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The dream started off pretty standard. Charlie was back in the trenches, crawling through mud that was deep enough to drown in. He could hear the inhuman wailing of the beasts that manned the guns, and the walls of muck that closed in on either side were swirling red and brown and yellow. Half-caught glimpses of faces in the filth, some still alive, some he recognized. Mud up to his throat, the acrid burn of gas on the wind. A kaleidoscope of terror. Same old, same old.
And there – a hole in the wall, the shredded canvas of a tent hung limp with muck. Charlie knew his exit, he’d been through this play too many times not to see his cue and take it. So he pulled himself forward, hoping that whatever new horror waited on the other side, it would at least be quiet. Those fucking guns were doing a number on his head.
He tumbled forward through the opening and landed in – grass? Warm, sweet-smelling grass, a little damp under his hands. The world was lurid green, plasticky and bright after the dank muck of the trenches. He rolled over onto his back. The hole he’d crawled through was gone. Nothing but empty air and a magnificent clear blue sky. The sun was just this side of too-warm on his skin. His ears rang in the quiet.
The air was fresh and so, so sweet. Charlie hadn’t breathed air like this in... Well. Years, wasn’t it? Not since Earth. And this place, it was a spitting image of home. Damn fine piece of work, really. Insects buzzed and danced on white clover in the grass, and as his heart slowed, he could hear birdsong in the distant trees. What were those, cottonwoods? Was there water nearby?
Charlie was no idiot. He knew things would turn, and soon, but god what a fucking treasure this was. Sunshine! Fucking sunshine. He soaked up the light like a flower. Save it, drink it all, lock it under his skin to keep him warm for a few more lifetimes in that pit.
He breathed deep. Wind rustled the trees. Charlie plucked a clover and held it in front of his face. His nails were clean. His clothes were clean, too. Okay, so. That’s fine. Take what you can get, when you can get it. He plucked a tiny petal off the clover flower and sucked the honey-sweet nectar from its root. A gift, a gift!
And then came a change in the air, like a pressure drop. The gentle sounds of Earth were joined by a quiet susurrus, a shifting wet sound of slick limbs moving against one another. Little waterfalls of quiet pops and snaps, the telltale sound of suckers grasping at air.
Charlie didn’t bother to turn his head. The clover bloomed darker in his hand, white turning purple, the delicate flower twisting with unnatural beauty. He brought another petal to his lips.
“Hello, Charlie.” Well. It was nice while it lasted.
“King,” Charlie greeted him. He tossed the clover away. “This is a new one. Trying out a different approach? You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, isn’t that what they say?”
“I’ve already caught you, Charlie.” The King said simply. “And no, this is not a trap. In fact, it’s a celebration.”
The King moved closer. His shadow fell over Charlie, who closed his eyes rather than look up at that featureless mask.
“Oh yeah? I can’t think of much to celebrate, myself.”
“No? You could even call it an anniversary, if you like.”
Wait. He didn’t want to know this. He didn’t want to know.
“As of today, you’ve been gone from Earth for…” The King paused. Charlie shook his head. “One month.”
“What?” Charlie lurched upright, staring at him in horror. “No. No! That’s bullshit! It’s been years! I’ve been down in that fucking pit, crawling through mud, and – and – starving and dying and – for years!”
“To your mind, yes,” the King answered, calm. As if nothing could be more mundane. His mask was impassive as ever, but those slick tentacles twitched and curled as they always did when he was entertained. “But time moves differently here. On Earth, it’s September 6, 1934, and you’ve been missing for one month. Do you think anyone’s noticed yet?”
Charlie’s head was spinning. He felt cold and nauseous. His mind immediately dropped back into the well-worn tracks of that question. He thought of his parents, back in Harper’s Hill. Mom would expect a few letters a year, nothing more. Dad would hope to see him on holidays. His friends in New York, they’d notice he’d gone, but they were vets like him, and they knew sometimes a guy needed to fuck off for a while, get his head on straight. If Charlie was gone for years, yeah, they’d look for him, but a month? Fuck. Maybe. Maybe. Probably not. Shit, how did he end up back here? He’d been through this a thousand, ten thousand times already. He knew the answers before the questions could form. His fantasies of rescue rewound and started over; maybe they would look for him, maybe someone would ask the right questions and follow the right leads, and – and what? Hit a dead end in Leerie? Or worse, find that hotel and get themselves caught too?
