
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/444158.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      John_Egbert/Dave_Strider
  Character:
      John_Egbert, Dave_Strider
  Additional Tags:
      Gore, Horror, Weight-gain, Chubstuck, Needles
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-06-26 Words: 3438
****** Hypodermic ******
by IntravenousDollhouse
Summary
     John and Dave are stranded in the perverse, hidden subterranean of a
     mystery-planet. Though the keys to survival are freely given, this
     world is not without risk.
Notes
     Warnings: Trigger-warning, extreme weight-gain (descriptive), gore,
     mild sex (implied touching).
     If these concepts are not your cup of tea, turn back now!
The shift of slender, cruel steel against throbbing flesh is yours to
experience. Cotton candy smoke dances about your horizontal and shuddering
frame even as you detect its calming allure. A sweet scintillation. Each breath
is drenched in syrup and pulls at the fibers of your throat; tempting your
reflexes. You’re sick.
A canopy of syringes flaunting vivid, effervescent fluids dangles precariously
from the violet vaulting. Each needle sparkles behind your eyelids, leaving
slick imprints of dextrose film. In actuality, though you’re barely able to
view the room in entirety, most of the space you see is glazed in a similar
paste.
“Hah...”
You sigh. The sound rattles through your chest wetly; like a loose trinket
inside a snow-globe. Imagination spits embers of a dreadful, visceral illness
in your mind. The sparks burn agitated landscapes of bacteria down your throat.
Latex sticks to your forehead as a soothing hand is placed there. The person
bent over your aching body is clad in sterilized rubber from yellow-soled boots
to ventilation mask. Not one slice of skin is shown.
A panicked susurration of briery pain oozes down the back of your skull,
culminating in an inflamed tangle of nerves. It’s the worst migraine you’ve
endured.
The wand of surgical steel returns. At its head, a spiteful blade glimmers.
Strength leaks out your neck at a hopeless pace, forcing you into a state of
relaxation. Your face is turned to the wall, which drips with a thick, pink
oil. If you could touch it, your fingers would sizzle.
Blood spatters the corners of your lips and becomes a milky, roseate froth when
mixed with a drizzle of hapless saliva. The latex specter grabs a cloth -- you
can barely see it through peripheral vision -- and presses it to convulsing
flesh. When their hand is drawn back, still clutching the rag, you see it drip
with thick spools of greasy blood. It’s discarded.
Jellied, blackened clots bubble from your gut as a hand burrows through fat,
muscle, and intestine. The anesthesia steadily dissipates; your quiet, humming
nerves are a malefic chime. You’re screaming, even before the creature’s
humanoid teeth crush a slippery chunk of bowel. A cauterization laser bores
through the anterior side of its smooth head. Its burning death smells like
rotten fruit, and for one surreal moment you’re at home, in the kitchen.
Organic compounds never lasted long in the apartment.
The still-twitching monster is removed from your gaping abdomen.
“Kill me too.”
Hands tightly grasping the unfathomable corpse halt before you. A masked face
regards you with enough emotion to detect beyond the rubber.
The person jolts in place, as though shocked, and swiftly accosts the twin set
of pressurized tanks beside you. That’s where the cotton candy vapor
originates. One valve is adjusted with affected coordination. A swamp of dusk-
light fills your palpitating brain; and the world mercifully mellows.
 
***
 
A notebook lies abandoned in the reprobate toy-box filled with your personal
items. One worn, pink pencil crayon rests inside the chrysalis of a metallic
coil perched above the pages. You haven’t dared to compose a log-book -- or
‘diary,’ as Dave would refer to it, if he was conscious. That’s an archetype
action befitting of your favorite films; it’s not a responsibility you’re
prepared to corrupt in this place.
After meeting with Rose, Dave, and the trolls, then successfully breaching the
alpha session, the communal asteroid unexpectedly met a wrongly birthed planet.
