Work Text:
One day, Adam Kaufman finds a smartphone on the ground with Pokémon Go loaded.
He takes it to the apartment. It's full of Pokémon. Most of them are not actual Pokémon. Some are downright terrifying, like the one called a 'Sybrow' which looks like a horrifyingly large and fuzzy black caterpillar. He doesn't even try to catch it.
Sybrow evolves into Unisybrow. ;)
Unisybrow broke free!
Adam drops the phone and screams as a terrifyingly large, fuzzy black thing slides out the phone's charging port and rustles its way ominously across the carpet.
"I DIDN'T EVEN CATCH IT!" he yells at no one.
Unisybrow pauses and swivels around to look at him.
All the colour drains out of Adam's face. He turns and runs.
"Adam, you're not making any sense," Sasan whines moments later after Adam barges wide-eyed into his house, wide-eyed and babbling. "How could a giant eyebrow come out from a phone?"
Adam hugs him tightly, trembling. "Don't make me go back in there," he pleads. "It's waiting for me, I know it-"
Sasan tries to shake him off. "Adam-"
"Don't leave me!"
Sasan sighs. "Adam, you're being ridiculous and you're creasing my shirt. I'm sure there's-"
He freezes. Across the room, Unisybrow slithers out of the door that Adam came through.
Sasan screams. He breaks free of Adam's grasp and jumps onto his bed. "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?"
Adam scrambles up the bed behind him and fumbles with his shoe to pull it off. He throws it hard at Unisybrow. He misses it spectacularly, partly because Sasan has grabbed him in panic.
"What is that," Sasan whispers. "It's in my room, oh god, it's in my room..."
Unisybrow pauses to collect itself, and then starts to stand, wavering slightly.
"What's it doing?" Adam whispers. Sasan is clutching him so tightly he can barely breathe, but that's okay because Adam is clutching him just as tightly.
Unisybrow sways as it stands, and then it stops and begins to split right down the middle into two Unisybrows.
Sasan lets out a tiny whimper.
The bedroom door flies open as Smudge walks in. "Hey Sas, why are you-"
Then he sees the Unisybrow. His face lights up. Smudge hastily digs into his pocket, grabs a Pokeball, and throws it expertly at the creature. The Pokeball opens. The Unisybrow is gone in a flash.
"Gotcha!" he says happily, and tucks the Pokeball back into his pocket.
His face still glowing with joy, Smudge looks up at the bed, where Sasan and Adam are still hanging on to each other for dear life.
He blinks. "What are you doing up there?"
#
Smudge empties a whole bunch of Pokeballs from his bag onto Sasan's bedroom floor as Sasan looks on with extreme trepidation. "I'm out of space," he explains. "They should be fine. The Pokémon usually don't break out."
"Um... 'usually'?"
"Yeah, one broke out once and ate half my bed, but it was okay because I still had a lot of pillows."
Sasan tries not to look as horrified as he feels.
He has a lot of trouble sleeping that night, even with Smudge by his side. His eyes fly open at the slightest noise – because there are noises, gentle rustlings coming from that pile as the trapped Pokémon shift about, and then... and then he hears the tiny snap as a Pokeball splits open, and in his heart, he knows.
Unisybrow slithers out. Sasan's heart tenses in his chest. Frozen with fear, his eyes wide with horror, he watches the creature's thick, hairy length bristling in a shaft of streetlight as it inches its way slowly across the carpet.
"Smudge," he whispers. "Smudge, wake up."
Smudge mumbles something and rolls over.
"Smudge..."
Unisybrow pauses, raising itself up slightly, and then it looks Sasan right in the eye. A dark and terrible presence nudges at the edge of his mind, for Unisybrow is a psychic Pokémon.
Sasan whimpers.
Unisybrow smiles – a slow, vicious, evil smile. Sasan doesn't know how it's smiling, because it's an eyebrow, but he feels the smile in his mind and knows with a deep and sinking dread that Unisybrow has him now.
A dark pall seems to fall upon the room. Sasan tries weakly to call for Smudge again, but his mouth can barely form his name.
