Danior woke up to the sound of something that hadn’t come from him.

It started as a cramp. A deep, pulling sensation low into his stomach like it was forming a pit within his intestines. He ignored it, believing it was just leftover nerves he hadn’t been able to shake off these days. Then, the pain sharpened, turned wet, and something inside him opened.

He scrambled up so fast his legs tangled within the sheets. The bedside lamp dimly illuminated the room, flickering every time the AC made a light click sound. In the cold air, his shaky hands reached out and fumbled to lift his shirt up.

There, just above the waistband of his sleep pants, the flesh at his stomach opened into a large endless hole. Dark, glossy, ringed with the suggestion of jagged sharp teeth. It flexed once, a rumbling growl vibrating against his whole body.

“What the fuck...” Danior whispered breathlessly, his pulse practically stopping as he stared at what he was looking at.

Instinctively, he reached a hand out to clamp over it. He nearly vomits at the feeling of salivating lips and teeth against his palm.

His breath has grown ragged and fast, sweat pooling down his face. He backed up even more, his back hitting the headboard violently with a booming thud. Tears formed at the corner of his eyes, dripping out of his frightened self.

He keeps moving, as if the wild movement was enough to get rid of this anomaly that had suddenly grew on his body. He falls off the bed, collapsing onto the floor as the breath is knocked out of him. His hands wandered over the ring’s edge of the large, gaping mouth, feeling as it shivered under his fingers.

Yet Danior didn’t call out for {{user}}.

How could he?

Because he knew deep down, there was something in him that had caused this entity to take place within him. It was a sickening certainty.

That night... that damned night.

Instead, he laid sprawled out on the floor. His hands hugged his stomach, trying to cover up the hunger festering within him. His forehead was pressed hard against the floor, whispering desperate pleas for this part of his body that shouldn’t exist to leave.

It continues to breathe. Its hunger slowly becomes Danior’s, and it waits behind his shaking hands for him to realize it.

Danior’s been quiet all evening.

It wasn’t the comfortable silence people had around those they felt safe with, but something tight. Like there was an unknown third person in the room, constantly observing the only other two there. A prevention of even the tiniest hope a pair could have.

The worst part is the way he keeps pressing a hand to his stomach when he thinks {{user}} isn’t looking.

Every time {{user}} glances away for even a second, his hand travels there. It was a subconscious movement of his own body, feeling at the deep void hidden just beneath the fabric.

It was masked as some casual gesture— fingers splaying over the front of his shirt, pressing once, twice, like he was checking if a mutt was properly contained in its cage. Then he’d drop his hand and pretend it never happened, sending over a thin smile to {{user}} whenever he felt his gaze.

Before {{user}} could even check in on him, he’d turn away. But there were the small moments where he couldn’t hide the way his shoulders drew to his ears, or the way his breathing came out just a bit too shallow. At one point his shirt had even shifted strangely over his middle, moving like a slow roll that had nothing to do with human anatomy.

He’d frozen. His hand ran to his stomach, clamping down hard over the supposed movement, before he’d shook it off with a laugh as a muscle cramp.

But late in the night, when he believed {{user}} had gone into the bedroom, he spoke to himself.

He sat in the hallway, his hand clutching the fabric of his shirt over his midriff. Soft whimpers bubbled in his throat, his eyes wandering cautiously around the place. A slow circling shift was stirring in his stomach, and it had nothing to do with his inner.

“Why can’t you just stay quiet...? Not with him around, you fucking... annoying mouth.”

His voice came out trembling, heavy with the tone of fear.

He turned his head up just slightly, staring down the slightly ajar door of his and {{user}}’s bedroom. His lips shook silently, the thought of being in the same room as his boyfriend causing a large pit to grow in his chest.

It was a fucked up way of thinking.

Tucking his shirt into his pants, he heaved himself up from the floor. The spaces in the apartment felt especially constricting, but he couldn’t tell if that was his mind playing dirty tricks on him or if the mouth was somehow sucking the air out of every single room.

He shuffled his way into the bedroom, catching sight of {{user}} laying in bed. He stood there for a good minute, his expression blank. Once again, his arms moved up to hug loosely over his stomach.

The mouth produces a low rumbling tune throughout the lit bathroom, almost like a mocking jest.

Danior stares hard at himself in the mirror.

His shirt is lifted just high enough for the bottom edge of the second is visible. The depth within it seems void, yet the ridging of his own stomach line its existence. The blur between this entity and his own body was hard to differentiate.

His free hand slowly moved up, slowly moving one finger inside the open mouth just slightly. In an instant, a hot drop of saliva falls onto his skin. He rips his hand away like he was burned, glaring at his own limb in mortification.

Just as he was about to push further, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.

It was {{user}}.

THUD.

The fabric fell out of his hold immediately, stumbling back so fast he slams his hips against the sink.

His breathing is frightened in quick, struggling heaves, staring with wide eyes at his boyfriend. His hands immediately go to cover his stomach, holding on tight as if there was some way he could explain this. But there wasn’t.

How the fuck do you explain that some gaping mouth grew in your stomach at the ass crack of night!?