Rose couldn’t foretell of such an event because the world itself was never
meant to exist. It’s a negative creation -- the perverse substratum of an
existing land. You initially wondered whose ectobiological relative unwittingly
spawned it, but soon surrendered such musings to surreal despair.
In this sector of the planet, you’re alone with Dave. Rose, Karkat -- the other
trolls -- all absent. With any luck, they’ve located each other and are
searching for your minimal envoy. A minuscule portion of food is maintained
under your singular discretion, and with profound fortune both bleak and
shining, you managed to become isolated in a medical ward -- of sorts.
The rubber gown you wear is doused in Dave’s blood. It’s a mess of sloppy,
candied hues. Gummy black, slick carmine. You cannot tolerate it any longer,
and in a fit of frustrated keening, throw it from your moist body to the
ground. Sweat drizzles down your brow and mixes with tears to form a scorching,
saline nightmare. You shiver, as it’s very cold without a suit. If you’re
careful, you might avoid another clandestine visit from the mud-man.
It’s a monster you cannot simply extract and burn. He spurts up from the
immense porcelain tub as a pus-heap of hemorrhaging filth; but when you dare
observe him from an appropriate angle, it’s obvious he has a human face. The
unnaturally wide grin -- a ghoulish frame for a mouth stuffed with squarish,
blunt teeth -- distinctly resembles that of the squirming infant you murdered.
An unpleasant tremor manipulates your heart. Was killing the monster inside
Dave really the only way to save his life? You could have extricated it without
melting a hole in the back of its mealy skull. Then again, it tried to devour
your best friend. Could you have simply plucked it from his guts without
causing irreparable damage?
No.
There was no way to avoid killing it.
Still, you feel the full accountability for its young termination. A weighty
guilt.
Before the luminous murmur of each convoluted lantern is snuffed, you hope to
see Dave’s conscious form. Preferably before the mud-man arrives, as he
inevitably will. You suspect this looming dusk is crucial. Tonight, the
creature will kill you. After all, you’re responsible for its child’s death.
 
***
 
An argent glow pries tired eyelids apart with quick brutality. Your breath
sticks to the inflamed flesh of your throat and gathers enough saliva to create
a vile dust-paste. It forces aggressive coughs from severely congested lungs.
Once the fit subsides, you rise to a seated position. A plush, cerulean jacket
proficiently substitutes a blanket.
It smells like John -- undoubtedly, it belongs to him. The garment is an
indication of your best friend. He’s either currently nearby, or once was. You
desperately hope for the former.
“Egbert?” Your voice is an atrocious clatter of rusty cutlery; all knives.
The coat slides off your torso. A metal gurney creaks below. It’s stained with
every color conceivable, but the most prominent shade is a glaring red. You
gaze, with dreadful hesitance, downward.
“Oh, fuck...”
There’s no way to rationalize the terror that rattles up your spine. All you
can do is process each gurgling scream to bleak silence.
A charred galaxy of abscessed tissue trembles with the first caress of your
distressed fingertips. Stitches jut from agonized flesh, dotting a grotesque
quilt-pattern from solar plexus to lower abdomen.
You’re uncertain as to whether it’s safe to stand, but blatant instinct
instructs you to anyway. Of course it’s dangerous; but remaining immobile in
stupefied dismay is worse.
A steel platter of surgical tools leers at you from the immediate left. Nestled
cozily amid them is a wrinkled slip of paper -- a letter.
Each brief, diminutive step you take results in a blinding paroxysm of agony.
You slide quivering fingers through the bladed cloister and retrieve the paper.
Pink lettering is rubbed dim in sporadic places and splotches of roughened
stationery crackle in your grasp, but the message is discernible.
‘dave, if you are reading this, it means i somehow didn’t kill you. since
you’re not dead it makes sense to say i’m sorry about how the stitches turned
out. i tried my best with them, but, well i’m just really sorry.
