CW: fetishizing language and themes.
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A small pod landed with a heavy sound, burning all cyan-tinted grass 5 meters from its reach. Its pilot, a young human man, lept out of the door immediately, nearly forgetting to grab a bag with his instruments and emergency supplies.
It was completely against any and all safety protocols: even seasoned researchers would never be allowed to head out into an unexplored alien wilderness on their own, much less university students.
At 21, Jason Stif was certainly not competent enough to conduct this field trip, and somewhere in the corner of his mind, he was keenly aware of that. But having missed a year of his bachelor studies to fund his transition, he was eager to prove himself in academia. Astrobiology was booming due to newly-accessible fast space travel, and a single stumble could kill a whole career in this ruthlessly competitive field.
Jason also knew that his quiet demeanor made him come off as shy, even anxious around his overconfident and loud classmates. He had no scandalous and outrageous stories of his own to add to their conversations. If he managed to pull this off, perhaps they would finally stop seeing him as some naive, prudish kid.
Sure, this was not by the rules, but what could go wrong, really? The planet was desolate, even its vegetation in the early stages of evolution. The only scientific interest lay within its impressive and impenetrable to radio waves cave system. Jason's task was simple: approach the caves from the surface, document anything of notice and return. An easy article to any leading astrobiology journal and an excellent future dissertation topic, bam!
Uplifted by the thoughts of his bright prospects, Jason brushed away his long dark hair and marched ahead.
***
To Jason's frustration, he did not find anything at all at the cave entrance. Nor 10 meters into it, nor a 100. He was dragging his feet along the dark stone walls for about an hour now, wondering how the hell could he possibly forget to check whether his flashlight was working before departing. Well, he couldn't turn back now, could he?
The long corridor finally ended in a spacious room. As Jason's eyes were slowly adjusting to dim light, he took in a shimmering underwater lake in the middle of it and the lush dark green vines covering every inch of the stone and fading into the shadows somewhere high above.
Jason sighed with awe, his exhaustion and annoyance instantly forgotten. He took out his camera and audio recorder and started to circle the peculiar cave, rigorously noting every detail of it. After a full circle, he stopped for a moment and looked behind himself, perplexed.
There was nothing but a sheer wall of vines near him now, but wasn't it the direction he came from?.. With growing confusion, he checked and checked, but there was no sight of an exit.
"This is ridiculous, I must be just mistaken," Jason huffed and took a step again. His leg caught up on something, and the young scientist tumbled forward, landing painfully on the cold floor.
"Fuck! What the hell?!"
An attempt to stand up was unsuccessful because the vine that tripped him was now firmly coiled around his leg. Jason felt unease creeping up in his mind. He tugged the leg, fruitlessly, but his slim and rather delicate body was no match for the plant.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to convince himself there must be some logical, not even remotely scary explanation for this. And then he opened his eyes and screamed.
All around him, the vegetation started to move all at once, crawling towards him. Faster than he could think or defend himself, it wrapped around his arms, torso and legs, and then lifted the human high into the air.
Jason trashed around reflexively but the strange organism (organisms? Was it truly a plant, even?) that bound him was unyielding. It held him dozens of meters above the glimmering water, like he weighed nothing, like he was a feather.
The cave was deathly still, the darkness lingering in its corners seemingly one with alien tendrils. Impenetrable. Strong. Alien against the tiny human it had securely in its grasp.
The vines never stopped shifting, they were crawling, rustling all over the scientist's body. Jason had an eerie feeling they were inspecting him. One reached his throat and tickled the Adam's apple, then latched onto the collar of his thin white space suit. A few others joined in, grabbing the fabric in different places, and one coiled around his neck, just barely loose enough not to squeeze.
A terrible ripping noise rang out, and a chunk of the spacesuit's top was brutally torn away and fell into the abyss beneath, exposing Jason's quickly contracting chest. He closed his eyes and prayed the alien would kill him quickly. The tentacles only slithered harmlessly the naked skin, however, probing everywhere still covered by clothes. The human squirmed under the unexpectedly fleshy touch. This seemed to excite the vines and they made several more holes in the fabric, brushing again Jason's shoulders, stomach, legs, back. He couldn't move, couldn't plead, couldn't fight back against the many things exploring his body.
It felt like tentacles were playing with him. They squeezed his ass, tugged on a nipple, roughly tickled the inner side of his thighs. Two were fondling his pecs, and one obscenely rubbed against his palm. Then they forced him to spread out as far as his limbs could stretch, and he was fully open to the curious touches.
