Work Text:
According to the mid-21st century dictionary Mirriam-Webster, attraction is defined thusly: The act, process or power of attracting. Furthermore, the dictionary adds, attraction can also be defined as the action or power of drawing forth a response, exemplified as an attractive quality, or as something that attracts or is intended to attract people by appealing to their desires and tastes. A winning smile. A nice perfume. Good, clean shoes. Prolonged surly silences, lurking just out of my peripheral vision. A jawline like cut glass. Impossibly soft hair that tangles and snags in the wind. A…fudging harness. Just to name a few examples that they didn’t bring up in the dictionary. Probably just to save space.
Now, the scientific definition of the word attraction, as described by the same dictionary, is a force acting mutually between particles of matter, tending to draw them together, and resisting their separation. The push and pull of celestial bodies. One of the fundamental forces. Gravity. The way my attention bends to him, even when I can’t see him. Like a lead weight on a rubber sheet, his very presence pulls me in. And as much as I try to give him space, something in me is definitely resisting separation.
So. Yes. I am attracted to him. To Simon. The lead weight that got dredged up from an ocean of blood and dropped on the metaphorical rubber sheet of my quiet existence on Erid, and ever since that day, he has warped my orbit and drawn me closer.
Of course, one of the fundamental aspects of attraction in the scientific sense is that it is a mutual force, and for the life of me, I cannot tell if that’s the case here. I was never very good at this sort of thing. Not at picking up clues, nor at putting them down. Attraction, back in my old life, happened sporadically, unpredictably, and with a few very notable exceptions, unilaterally. When it was reciprocated, the other party generally made the move. In Simon’s case, that seems unlikely, even if he did feel the same way. His stoicism is strangely offset by his skittishness. It took months for him to stop flinching every time I got too close, and even now, he freezes whenever I touch him, accidentally or otherwise. He doesn’t recoil from touch, not any more, but he never initialises. Heck, it took him a long time to even initiate conversation, hugs seem like a faraway mirage.
There are other things that need to be considered. I’m in the lab, ostensibly working, but really, I’m tallying up the considerable risks that come with making a move on the only other human within a several light years’ radius. For one thing, there’s that. What if my attraction to him is just my bedraggled biology kicking into overdrive after so long without human contact? Then again, attraction is a largely biological process, brains being little more than biological machines, thus even making the psychological aspects of attraction basically biology. Complicated, complicated biology. Another, and much scarier, side to the ‘only humans in this quadrant of space’ issue is the fact that should he be amenable, what’s to say it’s not out of biological imperative on his side? My attraction being largely biological is an entirely different matter than his potential attraction, because…Because consent. And I’m the one being a weirdo making lists in my head about this.
But the consent thing is important. Simon feels indebted to me. Deeply. Almost desperately so. I basically had to tell him that yes, working in the greenhouses is an acceptable way of paying me back for not letting him die of blood drowning or radiation poisoning, because Simon would not stop asking. What if he realised that there was another way in which he could, in his own mind, pay me back, and one that I, in my infatuation, would find it very hard to rebuff?
I feel my heart sink. Could I actually trust an admission of attraction from him? Or would it nag at the back of my head always, this feeling that he’s simply trying to even out the score he seems to keep between the two of you. I know that his past life was…Awful, and everything came at a price, every favour a transaction. It made sense that Simon would be looking for ways to repay me for saving him. But the thing is, he saved me just as much as I saved him. The Eridians are lovely, and Rocky is truly the best friend I’ve ever had, but going back to biology again, humans need other humans to stay sane. I have, by all accounts, done remarkably well as a species isolated human on an alien world, probably because I was never quite right to begin with, but now, with Simon here, an itch I didn’t even know I had is finally being scratched. Even when he was still little more than a snarling, frightened shell of a man, hiding in his room all day, even when his mutations were still shocking and new to you both, even then, the fact that another human being existed within touching range was soothing. Now, if I can just put all that into words that don’t make me sound insane, that would be lovely.
“You want to do what?”
“Just a quick medical check, that’s all. The gravity and all the weirdness of, y’know, the blood and the-”
“Fuckin’-” Simon sighs, loudly and pinches his nose. “The-the Eridians gave me the all clear, and they fuckin’ monitor everything that goes in and comes out of the dome, they’d know if something was up.”
As I scramble to come up with a plausible lie, I realise how bad of an idea this was. “Forget about it, it was just–”
“Fine, fuck, I’ll do it.”
It’s…It’s…Fudge, it’s too hot and…I tear off my t-shirt and fall back on my bed. Why did I think that would work? Every little detail of the ill-advised exam is playing in my brain, enhanced and slowed down to torture me. I feel like a disgrace to the scientific community when I unbutton my pants and shove my hand down my boxers to find myself swollen and soaking wet. The clumsy, out-of-practice first touch to my dick makes me hiss through my teeth. In all these years since I was shot into space like a glorified firework, I haven’t really masturbated. Maybe a few times, when I was so anxious and stressed that the only thing I could think of was to laboriously grind out an unsatisfying orgasm to hopefully fall asleep. But not often, and certainly not out of lust. And even after Simon arrived and I eventually realised that I was, in fact, enormously attracted to him, I never let my brain stray down that path, because it felt…wrong. Creepy.
I feel more like a creep now than I ever have. Not only did I use the excuse of a medical check-up to paw at him like a…like a– like some kind of pervert, now I’m getting off on it as well?
