Chapter 2: The Second Claiming
The hum of the fridge downstairs was the only sound. Yamato had moved them, carrying Taichi’s dead weight up the narrow stairs to his bedroom, a feat of straining muscle and trembling resolve. He’d laid him on the tangled sheets, the Polaroid on the wall staring down with its ghost-grins. He’d started to pull a blanket over Taichi’s nakedness, an act of pointless modesty.
A hand shot out, iron-strong fingers closing around Yamato’s wrist.
Yamato froze. Taichi’s eyes were open. The lucid horror was gone, burned away again. The black, hungry pupils had returned, reflecting the dim lamp light like pools of oil. His breath hitched, then evened into a low, purposeful rhythm.
“You pulled out,” Taichi said. His voice wasn’t a rasp now. It was deep, smooth, vibrating with a charisma that felt borrowed, poisonous.
“You passed out, Tai. We’re done.”
“Done?” Taichi’s lips curled, not quite a smile. A predator’s show of teeth. He used his grip on Yamato’s wrist to pull him down. Yamato stumbled, knee hitting the mattress, body falling against Taichi’s. The heat was still there, worse now, a furnace burning under his skin. Taichi rolled his hips, his half-hard cock dragging against Yamato’s thigh through his jeans. “I can still feel you in me. It’s fading. It’s starting to hurt again.”
“That’s the… the damage. We didn’t use anything. You need to rest.” Yamato tried to push back, but his body betrayed him, thrumming at the contact.
“I need to be full.” Taichi released his wrist and instead grabbed two fistfuls of Yamato’s shirt, yanking him until their faces were inches apart. The alien charisma poured off him, a sickly-sweet musk mixed with sweat. “You want to. I can see it. You’re hard just looking at me.”
It was true. Shame burned in Yamato’s gut, acid-bright, but it didn’t douse the need. Taichi rolled them, fluid and strong, pinning Yamato beneath him. He settled his weight, grinding down, the rough denim of Yamato’s jeans against his bare, sensitive flesh.
“Fuck me again,” Taichi demanded, mouth against Yamato’s neck. “Properly. I’m already open for you. Still wet with you.” He rocked back, guiding Yamato’s hand down, past the swell of his ass, to the place where they’d joined on the couch. It was slick, hot, loosely furled muscle yielding under the slightest pressure. A low, wanton groan vibrated through Taichi’s chest. “See? It remembers you. It wants you back inside.”
“Tai, this isn’t—”
“It’s the only thing that is,” Taichi hissed, biting the tendon of Yamato’s neck, not hard enough to break skin, but enough to claim. “Stop thinking. Just fuck me.”
The last thread of Yamato’s resistance snapped with a sound he felt in his soul. He shoved Taichi off, rolling him onto his stomach with a force that punched a gasp from his lungs. Yamato fumbled with his own jeans, shoving them and his briefs down just enough to free his aching cock. The bottle of lube from the nightstand was in his hand, the cap flicked open with a thumb. He didn’t bother with gentle preparation. He poured a slick, cool stream directly onto Taichi’s waiting hole, watching it drip down his perineum. Taichi pushed back against the air, a wordless, needy sound escaping him.
Yamato positioned himself, one hand on Taichi’s hip, the other guiding himself. The head of his cock pressed against that slick, used entrance. It gave way easier this time, a hungry, suctioning gasp of muscle.
He sank in. In one long, smooth, brutal stroke.
“God! Fuck!” Taichi’s cry was muffled by the pillow, his back arching, hands fisting the sheets. It was a sound of perfect, shattering relief.
Yamato set a pace that was nothing like the frantic struggle on the couch. This was deliberate, deep, each thrust a measured piston-stroke aimed at the core of that emptiness. The slap of flesh was wet, obscenely loud in the small room. The bedframe knocked a steady tattoo against the wall in time with his drives.
“Yes… yes… right there, you’re so deep,” Taichi chanted, pushing back to meet every invasion. His voice was slurry, drunk on sensation. “Fill me up, Yamato. Come inside me. I want to feel it. I want to be fucking packed with you.”
The filthy words, spoken in that familiar voice yet laced with an unfamiliar need, detonated something in Yamato’s brain. His control splintered. He folded himself over Taichi’s back, biting at his shoulder, his hips snapping faster, losing rhythm, becoming a punishing, jackhammer assault. The bottle of lube was knocked to the floor.
“You want my come?” Yamato growled, the words torn from a place he never exposed. “You want me to pump you so full it leaks out of you?”
“Yes! Please! Do it! I need it!”
Yamato’s orgasm ripped through him like a theft. He slammed home, buried to the root, and held there as his body emptied in hot, pulsing jets deep inside Taichi’s clutching heat. Taichi screamed, his own body seizing as he came untouched beneath them, his cock spilling onto the sheets with ragged, desperate spurts.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their shattered breathing. Yamato collapsed to the side, his softening slip sliding out with a wet, final sound. The evidence of what he’d done immediately began to seep from Taichi’s body onto the already-stained sheet.
Taichi didn’t move. He lay on his stomach, face turned away, his breathing gradually slowing. The awful, compelling heat radiating from his skin seemed to diminish, degree by degree.
Yamato stared at the ceiling, at a crack in the plaster he’d never noticed before. His mind was a white, silent static. Then, a movement in his periphery.
He turned his head. Taichi was trembling. Not the tremors of need, but fine, helpless shudders. A choked, wet sniff.
“Tai?”
Taichi slowly pushed himself up. He didn’t look at Yamato. He stared at the wall, at the warped Polaroid. His eyes were clear, brown, and devastated. Silent tears tracked clean lines through the sweat on his cheeks.
“It’s not going away,” he whispered. The charismatic, hungry voice was gone. This was his voice, fractured and small. “It just… goes quiet for a minute. Then it comes back worse. It’s in my head, Yama. It’s thinking.”
He finally looked at Yamato, his expression raw with a guilt that mirrored Yamato’s own. “And it really, really likes you.”
He swung his legs off the bed, his body moving with a stiffness that had nothing to do with sport. He walked, nude and unselfconscious, to the small attached bathroom. Yamato heard the shower turn on.
Lying alone in the sour-smelling bed, Yamato looked at the evidence of their act soaking into the cotton. He looked at the bathroom door, behind which the water ran. He had filled him. Twice. And it had only made the thing inside his best friend more aware, more specific in its hunger.
The parasite knew his name.
It was learning.