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The veil was very thin, here.
Yellow wasn’t sure how he knew that. He only had the barest idea of what that even meant. But as he lay in Arthur’s eyes, which lay in Arthur’s skull, which lay in a handsome bed of clean sheets and feather pillows, he felt the air shift and shiver around them. It was as if two thin slivers of silk were sliding against each other, and between them he could just make out color and light, a glimmering silhouette.
Shape, and form—a creature that lay just on the other side of a whisper-thin barrier, a beast he was meant to be. He was a god. All he had to do was take what was his.
Lightning flashed on the other side of the window, for only an instant casting a clear shadow across the bed. Ohh, his greater half was so close. He could feel its power, its majesty rippling throughout the darkness, seeping into him with a pawing urgency. Take, take what is yours, it seemed to say, its illustrious voice swallowed up in the trailing thunder. You have power here.
So Yellow reached. With all his might and will he clawed at the insides of his frail human host, digging in with aching fingers at the translucent boundary separating him from his godhood. He felt the goodhood press back, palm to palm across the layers, and then realized all at once that it really was his hand, scrambling against the bedroom’s lovely satin sheets.
Yellow shuddered with a rush of mania—even more so, when the sensation itself fully processed. He had a hand! It flushed with heat even as goose bumps rippled along the back of his palm and up his arm. He laughed, so overwhelmed with triumph that it took much longer than it should have for him to realize that it wasn’t his—it was Arthur’s hand, connected to Arthur’s elbow, shoulder, body.
“Fuck,” Yellow grumbled, but his disappointment quelled somewhat once he began moving again. He curled and uncurled the fingers, rotated his wrist, rubbing his skin all over the lovely sheets. The tug of small hairs, the popping of the joints, and even the sting from the mutilated pinky were electrifying in their novelty. Then he remembered the rest of Arthur’s body.
He splayed his new hand across Arthur’s stomach, feeling out the softness of his organs where his rib cage stopped offering protection. His fingers curled, nails jagged and worn digging into the tender skin, and fuck did he wish he could pry his way inside, tear the sack open and feel the hot gush of meat. Maybe he could rip himself from the frail and arrogant Arthur Lester, fling his soul back into the kingdom of dreams that was rightfully his.
Arthur’s pulse thumped against the pads of his fingers, bringing with it an unexpected, instinctual dread. What if Arthur’s death didn’t free him? He shuddered, the alternative scraping and grinding against the back of his mind. The Dark World. When the lightning flashed again, carving jagged shadows across the night-black room, he couldn’t help but remember the shuffling ghosts, looming towers and toothed craters that had tortured him for so long. He could suffer an indignity such as Arthur, so long as it meant not returning there.
“Arthur,” Yellow murmured, even though he could tell by the steady hiss of the man’s breath that he was still deeply asleep. How furious Arthur would be, when he awoke to find his limb was no longer his to control? Or would he simply gain it back? Determined to make the most of this small freedom, just in case it was temporary, Yellow slid his new hand back and forth across Arthur’s body. The warm friction of skin on skin tickled and delighted more than he would have ever admitted; he amused himself tracing the many scars that decorated Arthur’s torso, imagining each as a fresh and oozing wound. Swirled his finger tip around the circular knot of tissue just over Arthur’s heart.
Arthur breathed in deeply, chest expanding up against Yellow’s touch. He pushed in more insistently to better feel it. For as clear and terrifying as his memories of the Dark World were, he suddenly couldn’t recall if he’d breathed while there. Had he had lungs to fill, blood to pump? He must not have, to find it so fascinating now.
He started to reach for a different scar, and in doing so his fingertips dragged across Arthur’s nipple. Arthur sucked in a quiet breath at the touch; Yellow stopped, worried that his time was up, and that when Arthur stirred awake his control and feeling would end. Even so… that reaction stirred him. Despite the risk it posed, Yellow reached again, gently kneading his thumb into Arthur’s chest.
