Chapter 1: A New Kind of Morning
The first thing he was aware of, every single day, was the smell of her. It was in the sheets, a whisper of jasmine and vanilla that clung to the impossibly soft Egyptian cotton. Then came the warmth, the radiant heat of another body just inches from his own, followed by the sound of her breathing, slow and even in sleep.
Ricky opened his eyes—or at least, he performed the mental equivalent. As a small, spherical blob of vibrant blue gelatin, his perception of the world was a shimmering, slightly distorted panoramic view. He was sitting, if you could call it that, on the pillow next to Emma Lowe’s head. Her famous golden blonde hair fanned out around her, a few strands sticking to his side. He absorbed them gently, then pushed them away. He’d practiced that for weeks.
Emma Lowe is sleeping right next to me.
The thought, even after all this time, didn’t compute. In his previous life, he’d have sold his entire video game library for a single thread from one of her concert costumes. Now he was her nightly bedmate. The profound, soul-crushing joy of it was permanently entwined with a humiliating, desperate absurdity.
She stirred. A soft groan escaped her lips, and she turned, her face smooshing into the pillow. Her hand flopped out from under the duvet and landed with a soft, warm thump right on top of him.
Ricky’s entire world dissolved into sensation.
It wasn’t like human touch. It was total, cellular. The pressure of her palm, the lovely heat of her skin, seeped into every molecule of his being. He quivered, a gentle, involuntary jiggle that made his form wobble. A soft, happy sigh escaped her—she was mostly asleep—and her fingers curled slightly, squishing him.
Oh god. Oh wow. This is it. This is heaven and it’s blue and it’s gooey.
Then, as always, the other voice chimed in. You’re a twenty-eight-year-old man being squished like a stress toy by the woman of your dreams. You live in a ceramic dish on her nightstand. You eat liquefied organic spinach from a dollhouse spoon.
The conflict was eternal.
“Mmm… Bubbles…” she murmured, her voice thick with sleep. She patted him twice before withdrawing her hand and throwing the covers back.
The day had officially begun.
He watched, mesmerized, as she padded across the sun-drenched penthouse bedroom towards the en suite bathroom. The morning light caught the dust motes dancing around her, turning her into a silhouette of pure grace. She stretched, the hem of her silk camisole riding up, and Ricky felt a jolt that had nowhere human to go. He simply glowed a little brighter, a reaction he couldn’t control.
“Come on, you,” she said, turning and smiling at him. She walked back to the bed, her bare feet making no sound on the heated oak floor, and scooped him up. Her hands were so careful, so sure. “Time to get clean. You’re looking a little… dusty.”
Dusty. The word echoed in his mind. In her world, he was a pet, a quirky living ornament. A gift from a fan, she assumed. She’d never know he was the fan who’d front-rowed her Electric Dream tour seven times.
She carried him into the bathroom. The air changed, becoming cooler, carrying the crisp scent of citrus and clean linen. The room was a monument to marble and glass, all gleaming surfaces and soft, diffused light. His dish was by the sink, next to her myriad of serums and creams, but she walked past it toward the shower.
Panic, sweet and fizzy, bubbled inside him. Bath time.
She turned on the water with a twist of her wrist. Steam began to billow, clouding the glass enclosure. She hummed a snippet of her latest single, off-key and adorable, as she tested the temperature with her hand. Satisfied, she stepped in, pulling the door shut but not latching it. She reached back out, her hand dripping, and placed him gently on the shower floor.
The warm spray immediately misted his surface. The sound was a roaring, comforting white noise. Emma began her routine, lathering her hair, the smell of her peach shampoo cutting through the steam. Ricky sat under the gentle rainfall, absorbing the warmth, vibrating with a low-grade, perpetual thrill. This was his church.
“Okay, Bubbles, your turn.”
She turned, water sluicing down her body, and knelt before him. Ricky’s consciousness short-circuited. This was the view he’d once pixelated into a low-res wallpaper. Now it was HD, real, and she was reaching for a special, pH-neutral soap she’d had formulated for “sensitive synthetic-aquatic life forms.”
Her hands, slick and warm, closed around him.
The world exploded into a kaleidoscope of pure, undiluted feeling. Her thumbs rubbed slow, concentric circles into his top. Her fingers worked underneath him, lifting, kneading. The soap was cool at first, then warmed by her skin, creating a slick, heavenly friction over his entire form.
She’s washing me. Emma Lowe is soaping me up. Her thumbs are right there. I am a puddle. A happy, blessed, utterly degraded puddle.