‘anyways, i don’t know if you remember or not, but i pulled this really nasty
monster out of you. i think it would have definitely killed you otherwise, sort
of like in alien, where it kind of just pops out of their chests?
‘well, the thing is, this alien has a dad. and i think it’s going to finally
eat me tonight, like it’s been threatening to do for the past...i dunno how
long exactly. it’s already dark and you didn’t wake up in time for me to say
goodbye because it’s going to get here in probably less than a minute.
‘i just wanted to write this note for that reason. to say goodbye. we had a
pretty cool adventure together up to this point, and i’m going to miss you. i
don’t even know if i’ll get a dream bubble because i feel like this monster is
going to eat every part of me. like, psyche included. it’s that creepy, dave.
‘so don’t leave this room. i don’t think it likes coming in here but it will if
it figures out where you are.
‘there’s more i wanted to write, but it’s kind of unnecessary now, so never-
mind. i left food in the deep freeze in the corner. i know that once you’re
better, you’ll find a way to escape or rose and jade will find you.
‘so again, i’m sorry. and also, one last time, goodbye.’
--- john.
Stunned tears spatter the letter as you read. If you had a pocket, you’d place
it there, but what’s draped over your crotch is an abbreviated, smooth, russet
medical gown. No storage. John’s coat, however, is likely equipped with a
pocket. You’d captchalogue the note, but that seems dismissive. You don’t want
to relinquish the -- your thoughts summon the word ‘memento.’ A swift shudder;
then you notice an odd rivulet of hot fluid stream down your leg. At first, you
believe the wound is bleeding, then you realize the liquid originates from your
hand -- from the letter -- and it’s not red, but a chrome-lime. An acid brook.
Words begin to soak through the paper, corrupting John’s message with their
own.
‘he’s alive. take two syringes and make haste. remember, the injections are not
intended for the monster.’
Tittering glass vials. A flickering shadow in the dying light. You seize two
needles from the radiant legion. The note is a pulpy, disintegrated clot of
blinding green. You’re forced to release it as you lurch through abstruse
corridors.
An anemic glow draws you toward a vast cavity. As you stumble wetly across
frigid tile, a sinister noise swells. It’s like simmering soup -- or pancake
batter on a griddle. Lurid and bubbly.
You see him; just a distinct tuft of shining black hair. It’s enough. The
formerly apathetic lamp sparks with sudden ardor, and in the stark
illumination, a gruesome beast is fringed.
Its body takes no constant shape but it’s rather like a human in the most
unsettling way -- a human unmindfully forged from mercury. Cursed to remain
undefined; melted.
John is struggling beneath the creature, but its colossal volume renders the
protest as disjointed and impotent spasms. Color, flesh, voice -- all are
absorbed. Your best friend is dying.
It detects you and halts -- in that moment, you dive forward, obliterate your
stitches, and plunge the syringe into John’s emaciated hip. The monster
convulses and coils into a wormish abomination. It stares into your unveiled
eyes, and smiles with vapid cruelty. An overabundance of teeth float in a sea
of rancid pus. You can smell it; a wretched illness devised in humanoid mud.
A youthful voice -- cries of perplexed astonishment. You turn to John. The
creature jealously accosts him, mouth widening to impossible dimensions. It
resumes the binge, but in a clumsy manner. It cannot maintain the pace at which
John expands.
You’re mesmerized by solution’s effect. Cascades of fat drape his fragmented
clothing. He’s swelling to monumental proportions; characterized by immense,
voluminous rolls of quaking flesh. An opulent belly settles in his lap before
blanketing beautifully amorphous thighs.
He wears a justifiable expression of anxious wonder; it suits the unstable
nature of his facial features. Each cheek is rounded, softened. They rest upon
a wide duet of wobbling chins which obscure his neck and create a portrait of
youthful indulgence.
