Paresthesia

"I love gossip," says Kieran. The cool glass plays against her lips painted a deep forest green. There is no smudge. I feel that there should be a smudge. My knowledge of makeup is somewhat lacking, but lipstick smudges on glass. Collars and skin too. It's more of an excuse to mark things as owned by the color, now that I think about. I like lipstick. I think I should experiment with it. Maybe. No, second thoughts meandering through my mind dissuade me. Lips would distract from the hair and that is the real star of the show. Always has been, always will.

"And I have heard some very interesting gossip concerning the two of you," Kieran continues.

The Roulette Club's relatively empty. It's 7 o'clock on a Tuesday. I would be surprised if it was busier. There are responsible people out in the world, doing responsible things. Family table dinners, light readings, time spent improving and honing the self into something more than the day before. Even the noble act of rest and sloth has a purpose in gaining back the resources spent in the day. Hannah hugs into my arm and I can feel the soft swell in her chest, just barely. Never a bra on her. Never even a thought in her mind.

"We have been doing fun things," she says, "Robbed a jewelry store. Did a thing at the mayor's mansion."

"I vandalized some League property," I say, "Hannah didn't help with that."

"I know about that. I'm talking about some of the other things."

We are not being responsible. We are all several drinks deep, collectively. Most of them come from Kieran and Hannah. I'm not even one in. Probably. I don't think I've had more than one. There is a foot to my crotch, pushing and kneading and fondling with pressure and hunger. That makes it kind of hard to count. One, definitely one. I can recall the number, so that means I have most of my sense. And if I have most of my sense, then I am only one in. It all checks out. I feel a pair of lips kiss my neck and I think it's Hannah. Kieran's on the other side of the table, and so yeah. All checks out.

"We're planning on stealing more stuff," says Hannah, "But we can't tell you. It's a secret."

"Yeah, it's a secret," I say, "And secrets are supposed to be secret. And if you know it, then you'll tell and then it won't be a secret. So, we can't tell you. Cause it's a secret."

Kieran nods sagely at the logic. I am truly a dizzying intellect when it comes down to it. One of the greatest minds of this generation.

"Oh, I understand. You need to steal things," Kieran sighs. Her lips savor every syllable, glimpses of writhing snaky tongue between them and I know that they all can do. I think I will be reminded of them by the time the night is over. I hope so. The text from earlier implied as much.

"We need to steal things," Hannah agrees, "It's the only life we know. Really, everyone should pity us. We're just beggars on the corner, but with a few extra steps. Our home is a drafty warehouse with a leaky roof and a cracked floor. The landlord is an old man who pinches every penny. All the neighbors are thieves and cutthroats. We need a warm home to take us in and keep us safe."

I make my eyes wide. Hannah does too. Kieran just rolls hers and finishes the drink. Still no smudges. It should smudge. It would look good if it was a little more smudgy and runny.

"Oh boohoo," she sighs, "I know for a fact that your little love nest is better than anything the League provides. Probably eat off gold plates and have diamonds in the windows."

"No, but there are diamonds in the drawers," Hannah says, "We ran out of room in the safe, so we just keep 'em in a drawer. They're next to the scissors and the tape."

"And the thumbtacks. I don't even know why I have thumbtacks," I say, "I don't own a corkboard. I think they were there when I moved in."

Kieran sighs and runs a finger along the rim. I think she wants me to get up and get her a new one. But then the foot would leave its pressure and I don't think she wants to do that either. No, she is being responsible, too. Found the limit and toed the line, sure, but she isn't going overboard.

Hannah is not as responsible. She is hanging on me, playing on my chest, tracing shapes and patterns and lines with no care in the world as to who might see.

"So, about that little bit of gossip I actually want to talk about," Kieran says, "About your little friend with the demon hand."

"Ooooooooh," says Hannah, "Yeah, that's not a secret. We played together."

"That is much too innocent of a word. You all fucked. That's a few steps up from a friendly game of cards."

"No, play's the right word. Evan and I fuck. If it's another person, then it's play. I don't know what four people would be called."

"Still the same," I say, "I don't think it would change all that much. It's still play."

"Whatever it is," Kieran says, "Good for you. Nice job. Always struck me as kind of prickly."

"Can be. But there's some soft spots."