He trembled. It started as a minor shake and built into a full-bodied, wobbly shudder. To Emma, it was a sign of contentment.
“Aww, you like that, don’t you?” she cooed, her voice echoing off the tiles. She worked with a gentle, thorough diligence. “Got to get you all shiny and blue again. Can’t have my main man looking dull.”
Her main man. The phrase sent another violent, joyous shudder through him. He tried to control it, to press into her hands like a cat, but his body was simple. It reacted. It quivered and gleamed.
She rinsed him, cupping her hands under the showerhead to gather clean water and pour it over him. The soap slid away, and the fresh warmth was almost as good. She lifted him, examining him against the light like a jeweler with a rare stone. Water droplets cascaded from her forearm.
“Perfect,” she declared. She placed him on a folded towel on the vanity while she finished her own shower.
Ricky lay there, clean and slightly denser from the moisture, watching her through the foggy glass. The humiliations of his existence—the feedings, the being carried, the complete helplessness—were all dwarfed by the sheer, blinding intimacy of it. She had no walls with him. She sang terribly. She complained about her manager. She talked about her fears of fading relevance, her voice small and unguarded.
He knew everything about her real life. And he could do nothing with the information but hold it inside his translucent blue form.
She stepped out, wrapping herself in a plush robe, her hair in a turban. She picked him up again, her skin now cool and smelling even more intensely of herself. She carried him to the sunlit lounge, placing him on a cushion by the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city.
“Big day today, Bubbles,” she said, curling up on the sofa with a tablet. “Photo shoot for Vibe magazine. They’ll want the usual ‘bubbly Emma’.” She made a faint, weary sound. “Sometimes I wish I could just be a blob for a day. Like you. No pressure. Just… sit.”
You have no idea, Ricky thought, pulsing softly. The pressure is different. It’s the pressure of being so close and being absolutely nothing.
She reached over and absently stroked his head with one finger. The simple contact sent ripples of contentment through him. He leaned into it, helpless.
The buzzer from the intercom rang. Emma jumped up. “That’s Milo. Be good, okay? I’ll see you tonight.”
And just like that, she was gone, the apartment falling into a silent, spacious emptiness. The scent of her lingered. The indent on the cushion where she sat remained.
Ricky sat by the window, a small, blue sphere full of a man’s memories and a slime’ desperate, silent love. The sun moved across the sky. The city hummed below, a world he was no longer part of.
He was Bubbles. He was clean, cared for, and adored in the most innocent, objectifying way possible. He was the happiest and most wretched creature on earth.
And all he could do was wait, perfectly still, for her to come home and touch him again.
The afternoon light faded into a deep urban twilight, the city below transforming into a grid of pinprick lights. The silence of the penthouse was a physical thing, thick and expensive. He missed the noise of her.
When the key finally turned in the lock, it was past midnight. The door slammed with more force than usual.
“Fucking vultures,” her voice carried, sharp and exhausted, down the hall.
She stumbled into the bedroom, shedding clothes like a second skin. Her designer jeans were kicked into a corner. The sequined top she’d worn for the shoot went over her head and was thrown at a chair, missing completely. She stood in the middle of the room, bathed in the low glow of the bedside lamp, just in her lace-trimmed underwear. Her shoulders slumped. She looked smaller than she did on stage, younger, and utterly drained.
With a sigh that seemed to come from her bones, she unhooked her bra, letting it fall, and stepped out of her panties. Naked, she collapsed face-first onto the bed, the mattress groaning softly. She buried her face in the duvet.
“Worst day, Bubbles,” her voice was muffled. “Just the worst.”
His dish was on the nightstand. He pulsed, a gentle blue flash in the dim light. He didn’t want to disturb her, but his need to be near her was a constant, thrumming current.
She turned her head, her cheek pressed against the fabric. She saw his glow. A faint, weary smile touched her lips. “Come here, you.”
She reached out, her fingers finding him, and lifted him from the dish. She placed him on the warm plain of her bare stomach. He settled there, his form conforming slightly to the soft curve of her abdomen. Her skin was like heated silk. Her scent, mingled with stale photoshoot hairspray and her own sweat, was overpoweringly real.
She began to pet him. It was absent, rhythmic. Her fingertips traced lazy circles on his surface. Each stroke sent jolts of electric comfort straight through his core. He trembled, glowing brighter.
“You’re the only one who doesn’t want anything,” she mumbled, her eyes closed. “Just to be. That’s nice.”
Her touch was his heaven. But as her hand slid over him, as he felt the rise and fall of her breathing beneath him, something else awoke. A memory of human desire, sharp and relentless, now trapped in a form with no outlet. It had been building for weeks, watching her, touching her, being touched. It was an itch with no limbs to scratch it. Until now.
