Contaminated

Alexander’s stomach rebels. It cramps and spasms as his body struggles to contain the wrongness inside him. Sweat beads on his smooth skin; his muscles ache and his mouth forces itself open. The bathroom’s tiled floor is cool and peaceful, and he desperately wishes that he could let himself collapse onto it, to curl up and dissociate until it’s all over, but he can’t, he really, truly can’t. He is here and this is now and everything is happening so much.

He would be a beautiful sight if anyone was in the bathroom with him, but of course they are not. The throbbing, pounding music filling the rest of the house is far more interesting than a twink suffering the consequences of his choices, and even if it wasn’t the party had been more than halfway towards becoming an orgy when he fled. That’s the way things go, these days; everyone’s drunk and high and bodies are so pretty under red lights and losing track of who you are is so much better than thinking about the empire dying just outside. Sex isn’t about sex any more, but the way Alexander’s body is betraying him certainly is.

He’d seen her around before. Doing the social circuit. There’s always something happening somewhere, an event at a bar or a theme night at a club, and while they’d never talked properly she was certainly memorable. Tall and pretty, sure, in the way that girls like her tend to be, but that’s common enough. It was her makeup that always caught his eye: thick globs of neon drool dripping from her lips and her eyes, a different color every night, an impossible indulgence marring her pristine skin. He swore that it grew with every passing hour, pouring out of her steadily throughout each night, but no one else ever agreed with him so it was probably just alcohol distorting his memories.

It must have been.

There’s a way these things go. She was noticing him noticing her, and eventually he noticed her noticing him, and after a while they were outside smoking, their cheeks flushed with alcohol and their heads buzzing with whatever noxious vapors filled the house’s basement, and all of his friends were elsewhere. And she had friends, surely, people he’d seen her with before, never the same from night to night, but none of them were there either. Just them, and the click of a lighter, and the smoke billowing out of his mouth.

“Hey,” she said, and of course he turned to look at her. Anything else would have been impolite. “D’you have a light? Mine isn’t,” she gestured with an inert lighter, not bothering to finish the sentence.

“Oh, of course!”

She bent down for him to light it, the thin cigarette carefully held between her oozing lips. He caught the faintest hint of her breath, then, with his lighter raised in supplication and his brown eyes fixed on the splotchy pastels that filled her sockets—a painted contact lens, surely, its hues selected to perfectly match her makeup. Stale beer and musk almost covering a cloying, floral sweetness, like slowly rotting roses and spoiled marshmallows. His nose twitched. It was not a pleasant scent, and he missed it the moment it was gone.

There was a lull, then, both of them smoking, leaning on the porch railing, feeling the party’s music throbbing behind them. Smoke drifting up into the darkness, and the first drops of rain answering it. Not silence. Never silence.

“I’ve seen you around, haven’t I? Friend of, ah,” she snapped her fingers, “what’s his face, that one …”

“Switchblade?” Alexander had been hanging out with zir earlier that night, before the party’s tides pulled them apart.

“Yeah, him! Great guy,” her voice was breathy and low even in excitement, and a guilty little part of Alexander wonder what she would sound like moaning into his ear. It wasn’t his fault that he had a type, was it?

“I really like zir, ze invited me tonight,” Alexander bubbled. “I wouldn’t have known about this otherwise, ha.”

“And that would have been quite a shame, wouldn’t it? I’ll have to thank Switchblade the next time I see zir,” and at the time Alexander hadn’t noticed anything odd about how she said that. It’s always easier to spot things like that in hindsight, when you’re not enjoying being wanted.

“Oh, uh, yeah! I think ze was upstairs—”

“Not that I’m in any rush to,” she purred, “not when I’ve got lovely company here. And, hey,” she gestured with her cigarette, “I’ve got this to finish too, don’t I?”