"Her ass," Hannah interjects, "Her ass is amazing."

Kieran chuckles and keeps playing with her glass, tilting and rolling it around and around and around.

"You're making me jealous," she purrs, "Are you saying I don't have a nice ass?"

"You are fishing for compliments," I say, "We all know you're incredible. Your ass is incredible. Your boobs are phenomenal. Your hips are dreamlike."

Hannah nods and takes another deep drink. Her glass is now empty. She does not play with it. She just shoves it aside to join its friends clinking together.

"You're sweet," Kieran says, "If a bit too direct to be romantic. But all this talk is kind of just that. So, show me."

I leave my drink mostly finished. I am already tipsy and wobbly and the foot has done terribly things to my sense of self control. I do not need the rest of the glass to push me to intoxicated.

---

Kieran's little apartment is still so small for her and her three babies. One of them has decided that I am a good perch tonight. I agree and there is something to be said for the comforting weight of a python draped over my shoulders. It makes me feel exotic. I am shirtless and that also makes me feel exotic.

"I'm glad you and Mizuchi are getting along again," says Kieran from between my legs, "Usually he's the one to hold a grudge."

I hum some deep happy noise that does not really mean anything other than general pleasantness. Hannah looks to me and makes a very similar noise. Jormungandr coils up her torso, encircling her neck. Her hands find the gaps in the scales, playing with the peaking metal as Kieran attends to me. Quetzalcoatl has disappeared into the farthest reaches of the studio and I do not think he will be making an appearance. Shame. Everyone needs a snake. It's only fair. But I am not in a state to really care all that much about the fairness of the world. If I was, I think I would be getting a bit too much.

My hands grip the couch cushions and I hiss out through gritted teeth over Kieran's wonderful long snaky tongue. Long, long and wet, coiling and hugging and going up and down, up and down the length in her mouth. She smiles over me and the clench pulled from me. Tense, my muscles are tense to the point of trying to break bone. Toes curled, thighs burning, and arms screaming tense with hypnotic dance.

I can't look at her eyes. I can't gaze down at the turned-up sides that taunt and sit in their prideful rest at agony of another. I cannot look down and see eviscerating rapture in lip and tongue through me. I know it is there. Its mere presence sends me rocking and folding. The demon maw of carnal undulation devours me.

I moan and Hannah moans with me. Her hands slip through the muscle around her, between her own legs. I can look at that. She looks good embraced by the serpent. She looks good bound and trussed up with scale and strength. I have ideas, more with rope and cuffs, but that can come later. I don't know who would wear the restraints. Part of me wants to say both, but then the logistics of union start getting complicated.

All the thoughts of future play cannot distract me from tongue and lips and smearing paint all on my pale skin. Baseball fails me as well. Cold showers and tragic circumstances still keep me in the moment of tongue on lines and sensitive skin. Hannah laughs at me and my clenched teeth trying to break my jaw.

"You never look like that when I do it," she sighs, "Is she that good?"

"You have no clue," I hiss, "Kieran, you were holding out on me that first time."

"Can't have all my cards on the table. And Hannah, sweetie, I wouldn't get too comfortable over there. You're next on my list."

The words impart fear and panic, but the best kind of them. She shudders and goes back to the bob and suck and coil of wet muscle around me. I do not trust my legs. They will fail me. They try to squeeze and wring and take from the world, but Kieran's hands keep me spread and open. I cannot fight this. I do not want to fight this. There is oblivion and ruin and all sorts of wonderful tragedy awaiting me on the other side of the throat.

Kieran's breath races past me, chilling the blood in the veins, in preparation for the final plunge.

Her lipstick smears all over me and she is at the base completely. I throw my head back and moan with unabashed glee. Some of the joints, the ones that actually know how to find some way to relax and loosen. I am just sensation. Nothing more. Nothing less. There can be nothing less than the tongue and the coil with serpent glee.

