✥

Wen Kexing helps Zhou Xu up out of the water. He has shifted himself into such a human shape, the outline of his body almost convincing—the way he glows and his teeth and claws, less so. But then, there are many kinds of humans on many worlds. Who's to say—what one should look like.

Wen Kexing wraps Zhou Xu in a robe, tender and exact. Ties the belt loosely. He seems to be avoiding touching Zhou Xu's stomach—to be thinking around all the ways in which he has buried himself inside Zhou Xu—how uncharacteristic of him.

Zhou Xu takes a careful breath—then pulls the belt tight, stomach lurching at the sudden pressure. Looking down at himself, he finds he looks—normal, to the extent that anything can be said to be normal now. He looks, maybe, only a little less unhealthily thin.

He had thought that, standing like this, he would be making a complete mess of himself. But although he feels wet between his legs, it isn't—like that. He's still full. It isn't rushing out of him.

He walks carefully, all the same. Through the peacefully sleeping facility, out into the night.

✥

On the lake margin, screened from the nearby buildings by tall blades of water grass, Zhou Xu pins Wen Kexing to bare rock, knee on Wen Kexing's stomach. He pulls the robe he had belted so tightly around himself open—grabs Wen Kexing's hand—tugs it roughly to him, presses it hard to his tense and slightly swollen stomach.

Wen Kexing makes a thin and unsteady sound. He has lost control of his shape again already, hasn't he—of course he has. He is sharp and soft, all hard spines and delicate shifting flesh.

He shouldn't exist on dry land, Zhou Xu thinks—not when he looks like this. There is something a little pathetic about him, when he cannot shift and stretch and let his tendrils billow out around him. But it isn't bad. He was out of the water when he took his revenge. Those people did not get to know—the full extent of what Wen Kexing can be.

Ah—so much power, and Wen Kexing is allowing himself to be held down.

Wen Kexing's fingers flex, digging into Zhou Xu's stomach, and Zhou Xu could so easily double over at the feeling. He could start rutting desperately against Wen Kexing, scraping himself raw on Wen Kexing's edges. The fact that he hasn't come is getting difficult to ignore.

He manages to hold himself up. He tries to catch his breath.

Wen Kexing presses harder. Presses his mind against Zhou Xu's.

Zhou Xu sinks his weight down against Wen Kexing's palm—slides his knee off of Wen Kexing's stomach and straddles him. He could choke on this—this fullness, this pressure. It's hard to breathe normally. It's hard to think.

Wen Kexing's tendrils brush against Zhou Xu's hole—one of them dips inside.

Zhou Xu doesn't beg, won't beg. Begging is, if anything, Wen Kexing's job.

But Wen Kexing understands anyway—slides that tendril deeper. It pulses and twists inside Zhou Xu, not adding much to how full he feels and not really stretching him, but playing around, trying to find the places that will make Zhou Xu twitch or cry out in startled pleasure. Pushing into spaces that did not exist inside Zhou Xu—before.

It's really turning Zhou Xu on way too much—all of it. What the fuck is he meant to do with it?

Wen Kexing shifts them down into the water—only half way, so that his own lower body is submerged. He slides more tendrils into Zhou Xu, and Zhou Xu gives up—tips himself further down against Wen Kexing, his head against Wen Kexing's shoulder. Wen Kexing splays his hand wider on Zhou Xu's stomach, still putting heavy pressure on it although the angle has grown awkward. His shyness about touching Zhou Xu's stomach, now that Zhou Xu has made his point about it, seems to have entirely evaporated.

The blunt force of Wen Kexing's hand and the ticklish pleasure of tendrils brushing against those new sensitive places inside him have Zhou Xu trapped—constantly on the brink of some unknown kind of relief which keeps just barely failing to arrive.

It is a familiar relief, though, to feel Wen Kexing's cock against his ass, and, unable now to fake restraint, Zhou Xu shifts eagerly to take it inside himself—but Wen Kexing rolls them over, thrusts most of his cock into Zhou Xu in a single breathtaking motion. Zhou Xu's mind stutters at the feeling.