The edges of his vision close in on him until Unisybrow is the only thing he sees. There is nothing else in his world but him and it: Sasan and that unholy creature in his room now crawling purposefully across the floor and up his bedpost – yes, and then sliding over the covers until Sasan can see it right there before his face in all its terrifying majesty, and if he were still in control of himself he would have screamed when Unisybrow crawled onto his neck and he felt every hair on its nightmarish underbelly, and then when it crawled onto his face and brushed against his nose and lips; but Sasan's fear has taken him far beyond movement or conscious thought, and then... and then Unisybrow is settling into his eyebrows and merging imperceptibly into them and they are one, becoming one, the darkness creeping into his mind and wresting all control from him, and Sasan knows no more.
Unisybrow blinks Sasan's eyes. It raises Sasan's hand to his eyebrows, which look normal again, for Unisybrow is inside him now.
Smudge stirs. "Sas?" he asks sleepily.
Unisybrow slowly turns to him with Sasan's body, and smiles. "Go to sleep, Smudge," it whispers in Sasan's voice, and Smudge feels a strange presence pulling him inexorably down into a deep, deep sleep, and he cannot do anything but go along.
Adam is working on something of extreme importance to national security when he hears a sound, and looks up to see a door open and Sasan come in. No, not quite... Sasan's body slithers in, horizontal on the floor, hands dragging itself along, for Unisybrow has yet to properly understand that human bodies don't work like eyebrows.
Adam stares. He blinks, and wonders if perhaps he shouldn't stay up this late.
"...Sasan?" he asks.
Sasan's body pauses, his eyes blank, and then he slowly rises to his feet, swaying in a disconcertingly familiar manner. The colour drains from Adam's face. He gets up from his chair, backing away. "You're... you're not..."
"Go to sleep," Unisybrow intones.
Nothing happens, for Adam just had four cups of espresso.
"I can't," Adam says, half-delirious from the caffeine, not knowing why he's talking to whatever this is, because it definitely isn't Sasan, and perhaps it's just another one of them from another universe because the only other option is that Sasan just got possessed by an eyebrow. "I've got work, it's very important, I..."
Unisybrow stumbles towards him, struggling to work with Sasan's overly long legs with all their fiddly joints and stuff.
Unisybrow gives up. Walking is hard. It flops back down onto its belly and continues slithering towards Adam, giving Sasan a very bad carpet burn. It smiles viciously, pleased to discover that human mouths make it much easier to do.
Adam makes a soft squeaking noise, grabs his laptop, and runs out of the room.
He grabs his apartment key and jams it into the wall. Moments later, he bursts into Sasan's bedroom. He hears distinctly bisexual snores. There's only one person in bed, and dread fills his heart.
"Smudge!" He runs over to the bed and tries to shake him awake. "What happened to Sasan?"
Smudge is completely unresponsive.
"Smudge!"
Adam's gaze darts to the pile of Pokeballs in the corner. One of them is split wide open, lying empty on top of the pile, and he knows.
"Smudge!" he yells again.
The door creaks open and he jumps, turning to watch in horror as Unisybrow slides in, guided there by its psychic powers and Sasan's key.
"heh, heh," laughs Unisybrow darkly from the floor. "Heh, heh, heh."
There's something about hearing that sound in their voice that makes Adam's insides turn. "WHAT DID YOU DO WITH SASAN?" he shouts.
"We are one," Unisybrow whispers, carpet burn ripping a hole in Sasan's T-shirt. Its eyes glint in the dim light as it fixes its gaze on Adam's face, and Adam glimpses his terror mirrored in its eyes as Sasan, deep inside, awakes to the nightmare of being possessed by a unibrow. "We are one," Unisybrow repeats, reaching out an arm towards Adam's leg.
"Get out of him," Adam says, his voice trembling. "Get out!"
"Sleep," Unisybrow commands, just in case the first failure was just a fluke.
"Leave us alone!"
"Sleeeeeep."
Adam darts out of its way and grabs the empty Pokeball from the pile. He raises it in what he hopes is a threatening manner but isn't, and is why Adam always got picked last for dodgeball teams at school.
He hurls it at Unisybrow. There's a flash of light, and Sasan's body vanishes into the ball.
Pokeball in hand, Adam slides down the foot of the bed and has a long-awaited nervous breakdown.
#
"Wait a minute," Kirk says. "You're saying that a sentient eyebrow slid out of a phone, possessed your friend, and told you to get some sleep?"