The monster doesn’t retreat, but vainly struggles to absorb John’s flesh with
swiftness equal to his expansion. This overzealous determination costs the mud-
man its life as whichever mystery organ passes for a stomach stretches and
splits; spilling vile, rancid guts to the cold ground. It convulses in brief,
staccato agony then becomes still.
You stumble toward Egbert, but cannot conquer the distance before falling into
a grim and wrongful tangle of your own limbs. Where the stitches snapped, a
rindle of blood wets your protruding liver. Slick fingers strive to press it
back, unintentionally kneading the muscle wall with painful consequences. The
blood is thick and gluey -- your hand slips, and the dazzling throb of
squelching organs as they squeeze between the sinister maw weaves a lucid
nightmare.
“Dave! Wait, wait, it’s gonna be fine, okay!? Just, stop, don’t -- just keep
your eyes open, alright? Please, just for a bit, I can figure this out!”
It will be a heroic death. Permanent. There’s nothing you can do to prevent the
shutters of your eyes from closing.
So John does something to prevent it instead.
The second syringe -- the one that skittered away as you fell -- is impulsively
stabbed into your outer thigh. Resulting discomfort, so sharp and lovely,
distracts you from the spiteful ache of your gut; and your eyes remain focused.
 
***
 
Utilizing the second needle Dave brought was a compulsion. You inject its
wickedly glittering contents into your friend, as the pain will garner his
attention for a deficient amount of time -- might as well pursue your decision
in its entirety.
He begins to engorge; even before the tube is wholly emptied. What’s more
remarkable, and a sublime relief, is how his body -- minutely at first -
- regenerates. The guilty crevasse you hacked into his torso envelopes errant
bits of internal organ as it slowly mends into a well-healed, abstract scar.
Once restored, his body proceeds to fatten.
Velvety flesh distends to prepare for the flood of gelatinous surplus.
Elephantine rolls of flesh curve around his frame, forcing him into a partially
upright position. He is dazed -- awareness stolen from proximity to death and
an astonishing growth. Bovine canvases of fat drape from his arms with
evidently ponderous mass. The surreal, oceanic span of his belly and thighs -
- nearly merged in rotundity -- finally cease expanding. You watch his face,
accentuated with a plush abundance of chins, relax as his eyes close -- this
time in rest, not death.
You’re unsure of what to say, so you remain silent, watchful. Movement is
heavily labored at best, and you suspect it would be the same for him; yet you
cannot permit this location. It’s tainted with the dead mud-man’s steady
putrefaction and the lingering memory of your own threatened life. You stagger
to your feet and plod heavily toward the desolate corridor. With each step,
ripples echo through your bulging figure, sending your backside into a gentle,
pendulous motion.
Upon observing it, you realize dragging Dave through the lengthy hallway is a
vast improbability. You return to his side and grasp the widest, softest part
of him to prevent causing further pain before using the weighty motion of your
body to pull him.
“If you wanted me to get up, you could have just said something, Egbert. Real
smooth.” His voice is weary; a consequence of extensive illness and terror. You
likely sound the same.
“Heh, yeah, sorry. I thought I could drag you back into the other room without
waking you up.”
“I wasn’t really asleep. Just needed some time to recover. That was some
seriously mind-blowing shit.”
His flippant vocabulary suggests a paradoxically dismissive attitude, but you
posses an intimate comprehension of the current truth.
“Yeah. I think we should get out of here. If there’s more mud guys...well, I
know they can’t absorb us at this size, but I’d rather not deal with it again.”
“Hey, come on, we’ll get out of here. We’re both alive. In your note, you said
Rose and Jade would find us. I still think that’s possible -- you should too.”
The desperate note in your voice went undetected until Dave began to comfort
you. Now you hear it. Each too-sharp key of failure.
“I’m --” your statement briefly dissolves into discordant, fearful laughter “-
- okay. Just...really, really...tired.”
