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“Beneath Carcosa lies the Lake of Hali,” Arthur read aloud from the tome he’d been given, as he continued to slowly pace the chamber. The ancient language was still clumsy but irresistibly charming in his voice. “Its waters deep and black. They churn and froth like mist along the shore.”
Hastur reclined deeply into his chaise, watching and listening intently. The chamber he had cordoned off as Arthur’s private study hall was shining brilliantly today: soft morning light shown through the open windows that stretched nearly floor to ceiling, and a sweet breeze of balmy air curled their delicate curtains. Though the desks were overflowing with books, stacked into various arrangements that Arthur alone could decipher, they bore their burdens happily, light glinting off the gold filigree that marked their corners and legs. Up in this spire, only the most persistent sounds and smells of dazzling Carcosa reached them: an unobtrusive and potentially necessary backdrop to Arthur’s persistent study. There were few things more valuable in acclimating to the Dreamlands than a steady flow of manageable stimuli.
“When the suns set, they reflect off its constantly moving surface, creating… light-light.” Arthur stumbled over the word, its rough consonants tight and growly in his unaccustomed human throat. Hastur’s tendrils tightened around the legs of the lounge. “Is that right?”
“Lnghr-lnghr,” Hastur corrected, placing the emphasis at the end of the word where it belonged. “When a noun is repeated, it’s to pluralize or embellish, and the stress belongs on the repetition.”
Arthur nodded a few times. He took on a particular expression when committing something to memory that Hastur enjoyed. “So, lights, or something more intense than merely lights,” he said thoughtfully. “Like… an aurora?”
“It would look like that, to your eyes. But practically speaking, it would be more akin to light through a prism. Or a rainbow.”
Arthur’s eyebrows quirked. “My eyes, hm?” he said with mock indignation, as if Hastur had been implying a slight. He glanced over, and that brief, unexpected contact tickled in Hastur’s abdomen with an inexplicable eagerness. His gaze dropped briefly to the tentacles splayed out from beneath their robes, all of those that were in range of an anchor of any kind taking advantage of it. He smirked, and a hint of blush darkened his cheeks as he resumed his slow circumnavigation of the room.
“This doesn’t sound like the lake we saw when we approached the Thousand Steps,” he said.
Hastur’s tentacles squirmed as if of their own mind, those that had no free table leg to grip finding twisty solace in each other. “No, that was Lake Demhe. Lake Hali sits on the other side of Carcosa, beneath the plateau.”
“Ahh.”
Again, that studious face. As Arthur continued, in profile now, Hastur drank in the sight of him. Even after their weeks together, he still found himself fascinated by the simple image of Arthur from the outside. By Carcosan standards he was not very tall, impressive, or striking. Despite access to whatever food he asked for, he had not yet completely recovered physically from the trials they had suffered—he was thin, pale, and rather gangly. He had not the effortless grace of creatures born from dreams.
Even so, he was enthralling. Hastur watched in what could only be considered captivation every step and breath and microexpression. Arthur was dressed then for the weather in a simple, earth-style button down shirt and slacks—how he had gotten them, Hastur wasn’t entirely sure, to his amazement. His bare feet padded softly on the tile and his shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow. But of particular interest to Hastur was his collar: the top three buttons remained unfastened, laid open, exposing Arthur’s long, elegant neck.
His poor little Arthur. A more resilient mortal he had never met, but still, shockingly delicate. So white and soft that he wanted to rub his teeth against him.
“Will I get to see Lake Hali?” Arthur asked as he flipped the page. “Or is it another of those things I’m—” he scoffed “—not ready for.”
“You can see it whenever you like,” Hastur replied, eyeing Arthur’s long fingers. “Though the best combination of suns won’t be for several hours, if you want to see the lights.”
“Really?” The anticipation shone handsomely in his face, but something gleamed deeper than that. Arthur’s mind was not always easy to anticipate, but Hastur sensed an extra layer brewing beneath his surface. “It won’t interfere with any plans you have today, to take me?”
“No,” Hastur said, watching ever closer now. He could have peeled back Arthur’s thoughts and tasted what he was getting at immediately if he wished, but the delayed gratification was oh so sweet. “I have no engagements today.”
“Good.” Arthur had reached the wall of bookshelves and so turned, moving away from Hastur now. “If there’s a few hours to kill, then, I was thinking of visiting the garden.”
Hastur remained very still. “Oh?”