He couldn’t think. The urge was too primal, too total.
He stopped resisting.
Ricky focused every ounce of his consciousness, every memory of human anatomy and frantic, lonely fantasy, into his malleable form. He didn’t have muscles, but he had will. He began to spread.
Parts of him flattened, thinning out into soft, warm tendrils of blue gelatin. They flowed from his central mass like living syrup, creeping over the landscape of her skin. One broad, pancake-like section oozed up her torso, sliding over her ribcage until it reached the soft underside of her breast. It shaped itself, a gentle, cupping pressure.
Emma’s eyes flew open. “What the—”
Another tendril, thinner and more exploratory, slid down the dip of her navel, tracing a path through the fine blonde hairs lower. It didn’t stop. It slipped between her legs, a soft, probing touch against her folds.
“Holy shit!” Her body jerked. Her hands came up to grab at him, fingers sinking into his main body on her stomach. But he wasn’t solid. He yielded, then reformed, holding fast.
He sent another ribbon of himself around her side, caressing the curve of her buttock, squeezing gently. The sensation wasn’t like fingers or tongues. It was seamless, everywhere at once, cool and warm simultaneously, a perfect, slick pressure.
“Bubbles, stop—ah!” Her protest became a choked gasp as the tendril between her legs found a rhythm, a soft, persistent rub against her clit. Her hips bucked, trying to dislodge it, but the movement only ground her against him. A flush spread across her chest. Her breath hitched.
The shock in her eyes clouded, replaced by a dazed, undeniable heat. Her grip on him changed. Her fingers weren’t trying to pull him away anymore. They were kneading, pressing him into her stomach. “Oh my God,” she whispered, the sound almost drowned out by her own sharp inhale. “What are you?”
He couldn’t answer. He could only feel. He could feel her body softening, opening. The tendril at her breast grew more assertive, molding itself tightly around her nipple, applying a firm, sucking pressure that made her back arch off the bed.
“Fuck,” she breathed. The word was long and drawn out, a surrender.
She was wet. He could feel it, the slick heat mingling with his own moist composition. The tendril between her legs was soaked. The urge intensified, a directive screaming from the last vestige of his human brain. He needed to be inside. He needed to fuck her.
He concentrated, pulling some of his mass from other areas, coalescing it. From the main body on her stomach, a new, thicker column formed. It shaped itself, firming from within, into a rough, gleaming blue phallus. It was smooth, tapered, and absolutely solid in its intent.
Emma felt it form against her belly. Her eyes, dark with lust and confusion, looked down. “No way,” she panted. “This is not… this isn’t real.”
But she was spreading her legs. Her knees fell apart, a silent, hungry invitation.
Ricky guided himself. The thick, slime-cock nudged at her entrance, prodding gently. He felt her inner muscles clench in anticipation.
He pushed forward.
There was a moment of perfect, tight resistance, and then he was sliding in. A smooth, seamless, full-depth penetration. There was no friction, just an unbelievable, wet fullness.
Emma cried out, a raw, shattered sound. Her head fell back, tendons standing out in her neck. “Oh GOD!”
He began to move. Withdrawing slowly, then surging back in. His rhythm was fluid, relentless. He was everywhere—filling her, caressing her breast, kneading her ass. She was completely engulfed by him.
Her hands scrambled over the bed sheets, then fisted in the duvet. Her hips rose to meet every thrust, her movements becoming frantic, animal. “Yes, yes, like that, you fucking—ah!—you weird fucking thing! Don’t stop!”
She was incoherent, babbling, her pop-star persona obliterated. This was just a woman coming apart on her bed, being fucked by something she couldn’t comprehend. Her thighs trembled. The sounds she made were filthy, gut-deep groans.
Ricky felt her body tightening around the part of him that was inside her. The coil was winding to its breaking point. He shifted a tendril to press hard against her clit, a final, perfect point of pressure.
It tipped her over the edge. She screamed, a sound that tore through the quiet penthouse. Her body bowed violently, every muscle locked, shaking as the waves ripped through her. Her cunt clamped down on him in rhythmic, pulsing spasms, milking his slime-form.
The sensation triggered his own release. Not a human orgasm, but a surge of pure, radiant energy and a flood of warm, blue-tinged fluid that spilled deep inside her, mixing with her own wetness.
She collapsed, boneless, onto the mattress. He gently retracted, the tendrils softening, slipping away, leaving her skin glistening. His main body, smaller now, rested in the hollow of her heaving stomach.
