Chapter 1: A Virus on the Evening News
The key rattled in the lock, followed by the heavy sigh of the front door swinging open. Fin dumped his keys into the ceramic bowl by the entryway, the sound sharp against the quiet hum of the apartment. He could already smell it—the soft, clean scent of lavender laundry detergent and something baking, maybe those lemon cookies Vee liked to make when he was between projects.
“Hey, gorgeous,” Fin called out, his voice a gravelly baritone worn thin by a day of shouting over pneumatic drills.
“In here,” came the reply, a lighter melody from the living room.
Fin toed off his steel-toed boots, leaving them in a dusty heap on the mat. The polished wooden floor was cool under his socks. He padded into the living room, where the light was soft and gold, strung up by Vee’s countless fairy lights. There he was, curled at the end of the oversized sofa, a sketchbook balanced on his knees. He wore an oversized lilac sweater that swallowed his slender frame, his legs bare beneath a pair of tailored, cream-colored shorts. His focus was absolute, the tip of his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth as his pencil flew across the paper.
Fin didn’t speak. He just walked over, his shadow falling across the sketchbook, and carefully slid it from Vee’s grasp, setting it on the coffee table. Vee looked up, his doe-eyes blinking away artistic concentration, a smile already blossoming.
“Long one?” Vee asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“The longest.” Fin sank onto the couch and wrapped his arms around Vee, pulling him in until Vee’s back was against his chest. He buried his face in the crook of Vee’s neck, inhaling the lavender scent of his hair, feeling the day’s tension begin to leach from his shoulders. Vee’s hand came up, fingers tracing the coarse stubble along Fin’s jaw.
“You’re all grit,” Vee murmured.
“And you’re all soft.” Fin’s large, calloused hand splayed over Vee’s flat stomach, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his breath. “Perfect.”
On the television, a daytime baking show had given way to the evening news. The anchor’s voice, usually a smooth monotone, carried a strange, sharp urgency. Fin felt Vee shift slightly to see the screen.
“…urgently advising caution. Reports are still chaotic, but sources at the CDC confirm a new, fast-moving pathogen. Transmission appears to be exclusively through skin-to-skin contact. Symptoms are… unconventional.”
Fin snorted into Vee’s hair. “Another scare. Remember the frog flu?”
“Shh,” Vee said, his body going still.
The anchor looked genuinely unsettled, shuffling papers. “We’re receiving unverified imagery from initial exposure sites. Officials are stressing: do not approach anyone displaying signs of physical alteration. Do not make contact.”
A grainy cell phone video played, showing a person staggering down a sidewalk. Their arm seemed too long, the shoulder distended. The video cut off abruptly.
“Physical alteration?” Fin mumbled, the words feeling thick in his mouth. A strange, prickling heat began to spread across his chest, a sensation like a sunburn blooming from the inside. He ignored it, nuzzling closer to Vee.
“Fin,” Vee said softly. “Your heart is hammering.”
“Just holding you gets me going,” Fin joked, but his voice sounded off to his own ears. The heat intensified, becoming a deep, unsettling warmth centered on his pectorals. It wasn’t painful. It was wrong.
He moved his hand from Vee’s stomach, intending to rub at the spot, but as his palm brushed over his own chest through his worn flannel shirt, he froze. The firm, familiar muscle was… different. Softer. Mutable.
“What is it?” Vee twisted in his arms, turning to face him. His eyes, wide and concerned, scanned Fin’s face. Then they dropped to his chest.
Fin looked down. The sturdy blue and black check of his flannel was rippling. Not from his breathing. From beneath. The fabric shifted, folds appearing and disappearing as if the topography of his body was being redrawn in real time. He clutched at it, his fingers sinking into a surprising, yielding softness where solid muscle should have been.
“What the hell?” He ripped open the top two buttons of his shirt, pulling the fabric apart.
The skin was flushed, sweaty. And his pectoral muscle, defined from years of labor, was… changing. It was losing its taut, angular definition, softening at the edges, becoming fuller. He watched, detached and horrified, as the contour subtly rounded, the nipple darkening and shifting its position by a fraction of an inch. It was slow, but it was undeniable. A biological betrayal happening right under his skin.
“Fin.” Vee’s voice was a breath.
“Don’t touch me!” Fin scrambled back, almost falling off the couch. He stood up, stumbling away from the coffee table, from Vee, from the horrifying, comforting glow of the fairy lights. His breathing came in short, sharp gasps. “The news. They said… don’t touch.”
“Who did you touch today?” Vee asked, rising to his feet. He was trembling, but his gaze was steady.
“Everyone! It’s my job! A handshake with the inspector, helping Rick with a fallen beam, high-fiving the kid on the crew…” Fin’s voice cracked. He stared at his hands—the rough, scarred, capable hands that built things. Had they brought this home? He looked back at Vee, at his husband’s delicate, ink-stained fingers. The hands that created beautiful, impossible worlds on paper. A cold terror, sharper than any physical sensation, seized him. “Oh, god. Vee. I hugged you. I just…”
“I feel fine,” Vee said, taking a cautious step forward. “You’re not fine. Let me see.”
“No!” Fin backed into the wall, the cool plaster a shock against his back. “Just stay over there. Please.”
He looked down at his chest again. The transformation seemed to have paused, or at least slowed. He was left with a chest that was no longer wholly his own—a stranger’s topography superimposed on his body. A wave of nausea rolled through him.
Vee didn’t listen. He crossed the room in a few quick strides, stopping just short of arm’s reach. His eyes, glistening in the low light, scanned Fin’s face, then the exposed, altered skin. “Does it hurt?”
“No. It just feels… hot. And wrong.” Fin’s voice was a ragged whisper. “What is happening to me?”
Vee’s brow furrowed, not in disgust, but in fierce, concentrated thought. “Okay. Okay. We saw the news. It’s some kind of virus. It does… this.” He gestured weakly at Fin’s chest. “We need to call someone. A hospital.”
“And say what? That my chest is… reforming?” A hysterical laugh bubbled in Fin’s throat. He clamped it down. The anchor’s warning echoed: Do not approach.
A new sensation began, this time in his throat. A tightness. A strange, fibrous pull along his vocal cords. He tried to swallow. It felt like swallowing sand.
“Vee,” he tried to say, but his voice was wrong. It slipped, cracking mid-syllable, the deep baritone sliding into a ragged, uncertain tenor.
The sound silenced them both. Vee’s hand flew to his own mouth.
Fin looked into his husband’s terrified eyes, seeing his own monstrous reflection in them. The warmth in the room was gone, replaced by the sterile, blue glow of the television, where the anchor was now repeating a phone number for a emergency hotline. The fairy lights seemed mocking, childish.
The first chapter of their new, terrifying story had just begun, and it was written not in words, but in the shifting, unstable flesh of Fin’s own body.