“Between the music room and the books, I’ve been so busy studying lately, it feels like it’s been a while,” Arthur continued, trying his best to sound casual. “I don’t have to depend on it as much as I used to, which is a great feeling!” He chuckled to himself; the legs of the chaise creaked beneath Hastur’s grip. “But I…”
He cast a glance over his shoulder. Both Hastur’s hearts thumped in wholly unwarranted but undeniable intrigue. Arthur quickly turned forward again. “I like it there,” he concluded. “I think I’ll help myself once we’re done here, especially if…?”
An invitation. Already Hastur’s limbs tingled in expectation of having Arthur wrapped up between them. How foolish of him to take such blatant excitement from the prospect, when he could have delivered the same invitation dozens of times over, or even more simply, pulled him through the gates whenever he wished. But Arthur was pacing his spire, speaking his language, his shoulders hitched and ear cocked, awaiting his King’s response, and… as outlandish as it seemed, few pleasures of the Dreamlands had ever enticed him so fully.
Something deep in his nest of tentacles stirred. Something hungered.
“Finish the passage, Arthur,” said Hastur. “And we’ll see.”
Arthur straightened his back and continued with renewed vigor. “I wish to walk along its black shore again. I wish to fill my eyes with its lights. I wish to drink its vapors, take its dark magic inside me.” He hummed, and Hastur felt himself leaning forward; Arthur was mouthing the words over to himself. “I wish to,” he murmured. “Does the concept of repetition apply to other parts of speech than nouns, too? I feel as if I’ve encountered that before. Could I say, ‘I wish-wish’ to imply a deeper desire? Like longing?”
Hastur’s mind buzzed excitedly. Though he had virtually no experience teaching his own language to a mind as relatively simple as a human’s, every inch forward in Arthur’s progress brought him a prickly delight. To say nothing of his particular choice… “Yes,” he answered with as much restraint as he could muster. “Though stressing verbs like that is more of a regional dialect. In Carcosa we would simply use the word for longing, myhrey.”
“Dialects!” Arthur shook his head and chuckled in exasperation. “Another thing to learn. I certainly wouldn’t want to embarrass myself by sounding like a country bumpkin, hm?”
“All the more reason to practice among Carcosans.”
“Yes, yes. Still earning my invitation to ‘the Scholars.’” Arthur licked his lips—he was still turned away, but Hastur could hear very well the wet swipe of his tongue. “I long to,” he murmured, almost trancelike, before clearing his throat and continuing with the tome. “Someday, I will return to Lake Hali. I will sink beneath its mist, into the deep. I will greet the inscru—”
Arthur stopped abruptly—speaking and walking. A thread of tension wound in the air between them, and Hastur straightened up. His amusement hadn’t given in to concern just yet, but he unfettered the seeking filaments of his mind, probing over Arthur’s, should his intervention be required.
Arthur’s breath tumbled out of him in a long, hoarse sigh. He swayed just slightly on his feet, and Hastur could hear the whisper of his eyelashes fluttering. “Inscru—” he tried again, but his lungs shuddered around the abominable word. He shifted the book into one hand so he could reach for his neck.
Hastur’s focus narrowed entirely on Arthur’s fingers massaging his throat. When Arthur expelled another harsh breath, his body rattling beneath the weight of the unspeakable was deliciously enthralling. A pity to have to interrupt. “Do you need to stop?”
“No,” Arthur said automatically, because his better judgment didn’t always follow the same pace as his determination. “I’m fine, it’s just…” He cleared his throat, or rather, he tried to. “Something about this part.”
Hastur loosened his tentacles and slid upright. At the sound of his rustling cloaks, Arthur cast another glance back and then shook his head. “No, don’t, I’m fine,” he tried again. He grasped the book in both hands and straightened his posture. “I will greet the—”
“Arthur.” In an instant Hastur had crossed the distance between them; he pressed up against Arthur’s back, enjoying the way Arthur’s shoulder’s hitched at the contact. “I keep telling you not to push yourself.”
“And I keep telling you that I know my own limits,” Arthur protested. He quieted, however, when Hastur curled his hand around his throat.
Maybe it was cruel of him, Hastur thought, to take so much pleasure in Arthur’s heart rate rising against his palm. His frail, human neck was so easy to encircle, and the bob of his Adam’s apple a downright tease. But it was Arthur leaning back, relaxing his weight against Hastur’s abdomen, that was most tantalizing. Arthur’s slender body easing to his more and more readily, bit by bit, with every interaction they shared.