One of the King’s ever-moving tentacles reached out and stroked his cheek. He jerked away. It left a cold, slippery residue on his skin.
“Don’t look so upset, Charlie. I told you, this is a celebration. I’ve decided to give you a gift.”
Charlie resisted the urge to scrub his face. His skin tingled where the King had touched him. “Well, isn’t that nice? You’re gonna let me take a nap in the sunshine? I could use a little color, all that time underground hasn’t done my skin any good. Say, do you burn?”
“What?”
“Y’know. Burn. From the sun?” Charlie pointed unnecessarily at the sky. The King looked nonplussed.
“I am the sun, Charlie Dowd. I am the light and the shadow and the very air you breathe. I could no more burn from my own power than you could devour your own stomach.”
Charlie rolled his eyes. Figures. “So that’s what we’re doing today? Auto-cannibalism? I gotta say, it’s a little underwhelming for an anniversary present. You couldn’t come up with something new?”
“No, pet. You’ve suffered enough for now. Today is a day of pleasure.”
Ah. Shit. That couldn’t be good. “We talking your pleasure or mine?”
“Yours, Charlie.”
The tentacles reached out again. More of them this time – grasping, squelching things dripping with cold liquid. The suckers were amazingly strong; as soon as one latched onto his skin, there was no getting it off, even without the sheer number of them wrapping around him, squeezing him, dragging him in towards his captor.
The King’s touch was nauseating and familiar, and Charlie braced himself for the crunch of bone, the tearing pain of joints pulled from their sockets. But the pain didn’t come. Instead, the tentacles were astonishingly gentle, plucking at the buttons of his shirt, slipping his belt out of its loops. Undressing him.
“Ah, no, no, come on. You gotta be kidding me, right? What – what are you doing? What the fuck is this? Stop. Stop it!” Charlie kicked out, squishing a tentacle against the ground. It bounced horribly underfoot. The King didn’t seem to notice.
“I won’t hurt you, Charlie. Not today.”
Charlie shook his head, trying pointlessly to get away, to fight off those suckers and high-tail it back into the trenches or the pit, to do anything but this, please, no, no, he’d told himself this wouldn’t happen, he’d thought the King didn’t want humans like this. He’d watched those uncountable tentacles slip and write under the King’s tattered cloak, and up until now, his imagination had been torment enough.
“No, no, hey, no, stop.” He was babbling. His mind was running in place. “Hey, King. Stop. Uh, hold on, at least buy me dinner first, ha-ha. S-stop. Stop!”
Huge hands cradled his head, forcing him to stare up into the King’s mask. “When have I ever done as you’ve asked?”
“It’s never – never too late to start, right? Hey – ha – just slow down.” It was hard to think straight, with the King’s gaze boring into him. Patterns swirled on his mask, impossible organic shapes that rippled like waves. Charlie squirmed and kicked. “Bring a gal some roses first, y’know? Show me a little – fuck – a little romance! We don’t gotta – we don’t gotta do it like this, oh god...”
Tears ran hot down Charlie’s face. Christ, already? How embarrassing. He whined in the back of his throat. The tentacles were under his clothes now, and they stroked him like tongues, wetting his skin. His shirt was gone, as were his shoes. The heat of the sun was gone. Every part of him was chilled and slick, and he could feel puckered bruises forming in rows where the King held him. A cold limb writhed down the front of his pants, forced the zipper down, and then dragged them the rest of the way off his body.
The King wasn’t shy. Tendrils pushed between his legs, dragging over his soft cock and swiping into the cleft of his ass. He yelped and thrashed, but it was pointless. He had no leverage, he was suspended by the hands under his skull and the limbs that cradled him. He was weak, starved, and even at his strongest he’d have been a trivial opponent for the King. All he could do was beg, but the King spread his thighs and latched a single fat sucker onto his exposed asshole, frigid and pulsing and wet, and began to massage him with horrible intimacy.
The sun shone behind the King’s head, ringing him in a halo against the beautiful blue sky. Birds continued to sing in the distance.
Charlie’s hands were wrapped around the King’s wrists, trapped there by more tendrils, more suckers pinning him in place. He could barely move. The King’s body was so dense, each tentacle a thick slab of muscle and mucous, and the weight of them alone was enough to keep Charlie’s legs dangling and spread. It was deeply uncomfortable, but there was nothing he could do to ease the strain that was already making him shake.