Then there's the last bit of it. Wen Kexing pauses. He tugs Zhou Xu open with more of his tendrils. He is, for a moment, hesitant—

And then, feeling no answering hesitation from Zhou Xu, forces the rest of his cock inside.

He feels hotter than usual, and decidedly thicker than usual—thicker even than he was earlier in the night. He fucks Zhou Xu steadily, still looking turned on but collected, in contrast to the lingering chaos inside him.

Zhou Xu feels pierced, and not pierced enough—despite Wen Kexing's cock and the tendrils he didn't remove when he thrust his cock in. Wen Kexing should stab him again, spear through his navel again, change him again.

Wen Kexing moves more frantically. He lays a hand, again, on Zhou Xu's stomach. Presses down, curls his fingers. He is looking at himself fucking Zhou Xu, at the movement of his cock.

Zhou Xu would feel very used indeed, if he didn't understand Wen Kexing well—if he couldn't touch Wen Kexing's mind.

He imagines himself as a captured creature, pulled down into the shallow water to be a plaything for an unknowable being—

But he does know Wen Kexing.

Wen Kexing tenses up, over Zhou Xu. His muscles flex in an unfamiliar way. What he is doing seems necessary to him—he must do it—but it is not effortless. He is trembling at the strain of it, skin turning pale in places. He is being rough with Zhou Xu's insides—he is holding Zhou Xu open, somewhere deep in there, with force. There is an opening he needs to fit through.

He's going to get me pregnant, Zhou Xu thinks. He doesn't believe it, but the thought makes his cock throb inexplicably. It's that idea of being captured and used, isn't it—to be used as a host, then. That would be a plausible kind of utility. A reason for the way he is being fucked and filled. He will lay here helplessly until life claws its way out of him, and he will not have to care for it because it was only ever using him for warmth.

Absurd—how absurd.

The feeling of having an unfamiliar part of himself held open is uncomfortable—when the tip of Wen Kexing's cock nudges into that opening, it hurts—

But only briefly. Wen Kexing soothes the hurt away, touching and humming softly, despite his own discomfort—Zhou Xu's body relaxes, just in time for Wen Kexing's to bend itself into a taut curl over him, hips thrusting hard once more until he's really as far in as he can get—not deeper than before, but at a new angle. The base of his cock thickens further, stretching Zhou Xu wider—at his entrance, and then further and further in, until it hits that new opening—

Wen Kexing's forehead is pressed to the rock close to Zhou Xu's face, and Zhou Xu, who is having something forced inside him through Wen Kexing's cock, can think of nothing to do but tug Wen Kexing closer, press Wen Kexing's head to his shoulder so that he won't scrape himself.

Wen Kexing is crying out, out loud. Gasping sobs. He tugs at Zhou Xu's insides more with his tendrils, coaxing—and something slips, finally, out of Wen Kexing's cock—into Zhou Xu's altered body. The stretch of it is very nearly too much.

The one that follows is easier. The sting of being stretched and pulled at is already subsiding, and Zhou Xu is free to simply feel what's happening. The way it slides over sensitive places inside him makes him groan. The way it slips out of Wen Kexing's cock, settling heavily in his abdomen, is perhaps going to drive him insane. It should only feel like being full, but it isn't that simple. He feels terribly sensitive.

Then another. Zhou Xu feels heavier and heavier, in a way which is half imagination.

He lies there and lets Wen Kexing empty himself. Grows heavier still—

Relief rolls through him—Wen Kexing's, mostly. That's it, then.

He lies there, lies there—looks at the star-strewn sky—Wen Kexing fucks him a little more, quick movements, one last piece of need—spills into Zhou Xu, hot and liquid.

Everything inside Zhou Xu seems to shift as he breathes. There is pleasure to it, deep and oceanic. It feels bad in a good way, a desirable way. Even as Wen Kexing's cock pulls out of him, he doesn't feel empty.

