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The city is built in layers, and on the lowest layer, where the mushrooms bloom, the humid air is filled with their salty exhalations. Bran doesn’t know if it’s that scent, or the association of the mushrooms’ oblong, lewd shape, but those who live or work here often have only one thing on their minds.
Bran is the latter. He just works here, descending into the semi-darkness each evening, then climbing out into the light of the upper levels like he’s coming up for breath. Everything is slower here, like you’re swimming, like you’re breathing in liquid instead of air. Bran inspects the mushroom fields, deciding what kind and how much nutrient they need and if they’re ready for harvest, and he feels that air slide against his skin – together with the local workers’ gazes. The geothermal heat in the gleaming, mycelium-covered walls warms their constricted world, so they’re not wearing much, and what they’re wearing sticks to their skin with sweat and vapor infused with hormone-mimicking substances. Bran can wash it off once he’s out of here, but these men and women soak it in day after day after day. And even he, with somehow limited exposure, can feel the effects. Skin tingling. Warmth swelling in his groin, both delicious and disturbing. He’s trying not to succumb, but some days it’s…difficult.
Bran has a family away from here. Obligations. He’s not married yet, but his parents have arranged a good match for him – a wonderful young woman from a level even higher than theirs – and she and Bran are quickly learning to like each other, both in body and mind. It’ll probably be a while until she goes off birth control, but it will happen, and then Bran will have even more obligations, and possibly even happiness.
Here, happiness doesn’t matter much. Or rather, ‘happiness’ is something very different. It’s kept closer to the skin and seems to not care as much about the source. Bran can’t decide if that makes it more generous or selfish – the fact that anyone can give it to you and anyone can take it.
“This batch is almost ready,” he says after running his hand between the slippery, phallic fruiting bodies and inhaling a cloying lungful of the smell. “Two, maybe three more days.” He inserts the needle of his handheld spectrometer into a purple, bulbous tip and reads the quickly scrolling composition of chemicals. “They’re going to be potent, too. Not suitable for direct consumption at all.” He gives a meaningful look to his second, but the man only hums.
As much as Bran can tell, Traven is native to this level. He was born here, and he grew up here, and because of that his skin is hairless except for the buzz of bright hair on his head and so pale it’s almost translucent. He is a specialist, so he could live up; he just doesn’t want to – says too much light makes him miserable.
Bran can’t help but eye his smooth body and bulbous muscles from the corner of his eye.
He doesn’t think it’s the light keeping Traven down.
He knows that when the workers come here tomorrow with their small curved knives, there will be a few flat spots between the fat, nutrient-swollen purple tips.
‘Not fit for consumption’ didn’t mean that people weren’t going to consume them. Some will even do it more readily. The salty mushrooms, eaten raw, cause changes in the body, but many here welcome those.
Truth be told, the idea makes Bran uneasy.
“Have they already started harvesting the batch in the next corridor?” he asks Traven.
“Yesternight.”
“Everything going smoothly?”
“It’s not even half as potent as this one, so there weren’t many incidents. The moderators quickly resolved all of them except one.”
Bran frowns.
He actively tries not to think about what the euphemistic term ‘incident’ actually entails.
He shifts from foot to foot, but asks anyway, “What happened?”
“That one involved a moderator.”
Images come unbidden.
A hulking body is pressing another to the wall. The slippery sounds of mushrooms being squished. Viscosity. Juices flowing. That salty smell – so strong. Soft whimpers of the victim, half-protesting, half-needy. The haze clouding Bran’s mind; how tight his pants were.
How he stumbled away, in fear of both the others and his own flesh.
That time, too, it was a moderator.
“So they just…watched?”
Traven shrugs.
And Bran knows that’s how it’s done; he shouldn’t be feeling so indignant. The moderators are big, strong men and women, carefully hormonally screened before they’re armed with electric batons and allowed their authority, but bodies are dynamic things, and in an environment like this, they can be easily unbalanced. Besides, the moderators are big for a reason – the same reason Traven’s biceps and thighs are so thick and appetizing. Some imbalance is always there – just waiting to be triggered.
It’s unwise to try to stop a moderator when they are in that state.
So people don’t – they just let nature ‘run its course.’
The harvesters know what they’re signing up for, anyway.
“Was anyone hurt?”
Traven raises his pale brows. “Just one sore ass?” His tone is amused, and Bran understands how thinking shifts when you live here full-time; he understands that, but he still can’t help the uneasy, hot twist in his stomach. “Were you really never pushed down?”
“No!” Bran swallows and, with will alone, tries to slow down his heart. “It’s different above. It actually matters if you want it or not.”
Traven is standing a bit too close.
“But deep down, don’t you always want it?”
“Of course not!”
Traven furrows his brows. The concept seems to be incomprehensible to him. Down here, as long as it’s same-sex, non-penetrative, or up the ass, and thus doesn’t result in unwanted pregnancy – the mushroom diet messes up all attempts at hormonal birth control – and as long as there’s no long-term damage, people don’t consider sex a big deal even if it’s forced. Even the moderators are only necessary during harvest, when the potent vapors in the air and the fungal juices on the workers’ skin make excess violence more likely. Even then, all the workers know to just let it happen and wait for the moderator to either break it off or make sure nothing truly damaging happens. And the latter is considered a proper way to ‘deal with it,’ too. So when Traven said earlier that the moderators ‘resolved the incidents,’ it might’ve just meant they made sure it was quick and no one struggled too much.
It probably also meant that the ‘sore ass’ was really sore afterwards.
“Did the…”—victim?—“…recipient need a medic?”