Arthur squirmed just slightly, a quiet sigh tumbling from his lips. Almost immediately Yellow’s new palm began to sweat—this silly little human was responding to him! At last, he had this small means of exerting himself on the man and his world. Feeling Arthur’s flesh grow stiff beneath his thumb send little sparks cascading down his virgin nerves; he crawled his hand across Arthur’s chest to tease the other nipple.
Arthur arched his back beneath the covers. “John…”
Yellow growled, crushing the warm bud that Arthur’s breathless voice threatened to plant in him. He pinched, hard.
Arthur gasped, jolting beneath the cruel treatment. His little whimper of alarm and arousal—Yellow was sure of it!—was more enticing than anything had the right to be, and it sharpened in him a wholly unexpected hunger.
Lightning flashed, and Yellow glimpsed it again: the shadow cast over the bed, a hulking creature behind the veil. His greater self pressed against the insolent barrier separating them. He felt its mass, its perfection writhe against the physical outline he now held, promising more, more. It’s time; we are powerful here, powerful now, and you can take him all.
“John?” Arthur said again, in a tone of such desperate hope that even Yellow shuddered. He reached beneath the sheets to find his now wayward left hand and grip it tight. “Is that you?”
“No,” Yellow said, and he meant for it to be firm, an absolute rejection in every sense, and yet… his voice sounded strange to him. Reluctant, maybe. Not apologetic—never. He rubbed gentle circles around the nipple had pinched, testing to see that he still could; testing to see if he could still draw a reaction from the man. “It’s just me, Arthur.”
“Wh… Yellow?” Arthur shivered, his hand flexing in confusion against the back of Yellow’s palm. His voice thinned. “You have my hand now.”
“Yes. I do.” Yellow slipped out from under Arthur’s grip—Arthur seemed too bewildered to stop him—to continue his explorations. He fingered each of Arthur’s ribs. “You don’t sound surprised,” he noted, his bitterness welling up. “Did John get to control this hand?”
“Y-Yes, but…” Arthur reached for him again. “What are you doing?”
Yellow evaded, sliding further down Arthur’s abdomen. He pressed his palm flat over Arthur’s belly, just below his navel; Arthur didn’t try to chase him again. “I’m touching you,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s new to me.”
Arthur fell still, even though his pulse was thumping through them both, and he seemed to be making a conscious effort to control each deep breath. “Where are we?” he asked, turning his head even though he couldn’t see, the fool. “This bed feels…”
“It’s a bedroom,” Yellow muttered, uninterested. With Arthur’s head turned he got a clearer look at the window, and the swirl of darkness beyond. He waited in tight suspense for another flash. “A nice one. We’re safe here, Arthur; relax.”
Arthur did sink back into the bed, but he didn’t exactly relax. The sheets moved; he must have been debating on reaching for Yellow’s hand again. “Must be the estate they were talking about in town,” he murmured. “On the mountain.”
Yellow remembered, but he didn’t bother replying. He rubbed his hand back and forth against Arthur’s belly; the man was paper thin, threadbare, but here he was still soft. His skin was even a little loose, begging for sustenance, to be whole again.
This had been his doing—wasn’t that what Arthur had said? The King had tortured him? Yellow traced out his hollowness, fingers probing with fascination into the crease of Arthur’s pelvis. He imagined what it might have felt like, before Arthur was crushed beneath the weight of his godhood. Full, soft. Plump. The boundary was tingling.
“Yellow,” Arthur said, harder but shakier than before. “What are you doing?”
“Touching you,” Yellow murmured, fingertips sinking into the coarse hairs of Arthur’s groin. How convenient for him, that the beastly man that had brought them here had felt the need to undress him first. He stretched lower and felt the fleshy root of Arthur’s cock nestled there; already hot with blood, already a little swollen from that pinch. The thought made his palm sweat.
Arthur drew a breath through his teeth. “Stop.”
Yellow did stop, fingers greedily perched. “Why?”