“Relax,” Hastur murmured. He stroked Arthur’s throat with his thumb, and when Arthur sighed again, it lacked the harshness of moments ago. “You’ve always been clever, Arthur, but you’re overthinking. The language of gods is one of instinct.” He lowered his hand and plucked idly at Arthur’s collar before splaying his fingers across his chest. Arthur leaned more deeply into him. “It is primal, pure—the first sounds that clawed out of life at the dawn of time. Feel it.” He massaged Arthur’s chest, urging him to take in a deep breath. “Draw the words out from more deeply inside you.”
“That’s what I’ve…” Arthur started to argue, only to then give up. He took a moment to collect himself, shifting his grip on the tome. “I will greet—”
“Further back,” Hastur suggested.
Arthur made a quiet sound of amusement, as if catching a deeper meaning beneath the suggestion. “I wish to walk along its black shore again,” he obliged, making an honest effort to draw the sound out from lower in his throat. “I wish… I long to fill my eyes with its light.”
Hastur murmured in appreciation. “I long for it,” he said, subtly correcting his inflection. He drew his hand slowly up Arthur’s chest.
Arthur allowed him to pull the words out of him; his voice deepened, swelled. “I long for it.”
Hastur’s skin rippled, and almost without thinking, he snaked one of his tentacles around Arthur’s leg. “Good,” he purred. “Keep going.”
Arthur gulped; Hastur felt it. “I long to fill my eyes with…” His breath hitched as Hastur’s tentacle climbed higher, pressing into the inside of his thigh, and Hastur could hear the grin tugging at his mouth. “I long to be filled.”
Hastur’s breath caught, which in itself was exhilarating. He let it out in a long growl of arousal that made Arthur quiver; more of his tentacles circled Arthur’s thighs, as if of their own volition. Others twisted and ground against the floor of the study in search of sturdier anchors. He loomed over his small, audacious lover. “Tell me what you want,” he hissed in his own tongue, his mind twined so intently with Arthur’s so he could feel every firing synapse as his simple human brain struggled to adapt to the unholy.
“I…” Arthur gasped. The book slipped from his hands—Hastur caught it with one tentacle and nudged it aside—and reached behind him to twist his fingers instead in tattered gold. “I want you to fill me,” he said, and at last the primitive desire beneath the words welled up through his voice. “I long for you deep inside me.”
And something inside Hastur, long buried, roared to life in answer. All he wanted then was to crawl up under Arthur’s skin and fill him to overflowing in seething, molten gold. Two of his seeking tentacles lashed around the nearest desk and dragged it closer, the wood squealing in complaint; another two sent the books atop it clattering to the floor. For once, Arthur didn’t complain—his body was already searing hot as Hastur pushed his chest to the polished surface, back arching and legs splayed on tip toes. With one hand covering almost all of Arthur’s back, the other gripped the furniture, and his tentacles did the rest. He ripped Arthur’s trousers at their fastening, dragged them down while still more limbs pulled the king’s mantle out around them.
“Hastur!” Arthur breathed, startled and thrilled by the uncharacteristically rough treatment. He braced himself against the desk and angled his hips. “Did I get it right?” he teased as Hastur’s tentacles groped the insides of his thighs, teased his fattening cock and glided between his ass cheeks. His stuttering laugh was delight itself. “Deep inside me.”
Hastur slid one of his inner tentacles inside him. It was already slick, and Arthur’s body so eagerly attuned to him that there was no friction at all. Arthur moaned; for as many times as he’d accepted Hastur’s flesh, he still savored each penetration as when it was new, and for a few charming moments all he could do was clench and shiver as Hastur fucked him open. Then he caught his breath. He rocked back against Hastur’s body, one hand finding and gripping Hastur’s sleeve as he in turn clung to the desk.
That tiny moment of anchoring resonated down his long limbs into Hastur’s chest, where the first of his hearts pounded. Hastur found himself leaning down, more and more of his limbs winding themselves around the desk from all angles, spreading his cloak. He let go of Arthur’s shoulder only long enough to rake the back of Arthur’s shirt open—Arthur flinched, hissing even though Hastur’s talons didn’t come close to breaking the skin—and then leaned down, licking the sweat from Arthur’s back. As his hood closed around them both, Arthur let out a blissful sigh. If anyone had looked at them from the outside, they wouldn’t have even known Arthur was there beneath the mantle; this was only for the two of them, the darkness and heat winding them tight in each other, even the creaking of the desk as Hastur’s limbs fucked him into it swallowed up.
