Sex God Saga 24
Sex Therapy
SUNDAY:
Next to Saint Sebastian pierced through with pulsating arrows, Theo leaned over the lounge's railing.
He watched over a crowded Neon Sin, tinged in shades of azure and lavender.
His blond hair was freshly cut, he wore a spiky collar and a fluffy, oversized shirt with enough holes to feel flimsy despite its thick fabric.
Keith smacked him between the shoulder blades. "Not to make this about work," the prettyboy shouted over the music, "but there are some leads about Dreamer related shit going down in the suburbs. They're still debating if it's safer for you to join on the mission with us or stay back alone."
Theo rolled his eyes. "I kinda hate that this is all about me when they're trying to prevent, like, a godly demon incursion."
Keith flashed his teeth and punched Theo in the shoulder. "Better enjoy the night out before it's back in the cage for you. Oh right, you always got that cage with you, hehe."
Theo raised both middle fingers and leaned on the railing backwards. "Be nice. I have a horde of madly protective boyfriends and a rich fiancé."
"Am I invited to that wedding?"
"I... don't actually know what the ceremony for a Bond of Favors is. If there's a guest list I'll put you on it."
Keith shrugged. "Rituals usually don't care so much how many Knowing are around. Shall we ask your slavemaster about it?"
"You realize he'd hate to hear you call him that?"
Keith winked. "Which is why I only said it to you."
Theo raised his middle fingers again and Keith blew a kiss.
Teal and mint turned to amber and rose. The music got too frantic to talk.
Paris was in the lounge, on the sectional with legs wide apart. He'd fucked Theo on the way here. As had Mo and Victor who'd come along.
Keith left the lounge. He was here to land a girl after all. Theo followed and mingled with strangers on the dance floor. Moving sexily now had an erotic quality it had never had before. He was too horny for his own good but knowing he had dicks waiting for him kept him from despairing.
Mako appeared out of nowhere and danced at him, not at all shy about looking gay.
Their legs slipped past each other and they loosely grinded face to face.
"Hey," Theo shouted. "Happy to see me or is that a doggy treat in your pants?"
"I get erect when I see you," Mako shouted back and it sent a thrill down Theo's spine. Mako grinded more aggressively. "You Pavlov'd me into loving you, bitch."
"Wow, love you, too, neighbor."
"You mean it? Cause I'm serious."
"Sure. I didn't think... We always stayed so casual. I mean we had some deep pillow talks but this feels a bit out of nowhere."
Mako shrugged his sleeveless arms. "I was seeing a girl for a month. Got to bang her, finally. Broke up with her as soon as I shot my load."
Theo laughed. "That's kinda fucked up."
"Way I see it, I have a choice to make. Break up with you, get some distance, leave this thing behind and restart my old life after a, I dunno, sexual detox. Or I let myself fall."
"And you're falling?"
Mako grinned. "If you'll catch me. I had a few long talks with Everest and that's where I'm at. You're right that this is coming out of nowhere from your perspective but does that matter?"
"Uh, does a dog make a good therapist? Okay, now that I said it, yes of course. But also, shouldn't you talk to, like, friends?"
"She's a muse of icy summits. She can be very `sage on a mountain top' if she needs to be. Plus, I talk plenty to my friends. Jun thinks I should ask you to move in. Get five cocksuckings a day."
"I mean, you live across. You could have that now."
"Kiss me?"
"Sure."
"Magic-kiss me?"
Theo gave a knowing nod. "Ah, you're sure you love me?"
"Boy, I don't know anything for sure."
Theo pulled the Primal to the edge of the dancefloor and initiated a make-out under the statue of Saint Nicolas. The old, bag-carrying bishop's neon beard and halo turning from sky blue to a vibrant purple.
Theo let power creep from tongue to tongue, giving Mako the pleasure of a second gear fuck. For some people this was noticeably localized in the mouth, for others – like Mako it turned out – it gave a more distributed sensation.
It was mean but Theo pushed the orgasm button and made the hunk cream his pants as they slow danced to hyper-aggressive tunes. Theo chuckled into the kiss as the jizzing man's knees bumped into his without coordina-
Theo needed to look up and 45 degrees to the side. Nothing else mattered.
He pushed Mako away, harder than he'd meant, and let his eyes find the upstairs lounge to quench the compulsion.
His gaze met Paris', who stood waving by Saint Sebastian. Right, Theo had given permission for emergency mesmerization, which meant...
"Mako, I think we have a situation."
"Uh, do I have time to get rid of my undies?"
Theo sent Mako to the toilets and made his way upstairs.
Chase Powell, biracial, jar-headed Stygian with eye tattoos on the neck and a huge gold chain, awaited him. "Did you see Cain?"