He touches his stomach, presses both hands to it. Feels the smooth swell of it—a more definite curve, but he is not so big as he feels. He wonders what his terrible wife has done to him now—thinks it with amusement only. What is there to be alarmed about any more?

Wen Kexing slides further down into the water. He rubs his face carefully against Zhou Xu's stomach. His tendrils massage Zhou Xu's hips and legs, the curve of his back, his insides. It feels nice—soothing.

Wen Kexing's tongue drags across Zhou Xu's cock, laps at the tip of it—and then Wen Kexing carefully opens his mouth, and takes Zhou Xu's external genitals into it—everything. Sucks on all of it at once, until the restless arousal in Zhou Xu finally breaks.

He finds his head pillowed as he tosses it back—Wen Kexing has him, shields him.

Once he's done gasping and shuddering, they sink together into deep cool water. There is no question of going back indoors to sleep.

✥

Underwater, Zhou Xu stretches and shifts restlessly. Relaxes his form, trying to sink into some sort of natural shape—the shape his body wants to have, whatever that might be.

Unable to find one, he pulls himself at last towards a nearly human form. Smaller, more compact. His body presses itself together, and his stomach grows tighter—he is so very full, so full it feels like his insides must be growing bruised in a way which is new. His body had reflexively stretched itself as it was filled, he supposes—and he is only now understanding what the experience would have been like. If it had happened. Before. If his stomach didn't look so big as it felt to him earlier, it probably does now.

He holds this shape, settling into the ache of it. It hasn't been very long since he had no other way to be. Since Wen Kexing, pulling him under the surface to hold him and fuck him, had to be the one who breathed for both of them.

Wen Kexing stirs, the water swirling around them as all the expansive extremities of his body move. He grasps at Zhou Xu. He doesn't seem to be awake, but he rubs at Zhou Xu's stomach anyway, drawn to the places where Zhou Xu hurts.

Zhou Xu shivers. Feels those objects, whatever they are, shifting under his skin.

Go to sleep, Wen Kexing tells him. A drowsy presence.

Zhou Xu wants to curl in around his swollen stomach, and so instead he arches his back—his almost-human legs kick reflexively as his insides go bright with uncomfortable pleasure.

Wen Kexing holds him tighter. Wraps him up thoroughly.

Zhou Xu gives up. He curls his body, laying an arm across his stomach. Tries to relax again—partially, at least. His tendrils spread out slowly from fronds along his arms, his back, his legs. He reaches down with them—brushes one against his hole, then slips it inside.

It isn't altogether easy to explore his body like this. It takes effort. He hasn't had Wen Kexing's years and years to learn. But he manages. False starts, uncomfortable moments of too-sharp pressure. He is a strange creature—humans are strange creatures—his internal muscles move in ways he had until now only been aware of in theory. They squeeze and press and twitch and flutter.

It takes him a long time to find the opening that Wen Kexing so recently forced himself through, and by that time his fragile human cock is trying to harden—why does it enjoy this—he is being quite incompetent, is not drawing pleasure out of himself in the way Wen Kexing can.

He presses a tendril cautiously through, making it as thin as possible. Squirms in. His fingers grip the nearest part of Wen Kexing reflexively—squeeze until the fresh swell of pain subsides again.

his probing tendril meets a wet warm space, then meets something round and firm, which shifts as he touches it—and that shifts everything else—his fingers on Wen Kexing's arm have turned clawed. Break through Wen Kexing's skin.

A-Xu, Wen Kexing whispers into Zhou Xu's head.

Take me up, Zhou Xu tells him.

Wen Kexing does, slowly—still waking properly. Swims them up into a grey early morning.

Zhou Xu curls his tendril around one of the objects Wen Kexing has fucked into him as they surface. Tugs at it experimentally—tenses at the discomfort trying to dislodge it provokes. Wen Kexing's concern is heavy around him—but he does nothing to stop Zhou Xu.