Traven shrugs. “Just a shroom plug. The man was fine. Worked till the end of his shift without complaint.”
Which meant they stuffed his ass with the thickest, ripest mushroom phallus they could find to deal with any potential damage caused by the forced entry. Most doctors uplevel consider that a ridiculous folk remedy and have tried to convince the people here to use suppositories or tampons soaked in medicine that is proven to work, to which the people here have asked, ‘But isn’t it all made from the mushrooms, anyway?’
Bran’s buttocks clench.
“Why would you still force him to work?”
“Why not?”
“But wasn’t he hurt?”
“Not really? I mean, he still had all of his limbs, right? And the shroom plug dulls the pain, anyway. It’s not used as often as it could be only because it also makes the worker distracted. Even in the more troublesome cases, some opt to go without because of that. It’s only enforced when it’s clear that not using it could lead to infection, or when the worker is in so much pain that they can’t do their job at all.”
“Enforced,” Bran mumbles under his breath.
Traven probably hears, but he doesn’t react.
To be through, Bran inspects a few more bulging caps, at different places in the agricave, but the crop is ripening evenly. There’s a patch of a different, unwanted fungus spreading low in one corner, but it isn’t anything fast-growing or too malignant, so he simply marks it for removal with a fluorescent spray.
“Okay,” he says, “I think we’re done here.”
With a soft, moth-like sound, Traven closes the notebook in which he’s dutifully noted the weed’s location. “They should’ve started the harvest in the third parallel corridor, in those four caves we checked yesterday. Do you want to visit and see how it’s going?” He is half-teasing. Even without tonight’s conversation, he would’ve known Bran’s unease. Like all bottomlevelers, he considers Bran’s squeamishness amusing, even a bit stupid. For him, the lust the vapors wake in the body, the lack of control they bring, is a normal thing.
Desired thing.
It’s how the mushrooms reproduce.
Because the vapors aren’t just vapors – they’re spores. You breathe them in and are forced into a symbiosis. They’re in your eyes, gut, on your skin. They keep you strong and healthy, and when there’s finally enough of them, they make sure you either pass them out or to other people.
Bran has been working here only for about thirty nightshifts, but he’s infected just like all of them. Each morning, he goes through rigorous decontamination and receives a dose of a targeted antifungal drug that inhibits the spores’ growth, but soon even that will stop working. The moment he shows signs, he’ll be taken off the roster and placed under quarantine.
No one who doesn’t live at the bottom full-time has ever worked here for more than a year.
During each service cycle, no matter how carefully they handle themselves, the inspectors are usually raped at least three times.
Bran had signed his contract knowing that.
“Let’s go,” he says.
***
Bran clutches at the warm, slippery stone and whimpers while a man’s cock drives into him from behind. They’re in one of the narrow service corridors, and Bran has dropped his flashlight, so it’s too dark to see who it is. To be honest, Bran doesn’t really want to. Somehow, it’s more acceptable if it’s anonymous. Bran doesn’t have to look at the man; doesn’t have to acknowledge the slide of pleasure under the pain.
He doesn’t scream. He thought he would. He looked down on the meek, softly whining workers who just lay there and took what they didn’t want up the ass. Oh, how mistaken he was. He thought it would just be a violation.
He never factored in the fungal influence.
His head swims, but it feels like the opposite of sickness. He’s invigorated, hot. Excluding his rock-hard cock, his body is weirdly submissive. A small, still sane part of him actually admires some of those workers for being able to fight this enough to result in injuries. He thought them weak and lacking willpower when he’s the truly pathetic one.
He can’t do anything.
Doesn’t want to do anything.
He closes his eyes, separating the scary darkness outside from the safe darkness within, and focuses on the thrusts. They’re deep, painful, demeaning.
They make his blood boil.
He bites his lip to stop himself from moaning.
Why did he come here alone? Why? One moderator reported an uncontrolled growth here, but Bran should’ve waited for Traven! When did he become so arrogant to believe he could walk this dim, foreign world without hand-holding? That because nothing had happened until now, nothing ever would? Why did he disregard the sound advice of his predecessor, who told him that assistant really meant bodyguard, and to remember to always treat him as such? Because the rules were different here, and you weren’t safe even if you thought you knew them.
There’s a difference between knowing and accepting.
Reality tackled Bran today, and now it is moving rhythmically between his legs.
Bran clutches at the remnants of the wild mushroom batch and feels the meaty, slimy flesh squeeze between his fingers. The briny fungal juices soak his skin. The stone under him is smooth but not even, and he slides on it – up and down, up and down.
He refuses to think of how much shorter his contract is going to get because of so much contact. Most of the spores he’s breathing and bathing in are dormant, but some could be viable by the sheer dance of chance. And the ones in the man’s sperm – those are definitely going to be viable. Bran’s soft, abused, aching anal walls will absorb them.
They don’t tell this to you out loud, but the medicine each inspector is required to drink every morning is because of those cum-borne spores and not the naturally occurring ones.
They expect you to get raped at some point. It’s the accepted risk of the job.
And it’s not like Bran didn’t know.
He whimpers quietly as the thrusts quicken. Whoever it is, grunts and pants. The slaps of his hips are heavy, and they land perfectly to deliver his cock very deep into Bran’s tight but unresisting ass. Bran’s legs are only slightly spread, trapped at the knees by his tugged-off pants, but Bran has fallen on his bag, which now lifts his ass just right. On each thrust, the top of Bran’s cock bumps against it while his glans churns the warm, thick, ripe mushroom sludge underneath.
Bran hates how good it feels almost as much as he hates the pleasure within.