"Uh, no?"
"Damn. Then you just missed him. Should have gone after."
"Is he in trouble?"
"Not sure," Chase said. "He seemed intense, even compared to normal. Wanted to speak to Ace or a shaman."
"Why Ace?"
"No idea but Paris is calling him. I'll try find the kid, excuse me."
###
It was Theo, Paris, Ace, Mako and Keith in the lounge when Chase returned with Cain.
The white-haired twink of a man, years older than he looked, wore a shirt so washed-out it had become threadbare.
He made a few telling, uncomfortable expressions, before his neutral, almost dead-eyed expression resumed.
"Let me," Theo said and coaxed his echo sprite – he'd named it Melody – to reflect the music away from them. The sofa's area was plunged into a lower volume, much easier for talking.
Cain sat down between Theo and Keith.
He sighed. Somehow he looked skinnier than ever. No, he really was skinnier. He'd lost weight since last time they'd seen him.
"I... I can't do this anymore."
Theo let his hand hover near the man's shoulder. "Tell us and we'll find a way to help."
There was no response in Cain's body language so Theo let his hand drop without touching the guy.
"I thought over and over about how to tell you," Cain said, his voice deep and raspy for his stature and too level for his apparent emotional turmoil. "If you have a minute, I'll start at the beginning."
"Sure," Keith said.
"I'm... My name is Cain but..." He stopped, restarted. "For sixteen years, Cain Ho was a Baseliner. He stumbled over a demon. In a vodka bottle. Maybe a demon of addiction or underage drinking or fucking nightlife or something. And he took that bottle to a birthday of a friend and had a great time. A great, incredible time. Pushing boundaries, getting wasted, wrecking shit, almost getting laid for the first time. His first taste of freedom."
"The demon's doing?" Paris gently suggested.
Cain nodded, inhaled and continued with the same deadpan. "Demons like Venality but that's not stable. They need to push their victims for worse and worse acts to get the same dose of juice. And so Cain started pushing his friends to get nasty. And maybe he'd have lost a lot of friends by the time everybody sobered up but..."
Theo put a hand around the boy. He couldn't not.
"Cain pushed some friends into roaming the city, breaking into random places. They took a shortcut in the dark, across a construction site. I was the taillight."
Serious emotion crept into his voice for the first time. He kept control of himself on purpose now.
"That night, Cain Ho touched a live wire."
Mako whispered, "Fuck."
"Nobody heard me drop on a pile of cement bags," Cain said. "Nobody heard the bottle break on gravel. There was no good vessel for..."
Silence but for the dulled music.
"Did the demon go back?" Keith asked. "To Ephemera?"
Cain gave a light, even headshake. "There's something like rare voidzones were the way home is broken. We're not supposed to tell you shamans where they are cause you can kill us that way. We were both dead or as good as. So I had to..."
Keith did a big in-and-exhale. "You're... the demon."
Cain buried his face in his hands. "I don't know. I don't fucking know what I am. I'm Cain. I have his memories. If there's any missing, I never noticed. But I'm the demon, too. I need V. I ruined my life. I tried to make dad cheat. I made mom steal from the church but she broke down and they kicked me out. And I've been sucking up every speck of V I could find for years. And I still need to fucking eat human food, too. And I... I got to keep spending the V to hide. I-"
He raised his head. Glamour dropped. His irises and pupils turned a faded white.
"-I can't do this anymore. I'm always hungry. Please, he was already dead. And I'm pure evil. Just make it fast."
###
Paris had rented another lounge so they could talk while Chase watched Cain.
"Can I just say," Keith started, "this feels like `suicide by cop'? I get that he's suffering immensely but he's trying to push us into killing him."
"Yeah," Ace said slowly. "I get that he's been horrible to some people but he's more human than demon. Right? And he can live off of any V, not just demon Veneration?"
Theo looked at the Duskwright. "Has something like this ever happened?"
Keith ruffled his own hair. "Ghouls, Outsiders picking corpse vessels, don't generally get a lot of the person's memories and character, so if he's honest-"
"Yup," Ace said, taping his forehead to symbolize the third eye. "But they also don't have a reason to try, if they just want a vessel."
"Seems like possession exactly at the moment of death leaves a lot intact," Keith said, frowning. "Of course there's been necromancers, trying to create revenants out of their murder victims to extract secrets of dead rivals, or send a zombie at someone, or to bring back a loved one. But... those Outsiders tend to have their own motivation and aren't just trying to survive."
Paris raised a hand. "Anyone here actually in favor of offing our little Ghoul? No? Then maybe we should consider solutions. We can give him a place, feed him, rope him into our V collection. Maybe that's enough."