It pains me to say it, but the wet slithery tongue is better than the constant pulse and vibration. It feels wrong to admit. I am a betrayer, a mote of scum, someone unworthy and undeserving of such wonderful heavens. But here I am, legs spread with Kieran sucking me off while my girlfriend idly strokes and touches herself to the sight. Her eyes keep daring back and forth between us. The tense of my muscles, the clench of my jaw, the sway of Kieran's hips, the gap in her legs, so many wonderful sights to take in with unabated greed. There is so much to see, is much to swallow with wide blue eyes and the world cannot sate that hunger. It simply can't. There is not enough of me and her joined together in my pleasurable annihilation for her. The snake is there to keep her occupied, mostly. There would be a bit of reaction to keep her in place. She just has to sit there and watch. Kieran's endless compassion decided to let her have enough freedom to touch herself. That is more than enough.

I am drowning. I have been drawing in the snake's venom. Tingling limbs and warming necrosis sets in. I am dying. I am dying and being dragged down to hell with the vipers and the cobras. I glance down and finally glimpse the mouth of madness.

It is smiling at me with half closed eyes and a bulging throat.

"Soon, soon," I grunt.

Hannah chuckles from across the room and Kieran hums some mumbled pride noise of a successful conquest. I am at the back of her throat and her teeth graze me, just the softest touch of a dagger's edge.

She pulls it from me in slow languid strokes. The pulses from my core drag on and on and on, eclipsing the dark in my eyes with colorless gray and warm starbursts. My teeth gnash and grind with my joints lock and pop. I am going to break something. I can just feel it. The bones are too far gone. The muscle fibers tear and rip with the warm waves dragging me down. I cannot breathe. The pressure crushes me with tidal waves and tsunamis.

Hannah squeaks and that cuts the pressure from the mouth and the lips and the tongue. She is happy watching me destroyed. I am happy to be destroyed. I can't think of anything better. I wouldn't rather be anywhere else, in any other time. I am where I am and that is beautiful, simply beautiful.

The first wave of white slowly fades away, but my release comes and does not stop. More pulses, more shots, pulled from the deepest recesses of my soul. There is more of me, so much more than I thought. I shiver and shudder and slowly set the sharp glow into dull hills under my skin. And there is still more pulled from me, disappearing as tribute to the endlessly ravenous serpent mistress swallowing me whole.

The flow stutters and slows and comes to a languid halt with my knees deciding that there is no such thing as strength left for them. It's all gone, all in tribute to the smear of forest green coating my length. I do not think of standing. That concept does not exist. That concept cannot exist for that requires strength in me and there is none left. I sigh and huff, face flushed and red and staring at nothing at all. Kieran wipes away the strands that landed on the side of her mouth, licking her thumb clean and looking to me with calm not quite satisfaction.

"Are you alright, Evan," she sighs, "You don't look so good."

"I'm dying, I think. But I'm alright. I need some water or an IV or something," I rasp.

"I'm afraid I don't have an IV but hold on a moment. I can get you something to drink."

With unfolding ease, she is back on her feet, still clad in thin cotton hugging her hips. They bite and bend into her skin when she tilts to the left, to the right. Her breasts hang free, bouncing and swaying with her steps and I look with unashamed lust. I'm surprised there is even that urge left in me.

"Babe," Hannah murmurs, "You look really good right now. I need to start wearing more lipstick. I need to mark you like that."

"What color? I think orange is off the table."

"Absolutely. I don't know. Red? No. Black. Has to be black."

I laugh and move a bit. I need to lie down, but the snake is comfy across my shoulders. Hannah is still idly playing with herself, rolling and stroking and fondling her. I watch her. She watches me slowly come back to being human. She likes that I'm watching, my mere gaze pulling noises from her, not quite the level of my hands and my tongue and my hips, but I can hear them stifle the back of her throat.

"She is very fun to watch, isn't she," Kieran whispers in my ear. A pair of lips find my cheek and I know I am now marked once again with the forest of the serpent queen. There's a slice of lemon in my glass and I don't know what I did to deserve that. I am appreciative though. She gets a playful embrace that has just enough pinch to it to get a slight shiver.

"None of that now," she whispers, "I think you couldn't handle what would happen if you kept going."

I still keep a hold of her, with a touch of ginger care not to upset her. My other cheek gets the same treatment and I am now much more concerned with replacing my lost fluids.

"I think black would be wonderful," Kieran says, "He's pale enough that anything would show up."

"Not too goth?" Hannah asks. Jormungandr has decided that there are better places to be and slowly begins the process of unwinding. There might be food, heat, water, somewhere else that is more to his liking.