He doesn’t want to cum, despite needing it, and despite knowing that he should. He’s been warned that, were an event such as this to transpire, he should ‘empty himself’ – that is, cum and pee – for the spores to have fewer nutrients to breed in. It won’t stop the infection, but it will delay it enough for drugs to have a chance. When he surfaces, they’ll test his cum until it’s clean, but it won’t take as long if he ejaculates during the ‘act’ at least once.
Still. The thought of cumming during such an anonymous, animalistic violation is so degrading. And maybe it should be better that this is nothing but physiology – the well-known, sterile chemistry of hormones, pure interactions of specific environmental factors and individual biology – but Bran can’t get over that fact exactly. This dehumanizes him, and it takes away responsibility from the man pressing him down. When he crawls out of this hole, ass sore and belly aching with shame, Traven will just shrug, maybe make a joke or two, then it’ll be like nothing has ever happened.
But something has happened – is happening! Why else would Bran feel so changed? Something that was not there before has awakened within him. He’s diminished, and elevated, and he’s horny. He’s realized this is why he’s taken the job in the first place – not for money, as he’s told his friends, family, and fiancée, but because he knew this’ll happen at some point, and he was curious.
Was biology really such a potent factor? Would he, so civilized, so in control of his life and himself, succumb to it like everyone else?
Was he truly no better than the bottomlevelers?
And he is not, by the Sky Above, he is not! He is just a human, at the mercy of other humans, dependent on a mindless alien organism for survival, just like everyone else. They might chop it, separate it into fractions, sterilize and process it, but their city – and he within it – can’t exist without what grows down here.
What happens here.
He is a body under a body – with bodily needs.
An especially harsh thrust makes him squeeze, triggering a shiver. Its wave rolls up his spine and into his organs, clenching him whole and turning the whoosh of his own blood in his ears into a roar. He spasms. His cock burns like a damn miracle. For a long, suspended second, the pleasure swaying through his ass swallows even the echoes of the pain. The darkness under his eyelids blooms into colors.
Then he falls down to earth – just in time to feel the hot, infected cum spread in his sensitized gut.
His brain is still humming, so the implications don’t hit him immediately.
The man crawls off him. Without one word, he backs away in the direction he jumped Bran from.
Bran doesn’t look.
He waits until his pulse calms down, then tries to get himself together.
***
“You were lucky,” says the medical technician, who is examining Bran. “The active spore levels are still pretty minimal.”
Bran is naked and kneeling in a humiliating position – on all fours, like some surface animal – on a low, sterile plastic table in the sparsely furnished, oppressively white decontamination chamber. His shins and forearms fit into the padded indentations. He’s lucid, so he’s not restrained, but restraints hang ready down the table’s sides, and their presence fills his belly with unease.
The technician is checking him from behind. The man’s cold, gloved, lubricated hands are so different from the hot, fleshy cock which has violated Bran not even an hour ago that Bran’s balls have tightened and tugged themselves into his body. The reaction is confusing. Shouldn’t this clean, empathetic clinicality be less disturbing than the assault?
Something cold enters the tip of his penis and slides unnervingly deep.
“Your urethra and seminal vesicles seem clear. It may mean your reproductive tract is free of the infection, but it’s more likely the effects are simply delayed. I recommend we take the usual precautions.”
Bran doesn’t ask what those are, just hums in affirmation. He’s heard some whispered horror stories, but whatever the man deems necessary, Bran will allow.
Nothing could be worse than the infection growing uncontained and becoming permanent.
His curiosity alone is unhealthy enough; he doesn’t fancy becoming the bottomlevel’s full-time resident.
Things behind him click and whirr.
“You do know you have the option of terminating your contract after the first incident?”
“Yes.”
Bran says nothing more.
Something cool, slippery, and inorganic touches his smarting hole. Then it enters him slowly – narrower than the cock had been but far longer and because of that oddly invasive.
“This will take about twenty minutes,” the technician says. “Do you need support for your hips?”
“No, I’ll manage.”
“Alright. But if you change your mind, don’t hesitate to tell me.”
The insert in his ass swells, then it burns suddenly, sharply – a few hundred needles have just injected him with a cocktail of drugs. He whimpers, and his body stiffens, but he doesn’t fight it. ‘This is necessary,’ he tells himself – blinking moisture out of his eyes – as the insert deflates to about its previous size and the vibrations start with a hum.
“Alright?” the technician asks.
“Y-yeah.”
“The strength will increase over the next three minutes – to ease you into it – then the main motion will start.”
Meaning: the machine is going to start fucking.
“I understand,” Bran says.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything about the pain.”
“It’s alright. I…can handle it.”
And Bran can. That first, forced entry hurt much, much worse, and Bran handled it just fine.
“It’s your first time, so it’s only twenty minutes, anyway,” the technician says. “And with the infection indicators this low, you only have to take one dose of the drug.” The man adjusts something behind him, and the penetration deepens. “Please try not to move forward.”
Fuck. Bran didn’t realize he has.
“If you have trouble staying in position,” the technician says, “I can give you that hip support?”
Bran imagines having his hips immobilized – just like then. “No, thank you.” He purposefully relaxes and arches his spine, making his ass swallow even more of the slowly mounting, buzzing ache. “I’ll do my best to stay in position.”
“Alright.”
“Can you, um. Remove that from my cock?”
“This?” Bran feels a brief, cold touch on his tip. “No, I’m sorry. It must stay in for monitoring. It’ll measure the spore levels again when you ejaculate.”
‘When,’ not ‘if.’
Bran says, “I see.”