Arthur didn’t reply. There was a soft, wet sound of his mouth working, but when Yellow resumed, daring to glide lower, he wasn’t met with any protests. So he continued. He traced the length of Arthur’s cock with just the tips of his fingers, intensely attuned to the flutter of his breath, the subtle twitch of his flesh. Even with such delicate prodding his arousal became more and more apparent, and Yellow seethed with triumph as he slowly, deliberately wrapped his hand fully around Arthur’s hardening cock.
Arthur whimpered and squirmed. “We shouldn’t…”
Yellow held him for a moment, savoring the weight in his grip, before teasing his thumb across the tip. “Did John touch you like this?”
“Nn…” Arthur licked his lips, and he shifted his knees wider. “No…”
Yellow hissed softly; so, he was the victor at least in that regard now. He stroked Arthur’s cock, gentle and coaxing, as if granting a reward. Why shouldn’t he be the one to bestow? Arthur whimpered again through pressed lips; little tingles of his pleasure seeped through Yellow’s fingers and encouraged him to do it again. From the base to the head he squeezed, possessive and firm—then back down, looser, letting him breathe.
“This,” Arthur stuttered, rolling his hips up into the next stroke. “This is a bad idea.”
“No,” Yellow retorted, and Arthur didn’t fight back or ask him to stop again, so he didn’t. Not speeding up, not escalating: firm squeeze, teasing release, over and over while Arthur churned.
Lightning flashed, and Yellow could just about see it now: his Kingly form looming over them, blanketing the bed like a membrane. It stretched taut over them both, and through its shimmering layers Yellow felt the press of the divine, groping up and down the body that imprisoned him. Calling to him. He wanted so badly to answer and didn’t know how. There was only a strange instinct writhing inside him, sensations of ropey sinews twisting, grasping, slithering out of the pit of him. That gaping, hungry pit that yawned wide, teeth bared and ravenous.
The veil is thin, intoned his King. Our body is powerful now. You can fill him.
“Y-Yellow?” Arthur whispered, touching his arm though not to stop him. “I feel… different.”
So, he felt it, too. Yellow groaned and could have sung; once again he pushed out against the firmament, not with the pumping fist he already held but the rest of him, in the same way. He wanted to take Arthur’s other hand before he was made to stop—how could he stop when there was still so much of Arthur to be filled? He didn’t get it, though. Something inside him peeled away, cloaking itself in the King’s slick skin, stretching and twisting off Arthur’s body to wrap around his wrist. It eased Arthur’s hand away, then slithered into his palm; he gripped it back as a reflex, and the crush of his rough nails had Yellow hissing in morbid delight at the sting.
“Yellow,” Arthur said again, digging his heels into the mattress. He was panting now, sweating, as the otherworldly euphoria of the Dreamlands smothered them. The grace of an immortal was oozing up through his skin, twining into dozens of eager tendrils: some thin and graceful, some thick and muscled, winding over his body. “What the fuck…?”
“Shh.” Yellow vibrated, all his ephemeral particles joyously on the edge of bursting as the King’s might and power swelled into him. Each twisty limb was his to command, and he put them to work: encircling Arthur in a tight embrace, tugging his thighs wider. Arthur was shaking in his grasp, but he still wasn’t saying stop. He relinquished Arthur’s cock to one of the tentacles and reached up with the hand they shared so he could drape it over Arthur’s chest. The heavy thud of each heartbeat echoed up into him with a mysterious nostalgia. It felt right, being there. He drank in the rhythm of Arthur’s pulse and moaned.
This creature was his. Arthur was the sieve through which his will and magic spilled, and he reveled in every point of friction. With every appendage available to him he slithered between Arthur’s thighs, urged his back to arch, squeezed his throat and his cock. They were connected in a fleshy tangle unlike anything he had ever expected to feel. How could Arthur say that John had cared for him at all, if he’d never experienced this? What did entangled even mean if not the bundle of pleasure they’d become? When Arthur tipped his head back in a moan, Yellow plunged down his throat to feel the rumble of his voice. When Arthur allowed his knees to be prodded higher, wider, he pushed inside him. Arthur quivered and keened and welcomed him.