Theo swallowed a lump in his throat. "Guys? This is really tasteless of me to suggest, but... What about my power? You think he could use that?"
###
With Incu in the heavily rune-marked mirror beside him, Theo laid on his back, pulled his legs in and magically readied his ass.
Paris was supervising from a chair in the corner.
Cain had enjoyed a hot shower and restaurant leftovers curtesy of Seiko Yoshida. He brought his narrow frame between Theo's legs, his average dick erect.
"Just put it in?" he asked, deadpan.
"That's the plan," Theo said.
Cain invaded without hesitation, the pure white eyes meeting Theo's gaze with a brief frown. He dropped his hands beside Theo's shoulders and hit a slow rhythm.
"This works," the Ghoul said, sounding tranquil if mildly positive. "I'm feeding. It's perfect."
Theo ramped up to second, then third gear. The sex continued with only hints of confusion on Cain's face.
Candles flickered, the Watcher moving along the walls as a humanoid shadow with eyeholes.
"Honey, what are you at?" Paris asked.
Theo glanced past the white haired revenant. "Just switched to max power. Uh, Cain, does it feel different compared to sex you've previously had?"
"Soul-rending pleasure?" Cain asked monotonously. "Beyond anything I could have imagined? A lifetime of joy and relaxation ripping through me? Like more than your boyfriend's warnings could have possibly conveyed?"
"Uh, yeah?"
"Yeah, I feel that."
"He does feel that," the bullhead in the mirror confirmed.
"Oh," Theo made. "Good."
The bottom and Paris exchanged thumbs ups.
Cain's skin was getting appreciably rosier. He kept fucking gently, almost timidly.
Theo had gotten used to the idea of every fuck in his life from now on being a brutal freak-out where the top lost his mind with either sobbing, hysteria, screaming or all of it. Having an almost boring top was lovely.
Theo pulled Cain into a hug and sighed. "Cain, if this really works, are you going to give life another chance?"
Total deadpan. "Okay."
The bottom chuckled. "Welcome, new boyfriend."
###
Cain was bubbly for someone hardly emoting.
He already looked healthier, if still emaciated. He roamed the studio apartment as if he were seeing furniture for the first time.
He'd even reinstated the illusion of pupils and irises on his eyeballs since he had power to spare. The shirt Theo had lent him hung low on his narrow frame.
"-And I could go back to school. Do you think that's worth it? Finishing school? I mean, old Cain didn't hate it but it's never been a breeze. There's probably online stuff, right? Or do I literally have to go back. Fuck. I'd still fit in though, cause I don't age much. I have to spend power to not start rotting but I think that also slows down my aging. I'd say I look a year older since `the incident'. Do you think people would notice? I kinda hate PE though."
It was so cute Theo could have cried.
The shaman in a jockstrap was leaning against Paris, sharing snacks with him.
He whispered, "His smile is so rewarding."
The prince chuckled. "Same."
"-I think my parents would have noticed eventually, which was one reason I had to get out. I've been going from job to job, working mostly night shifts, so no one's been wondering why I age in slow-mo but one day that'll be a thing. I'll have to go to a nightshift at a fast food place tomorrow by the way. You're letting me crash here, right? I can run on four hours and- Shit, you think I can make up with them? My parents?"
Theo sighed. "You're asking a fellow estranged son. Christmas cards are our only regular communication. But I'd support you trying."
Paris yawned behind his hand.
Cain's smile dropped. "Fuck, am I keeping you two up? I don't really need as much sleep as a human, as mentioned. Or food for that matter. But I can get eight hours and three full meals if it helps me blend in."
"Be my guest," Theo said. "I can hold out another hour for-"
Theo's and Paris' phones beeped at the same time. They exchanged a glance and the prince in gold checked his device.
"Team Delta is called to assemble tomorrow. Not something we need to take immediate action on but they have a lead for the Dreamer. All hands on deck. You can choose if you feel it's safer there or here."
Theo nodded.
Paris got up. "I might want to head out and leave you to cuddle the Ghoul."
Theo spread his arms. "Come here, Zombie boyfriend. `Nother round?"
"Heck yeah."
Someone knocked on Theo's door.
"Oh," the blond said. "That'll be Mako, for his scheduled good night cumshot."
Paris was slipping into his jacket. "I can shoo him off on my way out."
Theo cringed. "Most nights, I'd say yes but we kinda had a huge breakthrough and then I totally sidelined him for" -he pulled Cain in- "my newest acquisition. Could you open for him?"
Paris strode to the door. "Guess it's time for Cain to see why his mild reaction had us so confused."