The insert isn’t thick, but it feels violating. It makes Bran’s cock strangely hot and makes it throb a bit.
“You already have an erection. That’s good.”
Bran flushes. Something inside him squirms. He doesn’t have a lot of time to wallow in his shame, because just at that moment, the apparatus in his ass starts thrusting.
The pumping is steady but fast – faster than a human would do it.
A quiet, surprised whine escapes him.
“That’s the lowest recommended setting, I’m sorry,” the technician says. “We can go slower if the damage to the anus is severe, but I’m not allowed to make that call. The patient has to be reassessed by the medic on duty, and your case – well. It’s one of the mildest I’ve seen.”
Bran says nothing to that. Instead, he obediently suffers his hole being re-victimized. The mechanical precision of it is very different from the original experience, but the repetitive, pleasure-pain filled movement is enough to refresh Bran’s memories. He closes his eyes and returns to that humid darkness. The imaginary weight presses on him, and this time he arches back into the stranger’s thrusts.
“I’ll, ah, um,” the technician says somewhere in the background. “I’ll be, ah, sitting there? Call for me if you need anything?”
Bran doesn’t.
***
Traven is visibly surprised to see Bran step out from between the towers of empty containers in the cargo elevator. “No offense,” he says, prompted by Bran’s raised eyebrows, “but I was convinced they’d send a replacement.”
“Thought I’d break that easily?”
“No. But most inspectors don’t return for at least a few days after their first incident.”
Bran knows many don’t return at all – the medical technician did mention such an option.
Many do return, though.
For more.
Suddenly, Bran looks at Traven as if he’s seeing the man for the first time. Sure, he’s pale like most bottomlevelers, but – could it be? “How many stay?”
Traven shrugs. “Some. About one in twenty, I think.”
Bran digs. “What do they do here – afterwards?”
“Ah.” In the low, orange-tinged light, it’s hard to tell if Traven is blushing. “Most of the time, they stay only because the mushrooms got them and they have to. And since they haven’t been born here and aren’t yet in a symbiotic state, the transition period can be…difficult. They can’t be given an important job – any job, really. They’re feverish, distracted, sometimes even violent. So we restrain them.”
“You…what?”
“It’s not forever – just until the fungi integrate into their bodies. If they’re exposed to many types of activated spores, the process goes faster, so we do what’s required to expose them, too.”
At the words – euphemistic to the core, but which are still understandable to every person who’s spent any meaningful time here – Bran is so overwhelmed by a rhythmical echo plowing through his ass that his steps falter.
Traven catches his elbow, and even that minute contact sends a shiver up Bran’s spine.
“Um, can I see it?”
Traven raises an eyebrow. “The proof of your predecessors’ failures?”
“Um, yes?”
The future that awaits him if he fails to protect himself.
“Sure. The inspector before you retired successfully, but the one before him did not. He’s still in the adjustment stage. We could go and see him. But – are you certain? Until now, you’ve been really squeaky about these things.”
“The situation has…changed.”
The corner of Traven’s pale mouth drives up, and for a moment Bran has the impression the man is mocking him. “I see.”
Traven leads Bran through sparsely lit, already familiar corridors. They talk about the quality of the crop, the ripening rates, and labor shortages in a neighboring district. What happened yesterday isn’t mentioned. Traven must know the man who assaulted Bran – he must’ve seen him leaving the cramped service corridor shortly before Bran crawled out of it – but chances are that even if Bran asks, Traven won’t tell him who it was. It’s not even because Traven wants to protect his own from a clueless outsider, but because it truly doesn’t matter. It could’ve been anyone. When the mycorrhizal drive to spread the spores overcomes you, you don’t choose the time or the first convenient ass you plant your cock in. Women have it more difficult because they need to do this in reverse, but the fungi have figured out a strategy for that, too – females hunt in packs.
Bran shudders.
He prefers a cock up the ass.
His body warms.
“We’re going to enter an adult-only residential area,” Traven says quietly. The corridors have turned narrower, but they’re better lit, and the stone walls are smoother and only sparsely covered in the white gossamer of hyphae. “Do not leave my side.”
Bran swallows and nods.
A broad-shouldered, bored-looking man guards the entrance. His hair is long, and it flows down his back in a bright waterfall. Usually, in the deceitfully warm, dim light of the agricaves, Bran forgets that most people here aren’t really blonde – their hair is white. Traven’s is cropped short, and most workers wear theirs bound or woven into tight braids for convenience. In fact, Bran can’t remember ever seeing a bottomleveler with their hair so on display.
“Hey, Trav,” the man says. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Been sleeping with the workers or something? That the new guy?”
“Or something,” Traven says. “Yes, this is the new inspector.”
“I’m Bran.”
“Davi.” The man gives him a hand to squeeze, and Bran takes it, trying not to show how uneasy the contact makes him. Some people on his level shake hands as a greeting, but it’s not a requirement, and it’s done differently. Here, you don’t shake, just hold on to another’s skin, occasionally shifting your fingers slightly for more contact. The gesture takes too much time and is weirdly intimate.
Traven explained it to him, demonstrated, then said that he personally wouldn’t require it of Bran, but that Bran should do it with others at least on introduction; that it is considered extremely rude not to.
Davi’s hold is hot and, like everything here, a bit moist. His hand is strong and wide, but instead of squeezing harshly, his fingers roam Bran’s palm and even slide between his knuckles – Traven says that’s a sign of interest.
To these people, Bran, with his golden skin and dark hair, seems exotic, so many show him interest.
Reciprocating would not be wise.
He doesn’t mirror Davi’s movements.