"...Yeah," Adam says, painfully aware that his worst nightmare was currently coming true. Most people dreamt of being caught naked on stage during a big presentation. Adam dreamt of having the whole crew of the USS Enterprise stare at him while he said ridiculous things.
Spock is giving him a look and eyebrow raise that plainly say that he thinks this is the most illogical thing he's ever heard.
"And you... caught it," Kirk says. He motioned at the Pokeball. "In that."
"Yes sir."
"Show us."
Adam hesitates, then tosses the Pokeball towards the bridge.
It falls open. Sasan's body appears out of nowhere, spread-eagled and drooling on the spotless floor. His clothes are ripped and smudged with dirt from all the slithering about. His hair is a complete disaster. Sasan is in ruins knowing he's being seen like this, but his body refuses to respond to any command. Unisybrow raises his head and spreads his lips in an ominous smile. "Hello," he rasps. "Heh. Heh. Heh."
"I need a drink," McCoy mutters, and walks off to the bar.
#
Trapped inside himself, Sasan struggles vainly against the psychic bonds of Unisybrow, painfully aware that a lot of ridiculously good-looking people are staring down at him. An MRI would reveal what looked like a giant hairy black scrunchie snug against Sasan's brain. It's fortunate for everyone that he will not be given an MRI, because some things can never be unseen.
Unisybrow is thinking. This place isn't safe. It doesn't know what newfangled equipment they have here, but it doesn't bode well for an evil sentient unibrow. Which means there's only one way out of this: it can no longer be an evil sentient unibrow.
Unisybrow gathers its psychic energy and launches itself deeper into Sasan's mind. It immerses itself in his memories, personality, speech patterns, fashion sense, his ability to walk and do all those complicated human things; Unisybrow learns to be Sasan. And it needs to make them think that everything is okay.
Banging futilely against the walls of his consciousness, Sasan feels a sudden lightness of freedom. Then darkness, and then an immense push forcing him out through something firm yet yielding until he bursts out, into glorious light, and splats onto the floor.
The gathered crowd gasps in horror at the fuzzy black creature that just emerged from Sasan's head.
Sasan tries to ask them what's up. Then he realises that he can't. His mouth seems to be missing. His vision is all weird, and his limbs feel strangely wedded to his sides-
Sasan freezes in horror. His own body – his beautiful, gym-toned body – is right there before him, blinking and picking itself up the floor.
"What happened?" Unisybrow asks with a groan. Sasan sees his face look down at him from a greater height than should be possible. Something that might almost be an evil smirk besmirches that flawless complexion, and then a dramatic expression of terror crosses his stolen face.
Unisybrow screams. "Get that thing away from me!" it yells, backing off into the crowd, and Sasan tries and fails to scream along as he catches his reflection in the shiny fittings of the Enterprise. He looks like a huge, bristly hairy leech. He looks like Unisybrow.
Gigantic human hands descend upon him and Sasan panics, slithering desperately out from their grasp, trembling in horrified panic. [It's me!] he tries to shout, but he still has no mouth, for he is an eyebrow, and Unisybrow didn't give him any of its psychic abilities.
"It's so gross," Unisybrow is saying in Sasan's body, eyes wide and face ashen, gripping tightly onto Adam's arm. "It was in my head... ew, ewww!”
Adam is clutching him back with an almost identical expression, unable to take his eyes from the nightmarish creature zipping haphazardly across the floor. "It was my fault," he whispers hoarsely. "If I hadn't... hadn't played that game... I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Sasan..."
“Kill it!” Unisybrow hollers.
Sasan squeezes out from Scotty's frightened grip and slithers under a counter, unable to bear the sensation of his underhairs sweeping against the floor, his mind reeling in fear and revulsion. He's covered in hair. He's covered in... no, he is hair, he's made up of hair, all thick and matted and disgusting...
"Where'd it go?" he hears Kirk yell. And another voice – McCoy, gently but firmly telling Unisybrow that he needs to run some tests on him to ensure that the parasite is completely gone, and Unisybrow agreeing, because its psychic powers can totally fool any medical equipment if necessary.
Sasan tries to sob, but he has no tear ducts, for he is an eyebrow, the grossest eyebrow he has ever seen, and in an overwhelming urge to get away he discovers that Unisybrow forgot to take away his teleportation ability.