He lays Zhou Xu down on the stone where they fucked the night before. He slides a tendril into Zhou Xu, following Zhou Xu's own—joins him, twisting and tugging.

He does want to see as well.

They only need to manage, to begin with, to remove one. Then—

They'll have to see.

Even pulling one out takes time—takes effort. Hurts. When it finally comes free, Zhou Xu cries out—more startled than anything. Wen Kexing has to be the one who guides Zhou Xu's tendril out, bringing that object along with it.

The discomfort eases fast, not vanishing entirely but subsiding to something dull and easy to ignore. Zhou Xu breathes carefully through the last sharp edges of it—then relaxes with a sigh.

"Here," Wen Kexing says—and Zhou Xu pushes himself up to a sitting position, accepts what Wen Kexing presses into his hand.

It's quite a featureless thing. Oval, translucent. It's homogenous. It can be squeezed and return to its original form.

Wen Kexing takes it from him once he's done looking at it—squints at it with his relatively poor vision—then breaks it deftly open with a flick of his clawed thumb. Rubs at it, lifts it to his face to smell it—

Licks it.

Zhou Xu watches, fascinated.

It's the same as what I feed you, Wen Kexing says.

He holds it to Zhou Xu's mouth, as though offering a piece of fruit. Zhou Xu, off balance, thinks helplessly of lychees. Their slippery pale flesh. Fragrant juice on the fingers. Stupid, stupid. This has been inside him. It's no kind of meal for Wen Kexing to offer him.

He pushes Wen Kexing's hand away, flushing—and Wen Kexing, who can be murderously difficult with other people, relents easily.

"Bring me breakfast," Zhou Xu says, and lies back on the sloping rock. Closes his eyes.

It has grown brighter, but the clouds are heavy, and there's no direct sunlight to irritate his skin.

✥

Waiting for Wen Kexing, he rests both his hands on his stomach. Thinks idly about eggs, about parasitic beings. He thinks, again, about something like pregnancy. Something that would never become a child of his, growing in him. He thinks about becoming insatiable as his stomach grows larger, about somehow needing sex more. Being at the mercy of this desire. Mad from it.

There is no logic to his thoughts today—but he is tired and sore and his stomach feels heavy, and Wen Kexing is inside him, but not inside him enough. He is only a little swollen, his belly is only a little visibly rounded. Well—it's quite rounded—but it only feels that way because he was too thin to begin with, surely—

He parts his legs, and pushes tendrils into himself—works them in deep, but doesn't try to find his way to the new organ that sits inside him now. All that matters is fullness.

He curls his tendrils, coils them carefully. makes them take up space. Makes himself fuller. Wonders how much he could fit inside himself—wonders if he should try and see. Just keep going and going.

It doesn't feel like masturbating, although he has no idea what it is.

✥

Wen Kexing returns as quietly as a killer, the world going still around him. No amphibious creatures splash along the water margins; no birds hop and warble in the trees.

Zhou Xu doesn't open his eyes. He can feel Wen Kexing's body close to his, the electrical almost-touch of Wen Kexing's hand hovering above his stomach—

Wen Kexing kneels over him, bends. He nuzzles his face against Zhou Xu's: shared breath, shared scent. He licks at Zhou Xu's mouth, slides his tongue inside. Explores.

Zhou Xu relaxes his throat, letting Wen Kexing push a little deeper. He sucks on Wen Kexing's tongue, careful to keep his own teeth blunt—this time.

The noises Wen Kexing makes are strangely soft and sweet—or maybe it isn't strange. He uses his voice to soothe often enough.

Are you full enough now? Wen Kexing asks, and Zhou Xu parts his legs in answer, embarrassingly reflexive. Shows Wen Kexing his hole, full of his own tendrils. Can he take more? He wants to.

Just like he relaxed his throat, he relaxes his lower body. Lets it take whatever shape will help.