Still, the man smiles. “Nice finally meeting you. Crop inspectors don’t visit residential areas often.”
That is – unless they’re permanently stuck.
“Bran wants to see Orrin,” Traven says.
Davi grins. “Sure thing.” There’s no malice in that grin, just that same amusement Traven emanates every time Bran is appalled at the casual way each and every even semi-sexual line is crossed down here.
Bran and Traven walk past him, then go down – literally down – a wide, rather well-lit corridor, passing by people at various levels of undress. The workers wear crude shirts and pants, made of brown myco-felt, but here there is color and fashion. There’s not much fabric as Bran understands fabric, but then the complex, upper-level processes and machinery that convert mushroom flesh to fiber, which then can be woven, aren’t that common here. Instead, clothes are grown. Smooth, fluffy, or resembling the exorbitantly expensive leather of surface animals, it is then harvested, already dyed, in large sheets – just another type of crop. Some of it is decontaminated and sold uplevel, but Bran’s people prefer their sterile, predictable, artificial fibers.
The myco-leather especially – it’s not popular uplevel, but oh boy, is it popular here. Tight, revealing, colorful – people seem to treat it more like a frame than a cover.
A man in a low-cut, green corset and weird, red trousers that don’t cover the ass and the groin area looks Bran and his neat, close-cut, gray uniform up and down, and Bran’s face burns. He tries not to stare at the – rather large – black pouch holding the man’s cock and balls, but doesn’t really manage.
Good-naturedly, Traven snorts.
Bran tries to explain, “It’s much…planer – where I’m from.”
“I know,” Traven says. “I’ve been.”
To visit the upper levels, a bottomleveler has to either wear a containment suit, breathing mask and all, or undergo a lengthy, physically invasive decontamination that turns the parts of the symbiotic mycelium in their body which can produce active, contagious spores dormant.
Traven often hints at having some familiarity with the upper levels, but he never says anything straightforward, and he never goes into details – Bran doesn’t know him well enough to tell if it’s the common for all bottomlevelers’ tendency towards euphemisms, or if it’s because there’s something personal and uncomfortable running underneath.
He itches to know, but he doesn’t dare ask directly.
“Oh?” he says instead.
Traven is silent for a while. Then he says, “I almost moved up, you know?” As three scantily clad women pass them, eyeing them and smiling predatorily, he pulls Bran to his side, then switches their places so now he’s between the group and Bran. “Couldn’t stand it.”
“Stand…what?” Bran asks quietly.
A few deep inhales of Traven’s rich, salty scent has made him dizzy.
“The emptiness,” Traven says. “The disconnection.”
From the corner of his eye, Bran sees his brows draw together.
“That distance between people – how do you upperlevellers breach it? How can you stand living so far away from each other, with so little actual contact?” Traven snorts. “And everyone’s so high-strung, all the time.” He looks at Bran. “Do you people unwind at all? How?”
“I…”
“And there’s so many hoops to jump through. You say things in simpler ways, but you don’t mean what you say at all. You have weird inhibitions, and you hold weird grudges. And everything is upside down. In a relationship, for example, the physical things are big, and they count really hard, but caring for each other is optional? Why? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
“It’s not optional!” Bran bristles. “Why would you think it’s optional?”
He pushes away all thoughts about his own relationship with his fiancée.
Traven says, “It’s like the dance is more important than the soul of the music. Pleasure is good, sure, and pain is bad, but why should it matter if the person doesn’t matter?”
Why, indeed?
“That’s…an interesting point of view.”
“Just how you keep being appalled at the necessary stuff,” Traven continues, as if he didn’t hear Bran. “The body wants, the body gets – isn’t it natural? As long as no harm comes to you, why would you begrudge yourself? Why would you begrudge others? Then, when a chance for a true connection comes, you’re not risking mistaking a simple need born between your legs for something deeper.”
Has Bran been doing that?
He doesn’t think so.
There’s nothing ‘deeper’ about it at all.
They turn into a narrow path which soon angles down sharply. The floor is rough, so there’s no risk of slipping; still, Bran would’ve appreciated some stairs. Straight angles aren’t organic, though, and there aren’t many interior design choices around here that aren’t rooted in the organic.
The chamber they walk into is like that, too. It’s like an inverted amoeba – flowing and many-limbed. The ceiling is low, and the air is warmer and more humid, more even than in the agricaves. The dew of perspiration immediately sticks Bran’s soft clothes to his body. The few people lazily roaming through the poorly lit space don’t have that problem – their bodies are bare; whenever they amble under a soft beam of widely spaced lights, they gleam with slippery sweat like some invertebrate, amorphous creatures, made of muscle and sinew and lust.
Bran takes it all in and feels a hot pulse in his crotch.
“Orrin was that way, last time I came here,” Traven says and leads Bran into the third pseudopodium to the left. The thick, soft moans and grunts Bran realizes have soaked the air become louder. Then his eyes get used to the shadows, and he sees what the shapes in front of him mean.
Bodies grow out of walls in a way that seems strangely natural. Here and there, Bran can spot a familiar phallic mushroom fruit – except these are much larger than the ones he’s used to. Clearly, no one harvests them here – they’re allowed to ripen. And the mass covering the walls and the ground doesn’t resemble the neat, white, spiderwebby mycelium Bran knows, either. It’s thick and fleshy; it throbs with some inner pulse. And humans – living humans – are buried in it. Sometimes just partially – like that man, lying on his back, with just his arms disappearing into the plump mass, whom a panting woman is riding – but most often almost entirely. Some of those mushrooms aren’t mushrooms but cocks. The walls have hungry mouths. Those fleshy bumps are buttocks, offering wet, pulsing holes.