Of course she wasn’t. Alexander would have been shocked and, honestly, a bit insulted if she was. They had chemistry, didn’t they? He knew he was interested, and she was giving all the signals, but …

Every conversation hits a lull sooner or later. Some are comfortable and others are not, and this one was Not. It was not yet full of thwarted desire, but the tension certainly stretched uncomfortably—for Alexander, at least. The woman (had he really not caught her name yet?) was utterly unconcerned, or perhaps even amused, by the way he kept on sneaking looks at her only to blush and glance away when her pastel eyes met his own drab pair. Playing the ingenue only works when the cad is interested in taking advantage, and she seemed more interested in playing with him than pushing forward. Such a pity!

But tension can only stretch so far.

“Hey,” she finally said, turning towards him, “can I kiss you?”

His face was already tilted up towards hers. His whispered—whimpered?—“yes please” was the merest formality. The game had stretched on for too long, and he couldn’t contain his eagerness, couldn’t help his expression when she rested her hand on his cheek, forcing him to tilt his head just a bit more as she bent down to meet him, and then, then—

The slime smeared across her lips was sweet and fragrant on his tongue, a flavor he couldn’t quite place then and still cannot now, as he retches again and it crawls up from inside his belly to stain the toilet’s smooth porcelain. It tasted better on her than it does in him, but he’s used to that, isn’t he? The subtle wrongness whenever he tries to be something that he knows in his heart that he is not, that aching urge to, to … he doesn’t know. Not yet. Instead, he vomits.

It felt like the kiss went on for a long, long time, but when their lips finally parted and they stared at each other, their faces still close enough to taste each others’ breath, he was suddenly sure that it had been far too brief. His eyes were lidded and his lips were still parted, and she could see how much he needed more, couldn’t she? He was sure she could. He could see it in her too, the look in her bright, oozing eyes, not at all concealed by the latest drops that he was suddenly sure he could see beading those fragile surfaces, swelling and bursting to flow down her face in fresh streaks—not makeup, then, as he’d assumed. Not makeup at all.

He still wanted another kiss.

He was drunk, and a bit high, and maybe he’d been partaking in some of the party’s other joys, and she was hot no matter the danger that he could feel breathing down his neck, and what is the night for if not making decisions that you’ll regret when the next morning’s light shows you what you’ve done? What would the point be, otherwise?

So he kissed her again, and he did his best to take the lead in those moments where it felt almost like she expected him to flee. He did his best to push her against the railing, despite their height difference, and he pressed against her and let the fluids staining her face smear his in turn and he was so, so hungry. He wanted to drink her down, to devour her, to take her into him and leave nothing behind—and when that kiss finally broke, it was not his choice to pull away.

“… well,” she said. There was a look on her face that he couldn’t understand then and still cannot quite grasp now, something partway between desire and guilt, as if she had done something she shouldn’t have and very much wanted to do it again. “I should get back inside. People to see, you know?”

“But,” his chest hurt, like he’d forgotten to breathe, “but couldn’t we …?”

She didn’t give him enough space to object, just kept on going. “Let me know if you find yourself in need of someone to go home with at the end of the night, hmm? My place isn’t far.”

At least it was something. At least it wasn’t a pure rejection.

“I, uh,” he stammered, desperate to stop her from turning away, “this is embarrassing, but, uh, I don’t think I got your name.”

“Oh?” She smiled, and for a moment the slime smearing her face, unchanged by their kiss, seemed to glow. “It’s Smoke. And I already have yours, Alexander.”

And then she was gone, and now he is here, viscous slime pouring out of him, filling the toilet and spilling out onto the floor’s stained tiles, and he doesn’t know where the hosts keep any of their cleaning supplies, if they even have them, if they even exist. Perhaps nothing outside the bathroom does. Perhaps he was born to suffer, springing fully formed out of the void into this eternal moment. His head feels very hot.