"Can anything really be too goth?" I reply. My glass is empty too fast and I am still thirsty. Kieran has moved on from me, so my needs no longer matter. And I do not trust my legs to carry me the handful of feet to get a refill.

"I certainly don't think so. Now, Hannah, dear, do you want to keep watching us, or do you want to be on stage?"

"On stage, on stage."

"Good girl. I think poor Evan needs a break."

I do not disagree. I keep my shimmy until Mizuchi is now too uncomfortable to stay. He wanders off in search of food and warmth or whatever it is that drives snakes to do what they want to do. I sprawl out and find the couch to my liking.

I also find Kieran moving to care for Hannah to my liking. Drained and empty and there is still a bit of me that rises and pulls from the way she walks. Sex, pure sex poured into a person shaped mold and given enough snakes to open a zoo. Tanned, more so than when we last did this. The tattoo on her chest wraps down her stomach until the head pokes up from her breasts. Hannah and I stare and drink her in with unabashed lust.

She bends over and comes to kneel before Hannah and I do not think I have ever seen my wonderful earthquake so afraid. She looks down and suddenly the torment I was enduring comes right to her. I am right once again. I was right to be afraid of the serpent of green lipstick and open mouths. There is even a little mouse squeak that comes when Kieran lays her hand on the toned thighs, taking them apart just a bit too much to be comfortable. She needs room to work.

The soft contact of lip and skin shudder through her. It's just the softest touch, ethereal angel butterfly wings against the stone and it is enough to start the process of turning it all to dust. And I get to watch it all, the echoing pangs to pull me into the action bouncing through my own empty halls. It hurts in the softest way, to see it and know that I cannot participate. The flesh is all spongy and bruised. I can't tell under the makeup. I hope I am. That seems fun, in its own way.

But there is joy in just voyeurism, watching the emotions throttle the visage into contortion. I was tense. Hannah is on the verge of breaking everything in half. The moans pulled from her shatter the air vibrate my joints. I feel the spokes of energy trying to rouse me. They fail. They almost get there, almost pull me from the lethargic repose, but they fail.

An odd half smile, almost a grimace and a snarl from the right angles, dances across the lips. The body lays into it. It is tense and breaking and squirming from a tongue that I know all too well. She looks to me for salvation and finds nothing by contempt for dragging me along. We have both been damned and there is joy in seeing another fall into dreadful bliss.

She shakes. Her thighs are on Kieran's shoulders and she shakes the whole room with tiny, squeaked noises trying to be bottled in. A hand, I'm fairly sure its Hannah's, comes again to her chest, idly playing the metal through the nipple, twisting and truing and hoping that the pain might come through and deliver her. It does not. The back of the throat breaks and she finally sings for the world with earth rattling delight.

Loud, so incredibly loud and reverberating, a wall of sound from one speaker. That finally pulls enough from me replenished. I am hard again, painfully so. That dead trumpet sound has made me rise right out of the ground. No grave, no snake infested pit of venom and scale, can hold my body down when Hannah sings. Her eyes glance over to me and find my length. She likes it. It is a pleasure she can withstand. But I am not about withstanding anything tonight. We are all irresponsible and careening down a path laden with bad intentions.

The moan and the yell slowly falter down to a soft whine interspersed with bubbly laughter. She is giddy and drunk on the night, the tongue between her thighs, the sight of me idly stroking marked and claimed. Her eyes slowly dance in their glaze taking over everything in the room. I glance back at Kieran, ass upturned just enough to entice me and make me hungry. But I have my own little corner of the world squared away.

"Tell me Evan," Kieran sighs, "Was that it? It certainly sounded like it was."

"No, sorry. You've seen it. She can get kind of pent up. You'll know when."

"Thought as much. And I remember. Just thought it might have been a rarer thing."

"Nope. Not in the slightest."

"Why are you talking," Hannah whines, "You should be licking."

"And you should be a good girl and let me work," purrs Kieran, "I know what I'm doing."

And do it she does. A moment to collect the thoughts and plan ahead and she dives once more. Hannah is back to pained yelps that needle the chest with their presence. She should be loud, but I understand the pleasure of holding things back. And it is not my turn on the ride. There is enough for all of us. The muscles are tense, the joints are locked and the jaw is clenched trying hard to realize that this is something good to sink, but not give, into.