Traven leads Bran to one of those.
He says, “This is Orrin.”
Bran swallows. “How…do you know?”
Then he sees how, even in the sparse light, the darker tone of the man’s skin pops against the pale mycelium.
Before Traven can answer, Bran asks, “Can he really no longer go uplevel? Some of you do.”
“He’s not stable yet. He might never be – not entirely. It’s different for people who are born into it. Your scientists can put our fungi to sleep, but for that to work without hurting either the symbiont or the body, the symbiotic relationship must be fully integrated. And even then, you have to go through treatment once every thirty to fifty days, and there’s always a risk that it’ll fail this time. You risk imbalance, disease. Your own cells turning against you. Parasitism.”
A body slips past them, and Bran takes a step back to avoid touching skin. His foot lands in something squishy.
Traven steadies him with an arm around his waist.
He lets go quickly, but the places he’s touched remain too hot.
The man who’s just got past them covers Orrin’s ass and starts thrusting.
Bran’s skin burns.
“Let’s go,” Traven says.
***
Bran is still thinking about Orrin’s hungry, disembodied hole the next night. What does Orrin think about while being trapped like that? Does he think at all, or has his consciousness dissolved, merging with and into the alien tissue of the fungi? What state is he in, really? How does it feel?
Is it a constant struggle, a grudging submission, or a form of freedom?
“After you returned,” he asks Traven as they’re taking samples in a new, freshly seeded agricave at the furthest edge of the district, “did you have to acclimate back?” He doesn’t dare say, ‘as Orrin is doing,’ but it is implied.
Traven smiles to himself. “Yes.”
It’s not his answer alone but that smile which makes Bran uneasy.
He waits.
“I spent two, maybe three thirty daynight cycles in the communal cave – I don’t remember exactly.” He closes his eyes and sighs. “Life’s been feeling stressful lately. I feel like returning there for a while.” He looks at Bran. “Would you mind working with a replacement assistant for a few nights?”
Bran’s shoulders stiffen. “I—” He fumbles and drops his tweezers – they click on bare, still rough stone and bounce away into the shadows.
Bran dives after.
“Sure.” His unseeing eyes dance all over the floor, as if in search of any weak glint of metal. “Do whatever you need.”
“Bran.” Traven’s voice is too close, and Bran startles.
He’s frozen, crouched.
He doesn’t turn.
Traven places a hand on Bran’s hip. “It’s okay. I can take it for a while longer.”
“But you want to…do…that.”
“Yes. But I don’t have to. Not yet.”
“How…” Bran swallows. His fingers twitch but not move. “How does it feel?”
“Good,” Traven says, and there is longing in his voice. “Like disappearing into your own body yet still being an integral part of something. After a while, the fungi realize you’ll be there for a while and start releasing chemicals designed to make you stay even longer. It’s like you expand and contract at the same time, and it feels so good – not just your skin and between your legs, but in your head. Everything matters, but nothing matters. You’re so grateful to every person who comes to breed you. Your bodies meet, and you are no longer strangers – when you meet them later and touch their flesh, you’ll recognize them, and for a second you’ll be grateful again, and you’ll know they are grateful, too. It’ll make sharing your body if they need it easy. Their symbiotic fungi would’ve already tasted you thoroughly and would remember breeding with yours, so not as many spores will activate, and for a while, you’ll be more in control. Then you will both drown in it, but it’ll be an intimate, shared drowning. A communion of sorts, a celebration of both your similarities and differences. You’ll know each other – not truly yet, but as thoroughly as the body allows.” Traven’s warm breath caresses Bran’s nape. “It’s a wondrous thing – understanding.”
Bran’s heart pounds, and his breath is quick.
His pants are the tightest they’ve ever been.
Slowly, Traven moves his hand from Bran’s hip down his thigh, then up – his touch inching towards the inside.
Bran’s skin heats and vibrates, but he’s afraid to shift. “They’ll make me…” He licks his suddenly too sensitive lips. “They’ll make me go through full decontamination again.”
“Do you dislike it?” Traven whispers the question into his ear. “Decontamination?”
“It’s…a machine.”
Traven finds Bran’s groin and strokes. “And you prefer not a machine.”
“Yes,” Bran says, and it’s almost a moan.
“Hmm.”
Traven’s other hand dips under Bran’s uniform shirt – it’s too warm here to wear it tucked in like the style demands above – and he strokes Bran’s tense belly, then up his sternum until he’s squeezing the muscle of Bran’s breast. Compared to Traven, and to what Bran has seen other men sport here, it must feel unimpressive, but Traven doesn’t complain. In fact, Traven moans appreciatively as he squeezes and shifts against Bran’s back.
When he pushes forward, Bran’s joints are loose and compliant. He’s lowered onto the hard but pleasantly warm ground. Traven pulls his pants down, and again, Bran doesn’t protest. Then carefully, Traven pushes two fingers in, and Bran closes his eyes and concentrates on catching breath after quick, shallow breath.
Traven’s fingers are slippery – with Bran is pretty sure he knows what. He tries not to think about it, though. Either way, he’ll be getting decontaminated. He tells himself a few extra spores don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
If they weren’t incubated inside a body, they probably aren’t biologically active, anyway.
They might activate inside him, given time.
The drugs he’ll soon take won’t give them time.
This is…not safe, but the risk is calculated.
Yeah, calculated.
Traven pulls more of Bran’s shirt up, then he rains light, warm, wet kisses up his spine. Bran shivers. His hole is achy and so, so warm. Traven explores it lazily – unlike that other man, who just took selfishly.