He pops up back in his bedroom. Dawn is breaking through the windows.
Smudge is snoring quietly in the bed, still deep in his induced sleep. Sasan's heart breaks for him.
[Smudge,] he thinks. He rasps his way across his bedroom carpet. He passes a pair of shoes and realises that he could fit his whole self in one now, and the thought both fascinates and utterly grosses him out. He pauses before his bed, torn with the desire to be near Smudge yet not liking the idea of having his current form contaminate his bedding. Who knew where Unisybrow had been or what diseases it – and now Sasan – might be carrying? But then he aches again for Smudge, and so he tugs on the bedspread with his upper body, inching his way up, a terrifying vermin upon the gentle silky sheets.
He crawls up next to Smudge, so much bigger and closer than he's ever seen him, each of his features so perfect, and Sasan is overwhelmed with a wave of love. He hesitates – but Smudge is unlikely to wake up, after what Unisybrow did to him – and then, gently, bends his body and strokes Smudge's cheek.
[Smudge,] he thinks again. [Wake up.]
He doesn't know what he would do if Smudge did wake. He has no way of communicating with him, and Smudge would just see Unisybrow. Even if he did know, somehow, that it was Sasan there... how could he love him in this form?
But, no, Sasan corrects himself in a rush of emotion, because if there was anybody in the multiverse who could still love him after he'd been transformed into an ugly sentient unibrow, it would be Smudge.
Sasan crawls up onto his boyfriend's chest and curls up tightly on it. He feels the rise and fall of every breath, Smudge warm and safe and there beneath him; and, for the first time since this nightmare started, Sasan almost feels okay.
"Ugh. You're disgusting."
The familiar voice wakes him up. And then Sasan realises in shock that he's no longer lying on Smudge, but dangling from his own hand as Unisybrow regards him with a passable expression of disgust on his face.
Sasan squirms. He tries to teleport away. But Unisybrow has some psychic grip on him that won't let him escape.
"Just look at you," Unisybrow says, lips curled in disgust. “You’re the grossest thing I’ve ever seen.” It walks to the mirror and lets Sasan take a good look at himself.
Sasan doesn't want to look. He wants to close his eyes, but he doesn't have eyes, for he is a cruel parody of an eyebrow that sees through its eyebrow hairs. In the reflection, he sees his own divinely handsome body all cleaned up and well-dressed, and he's stunned. His hair looks amazing. It's so amazing it physically hurts. But on the end of his leanly sculpted arm, clasped daintily between manicured thumb and forefinger is that hairy demonspawn, and Sasan cringes at how anything so horrible should ever touch his flawless skin. Except that that's him: he is that beastly mutant creature marring his own perfection, squirming in his hand as he struggles, and there is no escape from this cruel prison.
"You belong in the trash," Unisybrow says.
[No!] Sasan cries out.
An evil smile twists Unisybrow's perfectly kissable lips. It turns smartly on its heels and marches them out of the house as Sasan pulls futilely against his grip.
He can't get away, not even as Unisybrow yanks open the dumpster at the back of his house and flinches as the stench of rotting garbage blows out. Unisybrow turns its head, choking back the odiousness assaulting its newly human nose.
Unisybrow shudders. “Good riddance,” it mutters. He flings Sasan into the dumpster and slams it shut.
Sasan lands on rotting muck that oozes between the hairs that form his body. He sobs tearless sobs, aghast with misery as each movement coats him in moist, sticky filth, and he screams soundlessly as a gigantic cockroach – practically half his size, now – scuttles over and nibbles at him. He slithers away in terror, the movement pulling him deeper into the trash, and in a cry of desperation he tries to leave-
-and discovers that his teleportation has returned, and he materialises back in his bedroom next to Smudge's pile of Pokeballs. There's a rogue slice of rotting potato skin trailing from his glistening wet back. He moves, and smears a slime trail on the carpet. Sasan stares at it in horror. Ew. Ew. Ew ew ew ew ew-
He needs a shower. He's never needed a shower so badly in his life. Except that there's no way he'll be able to have a shower, because he's an eyebrow.
Unisybrow is reclined sideways on the bed, his body clean and fresh, gazing at Smudge as he sleeps. Sasan watches as Unisybrow kisses Smudge on the ear and runs fingers lovingly through the younger man's hair.