Instead of traipsing back to the operation room, and collapsing to the floor,
as anyone partaking in your level of exhaustion would do, you devolve into a
mess of hoarse, raw sobs; face pressed into Dave’s warm chest with frightened
urgency. A lovely dismay slices through the din of sadness and besieges you
with what was absent from your goodbye-note to Dave.
Maybe now’s the time to be honest.
“Thanks for letting me rub my gross face in your chest like this.”
His smirk is distant. “That’s what I’m here for. I’m the single most competent
handkerchief this side of the freak show.”
“It kinda is a freak show. If I knew where we were, like, exactly, I could
probably fly us outta here.”
“Likewise, but with time shenanigans.”
“Okay, so we’re both really big deals. Anyways, I don’t even want to try
exploring now. I kinda want to sit in that room with all the needles, just in
case.”
“Yeah, I get that. Are you ready to go now?”
He’s trying to be sensitive. You’re avoiding the confession.
“I think so. But I have to tell you something when we get there.”
“Does it concern the monster-spawn abortion? Because I’m pretty fucking curious
about it.”
“Uh, no, but we can talk about that too.”
Dave nods and begins the arduous hike; he’s positioned ahead of you,
maintaining the formation with silent assertion.
Protecting you.
The alpha-posturing would be irritating coupled with alternate circumstances;
now, it’s reassuring. You can’t imagine a sensation comparable to being
absorbed into the mud-man’s loathsome viscera. If Dave wants to shield you from
a repeated experience, you’re grateful for it. However, since you’ve already
inspired sufficient agony in your best friend, adopting the role of protector
is your responsibility.
“Let me walk in front of you.”
“No.”
“Aw, come on Dave, don’t be an ass. Shuffle over.”
“There’s no point now. We’re almost there.”
“You’re not going to fit through the doorway unless I knock the sides down a
bit anyways.”
“Oh shit, Egbert. Keep up with burns like that, and I’ll be a tender pork-roast
in no time.”
You groan and trundle past him; he barely surrenders the space, so physical
contact is unavoidable. A darkly pleasant thrill sparks through your body as
your backside is crushed against his plush abdomen.
The door is less than a few feet away. As you near it, dimensions become
problematic. You’re forced to turn sideways in order to comfortably breach the
threshold. Dave quickly subjugates his budding laughter. After all, he’ll be
prompted to assume a similar position.
Initially, you’re worried the room will have changed in a vital way. Paranoia
whispers colorful images of a mud-man ambush, or stolen syringes. Once you’re
inside, it’s evident nothing has changed since the moment you thought would be
your last with Dave. You almost ask him where he stashed the note, but refrain.
It’s no longer relevant.
“So, step into my sacred confessional, Egbert. What’s up?”
Anxiety beats a steady, skeletal rhythm inside you. At the time you wrote to
him, you didn’t have the courage to admit your emotions even under the shadow
of death. Can you do it now -- and live with the consequences of your
hypocrisy?
Yes.
You’re standing in close proximity to him -- well, heeding the size of your
body. Two vast globes of shamefully soft flesh meld together as you battle the
distance. It’s too late to turn back. Dave likely knows what you’re up to, even
now, prior to the actual kiss. Your suspicion is confirmed when he leans
forward. His lips are hot; thicker than you imagined they’d be when he was
slender. Your face is likely all creamy curves to him as well.
It feels like true comfort; acceptance. You’re vaguely bemused by the revulsion
you’d feel kissing anyone else. It has to be him -- it’s always been him.
“I guess you want to hear about alien hell-babies now?”
“Nah, we’ve got plenty of time for that later.”
His fingers, dextrous despite their obvious chubbiness, meander amid your
billowing thighs. Logically, you should protest his eagerness, but this has not
been a simple night; and you’ve held him in anticipation for years.
Constant bliss casts an idealistic illumination on the landscape. It’s how you
preserve Dave’s sanity, in addition to your own, until Rose and Jade find you;
as you knew they would.
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