Bran wants more, though.
“Please.”
Traven doesn’t speak. Instead, he molds his body to Bran’s, heavy and hot, and guides his cock where Bran needs it most. The penetration is slow and sensual. And Bran is still somehow loose from before, so it burns not one bit.
It aches, though.
It aches oh-so-good.
Traven thrusts. He’s just rolling his hips, careful not to jostle Bran against the rough stone. He controls his weight and his speed, but that control and the lack of speed don’t make their joining any less primal. Bran whimpers – the feeling is so profound.
Pleasure blooms into a pulsing rhythm between them.
Bran’s orgasm comes quicker than he would’ve liked. Deep and steady, it throbs around Traven’s thrusts.
When Bran slumps, Traven chuckles into his back. “Needed it, didn’t…you?”
“Yes.”
Warm and pleasantly dizzy, Bran enjoys waiting for him to finish.
***
It becomes like a dream. Bran wakes into the sharp light and white, artificial lines of the decontamination room. He endures different technicians – there are at least three of them – pushing medicine and cold tools into him. He cums as is necessary, almost on command, when the machine nears the end of its rhythmic cycle. An actual medic sees him once and expresses concern. This is worrying, he says. Bran should take better care of himself. Is his assistant not doing his job? Does Bran need an actual bodyguard?
No, working with Traven has been great, and Bran is doing fine. He’s simply acclimatizing. And it’s the harvest season. Doesn’t this sort of thing happen a lot more during the harvest season? In about thirty daynights everything should go back to normal. The bottomlevelers will calm down.
He doesn’t say that he will.
He’s lied enough.
He sleeps in his apartment with the blinds drawn. Before, he always forgot to do that. Now the brightness of the tall city corridors bothers him. The world outside his rooms feels unreal. Its edges are too sharp, too straight. That one time he visits his fiancée uplevel instead of making an excuse feels even more surreal. They’re not allowed to have sex until the end of his contract to prevent any risk of cross-contamination, and there should be yearning, but Bran looks at her and desires nothing. She is an excellent, intelligent woman, and he still likes talking with her, but now this vast, uncrossable distance stretches between them.
Is it a new thing, or has it been there all along?
How much longer can he disrespect her by pretending it is not there?
Then his stomach drops as an elevator carries him down. It resembles that uncanny feeling you get right before falling asleep. And sometimes it makes you wake back up, and in a way Bran feels like that – like returning to reality.
As soon as the elevator’s doors draw open, thick, feverish air invades his lungs. It smells earthy, organic, pleasant in a peculiar way he’s learned to appreciate and even yearn for – like he no longer yearns for his fiancée. The restless energy inside him thrums. From head to foot, he warms.
He doesn’t get fully hard, but his pants tighten.
At first, Traven always acts like nothing is amiss. They go about their duties – inspect, measure, register. They talk about work stuff. Sometimes Bran talks to the workers and the managers. Once, they meet with an inspector from another district – a big, energetic woman with impressively broad shoulders and a wide, easy smile – and they talk about the mundanities of the job while carefully avoiding any mention of anything sexual. Bran doesn’t know if she minds the omission, but the topic hangs over him. Constantly.
He knows that at some point in the night, he’s going to get fucked.
It’s not always Traven. Sometimes, Bran meets someone and there’s a…spark. And he doesn’t even have to ask Traven – the man only smiles, knowing and deeply amused, then pretends he has something extremely urgent to do just around that corner. Or well, he usually does.
Sometimes he stays.
Like when they meet that guard again, Davi, the one with the luscious hair, in the corridor between the municipal agricaves, where most of the bottomlevel food is grown – many mushroom varieties there other than the main crop they export up – and the residential quarters.
“Nice meeting you,” says the man, and extends his hand first to Traven, then to Bran.
“A free day?” Traven asks.
Davi looks at Traven as he answers, but his fingers don’t stop tracing hot paths on the back of Bran’s hand. “You can say that. We’re having guests tomorrow, so my spouses sent me for dinner supplies.”
Traven laughs. “Hard life of an attached man.”
Davi grins. “You should try it sometimes.” He looks into Bran’s eyes and brings Bran’s hand to his lips.
Bran’s body heats.
How long has he been holding it?
There is a question in Davi’s eyes.
“Won’t…” Bran swallows. “Won’t your spouses mind?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Davi says and gently scrapes Bran’s knuckle with his teeth.
A pleasant shiver runs up Bran’s spine. His buttocks tighten. “Here?” he asks.
Right now, aside from them, the corridor is empty, but they’re entirely in public!
“Why not?” Davi looks at Traven. “You staying?”
Traven glances at Bran – into his wide, wide eyes – and nods. “I’ll help. Then I’ll have you, too?”
It’s a question which, by now, Bran doesn’t need to answer.
They all undress – Bran thought that, around here, undressing wasn’t common for casual sex. But what does he know? He knew relationships worked differently here, but today is his first time learning about anything resembling marriage. It’s certainly nothing like where he’s from.
Davi mentioned multiple spouses, but not what their genders were.
“Are your spouses men or women?” Bran asks Davi when the man leans over him.
Damn, but his hair is so pretty; Bran can’t help but run his fingers through the silky strands.
Traven, on whose body Bran is half-lying, half-sitting, is sucking a wet, delicious ache into his neck.
“Two women, one man,” Davi says.
“That’s…a lot. How do you satisfy so many people?”
Davi grins. “There are four of us – why would I be the only one needing to satisfy?” He kisses the unoccupied side of Bran’s neck. All three of their bodies, hot and sweaty, shift against each other. “How can you people satisfy a person with no help at all?”