“Oh fuck, Hastur,” Arthur panted as Hastur added a second tentacle, massaging and loosening his hole. He pressed his forehead to the slick wood and licked his lips. “Deep, deeper, deep-deep inside me…”
Hastur groaned, so low and resonant he shook them both. The hunger inside him unfurled with such impossible ferocity it surprised even him. Arthur’s reckless invitation dove into his most vulnerable organs, and from within his nest of tentacles he felt pieces of himself he hadn’t exercised in eons swelling to life. They slithered from him, tangling in his inner wreath of tendrils, stroking themselves to aching fullness—each stretching forward, starving and salivating. He spared only a moment for self-awareness—Arthur wasn’t ready for this, he couldn’t possibly be—but when he hissed through his teeth with restraint, Arthur replied with another sly thrust of his hips.
“Oh, my king,” he purred facetiously; Hastur pulled his tentacles out of the way and slid the first of his cocks into him.
Arthur jolted beneath him. The first sensation of a god’s most intimate flesh plunging inside him sent a myriad of overwhelming stimuli cascading all through his frail human senses. He twitched like an animal, triggering some other, equally antediluvian instinct in Hastur; he closed his jaws over Arthur’s shoulder to prevent his “prey” from wriggling free. They tensed and flexed against each other, Hastur feasting on Arthur’s thoughts as they frayed into incoherent awe. He drew in tight, possessive and protective, enveloping him as thoroughly as possible.
And then, he moved. Unable to devote any further concentration to discipline, he slid his cock in deep—as deep as Arthur had asked of him—and let it swell open. Thousands of tiny, whisper-soft cilia reached out to tease every wrinkle and crevice of Arthur’s interior walls, guided by instinct to the sensitive glands that desired their attention most. Each was a separate point of contact between them that sang its own pleasure, up the length of each of Hastur’s impossibly alert nerves. He sighed all down Arthur’s neck and moaned.
Arthur answered in a tune so guttural and indistinct, he finally sounded Carcosan. He couldn’t stop shaking as Hastur fucked him in earnest, his body clenching greedily at the King’s churning organ. Every upraised finger stroking his hole as they passed in and out, in and out threatened to unravel him. His mouth formed Hastur’s name over and over by some muscle memory of its own, but his breath heaved uselessly. Only the hand gripping Hastur’s sleeve seemed to be under his control anymore; the hand that had once been taken from him, twisting around and pawing at Hastur’s forearm like a drowning man seeking a rope.
Hastur let go of the desk so he could take it. His hand dwarfed Arthur’s but he twined their fingers anyway, holding him tight and sure. He felt Arthur’s body already gasping for climax, but he still had so much passion left to share, so much deeper left to sink, so he didn’t allow it. Instead he threaded himself deep through the strands of Arthur’s consciousness, enduring with him the blazing-sweet waves of otherworldly pleasure. He fucked him harder, faster, pushing him to his limits, Arthur whimpering and keening obscenely. His unused organs, jealous not to be enveloped so firmly, took to stroking Arthur’s cock, where their tiny probes could lick and squirm and suckle.
Is this deep enough? Hastur sang to him, and Arthur’s mind wailed deliriously in answer, begging, begging him for even more. It unleashed a heat inside the God of Dreams he hadn’t felt in eons, and in amazement he let it overtake him.
Pleasure fit to rattle the city’s foundations flooded through him. His every cell tingled so beautifully, he remembered for the first time in ages where his and magic and artifice ended and his true flesh began. Carnal adulation ran rampant through his god-flesh, and he held Arthur so tight, devoted to sharing it with him. Feeling that impossible ecstasy through Arthur’s senses was a second awakening all its own. “Oh, Arthur,” he murmured, quivering around him, the desk groaning and creaking beneath so many of his spasming limbs. His cock swelled and poured its burden into Arthur’s shaking body, each stuttering clench of muscle drawing out another pulse. Arthur himself had come so violently somewhere amongst his king’s orgasm that Hastur couldn’t help but stroke his cock tenderly with one of his tentacles as if in apology.
Hastur pushed himself up against his arms. His joints creaked, and he couldn’t help but chuckle breathlessly at how exhausted he suddenly was. Him! Exhausted! He prepared happily for Arthur’s teasing, only to realize that Arthur hadn’t moved: he was still strewn across the desk, bonelessly inert.
“Arthur?” Hastur leaned back, sucking his cocks back up into their nest; Arthur whimpered at the lucky one being withdrawn, but otherwise collapsed back into Hastur’s waiting lap without a hint of consciousness. When Hastur prodded gingerly at his mind, he found only whirling black stars.