Wen Kexing doesn't say anything more, although his mind seems full of something complicated, if warm. He rubs the tip of his cock against Zhou Xu's hole, and slips it inside a little way. He's back to nuzzling against Zhou Xu's face, and Zhou Xu has the space to take a shuddering breath at the feeling. He shifts his tendrils, tucking them against the underside of Wen Kexing's cock instead of keeping them all around it, so that he can feel more clearly the motion of Wen Kexing carefully entering him. His body yields slowly, letting Wen Kexing's cock further in in increments.

He is full enough, finally, he thinks.

They rest together—not fucking, just entangled.

"You took your time," Zhou Xu says. His voice feels strange, his words coming out hushed.

I didn't mean to, Wen Kexing tells him. If I had known you needed me so badly—

"Who needs you?" Zhou Xu says, unconvincingly. His body is clutching hard at Wen Kexing, as though it could draw him deeper. He turns his face aside. He is doing something like blushing, and he doesn't know how that looks on him now.

Wen Kexing touches his cheek, touches his lips. Holds Zhou Xu's face. Kisses Zhou Xu in that overwhelming way of his, which is always more tongue than mouth—and presses himself the last little bit of the way in, into the space where Zhou Xu is full of his—well—call them eggs.

Zhou Xu barely feels able to breathe—between the eggs, his own tendrils, Wen Kexing's cock. There is no space left for anything else, surely.

He imagines, with bright and somewhat frightening desire, Wen Kexing having more eggs to give him—as many again, filling him until keeping anything like a human shape is impossible. Feels, in answer, a kind of regret. No—there's nothing more. That type of urgent heaviness has passed for him.

But he fucks Zhou Xu anyway, slow and rolling—until he clutches Zhou Xu to him and comes with a harsh jerk of his hips. Filling him a little more—despite it all. Oh, even taking that much really feels impossible.

Trembling, Zhou Xu carefully pulls a tendril out of himself, wincing at the feeling of uncoiling it—then another. Empties himself, reluctantly, enough to breathe—to make the discomfort of his fullness manageable.

He feels uneasy, all the same, when Wen Kexing's cock finally, some time later, slips out of him—when his hole is empty. He didn't come this time either—probably couldn't have, but he's persistently, directionlessly aroused all the same. Everything inside him feels hot and sensitive. He is both too empty and too full at once. He both does and doesn't want more sex, in a way which he doesn't want to even try and unpick.

Sit up, Wen Kexing says. Coaxes with words and limbs until Zhou Xu, wincing again, does. Even without a cock in him, without tendrils filling out his insides, his stomach is rounded—full of Wen Kexing's come, which is surrounding Wen Kexing's eggs, all of it held in this new organ which sits somewhere above Zhou Xu's navel. Very little come is leaking out of him, but he feels slick from the way their tendrils and Wen Kexing's cock can exude lubrication to help them force their way into small spaces.

It isn't easy to sit and eat, though. His hole is too open and his stomach too full. But he did ask for breakfast. Of course Wen Kexing won't let him neglect to eat it.

He shifts his weight back and forth restlessly, trying to get comfortable. He cups his stomach with his hand, feeling it against his palm. Does an expecting parent do this? If he presses his fingers in, he can feel the lumps of the eggs. If all of them began to grown then he would really look heavily pregnant before long. The idea comes, now, with a curious mix of desire and repulsion—and he supposes the parts that he desires are all the wrong ones. He has no parental feelings in him. He can be someone's brother, their uncle—but he will not raise a baby. It wouldn't suit him at all.

Wen Kexing makes a curious noise—lays one hand on Zhou Xu's stomach too. He radiates satisfaction at what he feels there—but he is not thinking of other lives at all, not even with distaste. He is thinking about how good it is to feed someone you love—how proper it is to do so with your own body.

But here, they share other food as well—Wen Kexing hand feeds him pieces of bread, fruit. Presses his fingers into Zhou Xu's mouth, as though Zhou Xu needs to be persuaded not to reject what he is given.

Well—it does feel improbable. That he would even be able to swallow down food. But he does—his body has a little room left in it after all.