"Wake up, Smudge," Unisybrow murmurs, and at the command, Smudge slowly rises from that deep sleep to meet his boyfriend's gentle smile and amazing hair.
"Sas," Smudge mumbles. He yawns, then rolls over and snuggles up close to Unisybrow, draping a possessive arm around its body and gazing into the familiar brown eyes. The furry black stain on the carpet twitches. "Wha' time is it?" Smudge asks.
"It's still early," Unisybrow says, brushing Smudge's fringe from his eyes. "We can go check out that new café we saw last week."
"'K." Smudge snuggles back against the pillow. “Love your hair,” he murmurs before his eyes flicker closed again.
Unisybrow kisses Smudge and gets up. "I'll go get ready."
Sasan's heart breaks.
But he feels unpleasantly like a trespasser spying on a very hot couple. He finds himself staring more at his body than at Smudge's, unable to take his gaze from it as Unisybrow walks into the bathroom, hips swaying ever so slightly, and if there's one bright spot in this neverending torment, it's knowing for sure now that his ass looks great in those jeans.
Smudge climbs off the bed a moment later and follows Unisybrow into Sasan's bathroom. The door shuts behind him, and Sasan feels another twinge of pain. He hears voices and giggling laughter through the closed door – him and Smudge, it should be him and Smudge, but for all anyone else can see, it is, and he – the matted, slimy tuft of hair stinking of garbage on the carpet – has no place in that picture any more.
#
It seems ages before the bathroom door opens again and they come out, Smudge leading the way with Unisybrow right behind, chin resting on his shoulder and arms wrapped around his chest.
They're chatting about something – regular small talk, and Sasan tries at first to follow the conversation until he's overcome with despair that he actually needs to eavesdrop on a private moment between himself and Smudge. They leave the bedroom, arms snug around each other's waist, and Sasan painfully tears himself away from them to teleport into the bathroom. He feels a pull to follow them instead, because he should be there, he is there, and everything Smudge is saying is meant for Sasan's ears, but this may be the only chance he gets.
The floor of the shower area is still wet. Sasan flings himself into a puddle and sobs with relief as he feels some of the dumpster muck leave his cursed body. He flops about from one puddle to the next, dimly aware that he's fouling up the bathroom floor, but he can't bear this any longer.
A little cleaner, Sasan zips up the wall – no more slime trails, he's glad to note – and onto the sink. He tries to stand on one end as he'd seen Unisybrow do... quivering, unbalanced, and by manoeuvring his upper body plugs the sink and – this was the hard part – eventually manages a strong enough grip to get the tap running.
He plunges into his sinkpool (for one panicked moment he thought he might drown, but then he realised he had no respiratory system, for he is an eyebrow, and he was, in fact, completely waterproof) and as the dirt and grime blessedly wash off him, Sasan tearlessly cries his sorrows away.
A couple of poolwater changes later, including rolling about on a bar of soap, Sasan is finally as clean as a giant creepy eyebrow could ever possibly be. He dries himself off on a handtowel and practically fluffs up.
Now he just needs a plan.
Smudge and Unisybrow are asleep on the bed, wrapped up in each other, curtains drawn to keep out the afternoon sun. Sasan feels no tiredness, for one of the few perks of being an eyebrow is that you do not need to sleep.
He crawls up the bed towards the sleeping humans. He tries not to get distracted, but fails. An almost gravitational force tugs Sasan towards his stolen body, spread out bare-chested and vulnerable before him: face angelic in sleep and gently breathing with no hint of the evil that lies beneath, the expanse of his tanned skin so smooth and tempting that he can barely contain the urge to... to slide over it, fondle it, luxuriate in it, weave snugly between fingers and toes, snuggle warm against the bat signal, nest in his softly styled and conditioned and unspeakably amazing hair, wrap himself lovingly around his-
Unisybrow stirs, and Sasan scampers beneath a fold of bedsheets. But Unisybrow only rolls over, treating Sasan to a view of his muscled back, and Sasan reluctantly forces himself to turn away and head towards Smudge instead.
He gently nudges Smudge's cheek. No response. He takes a moment to gather his resolve, and then stuffs his upper body up Smudge's nostril.