“Fuck,” Hastur breathed, and he hoisted Arthur up into his arms.
***
Arthur awoke in a blissful haze. He was fairly sure he had been dozing for some time that he couldn’t remember now, nor could he remember what he had been doing before then, or… well, just about anything. He was naked and warm, but not stifled. His skin prickled with the most delicious little goosebumps that simmered with pleasure whenever he moved. Not quite like arousal—something gentler than that, tingly and illuminating, like a blanket of stars. He squirmed, enjoying the tiny, tickling sparks that glided over his skin like a breeze through long grass. Yeah, that was it, he was cushioned in vibrant and fragrant grasses that teased his bare skin. Oh—he was in the garden.
Arthur sat up. His head swam, spots in his eyes that took several seconds of blinking to clear. He was tired but not uncomfortably so, nestled into the grassy trough between twisted roots that had so often been his resting place, glossy white blossoms overhead. Except he was alone.
“Hastur?” he called, trying to piece together the events just before falling asleep. He felt… different. Despite his exhaustion, a strange energy buzzed pleasantly under his skin, as if he had been thrown over some electric shell. When he closed his eyes, the flashes of color behind his lids seemed brighter than before, and somewhere deep in his abdomen...
“Ah; you’re awake.”
Arthur’s eyes snapped open, and he lifted his head. He was surprised to find Hastur climbing down from the tree itself—climbing being not entirely accurate, as his tentacles bore him down from the boughs without any assistance of his arms or hardly any disruption from his body. He couldn’t help a tiny bark of laughter. “What were you doing up there?”
“Watching you.” Hastur settled next to him, though curiously he made no move to touch him. Normally when they were this close—particularly in the garden—his first order of business was to loop at least one twisty limb around his ankle. “I wanted to give you some space.”
“Space?” Arthur echoed, baffled. “Why, weren’t we just…”
Arthur glanced down at his naked body. He felt satiated and a little sore, which was certainly not unusual for this particular combination of location and company. He remembered inviting Hastur here himself, and how turned on he’d been by just having the opportunity to make the overture. But something had come between then and now, surely?
“Do you remember?” Hastur asked with a hint of concern.
Light-lights, Arthur recalled, rubbing his throat. My shirt! He frowned as he stretched his back, no longer able to feel welts but certain they had been there not long ago. He was about to give Hastur a piece of his mind for having torn his new clothes, and then it hit him.
Hastur, plunging inside him. Cohesion unlike anything he’d thought possible—ecstasy no human was meant to bear, and all of a sudden his entire body went hot and shivery. The memory of that union bubbled up all under his skin, swept through like a torrent, and before he even had time to get hard, he was curling in on himself, choking on a rapturous moan as an abrupt and inexplicable orgasm rocked him to his marrow. His cock gushed against his thighs and his hole twitched hungrily for want of something he couldn’t begin to describe.
“Oh my god,” Arthur panted, blushing furiously through his fingers. Did I just come from the mere memory of what happened? “What the fuck was that?”
Hastur sagged, and his voice was a mix of apology and relief. “So, you remember.”
“What did you…” Arthur squeezed his eyes shut, seeking a moment to think straight, but the insides of his eyelids flashed with dazzling colors—some he wasn’t sure he could name. When he tried to think again on how everything had escalated in the study so quickly, his pulse raced into his ears. And his cock; he had to snap his eyes open and stare at the dainty white flowers draped overhead to keep from being swept up again in a whirlpool of arousal.
“Jesus,” Arthur murmured. “What the hell, Hastur?”
“Try not to think about it too much,” Hastur said as he sidled gingerly closer. “You’re going to dehydrate yourself.”
Arthur managed a chuckle. It took another few beats to blink the spots out of his eyes, but once he had, he looked to Hastur properly. The great, cloaked shoulders were hitched bashfully, and all his tentacles had found a root somewhere, gripping tight though still out of Arthur’s reach. Was he embarrassed? It was almost too absurd to contemplate, and Arthur could only gape in amazement.
“What did you do to me?” he asked, and god help him, his mouth was watering.
“I’m sorry,” Hastur said. “I got carried away.”
“Meaning what, though?” Arthur pressed. The tingling euphoria in his belly and limbs was beginning to sour, the longer Hastur remained out of his reach, which was in itself disconcerting. It had been bizarre enough, realizing how attracted he was to something as inhuman as the King in Yellow: that the deprivation was having such a physical effect on him was downright unnerving. He crawled forward to set his palm on the nearest tentacle; it flinched beneath his touch, and he latched on to prevent it from slithering away.
