bamboo doesn't grow in dark spaces. [80K Words / Complete]

chapter eighteen.

The mystery cold had Case bedridden for a few days. After sharing the night together, Sir's visits were cut short. While Case was sick, Sir's interest in sex seemed to be on pause, and the only interest he had in Case swallowing was watching him take Ease-a-cold and vitamin tablets (likely making sure he wasn't ferreting them away for some attempt at an overdose). Sir would come and go, checking Case's temperature with the back of his fingers before giving him hot lemon tea or chicken broth. And in the interim Case would sleep. Perhaps a week later, Case woke up with clear sinuses and his throat no longer inflamed, and he knew Sir's reprieve was over. That night, Sir came back to Case's bed, but he didn't bring a tender touch. That night, when Case slept, he was thrown into a nightmare:

In his dream, Case was lost inside the boiler room of a submarine. Rusty pipes snaked up walls, temperature gauges hit red, large boilers and furnaces glowed fiery orange. His dream-self knew that the outside was the cold abyss of the deep ocean. But here, the fire burned so hot that the metal and air seemed to sweat. The steam was so thick, it snuffed out oxygen. Case ran, navigating narrow corridors and catwalks. His body was slick with perspiration, and his pulse raced with fear. Clanging footsteps approached him. Not only was he lost, he was being hunted.

A figure—its physique unnaturally lanky, stripped of clothes as well as skin—tracked him. The figure walked but it was closing the distance, fast. Case shut a door behind him, a crossbar lock barricading him in a safe dead end. An engine room with valves and blaring alarms. The figure's face appeared through a grimy peephole. Though its entire body had been flayed, its face had been preserved. A stretched, gray grimace stared at Case with empty sclera. The figure knocked on the window, not with a fist but with its face—it smashed its forehead against the peephole, again and again, even when the reinforced glass was smeared with blood.

Fear, hot like boiling water, surged through Case's circulatory system. He turned away, but the banging continued, relentless and reverberating. Then, something shifted, and Case was no longer alone. He was having sex with Hannah. She was sprawled across a control station, helpless like a turtle stuck on its shell, knees to her shoulders and purple hair plastered to her flushed-red face. Case fucked her, her breasts bouncing out of her bra, her exposed skin glistening with sweat and someone else's cum. Tiny pink nipples poked free from black lace and Case twisted the pert buds, wanting to hurt her. She wailed, cried his name Casey, torn between pain and pleasure. He kept thrusting, the slap of his skin on hers in rhythm with the figure smashing its face against the glass.

And then Case wasn't standing over Hannah, he was standing over Sir. Sir, naked and vulnerable as Case rutted into him. Sir's knees by his shoulders, his large chest thick with dark hair, his face contorted with the torture of an orgasm. Case fucked harder, faster, the figure howling as its face smashed through the broken glass, and Case's mouth was sour with vodka and candy, and temperature gauges whistled in the danger zone, and Sir cried out like a submissive whore, and Case's abdomen tightened like a coil strained with the need for—

Case woke to the rocking motion of humping against his mattress. The nightmare vanished and he came to his senses, aroused and disturbed. "Ugh," he groaned into his pillow, "what the fuck . . ." He rolled over, picking the sleep from his lashes, aware that his underwear was pitched like a tent. Here it was, his first morning wood in months.

Go with it, the voice told him. Case couldn't remember the last time he ejaculated, and his body ached with the need for release. Why keep denying yourself the pleasure?

Despite the accompanying shame of imagining such messed up shit, Case was tempted to finish himself off. The erection throbbed between his legs.

Don't be ashamed. It's okay, it's just a release. A biological need.