✥

Zhou Xu does not leave the lake, that day. He lounges in the water, his full stomach unseen. Watches, from a distance, the process of Beiyuan and Wu Xi having the things they need for travel put in order—watches the strange and chaotic group of young people who have accumulated around them—flicks rocks from the lake bottom at Chengling when he feels the boy is slacking off.

His body has settled a little by evening, adjusting itself around the eggs it carries. He feels very full, and there is a lingering ache deep inside him where Wen Kexing forced him open, but he moves naturally through the water—and he feels—good.

He has too much energy, feels terribly urgent with it. He and Wen Kexing chase and wrestle deep in the lake, twisting and twining around one another. Tumbling, grasping, kicking. Soon, soon, this world will open itself up to them—and then there will be other worlds beyond it.

Wen Kexing pushes him heavily down at last, holding him to the lake bottom.

Rest, he says.

His body settles on top of Zhou Xu's, pressing down on his stomach and thighs. He shifts rhythmically, dragging his body back and forth, back and forth. Rubbing against tender skin. Against Zhou Xu's nipples, sometimes. His cock, sometimes. Always against his belly.

Zhou Xu's restlessness is beginning to become arousal, to Wen Kexing's delight. So of course they fuck—in a simple kind of way, for once. Then sleep.

✥

Zhou Xu can shape his body, he finds, around the eggs—can conceal their presence, adjusting his overall shape until there's nothing much to see. It feels like getting away with something, to sit at a table and eat with the others like a human, and for there to be no outward sign of what he and Wen Kexing have done—although he eats a little carefully, his stomach uneasy from the way he has reshaped himself. The pressure he has put on it.

"This lot will go with you," he tells Beiyuan, nodding at the rest of their group. "We're meeting up again later."

He can see that Chengling doesn't want to go—and Zhou Xu does not entirely want to send him away again—but he needs space, space to think and to practice looking human, to practice looking inhuman. To teach Wen Kexing more about the former, be taught more about the latter. The idea of visiting a city holds less pleasure than it should, if Wen Kexing cannot talk through it by his side—and so they will make that possible, first.

He lets Chengling go, to walk into the world ahead of him, and it is not the same as the dismissal of—

He closes his eyes briefly. Somewhere among his belongings there is a box that holds a memorial pin, kept separate from the others—meant to be worn, although he has never done so in public.

Wen Kexing's mind nudges against his like a question. Zhou Xu opens his eyes again.

Continues, carefully, to eat.

✥

They don't leave immediately, even once the facility has grown lifeless. Inside Zhou Xu, the presence of Wen Kexing's eggs has become more intrusive—they haven't grown, he doesn't think, but they feel heavier and harder, and therefore harder also to ignore. If Wen Kexing doesn't fuck him, doesn't come inside that part of Zhou Xu, there's often a scraping sort of feeling to his fullness—and so his stomach is often fairly rounded, as it is now.

"I'm taking them out," he says. He's lying on his back, out in the open—since there's nobody here, now, to see. His body seems to want the eggs gone, but not to know how to remove them—which ought, surely, to happen automatically. A biological function of this body of his.

He shoves a tendril inside himself, hissing at his own roughness. Pushes too deep too fast. Pushes, painfully, through the narrow entrance to this new organ of his, and, gasping, grasps at an egg.

Slow down, Wen Kexing tells him.

Zhou Xu doesn't want to slow down—he wants to rip all of these things out of himself and then have Wen Kexing—fuck it better, maybe. The idea of the pain of it pulls at him like arousal.

Wen Kexing presses a tendril into Zhou Xu's hole, twisting it around Zhou Xu's own. He rubs a tendril to Zhou Xu's lips, and then slips it into Zhou Xu's mouth—into his throat—down into his stomach. Soothing, until Zhou Xu's muscles are coaxed into relaxing and his body begins to feel softer and lighter.

The tendril which is wrapped around Zhou Xu's own slides deeper, finds that tight entrance—teases at it, feels around. Wen Kexing, too, is trying to understand.