“You’re making me nervous,” Arthur confessed, and he tugged the limb closer. “Just spit it out already.”
Hastur sighed, but to Arthur’s relief, the tendril relaxed. Hastur’s limbs unwound from their various lodgings as he stretched out alongside Arthur beneath the floral canopy. The close proximity of his almost too-warm body sent arousal spiraling again through him, enough that he wasn’t able to quiet a whine of anticipation as Hastur settled close alongside him, tentacles teasing his feet and ankles. Then Hastur urged him onto his back and wrapped him up in the warm, textured weave of his cloak, and his pleasure dimmed just enough to stay below the surface, like a pot left to simmer.
“We had sex,” Hastur said.
Arthur blinked up into the darkness hiding Hastur’s face. “We’ve done that plenty,” he replied, but as Hastur remained quiet, it started to dawn on him. “Wait…”
“Not like this.” Hastur carded his long nails through Arthur’s hair, smoothing it back, which was as bewildering as it was pleasant. “I used a part of myself I haven’t in a long time.”
Arthur squinted at him, and he couldn’t help his eyes darting further down, to where he assumed Hastur’s tentacles were rooted within his cloak. “You mean… a sex organ?”
Hastur grumbled quietly. “Yes.”
Arthur sat up and turned on him. “You have a cock?” he exclaimed, once again flushing all over. “And you never told me?”
“It hadn’t come up until now,” Hastur protested, and he must have realized a beat later how that sounded, because he groaned.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “That’s not funny. Christ, I can’t believe it. All this time!” He reached down to begin pawing at Hastur’s robes. “Let me see it.”
“What?” Hastur’s tentacles twisted and flicked in adorable disarray. “You’re not ready—”
“If it was already fucking me, I deserve to see it,” Arthur reasoned, swatting away Hastur’s attempts to hold his cloak closed. “You already know every inch of my body and mind intimately; it’s only fair.”
He found an opening, and his hand glided over Hastur’s impossibly smooth flesh: dry and warm like ceramic, boney dimples like ribs where he would have expected to find the indent of a hip. The tips of his fingers delved between two of Hastur’s outer tentacles, into a hot cleft of muscle. They flexed involuntarily against his probing, and suddenly Arthur’s mind was consumed with a fiery need—to be swallowed up by those strong limbs, smothered and consumed, with another, delicate limb pushing deep inside him. Deeper and deeper, filling him with light and song and rapture until it poured from every—
“Arthur,” Hastur said firmly, drawing his hand back by the wrist. “Not now.”
Arthur blinked. All at once he realized that he was sweaty and shaking again, lava for blood and teetering on the edge of yet another orgasm. I shouldn’t be okay with this were the only conscious thoughts he could muster before his mind scattered like a flock of frightened birds, leaving only sensations of hunger and longing, and an emptiness he couldn’t stand to leave unfulfilled. When he tried to speak, only a pleading murmur escaped him, and he tugged at Hastur’s hand and cloak in need of something he couldn’t name.
“Oh, Arthur,” Hastur murmured, but his low voice only made the urgency worse. Arthur could have cried with relief when Hastur bowled him over onto his back again. The soft grass was cool and welcoming against his feverish skin. His eyes widened as Hastur loomed over him, huge and golden, and his thighs fell open far too easily. But it wasn’t impossible genitalia that greeted Arthur then: Hastur lowered his entire hooded head over Arthur’s hips and sucked his prick and balls both into his drooling maw. Arthur gasped and bucked, and a moment later the tongue followed, snaking into his eager hole. With unhurried but focused purpose, Hastur fucked him with his entire mouth. He sucked and hummed, surrounding Arthur’s most sensitive flesh in heavenly vibration, while his tongue thrust in deep, curving upward just so to make Arthur’s knees shake and his moans puddle. Arthur came almost immediately.
But Hastur kept going. He slowed down even further, easing the entire length of his muscular tongue up Arthur’s clenching hole, massaging up into his belly as he withdrew. Already quaking with oversensitivity, Arthur whimpered pathetically as he rocked his hips—at first away, his overworked body instinctively shying from so much raw pleasure, and then into Hastur’s thrusts. The flashing lights and sick over-heat Hastur’s cock had fucked into him at last began to dissipate in favor of this more familiar lovemaking, and gradually Arthur found the rest of his wits. He rolled his hips against Hastur’s mouth, letting the pressure build inside him at a much more reasonable pace. He even managed a few actual words of encouragement, until Hastur wrung another climax out of him: weaker, but deep and roiling, easier for him to get his teeth around. He sighed through each shudder until he was spent, and Hastur pulled back, licking him clean.