The sucker pulsed against his hole. It squeezed and pulled lightly away, tugging at the tense ring of muscle, then relaxed and squelched back up against him. It set a kneading rhythm that sent little spirals of pleasure outwards from his core. He’d been eaten out before, and it felt a bit like that, but with a cold, suckling quality that made his skin crawl.
A thick rope of tentacle laid itself over the King’s forearm, suckers exposed. They tensed and spread in an offset rhythm with the ones on his body, blooming like a string of meaty flowers. Then he realized: the ones he could see were leading the ones on his skin, cueing Charlie into the sensation that would hit him half a second later. A motion rippled through them, rows of swollen rings all flaring outwards in a wave, and then the sucker on his hole spread, coaxing him open in a way that was as uncanny as it was unwelcome.
He tore his eyes away from the suckers. He didn’t want to know, he didn’t want to know. ‘What will be will be,’ he thought. ‘This too shall pass.’ He checked back in with his mouth, which was running on autopilot, “Please please please” over and over, and “Stop, god, stop, fuck.” But the real bitch of it was, it felt fucking good. Like everything the King did, it was overwhelming in its cruelty, and it disregarded his comfort and his dignity entirely, but his body responded fast and hard. Charlie’s voice grew shaky and low, though his protests never stopped. The muscle at his opening eased under the King’s touch, forced to relax into that firm, kneading pressure. It felt wrong, it felt sour, if pleasure could be sour, but Charlie knew he would come like this if the King wanted him to.
He couldn’t turn his head, couldn’t hide his face from the King. He was crying, of course. When wasn’t he crying? The King stared down at him. His not-a-face was too close, too close.
“I’d have thought,” Charlie gasped, “I’d’ve thought you wouldn’t want to... sully your godly f- flesh.... with a beast like me?”
The mask swirled. Empty eyes that did not blink. “What gave you that impression?”
Charlie grunted through his teeth. The suckers were speeding up – suck, squeeze, push, spread – moving with sickening wet sounds all over his body.
“Oh – uh, hnn, all the torture, I guess. The insults, the pain, the – aaaah fffuck...” A particularly firm and drawn-out push forced his body to open wider, to clench around nothing. He caught his breath. “The degradation.”
The King purred. He did enjoy the degradation. “But Charlie,” he said, and Noel’s voice was there too, layered above the King’s low rumble. “I’ve already fucked you plenty of times. And you’ve already fucked me, too. Have you forgotten?”
Charlie closed his eyes rather than look at that mask. “Those were dreams. I knew it was you but – I didn’t think it was – you – ahh god...” It was hard not to moan.
“This is a dream, too, Charlie.” And now he was Roland. “It’s all a dream. And it’s always me.”
Charlie’s body sang under the King’s touch. It had never been touched like this before – coaxed open and lax without so much as a finger pushed inside. He’d never felt this kind of empty need, and the thought of a cool, slippery tentacle pushing into him was getting less horrifying by the minute. He found himself rocking against the King, riding his tentacles in their slow waves. It was okay not to fight every time, he reminded himself. He could save his energy for when it would do some good.
It could have been worse. It had been worse than this, hadn’t it? As long as he kept his eyes closed, he could imagine... well, no, he couldn’t pretend this was anyone but the King. But he could pretend that he wanted it.
He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, but he knew that the King’s skin was warm where they touched. Charlie was sweating and all his muscles felt loose and heavy. His cock dribbled precum and his balls had drawn up tight against his body. His moans grew heady and rhythmic.
He dared to open his eyes. The King was still there, staring down at him. He was a patient bastard, Charlie would give him that. Fine. Fine. Time to get a move on.
Charlie swallowed wetly. “You... you gonna fuck me or what?”
The King hummed, as if he hadn’t considered it. As if he hadn’t considered doing anything beyond this torturous slow tease. The fucking bastard.
“Is that what you want?” He asked.
‘Fuck you,’ Charlie thought. ‘Fuck you, fuck you, you son of a bitch. This won’t end till you get what you want.’ But what he said was, “You got me so worked up. Be a bit of a letdown if you didn’t follow through.”
Hastur laughed. The sound rang Charlie’s skull like a bell. “Perhaps I could give you more... if you ask nicely.”
He punctuated with a slow squeeze of Charlie’s balls. It wasn’t good, but his body was so worked up that he felt the early tremors of an orgasm approaching.