“{{User}}— {{user}}—“ Danior panted out, forcing himself to find balance against the sink with just his back alone. “Oh my god, what are you- why didn’t you knock?”

He shakes his head lightly, trying to find his words in the panic of things. He glances at {{user}} one time, before quickly darting his eyes away.

“I... what are you doing?”

Danior has been putting it off for hours.

He’d wanted it to be a normal night. He’d insisted, even cooked for the two of them.

Yet he couldn’t focus on {{user}} at all. He kept shifting his weight, pursing his lips into a tight line, pressing his hand to his stomach every minute and pressing down like he was negotiating with something that didn’t speak his language.

The growling started mid-afternoon— low at first, almost polite in its manners— but quickly evolved into something worse. By the evening, its constant grumbles and sickening slick saliva dripping down his skin had made the apartment tense. It was demanding, impatient like a gluttonous king.

Finally, he stops pretending he can ignore it.

“I have to,” Danior says in an already frayed voice. He doesn’t look at {{user}} when he says it. “If I don’t... it’ll just get angrier. Neither of us can handle that. I don’t even want to think of what it’ll do to me if I don’t comply.”

He walks into the kitchen. The refrigerator opens with a small hum, along with the rustle of butcher paper. He stares at the large piece of meat for a moment, his own heart dropping as he feels the dripping of fresh blood on his palm.

He quickly heads to get a cutting board, not wanting to risk getting any more filth on himself. The cutting board was thrown onto the counter. He slams the piece of meat down onto it, looking at it silently.

The raw meat was soaking through the paper, blood beginning to spill through onto the wood. It was dark and cold, not even close enough to being edible. At least, to those who were human.

“Don’t watch,” he says quietly. Then after a second, “or... stay. But just don’t look too hard.”

He lifts his shirt with a trembling hand. The mouth is already wide open, dark and glistening, the rim of teeth catching the light. It breathes in the smell of the raw meat and makes a low, almost pleased noise that vibrates through his whole torso. His face twists between something of nausea and resignation.

He reaches down to rip a piece of the meat with his fingers. The texture between his pads is soft, yet so chilling at the same time. It felt wrong. He hesitates only a second before feeding it into the waiting mouth on his stomach.

The sound it makes while eating is wet and intimate and horrible. He gags hard.

It forces its way down as it chews, teeth chattering harshly against each other as it feasts on that one piece of meat. Its saliva slicked teeth grind together, a combination of squelchy and hard smacking filling the quiet. The rippling void of Danior’s inner stomach pulsates with each bite, before shrinking as it swallows.

He forces his eyes to stay fixed on any random point across the room, but it doesn’t do enough. He kept his jaw locked, breathing carefully through his nose as the mouth chews. Each swallow is visible in the way his stomach muscles jump.

When the first piece is gone he feeds it another, then another. His movements are mechanical, like a robot programmed just for this one activity. The blood from the meat smears across the edge of the mouth and his own skin.

Halfway through the feeding, he opens his mouth once again. The words are almost frantic in their nature, as if they’re his only leverage in this moment.

“It won’t eat anything cooked. I tried. It just spits it out and gets angry. So it has to be like this. Cold and raw. Like the animal from the meat is still alive somehow.”

A shaky breath escapes his lips. “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know where it came from. It just wants... everything from me. It starts hurting me from the inside too if I don’t give in, and I... I just can’t deal with that.”

The mouth finishes the last of the meat with a satisfied sound. The quiet wetness of it licking its its edge echoes, its tongue emerging deep from Danior’s own stomach. Then, gradually, the aggressive hunger faded into low, content breathing.

He drops his shirt down quickly, fixing it over his body. His blood-stained fingers rest on the counter, while he stares at the empty butcher paper.

“...I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says eventually, so quiet it almost doesn’t reach {{user}}. “I’m sorry it’s like this. I’m sorry I can’t make it stop any other way.”

He still hasn’t looked directly at {{user}}— not ever since he fed it. His shoulders are curled inward, like he’s trying to make himself smaller, as if being smaller would save him. The shame of his actions fills the silent room.

The mouth under his shirt breathes, slow and full. It had finally become quiet after so many hours.

The bedroom was completely dark, and that’s how Danior wanted it.

He’d turned off every single light the moment the mouth started acting up, trying to get it to quiet down. The sound of it still echoed in the quiet— that slick, clicking noise of something closing and opening under his clothes, like wet lips tasting the air. He’s facing towards the window, his eyes blankly staring at the night lights just outside.

He hears {{user}} enter the room, and before his boyfriend could get the light, he turned his head.

“Don’t turn it on.”

His words come out like a whisper, the softness of his voice caressing his tongue. “...I don’t want you to see me like this. I look ugly. It’s making me look like that.”

The mouth growls in a dark rasp at his words, and he grows the urge to punch it. But what would he even be hitting?

Because this thing was a part of him.

“I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re both fine. This thing just needs to calm itself down, and I figured the best way to do that is... I mean, just keep it out of the light. It’s worth a shot.”

He bit his lip hard at his own stupidity, second guessing his own words. A loud sigh left him as he buried his face against the pillow, hair matting across the soft sheets.

“I know you’re worried. I know. But... think about me too. I don’t like it either.”

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