“Holy fuck,” Arthur wheezed, eyes closed as he relaxed into the garden’s fragrant grasses. He could have sworn each blade was petting him reassuringly as Hastur stretched out alongside him once more. “I think I’m going to… pass out…”
“Go ahead and sleep,” Hastur encouraged him, and when he draped his mantle over Arthur, he found he was immediately dry and clean again, free from sweat and fluids. “You’re tired.”
“Yes, but…” Arthur forced his eyes open, even though the flowers overhead were spinning dizzily. “I still want to talk…”
Hastur scoffed quietly. “Don’t you always?” Again he eased his long fingers through Arthur’s hair. “Sleep. I’ll wake you in an hour, if you still want to see Lnghr-lnghr.”
“Hmm? Oh, yes!” Arthur gripped the cloak tight, as if he could use it to pull himself out of the exhaustion threatening to drag him down, but his eyes kept closing regardless. “I want to see… the lights…”
Hastur hummed in reassurance, and with that, he fell deeply asleep again.
***
An hour later, Hastur woke Arthur from his slumber. He spun him a fresh robe of sparkling gold fit for their excursion and brought him to the Lake of Hali.
Hastur had not strolled its banks for decades, he estimated, if not longer. The beach was formed of sand made of millions of tiny, perfectly round stones, their glossy, platinum shade reflecting the Hyades splendidly. It sloped into the black waters in a graceful curve, barely disturbed by the lake itself; its surface was so glassy smooth, so dense and undisturbed, it looked more like a mirror made of obsidian had been placed in a sandy valley. The mist that blanketed its surface was as dark and matte as the water itself, so that there was no seam between the two. As if the mist simply thickened very gradually, until becoming dense enough for buoyancy.
The pair of them moved to the lake’s edge, Arthur holding onto Hastur’s hand, as his feet were not yet accustomed to walking through the loosely packed pebbles. He seemed calmer now, to Hastur’s great relief, able to laugh about his frail human stamina. As they reached the edge of the lake, he even managed to let go and continue a few steps on his own power. Hastur braced himself as best he could—the terrain wasn’t terribly well-suited to him, either—in case Arthur tripped and he needed to lend his aid, but he kept his balance. He stopped ankle deep in the black water, letting it slosh gently over his feet.
“It’s eerie,” Arthur murmured, turning his head as he took in the full panorama of the immense lake. “Water this black. Feels like there’s something lurking underneath.”
“There is,” said Hastur. “Don’t go any deeper.”
Arthur tensed, and he started to take a step back. Then he caught himself, and stubbornly he remained, worming his toes into the silt. “It’s beautiful, though,” he admitted. “Pure black, and yet somehow I can see the city reflected in the mist.” He turned over his shoulder to see Carcosa towering over them upon its bluff, spires shining in the evening suns. He turned forward again. “I can see why the person writing that tome you had me read was so eager to return.”
Hastur hummed, and as he fell quiet, so did Arthur. He took a few moments in the silence beside the lake to contemplate his human lover again, no longer within the bounds of his city and spire, but here on the banks of the Dreamlands wilds. The gentle wind tossed the hem of Arthur’s golden robe against his calves, and he turned his face into it. He stood easy there, vibrant and self-assured against the black of the beautiful and unknown, and for a moment Hastur found himself breathless.
“Ah,” Arthur said quietly, and Hastur startled as if having been caught somehow, only to realize that the stars had shifted overhead; the Lights were on display. The brilliance of the Hyades shone through Carcosa’s glass spires, mixing with the natural phosphorus of Hali’s surface, creating an array of glimmering color that even the rainbow palace of Illek-Vad would envy. Each vibrantly rendered shade reflected off the tiny particles of mist in a wondrous display that marveled even the eyes of an old god: Arthur was left utterly transfixed and speechless, and Hastur moved up behind him.
