Chapter 18

Eighteen

Some hours later they found themselves relaxing on the bed, fed, watered and ready to get some rest. Theo was tucked up against the wall with Baku between him and the door. Though he wouldn't admit it out loud, Theo was pretty damn glad of that fact. The medicinal soap might have taken away the pain of the bruises, and the relentless pleasure Baku had given him soothed the worst of the aches, but Theo was exhausted and not just physically. He wasn't sure how it had only been less than forty-eight hours since he had set off with his squad to battle the munching monsters. It seemed so much longer. Perhaps it was simply that he was spending every moment of his time with Baku—well, except those where he was being dragged off to be eaten by other monsters—but Theo felt like he knew his monster.

He didn't though.

Theo was well aware that no one could know another person after just a few days, and that didn't even take into account the whole other dimension element that was involved in their relationship.

But Theo felt it.

It made no sense.

Were he less exhausted, Theo might have spent some time considering it, fretting over it even in his slightly neurotic way. But for now, tucked into the bed, body relaxed—though aching slightly from the memory of Baku's cock deep inside it—and brain exhausted, he simply accepted that it was all fucked up, there was nothing he could actively do about it, and instead looked up into the moonlit eyes of his monstrous lover.

"I find myself…captivated by you, my human Theo," Baku said as their eyes met. It was the first time the monster had called him his human, and it gave Theo an unexpected thrill. "I did not imagine that would be the case."

"What do you mean?" Theo asked.

Baku shrugged one massive shoulder. "The people I have encountered so far from your world have not captivated me."

"I'm not the first human you have met?"

"The first I have had any interest in."

Theo tried to imagine what other humans might have thought the first time they saw Baku, with his bulk and his purple skin and that silvery glow. On the other side, Theo's side, it would be so much more pronounced as he would have the inter-dimensional shimmer as well.

"How many times have you been to our world?" Theo eventually asked.

"A few."

"Why?"

"To gather information."

"Are there more of you there now?" Theo asked, his mind boggling at the thought of a huge purple monster wandering around Westminster.

"Yes."

"How many?"

"Many."

"Are you trying to invade?"

The monster almost laughed at that. "Your world is not for us. It is too…busy."

"There are billions of people and billions of animals," Theo said. "The population generally has been growing for centuries, but they say it will stabilise soon."

"Not so here," Baku said. "Our populations have been falling for centuries. There have not been billions of people here for some time." He paused. "There were more before the rages but since then…"

"How many of your people have the rages killed?" Theo asked but then wished he hadn't. The rages genuinely frightened Theo.

"It is not as simple as that, Theo," Baku said.

"They don't kill you?"

"I—"

"No, don't tell me," he said quickly. "I don't want to know."

"Theo…"

"I don't want to think about them right now, not here, not when it is us."

Baku seemed to sigh at that. He reached out and ran a finger along Theo's face, carefully caressing along his cheekbone. "Your skin is such a strange colour," he said. "The other humans I have met were similar and despite being warned in advance it took me some time to become accustomed to it."

"You look…different to me too," Theo said. "Your glow…" He leaned into the monster's caress. "Most people in my world do not glow."

"The glow has a very specific cause. One I will explain in time."

Given that the monster felt free to caress him, Theo decided he would do the same. He stroked gently along the monster's pointed ear. It twitched beneath his touch.

"You feel that, don't you?" he demanded again and he didn't mean the touch but the effects of it, the strange feeling that it induced.

"Of course, I do," the monster replied.

"Then tell me what you were doing in my world," Theo said as he watched the ear twitch again.

"Preparing to battle the nightmares," the monster said even as he leaned into Theo's touch. "But my journeys to your world began only recently. The trip to get from our continent to this one is not easy. Anyone that commits to travelling between the worlds must settle here for the time being."

"You have to be on this continent to travel over because the rips mirror each other, and this is mainly where they are?"

Baku nodded. "We have mapped all the rips."

"All of them?" Theo asked in surprise. "I'm not sure we've managed that. We have a warning system in place now when they start, but some of the early ones weren't recorded at all."

"It is important we know where they are so we know where we must go," Baku said.

"And where did you go the first time you went over to my dimension?"

"This was some months ago," Baku said. "And it was much farther south. A small town called Padstowe."

"In Cornwall?"

"Yes, you have been?" Baku asked.

Theo shook his head. "I rarely leave the city. But I know of the town because a famous chef once lived there. He cooked a lot of fish. This was long before the munching monsters infested it and ate them all. I think he lives up north now."

"The infestation down there is significant," Baku growled. "I went to witness it and try to understand what the nightmares are doing there."

"Eating everything," Theo said. "That's what they always do. They arrive through a rip, and they eat everything in sight. The only way to stop them is to kill them all. In the early days the government did try other things," Theo added. "Talking to them, negotiating with them. It didn't work."

"No," Baku said. "It would not. They are not people in the way that you understand people to be. They can think and they can plan and perhaps they are even slightly sentient, but they operate on instinct and their instinct is to consume. The act allows them to multiply so quickly."

"Which is what makes them so difficult to kill."

"Yes." Baku caressed him again, slower, gentler. "You need to sleep, Theo," he said. "We both do. Tomorrow is going to be…difficult."

"I'm a bit worried to close my eyes," Theo admitted.

"The rages…"

"Yeah."

"The memory of their cries will fade in time. They will cease to hurt you."

"And in the meantime."

"Hear it. Accept it. That is all you can do." The monster paused for just a moment before saying the next words, and Theo got the impression that he was choosing them carefully. "And perhaps it would be helpful if you came closer to me, if you spent the night physically pressed against me."

"How would that be helpful?" Theo asked even as his chest seemed to tighten.

"It would make you feel secure." He paused, being careful still. "You may not realise it, Theo, but you have felt drawn to me from the moment I pulled you into my world. This is part of how my species works, how we build bonds. When we decide to foster a closeness it becomes a physical thing, and it can rarely be resisted, even if only one of us decides upon it."

Theo sucked in a breath. "You've made me feel this way?" he asked.

"What way?" the monster replied.

"I…" Theo shrugged. "Attracted to you?"

"You would feel that regardless," the monster said. "I am your preferred type."

"How do you even know that?"

"It is obvious."

"Then what have you done to me?" Theo asked.

"I wanted you," the monster said. "Wanted to feel close to you from the moment I pulled you up that hill and away from the rages. That feeling only increased as we slept next to each other, and I felt your body beside mine. I wanted the closeness and so now you want that too."

Theo shook his head even though everything the monster said was correct and he realised that he should be quite angry about what he was hearing but honestly, he wasn't. If anything, Theo was relieved because it explained it all now, how the touches felt, why they were so intense, and it also entirely absolved him of responsibility. He hadn't allowed himself to be fucked by the monster because he was desperate and horny and lacking in any sense, but because Baku had bewitched him in some way!

The morality of that Theo would consider later. For now, there was no denying what the monster said. At least not to himself. To be held in the monster's big arms, to be curved against him. Theo knew that it would be an experience unlike anything he had ever enjoyed before.

"I guess I could give it a try," he eventually said.

And so he did. And the cries of the rages lasted only for a little while before the steady beats of Baku's heart filled Theo's ears and his mind instead. And before long he fell into the dreamless sleep he had wished for.