He loses his grip on the toilet’s rim as his stomach spasms again and the rest of his body—his esophagus, his mouth, and then his arms and legs, flailing futilely at the floor—follows suit, liquid spewing up and out, the first acidic gush and the gradually diminishing little spurts that follow as he prays that this one, this one, will be enough, that it will satisfy whatever urge has gripped his body enough to grant him release. By the time it finally does his chest feels very sore and his cheeks are streaked with tears, and the chunky, colorful liquid puddling around him on the floor looks nothing like the beer and fast food that he’s been filling himself with all night. It reminds him of her, of Smoke, of the way her lips felt and the urge to press himself against her—and his head is far from the only part of him that feels hot. His skin is burning and his lips are sticky and his cock is hard and demanding under cutoff jeans stained with pastel vomit,

The vomit doesn’t feel like it should when he touches it, first struggling to sit up and then trying to wipe it away from his crotch, telling himself that this is about making himself presentable and not an excuse to touch himself. It is too thick and too slick, and the acidic tang filling his nostrils is already fading, drowned out by—he can’t say. Lilacs and icing sugar. Cigarette smoke. The rich, delicious scent of arousal, the smell that lingers in rooms where people have been fucking, that clings to the hollow of a woman’s neck and invites more.

Alexander remembers, abstractly, the way the restroom smelled when he first stumbled into it. Bleach and stale piss. Cheap hand soap. The sulfur of a match lit and left to fade. He can’t smell any of that any more, just the slime incubating inside him.

His stomach clenches again as he unbuttons his jeans, and he catches the spew in his hand. It is pink and pale green, spring colors, and it refracts the light so prettily—and, when he slips his hand down into his crotch, it feels like a glob of liquid sunlight burning against his dick. The pain makes it better.

He’s writhing on the floor, smearing his sick around, his entire body slick and wet and wanting more. Still cramping, still coughing, barely acknowledging the liquids freely flowing from his mouth and nose and cock, the tears painting his cheeks—not translucent but still pale, still almost correct, as long as you don’t look close enough to see the wisps of color already contaminating them. The same colors filled Smoke’s eyes, and now they are in him too, twisting him askew.

Someone’s knocking on the door. A voice that rings a bell deep in the remains of Alexander’s mind, the bits of him that aren’t lost, teetering on the edge of something very much like an orgasm—“Hey, you okay in there?” Hammering.

He forgot to lock the door.

“What the FUCK Alex, what are you—where did you get this much paint?!”

Hands dragging him to his feet. Pulling his hand out of his crotch, his hips still thrusting mindlessly against nothing, desperate and denied. The motion makes him dizzy and he gags and something gooey drips down his chin. More voices—

“Man, he is fucked up, what did he even—”

“Is this even paint?”

“Ugh, gross, it’s all over me—”

“Who even invited him?”

“Let’s get him in the shower. Anyone know where he lives? Is it near?”

“No, it’s—”, but running water drowns their words.

It’s cold and heavy in the shower, the weight of water dragging him down. At first there are hands to keep him upright and tug away his ruined garments, and once they are gone it’s easier to stand up, easier to let the cold soothe away the throbbing need that filled him so completely, and when the hands recede he only stumbles a bit. Habit and routine cannot fill the empty places inside him but they are as good at pretending as any mask, and he is almost normal when he finally emerges into the still-ruined bathroom—

And finds it empty. Except for Smoke.

“Hey, Alex,” she says, quiet, kind. A hint of a sigh in her voice, right where he could imagine hunger. “Told them I’d take you back to mine. Got some clothes for you,” she gestures at a sad little pile, socks and a t-shirt that will fit him like a dress and sweat pants that barely will, “if you feel up to getting dressed. Oh, and a towel.”

He eyes her while he dries off. Tries not to look at his own body, but he can’t help feeling at its new wrongness through the cotton.

“… you did something to me,” not a question.

“I did.” She can’t make eye contact, now. “I didn’t mean to, if that helps any.”

“What is it?”

“… I’ll explain once we’re back at my place,” her voice doesn’t break, plaintive and guilty. He’s imagining things. He must be. “Okay?”

“Sure. Whatever.”

“Good. I’ll, uh, let you get dressed.”

She closes the door and he is alone again; and perhaps by the time he opens it he’ll have decided what he should do.