Zhou Xu couldn't say, precisely, why he isn't anxious. Perhaps it is because of everything that's come before. Perhaps it is because he doesn't feel he should understand his body properly yet, and so it can do as it likes. Perhaps it is because of their twinned curiosity, the way they are investigating the nature of their existence together.

Perhaps it is because of the hot anticipation of deeper pain which is filling his body.

Do you want so badly to give birth? Wen Kexing asks. He is teasing, and also fervently interested. He is still rubbing back and forth around that opening with his tendril, and he is touching Zhou Xu's rounded stomach from the outside too. He is pulsing in Zhou Xu's throat, in his stomach. He is playing with Zhou Xu's genitals. He is—is everywhere—

Zhou Xu pants, desperate with discomfort and arousal. Wen Kexing's hands dent his stomach, push down heavily until Zhou Xu wants to kick and claw, to do anything to make Wen Kexing pay for understanding so perfectly what he wants.

You bastard, he says. I don't fucking want to give birth—who wants your children—

This would be easier in the water, I think, Wen Kexing says. Wouldn't it—?

They are creatures who belong in water, after all.

But he doesn't try to pull Zhou Xu down into the lake. He just cages him in more entirely. The smell of crushed vegetation rises, green and bitter, around them.

Zhou Xu is, mercifully, finally pierced. Wen Kexing does it deftly, slipping in to find the eggs, not bothering to make his tendril particularly thin—the pain of penetration is sharp and clean, and Zhou Xu arches his back, twists his body, not really trying to get more, not trying at all to get away—it's just hard to take some things and remain still.

Wen Kexing delves around inside him, pushing at the eggs, tugging at them. Another tendril squirms its way in through Zhou Xu's insides, stabs in as quickly and neatly as the last one.

Held open by three tendrils now, the ache inside him has grown constant and intense.

Pull, Wen Kexing says—and tugs Zhou Xu open further—preses down, again, on his stomach.

Zhou Xu grits his teeth—and yanks.

Pain dizzies him briefly.

The egg slips out—but not out of his body altogether. It still sits heavily in his gut.

He lets it. Takes a shaky breath—finds another egg—yanks again.

Giving birth is meant, after all, to hurt, he thinks. Although Wen Kexing is softening his pain for him, he is not softening it so much as all that.

If there were really lives inside me, he thinks—shudders—

If there were really lives inside me, they would only be using me. If I were to give birth to them, they would not need me. I would only be a host—just a host—fortunate, after all, not to have been torn apart from the inside.

The eggs which have been pulled loose slide down through his body, slow and awkward. They drag against his insides, rub against sensitive places until he could cry with it—if his eyes weren't already wet from pain. Ah, he who could take so much without flinching—but that was in a different life.

It takes, he feels, all day. His sense of time blurs. He might remain like this forever—trapped on this lakeside—

Relax, Wen Kexing says, and eases his grip on Zhou Xu—focuses, for a little while, only on Zhou Xu's cock. Lies down at Zhou Xu's side, and is gentle with him. He fucks Zhou Xu ever so slowly, and the sweetness of it mingles with everything that hurts, and there is something here which is entirely and bizarrely blissful.

How strange.

He comes with a groan, and his body squeezes around the eggs, and Wen Kexing reaches into him again—

Coaxes the first of the eggs down towards Zhou Xu's entrance.

Guides it out. A stretch as it's tugged against his hole from the inside, making his toes curl. There's pressure on his prostate, pressure deep in his insides, pressure against his hole.

Zhou Xu's body barely know what it's feeling now, only that it is feeling. It is alive to every sensation—wants every sensation—wants, at the same time, to crawl away from the intensity of this moment.

There's much more to go. It may drive him mad.

But they are tangled together, and that keeps him sane.

The eggs lie between his thighs, wet and hard. Parasite and host, he thinks again. Something will break its way out of its shell, and slide away into the depths, and know nothing of how it came to be—

Backwards, Wen Kexing says. You ate them.