Fudge
With a frustrated grunt, I toe off my shoes and wiggle around until I can kick off one leg of my pants and boxers, and the wet sound my folds make when I let my legs fall open is impossibly loud in my ears. I feel my face burning, and I can tell without looking that I’m flushed a blotchy red all the way down to my chest. Another cautious brush against my dick makes me gasp, too loud, too sharp, and I slap my other hand over my mouth. Cautiously, I dip my fingers down to gather more slick, and as I slide over my swollen lips, the memory of running my fingers over the gills on Simon’s neck flash into my head.
“Shhhoot…” I whine, muffled by my hand. I dip the tips of my fingers in my hole, quick and shallow. What if I had pushed in? Fingered his gills. They were clearly sensitive. Delicate. Simon had blushed so prettily when I ran my fingers over the slits.
I could lick them.
My breath catches in my throat and I grind my hand down hard against myself, and I’m this close to losing it right then and there. Orgasms always took so much time and effort before, that I almost don’t recognize the feeling when it starts to sneak up on me already. Reluctantly, I withdraw my hand, tangling my sticky fingers in my matted pubes while I try to catch my breath and gather my thoughts.
Two options, really. I either get it over with as quick as possible and never think about it and definitely never do it again. Or, I milk every errant fantasy I’ve ever had for all they’re worth so I can let it run its course, so I never think about it and definitely never do it again. Of course, the secret, third option lurks just beyond the horizon, namely to not do it at all, to get up, take a cold shower and apologise for being such a weirdo to this poor, traumatised human in my care. That would be the sensible thing, not to mention the morally correct thing.
I don’t feel very sensible. Especially not when my mind drifts from the allure of the delicate membrane of Simon’s gills, to the gash of teeth on his face. He hid it, often, by turning the left side of his face away from me, or letting his hair obscure the jagged tissue and stark enamel. When I touched it earlier today, he tensed up, like he expected himself to bite me, like it was out of his control. But instead, I again think of sinking my fingers into his flesh, feeling the wet heat behind the teeth, so dangerous and yet so soft and inviting. Tracing each pointed tooth, stroking the slick mucous membrane that separates his mutated mouth from his normal one. Feeling his tongue on the other side, coiling and moving.
“Fiddlesticks,” I mutter to myself before I once again slide my fingers down to pinch my dick between my thumb and pointer. I shiver, hard, pushing up into my hand, grinding my hips in short, juddering circles. My fantasy moves on, with Simon now between my legs, looking up at me with those eyes, deep, warm brown and eerie glassy red. His face is slack with lust and th-that…Tougne lolling out so close to…I hiss again, and my dick throbs between my fingers. “Simon…” I sigh, as the man in my mind leans closer, tracing the pointed end of his long tongue around my hole and I trace my fingers around the rim in a weak mimicry. How the heck he manages to speak with that thing is beyond me, but the Simon in my mind isn’t speaking at all, he’s looking up at me through wispy curtains of dark hair, fucking me in long, slow strokes.
My own fingers are too short, too stiff, nothing like the slick muscle, but I’m so darn close it hardly matters. I hook my fingers up, not thrusting, just grinding them hard against my g-spot as best I can. My wrist provides a little friction on my dick, and if I try really hard, I can almost imagine it’s his hand pressing down on it, trapping it. His hand is broad, calloused and warm, I’d kill to feel it on me, holding me down. My mind is flitting between visuals now, from his jagged teeth on my neck, to his lips around my dick, to his…
Look, I didn’t do a full physical. And maybe it was less due to my conscience catching up to me, and more due to the fact that after half an hour of prodding and poking at this adonis I happen to share a zoo enclosure with, I was too horny to continue. But for all his skittishness, Simon is not in the least bothered about nudity. He has mentioned having little to no personal space in his old life, so maybe that’s got something to do with it, but I’ve seen him fully naked perhaps more times than any other human. Just short glimpses, before I manage to tear my eyes away, but I’ve seen enough to know that either the testosterone back on Eden was wild, or the mutations did a number on his downstairs as well. He’s thick and big and I’d do just about anything to feel him twitch and throb between my lips. I plunge two fingers into my mouth, whining pathetically as I suck on them, on him.
I need to come. With another startling wet sound, I pull my fingers out of my hole and start stroking my dick again. Short, quick strokes, and even though my wrist is going numb and overstimulation is looming on the horizon, I can’t stop. Not now. Not when I’m this close. It’s been building for a long time, all damn day. Two, three more strokes, and all at once, the tension snaps. I garble some kind of choked off moan of Simon’s name around my fingers, and my body shudders with each rolling pulse. Eventually, both my hands fall to my sides, both of them sticky and cooling in the air. Ugh. My legs are still wobbly when I manage to stand up and pull my pants back up, wincing at the feeling of damp boxers on damp crotch. I’m suddenly reminded of why I never did this very much, but I chose to focus on the purely physical discomfort so I can ignore the much more pressing psychological discomfort that I know will hit before long.
To my immense relief, Simon is not in the cabin, the door to his room open and the room itself empty. I drag myself to the bathroom for a quick wash-up before I flop down on the sofa in the living room. When I look out of the window, I see Simon off in the distance, trudging back from the greenhouses. I briefly consider fleeing the house altogether, putting off the conversation for at least another couple of hours, but I owe the man an apology if nothing else. Now, if I can just think of a way to apologise without fudging things up even further, that’d be lovely.