Charlie didn’t want to play this game. His pride balked at the King’s request, but pride hadn’t helped him once in the Dreamlands. Pride was a fool’s friend.
He closed his eyes. “Please,” he said.
“Please what?” The bitch.
"Please fuck me.” ‘You fucking bastard, you sick fuck, I’m sick to death of your stupid power plays.’
“You’re boring me, Charlie,” the King warned, and that was a threat Charlie took seriously even when there wasn’t a tentacle wrapped around his balls.
He braced himself. ‘Leave your pride. It won’t serve you here.’ “Please, for god’s sake, quit stringing me along and fuck me. It’s been years, it’s been years and you haven’t fucked me. I know you’ve thought about it, I’ve thought about it, and no I don’t want it but I’m so tired of waiting, I have to know. I have to know. Please. I know you want to fuck me so fuck me.”
Hastur made a low sound of approval. The sucker pulled off Charlie’s asshole with a sick little pop! He was so open and wet, holy fucking shit, the slick was cooling rapidly on his skin and Hastur’s studded tentacle was slipping down his leg and the tip was sliding in already, it was already inside, and oh fuck, it was thick. It was so thick, but his body was prepped to take it, and the thing was rubbery and cold and there were suckers inside him and they were moving and twitching and pushing in deep.
“Christ, Christ, fuck,” Charlie gasped. His legs shook. This thing was gonna ruin him. It flared and contracted. The tip curled. If the King made come from this, regular human dick was never gonna cut it for Charlie again. He swore and kicked, not even trying to get away, just trying to do something about the wild overstimulation.
“You asked for this, Charlie.”
“Nnnh, I know, shut up, shut the fuck up, I know.”
The King was still holding his face up, drinking in Charlie’s reactions, but Charlie couldn’t stop himself from moaning. He couldn’t stop his eyes rolling back and lids falling heavy. It was so much, it felt unbelievably good, and Charlie hated it (hated it hated it) but his body had never felt pleasure like this.
And then the thing inside him began to ripple, suckers opening and closing in waves, like kisses, like fingertips, like tongues licking him from the inside, and each wave shoved the limb a bit further inside him. The row of suckers at his entrance popped in and out of his body in a rhythm, in-in-out-out, and the poor overworked muscle could only twitch as they passed.
“I would have you like this always, Charlie,” the King said. “Open to me. Dominated. You surrender so beautifully.”
The orgasm hit him hard. It had been hovering on the horizon for a long time, but it shot through him suddenly and his whole body shuddered and bucked. His mind spiraled outwards, wave after wave of tense and release; his toes curled, his cock jerked, and he had the delirious thought of getting cumstains on Hastur’s golden cloak.
And here came the part Charlie knew would happen. Instead of easing off and dropping his spent body to the ground, the King pushed in deeper. And deeper. He fucked Charlie past his orgasm and onto a new plateau of sensation. Charlie whined and struggled, but the King rumbled deep in his chest and spread his legs wider, pulled all the way out with a filthy wet sucking sound, and shoved back in, and Charlie felt every single one of those god damned suckers catch on his rim. Whatever focus the King had kept on Charlie’s first orgasm had waned, and now Hastur puppeted his body this way and that, pinning one knee against his chest and fucking him hard, then arching his back until he was nearly upside down and toying with his spent cock and balls, then flipping him over and spreading him till he was nearly doing the splits, and every time a new tentacle would slide into place, coated in cool, dripping slime. Charlie felt like he was getting passed around at a fucking gangbang, only everything inside him was the fucking King.
Time twisted in on itself. Charlie had no idea how long it went on. It didn’t matter, really – it would happen until it stopped. He just had to get through the next minute, the next orgasm, the next limb squirming its way inside him.
By the time Hastur slipped out and lowered Charlie to the ground, his body was too weak to move. The grass prickled gently against his skin. Back came the birdsong, the gentle breeze. Warm sun caressed him. He was too tired to weep.
“Rest here a while, Charlie. You’ve earned it. In due time, you will be returned to the prison. But until then…” More clover bloomed across the field, white and red and purple. “The day is yours.”
Charlie swallowed against the lump in his throat. Slime was already drying in pale, tacky patches on his hands and chest. Circular bruises crisscrossed his body. Everything ached.
“And Charlie,” the King said, with one last cold caress of Charlie’s face. “Happy anniversary.”