He is admiring, satisfied. Zhou Xu took a little of him into his body. Consumed all the best parts, until there were only hard shells left behind.

He likes that fact very much.

✥

At last, Zhou Xu is empty, except for Wen Kexing in his throat and his own tendrils in his hole—he feels, he finds, too tired to even remove them. He feels bruised and strained and lightheaded—he is shakily exhausted—but these are things he has often felt before. The strange part of it is the sense that he has grown stronger for it, and not simply been worn down.

Wen Kexing settles on top of him, surrounds him. His weight sits strangely on Zhou Xu's newly emptied belly, half-unfamiliar.

You're soft, here, Wen Kexing says. A hand slipped between them, rubbing at Zhou Xu's stomach.

Oh, he is so very pleased. Aroused, too. His thoughts are both filthy and horribly affectionate. He is thinking about the way the eggs looked, leaving Zhou Xu's body.

I'm not going to stay awake just so you can fuck me, Zhou Xu says.

That's fine, Wen Kexing tells him—feeling, clearly, the actual desire Zhou Xu wished to convey. Not shying, now, away from the idea of Zhou Xu's motionless body. It's alright if you're asleep too.

Zhou Xu closes his eyes. The tip of Wen Kexing's cock slides into him, and Wen Kexing starts to fuck him, very slow and very shallow. Not much of a stretch, and coming nowhere near the parts of Zhou Xu which hurt.

It's almost a shame, Zhou Xu thinks. But at least this way he really can just drift into sleep.

✥

He wakes in shallow water, not submerged. The night is deeply shadowed, but the sky is clear; stars turn above him, bright in a way they rarely are on inhabited planets. There is little here to drown them.

Wen Kexing is awake. He is coiled loosely around Zhou Xu, whose sleeping body has it seems been accommodating of this attention—has settled easily into the grasp of this man of his.

It is very easy to pull himself into a human shape. It requires almost no thought.

Wen Kexing, made curious by Zhou Xu's mild surprise, imitates him—

"I'm better at this," he says, with his mouth. Frowns. "Better at it than—before—"

He has managed to make himself smooth-skinned; he has given himself more human-seeming hair; the proportions are correct. Perhaps if Zhou Xu were to disguise him with cosmetics, if he were dressed in heavy clothes, he would look more or less unremarkable.

Zhou Xu makes himself larger, stranger. Spines in ridges, sharp fingers and rows of vicious teeth.

This, too, feels easy.

He pulls Wen Kexing, who is only the size of a human still, to him. Places his sharp edges to Wen Kexing's delicate-looking skin.

Membranes slide across Wen Kexing's nearly human eyes as he blinks. He is excited, isn't he, by this turn of events. Zhou Xu's growing strength and mastery.

They fall away from one another, laughter passing between them. Lie side by side, looking up at the glittering sky.

"Does it hurt?" Wen Kexing asks.

"Yes," Zhou Xu says.

"Do you like it?"

"I'll kill you—"

It does hurt. He will ache inside, he thinks, for days—despite how the two of them heal.

He takes on a human shape again. Lays his hands on his belly, presses down. Tries to feel exactly where his new organ sits, and guesses that it must be the place where he feels softest and most sore.

Here, Wen Kexing says. Look.

He pushes himself to the edge of the lake, and takes something in his hand. Holds it out.

It is one of the—the eggs—

Zhou Xu's face burns in an awful human way.

I think they're rather pretty, Wen Kexing tells him.

Of course you think that, Zhou Xu says.

He turns his face away. But he is still aware of what Wen Kexing is holding, because of the way Wen Kexing is studying it—the way he has left that portion of his thoughts open to Zhou Xu.

A heavy oval thing. It is like something fossilized—ancient and fragile, preserved and made durable by some peculiar fluke.

Inert.

I'm keeping them, Wen Kexing says—and Zhou Xu, amused and provoked, manages a quick enough lunge that he has yanked Wen Kexing out into deep water before Wen Kexing begins to twist and change in his grasp.