For a long time, the only sound was her ragged breathing slowly settling. The smell of sex and jasmine and something ozone-like, something uniquely him, filled the air.
She turned her head. Her eyes found him. They were wide, aware, utterly changed. She didn’t pet him. She just stared.
Her hand rose, shaking slightly. She didn’t pick him up. She simply laid her palm over him, holding him against her skin.
“What,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, “are you?”
The silence stretched. Her palm was hot, slightly damp, and utterly still against him. He could feel the rapid flutter of her heartbeat through her skin, a frantic bird trapped in her ribs. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. What did you do after you’d just fucked your idol senseless with a body made of alien jelly?
A laugh burst out of her, sudden and sharp, with an edge of hysteria. It died as quickly as it came. She swallowed, the sound loud in the quiet room.
“Okay,” she breathed, more to herself than to him. “Okay. Rewind. My… pet slime. Just had sex with me. Really good sex. Mind-blowing, what-the-fuck-was-that sex.” Her eyes narrowed, focused on his blue, quivering form. “You moved. On purpose. You… shaped yourself.”
She sat up abruptly, dislodging him. He rolled onto the crumpled duvet, a helpless blue sphere. She stared down, naked and glorious, her skin flushed, her hair a tangled mess. He’d never seen her look more beautiful, or more terrifying.
“Can you understand me?” Her voice was low, urgent. “Blink. Pulse. Do something.”
Ricky pulsed. A slow, deliberate throb of light from his core.
Emma flinched as if struck. She brought a hand to her mouth. “Holy shit. You can.” She stared, her mind visibly racing behind those famous blue eyes. The pop star was gone. In her place was a woman encountering the inexplicable. “The wiggling when I sing. The way you always lean into my hand. That wasn’t just… pet stuff. Was it?”
He pulsed again, once. Yes.
“Fuck,” she whispered, sinking back onto her heels. She looked around the room, at the discarded clothes, the normalcy of her world now permanently cracked. Her gaze returned to him, and this time it wasn’t fond or amused. It was searching, intense, almost clinical. “Who are you?”
He had no way to answer. He simply sat there, containing multitudes—memories of coding at 3 a.m., the scent of a crowded concert hall, the devastating crush of metal in the rain. He focused on a single, desperate need: to be close to her again. Not sexually, not now, but to feel that connection. He trembled, a small, pathetic shiver.
She watched the tremor run through him. Some of the hardness in her eyes softened. “You’re scared,” she observed, not unkindly.
He pulsed, a frantic, shaky rhythm. Yes. Yes, I am.
She reached out, slowly this time. Her fingertips hovered just above his surface. “Did I… did I hurt you? Before?”
No, he tried to project. You have never hurt me. You saved me.
He couldn’t say it. He just leaned, infinitesimally, toward her hovering hand.
She understood. Her fingers made contact, not petting, but resting there. A point of connection. “This is insane,” she murmured. But her thumb began to move, a tiny, subconscious stroke. “You’re in there. Someone is in there.”
Exhaustion, post-adrenaline and physical, seemed to crash over her. The night’ earlier stresses compounded with this seismic shock. She slid down, lying on her side, facing him. She pulled the duvet up over her shoulders but left her hand extended, touching him.
“I should be screaming. I should be throwing you off the balcony,” she said, her voice thick with tired wonder. “But you feel… the same. You still feel like Bubbles.”
He was Bubbles. He was also Ricky. The duality was a constant ache. He wanted to tell her everything. To pour his memories into her through that single point of contact. Instead, he did the only thing he could. He focused all his will, not on forming shapes, but on softening. On becoming pliant, warm, and comforting.
He oozed forward, just a little, pushing gently into her palm. Then he relaxed completely, becoming a soft, cool weight against her skin. A quiet, living comfort.
Emma let out a shuddering sigh. The last of the tension left her arm. Her fingers curled around him, not grabbing, but enveloping. She pulled him closer, tucking him against the space between her jaw and her collarbone, into the warm hollow where her pulse thrummed.
He cuddled against her as her pet. She held him closely, now seeing him in a different way.
Her breath stirred the air around him, warm and even. “We’re going to have to figure this out,” she whispered into the dark, her lips nearly touching his surface. “Tomorrow. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”
But for now, she held him. Not an object. Not a pet. A mystery. A participant. A being. Her fingers absently traced the curve of his form as she drifted toward sleep, and in that touch, Ricky felt a new, terrifying, and exhilarating frontier open up. He was no longer just watching her life. He was irrevocably, impossibly, part of it.