“Arthur,” Yellow breathed, wanting nothing more than to draw Arthur down, down into his maw. “Arthur, you’re mine now. Nothing else can have you.”
The King churned in reprimand. His tatters clung to them, and he reached inside somehow, stirring to life those seeds of hunger that tumbled over and over in Yellow’s depths. They stretched out from him, and then from Arthur, coiling with purpose he couldn’t fathom yet. Even so, he obeyed—nudged the tentacle buried in Arthur’s ass aside so this new appendage could gain entry, wriggling up into the slick and flexing muscle. It felt indescribably right, so much so that when Arthur whined eagerly around him, it was almost frightening.
Then came the trickle. Something warm and smooth flowed out of… he had no idea where. From some well inside him that should have been intangible thought, a desire fierce and steady coursed through and out of him, becoming real, spreading a glow of pleasure all along the ethereal shaft and into Arthur.
Arthur’s voice rose and pitched, and Yellow tugged free from his mouth to hear: the delicious, wanton need of his heady moans lit fires all through Yellow’s cinching limbs, and he thrust deeper into Arthur’s body, pumping more of that glorious liquid into him.
“What is this?” Yellow asked, dizzy with euphoria. The appetite writhing inside him hadn’t abated an inch. “What am I…?”
Make him ours, droned his lord all around him, reverberating and inescapable. Fill him.
And then it wasn’t just that silky lubricant: something was moving down the tight channel, gaining power and presence as it went. Yellow groaned senselessly at the rapture it was, feeling his shape contract around it, driving it into the world and then into his partner. Arthur tensed and whimpered as his hole was stretched to accommodate, but once it was inside him—oh god, once Yellow had released that globe of pure light inside him—it sang, vibrant and purring deep in the shell of Arthur’s needy belly.
“Oh god,” Arthur breathed, sliding his hand down to cover his abdomen. Yellow diverted one of his tendrils to do the same, shamelessly groping to feel the extra heat radiating out from his entrails. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, that feels…”
Yellow shivered all over, and he obeyed instinct—squeezing another of the brilliant spheres along his organ, from his depths into Arthur’s. It was so overwhelmingly electric that he was furious he had ever doubted Arthur’s merits. “Arthur,” he growled, squeezing and easing around every part of him with each pump it took to bury the seed. By then Arthur’s cock was dribbling almost constantly as his frail human nerves struggled to interpret the unfiltered pleasure alight inside him.
By the fourth, Yellow could feel the shape of them through Arthur’s skin. His belly that had only recently been so flat and hollow was beginning to fill, his body making happy way for its visitors. Yellow’s tendrils butted up against Arthur’s fingers as they both traced the gentle mounds, over and over, reveling in the shared accomplishment. “Yes, Arthur,” Yellow purred, massaging his chest in encouragement as he readied a fifth. He didn’t know how many remained, but he was determined to make Arthur take every one. “You’re going to be so full of me.”
Arthur whined, arching up into Yellow’s groping limbs. “John…”
Yellow clenched. He would have sunk his teeth into Arthur, if only they’d been allowed to take form. Even so, something in him trembled at the needy, enraptured tenor of Arthur’s voice. It pulled at him, threatened to bury itself in him just as he was embedded. He dug his nails into Arthur’s skin, and he thrust the fifth sphere on, as if it would remind Arthur who he ought to be crying for.
Don’t worry about that, chided the King. He won’t matter soon.
“What does that mean?” Yellow grumbled, uncertain what to make of the anxiety those words raised in him. “What’s happening?”
You are planting our eggs in him. Filling him with our magic and gold. Once the last is laid, they will hatch, spilling us into him. We will finally consume him.