Smudge bolts up in bed, and Sasan falls gratefully out onto Smudge's lap. Smudge sniffs, rubs his nose and stares at him. "Hey," he whispers. "How did you get out of the Pokeball?"
Sasan gestures vigorously towards the bathroom door. Smudge picks him up and places him on his palm, bringing him up for a closer look. Sasan gestures towards the door again.
"Okay... you want me to go there?" Smudge says, and Sasan's non-existent heart thumps in anticipation that this might work.
Smudge walks into the bathroom. And there, on the counter in a mess of spilled hair product, he sees the messily written words: I AM SASAN.
Smudge stares.
Slowly, he looks down at the sentient unibrow in his palm, its upper end all matted and glossy with hair product, and a horrified, fascinated revelation dawns on his face.
"...Sas?" he whispers.
Sasan nods, repeatedly and enthusiastically, and then curls up and snuggles gratefully against Smudge's palm.
Smudge glances back at the door and the bed where Unisybrow snores on.
"What... what do I do?" Smudge asks.
Sasan hops off onto the sink, rubs off his previous message and painstakingly writes another: GET SPOCK.
#
There is a lot of newfangled equipment on the U.S.S. Enterprise. There is also Spock with his Vulcan mind-meld, and though it's the first time he's ever tried mind-melding with a unibrow, he manages to confirm that it is, indeed, Sasan.
Everyone except Smudge looks extremely disturbed.
"Oh," Smudge says. "Okay." He looks down at Sasan and strokes him. "You don't have to change back if you don't want to," he tells him, because you never know.
Sasan emphatically shakes his upper body no, and so they go back to Sasan's bedroom with Spock and a squad of expendable redshirts for protection. Sasan leaps off Smudge's hand the instant he's close enough to the bed. This is the last chance he'll ever get – and in a flurry of ecstasy that no one else can see, he scampers over his amazingly hot body.
Spock raises an eyebrow.
All that time in the gym had finally paid off. Sasan rolls over his toned abs in a fit of uncontrollable lust, bristly hairs scratching the flawless skin until Unisybrow wakes, eyes instantly filling with rage as it sweeps Sasan off his chiselled diaphragm. "What are you doing?"
Then it notices the crowd, and the rage turns into a belated fear. Unisybrow drops Sasan, who falls onto his crotch in half-comatose joy. "Smudge," it says. "Smudge, get this thing off me-"
Smudge scowls. "Give Sas back his body."
Unisybrow's face darkens. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're a liar!" says an enthusiastic redshirt waving a stungun.
"DIE!" Unisybrow screams. All the redshirts fall over dead.
"Smudge," Unisybrow says, face suddenly pleading. "Smudge, it's me. It's Sasan-"
Everyone looks sceptical, mostly because Unisybrow just killed all the redshirts.
"Give it back," Smudge repeats.
Unisybrow glares. "Fine! You think I like being in this pathetic human body? I only did it to escape from that spaceship. Good riddance."
There's a violent jerk (his name is probably Sylar), and then Sasan sits heavily down on his bed, his eyes wild, holding up his regained human hands to his face.
"I'm back," he says, voice trembling with emotion. Sasan looks up, awe in his face, and then he clambers off the bed and grabs Smudge in a hug. Tears pour from his eyes, which exist and have tear ducts now. "Thank you," he whispers through his sobs. "Thank you, thank you... I was in a dumpster, Smudge, it was so gross... so gross..."
Unisybrow twitches in contempt, and teleports away to another world before anyone can catch it.
Spock gets a bunch of people from the Enterprise to come over and help dispose of the dead redshirts. Then Sasan spends a long time in the shower after realising in disgust that a gross fuzzy eyebrow had been rolling all over his body.
#
Fast asleep in bed, Sylar doesn't notice the black creature creeping across his floor.
[Heh, heh, heh,] Unisybrow thinks. [Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh.]
#
Sylar tries to fight off Unisybrow, furiously flinging it to the other side of the room and slicing it into three parts with telekinesis.
Unisybrow falls apart.
Satisfied, Sylar returns to bed.
On the floor, the three parts of Unisybrow slowly sit up. They wiggle. Their cut ends start to grow... and then there are three Unisybrows on the floor.
[Heh, heh,] they say in ominous chorus, converging once again on Sylar's bed. [Heh. Heh. Heh.]
#