Traven finds both Bran and Davi’s cocks and strokes them both, guiding tip against tip.
Bran digs his fingers into the rippling muscles on Davi’s back and gasps. “How, indeed.”
Davi shifts down and enters him. Traven holds Bran’s legs as Davi fucks. The slide is easy. Bran now carries a sterile lubricant with him, and sometimes he even doesn’t forget to use it. Like today – in a corridor devoid of convenient, dangerous, wonderful fruiting bodies. And being exercised daily, his hole is used to the stretch. There is a dull, tired, half-pleasant ache underneath, but the sharp soreness of those first encounters is entirely gone. Instead, he’s filled to the brim with cloying, almost viscous pleasure. He’s melted into it. With them. He experiences each new body almost like they are his own. Especially Traven – the man now feels like a part of Bran’s own flesh.
Davi finishes, and they change the configuration. Now Davi is the one on the bottom, Bran in the middle, and Traven on top. Bran expects Traven to enter his slick, ready hole, but the man smiles at him and straddles his hips instead.
He’s tight. Then he settles deeply, and Bran jerks into him, surprised. He’s never been inside another man. Above, relationships between the same gender are not condemned, but they’re also not encouraged. Your main role in the society is to create a family and have children, thus contributing to the city’s health and growth.
It’s different here. Unrestricted. More. Bran doesn’t have to worry who he’s with or how he looks when he’s with them. Even when two women pass by them, holding hands, Bran doesn’t feel an ounce of shame. These women don’t disapprove of what he’s doing here.
They’re probably going to fuck in some shadowed corner of the municipal gardens, anyway – they have that look on their faces.
Traven moves – in-out, in-out. He’s swallowing him whole. And Bran is fascinated by the springy bobs of his cock, by the shifting glints and shadows of his pale, beautiful muscles. Everything is so wonderfully warm and wet, and so he touches. Meanwhile, Davi’s cock thickens in the crack of Bran’s ass, then one more shift, and the pleasure gets even richer.
Bran throws his head back and moans, and Traven strokes his arched throat. Someone worries his nipple; fingers dive into his mouth. Since they are pretty far from any active plantations, the scent in the air had been more earthy than salty. Now it has changed. They exude it themselves, proving they are a part of this complex, deeply buried, humid ecosystem; that just as it is, they are thriving. They sway up and down, against and into. They move, they pant, they moan and gasp. That communion Traven was talking about – Bran feels it for the first time, and he can’t get enough. Deep in his heart, some crazy part regrets not being able to give Traven anything but his cum; that he won’t pass any spores that would connect them further.
He’s glad when Davi quakes under him and thrusts all the way up.
Bran will pay for receiving that gift.
He’ll have to give it up.
“Look at me, Bran,” Traven says.
Bran looks up at him with wet eyes.
They cum at the same time.
***
It’s Traven who wraps him in the mycelium. He kisses every inch of Bran’s skin, then covers it with damp, delicate life. Bran only registers flashes. He’s too feverish by then, too needy and restless to submit to what’s good for him without struggle, so they have tied his wrists above his head and his thighs spread wide with durable myco-leather.
Traven is standing in the cozy den created by the hollow carved in the stone, the soft mycelium, and Bran’s twitching legs. “Soon, my sweet. First, I have to make it comfortable for you. I have to make it safe.”
Bran, who has already lost his words, thus can’t say, ‘please,’ simply whines and jerks his hips weakly.
“I know it’s hard to relax, but try.” Traven pulls a pale, living sheet over Bran’s chest like it’s a plush blanket. “You’ll feel much better if you do.”
Bran can’t. Still, the mushroom blanket is cooler than the sweltering air of the communal cave, and for a moment it brings relief. Then the hormones start seeping from the hyphae into him, and his need grows even more.
His mind is quieter, though.
Traven’s voice reaches him as if through a thick cloth. “I’ll come to visit you often. Don’t worry, you’ll know me. We’ve joined so many times. You’ll know me for sure. And now, you’ll know me even better. And I’ll be here when you emerge back, I promise you that.”
Bran doesn’t listen. Or, he does, but his brain doesn’t comprehend – it’s just his body, his ears. His cock and skin, which tingle with the awareness they’re going to feel Traven again, going to experience him. He’s going to experience so many new people, too – isn’t it wonderful?
Couldn’t it start already?
Bran needs it!
Dainty, gossamer cobwebs cover his face, and the world quiets and dims. The familiar, living scent fills Bran’s sinuses, although it’s not all that difficult to breathe – out and in, out and in. Bran settles. Slumps. His free toes still twitch, but something in him has accepted his fate, like the fungi are accepting him.
Soon, even those toes of his are covered – first with kisses, then with soft, damp, fungal flesh. Then – after a long, lazy blowjob – it’s time for his cock. Only his ass is left accessible – strategically, just in the middle. The professional in Bran has fallen asleep, but something in him still knows how fast the fungi can grow; how quickly the mat will thicken around him and swallow him entirely. That hole will remain his only path of communication with the outside world.
The idea doesn’t scare him.
Then Traven enters him. Traven. And yes, Bran does know him. The intimacy of that knowledge is profound. What should be just a cock is Bran’s entire world. His reason for existing. The source of all his joy. The fever consuming his body recognizes in it an old ally. Bran’s hole tingles with that familiarity, then the tingling spreads into and through Bran’s entire body.
And maybe Bran doesn’t cum that time. He doesn’t really know.
It’s so difficult to recognize what cumming is when your whole world is cumming.