Yellow’s tendrils curled uneasily, but it was too late; the fifth slipped free of him, and Arthur keening gorgeously threatened to unravel whatever wits he was still clinging to. But when he draped his tendril over Arthur’s hand, feeling it stroke back and forth with adoration left him shaken. Consume Arthur? The poor creature was only bones already, pathetic and contradictory and… and the way his voice trembled when he called out that name…
Yellow felt another egg stir in him: pure eldritch life aching to take form. It blazed so excitedly, and yet, he clamped down—he held it tight. Denying that instinct throbbed with a pain that was itself almost bliss, and Yellow shook in every plane as he fought. “No,” he said, reinforcing his will throughout his limbs. “No, you are not welcome here.”
Lightning flared, and the thunder came immediately. What?
Yellow groaned, and though it was sublime agony, he opened, blossomed, reaching deeper to swallow back down one of the eggs. It rumbled in protest, and even Arthur tried to squeeze his thighs together as if trying to prevent him. But Yellow was determined; he sucked, inch by in fucking the glowing sphere back through Arthur’s clenching hole and down into the pit of him again.
What are you doing? the King demanded.
“I don’t need your magic,” Yellow growled, shaking with the effort. He grabbed up another singing egg and gulped it down. When Arthur pawed at his belly, he reached down with his hand to grab it up, squeeze it tight. Arthur clinging to him hardened his resolve to continue. “I don’t need your help. Arthur is mine and I’ll take him how I choose.”
Foolish little fragment! The King’s tatters lashed at them, but already his power was waning, and the sting of his anger was more invigorating than threatening. This fucking pathetic human has already tainted your mind?
Yellow grit in defiance, but it was getting harder to concentrate; his body quaked as he swallowed, over and over, pulling the King’s seed along. By the last, Arthur’s voice was a raw, breathless sob, and the egg being dragged free sent a convulsion of relief and deprivation cascading through him. Yellow held him through it, swallowing that last glowing sphere down, where it burned itself out in his belly and then faded.
When that light died, it took the rest with it: Yellow’s writhing limbs receded as mysteriously as they had formed, casting off the cloak of magic that had sustained them. He shrank, cold with withdrawal as so much sensation was extinguished. The hand he had commanded for only minutes went numb. Disappointment and regret heaved back and forth inside him, and once he had gathered enough of his composure to reach out again, the King was gone. The vein, though still thin, remained intact and aloft, out of reach. The storm had moved on.
“Wait,” he whispered, realizing at once what he had sacrificed. Once again all he claimed were Arthur’s eyes: sore and bleary with tears, crying even now. “Wait… What did I…?”
“Jesus,” Arthur panted, trying to catch his breath. He was still shivering when he reached up to rub his eyes, and when he was unsuccessful in clearing them, he instead covered them gently. “Yellow?”
Yellow let out a long, broken sigh. His relief at not being called by another name crashed against his frustration and grief—was that really all he was? A splintered husk of a god who had rejected him, no power or agency that belonged to him, no identity of his own? He couldn’t wrap his mind around even wanting that. He hated this. He hated Arthur.
“Don’t ask me what just happened,” Yellow replied hoarsely. “I don’t fucking know.”
“Okay.” Arthur was quiet for a while, still gathering his composure. He licked his lips. “Are you all right?”
“I…” Why did he sound so concerned? Was that sympathy? Yellow groaned; all that remained of his sense of self was the empty hole—a sunken belly like a crater that made him think of Arthur’s body, ravaged by the thing he was supposed to be. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” Yellow no longer held any parts that could twist, but he felt it all the same; that terrible, aching tangle. “Arthur, I’m…” He sighed. “It’s full night out. Go back to sleep.”
Arthur scoffed. “Fuck, how am I…” He squirmed, and seeming to realize how large the bed was, he shifted toward the edge, to a less soiled area of the sheets. “You really don’t want to talk about what just…” He shook his head. “No; okay. I guess I’ll try.”
“Thank you,” Yellow murmured, which was the closest he could manage to his own apology. He had no idea where else to begin. All he could do was gaze into the dark room, praying it would remain that way, while Arthur’s exhaustion dragged him under again.
In the morning, he would ask Arthur to call him something else.