This frail creature had already changed so much of him. Though previously Hastur had approached with caution, he let his mind dance along Arthurs’ edges freely, appreciating the magnificent panorama through his blunt human senses. He drank of Arthur’s delight, and less expectedly, of the myriad emotions that came with it. Arthur, with his boundless curiosity and pride, still reeled from his experience in the tower and in the garden after; he pressed his hand to his chest as he watched the lights shift and dazzle, finding some metaphor even Hastur couldn’t fully interpret, against his body that now felt so new and strange to him. Arthur had felt then, and to a much lesser degree now, an intrusion of divinity not meant for his race, and despite his teasing and goading, he was beginning to read the marks that truth had left on him. He had been made love to by a god. An entity from the stars was partaking of his wonder and trepidation even then. A world of incomprehensible beauty lay before him with the spawn of eon-spanning abominations swimming underneath, and he dared stand at the precipice, the King in Yellow himself pressed to his back.
Arthur shook around a sudden sob of emotion. “I’m never going back,” he murmured.
“No,” Hastur said quietly. It was in his power to do so still—it had been his intention, once. He had mutilated himself trying to send Arthur home, but now he knew he was too selfish to allow it. “Do you want to?”
“No,” Arthur said, and the ease and immediacy of that answer startled even him enough that he laughed through an onset of tears. He wiped his face against his sleeve. “No, I don’t. I feel like that should bother me, but it doesn’t, and that is terrifying.” He laughed some more, wracked by as many emotions as there were colors parading across the shore. “Fuck. It really is beautiful.”
Hastur lowered himself, letting some of his tentacles stretch forward into the cool water. He wrapped Arthur up in his cloak again, and Arthur in turn reached back, twisting his long fingers in its tattered weave. They leaned together as the dazzling sunset crescendoed into its most magnificent array and then began to ebb.
“So,” Arthur said at length, “I can kind of understand why you didn’t bring up the cock until now.”
“Don’t think about it too much,” Hastur warned; they were twined so tight, in all ways, that he had no trouble feeling the shivers that coursed through Arthur’s long body and weary mind.
“But now that it’s out, so to speak,” Arthur continued, “does that mean something? Why was today different?”
Hastur rumbled; he estimated he was enamored enough in the moment that Arthur’s ego was more charming than it was irritating. “You were very cute today,” he admitted. “You’re getting much better at the language.”
“Oh?” As anticipated, Arthur stood up taller, and his voice dripped with smugness. “You liked my dirty talk, did you?” He arched his back. “Umna-umna wgah’ya…”
That was less expected, and Hastur couldn’t help the tiny growl of arousal that tumbled out of him. Arthur quivering against him in reply was a dangerous temptation. For a moment he considered dragging Arthur into the waters with him, fucking him amongst the sand and surf, so that his lovely voice would ring out over the entire lake…
He swallowed that fantasy back. “I did,” he said, firmly and earnestly, and Arthur’s breath caught. “And your psyche didn’t shatter from me completely, which is a very good sign as to your progress here.”
Arthur let out a breath of laughter. “I’m so glad to hear it,” he said, but then he quieted and grew more serious. “And I want more.”
Hastur swallowed. It should have been infuriating that Arthur could do this to him. “Arthur—”
“Not just your prick,” Arthur said with determination. “I want more: I want to see more of the city, I want to meet these scholars you keep teasing me with. I want to see the theater and the rest of the temple and—”
“All right.”
“And everything that’s left to see,” Arthur carried on. “If this is really my home now, I want…” He paused. “All right?”
“Yes, all right,” Hastur said again. “I’m not going to tell you you’re not ready anymore.”
“Oh.” Arthur was still for a moment, as if his bluff had been called, but then he leaned deeper into Hastur’s embrace. “Good. Thank you.”
They stood together for a while longer, watching the last of the lnghr-lnghr ebb into smooth, black mist once more. Arthur let out a long sigh as the final light extinguished. “Magnificent,” he murmured. “Thank you for bringing me.”
“You’re welcome,” Hastur said in kind. He, too, felt a mysterious passing with the last of the lights: a kind of unexpected melancholy, as if the wonders of Carcosa had flittered on without him, leaving him, too, in a body that was just as new and strange to him as Arthur’s seemed to him. The intrigue Arthur brought crashing against centuries of apathy left something in him agape, not unlike a wound. Dare a god as old as him admit it frightened him?
No. He swept Arthur up into his arms.
“Hastur—” Arthur squawked in protest, but then with a great pout he settled. “We’re going right now?”
“We’re going back to the garden,” Hastur said firmly. “I feel the need to hold you down for a while.”
Arthur squirmed, but not enough to suggest he was really trying to escape. “I suppose that’s fair,” he said, and he relaxed again, leaning his head against Hastur’s shoulder as they headed back to the familiar, lively embrace of the temple grounds.